The US U-turns and
accepts that
Iran will have uranium enrichment facilities
A Joint Plan of Action [1]
was agreed between Iran and
the US in Geneva on 24 November 2013.
Nominally, this agreement was between Iran and the P5+1 (that is, the five permanent
members of the Security Council plus Germany)
but in reality it was between Iran
and the US. The groundwork for it was laid in secret high-level
discussions between Iran and
the US which began in March
2013, while President Ahmadinjad was still in power in Iran [2].
The Joint Plan of
Action
The Joint Plan of Action consists of an interim agreement lasting
for six months at least, setting out a series of steps to be taken by Iran, in
exchange for a small scale reduction in economic sanctions. The Plan also establishes the principles on
which “a mutually-agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran's nuclear
programme will be exclusively peaceful” is to be based:
·
An
Iranian reaffirmation that “under no circumstances will Iran ever seek
or develop any nuclear weapons”
·
“Iran to fully
enjoy its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes under the relevant
articles of the NPT in conformity with its obligations therein”
·
“A
mutually defined enrichment programme with practical limits and transparency
measures to ensure the peaceful nature of the programme”
·
“The
comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions, as well as
multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran's nuclear programme”
So, the US
has agreed that Iran
is going to have enrichment capability on a permanent basis, albeit with
mutually agreed constraints on its operation and sufficient transparency
measures to assure the outside world that its nuclear programme is for peaceful
purposes.
In other words, the endgame for the US is that Iran
be treated like other states in this world, which possess enrichment facilities
but have not developed nuclear weapons, for example, Argentina,
Brazil, Germany, Japan
and the Netherlands. As John Kerry said at his press conference
afterwards:
“Iran says it doesn’t want a nuclear
weapon … .Therefore, it ought to be really easy to do the things that other
nations do who enrich, and prove that their program is peaceful. So that’s what
we’re looking for.” [3]
Extraordinary U-turn
by the US
This amounts to an extraordinary U-turn by the US, which has
barely got a mention in mainstream media reporting on the agreement.
The BBC’s Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen described it as “a
quite remarkable diplomatic breakthrough” but he didn’t give the slightest clue
as to why, having been at daggers drawn over Iran’s nuclear activities for more
than a decade, there was suddenly a meeting of minds between the US and Iran. The answer is that the US has reversed its policy and the final
agreement will be essentially on Iran’s
terms, since it will include Iran’s
bottom line, namely, the continuation of enrichment.
The other fundamental fact about the agreement is that, as
we will see, it could have been reached in 2005, on less favourable terms for Iran, had the US
been prepared to concede Iran’s
bottom line at that time.
For the last decade and more, the US
has expended an immense amount of political capital dragooning the world into
applying political and economic pressure on Iran in an attempt to force it to
cease enrichment. These efforts have
failed abysmally: a decade ago there were no centrifuges enriching uranium in Iran; today,
according to an IAEA report last August [4],
around 19,000 centrifuges are installed (though only about 10,000 of them are
in operation).
At the instigation of the US,
the Security Council passed six Chapter VII resolutions, the first in 2006 and
the sixth in 2010, demanding that Iran cease enrichment and various
other nuclear activities. Four of these six resolutions included tranches of economic sanctions.
These UN-approved sanctions were rather limited, because Russia and China opposed more severe ones. However, over the past two years Iran
has been subject to ferocious economic sanctions, which were not approved by
the UN, but are the product of legislation passed by the US
Congress in December 2011 at the behest of the Israeli lobby in the US. The legislation requires the US
administration to bully other states around the world to stop (or at least
reduce) purchases of Iranian oil, by threatening to cut off foreign financial
institutions from the US financial system, if they conduct transactions with
the Central Bank of Iran or other Iranian financial institutions.
Now, despite the continued existence of six Security Council
resolutions demanding that enrichment cease, the interim agreement allows Iran to
continue enrichment over the next six months, albeit with minor curtailments,
and there isn’t the slightest doubt that any long-term comprehensive agreement will
do likewise. Simply put, the US has conceded
defeat.
No right to enrichment
At his press conference, the US
Secretary of State, John Kerry, was at pains to emphasise that the agreement
“does not say that Iran
has a right to enrichment”. He
continued:
“No matter what interpretive
comments are made, it is not in this document. There is no right to enrich
within the four corners of the NPT. And this document does not do that.”
