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A Senseless Concession to Iran on Uranium Enrichment
(Wall Street Journal) John Bolton - Western negotiators have dropped their insistence that Iran halt all uranium enrichment, conceding that the regime could enrich to 4% commercial, "reactor-grade" levels if it stopped enriching to 20%, purportedly to fuel a research reactor. But nuclear physicists know it takes much more work to enrich U-235 to 4% or 20% than it takes to enrich from either of these levels to weapons-grade (90%+). Enriching natural U-235 to 4% requires most of the work (70%) needed to enrich to levels over 90%. From 4%, enriching to 20% takes merely 15%-20% more of the work. The Non-Proliferation Education Center estimates the difference between the two reactor-grade levels to be only about three weeks of further enrichment for enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear device. The West thus made a senseless concession by allowing enrichment even to 4%. Enrichment to any higher level will require mere baby steps to reach the Tehran regime's nuclear-arms destination. Once Iran is legitimized for enriching to reactor-grade levels - contrary to multiple Security Council resolutions requiring the cessation of all enrichment-related activities - any remaining possibility of stopping it from making nuclear weapons effectively disappears. The writer, a former U.S. ambassador to the UN, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.