Prospects of Iran nuclear deal bleak

Iran has put its nuclear programme at a rapid pace but the successive dispensations in Tehran have kept parroting it has had no nuclear weapon programme.

Diplomatic efforts are underway in the ongoing European Union-led talks in Vienna to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Will they succeed in clinching a new deal for the previous Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action?

Observers say the prospects of any new Iran nuclear deal look bleak. The friction between Washington and Tehran on the Iranian nuclear programme is far from dissipating. The JCPOA demanded Iran to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98 per cent, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges for 13 years.

According to the JCPOA, for the next 15 years, Iran would enrich uranium up to just 3.67 per cent. Iran would not build any new heavy water facilities. Its uranium-enrichment activities would be limited to a single facility using first-generation centrifuges for 10 years. Other facilities would be converted to avoid proliferation risks.

The International Atomic Energy Agency would have regular access to all Iranian nuclear facilities to monitor and verify Iran's compliance in the matter. In return, Iran would receive relief from the US, European Union, and United Nations Security Council nuclear-related sanctions.

Tehran did not disclose a past covert nuclear weapons programme to the IAEA. This led former US President Donald J Trump to pull Washington out of the JCPOA in 2018. Now, the Joe Biden administration has tasked its Special Envoy Rob Malley to find a way out to revive the JCPOA. But Malley has so far made little headway in Vienna.

Tehran still seems to be determined to advance its nuclear military programme and export, more effectively, the Shiite Islamist revolution to the world. It refuses to answer the IAEA's questions about its undeclared clandestine nuclear sites. It does not the allow the atomic agency to use any surveillance cameras to see images of its nuclear plants.

Tehran has put its nuclear programme at a rapid pace, spinning centrifuges and enriching uranium at a high level. It has enough enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF6) in the form of near 20 and 60 per cent enriched uranium to produce enough weapon-grade uranium (WGU).

However, the successive dispensations in Tehran have kept parroting it has had no nuclear weapon programme. In his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi only repeated the same. He insisted Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.

(Jagdish N. Singh is a senior journalist based in New Delhi. He is also Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, New York)

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