Meanwhile, back in the world where they don’t give a crap about Obamacare…

StrategyPage

Iran: Everything Is Going According To Plan And Victory Is Assured

The second round of “serious” negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program have ended in failure. Iran is unwilling to make any serious concessions. Iran insists it has no nuclear weapons program and is only offering to slow down nuclear fuel production and construction of nuclear research facilities. Nevertheless, Iran counts it as another victory because the West showed up to talk. The main Western demand was that Iran halt work on its plutonium producing nuclear reactor and produce less enriched (to 20 percent) uranium. This means producing uranium that contains that percentage of the more volatile U-235 form of the nuclear material that can cause a nuclear explosion.

Plutonium is the best material for nuclear weapons but at the moment Iran has a lot more uranium. A 1,000 Megawatt nuclear power plant (like Iran’s only such plant at Bushehr) requires 25 tons of enriched uranium (in the form of pellets, inside fuel rods) each year. That 25 tons is the end result of processing 200 tons of uranium ore from a mine. A nuclear weapon requires about 20 kg (44 pounds) of highly enriched (eight times the level of fuel for power plants) uranium. Currently, Iran has enriched most of its nuclear material to about 5 percent and some of it to 20 percent. For weapons, you need to increase the content of Uranium 235 in uranium ore to at least 54 percent. This is far above the 3.5-10 percent typically used in nuclear power plants. In its natural state Uranium ore is only about .7 percent U-235. Anything over 20 percent enriched can be used for a nuclear bomb, although for best results you want it over 50 percent. The most effective and reliable nuclear weapons use 80 percent enriched uranium.

Freebeacon:

Iran: No Nuke Deal Until West Lifts ‘All Sanctions’

Tehran adopts hardline, lashes out after talks fail

Senior Iranian officials now say that Tehran will not suspend its contested nuclear enrichment program until the West first agrees to lift all economic sanctions on the country.

Tehran issued its new demands on Tuesday, just days after Western nuclear negotiators failed to hammer out a deal to halt Iran’s contested enrichment program for at least six months.

Top Iranian officials now say that they will only continue negotiations if the West agrees to first lift the crippling economic sanctions that originally pushed Tehran to the bargaining table.

The developments came on the same day that Iran’s top nuclear official announced that the country would not be reporting a host of new nuclear facilities to international nuclear inspectors.

Freebeacon:

No Radical Change in Iran’s Nuclear Program: IAEA

he head of the U.N. nuclear agency said on Wednesday he saw “no radical change” in Iran’s nuclear program in the past three months, broadly covering the period since relative moderate Hassan Rouhani became president.

Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Reuters in an interview that the Islamic state was continuing its most sensitive nuclear activity, enrichment of uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent.

NYT:

After Near Miss on Iran, Kerry Says Diplomacy Is Still the Right Path

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Secretary of State John Kerry came up a few disputed words short of closing a landmark nuclear deal with Iran on Sunday in Geneva. Now he is defending the diplomacy that led to that near miss against a rising chorus of critics at home and abroad.

On Monday, in this Persian Gulf emirate deeply suspicious of a nuclear Iran, Mr. Kerry laid out his fullest argument yet.

“Having the negotiation does not mean giving up anything,” he declared at a news conference after meeting top officials of the United Arab Emirates. “It means you will put to the test what is possible and what is needed, and whether or not Iran is prepared to do what is necessary to prove that its program can only be a peaceful program.”

Mr. Kerry promised America’s allies in the Middle East that a nuclear accord would not put their security at risk, and he pleaded with critics of a deal, most notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, not to try to scuttle it before the details are even hammered out.

“The time to oppose it is when you see what it is,” he said, “not to oppose the effort to find out what is possible.”

You mean we have to accept the deal in order to see what’s in it?