Iran Nuclear Deal: History In The Making

by Max Fisher

When Aaron Stein was studying nuclear non-proliferation at Middlebury University's Monterey graduate program, the students would sometimes construct what they thought would be the best possible nuclear inspection and monitoring regimes.

Years later, Stein is now a Middle East and nuclear proliferation expert with the Royal United Services Institute. And he says that the Iran nuclear framework agreement, announced on Thursday, look an awful lot like those ideal hypotheticals he'd put together in grad school.

"When I was doing my non-proliferation training at Monterey, this is the type of inspection regime that we would dream up in our heads," he said. "We would hope that this would be the way to actually verify all enrichment programs, but thought that would never be feasible."

"If these are the parameters by which the will be signed, then this is an excellent deal," Stein concluded.

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This is an astonishingly good Iran deal - Vox

[video]http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.650594[/video]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took his campaign against the nuclear agreement with Iran to the American networks on Sunday, saying that he was "trying to kill a bad deal" and arguing that there was still time to "ratchet up the sanctions.”

However, the prime minister did not repeat his assertion on Friday that any final agreement should include a commitment by Iran recognizing Israel's right to exist.

The United States and five other world powers announced a preliminary deal with Iran last Thursday, which they said would curb Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and give international inspectors unfettered access to nuclear sites in exchange for a gradual easing of economic sanctions.

In interviews on Sunday with three U.S. talk shows – NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This week and CNN's State of the Union – Netanyahu argued that the deal reached last week "is a dream deal for Iran and a nightmare deal for the world.”

"I'm not trying to kill any deal. I'm trying to kill a bad deal," Netanyahu told NBC, adding that the current plan "leaves the preeminent terrorist state of our time with a vast nuclear infrastructure."