Explainer 2 on the Iranian nuclear deal

Explainer Question 2: How do we know Iran posed a nuclear threat, anyway?

This is a very good question. Iran has insisted for about a decade that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful in nature. Indeed, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Grand Ayatollah Khameini, has explicitly declared nuclear weapons to be HARAM, or forbidden by Islam. Moreover, Iran is guaranteed the right to a non-military nuclear energy programme by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (the NPT, to which the US and Iran are both signatories). It's essential to note that public American intelligence estimates have repeatedly concluded that Iran has not decided to acquire a nuclear weapon.

That is all well and good, but it is clear from other evidence that Iran has been actively pursuing the LATENT nuclear capacity (the ability to quickly construct a field-worthy nuclear weapon should they make the call to acquire one).

How do we know this?

Iran has been caught conducting nuclear activities outside of the ones that they've declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. They have been caught doing experiments on tightly-coordinated implosive detonations (one of the two means of causing a nuclear detonation). Iran has also been enriching uranium (a highly technologically intensive process which Iran does not have to do in order to produce nuclear energy, since they can buy reactor fissile material easily) to concentrations much higher than they need for nuclear energy (enriching to 20%, whereas nuclear reactors run on 4.3% enrichment, and there is no marginal benefit of taking it up to 20), and in much higher amounts than could plausibly be explained by peaceful uses (Iran claims that it is enriching to 20% for medical nuclear uses, but they sure don't need THAT much). Moreover, Iran's highly aggressive and active geopolitical posturing (through the development of its military, and particularly its deployment of covert forces and proxies, such as Hezbollah, Hamas [to a lesser extent], and the Quds force under General Qassem Suleimani) makes fears about their nuclear military ambitions very, very valid.

We have not been falsifying a confrontation with Iran. Iran is not an innocent, harmless state.