The Iranian missile barrage that struck an American consulate complex in the Iraqi city of Irbil at the weekend makes it clear that Tehran has little hope now of negotiating a nuclear deal to lift western sanctions. Indeed, it shows that the Revolutionary Guard, who claimed responsibility for the attack, are determined, if possible, to sabotage any rapprochement with the West. It makes it all the more evident that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the fraught attempts to revive it have barely been worth the weeks and months of intensive negotiations in Vienna. Key elements in Iran’s power structure do not want it. Those who hoped it would at last bring Iran in from the cold seem increasingly deluded.
The deal, which would revive the plan to delay Iran’s access to nuclear weapons that was renounced in 2018 by President Trump, was on the verge of completion. Final haggling over texts was expected to be over in the next week or two, and the deal would then, in theory, reinstate voluntary Iranian limits on its enrichment of uranium in return for the lifting of most western sanctions.
It was the Russians who sabotaged one of the rare modern instances of Europe, America, China and Russia all coming together to enforce a limit to nuclear proliferation. For reasons as perfidious as they were predictable, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, suddenly introduced a new stipulation: exemption from sanctions, the main goal of Iranian negotiators, must apply also to Russia, itself now excluded from global markets. There is an obvious reason: Russia would then be free to obtain from Iran items it cannot now buy from the West. Part of the Iranian establishment was furious, despite its close links to Moscow. But the Revolutionary Guard is clearly relieved that its political dominance and profitable monopoly on smuggling and sanctions-busting would not be upset by Iran’s return to normal western trade.
Without Russia, the treaty cannot go ahead. The JCPOA limits Iran to holding 300kg of uranium enriched to 3.67 per cent purity. Any excess must be shipped to Russia and stored there. Russia’s nuclear power authorities are also meant to help transform Iran’s main enrichment facility at Fordow into a medical isotope plant. To arrange alternative storage sites would take months.
Russia, like the other negotiators, does not want to see nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. But its war aims now take precedence. Halting a return of Iranian oil to western markets at a time when it is sorely needed gives Moscow extra diplomatic leverage. But in truth the JCPOA does little to halt nuclear proliferation. At present, after accelerating its programme since 2018, Iran could enrich a bomb’s worth of weapons-grade uranium within three weeks. Under the treaty, the “break-out” time is up to a year or more. This is no reassurance that an Iranian bomb will not be made.
The other big flaw in the JCPOA is that it makes no provision for Iran’s support for terrorism and its hostility to its neighbours. Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries and Israel all see the treaty as unbalanced and licence for Iran to continue its threats and subversion. Does the West need now to antagonise vital oil producers by sanctioning a treaty they see as dangerous? Already Iran has broken off tentative talks with Riyadh. There are other ways to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment, as Israel has found with its covert operations. This is no time to let a rogue nation off the hook.