by Peter Jenkins
The absence of any late September breakthrough on the central issue in the nuclear negotiation with Iran—Iran’s mastery of uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used for both civil and military purposes—has triggered speculation that the November 24 deadline for a comprehensive agreement will be missed. It has also sparked renewed debate on whether no deal would be better than the best deal likely to be on offer…
The nub of the enrichment problem appears to be Iran’s reluctance to give up the potential to produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for one nuclear weapon (a “significant quantity” or SQ) in a matter of weeks (perhaps four to six). This puts Iran greatly at odds with the US and EU (and possibly Russia and China, but that is unclear), since the US and EU want Iran to be unable to produce an SQ (to “breakout”) in less than six months and would prefer at least a year.
This wide gap on enrichment and the lack of any reason to think that Iran’s negotiators will budge on this point are feeding speculation that agreement by the deadline will be unattainable.The underlying assumption is that the US and EU will not budge either.
I have accepted a poisoned chalice from the editors of Lobelog and will try with the following points to explain why tolerating the Iranian operation of nine or ten thousand—let’s say 10,000—first generation centrifuges (IR-1s) would be the lesser of two evils—the greater evil being no deal—provided it paves the way to a satisfactory settlement of all the other points on the agenda.
1) In the long run the US and EU will have to rely for a non-proliferation assurance, where Iran’s nuclear program is concerned, on the deterrence provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring of compliance with Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, and on Iranian fear that the consequences of non-compliance could be devastating. Perpetual restrictions on centrifuge numbers would imply a perpetual double standard for which there is no basis in international law—and would therefore be totally unacceptable to Iran.
The US and EU tell themselves that relying solely on deterrence will feel more comfortable in ten or twenty years time, because during the intervening years Iran will have been able to build confidence in the peaceful nature of its intentions. In doing so, they tend to overlook that since 2003 the IAEA has not reported any Iranian failure to declare the possession of nuclear material and has not detected any undeclared nuclear activities. Nor has Iran attempted to produce HEU during the last four years, when it could easily have done so.
These years could be seen as evidence of Iran’s intention to comply with its nuclear non-proliferation obligations, and as grounds for confidence that it will not seek to breakout in the coming ten years…
The US and EU may also be overlooking that, if ten years from now Iran has had the potential to breakout in under six weeks but has not attempted to do so, then that will be a stronger reason for confidence in its peaceful intentions than if rapid breakout had not been a possibility.
2) A sense of perspective can be obtained by reflecting that several NPT Non-Nuclear-Weapon States (NNWS) have been and are in a position to breakout rapidly and that this is not generally considered cause for concern. Why not? Because it is assumed that they have no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. Nearly 30 years after Iran, also an NPT party, was first in contact with the A.Q. Khan nuclear supply network, to obtain enrichment technology, there is still no conclusive evidence that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons. Indeed, the US intelligence assessment is that no such decision has been taken.
3) The risk of Iran using the 10,000 centrifuges that it wants to retain to breakout is small. IAEA monitoring, and the impossibility of predicting the consequences of detection are deterrents. If Iran wanted one SQ of HEU, it would be better advised to try to build a small unmonitored enrichment facility to house more efficient second- or third-generation centrifuges.
(In that case, some might ask, why are the Iranians so determined to retain a capacity to produce one SQ in a matter of weeks at a monitored facility? In my view, the explanation must be that they want a quasi-deterrent. Being known to be able to breakout rapidly is not much of a deterrent but it is better than nothing—and it has the merit of not entailing any violation of the NPT.)
4) The US and EU reason that a reaction time of at least six months is needed in the event of a detected breakout, to allow the UN Security Council or a coalition of the like-minded to go through the gears before stopping Iran short of one SQ by destroying its means of production. Going through the gears means first persuasion and then coercion (sanctions). But it is highly unlikely that in breakout circumstances even good friends could persuade Iran to turn back; and there is now ample evidence that the greatest effect of sanctions is to stimulate Iranian defiance.
So in reality the US and EU, faced with evidence of an ongoing breakout, would have only one option: to destroy the 10,000 centrifuges as quickly as possible (unless, when it came to the crunch, the consequences of such action seemed likely to be worse than tolerating Iranian acquisition of HEU). To render the 10,000 centrifuges at Natanz inoperable would be an easy task for the US Air Force, and could be accomplished in well under a month.
The ministers of Iran and the P5+1 at the signing ceremony of the Joint Plan of Action reached on Nov. 24, 2013.
5) Assuming that other outstanding issues can be resolved satisfactorily, a comprehensive agreement on Nov. 24 offers a much fairer prospect than no agreement. A final agreement that includes the following provisions will generate a helpful reduction in tensions on at least one Middle Eastern front: frequent IAEA access to Iranian centrifuge workshops and assembly areas, and to Iranian fuel cycle facilities; changes to the design of the 40 MW reactor at Arak; and all the enrichment-related restrictions Iran offered in November 2013 and that Iran could hardly retract under a comprehensive agreement.
However imperfect, in Western eyes, such an agreement might seem if Iran continues to operate 10,000 IR-1s, it would be a better platform for developing the West’s relations with Iran in positive ways than no agreement. If Iran were given sufficient time, were offered EU as well as Russian civil nuclear cooperation, and were invited to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, it might decide to adapt its nuclear program in reassuring ways. An agreement would ease political inhibitions to cooperation when Western and Iranian security interests coincide.
Conversely, no agreement could lead quickly to renewed expansion of Iran’s enrichment capacities, a reduction in IAEA access to the minimum required by the NPT, abandonment of the plan to modify the Arak reactor, and who knows what else on a broader canvas.
Those who have been advocating “no deal” seem to assume that a nice alternative would be on offer: continuation of the confidence-building measures that have been in place since January under last November’s Joint Plan of Action. But there is no guarantee that this would be the case.
To date, Iran’s gains in return for those measures have been modest (US and EU sanctions relief having been paltry and, in some cases, ineffective); they would not lose a lot by walking away from the Joint Plan. US and EU negotiators could also find it hard to detain them—their negotiating hand is weaker than “no deal” advocates imagine. If it were strong, this problem would have been resolved to Western satisfaction years ago.
Of course it would be wise of Iran to bear in mind that it will be very hard for the Obama administration to persuade Congress of the merits of a deal that does not make it impossible for Iran to breakout in under six months (irritating though it is for foreigners to be told by US negotiators that Congress will or will not tolerate this or that). It is a regrettable reality that this breakout issue has become totemic. The Iranian negotiators ought to be trying to identify room for compromise on some aspect of it. If they could find some way of excluding the option of using Iran’s stock of low enriched uranium as centrifuge feed material in a breakout, this would extend potential breakout estimates by several months. However, it would also make a quasi-deterrent less impressive. That may put this option on the wrong side of an Iranian “red line.”
Better Deal?
I can see that US and EU negotiators face a very difficult choice. They are not to be envied. All their instincts drive them in the direction of depriving Iran of an option (uranium enrichment) that other NPT parties enjoy. So often since 1979 the Islamic Republic has behaved in ways that have alarmed the West, or offended our moral sensibilities, that it is hard for us to leave Iran in possession of the capacity to make a nuclear weapon.
But, as Senator Dianne Feinstein reminded her colleagues in January, the nature of a nation can change over time. The Islamic Republic has sometimes shown scant regard for international law, not least breaching its IAEA obligations over more than a decade prior to 2003, but it does not follow that they are bent on using their enrichment capability to acquire nuclear weapons. There are plenty of reasons why it would be foolish for them to do so. And, frankly, it is not obvious that the US and EU will have a better option on Nov. 24 than to cut a deal on the basis of Iran continuing to operate 10,000 centrifuges.
]]>To date, negotiators on both sides of the talks over Iran’s controversial nuclear program, which resume next week, have been remarkably discreet. Even at the political level, people have been unusually quiet. This is an excellent omen. In the past, too many opportunities have been nipped in the bud due to [...]]]>
To date, negotiators on both sides of the talks over Iran’s controversial nuclear program, which resume next week, have been remarkably discreet. Even at the political level, people have been unusually quiet. This is an excellent omen. In the past, too many opportunities have been nipped in the bud due to an excess of statements calibrated for domestic purposes (a special mention to Wendy Sherman, the chief US negotiator, for saying so little, amiably, in many background meetings with the press). The involvement of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the negotiations has also been of inestimable value. The Agency offers unique expertise and notarizes regularly the way in which Iran complies with its commitments. It contributes therefore decisively to the smooth progression of the discussions.
