Potemkin Nonproliferation, or Why the Mullahs Are Smiling

John Kerry wanted this:

What could be so wrong? Plenty.

First, although it received scant notice in the press, the contract Moscow rushed to cut with Tehran runs out in a mere ten years. For the remaining 20 to 40 years of the reactor's operation, Iran has announced that it will supply Bushehr with enriched fuel itself. Previously, Britain, France, Germany, and Washington insisted that Iran had no need to enrich uranium since Tehran could count on Russia to fuel Bushehr over the machine's entire lifetime. Not any longer.

Second, although the contract calls for Iran to return any spent fuel to Russia, Iran is not required to do so any sooner than several years after the fuel is delivered. This leaves ample time for literally hundreds of bombs worth of weapons-usable plutonium to mount up in Iranian spent-fuel ponds. The contract, in short, does nothing to limit the dangers of Iran's diverting enough spent fuel to a covert reprocessing plant to make not just one, but an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons.

This highlights a more basic problem: As long as there is reason to fear Iran might have a covert enrichment or reprocessing program hidden away, there's a danger fresh or spent fuel from Bushehr could be diverted to make bombs before inspectors could detect or block the diversion. This means that Iran could seize this material openly, withdraw from the NPT, and then make bombs or, alternatively, steal the material, covertly make bombs, and then withdraw.

BTW, I believe the correct pronunciation is "po-tyom-keen", not "po-tem-kihn". My college Russian is as hazy as my distance vision these days.