Iran nuclear deal: Will Trump's pullout backfire?

Causing worldwide furore, US President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal last week. He believes that the agreement is defective and won’t prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. "The Iran deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen. In just a short period of time, the world's leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons...."

As the US pulls out from the deal, new sanctions against Iran will be rolled out in about six months. European leaders have expressed concern over Trump’s decision and so has the world media. The Washington Post reports that most experts from both sides of the ideological spectrum disapprove of the decision as well. Let us examine if Trump’s fears are justified.

The deal

In 2015, Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, which came to be known as the Iran nuclear deal. In return, the other signatories agreed to lift crippling economic sanctions, allowing Iran’s economy to function normally again.

Understandably, the world couldn’t just take Iran’s word for it, so the treaty included a system of periodic checks on Iran’s nuclear programme. Anything that had the remotest capacity for churning out weapons-grade nuclear fuel would be monitored, altered or dismantled.

Iran gave up 98 per cent of its low-enriched uranium and was forbidden from increasing its stockpile for over a decade. The stockpile it does retain must remain below 3.67 per cent enrichment-level which is nowhere near the level required to build a bomb. Apart from that, the number of centrifuges that Iran owned was also cut down severely. The ones remaining were allowed to produce isotopes for use only in medicine and agriculture.

What adds immense weight to this agreement is that Iran agreed to let the UN’s nuclear watchdog, IAEA, maintain a constant presence in the country and have unfettered access to its declared nuclear sites—from uranium mines to research facilities. If the Agency suspects anything, it can demand access to any place in Iran and the government is obliged to grant access within 24 days. The IAEA use tamper-proof seals, surveillance camera footage, data analysis and physical presence to maintain control over Iran’s nuclear supply chain.

The deal was quite thorough in its approach, keeping in mind that it was more a negotiation than an imposition. It certainly makes it impossible for Iran to overtly manufacture nuclear warheads. Even secret operations that have any connection with Iran’s declared nuclear infrastructure can easily be uncovered.

So far, Iran appears to be squeaky clean. Every IAEA quarterly report for the past two years repeats the same sentence over and over, “The Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and locations outside facilities where nuclear material is customarily used (LOFs) declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement.”

However, the deal isn’t airtight by any means. The sentence above is followed by the words, “Evaluations regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities for Iran remained ongoing.”

It is not completely impossible that Iran is having a clandestine nuclear affair, right under the world’s nose.

The first time around

Even though Iran’s nuclear programme began with assistance of the US in the cold war era, no threatening developments took place until the 1990’s. After the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, who viewed nuclear technology as a suspicious western innovation, Iran engaged in nuclear research and development, the nature of which remains unconfirmed.

Some, like Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, allege that this was the time when the AMAD project came to life.

The project was allegedly a highly secretive affair aimed at developing technologies for manufacturing and delivering nuclear payloads. This was made possible with help from Russia and China, who provided support in areas like uranium mining, enrichment and heavy water reactors. Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan’s stolen centrifuge technology percolated through underground channels and helped things along.

The full scale of these activities came to light in 2002, and the international community started putting economic pressure on Iran. The IAEA reported that all nuclear weapons programme was shut down in 2003. By this time it was estimated that Iran already had substantial amounts of enriched uranium and, of course, the blueprints to rebuild their infrastructure.

How close had Iran really come to building a functional nuclear warhead remains unknown. Iran continues to deny that AMAD ever existed.

Things were obscure till 2011. Estimates of various degrees were made; some said that Iran had the capacity to produce a warhead within a few years while others were more sceptical. Then in November 2011, the IAEA released a report in which it said that Iran was engaging in nuclear development which could have military implications.

After two decades of tension over Iran’s nuclear programme, negotiations began in 2013. In 2015, what came to be known as the Iran nuclear deal, was signed.

Iran could do it again

It is not known if a programme as ambitious as AMAD was ever carried out and that leaves a lot of unknown variables in the equation. Iran’s murky nuclear past may still have some rather significant relics stored away somewhere; experiment results and perhaps even blueprints of certain unfinished projects. What Iran managed to achieve, and how close they had come to building a weapon between 1990 and 2003 remains uncertain.

History also makes it clear that the nuclear black market, at least to some extent, is real, as evidenced by Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan and his dealings. So Iran may still have secret dealings with unknown entities in possession of crucial information. It is also possible that the countries who have helped Iran with its nuclear programme in the past, like China and Pakistan, may still be lending it covert support.

A difficult plan

Even if all this is theoretically possible, it seems very unlikely. The Iran nuclear deal does a pretty good job when it comes to monitoring provisions; Iran is under constant scrutiny, and the IAEA can act upon the slightest suspicion.

For Iran’s clandestine nuclear programme to be reality, it would have to be physically undetectable and have no paper trail. Infrastructure for the development of nuclear weaponry is usually large and conspicuous, and US satellites undoubtedly monitor the Iranian landscape on a regular basis. Under these conditions, transportation of resources would also be extremely difficult.

Another major problem that a secret nuclear programme would face is the procurement of raw material. Uranium mines are not exactly easy to hide and the declared mines in Iran are already under IAEA supervision. The only way that Iran can get its hands on nuclear fuel is through black market dealings, but technical blueprints are one thing, and hundreds of kilograms of enriched Uranium another.

So while this possibility cannot be completely ruled out, it may be folly to work on the assumption it is true, which brings us to the current state of affairs.

Trump's folly

US President Donald Trump has not produced any evidence to back his claim that Iran is building nuclear weapons. He, initially, was pushing for a revision of the deal and the imposition of stricter regulations. But his decision to fully withdraw from the agreement may backfire, for several reasons.

The Trump administration has provided no alternative to the JCPOA. If the deal dissolves completely and the sanctions are re-imposed, nothing prevents Iran from fully exploiting its Uranium mines and building more centrifuges. Any secret programme already underway will get a substantial boost.

There may also be a fallout regarding the ongoing negotiations with North Korea on the very same issue. Trump has set a precedent with the Iran deal fiasco, and there is little reason that other nations should believe that the US will stick to its commitments in the future.

There is hope however. All other signatories of the deal stand by it. Even Iran intends to remain a part of the JCPOA. The US’ sanctions are no laughing matter, but due to their unilateral nature, their effects will be undermined by other signatories who will not back them with their own sanctions.

In essence, Trump is merely relinquishing any real surveillance he had over Iran’s nuclear supply chain. Some deal is better than no deal, it appears.