Wednesday, July 15, 2015

The Iran nuclear deal, translated into plain English

The Iran nuclear deal, translated into plain English - Vox
International negotiators assembled in Austria have announced the final terms of the Iranian nuclear deal.
The purpose of the deal is to limit Iran's nuclear program to something that is small, safe, and peaceful — and to impose lots of invasive inspections to make sure Iran is keeping to its end of the deal.
In exchange, Iran gets relief from some of the economic sanctions that have crippled its economy. Both sides, the thinking goes, also get to avert a war.
You can really see how that plays out, how the deal works, and what it means when you look into its details.
But those details can get awfully technical. So what follows are the most important provisions of the deal, along with a simple translation of each into plain English and a brief description of why it matters:
Centrifuges
Term: Iran will be allowed about 6,000 centrifuges in all: 5,060 that can enrich uranium at its Natanz facility and another 1,000 at Fordow, where they can be used for non-fissile research. It can only use first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, and has to give up other models, although several years down the line will be allowed to develop slightly more advanced models.
Plain English: Centrifuges are pieces of equipment you use to enrich uranium, a natural ore, into nuclear fuel. If you enrich uranium long enough in centrifuges, it can be used to make a nuclear bomb. Iran currently has about 20,000 centrifuges, so it will have to give most of them up. It will also be allowed to use only its very old, first-generation centrifuges.
Why it matters: This means Iran will have a much smaller nuclear program, in terms of its ability to create nuclear fuel or, potentially, nuclear material for a bomb. It will also be restricted to its oldest, slowest, least capable centrifuges for a number of years. This means that Iran's nuclear program just does not have the capability to do very much, and if Iran decides to break the deal and build a nuclear bomb, it will take them much longer.
Read it all.
This is a lefty, Obama loving site.
The best spin possible.
Little is possible.
we're screwed!

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