A document obtained Monday by AP, which is the only part of last year’s nuclear deal between Iran, the US and five other powers that has been kept secret, was described it as an appendix to the nuclear deal, which Iran sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency, describing its plans to restart its uranium enrichment program not after 15 years, as the world has been led to believe, but after only 10 years from the start of the nuclear deal.
The anonymous diplomat who leaked the secret document to AP said that it had been knowingly approved by the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, which then went ahead and lied to their citizens about the actual time constraints on Iran’s nuclear program.
According to AP, the document sets January 2027, 11 years after the deal was implemented, as the date when Iran will be allowed to operate thousands of advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium to levels ranging from use as reactor fuel and for medical and research to being placed in the core of a nuclear warhead. Iran’s new centrifuges, as many as 3,500, will be fewer in number than the current 5,060 centrifuges, but far more efficient, according to the document, allowing Iran to enrich at more than twice the current rate.
Speaking on the nuclear deal’s anniversary Thursday, President Obama said it had succeeded in “avoiding further conflict and making us safer.” But the AP predicted Republicans on the Hill would start voicing their loud objections to Obama’s assessment once they realize that Iran could go back to working on a bomb in 10 years. Israel will surely not be pleased with the news, either.
David Albright, head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, a major resource on Iran’s nuclear program, told AP that the document “will create a great deal of instability and possibly even lead to war, if regional tensions have not subsided.”