On 2 December 2015, the International Atomic Energy Agency released its final assessment on past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
Here in the United Kingdom, the report did not hit the front pages, as the parliament was debating whether the country should extend its military engagement in the Middle East to Syria. Like so many others, I was distracted by the debate and dazzled by some of the oratory in the house. Whether or not you like the outcome, the debate itself was a very fine representation of democracy in action.
Likewise, irrespective of how you read the IAEA’s Iran report, what happens next is relatively settled. The rumor from Vienna is that some JCPOA signatories have completed a draft resolution and that no one in the Board of Governors intends to block its adoption.
The report has little impact on the JCPOA from a technical verification perspective. The plan of action is future-directed and concerns itself very little with what happened in Iran’s past. The key paragraph in the Director General’s report, number 88, establishes a solid foundation for future implementation. It reads, “The Agency has found no credible indications of the diversion of nuclear material in connection with the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme.”
It is important to read this paragraph carefully. The Director General writes that the agency finds no “credible” indication of diversion of material. This means that there have been some indicators of diversion, but that they have been uncompelling. Moreover, the inclusion of the word “indication” means that the inspectorate cannot say—with an acceptable degree of certainty—that all nuclear material in Iran remains in peaceful use.
Paragraph 77 of the report hides another important conclusion, namely that the agency “has not found indications of an undeclared nuclear fuel cycle in Iran, beyond those activities declared retrospectively by Iran.” This language is more assertive, as it excludes the word “credible”, and bodes well for the future implementation of the JCPOA; it also builds confidence that all material in Iran is used for peaceful purposes. If the agency has not found any indicators that there are more nuclear sites in Iran, it is highly probable that the JCPOA implementation framework captures all relevant production facilities in the country. In practice, this means that there will be international monitoring of all potential pathways leading to the fabrication of weapons components.
A careful examination of the Director General’s report should lead the reader to conclude that Iran, over the past 20 years, made some considerable progress towards nuclear weapons acquisition, but that the country still had some way to go. Most development activities ended in 2003. Iran dabbled in computer modeling of nuclear weapons designs up to 2009 after which this work appears to have stopped as well. In any case, the Agency notes that this work was “incomplete and fragmented.”
Much dust has been thrown up over what has happened at the Parchin Military Complex. The Director General’s report increases suspicion that a “large cylindrical object” was on the site in the summer of 2000—more than fifteen years ago—but notes that this object, as of 20 September 2015, is not there. The agency can no longer establish what this object was intended to do; therefore it is now not possible to prove or dismiss the hypothesis that it could have been a test chamber for small-scale implosion tests.
However, does this matter for the future implementation of the JCPOA? Not really. If Parchin was just a conventional military site, the cylindrical object is inconsequential to the broader question of whether Iran introduced or intended to introduce nuclear material at the site. If it was, it is no longer active, and the only question remaining would be if the chamber has been moved somewhere else. Even that question becomes irrelevant if and when the agency concludes that Iran has accounted for all its nuclear material.
So here comes the crux. While the IAEA now closes the PMD file, the inconclusive nature of some of its findings may complicate the work to reach a so-called broader conclusion for Iran. Formally, the matter may be off the Board of Governors’ agenda, and this is what both Iran and its JCPOA partners desired, but the issues will not go away entirely. The agency is likely to continue to assess many of these issues internally, as it works towards giving Iran a so-called broader conclusion that all nuclear material in the country remains in peaceful use. This work will start, albeit internally and away from the international spotlight, once Iran brings its Additional Protocol into force.
On 20 July 2015, fellow blog contributor Mark Hibbs wrote for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “For the IAEA to arrive at a BC requires a mountain of work, scouring every shred of data it can find on a state’s nuclear history and then putting all of it into a holistic context. Will eight years suffice? For a state like Iran with sensitive fuel cycle activities that may be limited in scope, the process might take six years or so, assuming Iran fully cooperates.”
Not all agree with this, as Mark points out in his commentary, and this was one principal reason as to why sanctions relief and the broader conclusion are disconnected. Some officials, Mark explains, “argued that Iran had so far to go to explain its murky nuclear past that the IAEA could never award a BC to Iran. So to give an agreement with Iran a chance, they reasoned, it would be better not to use the BC as a yardstick.”
So in conclusion, while Iran’s past cannot easily be brushed under the carpet, it certainly does not stand in the way for the successful implementation of the JCPOA. This, I think, is what people should take away from the Director General’s report. All else is of lesser importance.
Update, 8 December 2015. The P-5+1 has now circulated the draft resolution on Iran to the Board of Governors. See GOV_2015_70. While the report formally closes the Board’s consideration of the present item, the Direction General is nevertheless requested to continue to submit a written report to every meeting under a new agenda item.
The resolution clears the way for continued JCPOA implementation.