Now that we’ve all put Bibi’s Big Adventure in the rear view, it’s probably worth mentioning that, while I’ve been taking it easy here on the site of late, the prognosis for the Iran talks is actually pretty good leading up to the March 24 (or 31, depending on who you ask) deadline for a broad-strokes political agreement. Laura Rozen, a must-read for anybody who’s following these talks, wrote after the last round of negotiations (early last week) that the participants seemed more confident than they have in some time that an agreement was doable. Tantalizingly, in last week’s Friday Prayer in Tehran, which is generally where the Supreme Leader makes his feelings clear on the big issues of the day via whoever is delivering that week’s sermon, prayer leader Kazem Seddiqi told worshipers that the “final steps” were being taken to reach an agreement and praised President Hassan Rouhani and his negotiating team. Maybe the most promising sign is that, instead of retreating to corners as they have after virtually every other negotiating session, John Kerry and Mohammad Javad Zarif have been trying to keep the momentum going by holding bilateral talks, one round of which just concluded today with more scheduled in about 10 days.
Speculation is high that the Iranians and P5+1 have finally made real progress toward a compromise on the two big sticking points in the talks, the size of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and the duration of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. On the former, the Iranians and the US seem to have both moved from their earlier positions (the US insisting on a limit of about 4500 active centrifuges with the Iranians refusing to take any of their current 10,000 active centrifuges offline) and are looking at a compromise figure in the 6000-6500 centrifuge range, proposed by the Iranians. The final number will depend on how much stockpiled enriched uranium Iran agrees to ship to Russia for conversion to fuel plates for its civilian nuclear reactors, but signs are that they are prepared to ship nearly all of the 6 tons they currently have, keeping as little as 300 or so kilograms (about a third of a ton) in their stash. Taking any centrifuges offline is a big concession by the Iranians, who have been pretty firm on that particular issue to date. As to the duration of the agreement, the Iranians have also proposed a compromise that satisfies the US demand for a “double digit” number of years by proposing a staggered agreement. Iran’s nuclear program would operate under full restrictions for ten years, then over the next five would be gradually allowed to expand so long as Iran continued to adhere to its obligations under the agreement. After that five year period all restrictions would come off.
Obviously nothing is done until it’s done, and there are a number of potential stumbling blocks still at play. The speed of sanctions relief is a major point of contention between the two sides, with Iran wanting all sanctions removed as soon as they sign an agreement but the US insisting that some of the harshest banking and nuclear-related sanctions should be lifted only gradually, as Iran shows its compliance with the terms of the deal. There’s also the question of Iran’s cooperation with International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, which has not been completely smooth. The IAEA says that Iran has been slow to fully disclose the “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program (i.e., any past R&D it has done that could be used to weaponize its nuclear material), such as they may be. It’s likely that the P5+1 are going to want assurances of Iranian cooperation from the IAEA before they finally agree to a deal, and at any rate Tehran and the nuclear agency are going to have to come to some understanding as to the amount and nature of inspections, even continuing beyond the potential 15 year timeframe of an agreement. The only sure thing (or nearly sure thing, anyway) about the Iran-IAEA relationship is that it’s likely to utterly collapse if no agreement is reached.
Last week a potential bombshell allegation was leveled by the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), via its National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) political front group. NCRI accused the Iranians of operating an undisclosed, underground enrichment facility near Tehran. That would be a bad thing, obviously, if it were in any way true, which it’s not (note to the NCRI: when you’re compiling your next Scary Dossier of Scary Iranian Nuclear Secrets, you might want to familiarize yourselves with something called “Google Image Search“).
The last potential fly in the ointment would appear to be Congress, which is why (his own political reasons aside) Netanyahu spent yesterday trying to prime that pump. Democrats seem to be holding to their promise not to revisit the idea of new sanctions until after the March 24/31 deadline passes, but they could instead turn to a poison pill that’s been drafted by Senator Bob Corker (R-TN). Corker’s bill doesn’t impose new sanctions, but instead it totally undercuts the Obama administration’s ability to make any promises to Tehran in terms of sanctions relief. It would block the administration from taking any action for 60 days after the signing of a nuclear agreement and require it to submit an analysis of the agreement to Congress within 5 days. Such analyses typically take months to properly put together, so this is obviously an attempt to force the administration to either fail to meet its legal requirements or to produce a shoddy report that Congressional opponents could then use as ammunition in a vote on whether or not to accept the agreement. The Corker bill also puts in place a series of potential opportunities for Congress to vote to either reject the agreement or to reimpose sanctions, and even if Congress has no intention of rejecting the agreement or reimposing sanctions, the fact that those opportunities would be enshrined in law would be a powerful signal to the Iranians that any deal they negotiate could be undercut at any time by a hostile Congress. That kind of thing won’t exactly encourage the Iranians to go the last mile to make a deal happen, you know?
Obama has promised to veto the Corker bill if it passes (which it certainly will), so the question is whether it can pass with a veto-proof majority. Ironically, it’s possible that the backlash to Bibi’s speech yesterday could encourage fence-sitting Democrats to uphold a veto and give the talks time to play out, but since we’re talking about Congress, and the Democrats, that’s far from a sure thing.
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 