TALKs in Lausanne between Iran and six world powers on a
ground-breaking deal to constrain its nuclear programme, in return for
the staged lifting of sanctions, ran straight through their March 31st
deadline; the negotiators decided in the wee hours of April 1st to give
themselves another day to haggle. The cause of the over-run was tension
between the fuzzy declaration of principles that the Iranians would
prefer and the detailed framework agreement that the Americans need to
persuade a sceptical Congress to postpone a vote on new sanctions when
it returns on April 14th.
The Americans want precise numbers on how many uranium
enrichment centrifuges Iran can spin, how much uranium it can hold and
how much plutonium can come out of a reactor at Arak. The Iranians want
to avoid specifics on nuclear limits at this stage, while securing firm
commitments on the lifting of sanctions, particularly those imposed by
the UN. On sanctions, the West wants automatic “snap-back” if any
serious violation by Iran is detected, which the Iranians reject.
All this makes it unlikely that whatever comes of these
negotiations will be seen as historic. If a comprehensive agreement is
signed by the end of June it will be regarded as an important milestone
passed on the way. But if the process collapses, this accord will have
been the high-water mark of a brave effort that met with failure.
The apparent inability to nail down critical details and
the number of issues that remained unresolved means that the next round
of the negotiations will be even harder than these. The broad aim is to
leave Iran free from most sanctions and far enough from the ability to
make a nuclear weapon that, if it were to head in that direction,
America and its allies would have time to forestall it. This would
reduce the incentives for other regional powers, such as Saudi Arabia
and Egypt, to move towards the nuclear threshold themselves.
The yardstick is Iran’s “breakout capability”—the time
it would take to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one device.
Extending it from a couple of months—the situation today—to at least a
year is a sensible, quantifiable goal. Iran had previously indicated it
would cut its number of operating centrifuges to about 6,500. Not yet
agreed is the amount of low-enriched uranium Iran will be allowed to
stockpile—a variable that dictates the number of centrifuges it can
keep.
Centrifugal forces
However, the biggest problems which still need to be
tackled lie elsewhere. There remains ambiguity about what rights the
Iranians will have to continue nuclear research and development. They
are working on centrifuges up to 20 times faster than today’s which they
want to start deploying when the agreement’s first ten years are up.
The worry is that better centrifuges reduce the size of the clandestine
enrichment facilities that Iran would need to build if it were intent on
escaping the agreement’s strictures.
That leads to the issue on which everything else will
eventually hinge. Iran has a long history of lying about its nuclear
programme. It only declared its two enrichment facilities, Natanz and
Fordow, after Western intelligence agencies found out about them. A
highly intrusive inspection and verification regime is thus essential,
and it would have to continue long after other elements of an agreement
expire. Inspectors from the IAEA would have to be able to inspect any
facility, declared or otherwise, civil or military, on demand.
Such powers for the IAEA are a lot more sweeping than
those it has under the safeguard agreements that are part of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. They go beyond those that the so-called
“additional protocol” gives the IAEA, powers that allow it not only to
verify that declared nuclear material is not being squirrelled away for
military use but also to check for undeclared nuclear material and
activities. But in Iran’s case such unprecedented powers are seen as
essential.
For a deal to be done in June, Iran will have to consent
to such an inspection regime. It will also have to address about a
dozen questions posed by the IAEA over the “possible military
dimensions” of its nuclear programme. Yet on March 23rd Yukiya Amano,
the agency’s director, said that Iran had replied to only one of those
questions. Parchin, a military base which the IAEA believes may have
been used for testing the high-explosive fuses that are needed to
implode, and thus set off, the uranium or plutonium at the core of a
bomb, remains out of bounds. Nor has the IAEA been given access to
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the physicist and Revolutionary Guard officer
alleged to be at the heart of the weapons development research. The
IAEA’s February 19th report on Iran stated that it “remains concerned
about the possible existence—of undisclosed nuclear-related
activities—including activities related to the development of a nuclear
payload for a missile.”
Iran says that it will sign up to stringent new
inspections only when all the main elements of the deal are in place.
But its lack of cooperation with the IAEA does not bode well. Even if
this week produces a limited success, it would be well to remember the
negotiator’s watchword: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”
Credit: Economist.com
No comments:
Post a Comment