Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that any new nuclear deal with Iran would have to go far beyond the Obama-era JCPOA, arguing that agreement failed to stop Tehran from building up its enrichment capabilities.
Follow The Post’s live coverage of President Trump and national politics for the latest news and analysis
“It is not JCPOA,” Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “[That deal] would have expired this year, and it allowed them to keep all the enrichment equipment that they needed.”
Rubio noted that Iran has already enriched nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium to 60% purity — just a short technical step from weapons-grade levels.
Any future agreement, he said, would have to address both Iran’s enrichment infrastructure and its growing stockpile of highly enriched material.
“It would have to deal with that question,” Rubio went on, “and it would have to deal with the highly enriched uranium that they currently are in possession of.”
Read the full article here
