Former Iran Ambassador: Nuclear Deal is Model for Closing Path to Militarization and Weaponization

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President Obama is defending the global agreement to curtail Iran's nuclear program as critics of the deal are accusing the White House of appeasement. The deal reached Tuesday will see Iran reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98 percent and cut its number of centrifuges by two-thirds. In exchange, Iran will see an easing of international sanctions that have battered the economy, causing food insecurity and medication shortages. Congress will have 60 days to review the agreement.

"The deal has closed all possible pathways toward possible militarization, weaponization of Iranian nuclear program," says Iranian Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former nuclear negotiator. "If the opponents in the region used the Iranian model for all countries in the Middle East, this would be the only way to assure a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East," Mousavian is now an associate research scholar at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of "The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir" and, most recently, "Iran and the United States: An Insider's view on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace."