The framework agreement for the memorandum of understanding this week can be said to be the “easy part”. And that says a lot about how the next phase of talks is going to proceed, considering the circumstances.
That being nuclear discussions between the two sides. And Iran is quick to outline what the key argument points will be when we get to that over the next 60 days.
The first will be enrichment. As a reminder, uranium must be enriched i.e. increase its concentration in order to be useful for other purposes. For commercial usage, the enrichment purity is around 3% to 5% typically and even for medical research purposes it should be up to around 20%.
The reality of the situation is that Iran possesses a huge amount highly-enriched uranium – up to 60% purity. At this level, it takes very little effort to push it to 90% where it will meet the weapons-grade threshold for a nuclear bomb.
As such, one of the key demands by the US is that they want a hard cap on Iran’s enrichment and preferably a complete suspension on that.
The second point will be on the current enriched uranium stockpile. That ties to whatever highly-enriched uranium that Iran already possesses at its facilities. The amount is said to be in the hundreds of kilograms, which means they can easily refine them further in a quick turnaround time to produce a nuclear weapon of sorts.
In that lieu, the US wants Iran to dismantle its nuclear program completely while diluting i.e. blend the uranium to safer levels, the stockpile and/or move the stockpile out of the country as an additional safety buffer.
The final point is on Iran’s nuclear needs. Iran is holding a hard line that enriching uranium is a sovereign right. Their justification is that the nuclear facilities built are entirely for civilian purposes. As examples, Iran is arguing that they need it for generating electricity as well as for scientific and medical research purposes.
However, the US (and everyone else’s) argument is that Iran does not possess the specific types of power reactors or medical facilities that would actually require 60% enriched uranium. As such, the whole point is moot as it is a poor disguise of Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.
But for Iran, giving that up would be to give up its sovereignty and any diplomatic leverage it holds in any form of negotiations with its neighbours and also “enemies”.
Taking all of that together, there is a big gap that needs to be bridged between the US and Iran over the next 60 days. And frankly speaking, I don’t see how they will be able to manage that all of a sudden after having butted heads for so many years already.
Iran will surely look to delay things by kicking the can down the road with empty baseline promises. That in exchange for further sanctions relief and more unfreezing of its assets
