Nuclear talks with Iran are gridlocked. In the first round of negotations with the Obama Administration held on October 1, Iran agreed to open its hitherto secret Qom facility to international inspectors, and it has honored that promise.1 Since then, however, Iran has refused to stop enriching uranium at Natanz, refused to stop work on the new enrichment facility at Qom, and refused to accept a provisional deal reached in October to send most of its stockpile of LEU abroad.
The United States and its allies may have contributed to the problem by refusing (at least publicly) to consider modifying the stockpile deal to meet Iranian concerns, and by continuting to insist (unrealistically, in the view of some experts) that Iran end all enrichment of uranium, even enrichment to low levels not suitable for weapons use, under full IAEA safeguards.
When the West pushed through an IAEA Board of Governors Resolution reprimanding Iran for its refusal to stop work on the Qom enrichment facility, an infuriated Iran retaliated by announcing on November 29 that not only will it continue work at Qom, it plans to build ten new enrichment facilities. This is bluster, of course, Iran' can't possibly achieve this goal any time soon, but it once again signaled Iranian defiance and rejection of Western demands.
A foreign policy fiasco is shaping up that may be avoidable. Here are three steps the United States can take at this point to maximize American security and avert a needless war.
1. Begin exploring with our allies what package of nationwide safeguards and inspections and ownership options would justify -- as advantageous to our security -- allowing limited enrichment to low levels under comprehensive safeguards in Iran.
The Bush Administration squandered six years trying to force Iran to surrender its right to enrich uranium to low levels under safeguards. In fact, the West's refusal to acknowledge Iran's right to enrich may well be the single greatest impediment under our control to progress towards a deal that would maximize our security.
Years of resistance to western pressure have inured Iran to sanctions and made standing on Iran's "right" to enrich for peaceful use practically a symbol of Iranian independence, supported by reformers and hardliners alike.
Heightened financial sanctions are a real possibility, though China opposes even these. Meanwhile, Russia, China and the rest of the world are not going to line up to "cripple" Iran through a comprehensive gasoline embargo for enriching uranium to low levels under safeguards. In fact, even our European allies don't favor going this far.
The Iranian people support Iran's nuclear program, which they believe (rightly or wrongly) is about nuclear power, and Iran's right to top tier status in peaceful nuclear technology. While targeted financial sanctions aimed at the Revolutionary Guard may offer useful bargaining leverage, hitting the Iranian people with a "crippling" gasoline embargo over the nuclear issue is far more likely to entrench hardliners in power and stiffen Iranian resistance on nuclear issues, than to de-stabilize the regime or weaken its resolve.
Attacking Iran's openly-declared and IAEA-safeguarded facilities would be a lawless act of agression that would make shambles of the rule of law and do far more to provoke an Iranian nuclear weapon than to prevent one.
Saddam Hussein, we now know, responded to Israel’s raid on the Osirak reactor not by stopping, but by accelerating another secret nuclear weapons effort.2 Likewise, for Iran. Secretary Gates has said that bombing Iran’s open and declared facilities would buy a few years at best, while driving Iran’s nuclear program underground. He is almost certainly right. In fact, the Qom facility may reveal Iran preparing to prove his point.
What all this means is that it is probably not feasible at this point to stop Iran from enriching. Moreover, open enrichment under safeguards is far better, from our perspective, than covert enrichment without safeguards. The best way to maximize our own security in the current situation is to ease external threats and enmesh Iran's peaceful nuclear program in a comprehensive and nationwide surveillance, inspection and control system, one which gives the West the means to detect any "breakout" reliably and punish it with a forceful international response.
How does trading enrichment for transparency improve our security? Experts believe that if Iran does decide (or has decided) to pursue a weapon, it is far more likely to do so using clandestine facilities than by using an openly-declared facility at Natanz that practically has a bulls-eye painted on it, albeit underground. Yet while all eyes focus on an openly-declared and safeguarded facility at Natanz we have no reliable way of verifying what is going on across the rest of Iran. This makes no sense. more
No breakout could occur from Natanz without crossing clear, regularly-monitored “redlines” -- re-configuring the centrifuge cascades, enriching uranium beyond 5 percent, diverting low-enriched uranium, and/or excluding foreign inspectors. Such trangressions almost certainly would be promptly detected, sounding an international alarm. Yet weeks or months of further enriching still would be needed to yield enough fuel for even one nuclear weapon. During this time Iran would face a very high likelihood of a forceful response.
