WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE JCPOA

Remember that, two years ago, when our negotiations began, we faced an Iran thatwas enriching uranium up to 20 percent at a facility built in secret and buried in amountain, was rapidly stockpiling enriched uranium, had installed nearly 20,000nuclear centrifuges, and was building a heavy water reactor that could produceweapons-grade plutonium at a rate of one to two bombs per year. Experts tabbedIran’s so-called breakout time – the interval required for it to have enough fissilematerial for a bomb – at two to three months.This is the reality we would return to if this deal is rejected – except that thediplomatic support we have been steadily accumulating in recent years woulddisappear overnight.Let me underscore – the alternative to the deal we’ve reached isn’t a better deal –some sort of unicorn arrangement involving Iran’s complete capitulation. That’s afantasy – plain and simple.The choice we face is between a deal that will ensure Iran’s nuclear program islimited, rigorously scrutinized, and wholly peaceful – or no deal at all.If we walk away from what was agreed in Vienna, we will be walking away fromevery one of the restrictions we have negotiated, and giving Iran the green light todouble the pace of its uranium enrichment, proceed full speed ahead with a heavywater reactor, install new and more efficient centrifuges, and do it all without theunprecedented inspection and transparency measures we’ve secured.If we walk away, our partners will not walk away with us. Instead, they’ll walkaway from the tough multilateral sanctions regime they helped us to put in place.We will be left to go it alone and whatever limited economic pressure fromsanctions would remain would certainly not compel Tehran to negotiate or to makeany deeper concessions. They would instead push the program ahead potentiallyforcing military conflict. And we will have squandered the best chance we have tosolve this problem through peaceful means.Make no mistake: we will never accept a nuclear-armed Iran. But the fact is thatIran has extensive experience with nuclear fuel cycle technology. We can’t bombthat knowledge away. Nor can we sanction that knowledge away. Remember thatsanctions did not stop Iran’s nuclear program from growing steadily, to the point ithad accumulated enough low enriched uranium that, if further enriched, could beused to produce about 10 nuclear bombs.2