REPUBLICANS UNITE TO THWART IRAN

No nuclear enrichment for the ayatollahs, not even in a ‘joint venture.’ The joint venture idea is a scam which will lead Iran to the bomb.

STOP IRAN NOW Via The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board

May 14, 2025

Photo Credit: Iran’s AFTAB News. : Iran has been deploying advanced centrifuges in violation of the limits in the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (the "JCPOA"). In 2024 the Director General of the IAEA issued an urgent warning:

The Republican majority in Congress has a message for Iran: There can be no deal that keeps open the country’s path to a nuclear weapon. Its message to President Trump? Stand his ground.

That’s what we take from a letter on Wednesday signed by 52 GOP Senators—all save Rand Paul—and 177 House Republicans. Led by Sen. Pete Ricketts(R., Neb.) and Rep. August Pfluger (R., Texas), the GOP Members ask President Trump to “reinforce the explicit warnings that you and officials in your administration have issued that the regime must permanently give up any capacity for enrichment.”

If Iran has centrifuges, it can enrich uranium to make nuclear bombs. Without centrifuges, it can’t. Tehran works hard to obfuscate this basic point, but Republicans aren’t buying that the regime can be trusted to enrich only a little.

The lawmakers note that Iran has advanced too far in secret for inspectors now to verify compliance with merely partial enrichment limits. The 3.67% enrichment for civilian energy is two-thirds of the way to weapons-grade. Tehran has all the oil it needs. If it wants civilian nuclear energy, it could safely import low-enriched uranium as 23 other states do, from Canada to the United Arab Emirates.

Iran wants nuclear weapons, which is why its negotiators now float more complex ways to hang on to domestic enrichment capability. The latest is a “joint nuclear-enrichment venture” with Arab states and U.S. investment. The New York Times hyped the idea Tuesday as a “novel path” to a deal.

The joint-venture language may be meant to appeal to Mr. Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff, but the idea isn’t new. Iran’s Foreign Minister floated it in 2007 as a “nuclear consortium,” and regime mouthpieces propose it every few years. The scam is that enrichment would still take place on Iranian soil. That means Iran would retain operational control and a path to a bomb.

The Trump team’s position was stated clearly last week by Mr. Witkoff, who said “an enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line.” He added that “Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan—those are their three enrichment facilities—have to be dismantled.”

“They cannot have centrifuges. They have to downblend all of their fuel,” Mr. Witkoff said, “and send it to a faraway place.” Unlike under Barack Obama’s deal, “there will never be a deal where obligations are allowed to sunset.”

The lawmakers cheer these positions and seek to hold the Trump Administration to them. Iran would be wise to heed the message.