Iran Nuclear Deal: Why is it a Big Deal? Everything You Need to Know Here!

After more than a decade, an agreement appears to be reached among six nations regarding Iran's nuclear armament issue. President Barack Obama has said that the deal is the more diplomatic path towards keeping Iran from creating a nuclear arsenal that may threaten international security.

"Iran and a group of six nations led by the United States reached a historic accord on Tuesday to significantly limit Tehran's nuclear ability for more than a decade in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions," The New York Times reported. "The deal culminates 20 months of negotiations on an agreement that President Obama had long sought as the biggest diplomatic achievement of his presidency."

However, a number of criticisms were hurled against the nuke deal. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is one of them, saying that the agreement is a "stunning historic mistake," according to the BBC. Some Republican leaders have also expressed their scorn over the said deal, prompting President Obama to explain and reiterate the importance of the deal.

"Part of our goal here has been to show that diplomacy can work," he was quoted by the New York Times as saying. "It doesn't work perfectly. It doesn't give us everything that we want."

"We have cut off every pathway for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he also explained in another interview with the publication. "The reason we were able to unify the world community around the most effective sanctions regime we've ever set up, a sanction regime that crippled the Iranian economy and ultimately brought them to the table, was because the world agreed with us, that it would be a great danger to the region, to our allies, to the world, if Iran possessed a nuclear weapon."

"And what we were able to do is to say to them, 'Given your past behavior, given our strong suspicion and evidence that you made attempts to weaponize your nuclear program, given the destabilizing activities that you've engaged in in the region and support for terrorism, it's not enough for us to trust when you say that you are only creating a peaceful nuclear program. You have to prove it to us,'" he went on to say. "And so this whole system that we built is not based on trust; it's based on a verifiable mechanism, whereby every pathway that they have is shut off."

The sanctions imposed on Iran will be removed only after the country does the stipulations included in the nuclear agreement, which includes "the removal and destruction of the Arak nuclear reactor core, and shipping uranium stockpiles abroad," USA Today reported. Iran will also have to reduce its enrichment machines to 5,000, instead of the 20,000 it currently has.

"Iran agreed to dilute or convert its entire stockpile of medium-enriched uranium into another form that would be monitored by international inspectors, and to ship its stockpile of low enriched uranium to another country," the news source added. "Iran agreed to repurpose the Fordow facility to isotope production and nuclear research rather than uranium enrichment."

Part of the nuclear deal is the permission of IAEA inspectors to check any site seen as suspicious.

The IAEA has since signed an agreement with the Middle Eastern country to resolve certain questions within three months. Sanctions will be lifted only after this investigation is complete.

However, should fail to fulfill its commitments, the sanctions will automatically be snapped back in place.

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