The stated rationale for the United States casting on Tuesday one of the very lonely votes it sometimes casts at the United Nations General Assembly, on matters on which almost the entire world sees things differently, warrants some reflection. The resolution in question this time endorsed the creation of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East and called on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to renounce any possession of nuclear weapons, and to put its nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency. A nuclear weapons-free Middle East and universal adherence to the nonproliferation treaty are supposedly U.S. policy objectives, and have been for many years. So why did the United States oppose the resolution? According to the U.S. representative’s statement in earlier debate, the resolution “fails to meet the fundamental tests of fairness and balance. It confines itself to expressions of concern about the activities of a single country.”
You know something doesn’t wash when the contrary views are as overwhelmingly held as on this matter. The resolution passed on a vote of 161-5. Joining Israel and the United States as “no” votes were Canada (maybe the Harper government was thinking of the Keystone XL pipeline issue being in the balance?) and the Pacific powers of Micronesia and Palau. The latter two habitually cast their UN votes to stay in the good graces of the United States; they have been among the few abstainers on the even more lopsided votes in the General Assembly each year calling for an end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba.
An obvious problem with the United States complaining about a resolution on a topic such as this being an expression of concern about the activities of only a single country is that the United States has been in front in pushing for United Nations resolutions about the nuclear activities of a single country, only just not about the particular country involved this time. The inconsistency is glaring. Iran has been the single-country focus of several U.S.-backed resolutions on nuclear matters—resolutions in the Security Council that have been the basis for international sanctions against Iran.
One could look, but would look in vain, for sound rationales for the inconsistency. If anything, the differences one would find should point U.S. policy in the opposite direction from the direction it has taken. It is Iran that has placed itself under the obligations of the nonproliferation treaty and subjects its nuclear activities to international inspection. Since the preliminary agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program that was negotiated last year, those inspections are more frequent and intrusive than ever. Israel, by contrast, has kept its nuclear activities completely out of the reach of any international inspection or control regime. As for actual nuclear weapons, Iran does not have them, has declared its intention not to have them, and according to the U.S. intelligence community has not made any decision to make them. Neither Israel nor the United States says publicly that Israel has nuclear weapons, but just about everyone else in the world takes it as a given that it does, which would make it the only state in the Middle East that does.
One might look, but still in vain, for justifying discrepancies that go beyond the respective nuclear programs of the countries in question but still involve questions of regional security and stability. What about, for example, menacing threats? Iran and Israel have each had plenty of unfriendly words about each other. Iran’s words have included bloviation about wiping something from pages of history; Israel’s have included more pointed threats of military attack. What about actual attacks? Israel has initiated multiple wars with its neighbors, as well as launching smaller armed attacks; The Islamic Republic of Iran has not started a war in its 35-year history. Terrorism? Well, there were those assassinations of Iranian scientists, with some later attacks against Israelis being an obvious (and not very successful) attempt by Iran at a tit-for-tat response against those responsible for murdering the scientists. And so forth.
Singling out one country in a multilateral context can indeed cause problems. The resolution the General Assembly passed this week need not involve a problem, however, since it was not calling for differential treatment of anyone—only for Israel to get with the same program as any state in the Middle East that does not have nukes and adheres to the international nuclear control regime.
Iran, by contrast, is being treated much differently from anyone else. Tehran already has acquiesced to some of that differential treatment, but Iranians unsurprisingly wonder why Iran should be subjected to more such treatment, or indeed to any of it. They wonder, for example, why Iran should be subject to unique restrictions that several other non-nuclear-weapons states that also are parties to the nonproliferation treaty and enrich their own uranium are not. Such wonderment is almost certainly a factor in Iranian resistance to making the sorts of additional concessions that many in the United States are expecting or demanding that Iran make. The differential treatment should be kept in mind in any discussion in the United States about who has made bigger concessions than whom and about what would or would not constitute a fair and reasonable final agreement.
Then there is the irony—although Iranians might use a more bitter word than irony—of Israel leading the charge in constantly agitating about Iran’s nuclear program (and by trying to torpedo an international agreement to restrict that program, making the issue fester and thus making it more possible for Israel’s agitation to go on forever).
This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.
