by Peter Jenkins
Sir Richard Dalton, British ambassador to Iran from 2002-06, and I have co-authored a paper for the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) on Iran’s Nuclear Future. Below is an edited transcript of the remarks with which I introduced the paper at a meeting in London [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
Sir Richard Dalton, British ambassador to Iran from 2002-06, and I have co-authored a paper for the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) on Iran’s Nuclear Future. Below is an edited transcript of the remarks with which I introduced the paper at a meeting in London on Sept. 4:
May I start by reminding you that the US intelligence estimate is that Iran’s leaders have not taken a decision to acquire nuclear weapons. This is what the US Director of National Intelligence stated on Jan. 29, 2014: ‘Iran has made technical progress…from which it could draw if it decided to build missile-deliverable nuclear weapons….This makes the central issue its political will to do so…We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.’
A different question is whether Iran’s leaders seek a latent capability to make nuclear weapons at some future date. Israel in particular fears that they do, but the evidence is not conclusive. And, most important, possession of a latent capability is not outlawed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); nor is it uncommon; nor is it necessarily a threat to international peace and security.
Nonetheless, on and off since 2003, nuclear negotiations with Iran have centred on Iran’s acquisition of an indispensable component of a latent capability: a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz (complemented some years later by a small plant at Fordow). The West has sought to deny Iran the option of using those plants to produce highly enriched uranium by closing them down, or at least severely curtailing their potential.
In the negotiation launched in September 2013 this has led the US and EU to demand that Iran reduce the number of operating centrifuges at Natanz to a few hundred from a little over 9,000 today and take out of service all 650 operating centrifuges at Fordow.
The most important beliefs underlying the recommendations in our paper are that continuing insistence on deep cuts at Natanz will doom the current negotiation to failure; and that insisting on deep cuts serves no useful end, since no state would be likely to use a facility visited by international inspectors to breakout. A state is more likely to try to build a secret plant for that purpose.
This is all the more so in Iran’s case if Iran is close to being able to deploy far more efficient centrifuges than those at Natanz. Why break out with 9,000 first-generation IR-1s at an inspected site if you can hope to break out undetected with 500 IR-8s in a very small, secret plant?
Nonetheless, so much has been made of the need to inhibit breakout, and Iran’s trust deficit in Western eyes is so great—not least because it concealed significant aspects of its nuclear program from 1985 to 2003—that the number of centrifuges at Iran’s disposal in the coming years is an issue. Our paper proposes that the West accept Iran’s very strong domestic political reasons for not going below 9,000 at Natanz but ask Iran to agree not to expand its available capacity until:
- first, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has given credible assurances as to the absence of undeclared nuclear material or activities in Iran,
- and, second, Iran has designed and is close to completing an all-Iran power reactor that will be needing Iranian-made fuel.
We believe this latter point to be over a decade in the future. So our proposal provides for a lengthy confidence-building period during which Iran can demonstrate that it deserves to be seen like several other NPT non-nuclear-weapon states that possess dual use facilities.
I should perhaps explain that Iran will not need an expanded enrichment capacity to fuel Russian-built reactors. The Russian-owned Rosatom earns good money by supplying fuel for its reactors and will not want to disclose to Iran the technical information that Iran would need to supplant Rosatom safely.
We believe that the resolution of the breakout issue can unlock agreement on all the other issues with which the negotiators are wrestling, and on which we also make recommendations in our paper.
Let me just touch on the over-arching objective of the negotiation. It cannot be to make it materially impossible for Iran ever to make nuclear weapons. The only way that could be achieved is by invading Iran and remaining there for a great many years. I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining why that is an unattractive option.
So we are suggesting that the goal be to minimise the risk that Iran will ever be tempted to misuse dual-use nuclear technologies, in breach of its NPT obligations, by affecting the political will of Iran’s leaders and influencing their cost/benefit calculations:
- through an agreement that Iran considers as reasonable and consistent with core interests, and not discriminatory or unequal;
- by ensuring Iran would have a great deal to lose—not least the good reputation that President Hassan Rouhani and others are eager to acquire—by violating the NPT;
- and by deterring violation, additionally, through a combination of state-of-the-art IAEA monitoring and US military power.
Finally, let me make four brief points.
The advent of President Rouhani and Minister Javad Zarif has created a great opportunity. Both are familiar to us from the 2003-05 negotiation. They are serious, trustworthy interlocutors with whom Western ministers can afford, politically, to be seen to be dealing.
A nuclear agreement will not transform Iran’s relations with the West. Iran’s Supreme Leader will want still to keep the West at arm’s length, fearing the corrosive effect of Western values on Islamic values. But it will re-open Iran to European trade and investment, and it will facilitate cooperation on several international political issues.
Western governments would be ill-advised to pay too much attention to the prime minister of Israel on this problem. Mr. Netanyahu has been fulminating that Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons since 1992. He has political motivations. Several of his former intelligence and military advisers have contradicted his claim that Iran’s nuclear program presents an existential threat to Israel.
Saudi claims that allowing Iran to retain a uranium enrichment capability will trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East also need to be taken with more than the proverbial pinch of salt. They too have political reasons for sounding an alarm that, objectively, is unwarranted on the evidence available at this point.
Photo Credit: Chatam House
]]>by Jim Lobe
The latest issue of the New Yorker features a lengthy article by Connie Bruck on the recent travails of AIPAC, especially its unsuccessful efforts since last November to increase sanctions on Iran, and its steady Likudnik drift, which has increasingly alienated its more liberal and Democratic supporters in Congress.
The article, “Friends [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
The latest issue of the New Yorker features a lengthy article by Connie Bruck on the recent travails of AIPAC, especially its unsuccessful efforts since last November to increase sanctions on Iran, and its steady Likudnik drift, which has increasingly alienated its more liberal and Democratic supporters in Congress.
The article, “Friends of Israel,” makes clear (in case any additional evidence were required) that the group’s intention all along was to sabotage the ongoing negotiations between Iran and world powers, which we at LobeLog chronicled pretty intensively during the key five-month period, and casts more insider light on the pressure exerted by AIPAC, related groups, and key donors on Democratic lawmakers. Consider this passage, for example:
[Majority Leader Eric] Cantor and [Minority Leader Steny] Hoyer have been steadfast supporters of AIPAC, and its members have held at least a dozen fund-raisers for them each year. But last December AIPAC’s efforts to implement sanctions against Iran were so intense that even this well-tempered partnership fractured. When Congress returned from its Thanksgiving recess, legislators in the House began discussing a sanctions bill. According to the former Congressional aide, Cantor told Hoyer that he wanted a bill that would kill the interim agreement with Iran. Hoyer refused, saying that he would collaborate only on a non-binding resolution.