Quite unexpectedly, Iran’s negotiators have been the driving force in this process. They have seized President Hassan Rouhani’s initiative to solve the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program and have kept it ever since, setting the targets as well as the tempo. Iran’s foreign minister and lead negotiator, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on April 7 that the drafting of the final agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) should start in May, and that all efforts should be taken to complete the negotiations by the official deadline of July. The Iranians seem set to resolve the conflict over their nuclear program as fast as possible, once and for all.
The Rouhani administration’s determination serves in pleasant contrast to the rather stiff and slow Iranian behavior that was especially exhibited during the Ahmadinejad era, but also, at times, in the most favorable of circumstances, during the 2003-05 period, when Rouhani was himself Iran’s chief negotiator. At that time, the Iranian diplomats on the frontline were subjected to a heavy-handed system of control, which tended to stifle their movements. Having learned from this experience, President Rouhani, elected last June, has obtained a carte blanche from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. While the Leader did issue a set of red lines last month (English diagram), and has issued specific warnings every now and then, he has consistently supported Iran’s diplomats while keeping domestic criticism of Iran’s team at a manageable level.
Indeed, Rouhani may not own the horse, but he controls the reigns. One of his first acts as president was transferring Iran’s nuclear negotiating file from the Supreme National Security Council to the Ministry of Foreign affairs. That enabled him to build a “dream team” of seasoned negotiators, perfectly comfortable with the codes and practices of their Western counterparts. Iran’s new and refined team has stood out in stark contrast to the collective clumsiness of the P5+1 negotiators, as in the early November 2013 episode, when four Western Foreign Ministers rushed prematurely to Geneva, spurring the media to believe, mistakenly, that a deal would be signed (it was signed 10 days later). But, as Marshal Foch used to say: “After leading a coalition, I have much less admiration for Napoleon…”
Getting to the heart of the matter, many points seem close to being settled. Iran is ready to cap at 5% its production of enriched uranium and to limit its current stockpile from further enrichment. The controversial underground facility of Fordow will probably end up as a kind of research and development unit. The Arak reactor’s original configuration allowed the yearly production of about ten kilograms of plutonium, enough for one or two bombs. Ali Akbar Salehi, chairman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), has hinted that this configuration could be modified in order to accommodate low-enriched uranium fuel rather than natural uranium. This would reduce Arak’s plutonium production capacity by a factor of five to ten. And Iran has already confirmed that it has no intention of acquiring the fuel reprocessing capacity indispensable for isolating weapon-grade plutonium.
Depending on the pace of sanctions relief, Iran also seems ready to return to a kind of de facto implementation of the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, which would provide enhanced monitoring over all of Iran’s nuclear activities. Iran should be ready to initiate the Protocol’s ratification process as soon as the United Nations Security Council shows itself ready to remove the Iranian nuclear file from its agenda, thus erasing the burning humiliation of 2006, when it passed its first resolution on the subject.
The make or break issues
To date, five sticking points remain on the table.
The most difficult issue concerns the format of Iran’s enrichment capacity. The Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), adopted last November, speaks of “parameters consistent with practical needs, with agreed limits on scope and level of enrichment activities”. But the West has focused on “breakout time”, that is, the time needed to acquire enough highly enriched uranium for a first bomb if Iran decided to renege on its commitments. This delay has been estimated at about two months in the current state of Iran’s enrichment program. To extend it significantly, Iran would have to bring down the number of its centrifuges from the present 20,000 to 2-6,000.
A drastic reduction of the number of centrifuges, however, would be a deal-breaker for Iran. Following the conservative elements of the regime, the Supreme Leader has recently excluded any kind of bargaining on Iran’s nuclear achievements.
Fortunately, other solutions can alleviate the West’s concerns. First, having enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb does not mean having the bomb. Several more months would be necessary to make it ready. Second, one wonders why the international community would need more than one or two months to properly respond to an Iranian rush for a bomb. If it can’t make it in two months, why would it succeed in six? Third, this infamous breakout time could be extended without reducing the present number of centrifuges by using, as fast as possible, the low enriched uranium produced by Iran as fuel for nuclear reactors, rendering it unserviceable for further, weapon-grade, enrichment. Here, feeding the Arak reactor with domestic low-enriched uranium could solve a good part of the problem.
It is unfortunate, though, that the Iranians have made so little effort up to now to identify the “practical needs” mentioned, at their initiative, in the Geneva agreement. The spokesman of the AEOI has announced recently that a “comprehensive document” was being elaborated on the subject, and would be submitted for approval to the Iranian Parliament. But this process will probably extend beyond the time limit set for the negotiations.
In the meantime, we know that the Russians are bound to provide for eight more years the low enriched fuel necessary for the Bushehr nuclear plant. After this period, they will resist the introduction of Iranian fuel into the Bushehr reactor, as the selling of fuel is for the Russians the most profitable part of their contract with Iran. Their attitude will be the same when discussing the construction and operation of more reactors in Iran. By all means, new Russian reactors, or any reactors from other origins, will not be active before a decade. All of this is to say that if the current number of 20,000 centrifuges was accepted by the international community, the Iranians would have no “practical need” in the offing to justify a raise of this number in the years to come.
Another difficult point is the question of nuclear research and development. The West would like Iran to forsake such activities, especially in the field of centrifugation. Again, this is a red line for the Supreme Leader and the conservatives, as Iran’s engineers are working on models up to fifteen times more efficient than the present outdated model forming the bulk of its program. Here, a simple solution has been suggested by Salehi: instead of setting a cap on centrifuges, which could be circumvented by using more efficient models, the parties should define this cap in “separative work units”, the equivalent of horsepower in the field of enrichment. The introduction of more efficient centrifuges would thus reduce in due proportion the total number allowed.
A third difficult point is the ongoing exploration by the IAEA of the “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program. This demand, reiterated by the IAEA Board of Governors and the UN Security Council, has been fiercely resisted by Iran. In fact, it was the head of the US national intelligence community who said, in 2007, that the Iranian weaponization program was stopped before completion by the end of 2003. Ten years have since passed, and the people involved in that program must have been granted some kind of protection in exchange for their compliance, hence the inherent difficulty for the Iranians of authorizing outsiders to probe too deep into this subject. In former similar occurrences, such as with Egypt, South Korea and Taiwan, the IAEA has accepted not to divulge details on the wrongdoings discovered by its inspectors, once assured of the cancelation of these programs. A similar way out should be explored with Iran.
The fourth sticking point evolves around Iran’s ballistic missiles. The West wants to include them in the negotiations, as a source of worry identified by the UN Security Council, but this has been outright rejected by Iran. Recall that Iran has accepted to negotiate over its nuclear program as a civilian program placed under the aegis of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Negotiations over missiles pertain to a different world, the world of defense and disarmament, in which negotiations are by definition collective, save for unilateral measures imposed upon a defeated country. If there is a solution here, it would require a separate, multilateral discussion on the level and distribution of ballistic missiles in the Middle East, with the aim of convincing concerned states to join the International Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation, adopted in 2002 in the Hague.
The last point, little talked about, but hardly the least difficult, concerns the duration of the future comprehensive agreement to be signed by Iran and the P5+1. Under the Geneva JPOA, this agreement, once fully implemented for the duration of all its provisions, will be replaced by the common regime applicable to all NPT members. Iran would then be freed of specific commitments such as the limitation of its enrichment activities, on which extensive IAEA controls, of course, would remain. Such a shift would mean that the International community would be fully reassured about the peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program.
However, to reach such an assessment, the general behavior of the Iranian regime and the quality of its relations with the outside world would be as important as the state of its nuclear program. How long should the assessment process last? These considerations cannot be put into writing. The Iranians will probably insist on no more than five years, while the West would be happy to see this regime of special constraints indefinitely extended. This point could be the last outstanding issue in the discussions. Hopefully, if solutions are found on all the previous questions, there will be a strong incentive to find a compromise here to ensure a final deal once and for all.
Photo: EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at a joint press conference following talks between Iran and the P5+1 in Vienna, Austria on April 9, 2014. Credit: AFP/Samuel Kubani
]]>by Peter Jenkins
A new Brookings Institution paper, “Preventing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” has rightly attracted considerable attention. The author, Robert Einhorn, has a distinguished record and was Special Adviser for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at the State Department from 2009 to 2013. His recommendations must be seen as authoritative.
The paper [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
A new Brookings Institution paper, “Preventing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” has rightly attracted considerable attention. The author, Robert Einhorn, has a distinguished record and was Special Adviser for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at the State Department from 2009 to 2013. His recommendations must be seen as authoritative.
