Republican senators demand transparency on Iran talks

WASHINGTON – Republican senators sent a letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry demanding to know what concessions the Obama administration is willing to make with Iran during this week’s talks in New York.

The thirty-one Republican senators want Iran to permanently destroy its centrifuges and end its efforts to create nuclear weapons. The senators are concerned that the Obama administration may allow Iran to unplug, rather than destroy, the centrifuges.

“Given that a nuclear Iran poses the greatest long-term threat to the security of the United States, Israel and other allies, we are gravely concerned about the possibility of any new agreement that, in return for further relief of US-led international sanctions, would allow Iran to produce explosive nuclear material,” the senators wrote in a Sept. 19 letter.

The senators asked Kerry for immediate answers to four questions covering the degree of dismantling of Iranian centrifuges for uranium enrichment that the P5 +1 negotiating partners – United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany – will agree to. The same concern was expressed about the dismantling of the heavy water reactor at Arak, a plutonium reactor that has not yet gone online.

The senators also questioned how long any agreement would last.