Tehran Commentators Mull Fate Of Iran Nuclear Negotiations
The Rouydad website in Tehran has warned that failure in Iran nuclear talks would increase regional and international tensions and perhaps lead to war.
The Rouydad website in Tehran has warned that failure in Iran nuclear talks would increase regional and international tensions and perhaps lead to war.
The website, which takes a centrist political position, argued Iran faced a stark choice between reviving the deal – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – or announcing its death.
The suspension in March of Iran’s year-long negotiations with world powers in Vienna coincided with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which complicated the situation. There have been no subsequent signs of rapprochement between the United States and Iran.
In the latest round of exchanges, the US State Department Spokesman Ned Price blamed the talks’ suspension on Tehran raising demands beyond the JCPOA. Iran has long argued that sanctions introduced by President Donald Trump – no matter whether under rubrics of ‘human rights’ or ‘terrorism’ – were designed to stymie subsequent efforts to revive the JCPOA, from which Trump withdrew the US in 2018.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has said the Biden Administration's inaction has left diplomacy in suspended animation, and that agreement over reviving the JCPOA was a simple matter of all parties honoring commitments.
With the US and the three European JCPOA signatories considering a resolution at next week’s IAEA board critical of Iran for failing to satisfy the agency over its pre-2003 nuclear work, China Thursday said such a move would undermine JCPOA negotiations. Qatar and Oman have been trying to mediate.
Iran Diplomacy website suggested that with the Vienna talks suspended, the US, France, Germany, and the United States might persuade the 35-member IAEA board “to make a political decision and issue a resolution that would send Iran's case to the UNSC [United Nations Security Council]."
‘Technical,’ and ‘political’
Qasem Mohebali, a former Iranian diplomat, told Nameh News website, that a report from IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi on the pre-2003 work, which leaked May 30, was ‘technical’ whereas any decision by the UNSC would be political. In very different circumstances in 2005-6, Iran’s expansion of its nuclear program led to a referral from the IAEA to the UNSC, which imposed multilateral sanctions with the support of both Russia and China.
Mohebali said that any IAEA board decision would be made purely on votes cast by the 35 member states, and that the outcome “depends on how US and Europe can garner support for their idea.”
Political commentator Javad Arianmanesh told Nameh News that the JCPOA was likely to fall aside. " In that case, things can become more difficult for Iran," he said. Arianmanesh argued “the most important obstacle on the way of any settlement" was the disagreement between Tehran and Washington over the US listing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a ‘foreign terrorist organization.’
Arianmanesh argued that the “fate of the country’s economy” depended on lifting US sanctions, and that “the longer the suspension of the talks continues” the more difficult “everything” would be for Iran.
In an interview on Wednesday, David Albright, founder and president of Institute for Science and International Security said the Islamic Republic has accumulated enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuckear weapon. He told Iran International's Fardad Farahzad, “Iran has reached this critical period where its breakout time is zero. And what that means is that now it has enough highly enriched uranium to fashion a nuclear weapon.”
However, assembling a nuclear weapon would take some additional time, Albright said and added, “But it may not be as long as some have argued. We don’t know how quickly Iran could make nuclear weapons today.”
While the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been monitoring Iran’s overt nuclear activities focused on uranium enrichment, the agency does not have full access to inspect every suspected military facility that might be engaged in weapons design and testing.
Albright, a physicist and an IAEA inspector in the 1990s, explained that the world does not know what kind of a nuclear device Iran would decide to make.
“They may choose to make a crude nuclear explosive to detonate underground, or to deliver it crudely or through crude methods like truck or ship. That could happen over the course of several months, less than six months. They may want, on the other hand, to focus on just building a warhead for a ballistic missile; that could take longer, a year or two. So again, the critical thing is that they have reached the zero-breakout time,” he explained.
Referring to Iran’s clandestine AMAD nuclear program in the 2000s, Albright said the plan was to accumulate enough fissile material to build five bombs, but once the secret was disclosed in 2002, Tehran abandoned the scheme under great international pressure. “So, in a way it's closer to nuclear weapons now than it was in the height of its crash nuclear weapons program in the early 2000s. So, this is a major milestone,” the former IAEA inspector said.
Iran has demonstrated that it could advance quickly in the absence of international restrictions on its nuclear program, Albright said, referring to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, or any new version of it.
In addition to Iran's ability to quickly resurrect and advance its program, the JCPOA is “is very time-bound,” he said, referring to the sunset clauses of the original agreement, adding, “It doesn't last very long, so it's a temporary fix-at best. And there are some problems in getting in that deal.”
To stop Iran at this juncture could also take another strategy Albright said – the strategy of increasing pressure on Tehran. “It's not the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign, it's much more. It would involve Europeans and the US and other allies working very closely together to increase pressure on Iran. It would involve stigmatizing Iran even more; like Russia's being stigmatized.”
Albright went on to say that a strategy of intense pressure would involve more support for Israel and other allied countries in the Middle East, “to push harder against Iran.”
He predicted that whether now or in the future the time will come for a tough pressure policy to stop the Islamic Republic from becoming a nuclear power.
“So, I think that's a path, and that's probably the path we're headed on. Maybe a nuclear deal could postpone this path, being launched for a few years perhaps. But there are real obstacles to getting that deal. And I think we are now headed into a period where pressure is going to increase on Iran.”