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What's the Diplomatic Breakout Time for Stopping an Iranian Bomb?

(PJ Media) Claudia Rosett - At the Iran nuclear talks, U.S. negotiators have been aiming for a deal that would involve a so-called breakout time of one year - meaning that the Tehran regime, should it cheat, would still need at least a year to be able to produce nuclear weapons. The idea is that this would be long enough for inspectors to detect the cheating, and the international community to do something about it. But how long is the Diplomatic Breakout Time - the time needed for the rest of the world, or the P5+1 world powers cutting this deal, to take decisive action. After failed talks and back channel talks and talks about talks, there eventually came the Joint Plan of Action in November 2013, setting the framework for the current talks that were supposed to be wrapped up in six months. There have been countless hours of bilateral, trilateral and full court meetings. There have been working dinners and discussions in Geneva, Vienna, New York, and now the Swiss city of Lausanne. So with a built-in buffer one-year breakout time for Iran, how does the diplomatic decision process work for the U.S. and its partners? Presumably they would all first have to be persuaded that Iran was really cheating, and how much. They would then have to debate and decide exactly what action to take. And Iran might use its talents to devise a form of cheating that such a deal has not fully anticipated and planned for. North Korea has been under UN sanctions for its nuclear and missile programs since 2006, when it conducted its first illicit nuclear test. North Korea is still building missiles and nuclear weapons, and the diplomats of the P5 are still brooding over what to do about it. There's already been a diplomatic breakout time of almost nine years. The writer, journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, heads its Investigative Reporting Project.
2015-03-20 00:00:00
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