Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz offered assurances that the Iran nuclear deal is a good one Sunday.
Moniz, a nuclear physicist who was part of the negotiations alongside Secretary of State John Kerry, asserted that the nuclear deal is a “long-term program” that will restrict Iran’s nuclear program.
“So we have blocked all of these pathways to a bomb. And we should also emphasize this is not a ten-year deal. This is a long-term arrangement. There’s no sense that there will be a lot of phases starting with extremely stringent restrictions on Iran’s program,” he said on Sunday’s “Face the Nation.”
“Hopefully they will comply for a long time, build up confidence. But we have ten-year restrictions, fifteen-year restrictions, twenty-five year restrictions, and we have forever restrictions. So this is a long-term program, not something that will kind of go away in a few years,” he said.
Moniz also tried to reassure viewers that it will be known if Iran does not comply with the rules in the deal — and will face repercussions if so.
“We’ll have continuous surveillance of centrifuge facilities themselves. We will have, by the way, for the plutonium pathway. We will have all of the spent fuel from the newly designed reactor, which produces much less plutonium. All that fuel will [be removed from] the country. So there won’t even be plutonium from that reactor in the country,” he said. “For the lifetime of the reactor. I repeat. The lifetime of the reactor. These are very, very strong. If they fail to meet any of these requirements, we are going to know through, again, our access and transparency. And that will immediately lead not only to [the U.S.], but the international community, the P5+1, taking the appropriate actions,” he added.
Moniz also said that getting nuclear power out of the hands of Iran was the No. 1 goal, but there are still other conflicts with Iran that have to be addressed down the line.
“[T]here’s no question that we will have many, many more issues with Iran … This agreement in no way lessens the importance of our working against them, supporting our allies and friends in the region very, very strongly,” he said.
