Potential Solutions as Iran Talks Enter Critical Phase

On the radar: Optimistic for a deal, but creativity needed; Bridging gaps; Sanctions relief sequencing; Why inspections are key; Iran can’t walk away; Don’t tell anybody about Israel’s “kumquats”; and unnecessary weapons, staggering costs.

September 26, 2014 | Edited by Will Saetren

Possible - As Iran and the P5+1 approach their deadline of November 25 for reaching a comprehensive deal, both sides will need to budge from their positions on how many centrifuges Iran can keep. “But it's a mistake to focus so intently on the centrifuge numbers, turning them into destructive measures of victory or defeat, when ‘breakout’ depends not only on producing fuel for a bomb, but also on assembling and testing the delivery mechanisms and warheads, as an excellent new paper from the Washington-based Arms Control Association explains,” writes Bloomberg in an editorial.

--”Rouhani and Obama don't need to be friends to defuse the nuclear issue. All they need is the courage to convince powerful lobbies back home -- in the U.S. Congress and the Revolutionary Guard -- that they needn't come out of the talks with victory, only a deal.” Full editorial here. http://bv.ms/1rpXAJK

Tweet - @DarylGKimball: "A Win-Win Formula for Defining Iran's U-Enrich. Capacity" Examp. of how a 4,500 SWU limit could work #IranTalksNYC http://bit.ly/1pjL2Oy

Meeting in the middle - “The U.S. is considering softening present demands that Iran gut its uranium enrichment program in favor of a new proposal that would allow Tehran to keep nearly half of the project intact while placing other constraints on its possible use as a path to nuclear weapons,” write George Jahn and Gregory Katz for the The Associated Press.

--“The tentative new U.S. offer envisages letting Iran keep up to 4,500 centrifuges but would reduce the stock of uranium gas fed into the machines to the point where it would take more than a year of enriching to create enough material for a nuclear warhead. That, [said an anonymous official], would give the international community enough lead time to react to any such attempt.” Read the full story here. http://abcn.ws/1rxXBeU

Sanctions under a deal - Wendy Sherman, the chief U.S. negotiator at nuclear talks with Iran, said that she is optimistic that a deal with is within reach. She also added that if a deal was reached, relief from major sanctions on the Iranian economy, “will happen very early in the agreement.” Sherman’s comments were made during an exclusive interview with Voice of America on Thursday.

--“I believe we are making progress,” Sherman said, referring to the last round of talks on Tehran’s nuclear program currently underway in New York. “That said, there are still some very crucial decisions that need to be made… This is a very, very complicated negotiation, very technically detailed.” Read the full story here. http://bit.ly/1wNoCLo

Why inspections matter - The idea of Iran “breaking out” for a bomb is a common feature of the debate, but experts acknowledge that a “sneak out” - where Iran could try to covertly build material for a bomb - is the more likely risk. “World powers have calibrated their demands in negotiations with Iran to forestall any such outcome,” writes Fredrik Dahl for Reuters.

--”To counter this risk, they say, any breakthrough diplomatic settlement with Iran must grant the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) broader surveillance powers in this vast country crisscrossed by remote, often inaccessible mountains and desert.” Read the full story here. http://reut.rs/1rk9Xbe

Walking NOT an option - “The Iranian government is reluctant to reduce the number of its nuclear centrifuges while the United States is anxious for Iran to decrease them. This has led to some speculation that the government of President Hassan Rouhani may consider walking away from the nuclear negotiations...While Tehran seems to be in a much better position now than it was even a year ago, Rouhani and Zarif should not overestimate their position,” writes Alireza Nader in The National Interest.

--”Failure to reach a deal will not diminish the sanctions regime against Iran. It is more likely that Iran will be blamed for a collapse of negotiations than the United States, which has far more leverage than Tehran may assume. Furthermore, the United States is not desperate for Iran’s help against ISIS... And finally, while Iran may be stable for now, Rouhani still presides over a deeply divided political system and society. Read the full story here. http://bit.ly/1my020u

Hardly top secret - Israel has the bomb. But don’t tell anyone, especially if you have security clearances and want to keep them, writes Jeffrey Lewis in Foreign Policy. Former Los Alamos employee Jim Doyle experienced exactly that. “The fact that the United States intelligence community believes that Israel possesses nuclear weapons is formally classified.” So when Doyle wrote an article for the journal Survival which recognized that fact, he was “suspended, had his clearances revoked, and lost his job at Los Alamos.” This despite having submitted the article to his superiors for prior review.

--”One obvious downside to our absurd policy of refusing to acknowledge Israel's bomb is that it ends up being enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner,” writes Lewis. “There is one simple solution to this problem. Change WPN-136 Foreign Nuclear Capabilities to declassify the ‘fact’ that the United States intelligence community has believed that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons since the 1970s. That's it...U.S. officials should be free to acknowledge the obvious without fear of losing their clearances and their jobs. That's all.” http://atfp.co/1ry4VXT

The unaffordable triad - “The current U.S. arsenal of approximately 4,800 nuclear warheads is a Cold War anachronism. Nonetheless, as The New York Times outlined in a Sept. 22 front page story, the United States is planning to rebuild all three legs of its existing nuclear ‘triad’ and their associated warheads – at a cost that could reach $1 trillion over the next 30 years,” write Kingston Reif and Angela Canterbury in Defense One.

--”The current modernization plan is geared towards building nuclear weapons that we don’t need and can’t afford. It’s time for Congress to insist on a new approach.” Read the full opinion here. http://bit.ly/1qBWXHV

Tweet - @BulletinAtomic: What you need to know about #Iran's heavy water reactor in Arak-crucial part of negotiations pic.twitter.com/qeP50FeKKq http://bit.ly/1vhhgPe

Quick Hit:

--“Nuclear terrorism: Most immediate and extreme threat to global security” by Valerie Plame for The Hill. http://bit.ly/1vnGSLi

Events:

--"The Regional Implications of a deal with Iran,” with Ken Pollack, Farideh Farhi, John Garver, Amb. Chas Freeman, and Haleh Esfandiari. Sept. 29, 2:30pm at the Washington Marriott. Part of the NIAC Leadership Conference. Details here. http://bit.ly/XvQffI

--Eric Schlosser discusses his book, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, at the World Affairs Council of Northern California. Sept. 29 in San Francisco. Details here. http://bit.ly/1qrePcW

--"Nuclear Stability in South Asia," Oct. 1, Noon-2:00pm, at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Suite 1225, 1400 K St. NW, Washington. Featuring Sumit Ganguly, Indiana University; Gaurav Kampani, University of Tulsa; David Karl, Asia Strategy Initiative; Col. David Smith, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Stephen Schwartz, Monterey Institute of International Studies. Sponsored by the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University Bloomington. RSVP Here. http://bit.ly/1odeg2m

-- “The UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent and the Chevaline Program: An Overview,” Oct. 3, 12:00pm - 2:00pm hosted by the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1qyEuvE

--Public meeting for the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories. Oct. 6, 10:00am-3:30pm in Alexandria, VA. Details here. http://1.usa.gov/1udhOIV

--“Preventing Proliferation and Advancing Nuclear Disarmament” Annual Meeting of the Arms Control Association. Oct. 20, 9:30am-2:30pm at the Carnegie Endowment. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1uGHZnS