Iran Nuclear Agreement Appears Back at Square One

Out of the wreckage of the US-Israel-Iran war, one issue is almost certain to dominate whatever settlement follows: Iran’s nuclear programme. And if a deal does emerge, it is likely to bear a striking resemblance to the accord President Trump abandoned in 2018 — the awkwardly titled Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

Signed in 2015, the agreement is widely seen as the defining foreign policy achievement of Barack Obama’s second term. It was also detested by Donald Trump, much of the Republican Party and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

When he announced the US withdrawal from the JCPOA on 8 May 2018, Trump branded it a “horrible”, one-sided agreement that “didn’t bring calm, didn’t bring peace, and it never will”.

Yet the deal itself was the product of decades of strained, frequently stalled diplomacy.

At its core, the arrangement was straightforward: Iran accepted verifiable limits on its nuclear activities in exchange for the gradual lifting of sanctions.

In practice, however, it was an intensely technical pact forged through painstaking negotiations, and critics who favoured a tougher line on Tehran had little difficulty identifying what they saw as flaws.

If mistrust had long poisoned relations between Washington and Tehran — stretching back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the US hostage crisis — the nuclear dispute hardened that hostility into something deeper.

For many Iranians, the programme has long been bound up with sovereignty and national pride.

Even before the revolution toppled him, the Shah had pursued nuclear energy on the argument that Iran’s vast oil and gas wealth had already been exploited and controlled by Western powers.

Iran, in that view, could not afford to repeat the same error — a position most Iranians shared.

George W Bush said that Iran was part of ‘an axis of evil’ in his 2002 State of the Union address

“With the fall of the Shah,” writes Ali M Ansari in his short history of Iran, “the nuclear programme was shut down on the basis that it had been a colossal waste of money and an imperialist plot to recycle Iran’s money westwards. Scientists were imprisoned and the programme mothballed.”

But during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, when Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons killed thousands of Iranian conscripts, the new Islamist leadership revisited the programme. It was seen both as a possible deterrent and as proof that a theocratic state could still embrace science.

In the West, though, Iran’s drive for nuclear energy raised suspicions, especially given the scale of the country’s oil and gas reserves, which was then becoming clearer.

The US had already imposed sanctions after the 1979 hostage crisis, and tightened them after the 1984 bombing of a US barracks in Lebanon that killed 241 marines, concluding that Iran was involved.

The Clinton administration later barred US investment in Iran’s oil fields. After 9/11, President George W Bush placed Iran in an “axis of evil”. More sanctions followed, targeting foreign firms that did business with Tehran.

From Iran’s standpoint, Western opposition to its nuclear ambitions fit a longer pattern of double standards dating back to the 1953 US and British-backed coup that toppled the democratically elected government of prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh and strengthened Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — a coup designed to protect British oil interests.

Iran argued that, as a signatory to the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), it had the same right as any other member state to enrich uranium.

‘We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,’ Barack Obama told Muslim leaders during his first inauguration address

In 2003, talks on Iran’s nuclear programme began between Tehran, the UN Security Council and the leading EU powers. But after hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged in 2005 as a forceful champion of the nuclear programme, the negotiations stalled.

Iran continued to cite the NPT clause guaranteeing “the inalienable right of all the Parties … to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination…”

The US and the Security Council were unconvinced, and more sanctions followed.

By 2006, Iran was known to be running a uranium enrichment programme at Natanz using a cascade of 164 centrifuges.

Even so, the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany — the so-called P5+1 — and the EU kept offering sanctions relief if Iran would abandon enrichment.

In his first inaugural address in 2009, Barack Obama memorably told Muslim leaders that “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” but no thaw followed.

Instead, relations worsened after the regime crushed nationwide protests — the Green Movement — over alleged vote rigging in the 2009 presidential election that returned Ahmadinejad to office.

Iran first threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz in 2011

Washington imposed fresh sanctions in 2010. Around the same time, the US and Israel allegedly unleashed the highly destructive Stuxnet computer worm against Iran’s nuclear programme.

Obama also ordered research into the bunker-buster bomb later used by President Trump last year, a weapon designed to penetrate underground nuclear facilities.

In 2011, Iran issued its first threat to shut the Strait of Hormuz in response to the presence of a US warship in the Gulf.

Still, both the Obama administration and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could see the potential value of a rapprochement, particularly as the Arab Spring reshaped the region.

In 2013, Khamenei approved the election of the more moderate Hassan Rouhani as president.

“For the regime,” wrote Ali M Ansari, “Rouhani’s victory was a political masterpiece. Not only did it appear to close the door on the crisis of 2009, but it opened up the prospect of constructive negotiations on the nuclear programme.”

