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Iran Deal Could Encourage Rather than Limit Nuclear Activity
(Washington Post) Yuval Steinitz - A final deal that allows Iran to retain centrifuges for uranium enrichment ultimately would allow the development of nuclear weapons in Iran. Iran already possesses ballistic missiles suited to carry nuclear warheads and advanced knowledge of weaponization. Given that the production of fissile material is the principal stage in the process of making a nuclear weapon, acquiescing to Iranian enrichment is tantamount to legitimizing Iran's status on the nuclear threshold. Proposals to restrict the number of centrifuges are almost irrelevant. Even if Iran were forced to reduce its number of centrifuges to only 3,000, its stockpile of uranium enriched to 3.5% would allow the production of enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb within six months. Sooner or later, Tehran's anxiety over potential retaliatory actions against its regime, including its nuclear project, would increase pressures within Iran to dash toward a fait accompli nuclear weapon. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's "charm offensive" has had a dramatic effect in the West, but no one in the Middle East buys Iran's projection of pacifism. Should the final compromise include de facto recognition of Iran's "right to enrich," the international community would find it difficult to insist later that other problematic regimes concede that "right." How could the U.S. cast greater legitimacy on the previously clandestine centrifuge facilities in Qom and Natanz than on those that would be aboveboard from the outset? Ironically, a deal intended to prevent the nuclear armament of one dangerous country, Iran, could plant the seeds for the wholesale sprouting of many nuclear powers. The writer is Israel's minister of intelligence.