Cantor sent Hoyer resolution that called for additional sanctions and sought to define in advance the contours of an agreement with Iran. “The pressure was tremendous—not just AIPAC leadership and legislative officials but various board members and other contributors, from all over the country,” the former congressional aide recalled. “What was striking was how strident the message was,” another aide said. “‘How could you not pass a resolution that tells the President what the outcome of the negotiations has to be?’” Advocates for the sanctions portrayed Obama as feckless. “They said, ‘Iranians have been doing this for millennia. They can smell weakness. Why is the President showing weakness?’” a Senate aide recalled.
AIPAC was betting that the Democrats, facing midterms with an unpopular President, would break ranks, and that Obama would be unable to stop them. Its confidence was not unfounded; every time Netanyahu and AIPAC had opposed Obama he had retreated. But Obama took up the fight with unusual vigor. …As the Cantor-Hoyer resolution gathered momentum, House Democrats began holding meetings at the White House to strategize about how to oppose it.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee, attended the meetings, at some political risk. Wasserman Schultz represents a heavily Jewish district in South Florida, and has been a reliable signature on AIPAC’s letters and resolution; she has boasted of concurring with a hundred per cent of its positions. Now the lobby e-mailed out an “AIPAC Action Alert,” including the text of a story about the meetings in the conservative Washington Free Beacon, in which she was described as “siding with the Mullahs over the American people.” The alert asked AIPAC’s executive-council members to contact her office, ask if the story was true, and challenge her opposition to Cantor-Hoyer. Stephen Fiske, the chair of the pro-Israel Florida Congressional Committee PAC, sent a similar alert to Wasserman Schultz’s constituents, setting off a cascade of calls to her office. (Fiske told the Free Beacon that the callers included a team of young students: his son’s classmate at a Jewish day school in North Miami Beach.) Wasserman Schultz was furious. Soon afterward, she flew to Israel for the funeral of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. On the trip, she remarked to a colleague, “They’re doing this to me?” [Emphasis added.]
Eventually, of course Hoyer disassociated himself from the initiative, and, as the months unfolded, AIPAC’s campaign to undermine the negotiations by enacting new sanctions legislation in both the House and Senate became increasingly partisan, jeopardizing the group’s carefully cultivated image of bipartisanship, until it finally essentially gave up the effort in March. The article offers many such anecdotes, but, of course, the sentence I bolded above helps to confirm the theory that AIPAC’s aim wasn’t to strengthen President Obama’s hand in the P5+1′s (US, UK, France China, Russia plus Germany) talks with Iran; on the contrary, the objective—entirely consistent with Netanyahu’s wishes, was to blow up the talks.
I particularly appreciated Bruck’s pretty extensive quotation of remarks by former Washington State Democratic Rep. Brian Baird whose on-the-record frankness about AIPAC was undoubtedly made possible by the fact that he left Congress in 2010 and apparently has no intention of running again. Baird, one of the very congressmen who traveled to Gaza after the 2009 war, explains the relationship between fund-raising and AIPAC:
“‘The difficult reality is this: in order to get elected to Congress, if you’re not independently wealthy, you have to raise a lot of money. And you learn pretty quickly that, if AIPAC is on your side, you can do that. They come to you and say, ‘We’d be happy to host ten-thousand-dollar fund-raisers for you, and let us help write your annual letter, and please come to this multi-thousand-person dinner.’” Baird continued. “Any member of Congress knows that AIPAC is associated indirectly with significant amounts of campaign spending if you’re with them, and significant amounts against you if you’re not with them.”
“…When key votes are cast, the question on the House floor, troublingly, is often not ‘What is the right thing to do for the United States of America?’ but ‘How is AIPAC going to score this?’” He added, “There’s such a conundrum here, of believing that you’re supporting Israel, when you’re actually backing policies that are antithetical to its highest values and, ultimately, destructive for the country.” In talks with Israeli officials, he found that his inquiries were not treated with much respect. In 2003, one of his constituents, Rachel Corrie, was killed by a bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier, as she protested the demolition of Palestinians’ homes in Gaza. At first, he said, the officials told him, ‘There’s a simple explanation—here are the facts.” Or, “We will look into it.” But, when he continued to press, something else would emerge. “There is a disdain for the U.S., and a dismissal of any legitimacy of our right to question—because who are we to talk about moral values?” Baird told me. “Whether it’s that we didn’t help early enough in the Holocaust, or look at what we did to our African-Americans, or our Native Americans—whatever! And they see us, members of Congress, as basically for sale. So they want us to shut up and play the game.”
While it may seem somewhat unrelated, this last point recalled for me a couple of op-eds published in the New York Times during the most recent war in Gaza on the subject of liberal Zionists (who, not coincidentally, reside almost exclusively in the Democratic Party, and their reaction to the evermore-rightward and aggressive drift of Israeli politics and policy. Both were written by Israelis; the first by Shmuel Rosner, an Israeli writer and fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, which is supposed to study and make recommendations about relations between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora; the second, by Antony Lerman, the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and author of “The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist.” In his column, “Israel’s Fair-Weather Fans,” Rosner essentially tells liberal Zionists who have warned Israel’s leadership that their right-wing policies are putting at risk the support of liberal US Jews to, in Baird’s words, “shut up and play the game.”
If all Jews are a family, it would be natural for Israelis to expect the unconditional love of their non-Israeli Jewish kin. If Jews aren’t a family, and their support can be withdrawn, then Israelis have no reason to pay special attention to the complaints of non-Israeli Jews.
…If they still want to root for a Jewish state, there’s no substitute for Israel. If they believe there is a need for Jewish sovereignty, Israel is the only option available to them. As the song says, there’s no other country even it it’s on fire.
For his part, Lerman more or less agrees that liberal Zionists in the US have become largely irrelevant, at least in terms of influencing Israeli policies and actions, and thus his title, “The End of Liberal Zionism.”
“Today, the dominant organizations, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, as well as a raft of self-appointed community leaders, have swung to the right. They have made unquestioning solidarity with Israel the touchstone of Jewish identity—even though majority Jewish opinion is by no means hawkish.
…In reality, the only Zionism of any consequence today is xenophobic and exclusionary, a Jewish ethno-nationalism inspired by religious messianism. It is carrying out an open-ended project of national self-realization to be achieved through colonization and purification of the tribe.
