If President Donald Trump withdraws from the Iran nuclear deal Tuesday, the world could change very quickly.
The nuclear agreement between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany) puts tight restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the relaxation of some punishing international sanctions on Iran. It was the Obama administration’s biggest foreign policy achievement. Now Trump has the chance to wound the deal, and possibly kill it altogether.
Trump and other critics argue that Iran can’t be trusted and that the agreement limits — but doesn’t end — Iran’s nuclear program. The deal’s many supporters, which include all of Washington’s closest European allies, say Iran has kept up its part of the deal and that pulling out of it would do more harm than good.
All of that can sound a bit abstract, so we’ve put together a report card on the deal’s progress, a series of graphics that show how well the nuclear deal is working (according to the International Atomic Energy Agency) and what could change if Trump goes back on it. We use visuals to show what the Iran deal actually does and how well it’s being implemented.
Limits on uranium enrichment: Iran complying
Enriched uranium is a form of the element with a high concentration of one isotope, U-235, that could be used to fuel a bomb. The nuclear deal prohibits Iran from possessing any uranium that’s more than 3.67 percent U-235, and prohibits it from having more than 660 pounds of enriched uranium (about 97 percent less than it had prior to the deal). Iran is fully complying with these restrictions.
Centrifuge limits: Iran complying
Making enriched uranium requires the use of centrifuges, devices that spin uranium really fast to separate U-235 from the less potent stuff.
Prior to the deal, Iran had close to 20,000 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facilities, Natanz and Fordow. Under the deal’s terms, Iran can only enrich at Natanz, and can only operate a maximum of 5,060 older-model centrifuges (rather than newer, more efficient ones). Iran is fully complying with these restrictions.
Plutonium enrichment restrictions: Iran complying
Another way to fuel a nuclear bomb is using plutonium, specifically plutonium produced through the natural operation of a specific kind of nuclear reactor called a “heavy water” reactor.
Iran has such a reactor in Arak; the deal requires Iran not to operate the facility and to redesign it such that it will not produce fissile material if operated. Iran is fully complying with these restrictions.
Inspections: Iran complying
The Iran deal is not founded on trust. Instead, the rule requires Iran to allow IAEA inspectors full and unrestricted access to its nuclear sites and other facilities that it deems suspicious (with some limits on nonnuclear military facilities that are off limits).
Iran is fully complying with the inspectors, which is how we know all the other terms are being adhered to.
Sanctions relief: P5+1 complying
Iran gets a lot in exchange for following these rules. Prior to the deal, more than $100 billion in Iranian international assets were frozen due to international sanctions; Iran already has access to that. Suspended international sanctions means Iran can sell oil, its most important export, on the international market; it also means that America’s so-called secondary sanctions, which punish not jut Iran but anyone who does business with them, are now lifted, making it significantly easier for international firms to start doing business with Tehran.
Currently, the US and its five partners are complying, but Trump is allowed under US law to unilaterally reimpose US sanctions if he so chooses, which would put the US in violation of its terms under the deal. The president has said he will announce his decision on Tuesday at 2 pm Eastern.
The deal is working as expected. So why is Trump thinking about canceling it?
The case against the Iran deal has little to do with the deal’s technical details. President Trump has never disputed any of these points; nor has there been any independent evidence of Iran failing to comply with its obligations.
No, the argument instead is that the deal isn’t enough to justify relaxing sanctions. Critics point to Iran’s continued testing of ballistic missiles, for example, and note that some of the deal’s terms expire after a decade.
So when President Trump says the Iran deal is a bad deal, he’s not saying it’s not working as intended: Everyone agrees that Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon has been limited by the deal, at least for the time being. The question is whether that’s enough and, if not, what could be done to improve it.