This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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On Nov. 24, 2013, diplomats from the “P5+1″ group (China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom) and Iran secured a breakthrough agreement that sets back Iran’s nuclear potential and increases international oversight of Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for limited and reversible sanctions relief. (For a summary the schedule and progress towards implementation, see the ACA fact sheet: “Joint Plan of Action At a Glance.”)
By pausing progress on key elements of Iran’s nuclear program, the first phase agreement provides time for further talks on “a mutually-agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful.”
Negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran on the comprehensive, final phase agreement begin Feb. 18 in Vienna.
Key Issues
The comprehensive, final phase agreement has the potential to roll back Iran’s overall enrichment capacity, block the plutonium path to the bomb, put in place even tougher international inspections, resolve outstanding questions about the purpose of Iran’s program, and comprehensively remove nuclear-related sanctions.
There will be several key issues and challenges that the negotiators from the P5+1 group and Iran must resolve.
Uranium Enrichment Capacity: The extent to which Iran is willing to reduce the capacity and the scope of its uranium enrichment program is key. The agreement reached in Geneva on Nov. 24 states that the program should be “consistent with practical needs.”
In other words, Iran’s enrichment capacity and stockpile of material should not exceed the fuel supply needs of its nuclear power and research reactor programs, which for now are close to zero but could grow in the coming years.
Iran will insist on retaining some uranium enrichment capacity, which it believes it has a right to pursue as a member of the NPT, which refers to the “inalienable right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy….”
The United States and several of the other P5+1 states do not believe that states have a “right” to uranium enrichment, especially if they may have engaged in nuclear weapons-related research. But they recognize the fact that Iran already has a uranium enrichment program.
The two sides did not agree on the nature of Iran’s nuclear energy rights in their Nov. 24 first phase agreement, but they did agree to negotiate practical limits on the scope of the enrichment program and additional safeguards on ongoing Iranian enrichment activities at its Natanz and Fordow facilities, in order to reduce Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities.
The United States and its P5+1 partners will point out that Iran has very limited or nonexistent needs for enriched uranium fuel for energy production. Today, Iran has one research reactor (the Tehran Research Reactor) that produces medical isotopes and Iran has enough material to fuel that reactor for years to come; Iran also has a light-water power reactor (Bushehr) which uses fuel supplied by Russia under an arrangement that will last for at least 10 years.
Iran says its has future plans for as many as 16 new nuclear power reactors and 4 research reactors that will require reliable fuel supplies from abroad or that are indigenously produced. However, these reactors are many years away from reality.
In the near term, the P5+1 powers will likely push for a significant reduction in Iran’s overall enrichment capacity from 10,000 operating, first generation (IR-1) centrifuges at two sites to approximately half that number or less. Even with 4,000 or fewer first generation centrifuges at one site, Iran would have more than sufficient capacity for its foreseeable “practical” nuclear power reactor fuel needs.
By rolling back Iran’s enrichment capacity to such levels and placing limits on Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, the time necessary to produce enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb would be extended to 6 months or more. Such an effort could be readily detected within weeks with the increased monitoring and verification measures that are likely to be imposed as part of the comprehensive deal.
If Iran tried to “breakout,” it would take still longer for Iran to amass enough bomb-grade material for additional weapons, assemble a nuclear device, possibly conduct a nuclear explosive test of the warhead design, and develop a reliable means of delivering the weapons.
Iran is also developing new and more efficient centrifuges and will likely resist any P5+1 effort to limit its ability to develop and deploy such centrifuges. Once operational, these more advanced centrifuges, such as IR2-Ms, could enrich uranium much more efficiently. Consequently, the two sides will likely set limits on the overall capacity of Iran’s enrichment program (as measured in “separative work units (SWU)”) rather than the total number of centrifuges.
Some P5+1 states would also like to see Iran mothball the underground Fordow uranium enrichment facility, while Iran will resist such an outcome. The two sides might compromise by agreeing that Iran will effectively halt any significant enrichment at Fordow and convert it to a “research-only” facility for uses including testing and developing advanced centrifuges.
The Arak Reactor and the Plutonium Path to the Bomb: The P5+1 states have argued that Iran should abandon the unfinished Arak 40MW heavy water reactor, but Iran has resisted such an outcome.
