Abbas Araqchi (C), Iran's chief nuclear negotiator arrives at the Austria Center Vienna after another rounds of talks between the EU 5+1 on May 16, 2014 in Vienna. (DIETER NAGL/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]The latest round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program ended on a dreary Friday night in Vienna with a gratifying amount of rancor on both sides.
The frustration and exasperation in evidence from Iranian delegates and those from the P5+1 (the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany) are signs that both sides are now genuinely invested in reaching an agreement. These talks are the fourth round since the interim deal agreed last year that set a deadline of July 20 for resolving the nuclear crisis. As the deadline approaches the pressure is being felt.
Iran’s leading negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, was blunt: “The gaps were too large to begin drafting the text,” he said. US officials were equally forthright. “This has, candidly, been a very slow and difficult process, and we are concerned with the short amount of time that is left,” said one senior member of the US negotiating team in Vienna. “We had expected a little more flexibility,” said another.
The difficulty in reaching an agreement is unsurprising. The issues now being debated are the keys to a crisis that has dragged on for more than a decade. The question of uranium enrichment, from which Iran could build a bomb, remains the central problem. The Iranians want to increase their enrichment capacity to around 50,000 new generation centrifuges. At present, Iran’s enrichment plants have 19,000 centrifuges installed—many of them older designs—of which around 10,000 are operating.
US officials rightly argue that 50,000 working centrifuges would give Iran an unacceptably quick breakout capacity—the ability to rapidly produce a bomb—and the Iranians know it. As far as Washington is concerned, Iran needs to cut, not increase, its number of centrifuges, but for the Iranians this prospect remains a “red line” they won’t cross.
Then there is the controversy surrounding the new Arak reactor, which offers Iran an alternative route to a nuclear bomb through the production of weapons-grade plutonium. It is estimated that Arak, once it is operating at full power, could produce about 19 lb (9 kg) of plutonium per year, enough for one nuclear bomb. P5+1 officials say the amount must be reduced, but again Iranian officials remain defiant. On Sunday, Iran’s Press TV quoted Araqchi as saying that the Arak reactor would remain a heavy-water facility and would continue to operate at 40 megawatts of power.
Also unresolved is the degree of sanctions relief Iran expects and the direction of the country’s future research and development. At the end of the talks no joint statement was made—the next round of negotiations will take place in Vienna on June 16-20.
All of this may appear infinitely depressing, but it is a transformation—in both tone and purpose—from the negotiations that took place under Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Then, the Iranians had little interest in reaching a deal, occasionally meeting with their P5+1 counterparts to stall for time as they pushed on with uranium enrichment—and the P5+1 knew it. And then, as now, both sides criticized the other but the accusations had a perfunctory feel to them, with each playing the role expected of it. Critically, nothing of substance was discussed. There was recrimination but no emotion. It was diplomatic charades.
Politics, not technology, dictates this dispute in all its forms. The outstanding technical issues have remained the same for a decade. What has changed is the political landscape behind them, in both Iran and the US.
US President Barack Obama took office in 2008, obviously determined to achieve some sort of détente with Iran. Just months into his presidency he publicly extended a conciliatory hand towards the Islamic Republic, addressing its leadership directly, something no US president had done before. When I spoke to a member of his pre-election team I was told that mending relations with the Islamic Republic preoccupied him even before his election: one of his first foreign trips before winning office was to Jerusalem, to ask the Israelis not to close off his options by attacking Iran.
His overtures were not, however, reciprocated by the deeply anti-Western combination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Ahmadinejad. But sanctions took their toll in Iran and contributed to both a softening of Khamenei’s position and Hassan Rouhani’s election to the Iranian presidency last year, with a promise to improve Iran’s international relations.
Both Obama and Rouhani want a deal. For the first time in more than 30 years there is an alignment of purpose in Washington and Tehran. There will need to be: both men will have to overcome their respective hardliners to reach an agreement. As soon as the initial accord was reached in November last year, members of the US Congress tried to legislate conditions that essentially amounted to sabotage—that Iran cease all uranium enrichment and dismantle its entire nuclear program.
Intense lobbying prevented the legislation from being passed, but the House of Representatives recently managed to attach a “sense of Congress” amendment onto the US Annual Defense Bill, on May 8. Pressure for more conditions on a final deal is only going to intensify as the July 20 deadline approaches.
Meanwhile, Rouhani and his Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who heads up Iran’s negotiating team, have also faced constant criticism from hardliners since last November. Public condemnation from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and conservative newspapers such as Kayhan is a given, but pressure is becoming more organized. On May 3, politicians and clerics gathered at the former US embassy in Tehran for a conference on the talks entitled “We’re concerned.” Iran, it was argued, was giving away too much without adequate returns from a West that cannot be trusted. The conference ended with an official statement demanding that the final deal must guarantee Iran’s rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and be presented to parliament for ratification before being signed.
Critically, though, Rouhani still enjoys the (reluctant) support of Khamenei. As long as this continues, criticism will not morph into rebellion, and the talks will proceed. No “magic formula” is available here, and an eventual deal will be the “least bad” option for both sides—no one is going to emerge entirely happy.
Finally, the political will to succeed exists on both sides. Both Obama and Rouhani have now staked so much political capital on a deal against so much opposition that the cost of failure may be politically fatal—for Rouhani’s presidency and Obama’s legacy. In this most international of disputes, internal politics may turn out to be the most overlooked yet important factor of all.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