It was strange to hear this coming out John Kerry’s mouth,
since in an interview with the Financial Times in June 2009 [5],
when he was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he said that
Iran had “a right to peaceful nuclear power and to enrichment in that purpose”
and described the inflexibility by the Bush administration about Iran as
“bombastic diplomacy” that “wasted energy” and “hardened the lines”.
However, it is true that the Plan of Action does not state
explicitly that Iran
has a right to enrichment under the NPT.
But what does that matter when it is going to have enrichment in
practice with US
approval?
In contrast to Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
said the deal accepts Tehran’s
right to enrich uranium:
“This
deal means that we agree with the need to recognize Iran's right for peaceful nuclear
energy, including the right for enrichment, with an understanding that those
questions about the [Iranian nuclear program] that still remain, and the
program itself, will be placed under the strictest IAEA control.” [6]
Kerry acknowledges US failure
John Kerry actually acknowledged that the US inspired sanctions against Iran over the
past decade had been a complete failure, saying:
“In … 2003, when the Iranians made
an offer to the former Administration with respect to their nuclear program,
there were 164 centrifuges. That offer was not taken. Subsequently, sanctions
came in, and today there are 19,000 centrifuges and growing.”
The offer to which he is referring was actually made in 2005
when President Rouhani was Iran’s
chief nuclear negotiator. To be precise,
it was made on 23 March 2005 in the Quai d’Orsay in Paris
[7]
to representatives of the EU3 (the UK,
France and Germany) by the
present Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. It involved the continuation of domestic enrichment,
but it also proposed unprecedented measures to reassure the outside world that Iran’s nuclear activities were for peaceful
purposes, measures of the kind that the US is now seeking.
(This was followed by further even more generous offers from
Iran, including the most remarkable offer of all by President Ahmadinejad at
the UN General Assembly on 17 September 2005, when he declared that “the
Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to engage in serious partnership with
private and public sectors of other countries in the implementation of [a] uranium
enrichment program in Iran” [8]).
John Kerry did not acknowledge that the EU3, and by
extension the US, could have
reached a settlement with Iran
at that time, had the US
been prepared to countenance Iran
having enrichment on its own soil. But
the US wasn’t prepared to do
so – and the EU3 bowed to Washington’s
wishes and refused to accept the offer even as a basis for negotiations. With that, the possibility of a settlement,
which contained unprecedented transparency measures, was aborted at a time when
Iran’s
enrichment programme was in its infancy.
(For discussion of this Iranian offer and the events which
followed from the EU3’s refusal to even consider it, see my book with Peter
Oborne A Dangerous Delusion: Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran [9]
and my article Has the US conceded defeat and accepted Iran’s
right to uranium enrichment? [10]).
Selling point for the US
The interim agreement’s selling point for the US is that it includes arrangements that will make
it next to impossible for Iran
to take any steps towards manufacture fissile material for a nuclear weapon, if
it decided to do so, without the world becoming aware of them.
Not that there is any hard evidence that Iran has, or ever had, any
intention of developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran’s leaders have repeatedly denied that they have any
ambitions to do so. What is more, in
2005 the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa – a
religious edict – saying that “the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear
weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall
never acquire these weapons” [11]
(page 121) and he has repeated
this message many times since then [12].
Recently (8 October 2013), Sergey Lavrov had
this to say about the issue in an interview with RT:
“As for the statements
regarding the Iranians playing another game and trying to dupe people, I
haven't seen any confirmation by any intelligence – be it Russian, be it
European, be it the United
States, be it Mossad, which would
categorically say that the Iranian leadership has taken a political decision to
have a military nuclear program. No intelligence agency on earth was able so
far to make this conclusion. And we spoke to our American colleagues just
recently. They agreed that Iran
hasn't taken a political decision to go military in its nuclear program … .” [13]
Obama says agreement cuts
off Iran’s
most likely paths to a bomb
President Obama declared that the interim
agreement had “cut off Iran’s
most likely paths to a bomb” [14].
This is essentially correct. As
Obama said:
“Iran has committed to halting
certain levels of enrichment and neutralizing part of its stockpiles.