The paper addresses the issues that are at the center of the ongoing negotiations in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 (the US, Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany). Einhorn recommends key requirements for an acceptable agreement with Iran — requirements designed to prevent Iran from having a rapid breakout capability and to deter a future Iranian decision to build nuclear weapons.
Preventing a rapid breakout capability
Iran’s development of a capability to enrich uranium has been at the core of Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme for over a decade. The two enrichment facilities that Iran has built, at Natanz and Fordow, are being used to produce low-enriched uranium for civil purposes but could be used to produce highly enriched uranium for military purposes.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) prohibits the manufacture of nuclear weapons by states such as Iran but does not prohibit the possession of enrichment facilities. The West’s negotiators therefore have a delicate task: they must contrive to persuade Iran to accept restrictions on its use of this technology — restrictions that would give the UN Security Council enough time, reacting to evidence, to prevent Iran from producing enough weapons-grade uranium for one device (i.e. from “breaking out”).
Einhorn explains that the breakout timeline depends on the numbers and types of centrifuges used and on the nature of the uranium feedstock available for a breakout attempt (for instance, if the feedstock is already low-enriched much less time is required than if it is un-enriched).
He goes on to describe the implications of limiting Iran to between 2000 and 6000 first-generation centrifuges. This creates the impression that these are the sorts of numbers that ought to be agreed to in Vienna. That is unfortunate, because Iran has already installed 19,000 first-generation centrifuges and is using 10,000 of them — and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has ruled out the dismantling of any existing capabilities (which his political opponents could portray as a humiliating surrender of Iranian rights).
Einhorn’s choice of what looks like an unrealistically low figure appears to stem from wanting to give the UN Security Council several months to react to evidence of a breakout attempt. However, as he himself implies, several months would be useful only if the Security Council were to want to impose sanctions before opting for force. In reality, since sanctions have proved ineffective as a tool for coercing Iran, the council would be well-advised to opt for force within a matter of days, and could do so if the P5+1 had pre-agreed that this would be the most appropriate response (see below).
A related concern is possible Iranian development of more advanced centrifuges. With a few thousand third-generation machines, using a low-enriched feedstock, only a few weeks would be required to break out. This concern could be resolved by placing limits on the scope of Iran’s centrifuge R&D, as Einhorn recommends. But tight limits may not be negotiable.
Yet another concern relates to the plutonium-producing potential of a 40MW reactor under construction at Arak. Einhorn describes ways in which this potential could be reduced. Recent Iranian statements suggest that they, too, are working up some proposals. So this concern is likely to be largely allayed, although the risk of a plutonium-based breakout may not be totally eliminated.
Deterring an Iranian decision to build nuclear weapons
In the absence of watertight solutions to these breakout concerns (or to concern that Iran might break out using a small clandestine facility) the West’s negotiators will do well to devote at least as much effort to deterring breakout as to trying to make rapid breakout impossible.
Since 2007 US National Intelligence Estimates have drawn attention to the importance of influencing the cost/benefit calculations of Iran’s leaders, implying that this is likely to be the most effective way of ensuring that Iran does not become a nuclear-armed state.
The framers of the NPT perceived that the treaty’s impact would hang on the ability of parties to recognise a national security interest in supporting nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Consequently the only deterrents envisaged in the treaty are verification of nuclear material use by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the risk that non-compliance will result in UN sanctions or authorisation of force, and the certainty that non-compliance will lead to a loss of prestige and exclusion from the society of the treaty’s adherents (currently 190 states).
Since 2003 President Rouhani has shown that he understands all this very well. He knows that Iran would pay a high price for breaching its non-proliferation obligations and that acquiring nuclear weapons would bring no benefit, since Iran is not in need of a nuclear deterrent. The signs are that his political opponents, too, have figured that out.
All this needs to be borne in mind when determining whether any additional (going beyond the NPT) deterrents are necessary in the current context.
Einhorn believes that they are. The most questionable of his recommendations are that:
- The Security Council should agree in advance on how to react to any evidence of an attempt to break out or other serious violation of the agreement under negotiation in Vienna;
- The US Congress should pass a standing authorisation for the use of military force (AUMF) in the event of evidence that Iran has taken steps to abandon the agreement and move towards producing nuclear weapons;
- The US administration should indicate publicly how it would react to such evidence.
These recommendations betray a flawed understanding of Iranian psychology. Such public threats would be seen in Iran as humiliating, and would be resented. That resentment could be used to stir up opposition to the agreement and could even end up providing a motive for ditching it. The threats would serve no practical purpose since leading Iranians are already well aware of what they would risk were they to attempt breakout.
More in keeping with Iranian psychology and a more effective deterrent would be a private P5+1 intimation that they will be united in urging the Security Council to authorise force in the event of evidence of a breakout attempt. Nothing more is needed. Iranian diplomats are highly intelligent.
Conclusion
This paper is heartening. It offers reason to think that the Vienna negotiators can succeed in producing a resolution of Western concerns that Iran will have an interest in respecting. However, as Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif likes to remind us, a resolution will require flexibility from both sides. The West must try to avoid the over-bidding (in pursuit of over-insurance) that doomed the 2004-05 negotiations between Iran and the E3 (the UK, France and Germany).
Photo: Representatives of Iran and the P5+1 celebrate after an interim nuclear deal is signed in Geneva, Switzerland on Nov. 24, 2013. Credit: FARS News/Majid Asgaripour
]]>by Derek Davison
Prominent neoconservative writers Bret Stephens and Reuel Marc Gerecht called for a much tougher approach to talks with Iran over its nuclear program in a debate hosted here by the McCain Institute on March 11, one week before talks aimed at a final deal between Iran and world powers [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
Prominent neoconservative writers Bret Stephens and Reuel Marc Gerecht called for a much tougher approach to talks with Iran over its nuclear program in a debate hosted here by the McCain Institute on March 11, one week before talks aimed at a final deal between Iran and world powers resume in Vienna.
Stephens, the deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, and Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, were up against the Brookings Institute’s arms control expert Robert Einhorn who served as a top non-proliferation adviser at the State Department in Obama’s first term and the Carnegie Endowment’s Karim Sajadpour, both of whom argued that now is the right time to give diplomacy a chance to succeed.
The neoconservative writers hammered the Joint Plan of Action (JPA), negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) in Geneva on November 24, 2014 as a surrender of sanctions for few, if any, Iranian concessions. Gerecht, who wrote in 2002 that an invasion of Iraq and the installation of a democratic government there would “probably” cause regime change in Iran, characterized the difference between those who support the JPA and those who oppose it as all related to a single question: “are you prepared to pre-emptively strike Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon?” Supporters of the JPA, he contended, are not, implying that they’re not tough enough to extract a favorable deal from the Iranians either. Stephens, a supporter of the Iraq War who still insists that the war was based on sound intelligence, took an even harder line against the negotiating process, contending that “the whole strategy of Iran since negotiations began in 2002 has been to delay and delay and delay” in order to continue developing its nuclear program without risking a military response.
On the other side, Einhorn commended the JPA, calling it “a very promising first step that halts movement in Iran’s nuclear program for the first time in twelve years” that also greatly improved access for international monitors, in exchange for relatively light sanctions relief. Sajadpour added that instead of criticizing the JPA for not being “the ideal deal,” opponents “have to look at the reasonable alternatives,” which are not favorable. A harder American line on issues like uranium enrichment, according to Sadjadpour, would also risk splintering the international consensus that has supported the sanctions regime thus far and might embolden Iranian hardliners to stop talking and fully pursue a nuclear weapons program.
The question of reasonable alternatives to the JPA — whether there were any and whether those would have been preferable to the deal that was reached — permeated the discussion. Both Einhorn and Sajadpour stressed the degree to which America must be seen as allowing room for diplomacy to work in order to build international support for tougher actions (whether economic or military) down the road, if needed. Stephens and Gerecht, on the other hand, supported stronger sanctions even at the risk of Russia and China abandoning the P5+1 altogether. When Einhorn pointed out that China is the largest importer of Iranian crude and would undoubtedly increase its imports if they were to pull out of the sanctions coalition, Gerecht countered with the argument that neither Russia nor China’s departure from the coalition would have much impact on the most painful banking sanctions. This assertion, an interesting one given that the Bank of Moscow just agreed to pay a $10 million fine to the Treasury Department for violating sanctions against the Iranian banking industry, was left unchallenged.
The moderate Einhorn did, however, support a general “toughening” of the US negotiating position, proposing that Congress could pass a “prior authorization to use force” resolution to empower President Barack Obama to strike Iran if it violates its obligations. No one mentioned what happened the last time Congress gave a president prior authorization to use military force over a Middle Eastern nation’s supposed weapons of mass destruction program.