Noting that the collapse of the latest US efforts for peace talks, as well as Netanyahu’s de facto rejection last month of the possibility of an independent Palestinian state (despite his previous grudging commitments to a two-state solution), Lerman argues that liberal Zionists have reached a dead end.
Liberal Zionists must now face the reality that the dissenters have recognized for years: A de facto single state already exists, where rights for Jews are guaranteed while rights for Palestinians are curtailed. Since liberal Zionists can’t countenance anything but two states, this situation leaves them high and dry.
Of course, this reality also means that liberal Zionists—who undoubtedly constitute a majority of American Jews (who in turn constitute a major source of political campaign funding for Democrats)—face a choice between their Zionism, as defined by Netanyahu and AIPAC, on the one hand and their liberal values on the other. The two appear to have become mutually exclusive.
]]>by François Nicoullaud
Defining the size of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program has become a major sticking point in the negotiations between Iran and world powers expected to resume next month. The scale of this enrichment program, however, greatly relies upon undecided agreements between Tehran and Moscow on the long-term supply of nuclear fuel [...]]]>
by François Nicoullaud
Defining the size of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program has become a major sticking point in the negotiations between Iran and world powers expected to resume next month. The scale of this enrichment program, however, greatly relies upon undecided agreements between Tehran and Moscow on the long-term supply of nuclear fuel for the Russian-built reactors: a 1,000 Megawatt reactor already operating in Bushehr since 2012 and two other reactors that will likely be built on the same site if the talks between Russia and Iran conclude successfully.
The decision to build several reactors on the Bushehr site basically conforms to general practice in the nuclear industry, as it generates important economies of scale. Tehran justifies its controversial enrichment ambitions by noting its intention to use, in the medium-term, domestically enriched uranium in its reactors.
Iran has already stored around nine tons of low-enriched uranium, about a third of the quantity necessary to run a Bushehr-type reactor for a year, consuming in the process about 40,000 Separative Work Units (SWU, a type of energy unit in the field of uranium enrichment). If Iran preserves its present capacity of about 10,000 SWU per year, corresponding to the 10,000 or so first-generation centrifuges currently in operation, it will need about eight more years to produce enough low-enriched uranium to operate a Bushehr-type reactor for one year. This brings us to around 2022, when the present contract for the delivery of Russian fuel for the first reactor in Bushehr comes to an end. It would also be around that time, according to best estimates, that two new reactors would have to be fed with an initial load of fuel to start functioning.
However, using such a stockpile of domestic uranium for Bushehr assumes that it would initially be incorporated in fuel elements complying with Russian standards. This would require Russia’s agreement and its active cooperation as long as Iran does not master the corresponding know-how. At first, this cooperation could take the form of fabricating the fuel in Russia using low-enriched uranium provided by Iran. In the second stage, the Russians could help the Iranians build and operate a fuel fabrication plant on Iranian soil. As for the introduction of Iranian-made fuel elements in the Bushehr reactor, this would once again require the agreement and the cooperation of the Russians, who could otherwise rightly withdraw their guarantee on the safe operation of the reactor.
What will the origin of the nuclear fuel used in the operating Bushehr reactors be in, say, 2022? Moscow would like to supply the reactors with Russian fuel, as this would vastly enhance their economic benefits. But Tehran will want to use Iranian fuel in at least the first reactor, as this would justify the expansion of their enrichment capacities (it should be remembered that the Iranians, under the terms of the Joint Plan of Action, must demonstrate that the enrichment capacity they desire responds to “practical needs”). Ultimately, the Russians will have to respond at least partially to Iran’s expectations if they want to retain their chance to sell Tehran two new reactors.
Within this framework, a possible compromise could be, for example, entrusting the Iranians with the fabrication of fuel for the first Bushehr reactor and leaving the Russians to take care of the other two. A similar formula would let the Iranians produce about a third or fourth of the fuel necessary for the three reactors (after the initial loading of the second and third reactors) while the Russians maintained responsibility of the rest. This would compel the Iranians to reach an enrichment capacity of about 90,000 to 120,000 SWU per year by around 2022. Adding Iran’s needs for its research reactors would bring the total required capacity to approximately 100,000 to 130,000 SWU per year.
This last figure is somewhat below the 190,000 SWU per year put forward by Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Iranian Organization for Atomic Energy, and quoted later by the Supreme Leader, but this discrepancy can probably be explained by different modes of calculation. Indeed, when one remembers that the production of highly enriched uranium for a nuclear explosive engine using the implosion method requires no more than 5,000 SWU, variations of capacities beyond 100,000 SWU per year are no longer relevant in terms of non-proliferation.
Of course, Russia could refuse to allow Iran to manufacture even part of the Bushehr fuel. This would greatly benefit the Americans and the Europeans, who would be happy to deprive Iran of arguments for developing a significant enrichment capacity. But in doing so, Moscow would likely forego the opportunity to sign a contract with Iran for the construction and operation of the two additional Bushehr reactors, which would result in a big loss for its nuclear industry.
On the other hand, if Russia were to announce its readiness to share the fuel fabrication process for Bushehr with Iran, that would be enough to validate Tehran’s view of its “practical needs” and justify an Iranian enrichment capacity of about 10,000 SWU per year for 6 or 7 years, eventually increasing to 100,000 and beyond. In this case, Western powers would find it extremely difficult to convince Tehran to limit its capacity to a few thousand first-generation centrifuges, corresponding to a capacity of 4,000 to 6,000 SWU — a long-sought goal.
All in all, one has to face the fact that Russian and Western interests diverge on the core issue of Iran’s enrichment capacity. If the Americans and Europeans want to keep the P5+1 unified, they should be especially thoughtful when considering Moscow’s dilemma in its bilateral trade negotiations with Tehran. Perhaps most importantly, these powers should prevent other subjects of contention, such as Syria or Ukraine, from interfering with the negotiations as a whole.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif shares a laugh with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.
]]>by Peter Jenkins
On the face of it, July has not been a bad month for those of us who would like to see the West’s nuclear quarrel with Iran resolved peacefully, not least so that the US, EU and Iran can feel less inhibited about regional security cooperation, and so that [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
On the face of it, July has not been a bad month for those of us who would like to see the West’s nuclear quarrel with Iran resolved peacefully, not least so that the US, EU and Iran can feel less inhibited about regional security cooperation, and so that trade and investment can resume, sanctions having created hardship not just for ordinary Iranians but also for many EU companies.
However, I find it hard to feel confident that on November 25 (or before) we will be celebrating a peaceful resolution — and victory over those in the US Congress and elsewhere who so clearly do not want the negotiations between Iran and world powers to succeed.
