Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has grown significantly since the United States withdrew from the multilateral nuclear deal agreed in 2015. The time it would take for Iran to produce enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon is now less than seven days. But negotiations in Vienna over restoring the deal have reached a stalemate, and the US is no longer placing high priority on its restoration, focusing instead on supporting Iranian human-rights advocates and sanctioning Iranian oil sales.
After a year and a half of negotiations in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear-arms accord known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement remains in a worsening coma. Former United States president Donald Trump, who withdrew from the deal in May 2018 and then sought, by piling on new sanctions, to prevent any successor from reversing this withdrawal, has done just that, with ample help from an intransigent government in Tehran. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s harsh repression of domestic protests, transfer of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) and missiles that Russia uses for indiscriminate attacks in Ukraine, and assassination plots make it impossible for the Joe Biden administration to give Iran any sanctions relief before the 8 November midterm congressional elections. Meanwhile, Iran’s retaliatory walk-back of the uranium-enrichment limits and monitoring requirements set out in the JCPOA have put it on the cusp of being able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon before such a breakout could be detected. While this danger might in other circumstances make arms control ever more advisable, the US is no longer prioritising JCPOA restoration, focusing instead on supporting Iranian human-rights advocates and sanctioning Iranian oil sales. There is little prospect of breaking the impasse.
Enrichment process
Although it does not appear that US intelligence agencies have received indication that Iran has decided to produce nuclear weapons, the aggressive hedging strategy that Tehran has pursued since 2018 has brought it close to that line. The JCPOA had limited Iran to enriching uranium to 3.67% of the U-235 isotope, the level required to fuel nuclear-power plants; to keeping a stockpile of less than 300 kilograms of such low-enriched uranium; to enriching using only first-generation centrifuges called IR-1; and to restricting the research and development of more advanced centrifuges. In June 2019, after the US reimposed sanctions that had been waived by the accord, Iran began to exceed these limits and by 2021 was taking fast-paced steps that were indistinguishable from the moves it would have made if racing to acquire
nuclear-weapon capability.
In January 2021, Iran resumed enriching to just below 20%, the borderline between low-enriched uranium and highly enriched uranium (HEU), an activity that had sparked a crisis in 2010. Three months later, Iran enriched to 60%, only a short step from the purity level of approximately 90% that is optimal for nuclear weapons. According to the most recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), by 21 August 2022, Iran had 55.6 kg of 60% HEU. This is more than enough to produce one nuclear weapon if further enriched. Its stockpile of 331.9 kg at near 20% by the same date could produce the feed for another two weapons, and the total stockpile of enriched uranium was 3,621.3 kg.
Meanwhile, by 10 October 2022, Iran was operating roughly 4,000 advanced centrifuges (including at least 2,150 of the IR-2m model, 700 of the IR-4 and 1,050 of the most advanced IR-6 model), increasing its enrichment capacity significantly. Iran has also arranged cascades of these machines and their piping in a new way that would allow for faster production of weapons-grade uranium.
"Iran’s breakout period – the time it would take to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon – is now less than seven days."
As a result of these advances, Iran’s breakout period – the time it would take to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon – is now less than seven days. Some analysts calculate that it could take as little as four days, although Western governments tend to speak of breakout as being a few weeks. US and Israeli government officials say it would take 18–24 months to weaponise the fissile material and produce a bomb that could be carried by a missile. The JCPOA limits were designed to ensure a breakout period of no less than one year. This goalpost is now impossible to restore. Due to Iran’s technological advances since the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, even if all the limits of the agreement were reintroduced, the breakout period would still be no more than four to six months. If the JCPOA were restored, the US would probably seek to shift the breakout focus to how long it would take to produce several weapons rather than one.
IAEA inspections
In addition to exceeding enrichment limits, Iran has reduced the monitoring access that the IAEA was allowed under the JCPOA. Although Iran is still adhering to most of the inspection requirements of its comprehensive-safeguards agreement, it is no longer permitting the enhanced monitoring described in the 2015 nuclear deal. Centrifuges can no longer be monitored online and IAEA cameras have been removed from the workshop where centrifuges are produced. This means that the agency would have difficulty determining the nuclear programme’s baseline level of development, should the JCPOA be restored. The IAEA said in September 2022 that Iran’s actions limiting oversight have ‘had detrimental implications for the Agency’s ability to provide assurance of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme’.