Another hotly contested point had to do with the efficacy of international monitoring. Einhorn praised the JPA for its verification provisions and for laying the groundwork for even tougher monitoring in a permanent agreement. He pointed to successes in identifying the facilities at Natanz, Arak, and Fordow as evidence that monitoring and intelligence gathering has worked, while Stephens pointed to America’s failure to predict India’s 1998 nuclear tests as evidence that verification can easily fail. Gerecht argued that Iran will resist more stringent monitoring in a permanent agreement, and warned that the US intelligence community likely has no sources in high positions either in the Iranian government or its nuclear program, and therefore lacks the ability to check what international monitors find.
The debate over monitoring highlighted what seems to be a fundamental flaw in the neoconservative position: by their logic there seems to be no circumstance under which negotiations can be allowed to work. After all, according to their argument the Iranians cannot be trusted, verification does not work, and toughening sanctions is always better than easing sanctions. If there is no way to trust that verification can work, and no way to trust the Iranians themselves, then how can there be a diplomatic solution to this situation? Gerecht’s question about pre-emptive military action could easily be reframed for opponents of the JPA: “are you prepared to ease sanctions on Iran, ever, in exchange for any Iranian concessions?” Are sanctions, and the implicit threat of military action they contain a means to the end of preventing Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon (or rapid breakout capacity), or are they the end in themselves?
The two sides did find common ground in supporting a policy of regime change in Iran, but had drastically different ideas as to implementation. Sajadpour suggested that, if the West pursues policies that cultivate goodwill among Iranians, and especially the Iranian youth, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may have no choice but to acquiesce to internal pressure to improve relations. On the other hand Gerecht and Stephens argued that a military strike that drastically set back Iran’s nuclear program would severely damage the regime’s credibility at home, a questionable assumption that has been challenged by moderate Iranian leaders. Einhorn cautioned that there is no way to know how far back a strike could set Iran’s nuclear program, but that it would certainly end any chance of a negotiated nuclear settlement and put Iran inexorably on the path toward developing a nuclear weapon.
]]>by Jim Lobe
First, it wanted the Senate to pass a binding bill (Kirk-Menendez, or S. 1881) that was certain to sabotage the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany). When that stalled in mid-January at only 59 co-sponsors, all but [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
First, it wanted the Senate to pass a binding bill (Kirk-Menendez, or S. 1881) that was certain to sabotage the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany). When that stalled in mid-January at only 59 co-sponsors, all but 16 of whom were Republicans, it initiated discussions about a non-binding resolution essentially endorsing Kirk-Menendez and laying out the conditions for a final “acceptable” agreement with Iran that was also certain to be rejected by Tehran.
It seems now that AIPAC, whose annual policy conference got underway Sunday and is scheduled to last through Tuesday despite ominous warnings of a new winter storm that may limit its 14,000 attendees’ lobbying capabilities, has been reduced to rounding up senators willing to sign a letter to Obama that softens or eliminates some of its previous language but suggests that some of its key demands — most notably, the abandonment by Iran of all uranium enrichment — may still be a sine qua non for Congressional acquiescence to lifting sanctions if and when a final agreement is reached. Gaining as many signatures on that letter as possible is now the top priority in AIPAC’s legislative agenda (although it will also continue pressing lawmakers to co-sponsor or otherwise support S. 1881).
The proposed letter is currently signed by six senators divided in equal parts between Republicans and Democrats. On the Republican side are Lindsey Graham, who’s been wanting to attack Iran for a really long time now; Mark Kirk; and Kelly Ayotte. On the Democratic side are Robert Menendez, Charles Schumer, and Christopher Coons. Of course, Kirk, Menendez, and Schumer were the three out-front and public co-sponsors of what became know as the Kirk-Menendez bill, while the three other letter signers also became co-sponsors. And, of course, Graham’s co-sponsorship, coupled with his long history of war-mongering, makes it difficult for the letter’s Democrats to indignantly insist, as they have in the past, that the letter is designed to reduce — rather than increase — the chances of war. (H/T to Ali)
One has to believe that if AIPAC could’ve gotten one of the Democrats who didn’t co-sponsor S. 1881, they would have preferred him or her to be among the original signatories of the letter. Their absence suggests that the group could run into similar resistance among Democrats even with a much toned-down letter. Indeed, a failure to get more than 59 senators to sign on to a mere letter — which, as I understand it, the administration still strongly opposes due to the baleful impact it could have on the P5+1 negotiations (both on Rouhani’s position and in light of the rapidly rising tensions with Russia over Ukraine ) — would constitute another very serious and highly embarrassing setback for AIPAC amid reports that some of its dissatisfied far-right backers are now mulling the possibility of creating a new lobby group.
But the letter appears to be part of a strategy to overcome that 59-senator threshold. By first asking recalcitrant Democrats to co-sponsor Kirk-Menendez, AIPAC knows it will likely be turned down, at least at this point. But then, by making a second “ask” — to sign a more innocuous-sounding letter — it no doubt believes that a number of Democrats who are uncomfortable about rebuffing AIPAC and/or not sounding “tough” on Iran and/or vesting complete confidence in Obama’s diplomacy strategy at a moment when it is under attack from the right over Ukraine, Syria, etc. etc., will go along in hopes that the Israel lobby will give them a gold star for campaign contribution purposes and not darken their doorway for at least a few months. It seems like a sound strategy, and, if successful, it would help demonstrate to AIPAC’s donors that its effectiveness has not diminished too much, in spite of its recent defeats.
Several points about the letter deserve highlighting:
First, AIPAC has dropped the “wag the dog” provision that called on Washington to provide all necessary help, including military support, to Israel in the event that its leaders felt compelled to attack Iran’s nuclear program. It also forgoes explicit military threats. And, of course, it is non-binding.
Second, it is ambiguous at best about whether its signers find acceptable any final agreement that permits Iran to engage in any uranium enrichment. Its ruling out any recognition of a “right to enrichment”; its demand that such an agreement preclude any “uranium pathway to a bomb;” and its insistence that any agreement cannot lead to any enrichment elsewhere in the region suggest that its authors have not given up on Israel’s “zero-enrichment” position, a stance that the administration and Tehran and Washington’s P5+1 partners all believe is completely unrealistic.
On the other hand, the assertion that there is “no reason for Iran to have an enrichment facility like Fordow” is more intriguing, depending on how you interpret its meaning. It may mean that the enrichment facility at Natanz is kosher, in which case it accepts future Iranian enrichment and demands only that an underground facility like Fordow, which is far more difficult to attack, be dismantled. Or it may mean that it objects to Fordow simply because it is an enrichment facility, thus making Natanz equally objectionable. Indeed, the ambiguity may be deliberate on AIPAC’s part, designed to appeal to those senators who choose to believe that the letter gives the administration the flexibility to accept a limited enrichment program, when, in fact, the letter’s intention is to reduce or eliminate that flexibility.
Third, the letter’s demand that any final agreement “must dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapons program” is tendentious and provocative, not to mention factually inaccurate, simply because neither U.S. nor Israeli intelligence believes that Tehran has made a decision to build a weapon. What we know — and the Iranian authorities admit — is that it has a nuclear program with elements that could contribute to building a bomb, IF and only IF a decision is made to do so. So how do you dismantle a nuclear weapons program if your intelligence agencies believe there is no such thing?
You may see other problems with the language, the ambiguities of which, as noted above, may be intended to rope senators back into the AIPAC fold and get them to sign on to a letter that could be used against them in the future if they try to stick to the administration’s determination to exhaust diplomatic options. Much will now depend on the attitude taken by both the administration and the ten Democratic Senate chairs who came out early and strongly against a vote on Kirk-Menendez.
]]>by François Nicoullaud
From recent declarations of President Barack Obama, echoed by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and various American and French officials, one can foresee the initial bargaining position of the Western members of the P5+1 group in the upcoming negotiation with Iran aimed at “a long-term comprehensive solution” to the nuclear [...]]]>
by François Nicoullaud
From recent declarations of President Barack Obama, echoed by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and various American and French officials, one can foresee the initial bargaining position of the Western members of the P5+1 group in the upcoming negotiation with Iran aimed at “a long-term comprehensive solution” to the nuclear crisis.
“We know they don’t need to have an underground, fortified facility like Fordow in order to have a peaceful nuclear program, they certainly don’t need a heavy-water reactor at Arak in order to have a peaceful nuclear program, they don’t need some of the advanced centrifuges that they currently possess in order to have a limited, peaceful nuclear program” stated President Obama on Dec. 7.
“…So the question ultimately is going to be, are they prepared to roll back some of the advancements that they’ve made that could not be justified by simply wanting some modest, peaceful nuclear power, but, frankly, hint at a desire to have breakout capacity.”
