Blinken Supports Restoring Iran Nuclear Deal

Accuses Iran of being able to produce fissile material for a bomb in 1-2 weeks

In the latest pro-forma statement on Iran’s civilian nuclear program, Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that he believes the US should return to the JCPOA, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that originally included the entire P5+1 membership. This group includes the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany.

Blinken’s comments follow the recent election in Iran of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, and talk of ending Iranian isolation. Returning to the JCPOA might be a strong step in that direction.

This isn’t the first time Blinken has talked up the JCPOA, which the US withdrew from in 2018. During the Davos 2024 World Forum, the Secretary of State declared the withdrawal from the deal to be a “big mistake,” noting that the US no longer has the agreements it needs.

The JCPOA was negotiated under the Obama Administration. The deal was somewhat complicated in nature, but the broad strokes were that, in return for sanctions relief, Iran agreed to a level of oversight on its civilian nuclear program that no nation had ever agreed to.

The sanctions relief by and large never came about, as the US did not ease sanctions as the deal stipulated. The US further threatened the other P5+1 nations to prevent them from following through with sanctions relief. Efforts to try to salvage the deal were derailed when the Trump Administration withdrew from it entirely.

In trying to force the remaining parties to come to the table to negotiate a settlement, Iran withdrew from some of the voluntary safeguards and increased its enrichment of uranium to higher levels. Despite no longer being a party to the deal, the US has consistently complained of Iran’s “violations.”

Iran has been supportive of the idea of reviving the JCPOA as originally written, with Iran’s acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri saying Iran remains committed to the deal, and doesn’t believe there is any need for a new agreement, just a restoration of the existing one.

Iran has made a point that its “violations” are immediately reversible and have been made in service of trying to lead to negotiations. Further, Iran has made no moves that could lead to the production of nuclear weapons. Reports from the US Director of National Intelligence have repeatedly affirmed that there is no nuclear weapons production being attempted by Iran.

Despite this, Blinken’s comments today centered on the false claim that Iran is capable of producing the fissile material for a nuclear bomb within one or two weeks. He presented this as a breakout capacity for the Iranian program.

In reality, Iran has never attempted to enrich any uranium over 60%, which is far below the 90%+ needed for weapons-grade uranium. Blinken’s scare-mongering centers on the belief that Iran has absolute control of its enrichment technology and could reconfigure its centrifuges to weapons-grade levels on a whim.

Even if Iran enriched enough uranium to produce a bomb, it would then need to produce a weapon, test this weapon, and then work on miniaturization to produce a deliverable weapon. There is no timetable for how long that entire process would take, which is not even relevant because Iran isn’t attempting to do all of this.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.