Arms experts warn of `Faustian bargain` with Iran

Washington: Arms experts Wednesday voiced concern about an emerging nuclear accord with Iran, with one labelling it a "Faustian deal" amid calls for America to push for a tough inspections regime.

Addressing US lawmakers, Stephen Rademaker, a former advisor on arms control to president George W. Bush, said the deal under negotiation would be "a radical departure in US non-proliferation policy."

"At a fundamental level what the deal ... signifies is acceptance by the international community of Iran as a nuclear weapons threshold state," he told the House foreign affairs committee, only days after lawmakers reached a deal with the Obama administration to have a say on the final accord.

Iran and global powers on Wednesday resumed difficult talks in Vienna to finalize the deal by June 30 aimed at putting a nuclear weapon out of Tehran`s reach by dramatically scaling back, but not dismantling, its atomic program.

If a ground-breaking deal is reached, the US administration says it will make the region and the world safer, ensuring that the Islamic Republic would need a year to acquire enough fissile material to make a nuclear bomb.

That would significantly increase from the estimated three-to-four months "breakout time" at present.

President Barack Obama also said no other country has presented an alternative, other than to allow Iran`s nuclear ambitions to continue unchecked.

But using an American football metaphor, Rademaker warned that by the end of the 10-15 year length of the accord, "the football is going to be on the one-inch line. They`re that close to having a nuclear weapon."

"Countries that are on the one-inch line... for all practical purposes in their international relations they have to be treated as if they do have a nuclear weapon."

David Albright, who was a former inspector for Iraq`s nuclear program, told the committee it remained an "open question" whether Iran would have an nuclear weapon at the end of the deal."Many of the key verification provisions remain unresolved," he said, referring to the parameters of the deal reached after months of talks and a marathon eight-day session in Lausanne on April 2. "The details matter," he insisted.

"The Iranians have taken the position of being extremely defiant, and the Americans have taken the position of problem solving. I think that`s put us at a disadvantage and it doesn`t bode well for finding solutions."

According to a US fact sheet, Iran has agreed to cut the number of its centrifuges, used for enriching uranium, by two thirds from 19,000 to about 6,000, and will put excess nuclear equipment into storage monitored by the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA.

It has also agreed to not build any new facilities for enriching uranium for 15 years, cut back its stockpile of enriched uranium and mothball some of its plants. The aim is to ensure that it will take Iran a year to accumulate enough fissile material to build a bomb.

But Rademaker said the emerging deal was a "classic Faustian bargain."

"We are being offered gratification in the short term - a one-year breakout period that may enable us to rest a little easier for the next 10 years. But after that, the short term benefit goes away, and Iran gets everything it has ever wanted."

Albright said the "inspection conditions are critical."

"We`ve got to have prompt access," Albright said, adding the US administration needed to push Iranian leaders to agree to inspections "anywhere."