In his March 5 Address to Congress, Prime Minister Netanyahu warned that the Iran deal would leave a vast nuclear infrastructure with a break-out time that would be “very short — about a year by U.S. assessment, even shorter by Israel’s.” The last four words were a diplomatic way of noting Israel’s lack of confidence in the one-year assurances of the Obama administration. Based on the extensive analysis released this week by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), “Breakout Timelines Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA), Israel’s assessment is more accurate. The ISIS study concludes that the likely breakout time is seven months.

On August 4 — at a time when the preliminary ISIS estimate was six-to-seven months — the organization’s president, David Albright, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and had this exchange with Senator Menendez:

SEN. MENENDEZ: Now, let me ask you something. I was a little stunned — and of course you cautioned that it’s not a final assessment … that the [JCPOA] doesn’t seem to accomplish a one-year breakout — that it may be between six and seven months. At what point in time will you be able to, with certainty … make [a final] determination?

ALBRIGHT: We’re working on it … and we’d like to get an administration response. I mean, we asked them last week for a response on this concern. …

SEN. MENENDEZ: [Six-to-seven months] would be concerning to me, because I already am a little concerned that what we bought here was a very expensive alarm system … [S]ix or seven months is not going to be helpful if they decide to break out, because by the time we re-impose sanctions … it [wouldn’t] be meaningful. The next president of the United States … will only have one choice: to accept Iran as a nuclear weapons state or to have a military strike.

In its report, ISIS analyzes the imprudent assumption on which the Obama administration bases its one-year contention:

The bare-boned limits on Iran’s centrifuge program provide for at least a 12-month breakout period. However, based on ISIS analyses the agreed limits do not guarantee a 12-month breakout timeline during the first ten years of the agreement, if Iran can relatively quickly re-deploy its already manufactured IR-2m centrifuges. The administration has taken the position that Iran will not deploy these IR-2m centrifuges, because they have assessed that they will not work well enough. However, this assessment depends on an assumption about Iran’s manufactured IR-2m centrifuges that may not hold. Moreover, available data indicate that the breakage rate of the IR-2m centrifuges are no worse than those for the IR-1 centrifuges. Uncertainties about the quality of the existing IR-2m centrifuges make a definitive resolution of this issue difficult. Nonetheless, straightforward prudence would argue to include these centrifuges in a breakout, since their redeployment would have a major impact compared to IR-1 centrifuges and the United States lacks high assurance that the IR-2m centrifuges will not work adequately if deployed. In this case, the 12-month breakout criterion does not hold during the first ten years of the agreement. At a minimum, it is arguable whether the breakout criterion holds. [Emphasis added].

In the August 4 hearing, one of the other witnesses, Gary Samore, executive director for research in Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, added this:

SAMORE: … Senator, I don’t think re-imposition of sanctions is an effective response to breakout. I think the only effective response to breakout is military force. I mean, if the Iranians have decided to run the risk of openly dashing for a nuclear weapon, I don’t think sanctions are going to deter them or stop them.

SEN. MENENDEZ: So it seems to me that if Iran makes a political decision to move forward because it believes it’s the preservation of the regime, the revolution, or its place in the region, then ultimately … we are just kicking the ball down the road, but we will have a stronger, resurgent Iran with more money and greater defense capabilities than it has today.

In the same way that indefensible borders invite aggression, a seven-month breakout period invites a breakout, by making the opportunity so tempting — especially if one side knows the real period while the other mistakenly thinks (or lulls itself into thinking) that it has 12 months. The breakout period will shorten even further as Iran improves its centrifuge technology; shorten even beyond that as the restrictions in the Iran deal fall by the wayside, including the fantasy of “snapback” sanctions; and eventually head toward zero.

The ISIS report contains a straightforward statement about the ultimate result of the deal: “it almost ensures that Iran can emerge in 15-20 years as a nuclear power with the potential, at a time of its choosing, to make enough weapon-grade uranium for several nuclear weapons within a few weeks.” (Emphasis added). So whether Iran breaks out, sneaks out, or waits out the agreement, the result is going to be the same.