December 12, 2014
The Obama Administration has told Congress that Iran made four secret concessions to the United States in order to get the nuclear talks extended by seven months, but when The Associated Press listed the concessions the Islamic Republic immediately denied making any such agreements.
The Associated Press reported last Friday that it had obtained a copy of a document the State Department gave Congress outlining the terms of the agreement to extend the nuclear talks another seven months to July 1.
After the AP story was published, Iranian officials began shouting that Iran made no concessions whatsoever and will continue its nuclear program just as in the past.
The document said the concessions apply to the period of the seven-month extension and are an addition to the interim agreement reached in November 2013. They are not concessions for the agreement intended to replace the interim agreement.
The four concessions the AP says are outlined in the document provide that:
• Iran will limit its research on and development of new centrifuges for enriching uranium. This is a response to American critics who said the administration left loopholes in the interim agreement that has allowed Iran to work on new and better centrifuges, even though the exisitng agreement says Iran can only use its old IR-1 design to actually enrich. For one centrifuge model Iran has been working on, the IR-8, the document says Tehran won’t be able to pursue the industrial-scale operation needed for any “breakout” effort toward producing enough material for a nuclear weapon. For other models in the pipeline, Iran won’t be permitted to feed the centrifuges with uranium gas or begin testing on a cascade level, which are needed steps in their development.
• Iran also has agreed to turn 35 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium oxide stocks into fuel rods, making it time consuming to later convert it into material usable in a weapon. The 35 kilograms amounts to almost half of Iran’s remaining stockpile of material that could in theory be converted into a form that is close to weapons-grade uranium.
• Iran will grant international inspectors expanded access to its centrifuge production facilities, allowing the IAEA to double the number of visits it makes to sites and to undertake unannounced or “snap” inspections. Such monitoring aims to deter Iran from producing centrifuges at any covert facility.
• Lastly, Iran will refrain from any other forms of enrichment, including the use of laser technology. Last year’s agreement halted Iran’s progress on its gas centrifuge program, but US officials feared the Iranians could experiment with other technology designed to do the same thing. Iran has attempted laser enrichment in the past, the US believes, but now has committed to refrain from exploring it any further.
The story set officials in Tehran aflame. On Saturday morning, the state news agency carried a statement from Behruz Kamalvandi, the official spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
“The conditions for extending the nuclear negotiations to July 1, 2015, were like the conditions in the extension of the previous deadline and no new understanding has been added to it,” he said without qualification.
It was noted that the denial came from the Atomic Energy Organization, which doesn’t handle the nuclear talks, rather than from the Foreign Ministry, which does handle the talks and which must deal with the Americans.
The Iranian media focused most of its attention specifically on the reported concession to allow “snap” inspections by the IAEA. Such inspections are allowed in the Additional Protocol that the Majlis has rejected. Snap inspections allow the IAEA to go where it chooses when it chooses and is widely seen in Iran as a violation of Iranian sovereignty. Kamalvandi said the IAEA inspections “will be carried out on a monthly basis, just as before.”