Heavy water-moderated reactors are well suited to the production of plutonium. Arak is some time away from completion and Iran does not have (and says it has no intention to build) a reprocessing facility that would be necessary to extract plutonium from the spent fuel. Nevertheless, the Arak reactor clearly represents a significant, long-term proliferation threat.
One compromise that would effectively neutralize Arak’s plutonium potential would be agree to convert Arak to a more proliferation-resistant light-water reactor, but this option would require Iran to abandon its original heavy-water technology choice and would be strongly resisted by Iran.
However, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told Iran’s official English-language Press TV in an interview Feb. 5 that Iran may agree to other modifications of the Arak heavy-water reactor near Arak.
“We can do some design change — in other words, make some change in the design in order to produce less plutonium in this reactor and in this way allay the worries and mitigate the concerns,” Salehi said.
Some of those options could be to use fuel enrich to reduce the reactor at a reduced power level (to at least 5MW) or to use uranium fuel enriched to 3.5% or 20% (instead of natural uranium fuel) in order to reduce the reactor’s output of plutonium that is suitable for weapons. While fueling the reactor with enriched uranium would increase Iran’s practical needs for enriched uranium, the plutonium produced in the spent fuel from the Arak reactor would pose less of a concern for weapons.
An additional option would be to require that all spent fuel from Arak is verifiably removed for disposition by a third country–possibly Russia–to prevent it from becoming a source of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Russia is already responsible for removing the spent fuel produced by the Bushehr reactor.
Tougher International Inspections: If Iran were to pursue nuclear weapons in the future, it would most likely try to do so by means of a secret program carried out at undisclosed facilities.
Consequently, the P5+1 will also seek to persuade Iran to allow even more extensive IAEA inspection authority to guard against a secret weapons program under the terms of the Additional Protocol to its existing comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA. These inspections allow the IAEA to access non-declared sites without prior notification, which is a strong deterrent against any clandestine nuclear weapons work. Once approved by the Iranian parliament, the duration of the Additional Protocol would be unlimited.
The P5+1 will also seek “Additional Protocol- plus” inspection measures for an extended period of time to provide still more confidence to the international community that Iran’s nuclear program is being used for entirely peaceful purposes.
Resolving Concerns About “Possible Military Dimensions:” To resolve longstanding questions about suspected weapons-related experiments that may have been conducted in secret in past years, Iran will also need to fully cooperate with the IAEA stalled investigation on these experiments.
The IAEA laid out its concerns about the experiments and other concerns about the completeness of Iran’s nuclear declaration in an annex to its November 2011 report to the agency’s Board of Governors. Shortly after the November 2011 report, the IAEA and Iran began negotiating an approach to resolve these concerns. However, no progress was made until Iran and the IAEA agreed on a path forward to guide the agency’s investigations. This breakthrough came on Nov. 11, 2013, when the IAEA and Iran agreed to a newFramework for Cooperation that committed both sides to cooperate to resolve the agency’s outstanding concerns. The agreement also specified the first six steps that Iran would take over the course of the following three months. While these steps provided the IAEA with necessary information and access to nuclear sites to verify Iran’s nuclear activities, they did include any of the contentious experiments with possible military dimensions.
However, when agreeing on the next set of steps for Iran to take during talks on Feb. 8-9, Iran and the IAEA finally began to address the concerns about activities with possible military dimensions related to nuclear weapons development. One of the 7 new steps that Iran agreed to take will require it to provide information on exploding bridge wire detonators to the IAEA. While other experiments with possible military dimensions remain to be addressed, moving forward on the bridge wire detonators is an important first step. Satisfactory resolution of these issues will help demonstrate to the international community that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and that the country is not pursuing nuclear weapons.
In the coming weeks and months, the IAEA and the P5+1 will insist that Iran provide all the information and cooperation that will be necessary to enable the IAEA to determine with confidence that whether such activities occurred or not and whether they were intended for a weapons program or not, and that no such weapons-related work continues.
While implementation of the Iran-IAEA framework has gone smoothly thus far, it is very likely that the investigation will continue for some time beyond the six-months to a year timeframe for the negotiation of the final phase P5+1/Iran agreement.
