by Peter Jenkins
The talks to resolve concern about Iran’s nuclear program will resume in early September. The negotiators will have had time to read and reflect on a well-informed and wise report that the International Crisis Group (ICG) published this week. Let us hope they will have done so.
The latest [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
The talks to resolve concern about Iran’s nuclear program will resume in early September. The negotiators will have had time to read and reflect on a well-informed and wise report that the International Crisis Group (ICG) published this week. Let us hope they will have done so.
The latest negotiating deadline is November 24, which marks one year from the date the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) was signed in Geneva. A further extension may be possible but will not be what any of the parties desire. The alternatives to an agreement are deeply unattractive, as the ICG points out: “a return to the sanctions versus centrifuges race” or recourse to force to destroy Iranian installations, triggering a chain of unpredictable consequences in a region where, arguably, the West already has its hands full.
So the stakes are high.
The parties cannot have failed to realise that. Yet to date both Iran and the West have been reluctant to shift from maximalist demands that they know the other cannot afford, for domestic political reasons, to concede.
This is particularly true of the issue that is at the heart of the negotiation, the resolution of which can open the way to an agreement: Iran’s possession of a nuclear technology that can be used for both civil and military purposes but is not outlawed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—uranium enrichment. This is how the ICG sums up the problem:
Negotiators are bogged down in a worn-out debate over exactly why Iran insists on uranium enrichment; its economic logic or lack thereof; whether Iran should be subject to restrictions beyond those imposed on other members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); and how to calculate the time Iran would need to enrich enough uranium for one weapon – which, assuming other abilities are present, measures its “breakout capacity”.
Their solution to the problem is as follows:
These recommendations are based on a sound understanding of Iranian interests—the kind of understanding that is an essential prerequisite to an agreement that caters to the core needs of all parties.
But I am not sure that the understanding goes far enough. Might Iran want more than “a meaningful enrichment program, continued scientific advancement, and tangible sanctions relief” as the ICG says? I suspect the Iranians want to be spared the indignity of being thought dumb enough to try to break out under the eyes of international inspectors at either of their declared enrichment sites.
I also wonder whether the ICG’s recommendations are as balanced as possible. It seems to me that they entail asking rather more of Iran than of the US and its allies. The balance could be improved by the West abandoning its quest to minimize the risk of break out by reducing the number of operating centrifuges from the number agreed on last November, i.e. by imposing additional “quantitative constraints.”
The case for abandonment was strengthened on August 27 when the AFP reported that the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) is ready to test a far more efficient centrifuge than those currently installed. If Iran’s leaders were to decide to break out (there being as yet no evidence that they have), it would make more sense for them to use a small number of advanced centrifuges at a small, undeclared site than to use first-generation centrifuges at sites that are visited daily by inspectors.
So the access to centrifuge workshops that Iran conceded upon the signing of the JPA, and an Iranian commitment to refrain from deploying additional centrifuges during a confidence-building period look to be worth more than additional constraints on current capacity.
In any case, the US and Iran have come a long way since President Barack Obama and President Hassan Rouhani spoke by telephone last September. The ICG is to be commended for a report that can help them complete their journey.
Photo: US Secretary of State John Kerry sits across from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Vienna, Austria, on July 13, 2014 before beginning a bilateral meeting focused on Iran’s nuclear program. Credit: State Department
]]>by Peter Jenkins
An article in the latest issue of the International Security journal goes to the heart of US and European nuclear non-proliferation policy. The author, Scott Kemp, an Assistant Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, raises a fundamental question: is proliferation best prevented by supply-side measures [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
An article in the latest issue of the International Security journal goes to the heart of US and European nuclear non-proliferation policy. The author, Scott Kemp, an Assistant Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, raises a fundamental question: is proliferation best prevented by supply-side measures (attempts to restrict the availability of certain technologies) or by influencing the demand side (the national interest calculations that underpin decision-making on nuclear weapon acquisition)?
