It’s been just two weeks since a long-delayed preliminary or “framework” agreement was reached between six major world powers and Iran on its nuclear program. A final or “comprehensive” agreement is supposed to be concluded by June 30.
Already, there’s been a flood of analyses, from both Israel and the West, about whether the framework plan is a “good” or “bad” deal.
Where one comes down on this depends on where one begins, what one believes has been achieved thus far, and what one expects in the next few months.
Regarding the first point – where one begins – it’s important to recall something that’s been almost entirely ignored: that, when talks for the first interim agreement were launched in November 2013, their declared aim was bold and definitive: “The goal of these negotiations is to reach a mutually agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful. Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek or develop any nuclear weapons” (emphasis added).
Yet, no sooner had the objective that Iran’s nuclear program would be “exclusively peaceful” been announced than we began hearing the talks were really about making sure Iran could not “break out” to a nuclear weapon for at least one year. So much for “under no circumstances… ever.”
The lofty goal of preventing Iran from ever having a nuclear bomb quickly became an exercise in creating conditions under which it would be unlikely Iran could cheat its way toward building a bomb in under a year – arguably time enough for the ruse to be detected and possibly countered.
Tehran, after all, has mastered deceiving the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, its nuclear watchdog agency, about Iran’s obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), which it had signed, committing it to disclosing all its nuclear activities and sites. Secret sites – Natanz, and Fordow – were revealed by other means, a discovery that led the UN Security Council to pass binding resolutions first forbidding Iran from carrying out any nuclear fuel enrichment, and, when Iran defied it, imposing sanctions for its defiance.
The 2013 interim agreement, which allowed Iran to enrich fuel up to five per cent, was a step back from the Security Council resolutions. According to many analysts, however, it amounted to a recognition that nothing short of war, and perhaps not even that, was going to stop Iran from asserting its “right” to enrich, even though such a “right” doesn’t exist under the NPT. In any event – and this brings us to the second point – the current interim (or preliminary) plan prohibits Iran from enriching “over 3.67 per cent for at least 15 years.”
Still, according to the White House account of the plan, Iran is permitted to run slightly more than 5,000 first-generation centrifuges for enrichment purposes at Natanz while, at Fordow, another 1,000 centrifuges will be allowed to operate but “not to enrich uranium” in a “research” facility that is to be used “for peaceful purposes only.” Does this imply, however unwittingly, the possibility that other facilities may be used for anything other than “peaceful” purposes? Apparently not.
This brings us to the third point. The only means to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program remains “peaceful” – that is, that Iran doesn’t cheat – is to ensure that IAEA inspectors will be allowed unfettered access to any site at any time. The details regarding such “intrusive” inspection remain to be worked out in the coming months. So too, critically, does the time frame for, and the extent of, sanctions relief, which is Iran’s primary goal and one Iran reportedly believes (erroneously according to U.S. officials) it will attain as soon as it signs the comprehensive agreement, assuming it does so.
Expect the following weeks and months leading to the June 30 deadline to be fraught with heated disagreements about exactly what the preliminary plan, leading to a comprehensive deal, entails.
