Fears Mount Over Iran Bomb As Nuclear Inspections Fall Sharply
Checks on Iran’s nuclear programme by international experts fell sharply last year, according to data from the UN atomic watchdog.
Checks on Iran’s nuclear programme by international experts fell sharply last year, according to data from the UN atomic watchdog.
Inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were down 10% in 2022.
The agency’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, revealed in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News that his inspectors had been “seriously affected by Iran’s decision” to end monitoring agreements created under the now defunct 2015 JCPOA deal.
The fall in inspections comes amid mounting international concern over Iran’s nuclear programme, after the Islamic Republic has already removed cameras and surveillance equipment.
Experts fear the regime may be closing in on its ambition to build a nuclear weapon with ever greater brazen ambition, and with the international community increasingly handicapped in its ability to monitor Iran’s progress.
Tehran continues to protest that its nuclear programme is peaceful, to the disbelief of experts in the outside world.
Grossi wrote in the annual IAEA Safeguards Implementation Report: “Iran has yet to clarify and resolve the outstanding safeguards issues.”
He added: “There is important and significant work ahead of us on this matter.”
On a visit to Tehran in March after Iran was found to be producing uranium of almost weapons-grade purity, Grossi had called for greater transparency by the Islamic Republic but welcomed its “high-level assurances”.
But whatever has been said in public, the newly disclosed data reveals an increasingly uncooperative Tehran.
The news will dismay domestic observers in Iran who fear that the regime’s obstructive approach will only prolong sanctions amid a continuing economic crisis.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen Mark Milley testified before the Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee, where they called for budgetary support in the face of Russian, Chinese and Iranian threats.
“Iran threatens to push the Middle East yet again into instability by supporting terrorists and proxy forces and they continue to improve the capability to produce a nuclear weapon,” Gen. Milley said.
“From the time of Iranian decision by the Supreme Leader, Iran could produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon in less than two weeks from time of decision. It will take several more months to produce an actual nuclear weapon. United States policy remains the same. United States remains committed that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” he added.
Although this has always been the Biden administration’s position, Gen. Milley’s previous testimony at the House Appropriations subcommittee on Defense in March had raised questions.
Gen. Milley at the time said that “the United States remains committed as a matter of policy that Iran will not have a fielded nuclear weapon.”
The term “fielded” led to questions about what the Biden administration’s policy exactly is regarding Iran becoming a nuclear power. Previously, President Joe Biden and all top officials had repeatedly said that US policy is not to allow the Islamic Republic to acquire a nuclear weapon, threatening that all options were on the table.
It was not clear what Gen. Milley meant by a “fielded” nuclear weapon. Did it mean the administration would allow Iran to build a bomb but not “field” it, which in essence is a vague concept.
Being a nuclear threshold state is a familiar concept, meaning that a country has the fissile material and the knowhow to build a nuclear bomb but has not decided to do so, but once a bomb is produced, it is not clear what the difference would be between a bomb in the basement and one “fielded.”
But in the Senate testimony on Thursday both Austin and Milley were clear that the administration is committed to prevent any Iranian nuclear weapon.
Secretary Austin in response to a question by Senator Susan Collins also emphasized that his responsibility is to present options to the President for making sure that the United States can prevent Iran from building a bomb.
Iran began to breach the low-level uranium enrichment it was allowed under the 2015 nuclear accord, the JCPOA, when former President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement and imposed economic sanctions in 2018. But Tehran accelerated the enrichment, stockpiling 20-percent and 60-percent enriched uranium once the Biden administration began talks in early 2021 to revive the JCPOA. Currently it is believed that Iran has enough enriched fissile material for 2-5 nuclear bombs.
Israel has repeatedly vowed to resort to military force to stop Iran from crossing the threshold and has reportedly been behind several sabotage attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities since July 2020.
The US has expanded military cooperation with Israel and regional Arab states in the past two years, conducting large military drills with the Israeli armed forces in January.
