The U.S. and Iran held their fifth round of nuclear negotiations in late May. Iran said the talks “strengthened the possibility of achieving progress,” and the U.S. called the talks “constructive” and said that “further progress” was made, though “there is still work to be done.” A hopeful sign of real progress is that, following the talks, the U.S. sent Iran a detailed written proposal that attempts to resolve the key disagreement between the two sides: Iran’s right to enrich uranium for their civilian nuclear program.
A creative solution that seems to have first been proposed by the Omani mediators is that Iran join Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in a nuclear enrichment consortium that would allow Iran to continue to enrich uranium up to the 3.67 percent enrichment required for civilian nuclear energy. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who would gain access to Iran’s nuclear technology, would be shareholders and funders.
The proposal is based on a consortium idea first proposed by Princeton physicist Frank von Hippel and former Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian. Von Hippel explained to me that the advantage of a consortium is that it allows nuclear experts from each country to “visit each other’s facilities to assure themselves that the activities are peaceful.” He added that “decisions that might have proliferation implications are made by the [partner] governments.” Saudi Arabia’s, the Emirates’ and Iran’s watchful eyes would all help the International Atomic Energy Agency ensure that the program is peaceful.
The U.S. proposal stipulates that the nuclear consortium be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United States. However, a source with knowledge of the issue told Axios that the U.S. wants the enrichment facilities to be located outside of Iran. And there are now competing versions of where the Trump team’s proposal stands on this point. After sources with direct knowledge of the proposal said that, as part of the consortium, Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium to the low levels needed for civilian purposes, President Donald Trump posted that “Under our potential Agreement — WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM!.”
Despite the creativity and the progress of the negotiations, if the U.S. insists on that point, it could mean the death of the negotiations.
Iran has drawn a red line at its right to enrich uranium on its own soil for peaceful, civilian purposes. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has allowed his team to negotiate, but he has made clear that Iran will not negotiate “the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian insists that “Iran has never sought, is not seeking, and will never seek nuclear weapons” but that “Iran will not give up its peaceful nuclear rights.” On the eve of the fifth round of talks, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, who is leading the talks for Iran, formulated the red line as “Figuring out the path to a deal is not rocket science: Zero nuclear weapons = we DO have a deal. Zero enrichment = we do NOT have a deal. Time to decide….”
Iran has placed a firm red line around its right to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear purposes for two main reasons.
The first is that the U.S. demand to fully dismantle Iran’s nuclear program is outside the framework of international law. Iran is adamant that, in the words of its Foreign Ministry spokesman, “Enrichment is an integral part of our peaceful nuclear program, which stems from our inalienable right under the NPT and is also enshrined in UNSC Resolution 2231.” Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran is a signatory, guarantees that “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.”
Mousavian, who is now a visiting research collaborator at Princeton, told The American Conservative that “denying Iran this right means subjecting it to discrimination as the only member state deprived of such a right. This constitutes a national humiliation.”
The second reason is that, historically, Iran has been made vulnerable by agreeing to limits on its domestic enrichment.
When Iran started down the path of a nuclear program, they were only enriching uranium to 3.5 percent, the level needed to run its power reactors to produce energy. They didn’t need or intend to enrich higher because, in 1988, they signed an agreement with Argentina to receive 23 kilograms of fuel enriched to 20 percent so they could produce medical isotopes in their medical research reactor for imaging and treating cancer. When that 23 kilograms was nearly used up, Iran requested that the IAEA help it purchase more under that body’s supervision, which Tehran has the right to do as a signatory to the NPT. But the U.S. and Europe put up roadblocks and prevented the purchase.
The U.S. then proposed that Iran send its 3.5 percent enriched uranium out of the country to be enriched into fuel rods for medical reactors and then sent back to Iran. As described by Trita Parsi in Losing an Enemy, Iran agreed in principle, but the deal died when the U.S. and its allies insisted Iran ship out all of its 3.5 percent uranium in one batch, even though it would take nine months or more to receive the 19.5 percent enriched uranium needed for its medical reactors. Iran would have been emptied of enriched uranium. When Iran offered the counterproposal that the 3.5 percent uranium be sent out in batches in a “simultaneous exchange” for the more highly enriched uranium, the U.S. ignored the offer.
Later, Brazil and Turkey would attempt to broker a deal with a similar simultaneous swap. Iran agreed to the deal; the U.S. not only ignored it but reprimanded Brazil and Turkey and pressed ahead with sanctions on Iran.
According to Gareth Porter, the U.S. also pressured France not to provide enriched uranium to Iran when Tehran turned to Western Europe for enriched uranium as an alternative to enriching their own.
For both of these reasons, Iran’s red line is very firm. It is so firm that Mousavian recounts that Khamenei once told then-top Iranian nuclear negotiator (and future President) Hassan Rouhani that “if Iran is to abandon its right to enrich, it will either have to happen after my death, or I will have to resign from leadership.”
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Trump has made it clear that “There are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal.” What if the U.S. stands firm in its insistence that no enrichment can take place on Iranian soil? I asked Mousavian if the red line is so firm that Iran would refuse to negotiate its civilian enrichment program even if the U.S made it clear that the alternative to that deal was war. His answer was one simple sentence: “Iran will not dismantle its enrichment facilities under any circumstances.”
The talks between the U.S. and Iran are making progress, and, for the first time since the U.S. pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement, there is hope for a peaceful, diplomatic solution. But it may all hang on Iran’s red line and America’s willingness to allow Iran to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes on Iranian soil.