“Iran cannot use
its next-generation centrifuges, which are used for enriching uranium.
“Iran cannot
install or start up new centrifuges, and its production of centrifuges will be
limited.
“Iran will halt
work at its plutonium reactor.
“And new inspections
will provide extensive access to Iran’s
nuclear facilities and allow the international community to verify whether Iran is keeping
its commitments.
“These are substantial
limitations which will help prevent Iran from building a nuclear
weapon. Simply put, they cut off Iran’s most likely paths to a
bomb.”
These comments are more or less correct. Let us look at each in turn:
(1) Iran has committed to halting
certain levels of enrichment and neutralizing part of its stockpiles.
Iran has agreed to limit enrichment to
5% (the level appropriate to fuel power reactors) from now on and to convert
half of its existing 20% stockpile to uranium oxide to fuel its Tehran Research
Reactor and dilute the other half to no more than 5%. When this is done, there will be no 20%
enriched uranium in a form that can be readily enriched to 90% for a bomb, if Iran had a mind
to do so.
This means that the scenario set out by Binyamin Netanyahu
at the UN General Assembly in September 2013 (famously, with the aid of a
cartoon) is no longer possible. Then he
envisaged Iran
soon having enough 20% enriched uranium to be able to produce 90% enriched
uranium for a single bomb in a matter of months, if it wasn’t stopped by
military action. Then Netanyahu
predicted that Iran
would have enough 90% enriched uranium for a bomb by the spring/summer of 2013:
“By next spring, at most by next
summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium
enrichment [that is, enrichment to 20%] and move on to the final stage [that
is, enrichment to 90%]. From there, it's
only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium
for the first bomb.”
This prophecy like others by him about Iran’s nuclear
activities has not come to pass. Once
the measures set out in the interim agreement are complete, any possibility of
it coming to pass will be eliminated, since there will be no 20% enriched
uranium in a form that can be readily enriched to 90% for a weapon.
Ceasing to enrich to 20% is not a great imposition for Iran. It began enriching to 20% in 2010, after
failing to obtain fuel for its Tehran Research Reactor from abroad. It is generally believed that it now has
enough 20% enriched uranium to manufacture fuel for this reactor for many years. So, stopping enrichment to 20% is not a great
imposition.
Iran also agreed not to increase its
existing stockpile of 3.5% enriched uranium held as uranium hexafluoride gas
over the six month interim period. The
interim agreement does not require enrichment to 3.5% to be halted, but any uranium
newly enriched to 3.5% is to be converted into uranium oxide, so that it cannot
be readily enriched further.
Note that in the March 2005 offer, Iran proposed
to do this immediately for all low enriched uranium.
Note that Iran
will retain the capability of enriching to 20% and even to over 90%, but with inspectors
in their enrichment plants daily (see below) that will not be possible without
being detected by the IAEA.
(2) Iran cannot use
its next-generation centrifuges, which are used for enriching uranium. Iran
cannot install or start up new centrifuges, and its production of centrifuges
will be limited.
Iran has installed a few next-generation
centrifuges, which can enrich more quickly and therefore have the potential to
enrich to weapons grade in a much shorter time. Iran has agreed not to start up these
(or other) new centrifuges and to limit its building of centrifuges to those
needed to replace damaged machines. In
other words, in the next six months, Iran will not be able to increase
its stockpile of centrifuges, or to increase its rate of enrichment by putting
more centrifuges into operation. But it
will still be able to continue to enrich to 5% using those centrifuges already
in operation.
(3) Iran will halt work at its
plutonium reactor
Here Obama is referring to the heavy water reactor which Iran is in the process of building at Arak. If it was in operation, it could be a source
for plutonium, which can be used as fissile material for a bomb (as an
alternative to 90% enriched uranium). However, the reactor isn't in
operation.
To obtain plutonium for a bomb it has to be extracted from
"spent" fuel from the reactor (that is, fuel that has been in an
operating reactor for some time, certainly months, perhaps years). The
process of extraction of plutonium from spent fuel is referred to as "reprocessing"
- and Iran
hasn't got any facilities for "reprocessing". So, the Arak
reactor was years away from being a possible source of fissile material for a
bomb.