In a letter to President Joe Biden, the former diplomats claim the President’s softly-softly approach urging good behavior in return for a revival of the nuclear deal signed under former President Barack Obama, have only served the interests of Iran.
The group of over two dozen urged for a tougher approach, which had led former President Donald Trump to abandon the nuclear deal in 2018.
“Today, we write to urge you and your team to stop all diplomatic overtures toward the Islamic Republic of Iran and instead reimpose the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign – the only effective policy to protect the American people, the Iranian people, and others in the region and around the world from the Islamic Republic’s threats,” the group wrote.
In addition to former diplomats and ambassadors, the signatories include former members of Congress who urged the Biden administration to change course. Though Biden has sought to re-enter the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal since gaining office, negotiations have gone nowhere, Iran’s military activities against the US only worsening.
While Trump pulled out of the deal to force Tehran to agree to a tougher agreement, change its regional policies and limit military expansion, Iran retaliated with more uranium enrichment, especially after Joe Biden assumed office and began indirect talks to revive the JCPOA.
In February UN inspectors revealed their discovery of uranium particles of 83.7% purity at an Iran nuclear facility built deep underground to protect it from air strikes.
The regime has also grown increasingly outspoken about its hatred of the US, among its arch enemies and tensions have continued to soar including rising numbers of attacks from Iran on US facilities in Syria and the seizure of oil tankers in Persian Gulf waters.
“The United States should never preemptively set the negotiating table with concessions, not least with an adversary with four decades of rhetoric and actions targeting the United States and the American people”, the group said.
“The approach of preemptively offering sanctions relief and that trust in the regime is entirely misplaced and reckless given the regime’s record of lying about its nuclear program.”
Last week, the Biden administration announced new sanctions against the intelligence wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps over its role in the detention of Americans Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz, who have been held for years on what the US State Department calls “bogus” espionage charges.
A bipartisan congressional group last week also introduced a bill that would permanently allow American presidents to apply economic sanctions on Iran.
Ali Bagheri Keni, Iran's political deputy minister of foreign affairs and chief negotiator, on Tuesday called the withdrawal “illegal” and demanded compensation including the lifting of sanctions.
In a denial of Iran's continued nuclear activity, he wrote: "While Iran's legitimate compensatory measures in the nuclear field continue, the resumption of the full implementation of the agreement, the essential element of which should be the effective and sustainable lifting of sanctions, should the violating party (and the European Union/Troika) have a valid political will to finalize the negotiations.”
All the parties involved know that the dead body of the JCPOA is in the political morgue and cannot be revived any longer, said Mehdi Motaharnia in an interview with Nameh Newswebsite in Tehran.
According to the website, no one talks about the need to revive the JCPOA on the May 8 anniversary of former US President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the deal. What does the silence mean? Motaharnia answered: The JCPOA is dead, but no one wants to bury it.
Referring to a remark by Hamid Aboutalebi, an adviser to former President Hassan Rouhani who had said "returning to the JCPOA or making changes in it is no longer possible," Motaharnia pointed out that this is not a new situation. Even if the two sides return to something called the JCOA, it will be different from the 2015 agreement. "I have always said that reviving the JCPOA is wishful thinking," Motaharnia added.
The analyst further said that "We have to admit that the Biden administration has tightened sanctions on Iran. Despite the fact that some in Iran believed that the Biden Administration will come to terms with the Raisi government. At the time they believed that if Iran stands firm against the United States, Washington will return to the JCPOA. However, despite Iran's insistence on its terms, the United States did not give in and did not put a step back. Even Iran's ‘looking East’ policy of closer ties with China and Russia did not persuade Washington to soften its position.
Iran hoped that an anti-Western front will be formed by China after the Ukraine war started, but Beijing was not interested in that either. Nor it is interested to stand against Washington over the JCPOA, Motaharnia said, adding that although Tehran had high hopes about joining the Shanghai treaty, nothing in particular happened in Tehran's interest. Furthermore, The Chinese are not interested in opposing the United States as Iran's strategic partners.
