Iran threatens to cast off restraints on its nuclear programme, raising fears that it could move closer to building a nuclear bomb
“THE UNITED STATES is not seeking war with the Iranian regime,” declared John Bolton, America’s national security adviser, when he announced on May 5th the deployment of an aircraft-carrier strike group from the Mediterranean to waters near Iran. It would be led by the. A separate bomber task-force was also being deployed to the region. The move, Mr Bolton said, was a response to “troubling and escalatory” intelligence warnings about Iran’s behaviour.Few believed Mr Bolton’s peaceable intent.
He claimed Iran would be acting within the dispute-resolutions of the JCPOA, without breaching it. “The path we have chosen today is not the path of war, it is the path of diplomacy,” he declared in a televised speech. “But diplomacy with a new language and a new logic.” Far from being a new diplomatic concept, this appears to be an old Iranian logic of pushing ahead with its nuclear programme—and so moving closer to the option of building a nuclear bomb—in response to rising pressure from the West. Iran has always claimed to be seeking to develop nuclear technology only for civilian power generation. But much of the same technology can be used to build nuclear bombs.
Mr Trump’s decision to abandon the JCPOA, despite pressure from European allies and many of his own advisers to reconsider, all but killed the deal. European efforts to keep it on life support are failing; most European firms have chosen to abide by the sanctions despite a European mechanism designed to protect those trading in “humanitarian” supplies with Iran. Now Mr Rouhani may bury the accord altogether.
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