International Crisis Group

Missing the point on Iran’s nuclear ‘breakout’ time | Ali Vaez (Crisis Group Senior Analyst for Iran)

One reason for the urgency behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial speech to Congress on Tuesday is the fact that a nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers is reportedly taking shape in Switzerland. The parameters of the agreement under discussion — and, indeed, of any deal that can plausibly be reached right now —will leave Iran with infrastructure that could potentially be repurposed towards weaponization. So, the key metric by which the U.S. Congress will judge any agreement will be “breakout time,” the minimum period required for Iran, using that infrastructure, to produce 25 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium. That would be enough for a single bomb, should Tehran decide to build one.

The timescale for Iran to produce a bomb’s worth of fissile material is an appealingly simple criterion in light of the technical complexity of the negotiations. But it’s also a deceptively simple one. Five common misperceptions make “breakout time” a misleading gauge of the potential threat:

Misperception #1: Breakout time measures the time needed to build a nuclear weapon

Misperception #2: Breakout time is measurable

Misperception #3:  Breaking out is Iran’s most likely path to weaponization

Misperception #4:  A shorter breakout time reduces Washington’s ability to prevent an Iranian sprint to nuclear weapons

Misperception #5: If the breakout time is short enough, Iran will dash to build a bomb

FULL COMMENTARY (via Al Jazeera America)

Photo: IAEA Photobank/flickr

Iran Nuclear Talks: The Beginning of the Endgame? | Ali Vaez

After a year of negotiations, the parties to the Iran nuclear talks failed to meet their deadline of 24 November. Nonetheless the talks will continue, with the goal of reaching a political agreement by 1 March 2015 and a comprehensive agreement, including an implementation plan, by 1 July 2015 (see Crisis Group’s new report Iran Nuclear Talks: The Fog Recedes). In the following Q and A, Crisis Group Senior Iran Analyst Ali Vaez discusses what the new deadline means and how the talks might move forward.

There’s much disappointment about the failure to agree a deal that would solve Iran’s differences with the international community over its nuclear program. Are we better off than when these intense talks began 12 months ago, or not?

Ali: Yes, of course we’re better off. Going through the 11th hour enabled both sides to gain a better understanding of each other’s real positions. It wasn’t clear until the very end which were real red lines, and which were artificial, maximalist ones. Going forward, they won’t need so much brinksmanship. They can now discern each other’s core requirements, where they really can’t move, and issues where there is a grey area in which they can manoeuvre.

What’s the rationale for having such a long extension of the talks – until 1 July 2015?

Each time you extend the talks you have to pay a political price for it, so they thought it was safer to go with a longer extension with the aim of reaching a deal as soon as possible. Also renewing it soon after the new U.S. Congress comes into office in January will be extremely difficult. Finally, there is the UN’s Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in May 2015; all of the key negotiators and experts will be extremely busy with that, which is held only every five years. Add to it Christmas and Iranian New Year holidays, and you’ll see that it actually is not that long.

FULL INTERVIEW (Crisis Group Blog - In Pursuit of Peace)

Photo: Crisis Group

Iran and the P5+1: Getting to “Yes”

Istanbul/Tehran/Washington/Brussels  |   27 Aug 2014

November’s deadline could be the last chance to avoid a breakdown in the Iran and the P5+1 nuclear talks. Compromise on Iran’s enrichment capacity is key to ending the impasse, requiring both sides to walk back from maximalist positions and focus on realistic solutions. 

Despite significant headway in negotiations over the past six months, Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., UK, Russia, China, France and Germany) remain far apart on fundamental issues. In its latest briefing, Iran and the P5+1: Getting to “Yes”, the International Crisis Group argues that both sides have forgotten the lessons that brought them this far. They have wrongly assumed that desperation for a deal would soften their rival’s bottom line and compel it to ignore its domestic political constraints. The result is a dangerous game of brinkmanship that, if continued, will yield only failure. Though there is little room for error and no time to waste, a workable compromise is still possible. Iran and the P5+1: Getting to “Yes”, Crisis Group’s latest briefing, building on the 40-point plan for a nuclear accord it detailed in May, explores a half year of talks, investigates the new realities facing negotiators and offers an innovative way out of the impasse.

The briefing’s major findings and recommendations are:

• Iran and the P5+1 should find common ground by reverse-engineering political concerns underlying their technical differences. For Iran, this means a meaningful enrichment program; continued scientific advancement; and tangible sanctions relief. For the P5+1, this requires a firewall between Iran’s civilian and potential military nuclear capabilities; ironclad monitoring mechanisms; and sufficient time and cooperation to build trust.

• Iran should accept more quantitative constraints on the number of its centrifuges and postpone plans for industrial-scale enrichment. In return, the P5+1 should accept the continuation of qualitative growth of Tehran’s enrichment capacity through research and development.

• Iran should commit to using Russian-supplied nuclear fuel for the Bushehr reactor for its entire lifetime, in return for stronger Russian guarantees of supply and enhanced P5+1 nuclear cooperation, especially on nuclear fuel fabrication. This would gradually prepare Tehran to assume responsibility for a possible additional plant, or plants, by the end of the agreement, in eleven to sixteen years.

• An accord should be based on realistic, substantive milestones such as the time the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needs to investigate Iran’s past nuclear activities ­ to determine the duration of the final agreement’s several phases rather than subjective ones dictated by political calendars.