]]>So much has been written and said about the uranium enrichment aspect of the 14-month nuclear negotiation with Iran that it is hard to look at it with fresh eyes, and starting from first principles. Nonetheless what follows is an attempt to do so. It suggests that the US and Iran are closer on enrichment than once seemed possible, but are still at risk of failing to find common ground in the course of the extension agreed a week ago.
From an international legal perspective the text that matters is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran deposited its last instrument of ratification on 5 March 1970, the same day as the deposit of the US instruments. Under the NPT the US is a “Nuclear Weapon State,” Iran a “Non-Nuclear Weapon State” (NNWS).
The NPT does not prohibit the acquisition of enrichment technology by NNWS. Nor does it impose any limit on the size or number of NNWS enrichment facilities. It merely requires NNWS to use that technology exclusively for peaceful purposes, and to place all the nuclear material fed into and produced by such facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.
In the current negotiation, Iran has assured the US that it takes its NPT obligations very seriously. It has also reaffirmed its intention to use enrichment technology exclusively for peaceful purposes, and to continue to implement the NPT safeguards agreement that it concluded in 1975.
Some people assume that such assurances are worthless. They point to the breaches of the NPT safeguards agreement that occurred between approximately1991 and 2003. However, none of those breaches amounted to evidence of an intention to use enrichment for non-peaceful purposes. And US intelligence has yet to come across any such evidence; suspicion of Iranian nuclear weapon intent has rested on inference, not evidence. States, like people, can make mistakes and then resolve not to repeat them.
There are also several resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council (UNSC) between 2006 and 2010 that make legal demands of Iran. But none of them imposes limits on the size and number of Iranian enrichment facilities. Still less do any of them outlaw Iranian possession of enrichment technology for peaceful purposes. One of them requires Iran to cooperate with the IAEA to resolve concern that Iran has engaged in research into nuclear weapon-related technologies. Iran has been doing that since November 2013, albeit with increasing hesitancy.
In the Iranian case another perspective is as important as the legal perspective; it is the confidence-building perspective. This was crucial to an attempt to resolve the problem peacefully in the wake of the IAEA Director General reporting the safeguards breaches to which reference is made above, because these breaches had undermined confidence in Iran’s peaceful intentions.
In the autumn of 2003, Iran volunteered, in the interest of confidence-building, to go beyond the requirements of its NPT safeguards agreement and make available to the IAEA the information and access required by the Additional Protocol (AP). Tehran also undertook to suspend activity at its only enrichment facility while it negotiated longer-term confidence-building measures with the UK, France and Germany (E3). The Iranians implemented these short-term measures scrupulously and ceased doing so only after they had grasped that nothing less than renunciation of the enrichment option would satisfy the E3.
In the current negotiation, various reports suggest that Iran has so far volunteered to renew application of the AP, de facto initially and later de jure; to accept limits on the size and number of its enrichment facilities during a confidence-building period; to refrain from producing uranium enriched to more than 5% U235; to convert some of its under 5% U235 uranium (LEU) into forms in which it would not be readily available as feed material; and to send the rest of its LEU stock to Russia for use in the fuel that the Rosatom corporation is supplying to the power reactor at Bushehr. Iran’s negotiators also have reportedly suggested that they are ready to extend the Bushehr fuel supply contract well beyond 2021.
In parallel, Iran has negotiated that Rosatom will help build two further power reactors and will supply them with fuel throughout their operating lives.
In confidence-building terms, this amounts to an impressive package. With only 10,000 IR-1 centrifuges in operation in only one facility, and its LEU stock unavailable to serve as feed material, Iran would need at least six months to produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for one nuclear device. With only 8000 IR-1s and no LEU feed, Iran would need at least eight months.
And if the Bushehr supply contract were extended to 2031, Iran would only need to consider increasing the available quantity of separative work units (a measure of centrifuge output) in the late 2020s.
In other words, Iran is offering a package that exceeds its NPT obligations by a wide margin. IAEA inspectors would be able to acquire confidence that there are no undeclared nuclear activities or material in Iran. The international community would know that it had six to eight months at least to react to any sign of Iranian misuse of its enrichment capacity for non-peaceful purposes.
So why in Vienna did it seem that this package is not enough for the US? That is for representatives of the US administration to explain. Past statements suggest that they will say that they need certainty that Iran will be incapable of producing (“cannot”) even one nuclear weapon.
