Verifying a Final Nuclear Deal with Iran

The Parameters of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed between Iran and P5+1 (US, the UK, France, Germany Russia and China)  on April 2, 2015 still require agreement on various fundamental aspects of the verification regime if the JCPOA is to be effective. The U.S. Administration’s goal to keep Iran at least a year away from being able to produce enough fissile material for one nuclear device demands robust and effective verification and monitoring—by no means an easy task given Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, capabilities, and history. And in some other areas such as R&D on more advanced centrifuges, attention will have to go into monitoring Iran’s manufacturing of centrifuges and acquisition of key raw materials.

In order to contain the nuclear program of Iran within agreed limitations, the provisions worked out on a verification system need to measure up to the task ahead. This involves requiring additional provisions to ensure that Iran’s enrichment capacity and stocks of enriched uranium and spent fuel remain capped; unfettered access of inspectors to all relevant sites, facilities, material, equipment, people, and documents in Iran to maintain a robust verification scheme; ensuring that monitoring starts from a well-defined verified baseline, which means the IAEA’s questions related to the military dimension and Iran’s past and potentially ongoing activities are addressed in advance; and constructing a mechanism to monitor Iran’s procurement activities, including any potential outsourcing of activities that should be proscribed.

As past history demonstrates, small as any future Iranian infractions may seem at the time and however difficult it may be to quantify the impact of these infractions on Iran’s breakout time, judicious and corrective actions need to be expeditious in order to prevent slippage and a creep of de facto baselines in Iran’s favor. Intelligence will also complement the role of verificationand monitoring in providing early indications of things going off-track. To garner sufficient confidence on the effectiveness of these systems, they need to be backed by an effective enforcement mechanism.

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