Iran's Nuclear Agreement: The Three Specific Clusters of Concerns.

• Author: Rezaei, Farhad
• Position: ARTICLE - Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

Introduction

The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran had unsettled neighboring countries and threatened a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. To thwart Iran's nuclear ambition, the international community imposed an increasingly crippling series of economic sanctions, implemented by the UN Security Council, the United States, and the European Union. By 2013, the crippling measures along with the combination of other factors including internal political divisions in the country and the threat of a joint military attack by the United States and Israel brought the Iranian economy to its knees and the regime back to the negotiating table. On July 14, 2015, Iran and the P5+1 reached an agreement (JCPOA) which curtailed most of the achievements of Iran's decades-long nuclear endeavor. In December 2015, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) certified Iran in compliance with the agreement, thus paving the way for implementation of the JCPOA. As a part of the deal, the IAEA promised stringent oversight of Iran's nuclear program to ensure that it would remain peaceful for the duration of the agreement and beyond. (1)

By any measure, the JCPOA wiped out most of the achievements of Tehran's decades-long nuclear endeavor. Iran has been restricted to 6,000 IR-1 first generation centrifuges of limited enrichment capacity. As measured by Separate Work Units (SWU), a standard gauge of the separative power of a centrifuge, the IR-1 has been estimated at having around 1 kg uranium SWU/year. The more advanced models which Iran had worked hard to fabricate are more efficient and have a higher SWU capacity. The IR-2M and the IR-4 are estimated to be three to five times more efficient than IR-1, designed to have roughly about five SWU/year per machine and 1 IR-8 centrifuge is estimated to be 16 times more efficient than IR-1, roughly equivalent to enrichment capacity of 16 kg uranium SWU/year = 24 kg UF6 SWU/year. (2)

In addition, until 2030, Iran will be limited to a 300 kg cap on its Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) per year; excess LEU needs to be shipped out of the country. These limitations were devised with a view of lengthening the breakout time, meaning the length of time Iran would need to fabricate enough weapon-grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon, should it renege on the agreement and leave the NPT. The same time framework applies to the so-called "sneak out scenario," a clandestine effort to enrich uranium without renouncing the NPT membership. (3)

The one-year timetable is limited to uranium production alone. It does not include projections about other parts of weaponization: fabricating the metallic core of the weapon from the powdered uranium hexaboride, building the trigger mechanism, integrating the weapon package into a delivery system, and testing. The time period to produce a working weapon known as "effective breakout time" is estimated to take at least one year for the duration of at least 10 years. (4)

To prevent Iran from cheating a justifiable suspicion given its record, the JCPOA offered a strict safeguards protocol based on electronic monitoring, visit of IAEA inspectors, and unspecified cyber sleuthing. Depending on the type of activity, the JCPOA restrictions would be lifted in 10-15 years, but the Additional Protocol which Iran is obliged to ratify until 2023 and which it is now voluntarily implementing, would guarantee a stringent IAEA oversight beyond the agreement's expiration date. (5) According to the JCPOA, Iran's total enrichment capacity will remain where it is now until 2028. The level of enrichment is restricted to 3.67 percent until 2030. The path to a plutonium weapon is also blocked by the 15-year ban on constructing a new Heavy-Water Reactor (HWR) and on reprocessing spent fuel. Iran would need 1,400 to 2,800 kg LEU for one single bomb. These limitations make Iran's weaponization almost impossible until 2030. Other prohibitions including surveillance of centrifuge production facilities and monitoring of Iran's uranium mines and mills will remain in place until 2035 and 2040 respectively. Moreover, Tehran will always be required to notify the agency when it decides to build a new nuclear facility. Should Iran default on its JCPOA obligations, sanctions would be reinstated, that is "snapped back." (6)

The signing of the JCPOA has generated an enormous debate among foreign policy officials, the intelligence community, academic experts, and public intellectuals. On one side of the debate, there were those who considered the JCPOA as a serious rollback to Iran's nuclear aspiration. On the other side, others predicted the regime's decision to sign the deal as a part of its strategy of tricking the international community into relaxing the sanctions to manageable levels and then to continue with its illicit nuclear weaponization activities. (7)

Critics argue that the JCPOA is not strong enough to prevent Iran from commencing a clandestine weaponization, in a parallel undeclared facility, to produce a nuclear weapon. They further argued that the JCPOA will encourage regional actors to develop their own nuclear arsenals. More immediately, according to critics, Iran would use the pass it has received from the nuclear agreement to expand its regional ambitions. This research has been organized into three separate sections to review these three clusters of concerns in order to find out whether they have materialized.