In the same vein, Laurent Fabius wrote about one week later: “It is unclear if the Iranians will accept to definitively abandon any capacity of getting a weapon or only agree to interrupt the nuclear program… What is at stake is to ensure that there is no breakout capacity”.
Addressing the two routes to the bomb
It is certainly a legitimate goal to try to erect around the Iranian nuclear program a tight barrier on the two ways that could lead to acquiring a bomb: the enrichment of uranium at the highest levels at Natanz and Fordow, and the production of weapons-grade plutonium by running a research reactor such as the one presently under construction at Arak. But the formulas put forward by President Obama and Foreign Minister Fabius have little chance of persuading the Iranian government. Significantly, they are not reflected in the Nov. 24 agreement that laid the groundwork for the negotiation to come. The final part of the agreement addresses these two points, but in a different way. Regarding enrichment, it asserts the necessity of defining an enrichment program “consistent with practical needs, with agreed limits on scope and level of enrichment activities, capacity… and stocks of enriched uranium.” Concerning the production of weapons-grade plutonium, it affirms the will to “fully resolve concerns related to the reactor at Arak”.
The route to the uranium bomb
What is really at stake? Starting with enrichment, it has been estimated by some that the Iranian enrichment program, with its 19,000 centrifuges, its stock of around seven tons of uranium enriched up to 5% plus a few hundred kilograms of uranium enriched up to 20%, would be able to produce the fissile material necessary for a bomb in just a few weeks; that is, 20 to 25 kilograms of 90% enriched uranium. That would be too short a time for inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to detect such a breakout and for the international community to react effectively. To be on the safe side, according to these estimates, it would be necessary to roll back Tehran’s program. Iran should not possess more than a few thousand centrifuges of its current prevalent model, the IR1, and should not be permitted to produce more efficient models. And it should not retain more than a minimal stockpile of low-enriched uranium available for further enrichment.
But what is the practical value of such estimates? First, having the material for the bomb does not mean having the bomb. Several months, possibly a good year or more, would still be necessary to manufacture and test a first nuclear explosive device. Second, to maintain a minimal deterrent effect after an initial test, at least two or three bombs should be kept in stock. To obtain such a deterrent, however, would significantly add to the time needed for enrichment to 90%. Some argue that as soon as this highly enriched uranium would be produced, and subsequently diverted, it would escape the safeguards of the IAEA, making it much more difficult for the international community to react. But why? The whole country would still be there, both as a possible target for increased sanctions and more. And if a few weeks are theoretically enough for a successful breakout, a few days should be enough to deploy and deliver an adequate response.
Forbidding Iran to develop more efficient models of centrifuges than its first-generation, low-yield, IR1s does not seem realistic either. Such a ban on research can be imposed on a defeated nation. In 1945, Germany, for example, was required to abandon all of its R&D in the field of aircraft engines. But Iran is not in such a position. The limitation of Iran’s enrichment capacities should be addressed, not in terms of numbers and models of centrifuges, but rather in terms of total enrichment capacity (calculated in the nuclear jargon, in separative work units). Once such a ceiling is fixed by mutual consent between Tehran and the P5+1, Iranians scientists and engineers should be left free to make their own technological choices.
As for the small underground enrichment facility of Fordow, it will be hard to convince Iran to close it. Fordow is placed under the same IAEA safeguards as any other Iranian nuclear facility, and being buried 70 yards deep makes no difference. It would make a difference in case of air strikes, but Iran, which is party to the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), has no reason to facilitate the destruction of its nuclear facilities, especially by a non-signatory of the NPT, or by any of the five members of the NPT authorized to keep their nuclear arsenals.
On the other hand, it is Iran’s urgent duty to address the widespread suspicions raised by the vagueness of its ambitions when it comes to its nuclear power and research program. Professor Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, recently announced that Iran should produce 150 tons of nuclear fuel to supply five nuclear power plants. Would it be possible to know how exactly, in what time-frame, through which procedures and on what budget such projects are to be implemented? When one knows that 150 tons of idle low-enriched uranium, through further enrichment, is theoretically capable of producing about 150 bombs, the international community is entitled to have access to and thoroughly assess Iran’s plans in this regard.
The route to the plutonium bomb
A word about the plutonium route. The Arak reactor has a design similar to various existing reactors used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, be it in Israel, India or Pakistan. Even if this reactor has little chance to be operational for another three or four years, the concerns about it are legitimate. Furthermore, to recoup the plutonium generated in the reactor’s core, the Iranians would have to build and operate a dedicated side facility. Until now, they have foregone such a possibility. All in all, even with the worst intentions, Iran could hardly produce the first six or seven kilograms of plutonium necessary to build one bomb before the end of the decade. And even so, because of the specific challenges presented by the plutonium route, the time span between the beginning of a possible breakout and the acquisition of a first batch of plutonium would be significantly greater than that of the uranium route.
True, the Arak reactor, once in operation, could not be destroyed without incurring unacceptable nuclear-related damage to the surrounding populations. But this cannot justify a legally indefensible preventive strike on a construction site that has been placed under IAEA safeguards. All in all, the proliferation risk raised by the Arak reactor looks much less pressing than the one generated through uranium enrichment. But it is also true that the best way to permanently alleviate this risk would be to modify, while there is still time, the design of the reactor in order to reduce its capacity to produce weapons-grade plutonium without affecting its other capacities. This is possible with international cooperation, and money.
Suspicion against suspicion
Let us go back to basics. In 1968, the newly signed NPT drew a clear line between licit and illicit nuclear activities for those countries willing to renounce the acquisition of a bomb. For better or worse, that line was drawn at the point before the actual manufacture of a nuclear explosive device. But this was not enough to dispel suspicions of possible breakouts by unruly countries. It has therefore been tried repeatedly — and now again with Iran – to prevent countries from developing the capacities that could theoretically lead to the construction of a bomb. But nations in the forefront of such endeavors have often been among the same ones authorized by the same NPT to retain their nuclear arsenals. It has thus been tempting to interpret their efforts to limit the development of nuclear programs of other nations as an attempt to consolidate their own strategic advantage, especially as they have shown limited enthusiasm for following through on their own NPT commitments to nuclear disarmament. Still another source of suspicion has arisen from the fact that the six members of the P5+1 together comprise the world’s major source of enriched uranium. Their efforts to limit the enrichment capacities of other nations may thus come across as an effort to preserve their own commercial interests.
Even putting aside sources of contention between Iran and the great powers and its regional rivals beyond the nuclear realm, one can see why mutual suspicion still looms so large, even after the breakthrough of the Nov. 24 agreement. To overcome it, vision, restraint, and steady diplomatic work will be critical on both sides in the months to come.
]]>by James A. Russell
The image of the finger-wagging Israeli Prime Minister at the United Nations this week provides the international community with a powerful message: the world — and the United States — must tirelessly search for “yes” as an answer in solving the world’s problems.
Israel’s persistent “no” model in seeking [...]]]>
by James A. Russell
The image of the finger-wagging Israeli Prime Minister at the United Nations this week provides the international community with a powerful message: the world — and the United States — must tirelessly search for “yes” as an answer in solving the world’s problems.
Israel’s persistent “no” model in seeking accommodation with its various antagonists is exactly the wrong approach — one that has placed it outside most acceptable norms of international behavior. A world of persistent war and confrontation may suit Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party, but it does not serve American or global interests.
After years of confrontation over its nuclear program and support for terrorism, the outstretched hand of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to the US and the international community provides an opening for both countries to end the state of undeclared war that has raged between them since 1979. Arriving at a settlement to end this state of overt hostility and bringing Iran back into the global community of nations would make the world a safer place.
To be sure, taking “yes” for an answer from your antagonists can be difficult. American foreign policy is full of examples. During the Cold War, the United States (through Republican and Democrat administrations) simultaneously negotiated arms reductions with its mortal enemy, the Soviet Union, while they were also engaged in a bitter and dangerous international rivalry.
It was a difficult political sell at home. Hardline Republicans and, at the time, neoconservative Democrats, opposed any compromise with an adversary that many argued was inherently evil, untrustworthy and bent on our destruction. It took great political courage for President Richard Nixon and his successors to pursue the arms control talks while American versions of Netanyahu lectured them on the dangers of such a folly.
Luckily for us, we reached an arrangement with our adversary and took “yes” as the answer to limiting our respective nuclear arsenals, which also helped manage our political relationship. The unintended consequences of arriving at “yes” in the nuclear arena helped us to arrive at a series of subsequent agreements with Russia that will see substantial reductions in our respective nuclear arsenals over the next decade. The world will be a safer place for it.
