Iran’s commitment to curb its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions was an occasion for joy and celebration in Tehran last night. Other places in the world greeted the news with reactions ranging from cautious optimism to downright dread.
Canada will not lift its sanctions. Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson issued a statement yesterday saying Canada “will continue to judge Iran by its actions not its words,” He said, “We will examine this deal further before taking any specific Canadian action,”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been a vocal critic of the Iranian regime, calling it the biggest threat to the world’s security. He suspended diplomatic ties and closed the embassy in Tehran in 2012.
“In many ways it is a wonderful agreement.”
Gordon Edwards, of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility sees the situation from a scientific and global viewpoint. He says of the deal, “In many ways it is a wonderful agreement.” He says it addresses the way in which a nuclear bomb is made, and it closes the door to the very material necessary to build a bomb.
Listen“Uranium enrichment is a very, very slow process… It takes a long time to get highly enriched uranium. When you only allow enrichment to 4 per cent then you know that it’s going to take a long time to get up to 90 per cent even under the worst of circumstances. So keeping the uranium level low is a key feature of this agreement.”
Gordon Edwards says the verification procedures are remarkable in their detail. As are the provisions for covert facilities, that make mandatory immediate inspections on detection, and he says the supply chain being under complete surveillance, goes a long way to assuring compliance. “Without uranium you cannot build any bomb of any description whatsoever”
Edwards says the demand to abandon the nuclear program altogether was not reasonable. And he says the six powers negotiating the agreement all have nuclear weapons of their own.
“I do believe that the world as a whole is kind of sleep-walking towards Armageddon in the sense that we’re not dealing with the root causes of these problems”
When asked about the critics of the agreement who describe it as one of appeasement, Gordon Edwards says. ‘Look at the alternative?” He says the alternative is that the Iranians were just two or three months away from the bomb, and if there were no deal they would just go ahead, or there would be a violent war breaking out” This agreement buys time. It’s what happens during that time that matters now.
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