Done Deal, hopefully to be undone by Congress

By Omri Ceren, TIP

Journalists are still waiting for the press conference to begin at the Austria Center Vienna, where the main details of the deal will presumably be confirmed. It’s not clear when the announcement will actually happen – the parties are still heading here from the plenary at the UN – but you certainly don’t have to be in the room to get all the information from whatever is about to happen.

First, the event is going to be livestreamed (http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/ebs/schedule.cfm?page=2&date=07/14/2015&institution=0#s303708).

Second, the Russian Foreign Ministry seems to have posted the full text of the JCPOA online (http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeednews/iran-nuclear-talks#.niQJEMmpxd).

Third, just about all of the relevant questions have already been well-leaked. The following has all been confirmed:

(1) The Iranian nuclear program will be placed under international sponsorship for R&D – A few weeks ago the AP leaked parts of an annex confirming that a major power would be working with the Iranians to develop next-generation centrifuge technology at the Fordow underground military enrichment bunker. Technically the work won’t be on nuclear material, but the AP noted that “isotope production uses the same technology as enrichment and can be quickly re-engineered to enriching uranium.” The administration had once promised Congress that Iran would be forced to dismantle its centrifuge program. The Iranians refused, so the administration conceded that the Iranians would be allowed to keep their existing centrifuges. Now the international community will be actively sponsoring the development of Iranian nuclear technology. And since the work will be overseen by a great power, it will be off-limits to the kind of sabotage that has kept the Iranian nuclear program in check until now.

(2) The sanctions regime will be shredded – the AP revealed at the beginning of June that the vast majority of the domestic U.S. sanctions regime will be dismantled. The Lausanne factsheet – which played a key role in dampening Congressional criticism to American concessions – had explicitly stated “U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place under the deal.” That turns out to have been false. Instead the administration will redefine non-nuclear sanctions as nuclear, so that it can lift them. The Iranians are boasting that sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank, NIT Co., the National Iranian Oil Company, and 800 individuals and entities will be lifted. That’s probably exaggerated and a bit confused – CBI sanctions are statutory, and will probably not be getting “lifted” – but the sense is clear enough.

(3) The U.S. collapsed on the arms embargo – Just a week ago Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “under no circumstances should we relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking.” Now multiple outlets have confirmed that the embargo on conventional weapons will be lifted no later than 5 years from now, and that the embargo on ballistic missiles will expire in 8 years. No one in the region is going to wait for those embargoes to expire: they’ll rush to build up their stockpiles in anticipation of the sunset.

(4) The U.S. collapsed on anytime-anywhere inspections – The IAEA will get to request access to sensitive sites, the Iranians will get to say no, and then there will be an arbitration board that includes Iran as a member. This concession is particularly damaging politically and substantively because the administration long ago went all-in on verification. The original goal of the talks was to make the Iranians take physical actions that would prevent them from going nuclear if they wanted to: dismantling centrifuges, shuttering facilities, etc. The Iranians said no to those demands, and the Americans backed off. The fallback position relied 100% on verification: yes the Iranians would be physically able to cheat, the argument went, but the cheating would be detected because of an anytime-anywhere inspection regime. That is not what the Americans are bringing home.

(5) The U.S. collapsed on PMDs – This morning the Iranians and the IAEA signed a roadmap for a process that would see Tehran eventually providing access for the IAEA to clear up its concerns. This roadmap differs in no significant way from previous commitments the Iranians have made to the agency, except now Tehran will have received sanctions relief and stabilized its economy. Administration officials will have to look at lawmakers and nonetheless promise that this time the Iranians will give the IAEA what it needs.

If anything dramatic comes out of the press conference I’ll pass it along, but analyst attention is probably about to turn to the 159 page Russian JCPOA text anyway.

Omri.
412-512-7256

A little earlier I reported:

Reuters updated the story that I sent around a few minutes ago – the one about how the U.S. is going to allow Iran to have a voice in determining which sites the IAEA will get to access – with a couple additional scooplets:

(1) The administration will go to the United Nations to pass a binding resolution unwinding sanctions before Congress has a chance to weigh in.

(2) The PMD concessions that the Americans managed to extract are sort of laughable: a single visit to Parchin, where the Iranians conducted tests relevant to the construction of nuclear warheads, and maybe some interviews with scientists, and in the meantime the Iranians will get some sanctions relief upfront.

I’ve pasted the full updated story below. But as long as we’re still on the topic of the Reuters story, I wanted to make sure that you had access to some polling that TIP did a couple weeks ago on exactly this issue. Not to repeat the previous email, but again here’s the lede revealing that, under the deal, Iran will get to help determine what sites the IAEA will be allowed to inspect:

A draft nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers calls for U.N. inspectors to have access to all suspect Iranian sites, including military, based on consultations between the powers and Tehran, a diplomatic source said on Tuesday.