More recently, the disastrous consequences of abandoning the “yes” policy option stares the United States in the face. America’s 8-year war in Iraq in no small measure unfolded over a 15-20 year period during which the United States boxed itself in politically by refusing to take “yes” from its adversary Saddam Hussein. In 1997, the US foreclosed any “yes” options in Iraq when it formally adopted regime change as its official policy — a decision that, at the time, had everything to do with domestic politics and little to do with a sensible strategy.
I was among the audience in 1997 as a Pentagon staffer when then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave a speech at Georgetown University explaining the US policy of supporting regime change in Iraq. Neither I nor anyone else could foresee the consequences of slamming the door on the possibility of taking a “yes” answer from Saddam Hussein. Earlier that year, I had initialed an internal policy paper to my boss, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, urging him to lobby the senior reaches of the Clinton administration to seek a deal with Saddam — a suggestion that surprisingly made it to his desk but that was of course never taken seriously.
Following the Albright speech, the Clinton administration allowed itself to be forced by neoconservatives and others into adopting the ill-conceived Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 that formalized regime change into law — a law subsequently cited in the October 2002 authorization for the use of military force against Iraq. The war that followed was a human, economic and military disaster for all its participants, but the path to war had stretched back into the 1990s by a series of seemingly innocuous decisions that had foreclosed accommodation and the possibility of “yes.”
These two foreign policy episodes represent opposite poles for American decision makers and, to be sure, simplify the challenges of arriving at “yes” with adversaries. The arms control agreements that were reached with the Soviet Union resulted from years of painstaking work by committed public servants from both sides through the ups and downs of the overall political relationship. They happened because both parties shared an interest in a “yes” outcome and were prepared to take steps to convince each other about their seriousness.
In the case of Iran, the United States has every incentive to similarly pursue “yes” as the answer and should be under no illusions that the process will be any easier than it was with the Soviet Union. The polarized and fractured domestic political landscape that is exploited by the Israel lobby and others presents the Obama administration with a serious political challenge. As illustrated by the Sept. 23 letter to Obama signed by 79 Senators, the overwhelming preference seems tilted towards “no” and continued pressure and confrontation. Netanyahu further amplified the volume for this approach at the UN this week.
Interestingly, the issues facing the two antagonists pale in comparison to those faced in the US-Soviet Cold War conflict. The path to a US-Iran deal is relatively clear: Iran must honor its obligations as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), open its facilities at Fordow and Parchin for inspection as called for in the treaty, agree to implement the Additional Protocol, and provide the requested information to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about its past nuclear research that was almost certainly part of an illicit weapons program. In short, Iran must agree to have a nuclear program with the kind of transparency that’s called for by the NPT. For its part, the United States must agree to lift sanctions and be ready for an agreement to reach a broader political accommodation if Iran takes these steps. All should recognize that, as was the case with the Soviet Union, such agreements depend on reasonable verification steps and confidence building measures by both parties that demonstrate a commitment to “yes.”
The Obama administration’s stumbling into a “yes” answer with Syria, which may result in the elimination of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons stockpile, suggests that keeping policy options open for solutions that may not be immediately apparent can result in positive outcomes.
The United States needs to keep “yes” on the table as a solution to its standoff with Iran and resist the pressure from those who seem to prefer war and confrontation. The world will be a safer place if we can get to a “yes” with our adversary; after more than a decade of war in the Middle East, it is our responsibility to focus our best efforts on this challenging endeavor.
Photo: Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev signing a joint communiqué on the SALT Treaty in Vladivostok, November 24, 1974
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Not everyone shares the optimism surrounding the recent communication between Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani. From Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Monarchies and, of course, Washington, DC, voices of war are in a panic that tensions between the U.S. and Iran might be reduced by some means [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Not everyone shares the optimism surrounding the recent communication between Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani. From Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Monarchies and, of course, Washington, DC, voices of war are in a panic that tensions between the U.S. and Iran might be reduced by some means other than further devastation of the Islamic Republic.
The concern that Iran might emerge with a better relationship with the United States is quite vexing for the Gulf rulers and for Israel. For some years now, the drive to isolate Iran has focused almost entirely on the nuclear issue. In fact, regionally, much of the concern has been the ascendancy of Iran as a regional player more broadly, with revolutionary rhetoric that challenges the dominance of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Since the destruction, by George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, of the dual containment policy, the issue for these parties has been how to contain Iran and its regional influence.
Iran has been cast as an “aggressor nation,” and this has been sold by illustrating Iran’s support for Hezbollah and other militant groups, its often bombastic rhetoric, and for the past decade, Iran’s ducking from some of its responsibilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). What gets left out is that Iran has never initiated an attack on another nation, its threats to “wipe Israel off the map” are factually known as (just not in mainstream discourse) to be a de-contextualized mistranslation of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s words, and even Iran’s failures with the IAEA have been part of a back and forth exchange, where they refuse or neglect to comply with some things in response to what they see as US-led unfair sanctions or restrictions. That doesn’t mean Iran has not caused some of these problems itself, it has. Lack of transparency on nuclear issues tends to raise the hackles of one’s enemies. But all this has hardly been the one-way street that’s been portrayed.
Too much scrutiny toward all of this sits poorly with Riyadh, Jerusalem, and in many circles in Washington. But because so much of the anti-Iran feeling has focused for so long on the nuclear issue, such scrutiny could come to bear at least a little more if Obama and Rouhani work things out. Labelling Iran an “aggressor nation” without the nuclear issue simply wouldn’t have the same impact anymore.
To combat this, Israel has been publicly playing down Rouhani’s overtures, sometimes calling him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and more generally, taking the “prove it” line. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s standard for proof is unrealistically high, and this is no accident. He has said that the conditions Iran must agree to are: halting all uranium enrichment, removing all enriched material, closing the reactor at Fordo and stopping plutonium production. This position is an obvious non-starter, but it reflects what has been the United States’ own position until now. Obama’s statements, while far from explicit, have given Iran reason to believe that this may have changed.
The reactions of Israel and the Gulf states would be puzzling if preventing a nuclear Iran was their main focus. But this has always been a means to an end: to isolate Iran and slow its rise as a regional power. The over-emphasis on the nuclear issue risks blunting other tools.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is already setting its sights on this issue. An AIPAC memo published on Sept. 20 urges the negotiations to be “backed by strength,” a vague enough statement, but one that shines light on its specific proposals.
One option AIPAC wishes to impede is the possibility of sanctions relief. “If Iran suspends its nuclear activity, the United States should be prepared to suspend any new sanctions” (emphasis added). This seems to make it clear that AIPAC wants to see the continued isolation of Iran no matter how the nuclear issue is resolved. UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions have repeatedly demanded that Iran suspend its enrichment programs and heavy water reactor programs, but the most recent resolutions, particularly UNSC 1835, also emphasize the UNSC’s commitment “to an early negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue” (emphasis mine). That is not something AIPAC wishes to see. An Iran that gets an agreement can be strengthened regionally. An Iran that either continues to labor under the status quo of sanctions and the looming threat of war or surrenders on the nuclear issue is seriously weakened. That is the game that’s being played here.
But this time, the playing field is much less certain. In the wake of the outcry against an attack on Syria, will AIPAC be able to push its measures through Congress without watering them down sufficiently to give Obama room to pursue substantive negotiations with Iran? Other than paranoia, there is scant evidence to support the position that Iran is merely putting on a show to stall for time while pursuing a nuclear weapon. But America’s own war footing keeps the risk of another Western misadventure in the Gulf region a real possibility. Obama seems bent on steering us away from that, and at least at first blush, seems to be acting on the will of his constituency in doing so.
Saudi Arabia will certainly add its voice to Israel’s on Capitol Hill. And Iran is not Syria. As appalled as many in the U.S. were over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, they were not convinced, for a variety of reasons, that this was cause for their country to take military action again in the Middle East. Syria may not be well-liked in the United States, but it is not a direct enemy. Iran is perceived as such, and has been ever since the fall of the Shah and the ensuing hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979-80. It may be that concern over Iran and the nuclear issue will provide fertile ground for AIPAC’s efforts to sabotage peace talks. It will also be a good deal easier to push their agenda in Congress because they won’t be advocating the immediate use of U.S. armed forces against Iran, as was the case with Syria.
