Abstract
‘This is a clear-eyed assessment of the Iran nuclear deal and how it was working smoothly before President Trump's reckless withdrawal. No single volume makes better use of the facts to refute the criticisms levied by the Trump administration against the deal, or differentiates more clearly between those of Iran's ballistic missiles which could be allowed in a negotiated arrangement and those which should be prohibited.’
Angela Kane, Senior Fellow, Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation; former UN High Rentative for Disarmament Affairs and UN Under-Secretary-General for Management ‘No one has contributed more to the public understanding of the complexities of nuclear proliferation and the attempts of various states to break out from the Non-Proliferation Treaty than Mark Fitzpatrick. Now he and his colleagues at the IISS have turned their focus to the withdrawal of the US from the JCPOA. Their new study is required reading for anyone concerned that this action could lead to yet another conflict in the Middle East or increase the risk of nuclear weapons spreading in the region.’
IISS
In July 2015, eight parties – France, Germany and the United Kingdom, together with the European Union and China, Russia and the United States on the one side, and Iran on the other – adopted the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal. Under the agreement, Iran accepted limits to its nuclear programme and stricter international monitoring in return for sanctions relief. Detractors, however, saw the deal as overly lenient towards Tehran. Donald Trump described the JCPOA as the ‘worst deal ever’, and announced in May 2018 that the US would cease waiving sanctions and withdraw from the agreement.
This Adelphi book argues that the unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA was a grave error. Drawing on a deep understanding of the non-proliferation regime and their own technical expertise, the authors evaluate the principal criticisms of the JCPOA, some of which are unrelated to nuclear issues. The authors argue that the Procurement Channel – established by the JCPOA to give Iran a route to procure goods and services for its now-limited nuclear programme – has been an effective check on Iran's illicit procurement of nuclear-related goods. They also show that Iran's nuclear and ballistic-missile programmes are not intrinsically linked, for not all of its missiles were designed to be nuclear-capable. The fate of the JCPOA now hangs in the balance; its survival will ultimately depend on Iran.
Only three and a half years after its adoption, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which aimed to obstruct Iran’s potential pathways to nuclear-weapons development, is in danger of falling apart. The agreement, better known as the Iran nuclear deal, was widely hailed throughout the world when it was agreed on 14 July 2015, following negotiations between Iran on one side, and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) and Germany – collectively known as the P5+1 – on the other, with the European Union chairing. Diplomacy had forestalled both an Iranian nuclear weapon and military action against Iran that some saw as the default means of preventing the development of such a weapon.
Acclaim for the diplomatic achievement was not universal, however. In the US, perceptions of the nuclear deal were divided along partisan lines. With a few exceptions, Democrats were elated at what their standard-bearer, President Barack Obama, had been able to accomplish. Republicans, on the other hand, believed the JCPOA made too many concessions to Iran, and that additional pressure on Iran’s economy could have achieved stronger constraints. Israel and three Arab foes of Iran – Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – also disapproved. From their perspective, the deal’s legalisation of Iran’s nuclear programme was less contentious than the fact that it legitimised Iran as a nation-state, and they feared that Tehran would gain influence and strength across the Middle East.
As the Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump made his opposition to the JCPOA a key campaign issue, calling it the ‘worst deal ever’ and vowing to terminate the agreement if elected. It took Trump 18 months to fulfil this election promise: in part because Iran was honouring its commitments but also because his key advisers recognised that withdrawing from the deal would serve no strategic purpose. As more hawkish advisers took over in early 2018, they encouraged Trump’s inclination to overturn his predecessor’s signature foreign-policy achievement. On 8 May 2018, Trump ceased waiving sanctions as required under the JCPOA and announced his decision to withdraw from the deal altogether. This left it up to Iran to decide whether to continue to uphold its end of the agreement in exchange for uncertain economic benefits from the remaining parties to the deal – trade and investment that was coming under sharp pressure from an aggressive US extraterritorial sanctions campaign.
Why is Trump so hostile to Iran? The reasons are rooted in recent history. Ever since its foundation in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been a source of Western apprehension. From a Western perspective, the antagonism started with the takeover of the US embassy by Iranian students in November 1979 and their holding hostage 52 American diplomats for 444 days. The US also blames Iran for its involvement in several terrorist attacks against US citizens, both indirectly as a patron of Hizbullah, which in 1983 carried out a suicide bombing on the US embassy in Beirut, and directly, through complicity in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. Iran has also harassed US ships in the Persian Gulf, detained several US citizens on spurious charges, trained and armed militia groups in Iraq that targeted US service members, supplied rockets to Hizbullah that are aimed at Israeli cities and propped up Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
Iran has its own list of grievances against the West, beginning with the coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh fomented by UK and US intelligence in 1953. Iran remains bitter about perceived Western acquiescence in Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War, and the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes in 1988, which killed 290 people (including 254 Iranians). Other points of contention include instances of lethal US naval action against Iranian vessels and facilities, and the United States’ 2007 raid on the Iranian Liaison Office in Erbil, Iraq, in which the US detained five Iranian diplomats, two of whom were held for just over ten months.