The measures needed for an effective nationwide safeguards system in Iran have evolved over years. They are well-known, highly intrusive and potentially highly effective. more
- Iran's ratification of the Additional Protocol to Iran's Safeguards Agreement would give IAEA inspectors greatly expanded access to declared or suspected nuclear sites all across Iran.
- Iran's return to compliance with the revised "Subsidiary Arrangement" would give the IAEA design information and the right to inspect declared or suspected nuclear sites as soon as ground is broken for construction.
- Iran might agree to store or process future stockpiles of low-enriched uranium in a foreign location, as it provisionally agreed to do with much of its current stockpile. (Critics in Iran have objected to the stockpile deal not because it is categorically objectionable, but because they worry about getting Iran's hard-won LEU back from France if talks over Iran's enrichment break down. Iranian critics of the deal also worry that giving away the stockpile before winning agreement on Iran's right to enrich will prejudice Iran's ability to defend the latter. Both objections would disappear in the context of a long-term settlement.)
- Iran should accept remote camera surveillance of all declared nuclear facilities.
- Iran might be asked to place all Iranian enrichment under the supervision of a multinational consortium
However, these measures are voluntary under current law until a nation commits to them. They cannot be dictated. They have to be bargained for.
Brazil, for example, is currently enriching uranium but has not adhered to the Additional Protocol, though it has a documented history of having pursued nuclear weapons in the past.
Though Iran has vowed that suspending enrichment is off the table, Iran has repeatedly offered to accept comprehensive safeguards as part of a comprehensive package that recognizes Iran's basic right to enrich.
It is not feasible at this point to stop Iran from enriching, and open enrichment under safeguards is far better, from our perspective, than covert enrichment without safeguards. The best way to maximize our own security in the current situation is to ease external threats and enmesh Iran's peaceful nuclear program in a comprehensive and nationwide surveillance, inspection and control system, one which gives the West the means to detect any "breakout" reliably and punish it with a forceful international response.
The approach just described offers a chance to call Iran's bluff, if it is that. For years Iran has denied that it has any interest in nuclear weapons, that it's sole interest lies in exercising its right to enrich. If so, then it should have no objection to an enrichment package that includes comprehensive safeguards and inspections carefully designed to make "breakout" very difficult.
2. Build higher fences around smaller yards. Instead of trying to mobilize what is nearly certain to be a weak international response to ambiguous behavior such as safeguarded enrichment, focus on developing international consensus for a very strong response to clearly illicit conduct, such as blocking IAEA access to declared nuclear facilities or producing highly-enriched uranium.
The United States is unlikely to succeed in orchestratring truly effective multilateral sanctions so long as the character and purpose of Iran's nuclear program remains ambiguous. Moreover, any Israeli or U.S. attack on Natanz -- an openly-declared and safeguarded facility that is producing only LEU unsuitable for weapons use -- would trample international law and wreak havoc on the NPT.
Looking within Iran, there is simply no way to attack Iranian nuclear facilities or impose "crippling" sanctions on Iran without severely harming the Iranian people. Yet polls show that large numbers of Iranians support their government's insistence on enrichment, and oppose any drive for nuclear weapons. So long as Iranians see the dispute as about enrichment, and not nuclear weapons, they will blame the West, not their own leaders, for the pain and loss they experience from new sanctions.
The situation changes significantly if the formal trigger for sanctions is shifted from open, declared and safeguarded enrichment, on one hand, to clearly illicit conduct such as high-level enrichment for a bomb, on the other. Tying international sanctions to plainer redlines will both maximize prospects for bringing to bear truly effective pressure internationally, and alter the dynamic within Iran so that the regime is now blamed for the confrontation instead of the West being blamed.
