Source: James Conca, Forbes, Jan 8, 2020
The Iran Nuclear Deal was one of the most effective, scientifically-complicated (and correct) foreign-policy initiatives in history. When the Deal was scuttled, President Rouhani warned that Iran would restart its nuclear program if America’s actions really hurt the country or if the rest of the world did not support the Deal.
So, on January 5, Iran announced that it would no longer abide by limits on its nuclear program stipulated in the Nuclear Deal, putting the final nail in that coffin. All this over a Trump campaign promise.
The sad thing is that Iran was actually meeting the terms of the Nuclear Deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). According to the United Nations’ nuclear watch dog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran shipped nearly its entire fissionable stockpile to Russia last year, over 12 tons of enriched uranium, that could have been used to make uranium atomic bombs.
Iran then mothballed thousands of centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium for this type of atomic weapon, reducing the number of centrifuges from 19,000 to 6,104 and those 6,104 were the old ones, the IR1s, not their new ones, the IR2s.
Iran also removed the core of its heavy water reactor at Arak, and filled it with concrete. That reactor could have produced plutonium for the other type of atomic bomb, one that is more easily mounted on missiles, like North Korea has done.