The question has divided the US nuclear community since 1945 and is unlikely to be resolved by this one article, well-researched and highly intelligent as it is. Nonetheless, Kemp’s conclusion merits substantial debate, not least in the wider foreign policy community. It is that a rebalancing of nuclear non-proliferation policy is advisable, away from over-dependence on supply side restrictions and towards greater reliance on influencing states’ motives and calculations.
Kemp justifies his conclusion by surveying the extent to which controlling one type of nuclear technology — the use of centrifuges to enrich uranium — can be relied on to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, and by demonstrating that controls have been and will be porous and permeable.
Technological and industrial developments since 1945 have moved the proliferation-potential boundary outwards to where the building of a uranium enrichment plant lies within the reach of many states. The required information has long been in the public domain. The tools and equipment needed to build rudimentary centrifuge machines are unsophisticated. The risk of remote detection of a small clandestine plant is small. Thirteen of the twenty states that have built enrichment facilities have done so without recourse to outside help — and several others could have gone it alone.
Kemp is careful to distinguish between over-reliance on technology controls and denying that controls have any merit. He is not advocating the elimination of controls. On the contrary, he recognises that controls can make the task of building and operating centrifuges more arduous by forcing states to develop the technology indigenously and to spend time troubleshooting the challenges that will inevitably arise. Controls can also limit the ability of states to build high-performance centrifuges.
But where centrifuge technology is concerned, Kemp’s sympathies clearly lie with Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer, and other Manhattan Project scientists who warned that controls could only provide a temporary hurdle, not an insurmountable barrier. Like them, he also believes that enduring protection “can only come from the political organization of the world”.
Mercifully, much of that political organization now exists, thanks to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force in 1970. Early doubts about how effective a barrier the NPT would be have been confounded. All but the four nuclear-armed states (Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea) and South Sudan, which has had more pressing priorities, are parties to it. Only nine states are known or suspected of having engaged in clandestine nuclear activities after becoming parties; and all but two of those (Iraq and Syria) have chosen or been persuaded to abandon their clandestine activities well short of nuclear weapons acquisition.
Why has the NPT been so effective? Kemp leaves that question to be answered by others. My sense is that NPT parties see mutual security benefits in maintaining this regime for as long as possible, certain grievances notwithstanding, and have no appetite for engaging in a nuclear arms race with their neighbors. An element of deterrence may also enter into the equation: latecomers to the nuclear-armed clubhouse cannot be sure of getting in unscathed.
But I hope someone more qualified than I will undertake the thorough assessment Kemp calls for at the end of his article:
While the specific causes of proliferation abstinence lie beyond the scope of this article, the subject clearly merits deeper analysis by both policymakers and academics as such factors are probably the most viable basis for the future of the non proliferation regime.
More immediately, Kemp’s conclusion begs important questions in relation to the current negotiations between Iran and the P5+1: if technology restrictions can never be more than a hurdle to centrifuge-based nuclear weapon acquisition, is it essential that the US and EU insist on a dramatic cut in the number of operating centrifuges at Iran’s disposal during the interim phase of a comprehensive solution?
Would the US and EU be wise to walk away from the negotiation if, for domestic political reasons, Iran were to refuse to dismantle any of its 19,000 centrifuges and to operate any fewer than 9,000 at any one time?
Should the US and EU be ready to close the deal if Iran can demonstrate convincingly that it has no interest in acquiring nuclear weapons — with no motive for incurring the near-universal condemnation that a nuclear “break-out” would trigger — and backs up the demonstration by accepting that verification of its nuclear program can remain at current levels indefinitely?
I know what I think. But what, I wonder, do the US administration’s “counter-proliferation” experts think, and what advice are they giving to the US secretary of state and president? I fear they may be on the other side of the post-1945 divide.
This article was first published by LobeLog.
Photo: The first meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the Review Conference of the Parties to the NPT, United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland on April 1, 1974. Credit: UN
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