My pessimism stems from continuing signs in official statements and media reports that the US administration, somewhat oblivious to logic, is determined to get a deal that would make the Iranian manufacture of nuclear weapons a practical impossibility.
Let me explain why logic is involved.
A rational policy has to rest on one of two assumptions:
a) Iran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons and will do so sooner or later unless it is deprived of all means of producing weapon-grade material;
b) Iran is not decided on acquiring nuclear weapons and can be discouraged and deterred from ever embarking on weapon acquisition by a well-founded diplomatic agreement.
If one’s starting point is assumption a), then there is no point in negotiating with Iran because it has become crystal clear since 2003 that Iran will not voluntarily close all facilities that could be used to produce weapon-grade material or eradicate all the related knowledge that has been acquired. Instead, the logical policy would be to establish a 100-year US/EU presence in Iran, dismantle all nuclear facilities and workshops, and put all of Iran’s nuclear scientists and engineers in internment camps. Let us label this “policy x.”
If one’s starting point is assumption b), then the logical policy is to negotiate an agreement that will minimize the risk of Iran’s leaders ever deciding to ignore their Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations and misuse their nuclear facilities and know-how to produce nuclear weapons. A risk-minimizing agreement is one that provides for extensive external inspection and monitoring of Iran’s use of nuclear materials, and that offers Iran gains that it would be sure of losing were it to decide to embark on weapon acquisition. Let us label this “policy y.”
On the evidence to date, the US and EU have opted for assumption b) but are trying to negotiate an outcome that falls between the goals of policy x and policy y. That is to say, they are pressing Iran to cut the number of centrifuge machines at its disposal to a point where Iran’s theoretical fissile material production capacity would be negligible, and to abandon its efforts to develop more advanced centrifuge models. Let us call what they are seeking a hybrid outcome.
What is impelling them down this path? As far as I can tell, it is a belief that they need a deal that can be sold to a large majority in Congress.
The problem with that objective is that many in Congress have accepted the Israeli line on Iran’s nuclear program and Israel’s Prime Minister is committed to assumption a). These members of Congress are not going to be impressed by a hybrid outcome. They want the full-blooded dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear capabilities that policy x would offer. They will see through the fiction that cutting back Iran’s declared centrifuge capacity to 3000 machines for 20 years or whatever (a Mickey Mouse enrichment program) means that Iran “cannot” acquire nuclear weapons.
And the Iranian government would rather the negotiations fail than commit political suicide by signing on to a Mickey Mouse program.
What’s needed, therefore, is for the US and EU to use the coming month to revisit their assumptions about Iran’s intentions. If they arrive at the conclusion, after all, that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons, then they should bring the negotiations to a close and set about preparing for war, with a view to offering Israel the prize for which they have long clamored: the dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear “infrastructure.”
If, on the other hand, they conclude that assumption b) remains valid, then they should have the courage of their convictions and should ask of Iran the following: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to Iran’s nuclear program extending well beyond what is required by the NPT, the progressive resolution of all IAEA concerns, a raft of voluntary confidence-building measures, and a reaffirmation, at the United Nations, at the IAEA, and at the 2015 NPT Review Conference, that Iran does not seek and will not seek nuclear weapons.
Some will underestimate the deterrent strength of such an agreement because they cannot grasp that the psychological determinants of human decisions are as important as the material products of human ingenuity. But many others will understand the deterrent pressure on Iran of knowing that any move towards weapon acquisition is not only likely to be detected by the IAEA but will also cause immense damage to the reputation of a state that requires a good name to make its way in the world.
I witnessed the loss of prestige that Iran suffered in 2003 when members of the IAEA heard that Iran had pursued “a policy of concealment” for 18 years. I find it very hard to believe that Iran’s ruling elite can or will want to risk a repeat of that humiliation. Ten years later, I believe they have learnt their lesson.
Such considerations will cut no ice in some parts of Congress, I realize. But the administration has a trump card: the wisdom of crowds; that is to say, the good sense of the American people. The American people showed a year ago that they could understand that a constructive outcome to the use of chemical weapons in Syria — Syrian adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention — was preferable to killing yet more Syrians. They will surely understand that deterring the misuse of the nuclear technologies that Iran has mastered is preferable to killing a whole lot of Iranians — and adding to the long US casualty lists bequeathed to the nation by President George W. Bush.
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 Jim Lobe
Sixty-one percent of the American public prefers a deal permitting Iran to continue limited uranium enrichment and imposing intrusive inspections on its nuclear facilities in exchange for some sanctions relief, according to a unique new survey released here Tuesday.
In contrast to previous polling on attitudes toward Iran’s nuclear program, the survey, conducted [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Sixty-one percent of the American public prefers a deal permitting Iran to continue limited uranium enrichment and imposing intrusive inspections on its nuclear facilities in exchange for some sanctions relief, according to a unique new survey released here Tuesday.
In contrast to previous polling on attitudes toward Iran’s nuclear program, the survey, conducted by the Program for Public Consultation and the Center for International & Security Studies at the University of Maryland between June 18 and July 7, also found no significant differences between self-identified Republicans and Democrats on the issue.
The poll, which was released as negotiations between Iran and six world powers intensified in Vienna in advance of the July 20 deadline for an agreement, was distinct in the level of detail provided to the respondents before they ultimately had to choose between “a) making a deal that allows Iran to enrich but only to a low level, provides more intrusive inspections and gradually lifts some sanctions; [and] b) not continuing the current negotiations, imposing more sanctions, and pressing Iran to agree to end all uranium enrichment.”
As noted by George Perkovich, who heads the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the survey methodology “modeled a rational thought process” much more rational than that which can normally be found in the US government. “Most members of Congress don’t spend much time on this except when they meet with someone who’s writing a check,” he said at the survey’s release.
Nonetheless, he and Suzanne Maloney, an Iran specialist at the Brookings Institution, agreed that the survey’s findings suggests that, if indeed a deal is reached with Iran, the Obama administration will be in a good position to sell it.
This “Citizen Cabinet” method simulated the policy-making process: respondents were given briefings on the subject and arguments — both for and against — the two options before they were asked to make a final recommendation.
The briefings and arguments were vetted in advance by independent experts and Congressional staffers from both sides of the aisle, according to Steven Kull, the Program’s director, to ensure as much accuracy and balance as possible within the US political context. You can judge this for yourself by examining the study and its methodology (beginning on p. 5). More than one staffer, Kull said Tuesday at a press briefing, commented that the respondents “are going to know more than their Member (of Congress) knows” after reviewing the material.
