IAEA should be involved, either directly or indirectly, for a successful agreement. As regards sanctions, all sanctions cannot be lifted at the very beginning, as it will leave little incentive for Iran to continue the comprehensive programme. Nor can it be delayed till the very last
While it is to be hoped that the current P5+1 (US, Russia, UK, France, China and Germany) talks with Iran being held in Vienna would result in a comprehensive strategy on the Iranian nuclear programme, all indications are that such a final settlement will not be reached by November 24, the deadline which the parties had imposed on themselves at the time of the agreement on the “Joint Program Of Action (JPOA)” negotiated on November 24, 2013. The inability of the parties to come to a final agreement should not be considered a failure: only that the parties will agree to an extension of negotiations for a further period of, say, six months, as they did earlier in July of this year. The elements of the final step of a comprehensive solution, which all the parties had agreed to conclude not later than a year after the JOPA, were required to:
i) Have a specified long-term duration to be agreed upon.
ii) Reflect the rights and obligations of parties to the NPT and IAEA Safeguards Agreements.
iii) Comprehensively lift UN Security Council, multilateral and national nuclear-related sanctions, including steps on access in areas of trade, technology, finance, and energy, on a schedule to be agreed upon.
iv) Involve a mutually defined enrichment programme with mutually agreed parameters consistent with practical needs, with agreed limits on scope and level of enrichment activities, capacity, where it is carried out, and stocks of enriched uranium, for a period to be agreed upon.
v) Fully resolve concerns related to the reactor at Arak, designated by the IAEA as the IR-40. No reprocessing or construction of a facility capable of reprocessing.
vi) Fully implement the agreed transparency measures and enhanced monitoring. Ratify and implement the Additional Protocol, consistent with the respective roles of the President and the Majlis (Iranian parliament).
vii) Include international civil nuclear cooperation, including among others, on acquiring modern light water power and research reactors and associated equipment, and the supply of modern nuclear fuel as well as agreed R&D practices.
Following successful implementation of the final step of the comprehensive solution for its full duration, the Iranian nuclear programme will be treated in the same manner as that of any non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT.
The aim of the two sides — P5+1, on one side and Iran, on the other — were clear from the beginning. The viewpoint of the former, especially the West, was (i) to be ensure that Iran was not working on a nuclear explosive device project in the past and (ii) make sure that sufficiently strong verification and monitoring mechanisms were in place in Iran to prevent Iran from embarking on such a project in the future. From the viewpoint of the latter, the primary objective in holding talks was to ensure the lifting of international sanctions on Iran which had begun to cripple its economy and prevented Iran from being able to fully exploit its human and capital resources to gain its rightful role as a power in West Asian region.
The initial JPOA, which had specified a set of actions by both sides to relieve the anxiety of the other, has so far functioned effectively and successfully. Iran has, through a number of actions, severely constrained its ability to fashion a nuclear device and cooperated with IAEA, to a large extent, in establishing that its past nuclear programmes were all peaceful in nature. For its part, the West has temporarily relaxed the application of various sanctions that had been imposed on Iran. As a result, the Iranian economy has seen definite improvement in its performance. For example, the rate of annual inflation, which used to be in excess of 40 per cent, has shown a dramatic decline to 12 per cent-15 per cent after the JOPA was agreed. The market sentiment has shown marked improvement with the differential between the official and market exchange rate of Iranian Rial declining sharply since the JPOA was put in place.
Hence, for these and other reasons, the deteriorating security situation in West Asia due the rise of ISIS being one, there is an all-round agreement in the international community about the need for the success of the talks. Such sentiment is shared equally by the P5+1 and Iran. The fact that a comprehensive agreement has not been reached is not an indication of the failure of the talks. In fact, there is agreement that substantial advancement has been made in many of the issues. However, the principle of the talks that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” has held up the final settlement.
In particular, the issues that seem to have held up the final settlement are (i), (iii) and (iv). On these issues while there has been broad agreement, difficulties seem to have cropped in fleshing out the details.
On the duration of the agreement, while some of the P5+1 would seem to prefer a period of 15 years, the Iranians seem to have an upper limit of seven to eight years. This is not an insurmountable issue. Given that the period should be sufficient to establish that all of Iran’s nuclear programmes are peaceful in nature, one looks to the time framework in which IAEA, through its inspection and verification mechanisms, put in place as a result Iran’s adherence to the various safeguards requirements of IAEA, including adherence to the Additional Protocol, can certify, as it had done so far in respect of a number of countries with extensive nuclear programmes, that all of Iran’s’ nuclear activities are peaceful in nature. Therefore, the final duration settled between the parties must have a requirement of such an IAEA certification.
As regards the size and nature of the Iranian enrichment programme during the programme period, here again, a reasonable figure might relate it to minimum breakout time — the time required for Iran to fabricate a nuclear explosive device after abrogating the agreement. Obviously the larger the enrichment facility, the shorter the breakout time. Here again the international community has to take into account the views of the IAEA safeguards regime to relate the breakout time to its verification and monitoring capabilities. Given an agreed breakout time, the size of the enrichment facility should not be greater than the capability of IAEA to verify and monitor fissile material production and guarantee that the breakout time will not be breached.
As regards sanctions, it is obvious that all sanctions cannot be lifted at the very beginning, which will leave very little incentive for Iran to continue the comprehensive programme. Nor can it be delayed till the very last. The lifting of sanctions has to be related to severity of the sanctions and the progress achieved in the success of the comprehensive programme, with only the requirement that when IAEA certifies that all of Iran’s nuclear is peaceful in nature, all sanctions would have been lifted. In the interim, once again, the type and severity of the sanctions to be lifted should be linked to the progress of IAEA verification and monitoring.
It might, therefore, seem that given the importance of IAEA for the successful implementation of the comprehensive programme, it should be involved, in some sort of active fashion, either directly or indirectly. Such an involvement may also help in giving the international community a greater confidence in the outcome of the talks and may even, perhaps, be a neutral guarantor of the agreement.
(The writer is Consulting Fellow, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi)