Because of Trump, Iran Edges Closer to Nuke Capability

Today, six years after the pullout, Tehran has bolted past nearly all the pact's constraints on the amount and type of enriched uranium it can possess, IAEA documents show.

In factory chambers that had ceased making enriched uranium under a 2015 nuclear accord, the inspectors now witnessed frenzied activity: newly installed equipment, producing enriched uranium at ever faster speeds, and an expansion underway that could soon double the plant's output. More worryingly, Fordow was scaling up production of a more dangerous form of nuclear fuel - a kind of highly enriched uranium, just shy of weapons grade. Iranian officials in charge of the plant, meanwhile, had begun talking openly about achieving "deterrence," suggesting that Tehran now had everything it needed to build a bomb if it chose.

Fordow's transformation mirrors changes seen elsewhere in the country as Iran blows past the guardrails of the Iran nuclear accord.

While Iran says it has no plans to make nuclear weapons, it now has a supply of highly enriched uranium that could be converted to weapons-grade fuel for at least three bombs in a time frame ranging from a few days to a few weeks, current and former officials said. The making of a crude nuclear device could follow in as little as six months after a decision is made, while overcoming the challenges of building a nuclear warhead deliverable by a missile would take longer, perhaps two years or more, the officials said.

This is the Stable Genius' legacy writ large. With Israel currently threatening Iran with a greater retaliatory strike should Iran decide to counterattack for their embassy's bombing in Syria, this news should be especially disquieting in Jerusalem. Trump and the GOP's impetulence is leading the world closer to a nuclear conflagration because the accord no longer constrains Iran's nuclear development.

Heck of a job, idiots.

I don't want to play the 'chase a link game' today. So, you are free to go on believing that Iran has been only 1 month from having a nuke since 2014.

That's what the critics of the 2015 accord have been claiming since, well pretty much forever - which is the complete opposite of the IAEA documented with their personnel on the ground in Iran and the cameras they used to have trained on key Iranian enrichment facilities 24 hour a day until Trump caused them to be turned off.

You just can't measure the stupidity and ignorance of Clodio and Robotson, two peas in the same pod of disinformation and their nonexistent universe of alternative facts and imaginary observations.

As Iran nears nuclear weapons capability, accountability matters

The international agreement with Iran did exactly what it set out to do: The policy dramatically curtailed Tehran's nuclear ambitions and established a rigorous system of monitoring and verification. Once the policy took effect, each of the parties agreed that the participants were holding up their end of the bargain, and Iran's nuclear program was, at the time, on indefinite hold.

And then Trump took office and got to work abandoning the policy for reasons he was never able to explain.

In reality, once the United States was no longer a part of the agreement, the West lost verification access to Tehran's program, and Iran almost immediately became more dangerous by starting up advanced centrifuges and ending its commitment to limit enrichment of uranium.

A couple of years ago, Robert Malley, the then-special envoy for Iran, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that after Trump's decision, Iranian attacks on U.S. personnel in the region got worse, Iranian support for regional proxies got worse, and the pace of the Iranians' nuclear research program got "much worse."

www.msnbc.com

I get so sick and tired of the continuing right wing lies about things being better after Trump abandoned the accords. I'd never seen the following before as Trump's rationale for how he'd 'get a better deal than Obama,' but here it is:

In broad strokes, Barack Obama set out to use economic sanctions to get Iran to the international negotiating table. That worked and a breakthrough agreement eventually followed. Trump came to believe he could duplicate the strategy by abandoning the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), restoring the old sanctions, and adding new ones.

If Obama's sanctions led to a landmark deal, the argument went, then maybe Trump's sanctions could produce an even better deal.

Except, that's not what happened. (link above)

And in the aftermath, the rest of the world is left to deal with the repercussions Trump alone set into motion. But you'll never hear a rightwinger reflectively admit that 'something' was far better than the nothing we now have because that nothing is actually something(s) that likely wouldn't have happened were it not for Trump.