Beyond Sanctions and Kerfuffles, the Iran Deal Netanyahu Wants to Avoid

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Netanyahu believes that Iran should not enrich its uranium and instead should rely on imported uranium for any civilian nuclear program it maintains.

The November 2013 Joint Plan of Action agreement governing the negotiations keeps Iran from enriching to 20 percent, which nuclear experts say is just a few steps short of the 90 percent enrichment that weaponizes uranium. Instead, Iran has been allowed to enrich to 3.5 percent, typical of civilian nuclear programs.

Obama administration officials, including the president himself, have said they would prefer a deal that leaves Iran without a capacity to enrich uranium, but it is likely that Iran will retain the 3.5 percent enrichment capacity.

Netanyahu has said that the distinction between 20 percent and 3.5 percent has become “redundant” because of technological advances.

Israelis “say it is much harder to verify a deal in which it has some enrichment capacity than to monitor and verify a deal in which it has no enrichment capacity,” said Orde Kittrie, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that has advised congressional skeptics of the Iran talks.

Kittrie, who is also a law professor at the University of Arizona, said that while his sense is that the Obama administration has “compromised too much” in the talks, a minimal enrichment capacity is a likely outcome of a deal.
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