Rouhani travelled to the UN General Assembly in New York, while Obama publicly acknowledged for the first time the US role in the 1953 coup.

That September, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton hosted a meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s foreign minister Javad Sharif, the highest-level contact between the two sides since 1979. In fact, Kerry had already held secret talks with Iranian officials in Oman in 2012 through an Omani back channel.

But by then, the nuclear issue had become more complex than ever.

Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, pictured in 2010

“By the time multilateral talks were back in full swing, in 2013, harsh sanctions had been in place for years,” wrote Wendy Sherman, Obama’s undersecretary of state for political affairs and a member of the US negotiating team, in Foreign Affairs in 2018.

“Yet Iran now had 19,000 operating centrifuges. Sanctions might have hurt Iran’s economy, but they hadn’t done much to thwart the country’s nuclear ambitions.”

Iran was not prepared to surrender what it regarded as its sovereign right to enrich uranium.

The Obama administration responded with a major policy shift: after years of insisting on zero enrichment, it accepted that Iran could continue limited enrichment if it was subject to tight monitoring and verification.

In return, the P5+1 and the EU would ease sanctions, restore access to $7 billion in frozen Iranian oil revenue funds, and lift bans on Iran’s car industry and its trade in airplane parts. In effect, Iran would begin to re-enter the global economy.

“In practical terms, Obama wasn’t giving away much,” wrote Sherman. “The Iranians had already mastered the science of uranium enrichment. They would continue to stockpile enriched uranium whether the United States accepted their right to do so or not.

“Insisting on a total prohibition of enrichment only frustrated the United States’ European partners and gave Iran the opportunity to cast Washington as the recalcitrant party.”

Instead, Washington could cap Iran’s enrichment while allowing Tehran to claim it had preserved its civilian nuclear programme and forced the West to lift sanctions.

A framework agreement was reached in November 2013, setting off six rounds of highly technical talks in Vienna — with extended sessions in Geneva and Lausanne — that ran until June 2015 and focused on uranium enrichment, gas centrifuges and sanctions relief.

Early disputes centred on how many centrifuges Iran could retain and how much enriched uranium it could keep. The West wanted to curb Tehran’s enrichment capacity; Iran wanted to expand it. The more centrifuges Tehran demanded, the more sharply the US pushed to cut its stockpile.

Throughout the negotiations, each side emphasised a different story: Washington underscored what Iran would give up, while Tehran stressed what it would still be allowed to keep.

‘Sanctions might have hurt Iran’s economy, but they hadn’t done much to thwart the country’s nuclear ambitions’ – Obama administration official

The US initially proposed that Iran be allowed to keep 6,000 to 7,000 gas centrifuges, which are essential to the enrichment process.

Most of Iran’s low-enriched uranium, it was understood, would be shipped abroad and turned into fuel for the Bushehr nuclear reactor, leaving only 300-500kg on Iranian soil at any one time.

That would create a so-called “breakout” period of one year — the time Iran would need to produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb, up to 27kg of 90% enriched uranium at Natanz.

As the talks approached their climax, Washington proposed that Iran keep 6,104 centrifuges, with 5,060 of them still allowed to enrich uranium.

Iran’s stockpile of 10,000kg of low-enriched uranium, meanwhile, would be cut to 300kg of 3.67% enriched uranium for 15 years.

Tehran wanted to retain its existing stockpile or, failing that, sell it on the international market in exchange for fresh uranium.

Washington, by contrast, wanted any low-enriched uranium above the 300kg limit to be down-blended — mixed with depleted uranium and returned to natural uranium.

Another key dispute concerned how long the enrichment restrictions would stay in force.

The US team wanted limits that would preserve a one-year breakout time for ten years.

That meant caps on active gas centrifuges, strict limits on low-enriched uranium stockpiles, and a ban on new enrichment facilities.

After 15 years, however, those restrictions would expire.

In the weeks before the final agreement, the Iranian fact sheet stated only that “the timeframe of the Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran’s enrichment program will be 10 years”.

There were also concerns about Iran’s heavy-water reactor at Arak, which could provide plutonium — a more attractive material for building a nuclear bomb.

Barack Obama giving his response to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015

Even so, by July 2015 the negotiators had crossed the finish line. The deal was signed in Vienna and came into force in January 2016.

The JCPOA sharply reduced Iran’s ability to enrich uranium or plutonium to weapons grade, but critics on the Republican right and in Israel derided the 15-year timetable.

