Explained: Iran’s announcement on compliance with nuclear deal, its background and likely fallout

What are the Iranian leaders talking about?

President Rouhani and Minister Zarif have set a deadline of 60 days for the world’s major powers to re-negotiate a deal that they had struck with Iran in 2015. Iran has not renounced the agreement altogether, but has announced calibrated steps to roll back its compliance.

The EU refers to the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy; E3 are the ‘big three’ European powers who led the negotiations with Iran — Germany, France, and the United Kingdom; and the ‘+2’ are China and the Russian Federation.

JCPOA is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an agreement that Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — the United States, UK, France, Russia, and China — and Germany) reached on July 14, 2015. It is the official name for the Iran nuclear deal or Iran deal. Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to destroy its stock of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stock of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce the number of gas centrifuges by two-thirds for 13 years.

It agreed to enrich uranium up to just 3.67% and to not build any new heavy-water facilities, for the next 15 years. It agreed that for 10 years, uranium enrichment would happen only at a single facility, using first-generation centrifuges. And that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the world’s nuclear watchdog, would have access to all Iranian nuclear facilities.

In return for Iran verifiably abiding by these commitments, the US, EU, and United Nations Security Council nuclear-related sanctions on it were lifted. The Iran deal was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which was adopted on July 20, 2015, and major international corporates rushed to do business with Iran almost immediately.
On May 8 last year, President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the JCPOA, dismantling one of the key foreign policy successes of his predecessor President Barack Obama, and reinstated the sanctions on Iran.

What exactly has Iran decided to do now?

Iran has begun building up again stockpiles of low-enriched uranium and heavy water, which is used in nuclear reactors. The IR-40 nuclear reactor that Iran started building close to its Heavy Water Production Plant in Arak in 2004, and which could ultimately produce bomb-grade plutonium, was closed down under the deal with the West. But Iran has now said it would resume its construction unless the Europeans compensate it for the sanctions imposed unilaterally by the US.

President Rouhani also said on national television that if Iran wasn’t allowed to “reap [its] benefits” with regard to exports of petroleum products and banking transactions within the 60-day deadline, it would scale up the enrichment of uranium. The current level of 3.67% enrichment is good for a nuclear power plant, but not for a bomb. Weapons-grade uranium must be enriched to 90%; however, once enrichment reaches 20%, 90% can be reached in half the time. Iran had enriched to 20% before it pulled back under the deal.

In what state are Iran’s nuclear facilities currently?

Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility is in an underground complex in Natanz in Isfahan province. The nuclear power plant that it opened in Bushehr with Russian help in 2011 is operational. Under the deal, it tweaked a heavy-water reactor so it could no longer produce plutonium, and converted an enrichment site in Fordo in Qom province into a research facility.

Under the deal, Iran can stock up to 300 kg of low-enriched uranium, a small fraction of the 10 tonnes of higher-enriched uranium it once possessed. It can operate 5,060 old IR-1 centrifuges, but not the more advanced IR-2M, IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges at Natanz. Iranian officials have said that the IR-2M and IR-4 can enrich uranium five times faster than IR-1, and IR-6 can enrich 10 times faster.

How did Iran’s nuclear programme progress before the deal?

Under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran and the US were allies. A test reactor that the US gave Iran under its Atoms for Peace programme came online in Tehran in 1967. With Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran and the US turned into enemies.

In the 1990s, Iran purchased nuclear equipment and know-how from the notorious Pakistani proliferator A Q Khan including, possibly, the designs of a weapon and detonators. In 2002, news of Iran’s covert nuclear site at Natanz became public, even though Iran continued to deny its programme had military objectives. Tehran stopped enrichment for a while, but resumed under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The UN-sanctioned Iran, and the US and Israel allegedly unleashed the Stuxnet computer worm on Iran’s centrifuges. From 2010 onward, as tensions rose higher, bombs targeted Iranian scientists in an alleged Israeli undercover operation.

What happens now?

After President Trump pulled out of the Iran accord, most of the promised international business deals ended. The Iranian economy, which grew in 2016 and 2017, shrank in 2018 and 2019 (until April), according to figures and estimates by the Central Bank of Iran and the International Monetary Fund. In April, the US increased its provocation by ending exemptions from sanctions for five of Iran’s main oil customers, including India, and designating Iran’s elite Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation. This week, US National Security Adviser John Bolton said an aircraft carrier was being deployed to the Middle East. Critics have been saying for some time that the Trump administration could be building up towards possible military conflict with Iran.

The European signatories of the JCPOA have been upset with the US for wrecking the deal that had taken difficult and painstaking negotiations to strike, and which was widely believed to have been working. This January, the E3 set up the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, or INSTEX, a special purpose vehicle for trade with Iran bypassing sanctions. Iran’s demand that they do more within a fixed deadline forces them to face difficult questions. In an early reaction on Wednesday evening India time, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Germany was “worried” about Iran’s decision.

(With The New York Times, AP and Reuters)