The question of whether Iran should be able to continue to enrich uranium on its own soil has once again emerged as a potential obstacle to a nuclear agreement with the United States.
That Iran should be willing to give up indigenous enrichment in return for sanctions relief may seem, on the surface, to be reasonable. After all, many countries operate nuclear power plants without producing their own nuclear fuel. Additionally, foreswearing enrichment is optimal from a non-proliferation standpoint since the technology that makes fuel for civilian purposes can also be used to produce fuel for bombs.
However, after mastering the process in the 2000s, Tehran has insisted it will not stop domestic enrichment, and requiring it to do so is a dealbreaker. This stance has a history that goes back to the days of the Shah.
The United States gave Iran its first research reactor in the 1960s and, along with several European countries, it offered to build nuclear plants in Iran to provide electricity. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi also sought the ability to make fuel for these plants but was persuaded by the U.S. to import fuel instead. Iran then purchased a 10 percent share in a European consortium called Eurodif that produces enriched uranium to this day. However, the Europeans reneged on the agreement after the Shah was deposed in a 1979 revolution, and it took more than a decade for Iran to be financially compensated for its investment.
Isolated diplomatically after the revolution and seizure of U.S. diplomats as hostages, Iran was virtually alone in confronting an Iraqi invasion in the 1980s. Fearful that Iraq—which had already used chemical weapons against Iranian troops—would develop a nuclear weapon, Iran turned to Pakistani black marketeer A. Q. Khan for rudimentary centrifuges and eventually succeeded in enriching a small amount of uranium. This accomplishment was touted within the country as a huge scientific and political achievement, even as Iran’s failure to disclose the full extent of its nuclear program to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) brought censure, referral to the UN Security Council, and eventual multilateral as well as U.S. economic sanctions.
Prolonged negotiations that began with European powers in 2003 and eventually included the U.S., China, and Russia led to a proposal in 2009 for Iran to send out its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. Foreign powers promised to further enrich the stockpile to 20 percent purity to refuel the old US-supplied research reactor which produced medical isotopes. The deal fell apart amid factional infighting in Iran and sanctions pressure in the West, and the Iranians proceeded to make their own 20 percent fuel.
Ultimately, negotiations led to a bigger agreement—the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran sent out most of its enriched uranium stockpile, reduced the level of enrichment to that needed for power plant fuel, and submitted to IAEA monitoring. Iran kept its word, but the U.S. reneged, quitting the JCPOA under the Trump administration and reimposing severe economic sanctions. In his second term, President Trump seems eager to strike a new deal but contradictory statements by Trump and his top advisers have led to confusion over just what is being required of Tehran.
For its part, Iran has been consistent: no domestic enrichment equals no deal. Iran is once again willing to send out stockpiles—this time of uranium enriched to nearly weapons grade—and to limit the future enrichment levels while cooperating with IAEA inspectors. The Iranians also seem amenable to creating a multilateral consortium for enrichment that would supply the civilian needs of other regional countries. However, they will not stop enriching uranium domestically in the interim.
“Iran insists on enrichment for both historical reasons and nationalism,” Sina Azodi, Assistant Professor of Middle East politics at George Washington University, told me. Azodi, who is writing Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran and the Nuclear Question, added that Iran’s “experience was that Europeans and the outside world will not give Iranians fuel, so they realized that they had to do it on their own. Also, they believe that enrichment and reprocessing is a matter of national sovereignty and dignity.”
As the JCPOA showed, it is not necessary to have zero enrichment to build confidence that Iran is not diverting materials to build a bomb. Verifiable limits on the program are sufficient, especially if Iran massively restores IAEA monitoring. Any effort toward breakout would also likely be detected by spies within Iran’s security establishment, as evidenced by Israel‘s covert success over the past two decades obtaining the Iranian nuclear archives and assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists.
The Arms Control Association (ACA) and other nuclear watchdog groups have recommended that Iran ratify the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would provide the IAEA with access to other facilities, such as centrifuge manufacturing workshops, while allowing inspections of declared facilities on short notice. The ACA has also recommended online enrichment monitoring and 24/7 surveillance of key facilities.
Iran should also finally come clean about the origin and fate of uranium particles detected at several sites in the past, believed to be part of a weapons research project that was dropped in 2003. This topic has been repeatedly raised by the IAEA Board of Governors and will figure again in discussions in Vienna this week.
While Iran’s failure to account for all its past activities has long engendered distrust, Iranians for their part have railed against what many consider a double standard under which the United States sanctions Iran but accepts both India and Israel as nuclear powers, even though neither is an NPT member and Israel has never officially acknowledged its nuclear arsenal. Iran, for its part, has insisted that it will not build bombs even as it has accumulated enough fissile material for perhaps ten weapons.
In a 2006 interview, Iran’s then national security adviser, Ali Larijani, told me that “if Americans are really over concerned about the NPT, why are they working with India that has already manufactured the weapons?”
Kamal Kharrazi, a former Iranian foreign minister who still advises the country’s supreme leader, added at the time, “It is really unbelievable why Americans make themselves the yardstick for being right and wrong. Who has given them this right?”
Iran is certainly no paragon of virtue. But insisting on keeping a program that has cost it billions in economic sanctions and the blood of its scientists does not seem an excessive demand when coupled with verifiable new safeguards against proliferation. And the alternatives to a new deal – especially another war in the Middle East – are far worse to contemplate.