That may sound reasonable but is in fact an unrealistic goal. It would require Iran not only to destroy all its centrifuges but also to wipe the minds of its engineers clean of all their knowledge and experience of enrichment technology. It also puts the negotiation at risk of the same fate as the 2003-5 E3 negotiation, because Iran is unready to build confidence by closing down its enrichment program. And it runs counter to the spirit of the NPT, since the NPT bases nuclear non-proliferation on self-restraint, political will, and deterrence through verification, not on nuclear technology surrender.
If instead the administration admits that it cannot literally “close all pathways” to a weapon but claims that it needs at least 12 months to react to any break-out attempt, then they should be asked why six to eight months would not be enough.
It is self-evident that 12 months of additional sanctions would not cause Iran to abandon a break-out attempt. Eight years of sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to re-suspend enrichment. Post-1918 history is littered with failed sanctions policies.
On the other hand, 12 months are more than are needed to get UN Security Council approval for the use of force to prevent break-out and to act on it—or for a coalition of the willing to form in the unlikely event of Russia or China threatening to veto a UNSC resolution. In 1990, only six months were needed for the US to gain approval for and prepare a massive operation to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. As recently as last April, Secretary John Kerry was formulating the goal as “six to 12 months.”
This analysis will be misconstrued by some as an apologia for Iran. Others will realize, I hope, that it is an attempt to clarify the progress that has been made on enrichment over the last 12 months; to explain why the current Iranian offer is reasonable from a legal and from a confidence-building perspective; and to counter the pernicious influence on US negotiating goals of people who want the bar set so high that Iran will refuse the jump.
]]>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
]]>by Peter Jenkins
The parties to the current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program are being discreet about the details, as is sensible. Nonetheless, from the occasional statement or remark to journalists it is possible to form some impression of the issues that are causing the greatest difficulty.
These include restrictions [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
The parties to the current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program are being discreet about the details, as is sensible. Nonetheless, from the occasional statement or remark to journalists it is possible to form some impression of the issues that are causing the greatest difficulty.
These include restrictions on Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium during an interim period, the duration of that period, the phasing of sanctions relief, and, a late-comer to the agenda, restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program.
If, as the remarks imply, the gap between positions on such issues is still wide, it does not follow necessarily that the negotiating deadline of July 20 will be missed. It is all too common for negotiators to keep the most painful concessions in reserve until the 11th hour, in the hope that they will not be needed.
It will, however, be interesting to review some of the problems that have come to light and to imagine ways of handling them.
Duration of the interim period
Al Monitor’s Laura Rozen reported May 15 that an Iranian source said it is the Iranian team’s expectation that “after the signing of a comprehensive deal, there will be an interim period,” where there will be restrictions on Iran’s program “and the [possible military dimensions issue] will be resolved.”
But there has to be a “basis” for the duration of that interim period, according to the Iranian source. If the restrictions should last for 10, 15 or 20 years, the parties have to “examine” the basis. “Why 20 years?” he asked.
A solution to this problem would be to agree that the duration of the interim period will be determined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in the sense that it will be co-extensive with the time required by the Agency to affirm that there are no undeclared nuclear facilities or material in Iran and, in effect, that Iran’s nuclear program is as peaceful as that of any other Non-Nuclear-Weapon State (NNWS) party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The “basis” or rationale would be that requiring Iran to accept constraints on certain nuclear activities is logical for as long as it can reasonably be questioned whether Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful. Once the IAEA has found the same grounds for confidence in the peaceful nature of Iran’s program as exist in other NNWS, this rationale would no longer be logical.
A similar solution was proposed in January 2004, in relation to the duration of the suspension of uranium enrichment that had been agreed in Tehran on October 21, 2003. On that occasion it was rejected by Iran because Tehran hoped to be able to resume enrichment well before the Agency would be able to provide grounds for confidence — and rejected by the UK, France and Germany because they wanted the suspension to last indefinitely, if not forever.
Ten rather grim years later, can the parties bring themselves to accept this logic and bend it to the cause of an agreement?
The phasing of sanctions relief
Arash Karami reported May 21 that a spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee told Iran’s Tasnim News that the P5+1 said after an agreement “we have to prove our goodwill. They will then remove sanctions one by one,” over a period of ten years.
