New York: June 30th was never going to be an immutable deadline for reaching a comprehensive agreement between six world powers and Iran to constrain its nuclear program. Diplomats know that the endgame is always the hardest part of any negotiation; and so it has proved. It remains likely, but far from certain, that a deal can still be done in Vienna by July 7th, the new deadline the negotiators have set themselves. Should the talks drag on any longer, a sceptical American Congress will get 60 days rather than 30 to review the accord, thanks to the August recess. That would give critics more time to muster support.
But if Congress represents a problem to be overcome later, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a far more immediate obstacle. On June 23rd, just as the negotiators were starting on the final lap, Mr Khamenei set out seven red lines that, he said, Iran would never cross.
All American and UN sanctions must be lifted immediately after an agreement is signed, he said. Curbs on Iran’s nuclear R&D programme were also unacceptable. And he declared that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would be refused the access needed to verify that all Iran’s nuclear activities are peaceful. Military sites would be entirely out of bounds, he insisted, as would the interrogation of Iran’s nuclear scientists. Iran’s parliament has also passed a law banning inspectors from military sites.
It is not the first time that Mr Khamenei has made such statements. But both the timing of his remarks and their apparent rejection of the framework agreement hammered out in Lausanne three months ago look aimed at scuppering a final accord. John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, dismissed it as just playing to the gallery at home. That, however, fails to explain why Mr Khamenei would risk the political humiliation of a deal being struck by Iran’s negotiators which would inevitably drive a truck through his red lines. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator, flew to Tehran on June 28th to consult the special council that oversees the negotiations and reports directly to the supreme leader. Two days later, hours before the “deadline”, he returned to Vienna still insisting that a “final deal” was possible.
The Americans and the Europeans are adamant that there will be no backsliding over the Lausanne “parameters”. On inspections, that means the IAEA’s full-fat Additional Protocol (AP), which is in force in 126 states and has become the norm for nuclear safeguards. The AP does not quite provide for the “anywhere, any time” inspection regime that might be desirable in Iran’s case, given its history of cheating. But it does require access to military bases if there are grounds for suspicion about what might be going on at them. The agency has made numerous military site visits in other countries. Once a state accepts AP, it is legally obliged to implement all aspects of it.
There may be some wriggle room when it comes Iran’s past nuclear activities (which the IAEA euphemistically calls the “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear programme). The Americans say they are not looking for a public confession. But there must be enough co-operation for the inspectors to find out about Iran’s past efforts to make nuclear weapons (much of which probably ceased in 2003, but some of which may have continued up to 2009). They need to draw the broad conclusion that such activities have stopped and that the intent of the nuclear programme is now peaceful.
Another question is what limits will apply to Iran’s work on advanced centrifuge development during the first ten years of an agreement, and how many it may deploy in the next five. The new IR-8 centrifuges Iran is working on can reportedly enrich uranium at up to 20 times the speed of the old IR-1s. In 15 years’ time Iran could have enough of these new centrifuges to reduce its “breakout period” (the time needed to produce enough fissile material for a bomb) to no more than a week or so.
The remaining areas where agreement is proving hard are over the pace of sanctions relief and the mechanisms for reimposing some or all of them if Iran is found to be cheating again. America, France and Britain want an automatic “snapback” of UN Security Council sanctions in the event of a major violation that no other permanent member of the council (ie, Russia or China) could veto.
This is all far beyond Mr Khamenei’s red lines. So what is going on? One possibility is that he has completely misjudged how far Barack Obama is prepared to go to get a deal, not to mention the opposition he will face if there is any backsliding. Another is that he does not know what constitutes the greater threat to the regime he leads: the ending of Iran’s pariah status or its continuation.
Most ordinary Iranians are desperate for the economic opportunities the former will bring; but the regime’s ideologues and their cronies quite like things as they are and fear change. Whether or not there is a nuclear deal may depend much less on the arcane technical details being thrashed out in Vienna and more on how the 75-year-old supreme leader, ailing from prostate cancer, resolves this dilemma.
Courtesy The Economists