Iran's Possible Engagement in a Clandestine Weaponization Activity

The first and indeed, the most important concern of critics of the JCPOA was that Iran would engage in covert weaponization activities to carry out a "sneak out" scenario, that is building a secret parallel nuclear program dedicated to military purposes. Under a "sneak out" scenario, critics of the deal said, Iran could enrich uranium in an undeclared enrichment facility to fabricate a bomb unknown to the IAEA, the designated watchdog organization empowered to visit Iran's declared nuclear sites only. (8)

Primarily, critics were concerned about Iran's breakout, defined as the time needed to produce approximately 27 kg of Weapon-Grade Uranium (WGU) known as a "significant quantity"--enriched to more than 90 percent of its fissile isotope U-235--to produce one nuclear weapon should the regime decide to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). To address this concern, the architects of the JCPOA set provisions in the agreement to lengthen Iran's breakout time. The nuclear agreement restricted Iran to operate 6,000 IR-1 first generation centrifuges of limited enrichment capacity. (9)

Indeed, drastically limiting the number and quality of Iran's centrifuges and the uranium stockpile was said to lengthen the breakout period from 2 months in 2013 to one year for the next ten to fifteen years. The time period to produce a working weapon known as "effective breakout time" is estimated to take at least one year. Robert Einhorn, a senior fellow in the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and the Center for 21 (st) Century Security and Intelligence surmised that as long as Iran had to rely on first-generation enrichment technology, it is unlikely to leave the NPT, expel the inspectors, and produce a nuclear warhead. (10)

To prevent Iran from cheating, the JCPOA proposed a strict safeguards protocol. The stringent oversight was also designed to prevent the so-called "sneak out" contingency, in a parallel, undeclared nuclear site. Critics noted that a "sneak out" is a more likely scenario than a breakout and requiring extreme vigilance on the part of the IAEA. (11) To this end, IAEA will monitor Iran's nuclear supply chain. In Fordow and Natanz a "round-the-clock access" will be available, including continuous monitoring via surveillance equipment. Using a new generation of monitoring technology such as fiber-optic seals on equipment that electronically send information to the IAEA, infrared satellite imagery to detect covert sites, "environmental sensors that can detect minute signs of nuclear particles," tamper-resistant, radiation-resistant cameras, computerized accounting programs for information gathering and anomalies detection and using big data sets to monitor Iran's dual-use imports are particularly promising. Human monitoring will also intensify as the number of IAEA inspectors will triple from 50 to a 150. (12)

Of greatest concern for the critics is that the JCPOA limits Iran's ability to break out or sneak out in the short-term, but it did not fundamentally remove the Iranian nuclear weapons option. As key provisions of the JCPOA expire in the next 5-15 years, according to critics of the deal, Iran will be in an increasingly strong position to produce a bomb. The JCPOA is therefore seen by some as at best a temporary pause to Iranian nuclear ambitions, rather than a permanent solution. Proponents of the deal disagree and argue that the set of provisions in the nuclear agreement renders Iran's weaponization impossible. As explained above, the JCPOA restrictions such as the number of Iran's first-generation centrifuges, the research and development of more advanced ones, Iran's total enrichment capacity, the level of enrichment and the path to a plutonium weapon will remain in place for a long time after the expiration of the nuclear agreement. (13) Leonard Spector, a nuclear non-proliferation expert at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, maintains that although the JCPOA is not a long-term solution "given the choice of an Iranian nuclear weapon next spring or in 2025, the second alternative is most certainly the better one, and that means keeping the deal intact." (14)

Concerns about Iran's developing nuclear capabilities in a non-declared site have been addressed by the IAEA's request to access the nuclear supply chain "to verify the absence of undeclared nuclear materials and activities or activities inconsistent with" the agreement. If Iran bans such a request or otherwise...