Not yet the real deal

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, were continuing past a March 31st deadline as The Economist went to press. The cause of the overrun 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, which returns on April 13th, not to vote for new sanctions.

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 the interim deal will be seen as an important milestone 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 remain unresolved mean that the next round of the negotiations will be even harder. 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. One is the 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 an enhanced “additional protocol plus” is 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 answer about a dozen questions already posed by the IAEA about 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 co-operation 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.”