Eli Lake, Columnist

Trump’s Latest Tweak Could Kill Obama’s Iran Deal

The U.S. has essentially revoked Iran’s right to enrich uranium.

May 6, 2019 at 9:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

What Trump would like to see ended.
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One of Iran’s greatest diplomatic achievements in recent years was getting the world to recognize its right to enrich uranium suitable for nuclear fuel. The Trump administration has now undermined it.

On Friday, the State Department renewed some exemptions to U.S. sanctions on Iran’s nuclear activities and ended others. The renewals initially attracted more attention than the terminations. Yet make no mistake: One sanction that will now be reimposed, preventing Iran from sending enriched uranium to Russia in exchange for natural yellowcake uranium, could effectively kill the deal — a realization Europe seems to have made over the weekend.