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President Obama’s statements are in bold.
Because of this deal, Iran will remove two-thirds of its installed centrifuges
This statement is not really accurate. Something like that proportion of installed centrifuges will be “uninstalled,” but they will still be extant in Iran, monitored by the IAEA. So “removed” is rather stronger than is appropriate. More important is the fact that the deal allows Iran to keep enriching in about half of the centrifuges it is now using for enrichment—that is, most of the centrifuges that would be “removed” are not actually in operation. The agreement lets Iran keep 5,060 centrifuges enriching at Natanz (p. 6). The most recent IAEA report put the number of centrifuges currently enriching at Natanz at 9,156. Several hundred more are enriching at Fordow, but the overall change in the number of centrifuges currently enriching is about 50%.

US President Barack Obama delivers a statement with Vice President Joe Biden at his side about the nuclear deal reached between Iran and six major world powers during an early morning address to the nation from the East Room of the White House in Washington, July 14, 2015. REUTERS/Andrew Harnik/Pool
And over the course of the next decade, Iran must abide by the deal before additional sanctions are lifted, including five years for restrictions related to arms and eight years for restrictions related to ballistic missiles.
There is nothing in the agreement itself that specifies how long restrictions relating to the arms embargo or ballistic missiles will last. The agreement stipulates that the new UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) will “terminate” all of the prohibitions of a list of previous UNSCRs, including those imposing both the arms embargo (UNSCR 1929 from 2010) and the ballistic missile embargo (UNSCR 1696 from 2006). So the only restrictions that will remain in place are those embodied in the new UNSCR, which I do not believe we have yet seen. He may have in mind that those will be the restrictions and that the Russians et al. will accept them, but the deal itself does not specify these timelines.
And if Iran violates the deal, all of these sanctions will snap back into place.
This is not true, actually, except in an extremely narrow technical sense. Section 37 of the agreement, p. 20, specifies: “In such event [the UNSC re-imposing sanctions], these provisions would not apply with retroactive effect to contracts signed between any party and Iran or Iranian individuals and entities prior to the date of application, provided that the activities contemplated under and execution of such contracts are consistent with this JCPOA and the previous and current UN Security Council resolutions.” In other words, deals done in the interim will still stand and will not be terminated by new resolutions—so sanctions won’t all snap back into place.
Congress will now have an opportunity to review the details and my administration stands ready to provide extensive briefings on how this will move forward.
This does not appear to be true, either, except in a pro forma way. By far the most important step the administration can take is the approval of a new UNSCR either lifting or retaining UN sanctions of any variety. The agreement appears to make it very clear (without explicitly saying so, however) that such a UNSCR will be passed before Congress takes action (and whether Congress approves the deal or not). Nor is there any language in the agreement recognizing the 60-day approval period or suggesting that Congressional approval is required for the commitments made in the deal.
Moreover, we give nothing up by testing whether or not this problem can be solved peacefully. If, in the worst-case scenario, Iran violates the deal, the same options that are available to me today will be available to any US president in the future.
Also not true because of the additional resources that will flow into Iran immediately as a signing bonus and the permanence, according to the deal, of any agreements struck before sanctions snap back (if they ever do). And, of course, the UN sanctions will be gone, EU sanctions will be gone, etc.—so those “options” will not be available to a future US president.
Meanwhile, we will maintain our own sanctions related to Iran’s support for terrorism, its ballistic missile program and its human rights violations.
This appears to be technically true in that the agreement does not seem to commit the US to relaxing any of our own, US-specific sanctions (apart from secondary sanctions) on these issues. It also explicitly reaffirms the relevant paragraph of the Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2012. BUT it does commit the European Union to lifting sanctions on the IRGC, Qods Force, Soleimani, and a whole raft of other individuals and entities sanctioned for terrorism and human rights violations in not more than eight years. So the US will continue to sanction them, if we choose, but the rest of the world will not—and we will not impose secondary sanctions either. Since the US hasn’t been doing business with Iran for 30 years, the dismantling of the EU sanctions is much more important than the retention of the US sanctions.
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