Draft Of A Deal With Iran Agreed In Vienna

By Steve Hynd

Various agencies are reporting that negotiators from Iran and other nations meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna have agreed a draft deal which would send the bulk of Iran's current uranium stockpile out of the country. The draft has been sent to the capitals of the various nations involved for agreement, with a Friday deadline.

Under the terms of the deal, the uranium would first be sent to Russia for further enrichment and then to a second nation - probably France but maybe Argentina - for processing into fuel rods for Iran's reseach reactor in Tehran. If enacted, that would put most of Iran's uranium beyond bomb-making purposes, since Iran neither has the technical expertise nor the plant to accomplish the difficult task of reprocessing such fuel rods to make the enriched fuel they contain suitable for further enrichment to weapons grade. 

How fast Iran could replace their stock if the deal goes ahead is a moot point, with estimates running between 4 months and over a year. However, the technicalities of that replacement are a secondary consideration, as Joseph Cirincione pointed out in an email to our friend Mark Goldberg.

This could be big. It would be the most significant deal with Iran since the suspension of the enrichment program in 2003.

The US missed the opportunity to turn that suspension into a permanent halt by refusing to negotiate. This administration will not make the same mistake.

If Iran agrees this will be a smart deal that makes us all safer. By eliminating Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium, it adds 1 to 2 years to the time it would take Iran to build a basic nuclear device, now judged to be 1-3 years.

It also establishes a precedent that could be used for all [Low Enriched Uranium] made by Iran.

Iran must now follow up with arrangements to permit UN inspectors into the formerly secret facility at Qom. It should disclose and allow inspectors into any other undisclosed facilities. This would also reduce Iran's potential break-out capability.

This is the result of smart, strong diplomacy by all the nations involved in the talks. The deal has tangible security benefits. It could also lead to a broader deal with Iran that would benefit all nations.

The usual anti-Iran crowd, most of whom are also anti-Obama, will be furious that negotiators have gotten this close to a deal in so little time. It makes the last eight years of saber-rattling look like exactly what it was - obstructionism. Already stenographers for their faction like David Sanger at the New York Times and James Blitz at the Financial Times are running anonymously sourced claims that Iran will either not agree to the deal or request changes that would invalidate it. Neither mentions the crucial fact that it was Iran that asked for a deal to procure fuel for the research reactor, in a letter to the IAEA on June 2.

This Sunday, IAEA inspectors are due to get access to a previously secret facility near Qom, which the US says was a covert plant to enrich for weapons production and Iran says was a dispersal of centrifuge research facilities against the many threats of attack made by the U.S. and Israel since 2003.

Update: Nuke expert Cheryl Rofer writes:

Momentum is the important thing. Even if Tehran decides against this agreement (and I don't think they will), it is likely that the parties will return to negotiations in public or in secret. And there are many other initiatives in play.