Under the accord, Iran would slash its low-enriched uranium stockpile from 10,000kg to 300kg and cap enrichment at 3.67% — suitable for nuclear energy and research, but not for a weapon.

Any uranium above the 300kg threshold enriched to 3.67% would be diluted or sold in exchange for uranium ore, while uranium enriched between 5% and 20% would be converted into fuel plates for a research reactor or sold abroad.

Iran would also mothball two-thirds of its centrifuges, leaving 6,104 active units, with only 5,060 authorised to enrich uranium.

The agreement would “ensure the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme” while “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons”.

To verify compliance, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would oversee an unusually intrusive inspection regime during the 15-year period, including the installation of cameras.

“Not only did they have those limitations and have an IAEA presence [at centrifuge facilities at Natanz and Fordow],” Obama’s deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes recently told the Bulwark podcast, “[these included] cameras. It wasn’t just people showing up every few weeks: it was constant monitoring.

“There was monitoring of uranium mines. Where do they mine the uranium? There was monitoring of uranium mills. How do they convert it into something that can be put in a centrifuge?

“Essentially, the entire supply chain of the Iranian nuclear programme, from when you take uranium out of the ground to when you ship that stockpile out of the country, was under monitoring and verification.”

The accord also contained a “snap back” clause allowing the UN to reimpose sanctions if Iran committed a serious breach.

Jeb Bush, who described the Iran deal as ‘dangerous’, in a 2015 debate with Donald Trump

In the United States, reaction to the deal split almost exactly along party lines.

Jeb Bush, then the leading Republican presidential contender, called it “dangerous, deeply flawed, and short-sighted.” Senator Lindsey Graham went further, describing it as “a death sentence for the State of Israel”.

Backers of the agreement countered that its monitoring provisions were unusually stringent.

“It is correct to label these restrictions extraordinary,” wrote Gary G Sick, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute.

“No other nation in the 47-year history of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has ever voluntarily agreed to such intrusions into its nuclear activities.”

Still, doubts lingered over what would happen once the 10- and 15-year provisions expired, and over the reality that Iran’s breakout time would shrink as key parts of the agreement wound down.

Administration officials argued that nuclear arms reduction treaties often ran for similar periods, and that by 15 years later — with Iran gradually reintegrated into the global economy — the hardline revolutionary generation would have passed from the scene.

Donald Trump, true to his campaign pledge, withdrew the US from the JCPOA just one year into his first term.

Ironically, the IAEA maintained that Iran had complied diligently with the agreement while it remained in force.

As the European Union and other signatories tried to preserve the accord, Iran said by the early 2020s that it no longer considered itself bound by the JCPOA’s limits.

Iran has more leverage now than it had when the nuclear deal was reached in 2015

Tehran steadily installed more advanced centrifuges and expanded its enriched uranium stockpile far beyond the agreement’s caps. IAEA inspection access also became increasingly restricted.

By this year, Iran was believed to have amassed more than 9,000kg of enriched uranium, including 440kg enriched to 60% purity. Since 90% purity is required to produce as many as 10 nuclear bombs, that represented a dramatic departure from the JCPOA’s 3.67% ceiling.

When President Trump returned to the White House, he said he wanted a deal.

But in June of last year, as tentative negotiations were under way, he launched the joint US-Israeli attack on the Natanz, Fodrow and Isfahan nuclear facilities using GBU-57A/B MOP bunker-buster bombs that he said had obliterated Iran’s weapons capability.

Yet the 440kg of highly enriched uranium may still be intact, handing Tehran leverage it did not possess in 2015.

If there is evidence that Trump’s war against Iran may simply have brought the crisis back to its starting point — the JCPOA under another label — it lies in the talks between US and Iranian officials that were taking place in Geneva before the 28 February attack.

At that stage, Iran was discussing reducing its highly enriched uranium back to 3.67% purity.

Now, with the war seemingly nearing an end, the memorandum reported by Axios this week as the basis for a possible deal reads unmistakably like the JCPOA.

It would impose a moratorium on enrichment for about 15 years, with the US reportedly insisting that any Iranian breach would trigger an extension of the ban, after which Tehran could enrich again to 3.67%.

As in the JCPOA preamble, Iran would pledge never to pursue a nuclear weapon or engage in weaponisation-related activity.

It would also accept an enhanced inspections regime, including snap UN inspections, while the US would gradually lift sanctions and release billions of dollars in frozen Iranian oil revenue.

It all sounds very familiar.

The difference this time is that Iran holds even more leverage. Beyond the 440kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — once a theoretical threat in 2015 — has now been shown to be a highly effective one.