SharonSquassoni

Thanks for your question. Let me answer it in two parts: 1. Are JCPOA measures adequate to detect acquisition of nuclear weapons and 2. What is the experience of the last year?
1. Among nonproliferation experts, it’s well known that a country determined to get nuclear weapons can’t really be prevented from acquiring them – we can just make it more difficult, costly, and painful (in terms of sanctions or other related punitive measures). The JCPOA adds additional obligations to those that Iran is obliged to meet as a non-nuclear weapon state under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The JCPOA obligations limit how close and how fast Iran can come to a nuclear weapons capability. You may have read about concerns about "break-out" capability, which means how quickly Iran could put together the elements of a nuclear weapon once it decided to really go for it. The JCPOA measures were specifically designed to lengthen the time that Iran would need to develop a nuclear weapon from a few months to one year. Experts debate exactly how you calculate the break-out time and there are a lot of assumptions involved, but basically the JCPOA limits the material Iran can stockpile (Iran can only have < 300 kg of low-enriched uranium and no highly enriched uranium), limits the production capabilities (e.g., no enrichment of uranium at the underground facility at Fordow and only about 5000 first-generation centrifuges spinning), and requires modifications to the Arak reactor so that it can’t produce bomb-grade plutonium. In addition to monitoring Iran's compliance with those measures (and I haven't been entirely comprehensive because we need to keep this concise), there are technologies to continuously monitor enrichment levels, to monitor activities at uranium mines and mills, at component manufacturing sites and there is an entire procurement chain that is being monitored. Also, Iran has agreed to allow other kinds of access to facilities under the IAEA Additional Protocol which it has not allowed in the last ten years or so. This is much more comprehensive than what was in place before, so there is significant confidence in the ability to detect irregularities. 2. On the experience of the last year, we have to keep in mind that about six months were devoted to preliminary steps; we have had only about 6 months of implementation of the JCPOA. As the second question in this reddit chain suggests, however, verification that Iran is meeting technical milestones is fairly easy to determine. More broadly speaking, it's important to remember that many of the JCPOA restrictions will be lifted in ten years' time, so we have a deadline for ensuring in the future that Iran sees no benefit in having these risky capabilities.

In some respects, the ambiguities regarding Iran's responsibilities were quickly wrapped up in the Roadmap obligations that the IAEA and Iran conducted with lightning speed between July 2015 and December 2015. I think you are correct in that going forward, there may be fewer ambiguities there, except perhaps in the procurement chain.

While Iran may be dissatisfied with the raft of U.S. sanctions that are still in place, there is language in the JCPOA that acknowledges that limitations of the executive branch (e.g., regarding Adoption Day, "The United States, acting pursuant to Presidential authorities,"). The US can prove that it has revoked the specified executive orders and licensed certain activities. From an economic perspective, Iran would do better to focus on the influx of European and Asian investment, although the possibility that U.S. actions could provide an excuse for Iran to walk away from the deal is still a real one.

In today's nuclear market, neither enrichment nor reprocessing is particularly cost-effective. (There's a big debate about the costs of reprocessing, but let's not get into that here). On enrichment, the conventional wisdom is that only when a country has 15-20 nuclear power plants does it make sense to have a domestic enrichment capability. Japan had 54 commercial power reactors and was never able to enrich enough uranium for its own use. It's important to remember that no one gets rich from enriching and that the commercial international market is dominated by about 3 companies. It's a classic oligopoly -- the costs ($ and technology) are high to get into the market and there are only a few competitors.

Economic reality aside, I think Iran is likely to keep its "boutique" enrichment capability. The question is whether Iran will expand it, spend a lot of money on improving it, and actually try to make a commercial-scale go of it. What I would hope that we spend the next ten years doing is convincing Iran that it has more to gain by being a part of the nonproliferation regime than it has by returning to an outlier status. Sanctions relief is likely not enough there. I'll let Ari handle the Iran-specific carrots, but I think the nonproliferation regime has to stop pretending that there isn't a problem. These technologies, and the ability to stockpile material present real risks. One approach is to try to universalize the JCPOA limits, which is expressly prohibited by the JCPOA. Another approach would be to work on universal limits that strengthen the nonproliferation regime. These may not necessarily be the same as those of the JCPOA. Iran may find it easier to adhere to widely accepted norms than to take a path that only a few have trodden (some of the unwillingly).

India, as far as I know, played little to no role in concluding this deal. The primary negotiators were Iran, UK, France, Germany (known as E3) and the US, China and Russia. However, as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, India did vote on IAEA Board of Governors' resolutions regarding Iran's noncompliance.

Thank you for your question. Let me start with why enrichment is so important to a nuclear weapons program. The fundamental dilemma in nuclear energy is that the same technologies -- uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing -- can be used to make fuel for peaceful purposes or to make the essential element in a nuclear weapon -- fissionable material. This dual-use nature makes it impossible (or improbable) to ban these technologies, even though it is clear that a country that pursues enrichment or reprocessing has an essential capability useful for nuclear weapons. In fact, most nonproliferation experts consider that the hardest part of making nuclear weapons is acquiring the fissile material. This is why they assume that once enough material is acquired, it is merely a matter of time before a country can assemble all the other elements for a relatively crude weapons. Not only can states legitimately pursue uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing as members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), but they can also stockpile as much fissile material (including weapons-grade Highly Enriched Uranium --HEU -- and separated plutonium) as they like. The JCPOA has several different limits: Iran cannot keep any uranium enriched above commercial grade (3.67%), and may only keep < 300 kg of commercial grade uranium. This means that should the deal end, it would not have a ready-made stockpile of material that it could feed into centrifuge cascades to make weapons-grade material quickly. Likewise, the limit of 5060 P-1 centrifuges ensures that it will have to add to its capacity significantly to be able to produce weapons-grade uranium. Iran is still enriching uranium, albeit at low enriched levels (3.67%) and without accumulating a stockpile. Iran intends to continue enriching uranium for commercial or research purposes. The big question is whether Iran would seek to enrich to highly enriched levels (>20%) for use in research reactors or naval reactors. Once the JCPOA ends, it could legally do so under the NPT. There has been a lot of effort under the Nuclear Security Summits to minimize the use of HEU in the civilian sector for this reason, and it may be time to think about restricting the use of HEU for naval reactors for this reason. Presently, no non-nuclear-weapon state under the NPT uses HEU in military reactors; only the US, UK, Russia and India use HEU in their naval reactors. The US recently decided to research whether LEU could be used in some naval reactors.