The JCPOA, the NAM, the NNWS, the USA, and the NPT

Hassan Rouhani at Non-Aligned Movement ministerial meeting in 2015

by Peter Jenkins 

Someone asked me last week how President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the July 2015 nuclear deal with Iran would affect the nuclear non-proliferation regime centered on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

One way of approaching the question is to try to imagine what impression the president’s decision will have made on the bulk of NPT parties: the Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) who are members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

This large group (almost two-thirds of all NPT parties) will realize that President Trump had several motives for ditching the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), such as undoing an Obama achievement, pleasing Israel and Saudi Arabia, and creating an opportunity for himself to demonstrate his mastery of the art of the deal. But they will focus especially on the president’s oft-repeated ambition to “fix the flaws” that he perceives in the JCPOA.

Principal among those flaws, to judge from the president’s statements, is that fact that from 2031 Iran will be free to deploy more advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium than those it deployed between 2006 and 2013, to install as many of those advanced machines as it chooses, and to stock as much low-enriched uranium as it wishes. Cumulatively those freedoms could give Iran the ability to produce enough highly enriched (weapons-grade) uranium for a weapon within a very low number of weeks, were it to decide to “break out” of its nuclear non-proliferation commitments.

A newcomer to this field might suppose that NAM parties to the NPT would agree with the president that this prospect is alarming and that a fix is needed. In reality those states are more likely to reflect on what the president’s position implies for their sovereign right to make use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. In essence, they will reason, the president is objecting a priori to a NAM member, Iran, exercising one of its sovereign rights, the enrichment of uranium in accordance with the NPT.

These states won’t like that, because they will think of it as a threat to their own sovereign rights. Most of them are very unlikely ever to see advantage in exercising their sovereign right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, but they will see the point that the president has raised as one of principle. In their eyes, it will be the United States that has no right to decree that other states may not exercise such rights, especially as over the years the United States has displayed a tendency to try to lay down the law with a remarkable lack of consistency and impartiality.

This NAM view will be influenced by a weakness in the president’s position. He is assuming that Iran is intent on eventually acquiring nuclear weapons and that Iran will move to do so as soon as the current restrictions lapse on uranium enrichment, a technology that has potential for both civil and military use. Not only is this assumption currently unsupported by evidence, it runs counter to Iran’s multiple nuclear non-proliferation pledges, and to all the reasons there are to believe that only in the most exceptional circumstances might it ever be in Iran’s interest to try to become nuclear-armed. In other words, at this juncture there is no good reason for the international community, through the UN Security Council or in any other way, to deprive Iran of its sovereign rights in the nuclear field.

Related influences on NAM reactions to the claim that flaws must be fixed probably include the following:

  • Well before 2031, the IAEA is due to report the outcome of its meticulous examination of Iran’s nuclear program. The access that the IAEA enjoys under the JCPOA and the “additional protocol” to Iran’s NPT safeguards agreement with the IAEA will enable it to assess with a high degree of confidence whether or not Iran has declared all of the nuclear activity and material on Iranian soil. That assessment ought to be a crucial determinant of whether the JCPOA needs to be extended or otherwise “fixed,” not unfounded and subjective assumptions about how Iran intends to behave after 2031.
  • According to Iranian ministers and diplomats, Iran intends after 2031 that its nuclear fuel needs will determine the amount of low-enriched uranium (LEU) it produces. As a confidence-building measure, Iran will aim to avoid having significant quantities of LEU available for rapid processing to the level required for weapons.
  • Signs indicate that the Trump administration intends to ignore the US commitment, under Article VI of the NPT, to move towards a nuclear weapon-free world. Moreover the US has attacked the July 2017 Nuclear Ban Treaty and has continued to shield Israel from pressure to negotiate a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. These failings do not endear the United States to the NAM.
  • Iran may be open to other confidence-building measures as 2031 approaches: forming a joint venture with foreign firms to manage Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle needs, for example, and creating a mutual safeguarding agency with Turkey, on a model offered by Argentina and Brazil (in addition to IAEA safeguards).

