On the Iranian Nuclear Deal

Whilst The Warwick Globalist has some technical issues with getting the new blog up and running I am using this one to comment on the Iranian nuclear deal. See here for an article I wrote for The Warwick Globalist’s temporary website on the relationship between the British establishment and the Gulf elites. There is a forthcoming piece on the relationship between the ‘realist’ international school of thought and international morality, a first blog on ‘theoretical’ issues in international relations.

Yesterday news came through that a preliminary deal had been struck between Iran and the P5+1 over Iran’s nuclear programme. I’ve written fairly extensively on this blog before about Iran, the West and the nuclear issue, including a brief history of Iranian-Western relations, discussion of whether or not Iran’s nuclear programme actually has military dimensions, military options for the prevention of Iran acquiring a weapon, and diplomatic options for a peaceful resolution to the issue. I stand by what I said in those posts and they all remain relevant for understanding the background to yesterday’s deal.

There has been a lot of comment on the deal by people who seem not to have taken the time to actually read it, and seem unaware that this is only a preliminary deal aimed at creating the needed mutual trust between the parties with a view to a comprehensive settlement in 6 months time. That said, the deal is fairly impressive in its own right. The White House release on the details shows how Iran is to “[h]alt all enrichment above 5% and dismantle the technical connections required to enrich above 5%... Dilute below 5% or convert to a form not suitable for further enrichment its entire stockpile of near-20% enriched uranium before the end of the initial phase” (enrichment to around 3.5% is the level needed for civilian nuclear energy purposes- 19.5% can be used for some civilian purposes such as fuelling medical research reactors, but it is also closer to the around-95% enrichment needed for a bomb). Iran has already been recognised as keeping its stockpile of 19.5% enriched uranium at below the level Israel considers necessary to make one nuclear device. The latest IAEA report puts its stockpiles at 196 kg, below the 250kg mark needed for a bomb. Additionally, Iran will “[n]ot increase its stockpile of 3.5% low enriched uranium, so that the amount is not greater at the end of the six months than it is at the beginning, and any newly enriched 3.5% enriched uranium is converted into oxide”.

Furthermore, Iran will “[n]ot commission the Arak reactor. Not fuel the Arak reactor. Halt the production of fuel for the Arak reactor. No additional testing of fuel for the Arak reactor. Not install any additional reactor components at Arak. Not transfer fuel and heavy water to the reactor site. Not construct a facility capable of reprocessing.  Without reprocessing, Iran cannot separate plutonium from spent fuel”. This stops fears of Iran taking an alternative, plutonium route to a bomb at Arak. When it comes to inspections, the White House report describes “[u]nprecedented transparency and intrusive monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program”; Iran will “[p]rovide daily access by IAEA inspectors at Natanz and Fordow. This daily access will permit inspectors to review surveillance camera footage to ensure comprehensive monitoring.  This access will provide even greater transparency into enrichment at these sites and shorten detection time for any non-compliance. Provide IAEA access to centrifuge assembly facilities. Provide IAEA access to centrifuge rotor component production and storage facilities. Provide IAEA access to uranium mines and mills. Provide long-sought design information for the Arak reactor”. This comes off the back of a deal Iran recently struck with the IAEA to expand inspections of many nuclear sites. When it comes to centrifuges, Iran agreed “[n]ot install additional centrifuges of any type. Not install or use any next-generation centrifuges to enrich uranium. Leave inoperable roughly half of installed centrifuges at Natanz and three-quarters of installed centrifuges at Fordow, so they cannot be used to enrich uranium”.

Given the extensive surveillance and “unprecedented intrusive monitoring”, it will be hard for Iran to break these constraints and get away with it. Officials familiar with the deal told the Washington Post that “[t]he concessions not only halt Iran’s nuclear advances but also make it virtually impossible for Tehran to build a nuclear weapon without being detected”. It should also be noted that it was already the opinion at the beginning of the year of James Clapper, US National Intelligence Director, that “Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU (weapons-grade uranium) before this activity is discovered”.