3. Try to salvage the stockpile deal with appropriate modifications, but if that deal cannot be salvaged look past it and work around it.
The draft agreement reached in Vienna on October 22 was an ingenious improvisation playing off a serendipitous development that the Tehran Research Reactor, which manufactures medical isotopes, is running low on fuel. The plan calls for Iran to ship most of its known stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia for further enrichment and then to France for processing into fuel rods to re-supply the Tehran Reactor. This seemingly win-win arrangement would meet Iran’s medical reactor needs while physically removing from Iran a stockpile of raw LEU that has greatly worried the West. Click here for a more detailed analysis.
Western hawks and neo-cons have cited Iran’s dissatisfaction with the stockpile deal as proof that Ahmadinejad is just stalling for time -- or evidence that Iran is so riddled by internal faction that it cannot deal at all.
These interpretations are half-truths at best. Ahmadinejad would not stall for time by approving and praising a deal his own side denounces days later, thereby making himself look foolish. And the factionalism thesis overlooks the fact that critics of the deal in Iran have surfaced respectable (if not compelling) arguments for their criticisms, and Iran has at least informally broached a modification that the West has been unable to muster a consensus to consider. more
First, Iranian critics point out that the deal as written requires Iran to give up a major bargaining chip (most of its hard-won stockpile of LEU) without getting anything of strategic value in exchange (such as recognition of Iran’s right to enrich). This criticism suggests that the stockpile deal may need to be worked out as part of the longer-term deal rather than at the threshold of talks as previously supposed.
Second, Ahmadinejad’s rivals in Iran have heaped scorn on the idea that Iran’s hard-won LEU is being entrusted to France. France may be the only willing country with the technology to manufacture the fuel rods for the French-made Tehran reactor. But France’s President Sarkozy can barely bring himself to say the word “Iran” except as part of a call for tougher sanctions. France also is remembered in Iran as the country that two decades ago expropriated a billion-dollar Iranian investment in a multinational enrichment consortium (Eurodif).
To deal with this concern, Iran has informally broached the idea of a simultaneous swap on Iranian soil of raw LEU for fabricated fuel rods. Nuclear non-proliferation experts believe this sort of swap could be structured in a way that meets Iran’s need for supply assurance with minimal added risk to U.S. security. For example: Russia might supply low-enriched uranium to France. France would process the uranium into fuel rods for Iran. Iran, upon receiving the fuel rods, would immediately send the promised LEU to Russia. Any move by Iran to seize both LEU and fuel rods during the exchange would be immediately detected and would stand as a major provocation not merely to the United States and France, but to Russia, Iran’s most important ally. The odds of that happening are quite small.
Other variations of the deal might work as well.
The key thing to remember is that the crux of the nuclear dispute with Iran is not the disposition of 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium that may or may not be shipped abroad, but will soon be replaced in any case. The main issue is the long-term future of enrichment in Iran.
Even if the stockpile deal were to be shelved completely while long-term talks are ongoing, Iran is highly unlikely to “break out” from Natanz in the next few months, with barely enough fuel for a single bomb, in the middle of talks aimed at a permanent accommodation with the West. Certainly the risks of that scenario are far smaller than the risks flowing from the alternative outcome of no talks, sanctions and war.
The question is not whether Iran will adhere to a single proposal hastily cobbled together in Vienna, but whether Iran is willing to negotiate in good faith towards a long-term solution.
Conclusion
After so many years of hostility and confrontation, no one should imagine that the diplomatic solution will be quick or easy. It may not be possible.
Nonetheless, coercive approaches have clearly failed. The current path leads straight to a wall: a Hobbesian choice between escalating to war, or facing the futility of sanctions in altering Iranian behavior and living with an un-safeguarded and un-controlled Iranian nuclear program.
Before precipitating such a choice, and certainly before embarking on another military adventure, the Obama Administration should give clear-eyed diplomacy a real chance, and Congress should support the Administration in doing so.
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