Mutual animosity over such incidents might not have boiled over if Iran had not challenged vital US national interests by pursuing nuclear-weapons development. Iran has always denied working on nuclear weapons, but the evidence is clear, as detailed in, for example, a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published in November 2015 and documents unveiled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 30 April 2018. Iran’s nuclear-weapons development and its failure to report various nuclear activities violated its commitments under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as it is better known. This development work was also seen to pose an existential threat to Israel. While Israel is not a treaty ally of the United States, the two states share strong political, religious and cultural ties. The US cannot sit by when Israel feels threatened.
Iran never produced nuclear weapons – unlike Israel, which may have about 200 warheads – and, as far as is known, never made a decision to undertake such production. In fact, in 2005 Iran publicised a fatwa issued by Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei against the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons.Footnote1 The fatwa, which was orally stated and variously recorded, did not prevent weapons-development work or retention of the records thereafter. Keeping the files, which Israeli intelligence removed from a warehouse in Tehran in a daring operation in January 2018,Footnote2 was in keeping with a nuclear hedging strategy. Since the mid-1980s, Iran has developed dual-use nuclear facilities in order to have the capability to produce nuclear weapons, should its security circumstances require a change to Khamenei’s fatwa.
Blocked by the US and other Western powers from obtaining dual-use technologies, Iran turned to the black market. Beginning in 1987, a shady network led by Pakistani metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan provided Iran with first-and second-generation Pakistani centrifuges and associated technology.Footnote3 Expanding on Khan network contacts, Iran developed a sophisticated nuclear-procurement effort that often evaded Western intelligence and law enforcement.
The development of fissile-material production capabilities was key to Iran’s hedging strategy. Nuclear weapons can be made using two kinds of fissile material: highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium. HEU is made by increasing the percentage of the fissile isotope uranium-235 from the 0.7% found in natural uranium ore to a concentration of 80% or higher. Plutonium is produced whenever uranium is irradiated in a reactor, though for use in weapons, the plutonium must be separated from other elements in the reactor through a chemical process called reprocessing.
Iran focused on the enrichment route, which it could justify for its civilian use in producing low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel for research and power reactors. The NPT does not prohibit enrichment or reprocessing – respectively, 12 and ten countries possess these technologies, albeit mostly for weapons purposes. (Japan’s civilian use for both is the example to which Iran points.) In response to US pressure over the years to deny it enrichment, Iran has talked itself into believing that this technology is essential to its national sovereignty and energy independence. Fifteen years ago, few Iranians knew what the word ‘enrichment’ meant. Today, almost all Iranians insist, as a matter of national pride, that they absolutely need it.
Ballistic missiles are also part of Iran’s nuclear hedging strategy, although most of its missiles also have a legitimate non-nuclear purpose. Denied replacement parts for US-built aircraft that the Islamic Republic inherited from the Shah, and having been outgunned by Iraqi missiles during the Iran–Iraq War, Tehran turned to short-and medium-range missiles as its primary means of air defence and deterrence. Iran insists that missiles are integral to its sovereignty, with even more fervour than when discussing enrichment.
The fissile-material production efforts that Iran launched in the mid-1980s inched along for two decades under weak management, in the face of strong US pressure to foreclose procurement of dual-use technology. Around the turn of the century, the programme made a breakthrough, with new leadership and a source of black-market nuclear goods and know-how. In 2001, Iran began construction of an underground industrial-scale enrichment facility at Natanz.
In 2002, an Iranian exile group exposed the Natanz facility and a heavy-water production plant at Arak, apparently fed the information by Israeli intelligence, sparking the now long-running Iranian nuclear crisis. France, Germany and the United Kingdom (the E3) initiated negotiations to persuade Iran to stop its enrichment programme, while the US pushed for sanctions at the United Nations to the same end. Neither effort succeeded. Diplomacy briefly stalled the enrichment programme in 2003 and 2004, but Tehran would never agree to forgo this technology. It responded to additional sanctions by adding more centrifuges to enrich uranium.
Recognising the impotence of the negotiating strategy he had inherited from the George W. Bush administration, Obama in 2013 changed US policy to limit, rather than eliminate, Iran’s uranium-enrichment capability. This compromise enabled multilateral negotiations, which had been stalemated for eight years, to progress in earnest. The pressure sanctions were beginning to place on Iran’s economy also encouraged Iranian diplomats to seek an accord, but they would not budge on key positions until the US conceded on enrichment.