It should also be noted that the relief Iran has received in return is minimal- maybe $6-7 billion in sanctions reductions (despite what an Israeli disinformation campaign in Washington tried to claim). The White House release boasts how it is “maintaining the vast bulk of our sanctions, including the oil, finance, and banking sanctions architecture”. Iran’s $100 billion in foreign exchange holdings will also be unavailable to their government. A US official told Foreign Policy that “Iran will actually be worse off at the end of this six month deal than it is today”. The sanctions are already severely affecting Iranian people; a Foreign Policy piece details how the “results have been devastating for the Iranian population, triggering a collapse of industry, skyrocketing inflation, and massive unemployment. As the rich and politically-connected prosper under sanctions, Iran's middle class has disappeared, and even access to food and medicine has been compromised”. Given that this is expected to continue and perhaps worsen, it is surprising that Iran has given in to such stringent demands at all.

The reactions to the deal have been revealing. All along Netanyahu slammed the prospects of a deal, seemingly before he even knew what the final details would be. After the deal was sealed in the early morning of Sunday, Netanyahu described it as a “historic failure”, and the Israeli Economics Minister, Naftali Bennett, proclaimed that “[i]f a nuclear suitcase blows up five years from now in New York or Madrid it will be because of the deal signed this morning”. The deputy speaker of parliament, MK Moshe Feiglin, of a ruling coalition party Likud, claimed the deal was “tantamount to the Munich Agreement of the late 1930s”. These wild ravings push Israel more and more to the fringes of the international community and are isolating it even from its allies. It could count on its new friend France to do its best to scupper the deal early on in the process, but now the only allies Israel seems to have on this issue are the Gulf dictators, chiefly the totalitarian Saudi Arabia. The Defence Minister also reaffirmed that “[a]ll options are still on the table”, an illegal threatening of the use of military force, not that anyone pays any attention to international law.

Reading through the English-language Israeli press has been an interesting experience too- some more measured reactions from Haaretz and the US-based Forward are counterposed against some more dubious responses. The online Times of Israel, for instance, explained that the problem isn’t that the details of the deal are bad, just that Iran is “a cunning and deceptive adversary”, and that “Iran has never acknowledged that it is in fact marching to the bomb”. Yedioth Ahronoth, one of the biggest newspapers in Israel, said that one of the problems with the deal is that “[t]he Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will effectively be finished”- not true, but both editorials are even more odd in light of the fact that Israel itself has refused to admit to its nuclear arsenal and refused to sign the NPT, seriously damaging its efficacy.

The fact is that the only thing which would make Netanyahu happy would be a complete elimination of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities, an absurd position, not least because Iran has the right to peaceful nuclear enrichment for civilian purposes under the NPT. He knows this demand is never going to be met, so as Trita Parsi put it in Foreign Affairs, “[t]here is reason to believe, then, that Israel’s insistence on zero enrichment is aimed to ensure that no deal is struck at all”. Even some parts of the Israeli military establishment seem at odds with Netanyahu on this: Christian Science Monitor reported that an Israeli military official told them that the “intelligence branch does not think this demand is realistic”, and that the negotiations offered prospects for stability in the region. Every state needs to exaggerate the threat posed by its enemies in order to further its domestic agenda, and Israel is no different. Whilst Netanyahu asserts that “[i]t’s 1938 and Iran is Germany”, the vast majority of scholars one should take seriously consider the Iranian regime to be a ‘rational actor’, not the kind of actor which will fire nuclear weapons at Israel in what would be the clearest case of state-suicide in history. Netanyahu wants to eliminate any possibility that Iran could ever challenge Israel’s monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region. If he were serious about eliminating the very-real scourge of nuclear weapons he would take seriously the possibilities for establishing a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East; but since that would entail Israel giving up their arsenal, he would prefer to use illegal force against Iran.

The US has done what it must in putting aside the more extreme of Israel’s demands, and we can only hope that the reports coming out that Netanyahu is, in private, willing to give the deal a chance, are true. Let’s hope that this editorial from Yedioth Ahronoth, which seems to suggest that Netanyahu is and should be willing to risk World War 3 over this deal, represents the fringes of mainstream thought in Israel. 

