Terms of any new agreement are likely to leave Tehran in position to amass fuel for bomb in significantly less than a year, shorter than 2015 deal, officials say
By Laurence Norman, WSJ Feb. 3, 2022
Delegates at a meeting in Vienna aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal in December last year.
The Biden administration expects a restored nuclear deal would leave Iran capable of amassing enough nuclear fuel for a bomb in significantly less than a year, a shorter time frame than the one that underpinned the 2015 agreement, U.S. officials familiar with the matter said.
Administration officials concluded late last year that Iran’s nuclear program had advanced too far to re-create the roughly 12-month so-called breakout period of the 2015 pact, the U.S. officials said.
Despite the change, the U.S. is pushing ahead with talks. A revised deal needs to be reached soon, the officials said, to leave the U.S. and its allies with enough time to respond to an Iranian nuclear buildup.
How limited that breakout period will be depends on the precise steps Iran agrees to take to dismantle, ship abroad, destroy or place under seal its stockpile of enriched uranium, machines for producing nuclear fuel and centrifuge manufacturing capacity.
Reducing the breakout time in any revised pact raises fresh doubts about the Biden administration’s ability to negotiate what U.S. officials have called a longer, stronger deal that would further restrain Iran’s pathway to nuclear weapons and gain political support in Washington and among European allies.
U.S. officials have said Washington would lift the bulk of the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration if Iran rejoins the deal. There are ongoing negotiations in Vienna about what assurances Washington will provide to help Iran enjoy the economic benefits of a restored deal.
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A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the details of U.S. breakout assessments and said the administration is confident a deal “would address our urgent nonproliferation concerns.”
“As we have said, we have only a few weeks to conclude an understanding, after which the pace of Iran’s nuclear advances will make return to the JCPOA impossible,” the spokesperson said, referring to the formal name of the deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The 12-month breakout time was a central tenet of the 2015 deal Iran reached with the U.S. and other powers, although it isn’t mentioned explicitly in the accord. The period was based on analyses that if Iran abrogated the restraints imposed by the pact, Tehran would still need a year to develop enough fuel for one bomb, giving the U.S. and its allies time to respond.
The Trump administration withdrew from the deal in 2018 and reimposed sweeping sanctions on Tehran, saying the agreement was insufficiently stringent. Since then, Iran has accelerated its nuclear program, reducing its breakout time to a few weeks, according to U.S. officials.
Some former U.S. officials warn that a deal with a breakout period of anything less than six months could weaken Washington’s ability to respond to a sudden ramp-up of Iran’s nuclear program.
Administration officials held internal deliberations last fall looking at breakout-time estimates under different scenarios, the officials familiar with the matter said. Those discussions made clear that the breakout time under any realistic deal would be significantly lower than 12 months, the officialssaid.
The breakout time is different from how long it would take Iran to attain a nuclear weapon because, according to Western officials, Iran is believed not to have mastered all the skills to build the core of a bomb and attach a warhead to a missile.
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How much time Iran would need to amass enough nuclear fuel for a bomb is an estimate that depends on assumptions about its ability to operate different types of centrifuges, the speed of those machines and its skill in enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes, has gradually expanded its nuclear work since mid-2019 and accelerated that work over the past year. It started producing 60% enriched uranium, near weapons grade, for the first time and worked on how to convert low-enriched uranium speedily into highly enriched material.
Critically, Tehran has also worked to improve its mastery of building, installing and running advanced centrifuges, which can produce enriched uranium far faster than the first generation of machines allowed under the 2015 deal. It has installed hundreds of these newer machines at its nuclear facilities.
“There’s nothing that a restored JCPOA will do to compensate for that increased knowledge and experience” Iran has gained, said Robert Einhorn, a former senior State Department arms-control official.
Under a restored deal, Iran would have to ship abroad or scrap the vast bulk of its 2½ metric tons of enriched uranium, uninstall almost all advanced centrifuges and limit the stockpile of enriched uranium and the purity of its enrichment to 3.67% until 2031.
The constraints on Iran’s nuclear research and development would gradually relax from 2024. Iran’s new breakout time could then fall rapidly after 2026 when the deal allows Tehran to deploy some advanced centrifuges.
Western officials have been pushing for months, with mixed success, for Iran to accept measures that could lengthen how long it would take it to amass nuclear fuel. Iran has said that it won’t allow its advanced centrifuges to be destroyed, although they would likely be taken out and placed under United Nations atomic agency seal under a restored deal, as they were in 2016.
Mr. Einhorn said a six-month breakout period would be enough time to respond—militarily if necessary—to an overt Iranian nuclear breakout. The sweeping monitoring and inspection powers included in the 2015 deal, which in some cases extend for another two decades, will also help restrain Iran’s ability to make a covert dash for a nuclear weapon, long considered by U.S. officials to be a more likely scenario.
Trying to limit Iran’s capabilities with regard to building the bomb are really an exercise in futility, just like telling India, Pakistan and Israel to “forget” how they managed.
If the world is serious about Iran, they can try diplomatic means but “carry a big stick”. Expecting the US administration to bend a finger fulfills the definition of insanity as long as Joebama is in charge.