Reporters visit Iran's Arak Heavy Water Complex in late 2019. By Richard StoneRatcheting up its maximum pressure campaign on Iran, the U.S.
State Department will no longer waive sanctions against parties redesigning an Iranian heavy water reactor to sharply curtail its generation of plutonium, which can be used to build nuclear weapons.The 27 May decision is “tremendously concerning,” says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “Heavy water reactors are a substantial proliferation concern.”Under the 2015 nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the United States and other Western powers agreed to relax sanctions