Iran’s Latest Game of Charades

Iran has just announced it will ship uranium to Turkey, to be enriched and returned as fuel for Iran’s nuclear energy plants. Sounds good right?

Wrong. Iran is shipping only part of its uranium — the rest is staying put at the covert enrichment plant at Qom, where it’s an integral part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

So why bother? Because Iran doesn’t want to give the U.S. or Israel an excuse to attack its nuclear sites. It doesn’t want the UN, especially U.N. Security Council members Russia and China, to impose severe economic and gasoline sanctions for being non-compliant on nuclear enrichment. Those trading partners don’t want to be dragged into sanctions either – they don’t see Iran’s nuclear weapons program presenting a threat to their security. So the deal announced today gives them all an excuse to ease off on sanctions, while allowing Iran to continue secretly enriching uranium to weapons grade quality.

The deal Iran has just announced is mostly a charade. The country is pretending to halt its nuclear enrichment program in hopes that we pretend to believe them. Meanwhile, the world is edging closer and closer to a nuclear arms race in the most dangerous part of the world.