An Elementary Thought Experiment

A short summation of the 4-piece series on Iran, from the perspective of an alternative world:

Imagine, if you will, that in 1953 Iran overthrew the elected government of the United States and installed a puppet dictator who would rule for 26 years, keeping US natural resources firmly under the control of Iranian companies. Imagine that in 1979 this Iranian-backed ruler was overthrown in a popular revolution, and US national independence restored. In time, Iran would invade both Mexico and Canada, building at least 42 military bases in the surrounding region, replete with a naval fleet to patrol the Gulf of Mexico. Iran then utilises politically distorted intelligence estimates to demand that the US surrender its rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium, in return for a vague promise not to pursue ‘regime change’ in the US. Any pretence of negotiations is undermined by the threat of an attack upon the US, in violation of the UN Charter. Imagine American scientists are assassinated, infrastructure decimated by ‘cyber-bugs’, and devastating sanctions imposed, causing a pharmaceutical crisis for the US people. Iran’s major regional ally, Venezuela, works with US Christian terrorist groups who seek to overthrow the US government. A conference on establishing a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone in the Americas, to be attended by the US, is whimsically cancelled by Iran to ensure that their ally Venezuela be allowed to unilaterally retain the only nuclear weapons in the region.

Rhetorical musings aside, everything written here has manifested itself in reality, with one key difference: the official ‘enemy’ is not the perpetrator of the crimes. We are.

Iranian-Western Relations Part 4

Diplomacy

The final full piece on Iran; reviewing perhaps the only hope for eliminating the spectre of WMDs from the Middle East: diplomacy.

Given the apparent repeated failure of the talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the permanent 5 on the Security Council plus Germany) at Kazakhstan recently (http://tinyurl.com/bow2gzg), this option would seem to be a proven failure. However the Western media have failed to give the full story on diplomatic efforts. There are two avenues in particular which should be pursued urgently.

Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone

The first is the possibility of a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East; a treaty, governed by the UN, which would place obligations upon all states in the region to forgo any current nuclear weapons, or nuclear-ambitions, and submit to a wide-ranging regime of inspections and verification, either through the IAEA, Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Additional Protocol, or a new body set up to monitor compliance. Such verification wouldn’t be 100% accurate but it would be pretty close- the capacities of institutions like the IAEA are generally respected. Such zones already exist in Africa, Central Asia, South East Asia and Latin America (http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nwfz), and have so far been more or less successful.

Efforts to achieve such a zone in the Middle East have been on-going for decades, headed historically by Egypt in particular. Patricia Lewis recently wrote an article in International Affairs documenting the history of such efforts. It is recorded how ‘In 1974… Iran and Egypt formally tabled a joint UN General Assembly resolution calling for the establishment of an NWFZ in the Middle East. The resolution was adopted by a majority of 138 votes, with only Israel and Burma abstaining’ (http://tinyurl.com/cvpf3ej). Furthermore, a 1995 resolution passed at the NPT Review Conference calling ‘upon all States in the Middle East to take practical steps… aimed at making progress towards… the establishment of an effectively verifiable Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological, and their delivery systems, and to refrain from taking any measures that preclude the achievement of this objective’, and was accepted and voted for by all relevant states, including the US. Subsequent efforts culminated in an agreement to hold a conference on the establishment of a zone in Helsinki in December 2012.

