By David Patrikarakos
The real roots of Iran’s nuclear program lie not in physics - but in Iran's own sense of history.
Exactly ten years ago today the Iranian opposition group, Mujahideen al-Khalq (MeK), revealed the full details of a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water plant at Arak in Iran. Since then Iran and the international community- since 2006, the P5+1 (the U.S., Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany) -have been locked in a diplomatic battle that has ground to a stalemate.
The P5+1 has managed to sanction Iran’s oil exports, isolate the country from the international banking system, and make it an international pariah. Iran, meanwhile, has managed to enrich uranium to twenty percent, which involves most of the expertise required to enrich to weapons-grade levels. It runs several thousand centrifuges (the equipment needed to enrich uranium) at its Natanz plants and has a large stockpile of low-enriched uranium [LEU] from which it could conceivably manufacture a nuclear weapon.
Neither side will budge; the specter of an Iranian bomb is closer than ever.
Read the full story at The Diplomat