Separate from the JCPOA, the IAEA is pursuing an investigation about man-made uranium particles discovered by environmental sampling at three sites where Iran never reported having conducted nuclear activities, a potential violation of its basic-safeguards agreement. One site is an open warehouse in Tehran’s Turquzabad district, which Israel claimed held cargo containers that contained nuclear-related equipment and material. Satellite imagery of this site in 2018 showed evidence of sanitisation efforts and the removal of containers. The second site is a plant in the town of Varamin, near Tehran, that the IAEA assesses was an undeclared pilot-scale facility for processing and milling uranium ore and converting it into uranium oxide between 1999 and 2003. The third site is in Marivan, near the city of Abadeh, where the agency said ‘outdoor, conventional explosive testing’ and tests related to neutron detectors may have taken place. Using the ‘atomic archive’ Mossad stole from a Tehran warehouse in January 2018, Israel flagged these sites for the IAEA, which then requested to take environmental samples at the sites. Iran allowed this in 2019 and 2020, and the samples showed evidence of unexplained uranium particles of anthropogenic origin. The IAEA judges that Iran’s explanations about the existence of the particles are not ‘technically credible’. The agency wants access to people and places in Iran to determine how the nuclear material came to exist and, most importantly, where it might be now, along with any contaminated equipment.
The almost-there talks
Since negotiations began in April 2021, the parties in Vienna have appeared to be on the cusp of agreement several times. In June 2021, compromises negotiated by the lame-duck government of president Hassan Rouhani appeared to have resolved many important disagreements. Yet it seems that the administration of the new president elected that month, Ebrahim Raisi, wanted to start over. By March 2022, a draft text had resolved issues of sequencing, how Iran would come back into compliance and, generally, which sanctions the US would lift. The main sticking point was Iran’s demand that the US Treasury Department remove its 2019 designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’. Biden would not agree to this without further concessions from Iran, especially given the group’s involvement in violent attacks, more frequent since 2021, that have been launched by Shia militias across the Middle East.
The format of the talks was convoluted. Since Iran refused to meet with the US, the other parties to the agreement – China, the European Union, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom – held separate discussions in turn with Iran and the US. In these ‘proximity talks’, the EU took the lead in trying to forge compromise. After the last such effort, EU High Representative Josep Borrell tweeted on 8 August 2022: ‘What can be negotiated has been negotiated, and it’s now in a final text.’ That text, which Iran initially appeared to approve, did not remove the designation of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organisation.
Optimism proved short lived, however, as Iran raised two other issues that were thought to have been resolved earlier: a guarantee that the US would not withdraw from a new agreement and a short timetable for ending the IAEA investigation of past nuclear activity. Many observers concluded that the Raisi government was negotiating for show, with no real interest in a deal because of the risk that Biden would be replaced by a Republican president in January 2025. It is difficult to imagine that any Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election would allow a nuclear agreement with Iran to remain in place were he or she to take office. Biden, in any event, is unable to guarantee the continuity of a new deal. Thus, Raisi’s calculation seems to be that his government could survive without short-term economic relief. Indeed, Iran’s economy has muddled through in spite of year-over-year inflation reaching over 50% in mid-2022, high youth unemployment (27% in 2021) and the declining value of the rial. The IMF projects real GDP growth of 3% this year, with sales of discounted oil to China at roughly 700,000 barrels per day.
Perhaps Washington’s best rejoinder to Iran’s demand for guarantees about a new deal is that if the US were to withdraw again, Tehran could simply resume proliferation pressure. Any advanced centrifuges, which presumably would be placed in storage under a restored deal, could be re-installed, increasing the pace of enrichment. Iran’s ability to resume producing HEU is why the US spoke often about the dwindling non-proliferation benefits of the JCPOA even as Iran’s continuing advances presented a compelling case for reaching an agreement in Vienna.
"Perhaps Washington’s best rejoinder to Iran’s demand for guarantees about a new deal is that if the US were to withdraw again, Tehran could simply resume proliferation pressure."
Iran’s other demand regarding past nuclear activity is also problematic. It wants the IAEA investigation of uranium particles to be ended before it rejoins the JCPOA because the investigation threatens to shed light on past nuclear research and development that it denies having carried out. In 2015, Iran succeeded in arguing that the IAEA investigation of past nuclear activity of a ‘possible military dimension’ be closed as a condition for implementing the JCPOA the following January. The fact that the parties to the JCPOA agreed to do so even though Iran had failed to answer the IAEA’s questions in full was seen by many as an unacceptable concession. But in 2022, the IAEA has refused to yield on this issue and has noted that accountability for nuclear materials is the core of its mission. The US and its European allies have said that they will not tell the IAEA to shelve its technical probe before it is completed.
Human rights and other issues
On 16 September, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died whilst in the custody of Iran’s morality police for having worn a loosely fitted headscarf, or hijab. Since then, young Iranians, particularly girls and women, have been protesting on the nation’s streets. It is the strongest display of domestic dissent since the 2009 protests known as the Green Movement. Although protests have broken out in 80 cities since Amini’s death, the overall number of demonstrators has been much smaller than the three million people who filled the streets of Tehran in 2009. But the recent protests have become more radical in nature than those before, with demands for ‘no compulsory hijab’ leading to calls for ‘death to the dictator’ – Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei. As some demonstrations became riots, the government responded brutally, leaving over 200 citizens dead, including 23 children, during the first four weeks of the protests, according to human-rights monitoring groups. Some two dozen members of the security services were among the dead.