Several months before the conference Iran announced it would attend (Jerusalem Post- http://tinyurl.com/c73jmdb). Shortly after that announcement, the US cancelled the conference, a decision slammed by Iran’s Ambassador to the IAEA as a ‘flagrant violation of the NPT’ (http://tinyurl.com/cd9dakg). The suspected reason for Washington’s sudden cancelation is Israel’s refusal to attend. Israel has a policy of ‘nuclear ambiguity’, refusing to admit or deny its possession of nuclear weapons, but it is widely believed by all respected observers to be the only state in the Middle East to have nuclear weapons. Given that this was a chance for an international effort to eliminate a danger to humanity in one of the most volatile regions in the world, one would have expected the United States to seize the opportunity with both hands. Instead, even the possibility of such an achievement was blocked. In a statement, the State Department claimed that ‘the United States will continue to work with our partners to support an outcome in which states in the region approach this issue on the basis of mutual respect and understanding’ (http://tinyurl.com/c3gdgrx), reminding me of a talk by Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow in which he called for negotiations to be undertaken with respect for Iran’s history and desire to be accepted into the international community (http://www.chathamhouse.org/events/view/182925); precisely the opposite of how diplomacy has been conducted so far. We have come a long way from the times when British diplomats wrote how ‘we English have hundreds of years of experience on how to treat the natives’ in Iran; but an air of superiority and arrogance remains in the US’ approach to negotiations. Take for instance one of their bargaining chips: a promise not to pursue ‘regime change’ in Iran in return for certain Iranian concessions. I wonder how the US would respond if Iran gave a vague promise not to pursue ‘regime change’ in the US in return for giving up certain aspects of its nuclear programme. When the precursor to negotiations is vast cyber-attacks and threats of an attack (even the very threat is actually against international law), it is unsurprising that negotiation often fail to get anywhere. It increases distrust and willingness to defy the opponent who comes across as an arrogant, aggressive bully.

Interestingly, I couldn’t find a single article on the conference for a nuclear-free Middle East in the mainstream British or American media. Such silence is stunning when the threats of nuclear proliferation are considered. Such a conference may come to nothing, but unless we at least try we can never know.

The Brazil-Turkey Deal

There are other avenues, and diplomacy has worked to some extent. Iran have recently diverted ‘a third of their enriched uranium fuel rods to medical research’ (Foreign Affairs- http://tinyurl.com/c4c3fmj), and Iran has been ‘careful to stay well below the 240kg mark’ of 20% enriched uranium which would be necessary for a bomb (Economist- http://tinyurl.com/c68gbt5). Furthermore, in 2009 the Obama administration approached Brazil asking them to broker a deal whereby Iran would ship out around 1,200kg of 5% enriched uranium, in return for a research reactor and 20% enriched uranium fuel rods usable for medical reactors only. Iran initially opposed the idea, but by 2010 Brazil and Turkey managed to get signatures on paper to achieve such an end (see here- http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2010_06/FuelSwap and here- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8685846.stm). However the US and UK then did a complete U-turn, refusing to back the deal (http://tinyurl.com/cuunbmn) which they had tried to foment previously. A common refrain has become that ‘the US doesn’t know how to take yes for an answer’. After Iran gave way to diplomacy, potentially opening up avenues for further agreements, the US humiliated the Iranian concession by destroying the deal.

This record of botched diplomacy could show one of many things. It could just be an unfortunate consequence of the challenges and complexities of international diplomacy, or it could be the result of a lack of respect for Iran and a certain arrogance on the part of Western powers. It may even betray a lack of sincerity on the part of the US to actually engage in serious negotiations. There is part of the US establishment that still hasn’t forgiven Iran for freeing itself from US dominance in 1979, and wants to re-establish control. Iran is one of the most important countries in one of the most important regions in the world, and the imperial mentality of the US is such that there is still a lingering feeling that they have a right to own Iran. In order to do that you need a war and regime change, something which has long been desired by the more hard-right elements of the US establishment.

There is certainly a wish on the part of the US to stop Iran getting weapons (although this certainly has more to do with the fact that a nuclear Iran would endanger US and Israeli power in the region rather than any concern for nuclear proliferation- Ehud Barak was quoted in Foreign Affairs as saying that the reason a nuclear Iran is so feared is that it would ‘undermine Israel's strategic monopoly in the Middle East’- http://tinyurl.com/c4c3fmj), but the mentality of the US state is one culturally prone towards war and violence rather than diplomacy. There are also more sinister motives underlying their aggressiveness towards Iran. The US is the world’s only empire, and ever since the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup the US has tried to dominate and control Iran in its interests. Disobedience to The Empire is often considered the greatest crime; one Iran is unlikely to be forgiven for whatever it does, short of complete submission to the iron will of the United States of America.


A short summation of the 4-part series will follow.