“Neither side’s arguments bear scrutiny in the debate over the number of centrifuges, because the roots of their differences are fundamentally political”, says Ali Vaez, Iran Senior Analyst. “Negotiators are both driven and constrained by their respective domestic politics, especially the U.S. and Iran, where powerful constituencies remain skeptical of the negotiations and have the leverage to derail them”.

“The moment of truth for Iran and the P5+1 has arrived. Should it be lost, it is unlikely to soon reappear”, says Robert Blecher, Acting Middle East Program Director. “The parties could allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good and watch the best opportunity to resolve this crisis devolve into a mutually harmful spiral of escalation. Or they could choose wisely”.

FULL REPORT

Iran Sanctions: Which way out? | Ali Vaez

The United States has imposed several layers of sanctions against Iran—for widely diverse reasons—dating back to the 1979 revolution. Tehran now wants relief from sanctions as part of any diplomatic deal on its controversial nuclear program. But lifting sanctions is often harder than imposing them—and varies depending on the issues, origins and methods imposed.

FULL ARTICLE (USIP) 

Photo:  · · · — — — · · ·/Flickr

US must not miss new opportunity to engage with Iran

by Ali Vaez, Senior Iran Analyst

Squandering any opportunity for détente has been the norm in US-Iran relations during the past three decades. Iranians missed a major opening when President Obama came to power in 2009. Americans – especially as they meet with their allies in Brussels today to discuss next steps in nuclear negotiations with Tehran – should avoid a redux with Iran’s President-elect Hassan Rouhani.

FULL ARTICLE (Christian Science Monitor)

Photo: Mojtaba Salimi / Wikimedia Commons

Time Ripe for Iran Reset | CNN

By Ali Vaez, Crisis Group’s Senior Iran Analyst

The history of Iran-U.S. relations is littered with missed opportunities. The Obama administration should make sure that the victory of a moderate president in Iran doesn’t become another one.

Sending a letter of congratulation to the new president on his inauguration day – August 3 – would be a positive first step. Conservatives in Tehran will have to bite their tongues, remembering Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s congratulatory note to Obama in 2009. Republicans in the U.S. Congress, meanwhile, will have a hard time accusing the president of somehow endorsing Iran’s faulty electoral process, given that most U.S. allies in that region don’t even hold elections.

But more important than recognizing the legitimacy of a political process in which well over half of Iran’s population participated is signaling to Iran’s leadership that Washington is willing to find some sort of common ground moving forward. This could, for example, include reversing the U.S. objection to Iran attending the Geneva 2 conference on the future of Syria, a move that could be justified by Tehran’s new political face.

FULL ARTICLE (CNN)

Photo: kamshots/Flickr

Comment | Iran’s Nuclear Calculus | PBS Frontline

By Ali Vaez

Tehran’s nuclear calculus has fluctuated significantly since negotiations between Iran and the world powers resumed in April. Iran first appeared eager for a deal that could check the damaging momentum of sanctions and avert a war. The run-up to the Istanbul meeting was marked by positive signs, ranging from Ayatollah Khamenei’s rare praise of President Obama’s defense of diplomacy and the reiteration of his nuclear fatwa, to Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi’s constructive commentary in the Washington Post indicating commitment to diplomacy, and the conciliatory remarks by Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, on halting high-level enrichment. At the same time, Iran’s confidence was bolstered by its recent advances in nuclear technology and the completion of the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow.

In the wake of the Istanbul meeting, and despite its concentration on generalities, the mood in Tehran became Pollyannaish. The West’s renewed interest in diplomacy, based on a step-by-step reciprocal process, was interpreted as a sign of weakness – a desperate attempt to tame oil prices and avert a military confrontation ahead of the U.S. presidential election and amid an unprecedented economic crisis in Europe. Tehran consequently orchestrated a messaging campaign to up the ante in Baghdad by simultaneously demanding the removal of sanctions and conditioning the public for a compromise.

Seemingly based on this calculation, in the second meeting with members of the P5+1, Iran presented a five-point strategy that included both nuclear and nonnuclear matters. But the Western response poured cold water on the expectations of Iranian negotiators. In mirror image, the West had equated Iran’s willingness to resume talks with its eagerness to delay further sanctions and avert an Israeli military attack. Perceiving signs of Iranian weakness, the West had no intention to relax or postpone sanctions on Iran’s oil sector and central bank short of a major concession by Tehran. The Iranians realized that they had erred in insisting on easing the sanctions and reverted to more familiar hardline posturing, evidenced by their foot-dragging on efforts to resolve outstanding problems with the International Atomic Energy Agency and an acerbic squabble with European negotiators vis-à-vis preparatory talks.

In Moscow, Iranian negotiators stood firm, counting on their Russian allies to persuade the rest of the P5+1 to show more flexibility. Nevertheless, intent on not being seen as stalling, Iran prepared a comprehensive response to further underscore its position and respond to the P5+1’s demands. Their proactive media campaign in Moscow, especially Deputy Negotiator Ali Bagheri’s press briefing, was testament to this strategy.

Iran and the P5+1’s diplomatic roller coaster hit bottom in Moscow, yielding nothing more than a follow-on technical meeting. But the prospect of achieving a breakthrough was as illusory as a breakdown could have been perilous. Rather than more brinkmanship based on mismatched expectations and misguided convictions, both sides should embrace intensive, continuous, technical-level negotiations to achieve a limited agreement on Iran’s 20 percent enrichment.

FULL COMMENT (PBS)

Photo: Mohammad Hassanzadeh/ FARS News Agency