As Iran talks resume, it’s time to play ‘Let’s Make a Deal’
As Iran talks resume, it’s time to play ‘Let’s Make a Deal’
Iran: Gaza, “Axis of Resistance” and Nuclear Calculations
Iran: Gaza, “Axis of Resistance” and Nuclear Calculations
Op-Ed / Middle East & North Africa 3 minutes

As Iran talks resume, it’s time to play ‘Let’s Make a Deal’

On Thursday, negotiators from the United States, Iran and five other world powers begin the final stretch of negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear agreement. A deal is within reach. But time is short.

With fewer than three months before the Nov. 24 deadline for an agreement, defining the size and scope of Iran’s uranium-enrichment program remains the most significant gap. To bridge it, negotiators must move away from extreme positions toward more realistic ones.

There are several ways to square the circle and find a formula that meets the basic requirements of all parties. For Iran, the goal is a meaningful uranium-enrichment program. For the five permanent member of the United Nations Security Council — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — plus Germany, or P5+1, the goal is to limit Iran’s enrichment capacity and to monitor its activities to ensure that the time it would take Tehran to amass enough weapons-grade nuclear material to build a bomb is extended.

Under the interim agreement reached last November, the parties agreed that Tehran could maintain an enrichment program based on its “practical needs.” Both sides base their positions on technical assessments of Iran’s needs yet strongly disagree on the amount of enriched uranium required to meet them. The problem here is essentially political.

Iran believes its practical needs include future fuel needs for nuclear reactors now in the planning stage. Russia supplies fuel for Iran’s sole operating nuclear power plant, Bushehr, and is under contract to do so through 2021. Tehran wants to build up its domestic capacity and reduce its reliance on the international market for enriched uranium fuel, a concern not unwarranted by Iran’s past experiences.

The United States and its partners’ assessment of Iran’s practical needs is more limited. They assert Iran’s nuclear fuel requirements can be met with fewer than 2,000 of Iran’s first-generation centrifuges — a significant reduction from the 10,200 now running — and by extending the Russian supply contract for the lifetime of the Bushehr reactor.

To get to “yes,” negotiators need to devise some creative trade-offs. For Iran, this would mean postponing industrial-scale uranium enrichment and extending its fuel contracts with Russia. For the United States and its partners, this would mean accepting that Iran’s uranium-enrichment program could slowly scale up over time and research-and-development activities could continue under certain restrictions and monitoring.

The International Crisis Group and the Arms Control Association, working with a number of nuclear experts and diplomats, have developed a proposal that can lead to this outcome.

Iran, in this approach, could retain a meaningful uranium enrichment capacity and continue research and development on advanced centrifuges. Tehran would also receive fuel guarantees for its Bushehr reactor, including pre-delivery of fuel when the agreement is signed — to guard against supply disruptions.

In the short term, such a tradeoff would mean that Iran would have to reduce its enrichment capacity by roughly half and remove the extra centrifuges from its facilities. Tehran could also only keep a limited enriched-uranium stockpile in the country. This would increase the time it would take Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build one bomb from nine to 12 months, a key Western goal.  It would represent a major increase from the current estimate of two to three months.

As Iran meets agreed-upon milestones and restores international confidence in its peaceful intentions, it would be able to slightly increase its enriched-uranium stockpile and phase in more advanced centrifuges.

Since last November, remarkable progress has been made in resolving the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program. Negotiators have, for example, reached creative compromises on the future of the Arak heavy-water reactor and on the monitoring and verification regime for Iran’s nuclear program.

But if the uranium-enrichment standoff is not resolved, this progress will be lost. We could miss the best opportunity in more than a decade to reach a nuclear deal that guards against a nuclear-armed Iran.

The costs of failure — an unrestrained Iranian nuclear program and increased sanctions or military strikes — are too high. As with any negotiation, neither side can get everything it wants. But with a little flexibility and creativity, they can get what they need.

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