Alphen, Netherlands. 16
July. The “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” agreed on 14 July in Vienna
between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the E3/EU+3 states: “The E3/EU3+3
(China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the
United States, with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign
Affairs and Security Policy) with the Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes the
historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which will ensure that
Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful, and mark a fundamental
shift in their approach to this issue”.
Whilst the JCPOA concerns the nature and scope of Iran’s ambitions to
build nuclear weapons the Accord is also about contemporary geopolitics and the
regional-strategic security and stability of the Middle East.
The
Accord: The JCPOA is 159 pages long which attests to its
complexity and builds on the November 2013 Geneva Accord or Joint Plan of
Action. The main aim of the Accord is to
reaffirm the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the essential benchmark
for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to so-called non-nuclear weapons
states (NNWS). Under the agreement Iran is to be transformed from a so-called
‘threshold state’ into a NNWS. Central to the Accord are strengthened
safeguards and a verification and inspection regime that is intrusive even if
it stops short of ‘no warning inspections’.
Specific
Measures: The focus of the Accord is on preventing the
weapons-grade enrichment of both uranium 235 and plutonium. Uranium enrichment will be curtailed by
reducing the number of operational centrifuges from 19,000 to 5000 and limiting
Iran to the use of short lifespan first generation centrifuges. Medium-enriched uranium will be rendered
unfit for use in weapons. Some 9700 kg
of Iran’s 10,000 kg low-enriched uranium will also be shipped abroad. Fordow, one of two main research and
development sites, will cease all enrichment and become a physics research
centre with no access to fissile material for at least 15 years. The Arak heavy water reactor vital to the
development of weapons grade plutonium will have its core destroyed and Iran
will seek no heavy water production again for at least 15 years.
Verification
and Inspection: Vienna-based International Atomic
Energy Authority (IAEA) inspectors will have the right to inspect so-called
‘suspicious facilities’. The so-called
Safeguards Regime is based on but more extensive than those agreed under the
NPT. However, the inspectors will be
unable to carry out snap exercises. Iran
will also be required to address so-called “possible military dimensions” of
its nuclear programme.
Sanctions
Relief: In return for compliance with the terms of the
Accord the EU, US and United Nations Security Council will lift a range of
trade sanctions and unfreeze some $150bn of Iranian oil assets currently held
in foreign banks. However, sanctions
relief is linked to Iran’s compliance over time and thus will take place in
stages. Critically, there will be no
complete relief from sanctions until the agreement has been implemented in full
and the Arak reactor destroyed. There is
a strong ‘snap back’ regime in place that allows for sanctions to be re-imposed
quickly if the Accord is breached and without a further UNSC Resolution.
Analysis:
A key phrase in the Accord reads, “They [the Parties to the Accord] anticipate
that full implementation of this JCPOA will contribute to regional and
international peace and security”.
Indeed, the Accord reflects a rapidly changing region and wider world
and a battle over the conduct of international relations that goes far beyond
the issue of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Specifically, a global struggle is
underway over between a legalised order and Machtpolitik
and between globalisation and Islamisation.
In Iran there is
clearly some tension between relative moderates around President Rouhani who
believe that Iran’s changing society must accommodate itself with globalisation
and hard-liners in and around the powerful Revolutionary Guard who see
themselves as the guardians of the 1979 Revolution. However, it would be far too simplistic to
suggest there is a split between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and
President Rouhani. Iran remains first
and foremost an Islamic Republic with clerical power still the deciding force
in Iranian policy-making. The Accord
would seem to reflect an accommodation between the two factions both of which
believe they can gain.
Tehran has signed up to
the Accord because it it believes it has the upper hand in the struggle for
regional dominance in the Middle East.
Indeed, Persian Iran is at one and the same time confident in its
ability to influence the by and large Arab region in which it sits. Equally, Shia Tehran is deeply concerned by
the rise of Sunni Islamic State and pragmatists clearly believe some form of
accommodation will be needed with all anti-IS forces across the region. However, a temporary suspension of
competition with peer competitors such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
States does not mean that competition over regional-strategic supremacy has
been postponed indefinitely. Indeed,
suspension of Iran’s nuclear ambitions over the short-term would help forge an
implicit anti-IS ‘coalition’ which perversely could help weaken regimes such as
the Saudi monarchy because of the split within the Arab-Sunni world that would
ensue between leaders and led. Iran is also fully aware that Saudi money paid
for much of Pakistan’s nuclear programme and Riyadh is quite capable of rapidly
becoming a nuclear power should the Accord falter.
Israel is of course
key. There is as yet no sign that the Accord will lead to a shift in Tehran on
its long-standing and extreme hostility to Israel. Indeed, with significant funds about to be
released to Iran one of the key tests of of the Accord concerns the impact it
will have on wider Iranian policy. If Hezbollah
is restocked and re-supplied and President Assad in Syria bolstered it will be
clear that Iran is just as committed as ever to an eventual showdown with
Israel and that hard-liners still drive much of Iranian foreign policy. However, if that money instead goes into
supporting the hard-pressed Iranian population then some moderating of Iran’s
position may be underway.
The geopolitics of the
Accord are equally fascinating. After a bruising couple of years which saw Russia
use force in Ukraine and China seize territory (and build it) in the South
China Sea the Accord demonstrates that a legalised systems of international
relations is still workable and that some semblance of ‘international
community’ still exists. Arms control
(for that is what the Accord is) is unlike disarmament in that whilst the
latter is part of an ideal the former is a pragmatic function of security and
defence policy, i.e. the more arms are limited by accord the less likely they
will be built and the more likely legal solutions to disputes will be sought. The world is in the balance between a
treaty-based system of world order and a new balance of power. The Accord is a
modest but important step back from the brink of Real and Machtpolitik and
new regional and global arms races and a strengthening of the regimes and
international institutions that underpin a legalised world order.
Assessment:
As ever with such accords the devil will be in the demonstrable upholding of
the detail with political and strategic implications that go far beyond the
many technical pages of the Accord. It
Iran adheres to the Accord in full some semblance of trust will be established
which in time may allow for the establishment of shared interests and
actions. If Iran seeks to use the very
detail of the Accord to split the fractious coalition that negotiated it then
the there is a very real danger of treaty breakout and a defection that will
make the current fragile situation even worse.
President Obama is
surely right to make the effort implicit in the Accord for all the reasons laid
out above. However, neither the White
House nor the EU powers can dismiss the stated concerns of Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu. This Accord might
not be the “historic mistake” he claims it to be but unless a clear
determination to uphold it to the letter is apparent from Day One then the very
real danger exists that Iran will out-manoeuvre a naïve Administration and a
Europe that really does not want to be bothered right now. As former US President Teddy Roosevelt once
said, now is the time to speak softly but carry a big stick.
Julian Lindley-French
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