US energy secretary says Iran deal ‘based upon limitations, not trust’

United States Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz says during the White House briefing to reporters on Monday that international monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program within the confines of a future deal will give the international community “Unprecedented access in terms of the entire supply chain… It’s quite a strong arrangement.”

Moniz adds that the mechanism to “snap back” sanctions on Iran should it violate the agreement, is such that “no country has a veto power.”

Asked about the production of plutonium, Moniz, who is a nuclear physicist by education, explains that “nuclear reactors produce plutonium, you cannot avoid it at some level.” He explains that Iranian reactors will be reconfigured to produce as minimal as possible a quantity of plutonium which will then – according to the deal – be shipped out of the country.

Moniz was asked by a journalist whether the US trusts Iran to stick to the agreement.

“This is not built upon trust; this is built upon hard-nosed requirements and limitations on what they do,” he says.

He also rejects reports that the English and Persian official accounts of the understandings reached in Lausanne differ widely. “Right now, there’s a different narrative, but not in conflict with what’s written down, just selective,” he says, implying that the Iranians are emphasizing the parts of the deal which are easier to sell to the leadership back in Tehran. “The reactions we are receiving [on the bullet-by-bullet document issued by the White House], there is a certain level of amazement at the specificity” of the document, he says.