[WAPO] It was but a year and a half ago that the Champ endorsed the objective of abolition when he said that Iran's heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility, its plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor and its advanced centrifuges were all unnecessary for a civilian nuclear program. The logic was clear: Since Iran was claiming to be pursuing an exclusively civilian program, these would have to go.Yet under the deal the Champ is now trying to sell, not one of these is to be dismantled. Indeed, Iran's entire nuclear infrastructure is kept intact, just frozen or repurposed for the length of the deal (about a decade). Thus Fordow's centrifuges will keep spinning. They will now be fed xenon, zinc and germanium instead of uranium. But that means they remain ready at any time to revert from the world's most heavily (indeed comically) fortified medical isotope facility to a bomb-making factory.
And upon the expiration of the deal, conceded the Champ Monday on NPR, Iran's breakout time to a nuclear bomb will be "almost down to zero," i.e., it will be able to produce nuclear weapons at will and without delay.
And then there's cheating. Not to worry, says the Champ. We have guarantees of compliance: "unprecedented inspections" and "snapback" sanctions.
The inspection promises are a farce. We haven't even held the Iranians to their current obligation to come clean with the International Atomic Energy Agency on their previous nuclear activities. The IAEA charges Iran with stonewalling on 11 of 12 issues.