By: Afchine Alavi
Since signing the interim agreement in Geneva between the P5+1 (5 Security Council permanent members plus Germany) and the Iranian regime, analysts have been preoccupied with assessing a deal considered by some as historic, and by others as an interim step.
The ink on the deal had hardly dried when the two sides began contradicting each other. While Iranian president Mullah Hassan Rouhani bragged in a public letter to his Supreme Leader about great powers accepting the ‘right to uranium enrichment on Iranian soil’, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was busy offering assurances that, “We do not recognize a right to enrich.”
The British Foreign Secretary explained that: “The document does not resolve the argument about whether there is such a thing as the right to enrich. What it says, is that as part of a comprehensive solution, if we reach that further stage of a comprehensive solution, Iran would be able to enjoy its basic rights to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and that would involve what we call a mutually-defined enrichment programme limited to practical needs.”
Also while the great powers announced that the agreement would stop activities in the Arak heavy-water plant that can produce the necessary plutonium for a nuclear bomb, Tehran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told parliament that despite the agreement, construction work would continue to finish Arak plant.
These contradictory remarks are caused by the vague wording of the agreement. Experts fear that superficial deficiencies in the text may allow Tehran to, for example, do construction work outside the site of Arak and then integrate it into the plant.
A retreat that was imposed on Iran
But one thing is certain. The Geneva agreement has forced a retreat by the Iranian regime since it entails an important series of restrictions and checks on the mullahs’ nuclear program that were absent in the past, and freezes part of the program for six months. These commitments by the Iranian regime include a halt in enrichment above 5%, neutralizes 20% enriched uranium, stops production of centrifuges, halts activities to initiate the heavy-water plant in Arak and the introduction of fuel into this reactor, bars construction of plants that produce plutonium from used up nuclear fuel, allows daily visits by IAEA inspectors to the Natanz and Fardow nuclear sites, as well as factories that construct centrifuges and uranium mines. Iran should also handover design information for the Arak reactor.
Reciprocally, regime was looking to have its principal demand met, but as Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, former President, who himself is among the proponents of the deal, admitted, the right to enrichment has not been specifically mentioned in the body of the agreement.
Why did Tehran accept the deal?
Why did the Iranian regime give in and sign such an agreement that it had previously turned down? The reason is crystal clear: Economically, it had reached rock bottom because the international sanctions had successfully brought it to its knees. In a state-TV interview on November 26, Rouhani admitted that country’s growth rate was minus 5%, the government’s debt stands at 2,000,000 billion Rial or $67 billion, and the inflation rate is hitting 35%. According to independent economic experts, this situation was simply unsustainable and had led to a 30% unemployment rate. International sanctions in particular had diminished the regime’s capability to sell its oil as its principal source of income. Moreover, the social and political conditions are considered to be explosive, according to the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and the Revolutionary Guards. The inner circle of the Vali-e faqih stated that the only reason Khamenei conceded to a one-round election back in June was to prevent the eruption of another uprising in the country. At the same time, the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program is universally unpopular in Iran and intensifies the regime’s isolation in the population.
Therefore, the regime is gasping for a vital opportunity to buy time and ease the sanctions to temporarily escape its ignominious downfall.
In return for these steps, the P5+1 is to provide ‘limited, temporary, targeted, and reversible’ relief to ease the sanctions, which is worth $7 billion, plus remove some sanctions in the auto and airplane industries, and in particular freeze any new sanctions – all of while are urgently needed by the regime. In his letter to Khamenei, Rouhani unmistakably gave away the regime’s objective: “The destruction of sanctions against the regime has begun”. The $7 billion is only an interim target; the mullahs are looking to introduce a crack in the sanctions. They hope to achieve just that with assistance from greedy trade companies, work of the lobbies, and the fecklessness of other countries, especially the U.S. If successful in weakening the sanctions, Tehran will no longer need a final agreement. The regime is planning to defeat the sanctions by introducing a crack into the sanctions regime. As Camille Grand, director of ‘La fondation pour la recherche stratégique (FRS)’ put it in his interview with Le Figaro: “The regime is looking to buy time and loosen the sanction siege without sacrificing anything of its own.” For now, the halt in new sanctions delivers artificial respiration to the regime.
The Chalice of Poison
Rafsanjani, head of State Exigency Council, lucidly said: “The nuclear deal saved us from a great bottleneck.” He did not think twice about comparing this agreement with the ceasefire agreement in the Iran-Iraq war. At the time, Khomeini compared the ceasefire agreement with drinking the ‘chalice of poison’ in order to save the regime. Previously, the current retreat on the nuclear front has been described as drinking the chalice of poison that permeates into the system and can prove deadly. During discussions in parliament, one parliamentarian criticized Rouhani and his foreign minister saying: “They are portraying the chalice of poison that they gave to the nation as a sweet drink.” The consequences of this poison may cause the regime to revert on the agreement at any time; a matter that makes this agreement quite fragile.
Pitfalls of a fragile agreement
Bruno Tertrais, in an interview with the French daily Libération, said: “There is nothing in the text of agreement that relates to what is ashamedly called the military aspect of Tehran’s parallel research.”
In general, the interim agreement has left the military aspects of the program untouched. The inspection of Parchin site in southeastern Tehran, where tests of conventional explosions for nuclear purposes are conducted, has not been requested. Inspection of none of the sites disclosed in a span of ten years by the Iranian Resistance has been requested: The SPND, that is the nerve center that guides the regime’s nuclear weapons program, and that has recently been relocated, the Metfaz special labs in Tehran that test nuclear detonators necessary for a nuclear weapon, and the underground site Kossar near town of Damavand or the ‘012’ site near Isfahan.
It should also be remembered that the clerical regime is expert in skullduggery. The current President Rouhani has publicly bragged about how he duped the West as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator between 2003 and 2005. He boasted in a 2004 speech to the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council: “While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the [uranium conversion] facility in Isfahan. . . . In fact, by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Isfahan.”
Swiftly closing the crack
In the morning after signing the agreement, in the social network of Iranian web, this question was posed to Khamenei as to why we delayed an agreement for 10 years? This question may also be posed to the world powers. Given the unmistakable revelations by Rafsanjani, one may deduce that the world has wasted 10 years. If, after the disclosures of covert sites of Natanz and Arak by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in 2002, the international community that had discovered Iran’s clandestine nuclear program and its blatant breach of NPT had taken a firm stance against the mullahs, we would not have been at this point today. Instead of adopting a policy of appeasement towards Tehran in 2003, the world powers could have imposed effective sanctions to bring the regime to its knees and this would have surely stopped the mullahs cold in their tracks to achieve nuclear weapons capability. They would have been forced to abandon their program to save their skins from a probable downfall.
Moreover, regime’s acute feebleness did allow the world powers to finalize a better deal right now in Geneva. That did not happen. They should however know that the slightest appeasement would offer this regime windfall opportunities. Considering that we had six Security Council resolutions against this regime that prohibited enrichment and called on the regime to acquiesce to the Additional Protocol, what was put in ink in Geneva was a bare minimum. Before it’s too late, the crack looked for by the regime in the sanctions regime needs to be swiftly closed. Without the Additional Protocol and allowing snap inspections, the mullahs shall not allow inspection of their sites involved in the nuclear weapons program. The regime’s potential to build the bomb that has just been slowed down is yet to be dismantled. Permitting the mullahs to keep it is a thousand times more destructive than any mistakes West has committed thus far.
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