For many Republican critics, acknowledging that Iran could keep its fissile-material production technology was an unacceptable concession. The fact that Iran already possessed the technology was less relevant to opponents than Obama’s concession of legitimising the enrichment. Critics also condemned Obama’s agreement to limit the scope of negotiations to the nuclear issue, leaving aside Iran’s development of ballistic missiles, regional aggression and internal repression.
In voicing their complaints against the JCPOA, critics looked for additional arguments to buttress their case that the US should void the deal. Partisan opponents, for example, seized upon unfounded accusations – including by some well-respected analysts – that Iran was violating the agreement. Except for two very minor and quickly rectified instances of excess heavy-water storage, this was not the case. Yet although the accusations were easily refuted, a narrative of Iranian deceit in implementing the nuclear accord took hold among Republicans, especially those who had Trump’s ear and in 2018 joined his national-security team. This narrative of Iranian deception, along with an impulse for regime change in Iran, formed the foundation for his withdrawal from the deal, as explained in Chapter One.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) does not share this view of the JCPOA. Researchers in the Institute’s Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Policy (NPNP) programme have long been sceptical of Iran’s claims that its nuclear programme was entirely for civilian purposes. We saw sanctions as a legitimate and potentially effective means of changing the cost–benefit analysis behind Iran’s nuclear decision-making. When sanctions achieved their immediate objective of helping to bring Iran to the negotiating table, however, we assessed that the agreement reached was beneficial. We have not changed this assessment.
This book is a combined effort by IISS NPNP researchers, led by programme director Mark Fitzpatrick, who wrote the first chapter, drawing on analysis published by the Institute since 2015. The second chapter was written by Research Associate Paulina Izewicz (who has since moved to the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey) and draws on a paper she wrote with the financial support of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.Footnote4 Fitzpatrick and Michael Elleman, IISS Research Fellow for Missile Defence, collaborated on the third chapter on Iran’s ballistic-missile programme, an earlier version of which, written with the financial support of the MacArthur Foundation, was published in February 2018.Footnote5
Chapter One addresses the false claims of Iranian JCPOA violations and other criticisms that have been levied against the accord. The chapter recognises that, like any negotiated agreement, the JCPOA was far from perfect, but notes that until Trump withdrew, it was running smoothly. Withdrawing from it was a grave mistake.
Chapter Two returns to the issue of nuclear black-market trafficking and explores the Procurement Channel: a little-known mechanism established by the JCPOA to counter such activity by providing a legitimate way for Iran to procure nuclear-related goods for its limited programme. In asking whether this mechanism is fit for purpose in curbing Iran’s covert procurement of nuclear and dual-use goods, the chapter notes the importance of credible enforcement and, most importantly, the viability of the JCPOA itself.
Chapter Three takes up in detail the issue of Iran’s ballistic-missile programme. From a strategic perspective, it was regrettable that Iran, Russia and China insisted on excluding missiles from the negotiations. Ballistic missiles are an essential element of a nuclear-weapons programme, which comprises three elements: sufficient fissile material for a nuclear explosion; the physics package to fashion the weapon; and the means of delivering it. Allowing Iran to develop nuclear-capable missiles while there are only temporary limits on its enrichment programme means Tehran would be well placed to develop a nuclear weapon when the limits expire.
Yet not all of Iran’s ballistic missiles are able to carry the bulky devices typical of first-generation nuclear weapons, and fewer of its missiles are designed with a nuclear delivery role in mind. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which was adopted to endorse the JCPOA in July 2015, superseded – and departed from – previous Security Council resolutions on Iran. It proscribed Iranian missiles based on their intent (those ‘designed’ to carry nuclear weapons) rather than solely on their inherent capability. Chapter Three differentiates among Iranian missiles that are so designed and those that are not.
A question mark hangs over the JCPOA. Given Washington’s withdrawal and near declaration of economic war against Iran, we fear that the accord may soon be spoken of in the past tense. If so, it will be the world’s loss.
Notes
1 ‘Iran’s Statement at IAEA Emergency Meeting’, Mehr News Agency, 10 August 2005.
2 David M. Halbfinger, David E. Sanger and Ronen Bergman, ‘Israel Says Secret Files Detail Iran’s Nuclear Subterfuge’, New York Times, 30 April 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/world/middleeast/israel-iran-nuclear-netanyahu.html.
3 See IISS, Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A.Q. Khan and the rise of proliferation networks – A net assessment (London: IISS, 2007).
4 Paulina Izewicz, ‘Assessing the JCPOA Procurement Channel’, IISS, 29 March 2018, https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2018/03/jcpoa-procurement-channel.
5 Michael Elleman and Mark Fitzpatrick, ‘Are Iran’s ballistic missiles designed to be nuclear capable?’, IISS, 28 February 2018, https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2018/02/iran-missiles-nuclear-capable.