While the congressional playing field is not entirely clear yet, one thing is obvious. Obama is going to need support in his peacemaking efforts. That support will need to come from the U.S. public and he will need to know that he has it in order to counter what is sure to be a furious onslaught from the most powerful forces that oppose any normalization with the Islamic Republic. That onslaught is coming and it is going to be furious. Obama will also need support from Iran, of all places. Rouhani will need to maintain the positive face he is portraying. And Rouhani should not be alone in this endeavour. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, apparently recognizing that Rouhani had not gone far enough in distancing himself from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial, has made sure to unequivocally acknowledge the Holocaust and its horrors. However prominent one thinks that issue should be, the clear statements were obviously intended to forestall the use of that issue against progress in upcoming nuclear talks.
More of that will be needed. Obama has restarted his Iran diplomacy on the right foot, being bold with his phone call to Rouhani and cautious in his public statements. He is proceeding deliberately but not giving his opponents big openings to attack his efforts at diplomacy. But the storm that is heading for Capitol Hill on this issue is going to be fierce. Obama will need all his skills and all the help he can get in weathering it.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Last week marked the 68th anniversary of the WWII destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) — the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in human history. Within moments of the nuclear explosions that destroyed these cities, at least 200,000 people [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Last week marked the 68th anniversary of the WWII destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) — the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in human history. Within moments of the nuclear explosions that destroyed these cities, at least 200,000 people lost their lives. Tens of thousands subsequently died from radiation poisoning within the next two weeks. The effects linger to this day.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has implied that this would the be fate of Israel if Iran was allowed to obtain nuclear weapon-making capabilities, including the ability to enrich high-grade uranium. To prevent this from happening, the economy of Iran must be crippled by sanctions and the fourth largest oil reserves in the world must be barred from global markets, as the oil fields in which they are situated deteriorate. Israel — the only state in the region that actually possesses nuclear weapons and has blocked all efforts to create a Middle East Nuclear Weapon Free Zone – should thus be armed with cutting-edge American weaponry. Finally, the US must not only stand behind its sole reliable Middle East ally, which could strike Iran at will, it should ideally also lead — not merely condone — a military assault against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Netanyahu invariably frames the threat posed by Iranian nuclear capability (a term that blurs distinctions between civilian and potential military applications of nuclear technology) as “Auschwitz” rather than “Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, even though the latter might be a more apt analogy. The potential for another Auschwitz is predicated on the image of an Israel that is unable — or unwilling to — defend itself, resulting in six million Jews going “like sheep to the slaughter.” But if Israel and/or the US were to attack Iran instead of the other way around, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki” would be the analogy to apply to Iran.
A country dropping bombs on any country that has not attacked first is an act of war, as the US was quick to point out when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor — and this includes so-called “surgical strikes”. In a July 19 letter about US options in Syria, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reminded the Senate Armed Services Committee that “…the decision to use force is not one that any of us takes lightly. It is no less than an act of war” [emphasis added].
If the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during wartime remains morally and militarily questionable, one might think that there would be even less justification for a military strike on Iran, with whom neither Israel nor the US is at war. Of course, there are those who disagree: the US is engaged in a war on terror, Iran has been designated by the US as the chief state sponsor of terrorism since 1984 and so on. Therefore, the US is, or should be, at war with Iran.
“All options are on the table” is the operative mantra with regard to the US halting Iran’s acquirement of a nuclear weapon. But if bombs start dropping on Iran, what kind will they be? In fact, the 30,000 lb. Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) that could be employed against Iranian nuclear facilities are nuclear weapons, since they derive their capability of penetrating 200 feet of concrete in the earth from depleted uranium. Furthermore, some Israelis have darkly hinted that, were Israel to confront Iran alone, it would be more likely to reach into its unacknowledged nuclear armoury if that meant the difference between victory and defeat.
Given all this, comparing the damage that would be done by bombing Iran with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not farfetched. It also reveals some troubling parallels. In the years prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in response to what the US regarded as Japanese expansionism, imposed economic sanctions on Japan in 1937. Just before the US entered the war, an embargo was placed on US exports of oil to Japan, upon which Japan was utterly dependent.
In 1945, it was already clear that Japan was preparing to surrender and that the outstanding issue at hand was the status of its emperor. There was neither a military nor political need to use atomic weapons to bring an end to the war. Numerous justifications for dropping atomic bombs on Japan were invoked, but nearly all of them were challenged or discredited within a few years after the war ended. Three are particularly noteworthy today, as we continue to face the prospect of war with Iran.
Saving lives: US Secretary of War Henry Stimson justified the decision to use atomic weapons as “the least abhorrent choice” since it would not only would save the lives of up to a million American soldiers who might perish in a ground assault on Japan, it would also spare the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians who were being killed in fire bombings. President Harry Truman also claimed that “thousands of lives would be saved” and “a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities.” But as Andrew Dilks points out, “None of these statements were based on any evidence.”
Speaking in Warsaw, Poland on June 12 — two days before the Iranian election that he declared would “change nothing” with regard to Iran’s alleged quest to develop nuclear weaponry — Netanyahu used the opening of an Auschwitz memorial to make his case. “This is a regime that is building nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose to annihilate Israel’s six million Jews,” he said. “We will not allow this to happen. We will never allow another Holocaust.” About the Iranians who would perish after an Israeli attack, Netanyahu said nothing.
Justifying expenditures: The total estimated cost of the Manhattan Project, which developed the bombs dropped on Japan, was nearly $2 billion in 1945, the equivalent of slightly more than $30 billion today. Secretary of State James Byrnes pointed out to President Harry Truman, who was up for re-election in 1948, that he could expect to be berated by Republicans for spending such a large amount on weapons that were never used, according to MIT’s John Dower.
A recent report by the Congressional Research Service shows that Israel is the single largest recipient of US aid, receiving a cumulative $118 billion, most of it military aid. The Bush administration and the Israeli government had agreed to a 10-year, $30 billion military aid package in 2007, which assured Israel of funding through 2018. During his March 2013 visit to Israel, President Barack Obama, who had been criticized by the US pro-Israel lobby for being less concerned than previous American presidents about Israel’s well being and survival, pledged that the United States would continue to provide Israel with multi-year commitments of military aid subject to the approval of Congress. Not to be outdone, the otherwise tightfisted Congress not only approved the added assistance Obama had promised, it also increased it. An Iran that is not depicted as dangerous would jeopardize the generous military assistance Israel receives. What better way to demonstrate how badly needed those US taxpayer dollars are than to show them in action?
Technological research and development: One of the most puzzling questions about the decision to use nuclear weaponry against Japan is why, three days after the utter devastation wreaked on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It was unnecessary from a militarily perspective. Perhaps the answer exists in the fact that the Manhattan Project had produced different types of atomic bombs: the destructive power of the “Little Boy”, which fell on Hiroshima, came from uranium; the power of “Fat Man”, which exploded over Nagasaki, came from plutonium. What better way to “scientifically” compare their effectiveness at annihilation than by using both?
The award winning Israeli documentary, The Lab, which opens in the US this month, reveals that Israel has used Lebanon and Gaza as a testing ground for advances in weaponry. Jonathan Cook writes, “Attacks such as Operation Cast Lead of winter 2008-09 or last year’s Operation Pillar of Defence, the film argues, serve as little more than laboratory-style experiments to evaluate and refine the effectiveness of new military approaches, both strategies and weaponry.” Israeli military leaders have strongly hinted that in conducting air strikes against Syria, the Israeli Air Force is rehearsing for an attack on Iran, including the use of bunker-buster bombs.
The Pentagon, which reportedly has invested $500 million in developing and revamping MOP “bunker busters”, recently spent millions building a replica of Iran’s Fordow nuclear research facility in order to demonstrate to the Israelis that Iranian nuclear facilities can be destroyed when the time is right.
Gen. Dempsey arrived in Israel on Monday to meet with Israel’s Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Israel’s political leaders. Members of Congress from both political parties are also visiting — Democrats last week, Republicans this week — on an AIPAC-sponsored “fact-finding” mission. No doubt they will hear yet again from Israeli leaders that the world cannot allow another Auschwitz.
The world cannot allow another Hiroshima and Nagasaki either.
Readers who recall that four years ago a new US President seemed eager to defuse the West’s quarrel with Iran over its nuclear activities may wonder why we are all still waiting for white smoke. I am not sure I know the answer, but I have a hunch it has something to [...]]]>
Readers who recall that four years ago a new US President seemed eager to defuse the West’s quarrel with Iran over its nuclear activities may wonder why we are all still waiting for white smoke. I am not sure I know the answer, but I have a hunch it has something to do with a lack of realism on one side and a profound mistrust on the other.
The lack of realism is a Western failing. The US and the two European states, France and the UK, that still have the most influence on the EU’s Iran policy, ten years after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) first reported certain Iranian failures (long since corrected) to comply with nuclear safeguards obligations, are still reluctant to concede Iran’s right to possess a capacity to enrich uranium.