“At this point, the public doesn’t have a clear idea,” said Kull. “[This survey] tells us what would happen if we had a bigger debate,…and people had more information.”
All of the briefing materials were provided to respondents via the Internet, and access was arranged for those who lacked it. According to Kull, only 16 out of the 748 randomly selected respondents did not complete the exercise, which also required participants to assess each of the arguments separately for their persuasiveness before making a final policy choice. I won’t bore you with further details about the methodology, but here are the main findings:
- 61% of all respondents ultimately opted for a deal, while 35% chose the sanctions route.
- 62% of self-identified Republicans opted for a deal, compared with 65% of Democrats and only 51% of independents. Kull said they found no significant differences between respondents living in “red” and “blue” districts.
- Support for a deal correlated strongly with education levels. While 71 percent of respondents with at least a college degree supported a deal, that was true of only 46 percent of respondents who did not graduate from high school and 54% of those with only a high school diploma.
Still, it’s worth noting that the numbers who prefer a deal over increased sanctions are not so very different from those taken last November when the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) was being negotiated between the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) and Iran in Geneva. Sixty-four percent of respondents in an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted a week before the Geneva accord said they supported “an agreement in which the United States and other countries would lift some of their economic sanctions against Iran, in exchange for Iran restricting its nuclear program in a way that makes it harder to produce nuclear weapons.” Thirty percent were opposed.
A second poll taken by CNN on the eve of the agreement found 56 percent of respondents in favor of “an interim deal that would ease some …economic sanctions and in exchange require Iran to accept major restrictions on its nuclear program but not end it completely and submit to greater international inspection of its nuclear facilities.” Thirty-nine percent opposed. In that poll, however, there was a much more significant gap between Republican and Democratic respondents than that found in the survey released Tuesday. While 66% of Democrats supported such a deal in the CNN poll; only 45% of Republicans did.
In addition to the questions about a possible nuclear deal, the new survey asked respondents a number of other pertinent questions after they completed the briefings and made their final recommendations on the nuclear negotiations:
- 61% said they favored US cooperation with Iran in dealing with the ongoing crisis in Iraq; 35 percent opposed. There was no meaningful difference in support among Democrats and Republicans.
- 82% said they favored direct talks between the two governments on “issues of mutual concern;” 16% opposed.
- Iran’s image in the US has appeared to improve compared to eight years ago when Kull’s World Public Opinion asked many of the same questions: 19% of respondents said they had either a “very” (2%) or “somewhat” (17%) favorable opinion of the Iranian government. That was up from 12% in 2006. And, while roughly the same percentage (79%) of the public said they held an unfavorable opinion of Iran’s government as in 2006, those who described their view as “very unfavorable” fell from 48% to 31%.
On possible confidence-building bilateral measures, the survey found that:
- 71% of respondents said they favored greater cultural, educational, and sporting exchanges and greater access by journalists of the two countries to the other, while 26% were opposed.
- 55% said they favored more trade; 41% were opposed — a finding that will no doubt be of interest to many US businesses which, according to a new study released Monday by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), have lost out on well over $100 billion in trade with Iran between 1995 and 2012.
- Only 47% of respondents said they favored having more Americans and Iranians visit each other’s countries as tourists. A 50% plurality opposed that option.
- 69% said they favor a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that includes Israel as well as its Islamic neighbors; only 28% were opposed.
In responding to the individual arguments made in the survey for and against a deal with Iran, Republicans generally tended to be somewhat more hawkish than Democrats, although independents tended to be substantially more so. More significant partisan differences appeared in their opinions about Iran’s government: 40% of Republicans said they held a “very unfavorable view” of Tehran, compared to 24% of Democrats and 27% of Republicans. Perhaps the most striking difference emerged on the questions regarding the compatibility of the Islamic world and the West: while 62% of Republicans said they considered conflict between the two inevitable, only 33% of Democrats agreed with that view.
Photo: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, US Secretary of State John Kerry shake hands after world powers reached an interim agreement with Iran over its nuclear program on Nov. 24, 2013 in Geneva. Credit: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
]]>by Francois Nicoulaud
“No deal is better than bad deal:” that’s the mantra that has been heard ad nauseam in the recent past and presented as self-evident of U.S. toughness in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
But is it really so? Of course, everybody knows what “no deal” means. It is [...]]]>
by Francois Nicoulaud
“No deal is better than bad deal:” that’s the mantra that has been heard ad nauseam in the recent past and presented as self-evident of U.S. toughness in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
But is it really so? Of course, everybody knows what “no deal” means. It is more difficult to discern at what point a deal becomes bad, rather than good, or even average. But plenty of experts are ready to help. A bad deal, they tell us, is a deal which would allow the Iranians to produce the material necessary for a bomb in less than six months. A bad deal is a deal which would not clarify once and for all what kind of research the Iranians have been pursuing in the past for manufacturing a nuclear explosive device. A bad deal is a deal which would allow the Iranians to pursue their ballistic missile program. And so on… One ends up understanding that any deal less than perfect would amount to an unacceptably bad deal.
But such an approach goes against any diplomatic process in which compromise and give and take are key notions. It leads to the conclusion that a perfect deal is a deal which does not have to be negotiated, a deal in which the winner takes all. And indeed, there are people who believe that non-proliferation is too important a question to be submitted to any kind of compromise. It deserves only perfect deals.
History, though, does not confirm this approach. The mother of all non-proliferation agreements, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), concluded in 1968, was in each and all its articles one big compromise. A few countries were allowed to develop nuclear arsenals, others not. The countries that agreed to forsake any military nuclear ambitions were allowed to bring their nuclear capabilities up to the thin red line beyond which could start the manufacturing of an explosive nuclear device. Nobody was happy at the result when the Treaty was signed and nobody is satisfied today by the state of affairs that has developed since.
Thus, the NPT was a deeply imperfect agreement, and indeed, a kind of bad deal. But would a “no deal” have been better? Obviously not. In a different field, the strategic arms limitation agreements concluded during and after the Cold War between the US and the USSR, later on Russia, and signed on the US side by Presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Obama… were certainly deeply imperfect. But, again, would “no deals” have been better?
Considering the Iranian negotiation, one could risk being provocative by saying that almost any deal (at least in the ambit of the current negotiation) could be better than no deal at all. No deal means the unchecked development of the Iranian program, the continuing increase of its enrichment capacities and stock of enriched uranium, the completion of a reactor of the plutonium-production type, and eventually the resumption of active research on engineering a nuclear device. By way of consequence, it would mean a growing tension between the international community and the Islamic Republic, possibly culminating in strikes on its nuclear facilities and in armed confrontation.
