Understanding a Potential Iran Nuclear Deal
![Secretary Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif Sit Down For Second Day of Nuclear Talks in Vienna. [State Department photo, 7/14/14]](/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Kerry-Zarif-Vienna.jpg)
Secretary Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif Sit Down For Second Day of Nuclear Talks in Vienna. [State Department photo, 7/14/14]
Significant gaps remain between the negotiating positions of the United States and Iran, but there are still opportunities for compromise. The primary point of contention remains Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity after a deal. This has been framed in terms of how many centrifuges Iran will be allowed to continue operating, and also the efficiency of those centrifuges – some proposals have suggested Iran maintain a small number of highly-efficient centrifuges instead of a large number of less-efficient centrifuges. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that the Iranian nuclear program requires a mix of centrifuges capable of 190,000 separative work units (SWUs) per year – a demand that P5+1 negotiators have found excessive – but the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, has clarified that the 190,000 SWU-capacity is not an immediate Iranian goal at the negotiations. “Maybe this will not be for this year, or two years, or five years,” he said, “but this is the final need of the country.” This suggests Iran may be willing to compromise on enrichment capacity in the near-term with a plan to increase production after it has demonstrated its program is peaceful and its nuclear program has been normalized. [Ali Akbar Salehi via Al-Monitor, 7/9/14]
Concerns about Iran’s “breakout capacity” are overblown and complicated by a lack of understanding about the term’s meaning. As many U.S. legislators have noted, a critical component of any agreement will be making it more difficult for Iran to build a nuclear weapon should Tehran decide to violate its commitment to a peaceful nuclear program. Iran’s ability to sprint toward a nuclear weapon is called its “breakout capacity,” which is measured as the length of time it would take to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb. But as Greg Thielmann, Senior Fellow at the Arms Control Association, wrote, this does not include subsequent steps to build a bomb, such as converting the uranium into a usable form, and even then Iran must still “develop and assemble other components, and finally integrate the weapons package into a delivery vehicle.” While Iran’s breakout capacity is currently gauged to be about two months, “[estimates] used by the White House have this process taking up to a year,” and that’s if Iran “gets everything right the first time around, even if they are completing procedures they have never attempted before,” as one U.S. official said. Even in a worst-case scenario, the United States would have time to detect and formulate a response to an Iranian breakout. [Greg Thielmann, 6/18/14]
Any agreement will be backed by a rigorous IAEA inspection program. The Arms Control Association explains, “The two sides agree that a comprehensive agreement should include requirements for more-timely notification of Iranian nuclear activities to the IAEA under Iran’s current comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA and more-extensive IAEA inspection authority to guard against a secret weapons program under the terms of an additional protocol. An additional protocol would allow the IAEA to conduct inspections of non-declared sites without prior notification, which is a strong deterrent against any clandestine nuclear weapons work. In the first phase of a comprehensive agreement, Iran will likely be required to implement an additional protocol. At a later point, Iran would commit to ratify it. Once approved by the Iranian parliament, the duration of the additional protocol would be indefinite.”
As Thielmann noted last week, the IAEA has proved more reliable than the U.S. intelligence community in investigating nuclear programs and has the trust of the international community. “The analysis of the IAEA inspectors during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq was excellent, in stark contrast to that of the U.S. intelligence community,” he explains. “It was the IAEA in January 2003, which detected the forgery behind the U.S. claim of Iraqi efforts to import ‘uranium from Africa.’ It was the IAEA which concluded definitively in early March 2003 that the high-strength aluminum tubes Iraq had imported were not being used for centrifuges to enrich uranium as the U.S. claimed. Not surprisingly, partly as a consequence of this record, the IAEA has more credibility with many countries than does the U.S. government. As a result of the IAEA’s past history with Iran and current access to Iran’s nuclear facilities, it is one of the best sources of objective information available on Iran’s nuclear program.” [Arms Control Association, 6/14. Greg Thielmann, 7/7/14]
Legislators must be prepared to discuss a limited and responsible repeal of sanctions – not doing so risks scuttling a deal. Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) sent a letter to the White House asking for the Administration to consult with Congress about any potential repeal of sanctions that might be part of a nuclear deal with Iran – something the Administration has already promised to do – and citing other non-nuclear concerns that have prompted U.S. sanctions. But as a coalition of pro-diplomacy groups has noted, this distracts from the deal at hand. “A comprehensive agreement that verifiably prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon would be a major national security achievement that would greatly benefit the U.S., as well as its allies, and resolve the issue that Congress has consistently identified as the top priority regarding Iran,” these groups noted in a letter last month. “It would be a travesty if the very sanctions that Congress enacted under the premise of stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons proved to be the obstacle that blocked a nuclear deal.” [Letter, 6/19/14]