The question of whether Iran should be able to continue to enrich uranium on its own soil has once again emerged as a potential obstacle to a nuclear agreement with the United States.
That Iran should be willing to give up indigenous enrichment in return for sanctions relief may seem, on the surface, to be reasonable. After all, many countries operate nuclear power plants without producing their own nuclear fuel. Additionally, foreswearing enrichment is optimal from a non-proliferation standpoint since the technology that makes fuel for civilian purposes can also be used to produce fuel for bombs.
However, after mastering the process in the 2000s, Tehran has insisted it will not stop domestic enrichment, and requiring it to do so is a dealbreaker. This stance has a history that goes back to the days of the Shah.
The United States gave Iran its first research reactor in the 1960s and, along with several European countries, it offered to build nuclear plants in Iran to provide electricity. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi also sought the ability to make fuel for these plants but was persuaded by the U.S. to import fuel instead. Iran then purchased a 10 percent share in a European consortium called Eurodif that produces enriched uranium to this day. However, the Europeans reneged on the agreement after the Shah was deposed in a 1979 revolution, and it took more than a decade for Iran to be financially compensated for its investment.
Isolated diplomatically after the revolution and seizure of U.S. diplomats as hostages, Iran was virtually alone in confronting an Iraqi invasion in the 1980s. Fearful that Iraq—which had already used chemical weapons against Iranian troops—would develop a nuclear weapon, Iran turned to Pakistani black marketeer A. Q. Khan for rudimentary centrifuges and eventually succeeded in enriching a small amount of uranium. This accomplishment was touted within the country as a huge scientific and political achievement, even as Iran’s failure to disclose the full extent of its nuclear program to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) brought censure, referral to the UN Security Council, and eventual multilateral as well as U.S. economic sanctions.
Prolonged negotiations that began with European powers in 2003 and eventually included the U.S., China, and Russia led to a proposal in 2009 for Iran to send out its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. Foreign powers promised to further enrich the stockpile to 20 percent purity to refuel the old US-supplied research reactor which produced medical isotopes. The deal fell apart amid factional infighting in Iran and sanctions pressure in the West, and the Iranians proceeded to make their own 20 percent fuel.
Ultimately, negotiations led to a bigger agreement—the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran sent out most of its enriched uranium stockpile, reduced the level of enrichment to that needed for power plant fuel, and submitted to IAEA monitoring. Iran kept its word, but the U.S. reneged, quitting the JCPOA under the Trump administration and reimposing severe economic sanctions. In his second term, President Trump seems eager to strike a new deal but contradictory statements by Trump and his top advisers have led to confusion over just what is being required of Tehran.
For its part, Iran has been consistent: no domestic enrichment equals no deal. Iran is once again willing to send out stockpiles—this time of uranium enriched to nearly weapons grade—and to limit the future enrichment levels while cooperating with IAEA inspectors. The Iranians also seem amenable to creating a multilateral consortium for enrichment that would supply the civilian needs of other regional countries. However, they will not stop enriching uranium domestically in the interim.
“Iran insists on enrichment for both historical reasons and nationalism,” Sina Azodi, Assistant Professor of Middle East politics at George Washington University, told me. Azodi, who is writing Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran and the Nuclear Question, added that Iran’s “experience was that Europeans and the outside world will not give Iranians fuel, so they realized that they had to do it on their own. Also, they believe that enrichment and reprocessing is a matter of national sovereignty and dignity.”
As the JCPOA showed, it is not necessary to have zero enrichment to build confidence that Iran is not diverting materials to build a bomb. Verifiable limits on the program are sufficient, especially if Iran massively restores IAEA monitoring. Any effort toward breakout would also likely be detected by spies within Iran’s security establishment, as evidenced by Israel‘s covert success over the past two decades obtaining the Iranian nuclear archives and assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists.
The Arms Control Association (ACA) and other nuclear watchdog groups have recommended that Iran ratify the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would provide the IAEA with access to other facilities, such as centrifuge manufacturing workshops, while allowing inspections of declared facilities on short notice. The ACA has also recommended online enrichment monitoring and 24/7 surveillance of key facilities.
Iran should also finally come clean about the origin and fate of uranium particles detected at several sites in the past, believed to be part of a weapons research project that was dropped in 2003. This topic has been repeatedly raised by the IAEA Board of Governors and will figure again in discussions in Vienna this week.
While Iran’s failure to account for all its past activities has long engendered distrust, Iranians for their part have railed against what many consider a double standard under which the United States sanctions Iran but accepts both India and Israel as nuclear powers, even though neither is an NPT member and Israel has never officially acknowledged its nuclear arsenal. Iran, for its part, has insisted that it will not build bombs even as it has accumulated enough fissile material for perhaps ten weapons.
In a 2006 interview, Iran’s then national security adviser, Ali Larijani, told me that “if Americans are really over concerned about the NPT, why are they working with India that has already manufactured the weapons?”
Kamal Kharrazi, a former Iranian foreign minister who still advises the country’s supreme leader, added at the time, “It is really unbelievable why Americans make themselves the yardstick for being right and wrong. Who has given them this right?”
Iran is certainly no paragon of virtue. But insisting on keeping a program that has cost it billions in economic sanctions and the blood of its scientists does not seem an excessive demand when coupled with verifiable new safeguards against proliferation. And the alternatives to a new deal – especially another war in the Middle East – are far worse to contemplate.