Iran can only be happy about making a deal with Saudi Arabia and sign some contracts with Syria, but these cannot bring about a serious change in its ailing economy, said Motaharnia.
On the other hand, another Iranian foreign policy analyst Amir Ali Abolfath told Nameh News that the European signatories of the JCPOA are waiting to see if there will be an agreement with Iran over the nuclear issue. If that is not feasible, then they will use the JCPOA's ‘trigger mechanism’ and make sure that the UN Security Council's pre-JCPOA sanctions against Iran will be brought back as some Western countries have threatened.
Abolfath said: "Activating the trigger mechanism is a possibility. This is something that has been stipulated in the text of the JCPOA. So far it has not been used although Iran reduced its commitments under the JCPOA after the US pull-out. He said that the mechanism might be activated if the Europeans see that UN Resolution 2231 based on which sanctions against Iran were lifted is reaching its expiry date. Then, as there will be no JCPOA, there won't be a trigger mechanism either. Europeans would activate the trigger mechanism in that case, Abolfath said.
Iran's former government had threatened that if other JCPOA member states activate the trigger mechanism, Iran might consider exiting the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Abolfath, however, added that UN resolutions can be effective on Iran only if they affect more areas than the US sanctions, which they are not. So, Iran can rest assured that if the trigger mechanism is activated its situation will not become more difficult. Abolfath's take on the matter is that "The JCPOA will not be revived, and the United States will not return to its commitments. So, the JCPOA will continue to remain in the same state of lull and the world will not return to the pre-JCPOA period. That means the same agreement nobody is committed to will be still useful."
Rouhani in a meeting on May 3 with his former officials and aides said that before his term in office ended in mid-2021, his government had convinced the Biden administration not only to lift IRGC’s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation by the Trump administration, but also to lift sanctions on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office and entities.
Rouhani has recently been holding regular meetings with his former aides, which is seen as an act of opposition toward hardliners, which control all three branches of the government.
One of the first foreign policy initiatives by the Biden administration in early 2021 was to launch indirect negotiations with the Islamic Republic to revive the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal that former President Donald Trump had abandoned in 2018. This entailed lifting of sanctions that Trump had imposed.
The talks that lasted 18 months and eventually reached a deadlock in September 2022, were partly kept secret, and it is not clear if Washington had agreed to lifting the sanctions that Rouhani is taking credit for.
One thing which is clear is a five-month hiatus in the negotiations in Vienna from June to November of 2021 – the period from Iran’s presidential elections to when the new administration decided to return to talks.
Iran’s hardliners had readied themselves to capture the presidency, with Khamenei’s apparent blessing. The constitutional Guardian Council loyal to the Supreme Leader, disqualified most serious candidates, leaving the path open for Khamenei loyalist Ebrahim Raisi to get elected in a low-turnout vote.
Whatever Rouhani’s negotiating team had achieved in the nuclear talks from April to June 2021 became meaningless once the hardliners took office.
Rouhani was quoted by reformist media on Saturday as having said during his meeting that his government had wanted to solve as many problems as possible for the incoming administration. “Everything was completed for the revival of the JCPOA and was ready,” he was quoted as saying.
The former president went on to say, “When I informed the Supreme Leader [about lifting of the sanctions], he was very happy, but unfortunately this did not come to fruition.”
Rouhani also took credit for many domestic accomplishments and claimed that several major projects were almost completed and ready to be inaugurated by the new administration. He implicitly criticized the Raisi administration of not following up and leaving these projects in limbo.
In the wake of the unprecedented anti-regime protests last fall, reformist and centrist regime insiders have been trying to drive home the point that hardliners, having, monopolized power in parliament and controlled the presidency, have failed to solve the country’s multiple crises.
In fact, after the breakdown in the nuclear talks, the economic situation has worsened, with the national currency rial losing half its value against the US dollar, the euro, and other major currencies.
Many pundits and politicians have been blaming the deepening political and economic crises on the hardliners for not reaching a nuclear agreement with the United States, which would lift crippling sanctions.