Welcome Iran deal but don’t celebrate just yet
The framework that the P5+1 powers and Iran have agreed upon is an important step towards a final deal that aims to curtail Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities in return for the West lifting its debilitating sanctions regime on the Islamic Republic. It must be understood that Thursday's agreement is a work-in-progress, only an understanding on what the final deal could look like. There are still some major gaps to be filled in (and these, in turn, could be deal-breakers). According to the preliminary pact, Iran will dismantle two-thirds of its approximately 19,000 installed centrifuges and store them with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It will then be left with about 6,000 centrifuges and about 5,000 of those can be used for enriching uranium which can then be used to build a nuclear weapon. Iran will also destroy 97 per cent of its current stockpile of 10,000kgs of enriched uranium, bringing it down to just 300kgs. This will leave Iran with only a tiny piece of its original nuclear programme. This means that if Iran decides to go rogue after signing the deal, it will still need at least a year to build the bomb, as opposed to the current ‘breakout period' of a few months, according to experts. Another highlight of the deal is the stringent inspections and monitoring processes that Iran has accepted. Iran has agreed to let the IAEA inspect its entire nuclear supply chain including centrifuge production factories, uranium mines, and mills where uranium ore is processed, for over 10 to 25 years.
This is unprecedented. If Iran has to cheat, it will most likely do so by avoiding the nuclear materials it has declared to the world and, instead, by mining some uranium on the sly and manufacturing centrifuges off-the-record. IAEA monitoring of the entire nuclear supply chain, and not just Iran's nuclear plants is, therefore, crucial. On its part, Iran has also won some concessions — it will enrich uranium at the Natanz plant (where it had previously done covert enrichment) and keep the Fordow plant open for research. The big loophole in the deal, however, is that there is no clear agreement yet on how the sanctions regime will be lifted. The Iranians want all sanctions to be removed immediately as they are agreeing to all the restrictions on their nuclear programme with immediate effect. However, the P5+1 powers worry that if all the sanctions are lifted at once, then Iran has little incentive to stick to its end of the deal. There are no easy answers here but one can only hope that, like other contentious issues, this too will be resolved.
A deal with Iran will bring much benefit to India. Until 2006, Iran was India's second-largest supplier of crude oil but it dropped to the seventh position by the end of 2013-2014, as Western sanctions and US pressure made it difficult to do business with Iran. Also, after the deal, at least two Indian oil and gas projects, that have been stuck in the Iranian quagmire, can be resuscitated. Finally, non-oil bilateral trade with Iran can also grow freely. In general, the deal has been welcomed in most quarters except by the Israelis who have taken a hardline position. But while Jerusalem surely has legitimate concerns and is understandably more sceptical, given that the ayatollahs still threaten to blow Israel off the map, it should give this deal and diplomacy a chance.