Compared to such a prospect, a far less-than-perfect agreement could appear indeed as highly desirable. Let us remember that international relations are nurtured by iterative and evolutionary processes. “Solve-all”, perfectly designed agreements, the epitome of which could well have been the Treaty of Versailles, seldom produce brilliant and lasting results. What is critical is to grab at the right moment the maximum of what is within reach. The art of diplomacy lies precisely in the ability to first discern, and then to join and knit together the extremes of what can be willingly accepted by the conflicting parties. It incorporates also the humility of leaving to others the task of solving at a later stage questions not yet fully addressed or wholly answered, in the knowledge that new circumstances created by an agreement will create new possibilities for progress. It keeps in mind that even an imperfect agreement, if faithfully implemented by the parties, can be a kind of confidence-building machine, opening the way to further advances. This is precisely what happened with the November 24 Joint Plan of Action between the P5+1 and Iran: that accord was transitory and therefore essentially imperfect, but it created the proper atmosphere for a more ambitious step forward.
Given the current state of the negotiations, how can these general considerations be translated into concrete terms? Let us limit ourselves to the most difficult point; that is, the acceptable level of Iranian enrichment activities. Here, the obvious line of compromise turns around capping them for a few years the present level of employed enrichment capacity – expressed in Separation Work Units (SWU) in order neutralize the consequences of the possible introduction of more efficient centrifuges. The figure to be retained would then be between 8,000 and 10,000 SWU per year.
For this, the Iranians have to admit that they do not need to develop an enrichment capacity on an industrial scale (about 50,000 SWU per year and over) as long as do not break ground on the main structures of their future nuclear power plants. And they should take advantage of this interval to develop more productive and more secure centrifuges than the primitive, outdated model that forms the bulk of their present stock of working centrifuges. They also need to progress significantly in the technology of nuclear-fuel manufacturing in order to be ready in due time if they want to meet at least partially the needs of their future nuclear power plants.
On the other side, the West should consider the enormous political difficulty the Iranian government would face if it had to dismantle even part of the nation’s hard-won enrichment capacity. It is true that accepting the preservation of this capacity at its present level would open the theoretical risk of the Iranians quickly acquiring significant quantities of highly enriched uranium, thus opening the way to the bomb. But considering the self-destructive consequences of such a blatant breach of agreement, the risk is very limited indeed, and by all means much more limited than the risks raised by the absence of any deal. Is this risk really unmanageable for the coalition of the world’s most powerful countries, given the sophistication of their diplomatic, intelligence, and contingency-planning capacities? Of course, such a compromise could be easily depicted with equal vehemence as a bad deal on both sides. And that is why it is probably the right compromise, and a fair deal.
Photo: The P5+1 foreign ministers, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif at United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, November 24, 2013. Credit: State Department photo/Public Domain
]]>via Gary’s Choices
In the avalanche of reportage and commentary on the nuclear deal with Iran, here are a few tiny facts that may have escaped your notice:
1. France’s President François Hollande made his triumphal trip to Israel (a hero because he put a speed bump in the way of an [...]]]>
via Gary’s Choices
In the avalanche of reportage and commentary on the nuclear deal with Iran, here are a few tiny facts that may have escaped your notice:
1. France’s President François Hollande made his triumphal trip to Israel (a hero because he put a speed bump in the way of an agreement); a few days later, France returned to the negotiations and quietly signed the text. Can he still wear his hero medal?
2. Opponents of the deal denounce the “shredding” of the United Nations Security Council resolutions (which demanded that Iran stop all enrichment) but fail to notice that all five Permanent Members of the Security Council negotiated and signed off on the text. These are the same countries that passed those resolutions.
3. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just a year ago used a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate that Iran was getting perilously close to a nuclear weapon; the agreement moves Iran far away from his famous red line. Is that a “historic mistake?”
4. Netanyahu in 1992 said that if no one intervened Iran would have a bomb within five years — and he has been saying the same thing ever since. He has been consistently wrong for more than two decades.
5. If you look carefully at the words of the opposition, you’ll see that they base all their objections on the supposition that Iran will renege on its commitments and the US will acquiesce. Do they have an alternative? Whining is not a policy.
6. The dog that didn’t bark: since the last Iranian election there has not been one peep from our old friend Ahmadinejad. Several American politicians who relish conflict in the Middle East have said they miss him. I don’t.
7. The other dog: the strangely silent Revolutionary Guards. Ditto.
8. Have you noticed how many of the people opposing the nuclear agreement are the same ones who thought invading Iraq was a nifty idea? War good; talk bad.
9. Iran is so determined to build a nuclear weapon that it renounces them under any and all circumstances, reduces its production of enriched uranium, and invites the largest group of inspectors in history to monitor its activities. Hmmmm…
10. Iran has been able to build a nuclear device for at least seven years and has not done so. In the eyes of some that is absolute proof of their deviousness.
– Gary Sick is a former captain in the U.S. Navy, who served as an Iran specialist on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He currently teaches at Columbia University. He blogs at http://garysick.tumblr.com.
Photo Credit: ISNA/Mona Hoobehfekr
]]>by James A. Russell
Wow. This is what we were expecting from a guy that ran for president as a transformational figure but has left so many of us disappointed as he declined to dive into the scrum to get the ball.
But now? A deal where none thought one was possible. A deal [...]]]>
by James A. Russell
Wow. This is what we were expecting from a guy that ran for president as a transformational figure but has left so many of us disappointed as he declined to dive into the scrum to get the ball.
But now? A deal where none thought one was possible. A deal in spite of his multiplying number of detractors on the home front and in Jerusalem. You have to give credit where credit is due.
If there is an abiding lesson from the Iran nuclear deal, it is that the US still holds the cards in seeking solutions to the world’s myriad problems. US political power and authority still matter – and we need a president and empowered, able deputies that can wield it. Hello Barack! Great job John. Welcome to the big leagues! Keep it going.
Isn’t this how its supposed to go for the world’s superpower? The United States orchestrated the P-5+1 unity with deft and subtle diplomacy every step of the way. French opposition was handled, the UK played its usual supporting role, the Russians actually chimed in, and the Israelis were politely but firmly kept at arm’s length. That’s what you call diplomacy. Do we think Jim Baker or Henry Kissinger would have done it any differently?
