Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The endgame for negotiations would be an Iran whose entire nuclear program would be subject to routine but rigorous oversight to make sure everything is accounted for.
Iran’s ongoing negotiations over its nuclear program, most recently this weekend in Geneva, have not yet resulted in a deal.
As part of a negotiated comprehensive settlement with the P5+1, Iran could get access to foreign expertise, which could help Tehran realize its ambition to have a versatile research reactor.
Shares of Urenco, a pioneering developer of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment, may soon change hands, but a sale of the company is unlikely to increase the risk of proliferation.
The U.S. government should not require all foreign countries with which it concludes new nuclear cooperation agreements to legally commit themselves not to enrich uranium and reprocess spent fuel.
Proposed revisions to the U.S. rules governing nuclear technology transfers do much to accommodate commercial interests without compromising national security.
Pakistani luminaries met with Chinese luminaries a few months ago, and their handshake will translate into a brand new 1,000-MW power reactor–Kanupp-2–being plunked down into the middle of Pakistan’s mega-metropolis Karachi.
Despite undergoing some delays, Iran’s construction of a new heavy water reactor to the northwest of the city of Arak could eventually match the proliferation risk posed by the country’s uranium enrichment program.
While the media has focused on recent allegations of a secret uranium deal between Zimbabwe and Iran, the real story of Iran’s efforts to obtain secondary uranium sources is a much more complicated one.
Were U.S.-Iran diplomacy to significantly improve after Rouhani’s election, the revelation that Iran was preparing a new underground nuclear site would be poison.
