Assessing the Interim Iran Deal at the Halfway Point

April 22, 2014 | Edited by Lauren Mladenka

April IAEA Report - “Status of Iran’s Nuclear Programme in Relation to the Joint Plan of Action” by the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors. April 17, 2014 (pdf). Via Iran Fact File. http://bit.ly/1rjNDJR

The deal is working - “In September 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood at a United Nation’s podium with a cartoon bomb warning that the world had to stop Iran before it completed ‘the second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb.’ The prime minister can rest a bit easier now. We have stopped Iran from completing that second stage,” writes Joe Cirincione in Defense One. “When Netanyahu spoke, Iran had roughly 190 kilograms of medium enriched uranium and was making more every week. ‘That’s why I speak today with such a sense of urgency,’ he said, ‘And why everyone should have a sense of urgency.’ He predicted Iran would cross his red line by the summer of 2013.”

--”It did not...The interim deal the U.S. and other nations secured with Iran last November rolled it back, directly addressing Netanyahu’s main fear. Iran agreed not only to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent, but to get rid of all it had made. That goal has now been effectively reached. The IAEA report last week confirms that Iran cut its stock of medium enriched uranium by three-quarters. It has completely diluted half its stock down to low enriched uranium, and it has converted half of the remaining amount into reactor fuel, all ahead of schedule. It would be extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming to reverse these processes. In short, Netanyahu’s bomb has been drained.” Read the full piece here. http://bit.ly/1jv6xJK

Zarif in Foreign Affairs - “Iran has no interest in nuclear weapons and is convinced that such weapons would not enhance its security,” writes Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Foreign Affairs. “Iran does not have the means to engage in nuclear deterrence -- directly or through proxies -- against its adversaries. Furthermore, the Iranian government believes that even a perception that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons is detrimental to the country’s security and to its regional role, since attempts by Iran to gain strategic superiority in the Persian Gulf would inevitably provoke responses that would diminish Iran’s conventional military advantage.”

--”Therefore, the ongoing negotiations over the nuclear issue face no insurmountable barriers. The only requirements are political will and good faith for the negotiators to ‘get to yes’ and achieve the objective established by the Joint Plan of Action adopted in Geneva last November, which states, ‘The goal for these negotiations is to reach a mutually-agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful.’ The unexpectedly fast pace of progress in the negotiations so far augurs well for a speedy resolution of this unnecessary crisis and for the opening up of new diplomatic horizons.” Read the full piece here (paywall). http://fam.ag/1nlZx8H

Full account - “Iran said on Monday it was drafting a comprehensive account of its nuclear activities, but did not indicate whether this would be made available to help the final diplomatic push to resolve a decade-old dispute with the West over the program,” Reuters reports. “The move could meet Western demands for greater transparency to address concerns that Iran may have been trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability.” Read the full story here. http://bit.ly/1icmPpw

Ruskies in Montana - “Russian nuclear inspectors visited the U.S. amid heightened tensions between the two nations to verify that 18 nuclear missile launch facilities had been demolished as part of [the New START treaty],” writes Matt Volz for AP. “The Russian inspection teams spent 12 hours traveling to sites across central Montana to confirm that each silo's launch doors had been removed and their launcher tubes filled with earth and gravel.” Full story here. http://abcn.ws/1muzTvG

Special relationship could get more special - “Some U.K. Conservative Party leaders are said to support temporarily basing British nuclear arms in the United States if they are expelled from Scotland,” Global Security Newswire reports. “The Tory-led coalition government in London is fiercely opposed to a campaign sponsored by Scottish nationalists to secede from the United Kingdom. If voters choose independence in a September referendum, the locally governing Scottish National Party has vowed to quickly begin removing from Scotland all nuclear-armed Trident D-5 missiles -- and ultimately the submarines that carry them -- by 2020.”

--”London has not officially acknowledged any contingency scenarios for a possible future in which the nuclear-armed fleet of four Vanguard-class vessels is ordered out of an independent Scotland. Privately, however, some senior Conservative members think the submarines and weapons could be temporarily sent to the United States,” as “the two allies have a longstanding cooperation agreement related to equipping and maintaining the U.K. submarines with the Trident missiles… Under such a scenario, the fleet would be returned to the United Kingdom as a home base once new facilities have been constructed to replace the lost sites in Scotland.” Full article here. http://bit.ly/1lzu52H

Increased activity - “North Korea has increased activities at its main nuclear test site, prompting Seoul and Washington to prepare for a possible nuclear test from the North,” writes Choe Sang-Hun in The New York Times. “The report came as President Obama was nearing the start of a trip later this week to Japan and South Korea, where he was expected to discuss with regional leaders how to deal with the North Korean nuclear threats.”

--”The fact that the South Korean military activated an emergency task force meant that it took the North’s most recent activities more seriously. The national news agency Yonhap quoted an anonymous government official as saying that the North had placed a large screen at the entrance of a tunnel in Punggye-ri, possibly to thwart Western spy satellites watching the site.” Full story here. http://nyti.ms/1f0GEFD

Quick-hits:

--”Former Officials Seek U.S. Disclosure on Alleged Israeli Nuclear Theft” by Diane Barnes in Global Security Newswire. http://bit.ly/QCxyUn

--”China Goes Ballistic” by Andrew Erickson and Michael Chase in The National Interest. http://bit.ly/1nEtYnM

--”Lessons Learned from Successful Iran Diplomacy” by Ryan Costello in Roll Call. http://bit.ly/1k3peHA

Events:

--“Crisis in Ukraine, the Budapest Memorandum and Extended Deterrence.” Discussion with Steven Pifer. April 22 from 12:30 to 2:00 at National Defense University, 408 Fourth Ave., Fort McNair, Washington. RSVP by email to Nima.Gerami@ndu.edu

--“Garwin: Witness to History.” Film screening and panel discussion with Richard Garwin, Richard Breyer, Anand Kamalakar, and Charles Ferguson. April 22 from 5:00-8:00 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, auditorium, 1200 New York Ave. NW. RSVP by email to rsvp@fas.org.

--“Making a Difference: Faith Communities Speak to the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.” Discussion with Andrew Kanter, Daryl Kimball, and eight other speakers. April 24 from 9:30-4:00 at the U.S. Institute of Peace, 2301 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington. http://conta.cc/1ssfg70

--“Preparing for Deep Cuts: Options for Enhancing Euro-Atlantic and International Security.” Discussion with Ulrich Kuehn, Götz Neuneck, Eugene Miasnikov, and Greg Thielmann; moderated by Steven Pifer. April 28 from 10:00-11:30 at The Brookings Institution, Falk Auditorium, 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1hOGcd1

--“The United States and Iran: Can Diplomacy Prevent an Iranian Bomb?” Discussion with former Amb. Thomas Pickering and Shaul Bakhash. April 28 from 6:00-7:15 at American University, Abramson Family Founders Room, 4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington. RSVP here. http://conta.cc/1eEMAyC