5-8 Year Comprehensive Agreement

Interview by Sara Massoumi

Vienna’s Palais Coburg is once again host to the Iranian negotiating team this week. Iran’s team will be holding trilateral meetings with the US delegation and the EU foreign policy team, working to pave the way for the signing of a comprehensive nuclear agreement before the November 24 deadline. E’temad newspaper recently spoke with Peter Jenkins, a former British diplomat who was the British Ambassador to the IAEA from 2001 to 2006, about the technical challenges the sides will face in reaching a comprehensive agreement.

You were Britain’s representative to the IAEA between 2001 to 2006 during which time Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the West were about to lead to the signing of an agreement. Iran’s negotiating team at that time now is in charge of the Foreign Ministry and claims that it was the obstacles created by the US and Europe’s obedience of Washington which prevented an agreement during that period of time. What issues prevented the signing of an agreement at that time and are we facing the same obstacles as we are moving closer to the November 24 deadline?

In 2005 the negotiation foundered on Iran’s insistence on operating a small number of centrifuges for R&D. Its EU negotiating partners were opposed to Iran having a capacity to master uranium enrichment technology.

Following the late-September negotiating round in New York, there appears to be the risk that the current negotiation will founder on Iran’s wish to operate a minimum of 9000 or 10,000 IR-1 centrifuges.  The US and EU want to restrict the number of operating centrifuges to a few thousand.

So, yes, there seems to be a risk of history repeating itself.

According to the NPT, the secret capacity of building a bomb is illegal. Nonetheless, since 2003, this issue has been transformed into a challenge in the nuclear negotiations. Is the insistence of the West on this issue in negotiations legal? How could this challenge be eliminated from the path of negotiations?

I am not sure I understand the question.  Manufacturing nuclear weapons is outlawed for NPT parties by the NPT.  Acquiring a nuclear technology that could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons is not if the intention is to use that technology for peaceful purposes under the supervision of the IAEA.

The central negotiating problem is that the US and EU lack confidence in the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear intentions, partly because Iran developed aspects of its programme in secret. The challenge is to build confidence.

Iran has agreed with all types of inspections within the framework of the laws of the IAEA and even beyond the safeguard and with the signing of the Additional Protocol at the end of this path. Under such conditions, don’t these inspections have the capability to remove the concerns of the West with regard to Iran’s nuclear program?

The access that Iran has offered the IAEA during the last nine months and the cooperation Iran has extended since 11 November 2013 certainly have the potential to build international confidence in the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme. But that will take time, years not months, and will not be altogether sufficient.

Let me clarify. The US and EU fear that at some future point Iran may decide to expel the IAEA and set about producing highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.  This fear cannot be dispelled overnight by IAEA inspections.  Dispelling it will take years of IAEA inspections and also years of Iran changing Western perceptions of the nature of the Islamic Republic – impressions formed mainly in the early years of the Revolution.  That will be a difficult task because Western media coverage of Iran is not always objective, and there are interest groups that want to keep alive the belief that Iran is a dangerous ‘rogue state’.

Iran and the IAEA have begun intensive cooperation since last year in order to resolve technical differences. Nevertheless, recently, Iran was not able to respond to some questions by the August 25 deadline. What are the main differences, in your opinion, between Iran and the IAEA at the present time? Could the negotiations between Iran and the IAEA have positive or negative effects on Tehran’s interactions with the P5+1?

My impression is that the IAEA is disappointed that Iran has yet to address two of the issues that in May it promised to address, and that Iran has yet to agree issues for the August-November phase of this process.

The 24 November 2013 Joint Plan of Action does not require Iran to resolve all the IAEA’s concerns as a pre-condition for concluding the final phase of the Joint Plan. It is likely, however, that progress towards resolution of the IAEA’s concerns will favourably impress the P5+1 and facilitate the conclusion of a comprehensive agreement. Conversely, a lack of cooperation will strengthen opponents of a comprehensive agreement.

One of the main differences between Iran and the IAEA is the PMD issue. What are the IAEA’s exact demands from Iran in this regard? Iran claims that it has not had any nuclear activities with military objectives in the past and the West does not accept this claim. How could Iran resolve this issue in the negotiations?

I don’t know what the exact demands are.  Besides, they are numerous. But they seem to relate to evidence of work in defence-related establishments on certain technologies that have been used in other parts of the world to manufacture nuclear weapons.