(There is already an operational nuclear reactor in Iran in a power station at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. This
reactor was installed and fuelled by Russia
and is operating under IAEA supervision, as the Arak reactor will be when it is operational. Theoretically, “spent” fuel from this
reactor, which is supposed to be returned to Russia,
could be retained in Iran
and “reprocessed” to extract plutonium, if Iran had a means of doing so. Needless to say, it couldn’t do so without
the IAEA becoming aware of it. This possibility
is never mentioned by those who kick up a fuss about the danger of Iran producing plutonium from the Arak reactor which isn’t
operational. This demonstrates that the
fuss about the possibility of plutonium being obtained from the Arak reactor is bogus.)
Note that in the March 2005 offer, Iran proposed
that it refrain from “reprocessing” spent fuel rods, thereby precluding the
production of plutonium.
(4) New inspections will provide extensive access
to Iran’s nuclear facilities
and allow the international community to verify whether Iran is keeping its commitments.
This includes daily access by IAEA inspectors to the enrichment
plants at Natanz and Fordow.
Note that in the March 2005 offer, Iran proposed
to allow much greater access than this for IAEA inspectors, namely, continuous
onsite presence at its conversion and enrichment plants.
The interim agreement also includes the provision of
”certain key data and information called for in the Additional Protocol to
Iran’s IAEA Safeguards Agreement [with the IAEA] and Modified Code 3.1”. (For explanation of these, see Annex to Has the US
conceded defeat and accepted Iran’s
right to uranium enrichment? [10]).
Note that in the March 2005 offer, Iran proposed
to continue to apply the Additional Protocol and Modified Code 3.1. The level of access for the IAEA and of
reporting to the IAEA, which has now been agreed, was in operation in 2005 and
would have been continued had the EU3 had accepted Iran’s March 2005 offer.
A good deal for Iran
The interim
agreement is a good deal for Iran:
in exchange for minor curtailments to its present nuclear activities, it has
received a small scale reduction in economic sanctions. The latter includes ending the ban on the
supply of spare parts for civil aircraft and making it easier to buy
pharmaceuticals and medical equipment.
Much more important, the way has been opened for Iran’s right to
enrichment being accepted internationally and sanctions being lifted completely. That being so, it is inconceivable that Iran
will fail to carry out its obligations under the agreement. More likely, it will go further than it is
required to do according to the letter of the agreement – and the US will have no
excuse to re-impose the sanctions.
President Obama himself has the power to reduce sanctions as
prescribed in the interim agreement. But
it is possible that the US Congress will scupper the interim deal by passing
legislation imposing additional sanctions on Iran,
at the behest of the Israeli lobby in the US,
thereby potentially breaking a US
commitment in the agreement. The interim
agreement says that during the interim period:
“The
US Administration, acting consistent with the respective roles of the President
and the Congress, will refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions.”
This implies that, if the Congress were to legislate for
more sanctions in the coming months, the agreement would be breached if the
President refused to veto the legislation.
But if enough votes were mustered in Congress (a two-thirds vote in each
house) to override the presidential veto, the agreement would not be formally breached. However, the resulting imposition of
additional sanctions by the US
would surely deal a death blow to the agreement.
David Morrison
31 December 2013
References:
[1] eeas.europa.eu/statements/docs/2013/131124_03_en.pdf
[2]
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25086236
[3] www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/11/218023.htm
[4] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2013/gov2013-40.pdf
[5] www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d5c6395e-55e6-11de-ab7e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2FgP41h00
[6] rt.com/news/iran-historic-nuclear-deal-201/
[7] www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/Iran_Proposal_Mar232005.pdf
[8] www.un.org/webcast/ga/60/statements/iran050917eng.pdf
[9] www.amazon.co.uk/Dangerous-Delusion-Wrong-About-Nuclear/dp/1908739894/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&
[10] www.david-morrison.org.uk/iran/us-defeated-on-enrichment.htm
[11] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2005/infcirc657.pdf
[12] www.juancole.com/2012/03/khamenei-takes-control-forbids-nuclear-bomb.html
[13]
rt.com/politics/official-word/iran-cooperation-interview-lavrov-904/
[14] www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/23/statement-president-first-step-agreement-irans-nuclear-program