The basis for a permanent deal: deep, verifiable changes to Iran’s nuclear program

The purpose of the interim agreement is to lengthen the breakout time Iran would need to build a nuclear device from days to months, and this has been achieved by Iran’s commitment verifiably to destroy its 200 kg stock of 20 percent enriched uranium by diluting it (for details of the interim agreement, see “The interim agreement between the P5+1 and Iran: the details,” HSNW, 25 November 2013). The dilution process of the 20 percent enriched uranium is irreversible, meaning that Iran, which for now would be left with its large quantity of 5 percent enriched uranium, would now need about four or five months to rebuild its stock of 20 percent enriched uranium (it takes much more time to enrich uranium from 5 to 20 percent than it takes to enrich it from 20 to 90 percent), giving the United States and Israel enough time to take action to prevent the move if they wanted to do so.

The interim agreement has thus moved Iran back from the nuclear weapon threshold – but only temporarily. The purpose of the permanent agreement is not only to move Iran back from the nuclear weapon threshold, but to make it impossible for it to get back there.

A new report by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security(ISIS) says that to reassure the world that it has no intention of becoming a nuclear threshold state – let alone a nuclear weapon state – Iran would have remove 15,000 centrifuges and take other drastic measures which would reshape its nuclear program.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the steps required to make it impossible for Iran to develop nuclear weapons are sweeping, and will offer a stiff challenge for P5+1 as they try to turn the interim agreement into a permanent one.

The ISIS report says that in addition to removing the thousands of centrifuges that enrich uranium, Iran would have to agree to a long – and exceedingly detailed – series of changes to its nuclear program. Here we highlight only three such changes — the ISIS list contains twenty-three specific steps, many with additional sub-steps — Iran would have to take:

• Have only one enrichment site, the one at Natanz. The underground Fordow site will be shut down or converted into a non-centrifuge-related site.
• Convert a heavy water reactor being built in Araq to a light-water reactor powered by low-enriched uranium (LEU). The enrichment of the fuel should be less than 5 percent in the isotope uranium 235. The spent or irradiated fuel should be sent overseas, as is the case with the irradiated fuel from the Bushehr reactor.
• Accept a 20-year, intrusive inspections regime to verify that it is complying with the agreement

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that as of Monday, Iran has been complying with its commitments to halt production of 20 percent enriched uranium.

The IAEA also said Iran had stopped work on its heavy-water plutonium reactor in Arak and begun removing its stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 percent. The IAEA also said it had agreed on stepped-up inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites, including daily visits to facilities in the cities of Natanz and Qom.

“This is an important day in our pursuit of ensuring that Iran has an exclusively peaceful nuclear program,” EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on her way to a meeting in Geneva about implementing the agreement.

The Journal notes that the ISIS list of changes to Iran’s nuclear program is not viewed as particularly harsh. The ISIS report, for example, assumes that Iran will maintain some ability to continue producing nuclear fuel through low-level enrichment as part of a final agreement.

Israel, and a bi-partisan group of U.S. lawmakers, demand the complete dismantling of Iran’s uranium-enrichment capabilities as part of a final deal.

David Albright, a physicist who heads ISIS and who was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, said his institute’s study was based on independent research and that it is informed by extensive discussions in recent months with Obama administration officials working on the Iran file.

“Our requirements are a far cry from what Iran wants. The negotiations are going to be really tough,” Albright told the Journal. “We don’t see ourselves as sketching an extreme case, however.” Albright said the report is based on a formula which would ensure Iran would need six months to a year to build a nuclear weapon if it decided to break off its cooperation with the West and the IAEA.

State Department officials declined to comment on the ISIS report’s conclusions. A senior U.S. officials, though, told the Journal that “The final agreement envisages the possibility of some limited enrichment program…. What we’ll have to look at if there is one that is limited in scope that gives us what we need” in terms of nonproliferation guarantees.

The ISIS report highlight the need to deny Iran the ability to make weapons-grade fuel through the two separate tracks Iran has been developing: the uranium enrichment and the production of plutonium from a heavy-water reactor’s spent uranium rods.

In addition to limiting Iran’s enrichment activities to one enrichment site, Iran also needs to reduce to 4,000 the total number of centrifuges it is operating from the current number of nearly 20,000 centrifuges. The reduction in the number of centrifuges will make it impossible quickly to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) required for a bomb.

The ISIS study said Iran should be required to convert its heavy water reactor in Arak to a light water reactor powered by low-enriched uranium. Light-water reactor are of little use in developing weapons-grade fuel. The ISIS also argues that a tight inspection regime must be imposed on Iran to prevent Iran from acquiring equipment or fuel for its nuclear program, and that this tight regime must be in place for at least twenty years.

“Critical to this approach is that the United States must remain ready for many years to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” the ISIS report concluded. “It would not be surprising if the IAEA needed two decades to ensure that Iran is fully compliant with all of its nonproliferation obligations.”

— Read more in Defining Iranian Nuclear Programs in a Comprehensive Solution under the Joint Plan of Action(ISIS, 15 January 2014)