All of this suggests that President Trump’s decision has not enhanced the NPT standing of the United States. The president’s readiness to withdraw from a valid agreement without good cause will have heightened distrust of the US commitment to a rules-based order. Fortunately, that is more likely to result in a decline in US influence at the next NPT Review Conference in 2020 than in defections from the NPT regime. It is to be regretted nonetheless.

Peter Jenkins

Peter Jenkins was a British career diplomat for 33 years, following studies at the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He served in Vienna (twice), Washington, Paris, Brasilia and Geneva. He specialized in global economic and security issues. His last assignment (2001-06) was that of UK Ambassador to the IAEA and UN (Vienna). Since 2006 he has represented the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, advised the Director of IIASA and set up a partnership, The Ambassador Partnership llp, with former diplomatic colleagues, to offer the corporate sector dispute resolution and solutions to cross-border problems. He was an associate fellow of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy from 2010 to 2012. He writes and speaks on nuclear and trade policy issues.

SHOW 5 COMMENTS

5 Comments

  1. Peter Jenkins. You are talking about Iran, as if it is run by people who respect human rights and international law. Iran has been besieged by mad inhuman Ayatollahs. It is very naive to assume otherwise.

    Please reserve all you comments to a moment when normal human beings are back in government in Iran. Of course you could be a fan of Ayatollahs.

  2. It is always a pleasure to read the sensible blogs by Amb. Jenkins, and to add a few comments.

    I would like to believe in the statement “only in the most exceptional circumstances might it ever be in Iran’s interest to try to become nuclear-armed.” Unfortunately, the U.S. is demonstrating in the DPRK case that possession of a nuclear deterrent is the way to get ‘respect’ and perhaps ‘economic goodies’ from it. That is, if you fully submit to this Administration’s demands. Otherwise, ‘crushing’ and ‘decapitation’ are casually suggested. DPRK used the U.S. threat as justification for applying Article X and leaving NPT; with the current threats being made, Iran now has at least as good a justification.

    It is regrettable to have to state that this U.S. administration considers the NPT to be in the way of enforcing its demands on states to ‘shape up’. Note that the NPT has not even been mentioned in the public discourse on DPRK. Wouldn’t DPRK’s return to the NPT and therefore restart of IAEA safeguards be key steps toward the ‘denuclearization’ of the Korean peninsula? Not in the Bolton/Pompeo view of the world. They want U.S. inspectors in DPRK, and all DPRK nuclear material shipped to the U.S.; the NPT and IAEA are not needed, would just get in the way, in their view (as in the Libya case). And the same will be true with Iran. After the regime collapses economically from the strongest sanctions in history and regime change occurs, U.S. inspectors will rule the roost in assuring Iran gets completely out of the nuclear business. The NPT and IAEA inspectors will not be needed, since there will be no nuclear material or activities in the country. What they can do with the operating 1000-MWe Bushehr reactor and the medical-isotope producing research reactor are interesting questions – shut down and decommissioned, I presume.
    And that’s the way the world looks after Pompeo’s unbelievable speech yesterday.

  3. There is one more clarification I would like to add. It is regarding the statement “the president is objecting a priori to a NAM member, Iran, exercising one of its sovereign rights, the enrichment of uranium in accordance with the NPT.” Any government can have such ‘objections’. The required so-called 123 bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation is used by the U.S. to get states to agree not to enrich or reprocess, thus voluntarily giving up their NPT ‘right’ in order to engage on nuclear matters with U.S. public and private entities; the ‘golden’ example being the 123 Agreement between the U.S. and the UAE. And we are all watching the possible 123 Agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which doesn’t seem, for some reason, to want to give up those NPT-authorized things just for the U.S. Will this U.S. Administration grant them a 123 Agreement without those provisions? Stay tuned.

  4. The real problem is that the Trump Administration is going to fully support Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program with no oversight and likely knee cap the IAEA. They will eagerly sell the Saudi’s nuclear enrichment equipment and MbS has already announced his intentions to use it for a weapons program.

    Will the U.S. run interference for the KSA when the IAEA starts issuing negative reports?

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