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Russia is supplying weapons to Damascus under contracts signed since the conflict in Syria began in 2011

appeared to contradict Moscow's line that any Russian arms supplies to Damascus were agreed before the conflict began

"There are contracts that had been sealed before the crisis started and were carried out during the crisis. There are other agreements on arms supplies and cooperation that were signed during the crisis and are being carried out now

However, in order to utilize the plutonium for a weapon, Iran would still have to build a reprocessing plant to be able to separate plutonium from spent fuel.

[I]t will reduce the risk of Iran getting a bomb better than any of the realistic alternatives. Iran has agreed to physical limits on its ability to produce weapons-grade materials that will assure a break-out timeline of roughly a year for the next 10 years, as well as additional restraints and verification measures to monitor compliance and detect cheating. If the U.S. rejects the deal and returns to sanctions, Iran is certain to return to what it was doing before the interim agreement: installing additional centrifuges, enriching uranium, increasing its stockpile of enriched material, developing more advanced centrifuges, and completing the Arak heavy water reactor. The agreement does not solve the problem, but it reduces the risk for now and buys substantial time to resolve the threat in the future.

They will prevent Tehran from using the $100-plus billion in previously frozen oil revenues that will be released under the JCPOA to go on a buying spree next year for advanced conventional weaponry and ballistic missile technology. Although Iran will seek to evade the renewed restrictions, Russia and China voted for them and, together with other U.N. members, will be bound to enforce them. Although the arms embargo does not cover all categories of arms (air defense systems such as the S-300 are not included), neither Russia nor China is expected to sell Iran the weapons that are covered, such as high-performance aircraft.