As the article admits, until the enrichment is >90% it can’t go boom.
So, why are we wasting any effort or negotiating capital on anything below that? What are we giving up that we could have if we quit talking about anything below 90%? This is asinine.
Apparently, there is money involved in wasting such effort. So, who is profiting?
The article is incorrect. It is also from something called a dissident news source, which means, as proven by the wrong data, to be worthless.
1) Reactor grade enrichment is generally accepted to be 5%, not 3.67%. There is no reason to accept lower. No reason to propose lower. 5% is not going to be made into weapons.
2) You do not need 90% enrichment for weapons grade. You can get nice booms at 70%. You can get lesser quality booms even lower.
3) The writers know nothing.
FYI, Uranium out of the ground is a combination of U235 (0.7%) and U238 (99.3%). There is a tiny weight difference of the two isotopes so you spin the material in some special fluid and spin it and spin it and the heavier stuff migrates to the outside of the curve. Scrape it out and continue spinning. After a while you have elevated 0.7% to 5%.
Pretty much all nuclear powers don’t think in these terms anymore. Fuel rods from reactors are processed to harvest Plutonium. Pu239. It has its own set of obstacles, but the can be overcome and it takes much less time than years of spinning. 99% of the world’s nuclear weapons are Pu239 based.
Regardless of all this, Iran could promise no more uranium enrichment at all, they could promise to have inspectors come in and inspect. They could dismantle their reactor and stop building others. And the US would not accept it. The US wants to dictate their foreign policy. They have the 2nd largest reserves of natgas in the world and the demand for it is astronomical. They can fund their foreign policy with it.
The US doesn’t really care about their nuclear program. They likely already have a few fission bombs. That’s not what this is all about. The US wants to dictate their government’s foreign policy.