Given the impasse over nuclear negotiations, US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said on 17 October that ‘the talks on revival of JCPOA are not on the US agenda; the focus is on what’s happening in Iran’. This is a different approach than was taken in 2009, when then US president Barack Obama thought that public US support for the Green Movement would be counterproductive and make it easier for Tehran to claim that the demonstrations were instigated by foreigners. The Biden administration has said that, whilst its policy is not to support regime change, it strongly supports the protests. US officials have condemned the crackdown, sanctioned security forces involved and granted broad sanctions waivers to allow technology firms to provide internet services to facilitate information exchange among protesters, despite government-imposed blackouts. Canada, the UK and other countries have also been outspoken in support of the demonstrations.
"Given the impasse over nuclear negotiations, US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said on 17 October that ‘the talks on revival of JCPOA are not on the US agenda; the focus is on what’s happening in Iran’."
Tehran’s harsh repression of protesters raises yet another barrier to concluding a nuclear deal. Even if Biden wanted to make an agreement under these circumstances, it would be politically impossible to do so. In addition, Iran has been supplying over-the-horizon weapons to Russia to use in its war against Ukraine. Russia has used them to execute lethal, indiscriminate attacks against Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilians. Since September, Ukrainian forces have recovered the remains of Iran-made Shahed-136 and Mohajer-6 armed UAVs that were repainted and given Russian names. France, the UK and the US contend that United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2231 bans Iran’s export of such weapons. Although that resolution’s arms embargo expired in 2020, an embargo on missile sales, including related technology, remains in force until October 2023. UAVs fall under the ‘related technology’ category because they are included in a Missile Technology Control Regime list. On 16 October, it was reported that Iran was preparing to send Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar ballistic missiles to Russia. These have ranges of 300 kilometres and 700 km, respectively, and such a transfer would be a blatant violation of UNSC Resolution 2231. Iran has denied selling weapons used in the Ukraine war.
Biden’s political room for compromise is limited by several other factors. Iran does not deny that it has targeted former Trump administration officials for assassination, including John Bolton, the US national security advisor from 2018–19. This was in retaliation for these officials’ alleged roles in the January 2020 killing by the US of Qasem Soleimani, then commander of the IRGC Quds Force, and in launching Washington’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran. On 12 August 2022, a man from New Jersey attacked and nearly killed the writer Salman Rushdie in response to a 1989 fatwa that had been issued by Iran’s then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who thought that one of Rushdie’s novels disrespected Islam. There is also the issue of the three dual American–Iranian citizens (along with several other European dual-nationals) that Iran has imprisoned on dubious charges. Tehran has said it will release them in exchange for the release of several million US dollars in Iranian assets that have been frozen.
Outlook
Biden may have more political flexibility after the midterm elections on 8 November 2022, but perhaps not much if the Republicans take control of one or both houses of Congress. Republicans have vowed to do everything possible to prevent JCPOA restoration. Whilst it is in the president’s authority to return to the sanctions easing under the 2015 deal, legislation enacted at that time gives Congress a path to block it if opponents can muster 60 votes in the 100-person Senate. In any case, there is little sign that Iran will budge on the two conditions that have prevented an agreement from being reached.
The prospect then, is for a worsening status quo. Iran will continue to expand its enrichment programme and to restrict IAEA monitoring access. It will also step up what the West regards as provocations in abetting lethal actions by its regional partners and transferring rockets and other arms. The US will continue to increase sanctions, like those imposed on 22 September 2022 targeting Iran’s oil and petroleum trade, missile programme, and morality police and other security officials. France or the UK may exercise their right under UNSC Resolution 2231 to invoke a ‘snap-back’ of pre-2015 UN sanctions. While China, Russia and some other states would refuse to implement such sanctions, Iran would consider them a national humiliation and has vowed to respond by abrogating the JCPOA altogether and perhaps withdrawing as well from the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Iranian leaders say they do not believe the US has the will to fight another war in the Middle East and that Israel does not have the means to wage one against Iran on its own. But if Iran’s enrichment programme continues as it has since 2020, Israel will continue attempting to sabotage it using cyber attacks and other means, and by planning kinetic attacks. While the US has posited a redline of ‘no nuclear weapons’ for Iran, Israel’s stated redline is more ambiguous: ‘no nuclear-weapon capability’. Now that Iran’s breakout period can be measured in days or weeks, rather than months or years, there is ample room for misperception and miscalculation, which could spark a crisis and precipitate a serious military conflict.