In addition, it is possible that the final phase P5+1/Iran agreement will specify that Iran will not henceforth conduct certain research and development activities with nuclear-weaponization applications, such as those identified in the annex of the IAEA’s November 2011 report.
Sanctions Relief: To secure a “final phase” agreement, the P5+1 will need to phase-out the tough multilateral nuclear sanctions regime now in place, including the international oil and financial sanctions that are devastating Iran’s economy. Iran will likely insist that with each of the successive steps that it undertakes as part of a comprehensive agreement, there will be commensurate actions to suspend and then lift sanctions.
This step-for-step approach will require a new UN Security Council Resolution on Iran’s nuclear program and positive, follow-up actions by the European Union states and approval by Congress of revised legislation that unwinds U.S. nuclear-related sanctions that impact other nations’ dealing with Iran.
Negotiating an agreement along these lines will be difficult and implementing it will be very challenging, but a sustainable arrangement to guard against a nuclear-armed Iran is within reach.
Myths and Misperceptions
Some policy makers and observers will likely continue to push for outcomes that are not realistic or necessary to stop Iran short of building nuclear weapons. For instance, some critics of the current diplomatic negotiations, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, argue that the only “acceptable” outcome is one that requires Iran agree to the permanent suspension of all uranium enrichment and the dismantlement of the Natanz, Fordow, and Arak facilities.
According to the U.S. intelligence community Iran has had, at least since 2007, the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it were to choose to do so. That capacity can be reduced but not entirely eliminated, even it Iran were required to dismantle its uranium enrichment machines and facilities.
A “zero-enrichment” outcome would be ideal from a nonproliferation perspective and may have been conceivable in 2005-2006 when Iran agreed to suspend enrichment work and had less than 300 centrifuges.
But today, demands that Iran permanently halt uranium enrichment are unrealistic and unattainable. A deal that bars Iran from enriching uranium for peaceful purposes would be unsustainable politically inside Iran, and such an outcome is not necessary to guard against a nuclear-armed Iran.
Another misperception is that the UN Security Council’s earlier demands for Iran to “suspend” uranium enrichment require that a final phase agreement must end all Iranian enrichment activity.
In reality, the purpose of the demand for suspension of uranium enrichment by Iran under existing U.N. Security Council resolutions is to prevent Iran from accumulating more LEU until it restores confidence in the peaceful nature of its nuclear program–not to permanently cease all uranium enrichment activities. (See: “What the UN Security Council Resolutions Say (and Don’t Say) About Iran’s Nuclear Program,” Dec. 4, 2013.)
The Nov. 24 agreement effectively accomplishes that goal by capping the total amount of 3.5 percent material and it goes further by requiring Iran to neutralize its 20% stockpiles and to cease all enrichment to 20 percent levels while a comprehensive agreement is negotiated.
Bottom Line: A “Win-Win” Deal to Guard Against a Nuclear-Armed Iran
To guard against a nuclear-armed Iran and avoid a future confrontation over its nuclear program, the P5+1 and Iran should promptly implement the first-phase agreement and expeditiously negotiate a long term final-phase agreement on the basis of realistic and achievable goals that meets their core requirements and respects the bottom-line needs of the other side.
A “win” for the P5+1 countries is a comprehensive agreement that 1) establishes verifiable limits on Iran’s program that, taken together, substantially increase the time it would take for Iran to break out of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and build nuclear weapons; 2) increases the ability to promptly detect and effectively respond to a breakout; and 3) decrease Iran’s incentive to pursue nuclear weapons in the future.
A “win” for Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani would be to: 1) preserve a peaceful nuclear program (including some uranium enrichment and R & D); 2) protect Iran’s “right” under the NPT to a peaceful nuclear program; and 3) remove most international, nuclear-related sanctions against Iran.
If either side pushes unrealistic requirements on the other side, the chances for a negotiated resolution will decrease and the chances of a conflict and a nuclear-armed Iran will increase.
Any resort to military force against Iran’s nuclear sites would, at best, only delay Iran’s nuclear program and at worst, would lead to a wider conflict and very likely prompt Iran to openly pursue nuclear weapons.
A final phase agreement will require hard compromises on the part of both sides, but it is the far more preferable and effective way to resolve the long-running dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
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