When Aaron Stein was studying nuclear non-proliferation at Middlebury College’s Monterey graduate program, the students would sometimes construct what they thought would be the best possible nuclear inspection and monitoring regimes.
Years later, Stein is now a Middle East and nuclear proliferation expert with the Royal United Services Institute. And he says the Iran nuclear framework agreement, announced on Thursday, look an awful lot like those ideal hypotheticals he’d put together in grad school.
‘When I was doing my non-proliferation training at Monterey, this is the type of inspection regime that we would dream up in our heads,’ he said. ‘We would hope that this would be the way to actually verify all enrichment programs, but thought that would never be feasible.
‘If these are the parameters by which the [final agreement] will be signed, then this is an excellent deal,’ Stein concluded.
The framework nuclear deal establishes only the very basics; negotiators will continue to meet to try to turn them into a complete, detailed agreement by the end of June. Still, the terms in the framework, unveiled to the world after a series of late- and all-night sessions, are remarkably detailed and almost astoundingly favorable to the United States.
Like many observers, I doubted in recent months that Iran and world powers would ever reach this stage; the setbacks and delays had simply been too many. Now, here we are, and the terms are far better than expected. There are a number of details still to be worked out, including one very big unresolved issue that could potentially sink everything. This is not over. But if this framework does indeed become a full nuclear deal in July, it would be a huge success and a great deal.
Iran gives up the bulk of its nuclear program in these terms The framework deal requires Iran to surrender some crucial components of its nuclear program, in part or even in whole. Here are the highlights:
Iran will give up about 14,000 of its 20,000 centrifuges. Iran will give up all but its most rudimentary, outdated centrifuges: its first-generation IR-1s, knockoffs of 1970s European models, are all it gets to keep. It will not be allowed to build or develop newer models. Iran will give up 97 percent of its enriched uranium; it will hold on to only 300 kilograms of its 10,000-kilogram stockpile in its current form. Iran will destroy or export the core of its plutonium plant at Arak, and replace it with a new core that cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium. It will ship out all spent nuclear fuel. Iran would simply not have much of its nuclear program left after all this.
This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner on April 6, 2015.
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