The Iran Deal-Hopes and Loopholes

On April 2, 2015, the P5+1 negotiators and Iran announced in Lausanne, Switzerland, that an agreement has been reached, in principle, on the parameters for a joint Plan of Action regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Following President Obama’s presentation of the agreement, in which he called this agreement a “good deal” and extolled its components, a paper denoting the details of the agreement was handed to the press. The following is based on this paper.

It should be noted, at the outset, that the present agreement is based on the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) that was agreed on in November 2013. In that agreement, the right of Iran to enrich uranium was implied and that was already the biggest concession, paving the way for the present agreement. On the face of it, this agreement has many achievements: the apparent extension of the “breakout” time, from 2-3 months to one year, the conversion of the heavy-water reactor at Arak to one with a lower potential for the production of weapons-grade plutonium, the more thorough inspection regime and dealing with the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program. When looking more thoroughly into the details of the agreement, as noted in the press release, one comes up with several loopholes that could be deal-breakers. Some of these are detailed and discussed below.

The uranium enrichment issue has been seen by many as the more important one in the negotiations. During the negotiations, the P5+1 apparently backed from their initial position, of about one thousand operating centrifuges, and in the final text, if one looks carefully, Iran will maintain 6104 installed centrifuges (5060 of them enriching uranium at Natanz and an additional 1044 at Fordow.) This number, if fully operational, would lower the breakout time to less than a year. Some advanced centrifuges would remain installed at the Natanz pilot plant and some research and development could still take place in Iran. The IAEA verification of Iran’s enrichment activities would be much stricter than previously, including the right to investigate suspicious sites or allegations of covert uranium enrichment-related sites.

The conversion of the Arak heavy-water reactor to a design that will not produce weapons-grade plutonium, and the prohibition on the construction of other heavy-water reactors in the next 15 years should take care of this issue. Two major loopholes remain: Iran is not prohibited from building other types of reactors, and the verification mechanism is not specifically empowered to search for any plutonium-related facilities such as plutogenic reactors, reprocessing facilities and metallurgic laboratories, for casting and the machining of the plutonium metal. One should not forget that the destroyed Syrian plutogenic reactor was graphite, not heavy-water, moderated. As such, Iran is not prohibited from constructing such a reactor.

The aspect of the military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program is only partially treated in the published parameters. For almost two years, the agreement Iran signed with the IAEA on resolving outstanding questions on this subject submitted by the IAEA to Iran has been largely ignored by Iran. These questions, however, form only a part of the larger issue. The research and development work on these aspects has always been recognized, but Iran steadfastly refused the submission of information and the inspection of related sites, and the Parchin site which has been a point of contention between Iran and the IAEA is a case in point. Without a satisfactory resolution of this issue, a major part of Iran’s nuclear program will remain out of the international sight, with possible serious consequences.

The above are details. Some of the general provisions of the agreement are no less disturbing. The document notes the goal of prolonging the timeline for a breakout as one year. The calculation of this timeline is not a simple matter, and must come under a continuous review process. There has been, for a long time, an implied reliance on intelligence for the provision of timely information, critical for the success of verification of the compliance of any deal. Unfortunately, history is replete with cases of missed, overlooked or wrongly interpreted intelligence information. The verification mechanism denoted in the paper does not mention some essential activities that should complement the Additional Protocol ones: the access, anywhere at any time in order to search for concealed facilities, access to personnel and to documentation. These capabilities were at the core of the success of verification in Iraq after the first Gulf War.

This brings us to the issue of resolving future disagreements between the parties to the final, comprehensive, agreement. A mechanism will be set up to resolve these issues, and if resolution is not achieved, the UN sanctions could be re-imposed. Anyone familiar with the international dispute resolving mechanism must be aware that this could take years to complete, and the result could be very uncertain. This includes the possible use of the Security Council veto powers, rendering the renewed imposition of sanctions nearly impossible, depending on the international situation. Thus, the one year breakout time could be much too short.

The omission of dealing with the delivery means of nuclear weapons is also a serious one. Iran is developing long-range missiles, including cruise missiles. These are strategic weapons that could carry nuclear warheads and pose a threat to the region and to states even outside the region. If we recall the declared animosity and threats towards Israel, one cannot but wonder why these were not dealt with within the present framework.

Can Iran be trusted to adhere to the comprehensive deal that is in the works? Taking into account Iran’s past history of not adhering to agreements and its past history of lying and concealments one cannot but wonder. Iran should be also expected to utilize any loophole in the agreement to its advantage. The declarative parts of the document are very nice, but are they really binding on Iran? Iran has, so far, not really shown any tendency to forgo its military nuclear ambitions, and the present document attests to this. The final deal must take care to shore up the above and other loopholes, before any sigh of relief can be heard.