These Western powers know that the treaty which governs the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), does not prohibit the acquisition of uranium enrichment technology by the treaty’s Non-Nuclear-Weapon States (NNWS).
They know that several NNWS (Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa) already possess this technology.
They know that the framers of the treaty envisaged that the monitoring of enrichment plants by IAEA inspectors would provide the UN Security Council with timely notice of any move by an NNWS to divert enriched uranium to the production of nuclear weapons.
Nonetheless, they cannot bring themselves to tell Iran they accept that Iran, as a NNWS party to the NPT, is entitled to enrich uranium, provided it does so for peaceful purposes, under IAEA supervision, and does not seek to divert any of the material produced.
One of the reasons for this goes back a long way. When India, a non-party to the NPT, detonated a nuclear device in 1974, US officials decided that it had been a mistake to produce a treaty, the NPT, which did not prohibit the acquisition of two dual-use technologies (so-called because they can be used either for peaceful or for military purposes) by NNWS.
The existence of a non-sequitur in their reasoning, since India was not a party to the NPT, seems not to have occurred to them. They set about persuading other states that were capable of supplying these technologies (uranium enrichment and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel) to withhold them from NNWS.
This could be defended, of course, on prudential grounds. However, it caused resentment among the NNWS who felt that their side of the NPT bargain was being eroded surreptitiously; ultimately, like all forms of prohibition, it was short-sighted, because it encouraged the development of a black market and enhanced the risk of clandestine programmes, unsupervised by the IAEA.
Denying Iran the right to enrich uranium, and trying to deprive Iran of technology that it had developed indigenously, (albeit with help from the black market), seemed more than prudential in 2003. It seemed a necessity, because at the time there were good reasons to think that Iran had a nuclear weapons programme.
Nevertheless, by 2008, the US intelligence community had concluded that Iran abandoned that programme in late 2003 and would only resume it if the benefits of doing so outweighed the costs.
Despite that and subsequent similar findings, this prohibitionist mind-set is still prevalent in Washington, Paris and London. It is one explanation for a lack of progress since President Obama first stretched out the hand of friendship four years ago.
Another explanation is Israel. Israel shares with North Korea, Pakistan and India the distinction of being one of only four states that do not adhere to the NPT. It nonetheless enjoys considerable influence over US, French and British nuclear non-proliferation policies. Israeli ministers are deeply opposed to Iran possessing a uranium enrichment capability.
They may or may not believe what they frequently claim: that Iran will use its enrichment plants to produce fissile material and will use that fissile material to attack Israel with nuclear weapons, directly or through Hezbollah. In reality, few outside Israel believe this, and many inside are sceptical. However, they do not want Israel’s room for military manoeuvre to be reduced by the existence of a south-west Asian state that could choose to withdraw from the NPT and seek to deter certain Israeli actions by threatening a nuclear response.
A third explanation is Saudi Arabia. Leading Saudis are as opposed as Israeli ministers to Iran retaining an enrichment capability. They are less inclined than Israelis to talk of this capability as posing an “existential” threat; but they share the Israeli fear that it will erode their options in the region. They also fear that it will enhance the regional prestige of their main political rival, an intolerable prospect – all the more so now that Iran and Saudi-Arabia are engaged in a proxy war in Syria that seems increasingly likely to re-ignite sectarian conflict in Iraq.
Finally, there remains strong hostility to Iran in some US quarters, notably Congress. This makes it difficult for any US administration to adopt a realistic policy of accepting Iran’s right to enrich uranium, relying on IAEA safeguards for timely detection of any Iranian violation of its NPT obligations, and minimising through intelligent diplomacy the risk of Iran’s leaders deciding to abuse their enrichment capability.
On the Iranian side, the lack of trust in the US’ good faith has become increasingly apparent. It is in fact a hall-mark of Iran’s supreme decision-taker, Ayatollah Khamenei. One hears of it from Iranian diplomats. The Ayatollah himself barely conceals it in some of his public statements.
As recently as March 20, marking the Persian New Year, he said: “I am not optimistic about talks [with the US]. Why? Because our past experiences show that talks for the American officials do not mean for us to sit down and reach a logical solution [...] What they mean by talks is that we sit down and talk until Iran accepts their viewpoint.”
This distrust has militated against progress in nuclear talks by making Iran’s negotiators ultra-cautious. They have been looking for signs of a change in US attitudes – a readiness to engage sincerely in a genuine give-and-take – and have held back when, to their minds, those signs have not been apparent.
Instead of volunteering measures that might lead the West to have more confidence in the findings of Western intelligence agencies (that Iran is not currently intent on acquiring nuclear weapons), the Iranian side has camped on demanding that its rights be recognised and nuclear-related sanctions lifted.
Unfortunately, this distrust has been fuelled by the Western tactic of relying on sanctions to coerce Iran into negotiating. Ironically, sanctions have had the opposite effect. They have sowed doubts in Ayatollah Khamenei’s mind about the West’s real intentions, and they have augmented his reluctance to take any risks to achieve a deal.
Compounding that counter-productive effect, Western negotiators have been reluctant to offer any serious sanctions relief in return for the concessions they have asked of Iran, whenever talks have taken place. One Iranian diplomat put it this way: “They ask for the moon, and offer peanuts.”
Here part of the problem is a continuing Western hope, despite all experience to date, that unbearable pressure will induce Iran to cut a deal on the West’s unrealistic (and unbalanced) terms.
Another part is ministerial pride in having persuaded the UN Security Council, the EU Council of Ministers, and several Asian states to accept a sanctions regime that is causing hardship among ordinary Iranians (but from which Iran’s elites are benefitting because of their privileged access to foreign exchange and their control of smuggling networks). It sometimes seems as though causing hardship has ceased to be a means to an end; it has become an achievement to be paraded, a mark of ministerial success.
Many of the factors listed in the preceding paragraphs have been visible during the latest round of talks between the US and EU (plus Russia and China), which took place in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on April 5 and 6, 2013.
According to a draft of the proposal to be presented to Iran which Scott Peterson described in The Christian Science Monitor on April 4, the US and EU demanded:
- the suspension of all enrichment above the level needed to produce fuel for power reactors [5% or less];
- the conversion of Iran’s stock of 20% U235 into fuel for research reactors, or its export, or its dilution;
- the transformation of the well-protected Fordow enrichment plant to a state of reduced readiness [for operations] without dismantlement;
- the acceptance of enhanced monitoring of Iranian facilities by the IAEA, including the installation of cameras at Fordow to provide continuous real-time surveillance of the plant.
In exchange, the US and EU offered to suspend sanctions on gold and precious metals, and the export of petrochemicals, once the IAEA confirmed implementation of all the above measures. They also offered civilian nuclear cooperation, and IAEA technical help with the acquisition of a modern research reactor, safety measures and the supply of isotopes for nuclear medicine. In addition, the US would approve the export of parts for the safety-related repair of Iran’s aging fleet of US-made commercial aircraft.
Finally, the proposal stressed that additional confidence-building steps taken by Iran would yield corresponding steps from the P5+1, including proportionate
relief of oil sanctions.
The initial Iranian response on April 5 seems to have been less than wholeheartedly enthusiastic. On the first day of the talks they irritated the US and EU negotiators by failing to react directly to the US/EU proposals. Instead they reiterated their demand for the recognition of Iran’s rights and the lifting of sanctions as preconditions for any short-term confidence building curbs on their 20% enrichment activities.
On the second day, however, according to Laura Rozen, writing for Al Monitor on April 6, and quoting Western participants in the talks, Iran “pivoted to arguing for a better deal.” The Iranian team started to make clear what they would require in return for curbing Iran’s 20% activities, notably the lifting of “all unilateral sanctions.” These mainly comprise the oil and financial sanctions imposed in 2012.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” a US diplomat said. “There was intensive dialogue on key issues at the core of [the proposed confidence building measures].”
Will that pivot be a turning-point? The latest proposal clearly falls far short of what Iran seeks by way of clarity that ultimately the US and EU can accept Iran retaining a dual-use enrichment capability, and by way of relief from oil and financial sanctions. There has been no sign that the US and EU can bring themselves to offer significant movement on either of these points.
Yet, a scintilla of hope can be drawn from the fact that on April 6 there may have been the beginnings of a haggle. If both sides can resume their talks in that haggling mode, progress may finally be achievable. Haggling is central to any good negotiation. Until now it has been sorely lacking in dealings with Iran under President Obama.
This article was originally published by the Fair Observer on April 10th, 2013.
]]>