Iran’s best options are to prove that the evidence is misleading or to prove that the work was undertaken because the technologies also have civil applications, e.g. in the oil and gas sector.

Recently, a plan was proposed with regard to the removal of piping connecting centrifuges. What are the benefits and disadvantages of this plan for Iran and the P5+1?

The idea behind such a proposal would be to extend the time required to produce HEU were Iran to expel the IAEA and set about using its centrifuges for a military purpose. Extending the time would be a confidence-building measure. By agreeing to it Iran would lower risk perceptions in the US and EU.  

RAD is one of the main challenging issues in the Iran-P5+1 negotiations. What is the plan that the West is proposing for Iran’s nuclear program with regard to RAD? Will the limitations be enforced for an agreed period of time or does the West look to enforce a permanent limitation on Iran’s RAD program?

I’m afraid I cannot answer this question.  I do not know what the US and EU negotiating position is.  I can only say that this issue is intimately connected to their fear of Iranian intentions.  They do not want Iran to develop more advanced centrifuge models, because these would allow Iran to produce HEU faster than when using IR-1s.

The issue of inspections of Parchin has repeatedly been heard. This is while Iran claims that it has allowed inspections several times and there is no longer the possibility of inspecting this site within the period of time which the West is interested in. Considering the previous inspections, why is Parchin still important for the West?

There were only two previous inspections.  The problem is that they involved access to only a few buildings on what is a very large site, which accommodates a very large number of buildings. At the time of those visits the IAEA did not have reason to ask for access to the building that they now want to visit. They suspect that some of the work on nuclear explosive technologies to which I referred above took place in that building, more than ten years ago.

Do you have any practical solution to resolve the issue of the capacity and enrichment level of Iran’s program which could both remove the West’s concerns and give Iran, as a member of the NPT, the right to peaceful nuclear activities?

In a paper I co-authored for the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Iran’s Nuclear Future), published on 4 September, I argue that the US and EU should agree to Iran continuing to operate 10.000 IR-1s in return for Iran undertaking not to expand its centrifuge capacity until it has a practical need for more. That need will not arise for many years, since for technical reasons Iran is not capable of producing fuel for the power reactors it has bought and is buying from Russia.  Only when Iran can design and build its own power reactors will it be able to point to a convincing practical need for an expanded enrichment capacity.

How many years, in your opinion, is a logical time for the comprehensive agreement wherein the win-win strategy for both negotiating parties could be considered? Iran suggests a single-digit number of years and the West a two-digit number.

I have long argued that logic points to linking the agreement to ongoing IAEA safeguards work.  At some point (probably 5-8 years from now) the IAEA will be in a position to offer a ‘credible assurance’ that there is no undeclared nuclear material in Iran and that there are no undeclared nuclear activities.  That is the best the IAEA can say about any party to the NPT.  Once it has been said of Iran, I can see no justification for differentiating between Iran and other NPT parties.

However, it will be hard to convince the US and EU of this logic.  They will want the freedom to continue fearing Iranian intentions beyond the point when the IAEA delivers its ‘credible assurance’, and despite that assurance.

What could, in your opinion, replace an agreement?

I very much hope that a compromise on enrichment will be found, as I am confident that this would open the way to a comprehensive agreement - and I believe that failure to achieve a comprehensive agreement could be dangerous. Why? Because the US will be electing a new president in November 2016. A Republican realist might be deaf to the belligerent hostility to Iran of neoconservatives; an ideological Republican, in the mould of George W Bush, would not be.  And on the Democrat side the most likely winner, Mrs Clinton, has long struck me as over-eager to please pro-Israeli lobbying groups, some of which are also hostile to Iran. So after 2016 there is a risk that we will see pressure for the US to attack Iran growing once again, unless there is a comprehensive agreement in place.

However, if the two sides cannot find common ground on enrichment this autumn, then I suggest that Iran offer to prolong to 31 December 2016 the measures in place under the Joint Plan of Action, and to modernise the design of the 40 MW reactor at Arak, in return for a big chunk of sanctions relief – and that Iran propose a further attempt to resolve the enrichment problem in November 2016 after the US elections. It could be that those elections will open up a political perspective that will make it easier for the parties to solve the enrichment problem.