Perhaps most importantly, the deal hammered out in Geneva reflects things many thought had been lost in the Obama Administration – US global leadership, tough but sensible bargaining, compromise where necessary, and an agreement that ultimately makes the world a safer place in spite of detractors in Congress parroting lines supplied by the Israeli lobby.
We find out that the breakthrough with Iran was accompanied and perhaps enabled by a backchannel with Iran reminiscent of the Cold War era in which Kissinger was dispatched on various occasions to Brezhnev’s hunting dacha in the woods around Moscow. This time, William Burns and various others traveled on service elevators in hotels in Oman to meet with Iranian interlocutors earning their civil servant paychecks in their tireless search for peace in service of their country.
Another abiding lesson of the Iran deal is that smart, empowered cabinet secretaries can accomplish a lot if they are given a long leash and lots of gas to fly their airplane around the world. Hillary Clinton flew around a lot but accomplished little during her four years. John Kerry arrived, threw himself into difficult problems and is trying to move the ball forward and is apparently empowered by the White House. He won’t solve the all worlds problems — witness the Palestinians twisting in the wind — but at least he’s trying. Barack: keep on filling up his airplane with gas — the world still needs US leadership and maybe you need to take some of these trips with him.
One of the things missing from this White House from day one was the sense of teamwork and purpose that was supposed to have operationalized Obama’s transformational message during the campaign. In its place, we got a suspicious, insecure White House that distrusted and never really understood the vast governmental system that is was supposed to be in charge of. Many have watched in astonishment at the unused, broken inter-agency foreign policy process that has been pushed aside in favor of serendipitous, centralized decision-making by a few in the White House.
In this case, however, it seems clear that the White House relied on its team, delegated authority and reaped the rewards. Maybe there was a good reason that 59+ million Americans voted for John Kerry when he ran for president in 2004. Maybe the Obama Administration should start asking around in the State Department and the Defense Department what other good ideas are out there to address the world’s problems.
To be sure, the first phase of the agreement is the opening round in a series of negotiations that will prove difficult as Iran is forced to return its nuclear program to comprehensive safeguards administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The next round of negotiations will have their ups and downs — just as the arms control talks with the Soviets did all those many years ago.
Moreover, domestic political opponents of accommodation with Iran represent another obstacle to finally sealing the deal over the next six months. Fueled by opposition to anything Obama wants and the Israeli lobby’s war chants, Obama’s enemies in Congress will criticize him every step of the way. The Obama Administration will have to go to the mat and ask all those former high-level officials to trot on up to the Hill to reiterate their support in order to forestall new sanctions and relax the existing ones if negotiations with Iran yield fruit over the next six months.
This is the kind of leadership we expect from a president. America yearns to be led in the right direction. It’s what the country voted for when it elected Barack Obama. The country doesn’t endorse, the sclerotic and paranoid vision of right-wing republicans that seek to destroy what’s left of the America dream in their tireless pursuit of helping only the wealthiest Americans and other special interests.
Welcome to the scrum, Mr. President. Where have you been?
]]>By Robert E. Hunter
The devil is in the details. This cliché is already being invoked regarding the deal concluded this past weekend between Iran and the so-called P5+1 – the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, along with the European Union’s High Representative, Baroness Ashton.
Devil and details, [...]]]>
By Robert E. Hunter
The devil is in the details. This cliché is already being invoked regarding the deal concluded this past weekend between Iran and the so-called P5+1 – the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, along with the European Union’s High Representative, Baroness Ashton.
Devil and details, yes; but if there is such a thing, the “angel” is in the “big picture,” the fact of the agreement itself – interim, certainly; flawed, perhaps; but a basic break with the past, come-what-may. It will now become much harder for Iran to get the bomb, even if it were hell-bent on doing so. The risk of war has plummeted. Israel is safer – along with the rest of the region and the world — even as Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu denies that fact.
This is the end of the Cold War with Iran, (accurately) defined as a state when it is not possible to distinguish between what is negotiable and what is not. Going back to that parlous state would require a major act of Iranian bad faith, perfidy, or aggression, not at all in its self-interest.
In the last few days, the Middle East has become different from what it was before. Indeed, that happened, if one needs to denote “moments of history,” when President Barack Obama picked up the phone to call Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, in the latter’s limousine on the way to Kennedy Airport.
Even that moment was months in the making. But psychologically it set in train a sequence of events that is causing an earthquake in the region. And like any good earthquake, the extent, the impact, and even the direction it travels will not be clear for some time. But one thing is clear: much is now different, and despite serious down-side risks, that can be positive if people in power will make it so. As said by John Kennedy, the 50th anniversary of whose assassination also came this past week, “Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.”
The struggle with Iran has never been just about “the bomb.” Even putting aside the question whether Iran’s insistence on having a domestic nuclear energy program would ineluctably morph into a nuclear weapons capability (or threshold capability, a “screwdriver’s turn” away from a weapon), Iran has posed a problem for the Middle East, many of its neighbors, and outsiders in the West ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. That turned Iran from being a supporter of Western, especially American, interests – a so-called “regional influential” – to being a challenger of US hegemony, the more-or-less accepted predominance of Sunnis over Shiites in the heart of the Middle East, and the comfort level of close US partners among Arab oil-producing states and Israel. That all happened well before Iran’s nuclear program became an issue.
Led by the United States, countries challenged by the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution fostered a policy of containing Iran. It included diplomatic isolation, the introduction of economic sanctions, US support – some covert, some open – for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its war against Iran, and US buttressing of the military security of its regional partners, along with the plentiful supply of Western armaments. There have also been widespread reports of external efforts to destabilize Iran, along with a US predilection, when not also a formal policy, for regime change in Iran, a goal which continues to have its adherents. For example, see here.
Why Iran has now decided to negotiate seriously about its nuclear program will be long debated and will be variously ascribed to swingeing economic sanctions that have increased pressures by average Iranians on their government to do what is needed to get them lifted; to progressive loss of popular support for the mullah-led regime and a “mellowing” of ideology – factors analogous to the crumbling of Soviet and East European communism two decades ago; and to the election of an Iranian president with an agenda different from his predecessor – blessed, one has to emphasize, by the Supreme Leader for reasons he has not revealed.
The current state of possibilities was helped immeasurably by a US administration that has itself been prepared to negotiate seriously, unlike its two predecessors, from the time a decade ago when Iran put a positive offer on the table that went unanswered – as Secretary of State John Kerry noted in early Sunday morning (Geneva time) commentary.