It is not hard to imagine how unappealing such an offer must seem to an Iranian government that is banking on sanctions relief to improve the living standards of ordinary Iranians.
Iran will have understood long ago that the US administration will require many years to persuade Congress to repeal the nuclear-related sanctions that Congress has imposed. But Iran must surely be hoping that non-US and particularly EU firms will be free to trade and invest in Iran within months of agreement on a comprehensive solution.
“Iran would not mind front-loading the final deal,” another Iranian source told Rozen. “Iran would take all the measures [agreed] at the beginning of the deal, and expect its counterpart to do the same.”
It tends to be forgotten that when, on January 23, 2012, EU Ministers agreed to what Foreign Secretary William Hague described as an “unprecedented set of sanctions against Iran,” their aim was to coerce Iran into a nuclear negotiation.
“This is a major increase in the peaceful, legitimate pressure on Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program,” Hague told the House of Commons the next day.
If EU Ministers such as Hague are concerned about legitimacy, there is a chance that it would trouble their consciences to maintain such “unprecedented” (an euphemism for draconian) sanctions not just after Iran’s appearance at the negotiating table, but even after the conclusion of a comprehensive negotiation. And if legitimacy is not a concern, perhaps they can at least be persuaded to lift EU sanctions by all the EU firms that are hoping to resume normal business with Iran.
Iran’s ballistic missile program
“Iran also rejects that its ballistic missile program should be a subject for discussion with the P5+1, Iran’s negotiators have repeatedly said,” wrote Rozen May 21.
For their part, US negotiators have justified the inclusion of this issue on the agenda, despite the absence of any reference to it in the November 24 Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), by recalling the JPOA reference to “addressing the UN Security Resolutions” (the last of which, 1929 (2010), contains a brief missile-related provision).
As a justification this leaves a bit to be desired. The reference to UN resolutions is in the preamble of the JPOA, not in the final operative section, which itemizes the agenda for the current negotiation. It is uncommon to consider preambular wording as binding on the parties to an agreement.
Moreover, the relevant bit of operative paragraph 9 of resolution 1929 (2010) scarcely lends itself to the sort of restrictions that Israeli leaders and their Congressional supporters have been demanding that the administration obtain. It reads “[The Security Council] decides that Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches…”
These words are clearly no basis for requiring Iran to surrender or destroy any of the ballistic missiles in its possession. At most they provide an opening for requesting that Iran refrain from testing some of its existing stock (those “capable of delivering nuclear weapons”), and from developing new models with that capability.
But even that request is contestable. Iran could deny that it possesses a nuclear weapons delivery capability. Since an internationally agreed definition of what constitutes that capability is lacking, and since that capability is contingent on being able to produce warheads of an appropriate diameter, US negotiators might end up wishing they had suggested, instead, a debate on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Such objections might sound semantic; but the US, which has long relied on semantics to deny that Iran has a right to enrich uranium, would be ill-placed to jib at a dose of its own medicine.
It’s the Politics!
Speaking to the press on May 16, a senior US administration official said: “We’re focused on how all of the elements fit together to ensure Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon.”
It must be hoped that the senior official meant to say “will not”, and not, “cannot.” Indeed, if these negotiations are about denying Iran the capability to produce nuclear weapons, they are doomed to fail.
It is in the nature of nuclear weapon technology that once a state has passed a certain threshold, as Iran has, it can produce nuclear weapons, sooner or later, if it makes that decision. It is not axiomatic, however, that states will choose to do so.
On the contrary, since 1970 the evidence is that very few weapon-capable states want nuclear weapons; most recognize that their security is better served by backing the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.
This perception has been well articulated by Scott Kemp, a former adviser on nuclear non-proliferation at the State Department. In an interview with the MIT News office Kemp said, “We need to get past the idea that we can control the destiny of nations by regulating access to technology. International security must ultimately resort to the difficult business of politics.”
The current negotiation can succeed if the West’s goal is political: denying Iran a rational basis for wanting nuclear weapons. Since President Hassan Rouhani’s words and deeds suggest that he recognizes Iran will be more secure, and more prosperous, as a fully compliant NPT-state without nuclear weapons, this is a realistic goal.
Photo Credit: FARS News/Majid Asgaripour/
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