March 26, 2021
by Warren L. Nelson
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has thrown a spanner into the effort to get the United States and Iran to resume their obligations under the nuclear agreement by saying it is now “impossible” to revive the deal since there is solid evidence Iran has been working with enriched uranium it has not declared to the agency.
The evidence was unearthed last year when visits to two sites that Iran says were never part of its nuclear program found uranium residue. Grossi has asked Iran for explanations, but did not make a major issue of the uranium particles until March 22, when he gave an interview to Newsweek.
He then said that the undeclared uranium is “totally connected” to the future of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Two days later, in an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais, he went much further and said reviving the JCPOA is “impossible” and that an entirely new agreement is required.
In the second interview, he not only cited the uranium traces found at the two undeclared sites but the fact that Iran had now “begun feeding a newly installed cascade of 174 IR-4 centrifuges” with uranium that it is enriching. He said that meant Iran was now producing what could be considered the minimum amount of material needed to make a nuclear weapon.
As for the uranium residue at the undeclared sites, Grossi said, “We need to know what was going on there. We need to know exactly what kind of activities were taking place there. And we need to know, if there was [uranium] material, where is this material now because it hasn’t been declared. This necessitates a very detailed and technical discussion, which is not taking place.”
That last sentence appeared to mean that Grossi was complaining that Iran has been stonewalling the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the last few months since Grossi asked Iran to explain the residue found last August and September.
Grossi was apparently even more concerned when he learned that Iran had lied in its explanation for why the uranium residue was present at the sites. Iran told the IAEA the residue came from equipment moved to the sites from other, acknowledged, nuclear sites. But the IAEA checked and found that the kind of uranium found at the sites did not match the kind of uranium found on the equipment Iran had cited.
The Islamic Republic had refused to allow the IAEA to visit the sites for seven months before changing its mind. It was assumed that Iran used those seven months to scrub the sites of all uranium traces. The fact that they failed to accomplish that reflected badly on the competence of people in Iran’s nuclear program. Several years ago, the same thing happened at another site where satellite photos showed buildings being rebuilt and the surrounding earth being scraped up and removed. But when the IAEA finally got there, it still found uranium traces.
Iran’s response to Grossi came from Kazem Gharib-abadi, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, who tried a two-track effort. First, he alleged that the residue was ancient history, since the sites where the uranium traces were found had not been used for almost two decades. Second, he said Grossi should be spending his time on the more important issue of Israeli nuclear weapons.
Grossi does not dispute that the two sites have been unused since about 2003. But the point is that Iran never told the IAEA they existed. That raises questions about the possibility of a clandestine nuclear program that Iran does not need unless it is working on nuclear weapons.
As for Israel, Iran often raises it to try to distract attention from its own nuclear program. The IAEA does not deal with the Israel question because Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and so does not come under the IAEA’s surveillance. Iran never bothers to note that India and Pakistan have also never signed the treaty and so their nuclear programs don’t get seen by IAEA inspectors either.
Gharib-abadi was harsh and personally attacked Grossi, saying, “Do not cling to over two-decade-old allegations as a cover-up to justify your deliberate failure to address important issue of proliferation, including the nuclear dossier of the Israeli regime.”
Grossi said, “My obligation is to make sure that everything is duly accounted for, otherwise we may repeat past experiences where the IAEA was accounting for things in other places [while] forbidden or undeclared activities were ongoing. So, it is an urgent matter.”
French President Emmanuel Macron expressed Europe’s growing frustration with the Islamic Republic. “Iran must stop aggravating a serious nuclear situation with an accumulation of violations of the Vienna accord,” he said, referring to the JCPOA. “Iran must make the expected gestures and behave in a responsible way.”
The US under President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018. Iran waited a full year before announcing a policy of progressively withdrawing from one aspect of the agreement after another by, for example, operating more centrifuges than permitted under the JCPOA and enriching uranium to a higher level than permitted under the agreement.
Majlis Speaker Moham-mad-Baqer Qalibaf said March 19 that the purpose of those violations was simply to give Iran more leverage in the jockeying over the revival of the JCPOA. He said Iran’s actions, including a law enacted by the Majlis to mandate violations, were “a bargaining chip.” While that seems to be the universal view in Tehran, it is not the way the West sees things.