At heart, what has happened in the last two months is that Iran is now back “in play” in the region and is beginning the march toward resuming a role in the international community – slow perhaps, abortive perhaps, but for now pointed in that direction. Assuming that the issue of Iran’s nuclear program can be dealt with successfully – a big “assuming” — that is clearly in US interests. While it is much too soon to “count chickens,” that could lead toward renewed US-Iranian cooperation, tacit or explicit, over Afghanistan, where complementary interests led Iran to support the US overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. The possibility of Iran’s potentially no longer being a pariah state could lead it to value stability in Iraq over the pursuit of major influence there, which itself is problematic, given historic tensions between the two countries that Shia co-fraternity between the leaderships in Baghdad and Teheran only partially obscures.
It is still a stretch, however, to see Iran’s working to reconcile with Israel (a quasi-ally before 1979), although Iran’s full reengagement in the outside world and especially in relations with the United States can never be completed without Iran’s reaching out to Israel (and vice versa), a feat far more difficult than the diplomacy that began to bear fruit last weekend in Geneva. And for Iran to change its posture toward Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon would require not just alteration of Iran’s ambitions but also changes in policies by other states and groups.
Syria is both symbol and substance of the core problem of Iran’s re-emergence as a serious player in the Middle East. At one level is the slow-burning civil war between Sunnis and Shias that was reignited by the Iranian Revolution and then, when that fire began to be tamped down, by the US-led invasion of Iraq, which overthrew a Sunni minority government dominating a majority Shia population. The war in Syria is at least in part an effort by Sunni states to “right the balance.” In the process, however, Saudi Arabia in particular has been unwilling to control elements in its country that are both inspiring and arming the worst elements of Islamist extremism and which also fuel not just Al Qaeda and its ilk but also the Taliban. They have been primary sources of destabilization in several regional states and have killed American soldiers and others in Afghanistan.
At another level is the state-centered competition for influence in the region – geopolitics. This is also linked to the relationships of regional states with the West and especially the United States. In particular, Saudi Arabia and Israel each has a basic stake in their ties to, and support by, the United States; both stoutly oppose Iran’s reentry into that competition, however modest. Of course, Israel is also concerned by the continuing risk that, somehow, the US (and others) will fail to trammel Iran’s capacity to get the bomb; and also that attention will again swing back to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Saudi Arabia faces no potential military threat from Iran. Indeed, to the extent it and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf face a threat or challenge from Iran, it is denominated in terms of Sunni vs. Shia, cultural and economic penetration, and the greater vibrancy of Iranian society – none of which can be dealt with by the huge quantities of modern armaments these countries have accumulated.
Further, as Iran does again become a player and moves out from under crippling sanctions, in the process attracting massive foreign investments, uncertainties regarding Iranian power and potential challenges to its neighbors will lead the latter to cleave even more closely to the United States; and the US will have to continue being a critical strategic presence in the region – its desire to “pivot” to East Asia notwithstanding.
With all these stakes, it is not surprising that several regional states are opposing the US-led opening to Iran and have already signaled a no-holds-barred campaign, including in US domestic politics, if not to scuttle what has been achieved so far, at least to limit US (and P5+1) negotiating flexibility. (Iranian hard-liners will also be working to undercut President Rouhani.) Israel and others can rightly ask that the US not fall for a “sucker’s deal,” though, as Secretary Kerry correctly stated, “We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid.” But they are also worried that they will lose their long-unchallenged preeminence in Washington and with Western business interests. This is not Washington’s problem. Indeed, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria and even to Israeli-Palestinian relations, drawing Iran constructively into the outside world – if that can be done and done safely – is very much in US interests.
Even as things stand now, at an early stage in moving beyond cold war with Iran, President Obama has earned his Nobel Peace Prize.
]]>These understandings are a credit to all who were involved in their negotiation. They are practical, far-sighted, and fair – although personally I believe greater sanctions relief would have been justified by the temporary derogations to the Nuclear-Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) rights that Iran has volunteered.
The quality [...]]]>
These understandings are a credit to all who were involved in their negotiation. They are practical, far-sighted, and fair – although personally I believe greater sanctions relief would have been justified by the temporary derogations to the Nuclear-Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) rights that Iran has volunteered.
The quality of this Joint Plan of Action is particularly apparent in the enhanced monitoring provisions which Iran has offered.
Iran has agreed to:
- allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) daily access to the two enrichment plants that have been at the centre of Western and Israeli concern about Iran’s nuclear program. Daily access is more than enough to ensure that detection of any Iranian move towards using these facilities to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium would be so timely that the Un Security Council could interrupt and put an end to the process.
- give the IAEA access to the workshops that produce centrifuge components and where centrifuges are assembled. This is not a legal obligation that flows from Iran’s comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA. It is a voluntary, confidence-building measure. It will enable the IAEA to provide the E3+3 with assurances that Iran is implementing its commitment in the Plan of Action to limit the production of centrifuges to what is needed for the replacement of any of its currently operating machines that break down.
- provide the IAEA with detailed information about the purpose of each building on its nuclear sites, as well as about its uranium mines and mills and unprocessed nuclear material stocks. This will help the IAEA towards providing the international community with a credible assurance that there are no undeclared nuclear activities or material on Iranian soil – an assurance that ought, in principle, to open the way to treating the Iranian nuclear program in the same manner as that of any non-nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT, as envisaged in the last paragraph of the Joint Plan of Action.
- furnish up-to-date design information for the reactor under construction at Arak. This well help the IAEA to design, in collaboration with Iran, a plan for applying safeguards to the plant, with the aim of maximising the possibility of timely detection of any diversion of nuclear fuel from the reactor to non-peaceful purposes.
A very interesting innovation in the Plan of Action is the agreement to establish a Joint Iran/E3+3 Commission to address plan implementation issues and to work with the IAEA to facilitate resolution of past and present issues of concern. Iran has long argued that some of the demands for cooperation made of it by the IAEA Director General and his subordinates fall outside the IAEA’s legal authority and are unreasonable. This new Commission will provide Iran with a forum in which it can set out such cases, confident that at least two other members of the Commission, Russia and China, will be ready to give impartial consideration to its arguments.
This Commission is also likely to facilitate resolution of questions relating to possible research by Iran into the technology of nuclear devices. Such research is believed to have taken place during the years when Saddam Hussein either ran a nuclear weapons program or was suspected of wanting to resurrect that program after its dismantlement by the UN and IAEA.
Together these provisions in the action plan amount to a very promising package. They make possible state-of-the-art verification of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program. Such high-quality verification was never available in the only state that has developed nuclear weapons while adhering to the NPT, North Korea — nor in Iraq prior to 1991 and between 1998 and 2003.
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