Energy Secretary Lands Leading Role in Iran Nuclear Talks

Secretary of State John Kerry was not the only Obama administration Cabinet member appearing in news photos of the nuclear weapons talks in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, whom Kerry summoned to his side in February, is credited with playing a key role on technical issues of verification of Iran’s commitments as laid out in the joint framework agreed to on Thursday.

"The key parameters established today lay the groundwork for achieving the [the six negotiating partners] P5+1’s objective of blocking Iran’s four pathways to nuclear weapons,” Moniz said in a statement. These include “the two uranium pathways through Iran’s Natanz and Fordow enrichment facilities, the plutonium pathway at the Arak reactor, and the covert pathway,” he said.

"America’s leading nuclear experts at the Department of Energy and its national labs and sites were involved throughout these negotiations, evaluating and developing technical proposals to help define negotiating positions in support of the U.S. delegation,” Moniz said. “As a result, I’m pleased to say that we are very confident in the technical underpinnings of this arrangement.”

Touting the concessions the negotiators wrung from Iran’s diplomats—details of which await final signing of an expected pact in June—Moniz thanked his Iranian counterpart, Ali Salehi. That fellow nuclear physicist was in graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1970s when Moniz was seeking tenure there, though the two were not acquainted. “I deeply appreciate his professionalism, candor and unwavering commitment to analytical rigor,“ Moniz said.

Tom Collina, director of policy at the Ploughshares Fund, a nonprofit that distributes funding to reduce nuclear weapons worldwide, told Government Executive that Moniz “played an important role in working out the technical details in the framework agreement. And he will have an even more important role going forward, as he will be a key validator for the administration's position that this deal would -- if completed -- extend the time it would take Iran to produce enough fissile material for a bomb to one year or more,” Collina said. “As a physicist, he can speak credibly on the subject, as can scientists at DOE's nuclear laboratories.”