The Islamic Republic views its violations as a way to bring revival of the JCPOA closer, while the West sees those violations as making revival less likely and that was the view that Grossi made manifest when he said the continuing violations had made revival “impossible.”
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi has not weighed in on the issue. He simply continued his theme that sanctions are actually strengthening Iran’s economy by making the country more self-reliant. He boasted that the World Bank cites Iran as having the world’s 18th largest economy, which doesn’t really mean much since Iran has the world’s18th largest population.
Khamenehi also made the odd assertion that President Barack Obama never abided by the terms of the JCPOA, something Iran never charged when Obama was president. “We trusted America at the time of Obama and fulfilled our commitments. But they didn’t. The Americans said on paper that sanctions will be lifted, but they didn’t lift sanctions in practice,” Khamenehi said.
The newest violation of the JCPOA the one that Grossi cited in his interview was that Iran has now started enriching uranium with the more advanced IR-4 centrifuge, which can reportedly produce much more enriched uranium in any given time. The JCPOA confined Iran to enriching only with its rather primitive and inefficient IR-1 centrifuges. A few months ago, Iran began using the more modern IR-2m centrifuge. And now, Grossi said, it has just started using the much more efficient IR-4.
The IAEA said it verified on March 16 that Iran now had one cascade of 174 IR-4 centrifuges installed and being fed un-enriched uranium for enrichment. In addition, it has at its Natanz plant 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges the maximum allowed plus 522 IR-2m centrifuges and the 174 IR-4 centrifuges all enriching uranium up to 5 percent. At its smaller Fordo enrichment plant, it has additional centrifuges enriching up to 20 percent.
Meanwhile, President Ro-hani charged Iranian hardlin-ers not the Americans with obstructing efforts to revive the JCPOA. “The small minority that is obstructing this path needs to stop its destructive act,” he said March 17. “If it stops,… the government can break the sanctions.” He did not name anyone, but there is a widespread assumption that hardliners who expect to win the June elections do not want the Rohani crowd to get credit for reviving the agreement and perhaps reviving Reformist electoral chances at the same time.
Many in the United States and Europe fear that, if the JCPOA is not revived before Rohani leaves office in August, a new right-wing president won’t even bother to try, but will push the nuclear program into higher gear. But that would risk seeing Europe and the UN resuming sanctions against Iran.
Rohani also endorsed a proposal that has been floating around that the two countries each resume their adherence to the JCPOA in phases, with Washington removing some sanctions and Iran returning to compliance with one or two aspects of the agreement, continuing that phase-in until the agreement is fully restored. Iranian conservative commentators swiftly denounced that idea without, notably, explaining why. It appeared to many as further evidence that the right-wing does not want Rohani to succeed. The Biden Administration has already endorsed such a step-by-step process.
In Washington, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said March 12 that the US is engaged in “indirect” talks with Iran on restoring the JCPOA. He said Washington and Iran are exchanging messages with the Europeans and “others” as intermediaries. Iran denied there were any contacts, direct or indirect.
Nothing serious seems to be going on. On March 3, Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif said Iran would “shortly” communicate through diplomatic channels its proposal for restoring the JCPOA fully. On March 12, Zarif sent a letter to Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief. But Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the letter “contains no plans.” He said the letter makes clear that the first step is for the US to fully comply with its JCPOA commitments, meaning it must first lift sanctions.
In Congress, progressives and conservatives were submitting dueling bills. Progressives generally want President Biden simply to reverse the Trump withdrawal and adhere to the JCPOA without demanding any Iranian action first. Conservatives are mostly pushing Biden to demand new negotiations to limit Iran’s missile program and force it to stop intervening in Arab countries.
Wendy Sherman, the person mostly closely identified with the JCPOA as its primary negotiator, has been nominated for the Number Two spot in the State Department and is seen by many as the primary advocate for swiftly re-joining the agreement. But in testimony to a Senate Committee March 3, she squashed that idea with a diplomatically worded, but clear, statement that times have changed.
“I remain clear-eyed about the threat that Iran poses to our interests and those of our allies,” she said. “I would note that 2021 is not 2015, when the deal was agreed, and not 2016, when it was implemented. The facts on the ground have changed, the geopolitics of the region have changed, and the way forward must similarly change.”