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President Donald Trump may have signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran to end the war late Wednesday, but the memo doesn\u2019t resolve a much darker question: Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
While Iran affirms that it won\u2019t develop nuclear weapons in the agreement, curbing the actual process of making those weapons\u2014stockpiling and enriching uranium\u2014is left to be finalized later. Crucially, the memo states that in the meantime, Iran will \u201cmaintain the current status quo of its nuclear program.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the negotiators are trying to capture is that Iran takes no further advances with its nuclear program, but they should have considered that the status quo is pretty poor,\u201d Andrea Stricker, a national security expert specializing in nuclear weapons, told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cIf I were negotiating, I would have insisted that restoration of monitoring and access would have to be something that Iran had to do in the MOU because it\u2019s so important.\u201d<\/p>\n Iran hasn\u2019t allowed the UN watchdog responsible for monitoring nuclear materials\u2014the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)\u2014access to its nuclear facilities since its 12-day war with the U.S. and Israel last June, meaning it hasn\u2019t been able to verify the size of Iran\u2019s uranium stockpile for a year now.\u00a0<\/p>\n IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told reporters on Thursday that moving Iran further away from building a nuclear weapon isn\u2019t fully up to him but \u201cdepends on the political will of both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is needed will depend on the final technical agreement that we will have,\u201d Grossi said about the memo in the press briefing video. \u201cI understand your curiosity, but it\u2019s not prudent to jump ahead of facts.\u201d<\/p>\n The IAEA Board of Governors has formally found Iran in non-compliance with its nuclear non-proliferation safeguards obligations twice: in 2005 over past concealment and breaches, and in 2025 over failure to cooperate on undeclared nuclear material and activities since 2019. The memo commits the U.S. to terminating IAEA Board resolutions, but only as part of a final deal to be negotiated and not one with immediate action.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s essentially saying they will close the case on the outstanding issues and pass no further IAEA resolutions,\u201d Stricker told Fortune. \u201cIran just basically put its wish list into this MOU.\u201d<\/p>\n The IAEA didn\u2019t respond to Fortune<\/em>\u2019s multiple requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Deal \u201cnot worth much\u201d without stricter uranium monitoring<\/strong><\/p>\n On reducing nuclear weapons development risk, the memo of understanding states that Iran will, at minimum, be downblending uranium on site under IAEA supervision. Downblending would turn Iran\u2019s reported \u00a0440.9kg of uranium enriched to 60%\u2014the weapons-grade threshold is 90% or more\u2014to a low-enriched or even natural uranium state. But the risk in that is it\u2019s reversible, Stricker said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt introduces an unnecessary intermediary step if your goal is to actually export or destroy the material,\u201d Stricker said. \u201cWhy would you want to put this intermediary step there unless they\u2019re planning to allow Iran to keep the stockpile?\u201d<\/p>\n The first Trump administration withdrew from the last nuclear deal the U.S. had with Iran finalized under Obama in 2015, which was made before Iran had uranium that was as close to the 90% nuclear weapon threshold.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump now has 60 days to finalize an agreement with Iran, extendable with mutual consent, and Stricker hopes that the deal will include stricter measures\u2014like requiring Iran to disclose all its nuclear materials\u2014that are not present in the memo.<\/p>\n \u201cI think if that is not included in a final deal, then it really won\u2019t be worth much,\u201d Stricker said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #TrumpIran #agreement #Iran #free #pass #nuclear #treaty #violations #pending #final #deal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Donald Trump may have signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran to end the war late Wednesday, but the memo doesn\u2019t resolve a much darker question: Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons.\u00a0\u00a0… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[57,110,665,906,228,445,3368,10193,3154,8443,10195,10194,1038,10196],"class_list":["post-7976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-agreement","tag-deal","tag-donald-trump","tag-final","tag-free","tag-iran","tag-nuclear","tag-nuclear-weapon","tag-pass","tag-pending","tag-treaty","tag-trumpiran","tag-united-nations","tag-violations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}