The understandings reached last week regarding Iran’s nuclear program are full of loopholes, according to a paper (.pdf) written yesterday for Harvard’s Belfer Center by Dr. Ephraim Asculai, who worked for the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and is currently a senior research fellow for Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies. Asculai pointed to...

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Iran’s foreign minister and lead nuclear negotiator, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told legislators that Iran would start feeding uranium into advanced centrifuges as soon as the nuclear deal with the P5+1 nations goes into effect, The Times of Israel reported today. Enriching uranium in advanced centrifuges would violate the parameters agreed to last week,...

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Iran’s foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif told a closed parliamentary hearing that Iran would not allow cameras into any of its nuclear sites, the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, reported today. Zarif told the parliament that Tehran is not going to permit online cameras for inspection purposes, said...

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Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), raised concerns about the emerging nuclear deal between the P5+1 nations in an interview today with The Times of Israel. Heinonen specifically mentioned the risk of regional nuclear proliferation, the opportunity for an Iranian nuclear breakout when limits of...

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In an interview with NPR, President Barack Obama acknowledged that at the end of the nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran, Iran’s breakout time – the time it would take to produce enough fissile material to fuel a nuclear bomb – would be “near zero,” the Associated Press (AP) reported today....

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Despite President Barack Obama’s assurances last week that the world will “know” if Iran cheats on the nuclear deal being negotiated with the P5+1, in an interview with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times Saturday, the president’s response supported one of the key objections to the known terms of the...

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Prominent Israeli politicians across the spectrum have questioned the understandings reached last week by the P5+1 nations and Iran regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni the leaders of the Zionist Union, the bloc likely to lead the opposition in the new Knesset, released a statement saying: “We need...

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Noting that President Barack Obama’s stated goals for an acceptable nuclear deal with Iran in 2012 would see Tehran “‘[…] end their nuclear program’ and ‘abide by the U.N. resolutions that have been in place,'” an unsigned staff editorial published today in The Washington Post laments that the president has retreated...

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In the understanding reached on Thursday between the P5+1 global powers and Iran in Lausanne, Switzerland, there appears to be a discrepancy in the language on the sequencing of sanctions relief between the European Union/Iran join statement and a factsheet released by the Obama administration on the parameters of the...

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The P5+1 nations and Iran concluded an understanding to limit elements of Iran’s nuclear research and lift international sanctions on Iran today in Lausanne, Switzerland. Even as he praised the agreed-upon parameters, President Barack Obama raised doubts about Iran’s record of abiding by past international commitments. The New York Times reports on some the...

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