A report on recent developments in the Middle East and the Muslim world he Iranian Nuclear Deal of Spring 2015: TProspects - Introduction - The Islamic Republic and Deal Making - Decision Making in the Islamic Republic - Iran’s Nuclear Program: A Brief Overview - 2003: The Advent of Crisis - The Nuclear Presidential Campaign - The 2013 – 2015 Round of Negotiations: Not a 2003 Redux - The View in Iranian Political Circles: From Support to Rejection - Conclusion Shaban 1436 18 June 2015 © KFCRIS, 2015 ISSN: 1658-6972 Issue No. 18 - 24/03/2015 L.D. No: 1436/2868 June, 2015 3 June, 2015 www.kfcris.com 4 General Survey of Sites Related to Iran’s Nuclear Activities Source: Reuters. http://blogs.reuters.com/data-dive/201325/11//mapping-irans-nuclear-facilities/ June, 2015 5 Type Number Location Notes The Yazd region: Yellow cake production Sites • Saghand (1000 tons of low grade (Mills): uranium ore- 50 tones/yr), • Gachin (21tons/yr production Uranium Mining regions 2 Southern region (near Bandar Abbas capacity) on the gulf go Oman): • Ardakan (Yazd Province) (50tons/ • Gachin Mine (21 tons/yr) yr production capacity) In and around Tehran: • Gorgan, • Jabr Iban Hagan, IAEA has raised serious concerns Research Facility 6 • Parching (military site) and suspicions regarding activities • Ramsar, at Parching facility. • Mo-Allem Kalayeh (suspected Site), • Bonab (nuclear research) • Plutonium from spent fuel can be Arak (Khondab): used for nuclear weapons. Heavy-Water Facility 1 • Heavy water production Plant and • Not subject to IAEA safeguards or reactor site inspection Bushehr. nuclear power Plant on the Light Water Reactor 1 In operation since 2011. northern part of the Arabian gulf coast • Lakshar Abad: Cover pilot plant • Isfahan Uranium conversion facility. until 2003 when Iran moved some Nuclear technology center; equipment and natural uranium to uranium conversion facility; fuel Karaj. IAEA has raised concerns Uranium Processing Site 4 manufacturing plant bout the true purpose of this site. • Darkhoun (near border with Iraq) • Karaj: Agricultural and Medical • Lakshar Abad Center, but believed to hold • Ramandeh (Karaj) nuclear waste and laser enrichment equipment* • 2014 IAEA report confirms Nantaz produces low enriched Nantaz Fuel Enrichment facility uranium. Has the potential to (since 2007)- produce higher levels. Uranium Enrichment Site 2 • Initial plans of fordo was to Fordow (Qom) produce 20% enriched Uranium but 2014 IAEA reports indicated enrichments levels of 5% June, 2015 www.kfcris.com 6 Introduction On April 3, 2015, the Iranian and 5+1 across the Iranian political spectrum, with the delegations emerged from exhausting negotiations notable exception of the Supreme Leader Ali in Lausanne, Switzerland, to announce the Khamenei, as a major breakthrough, the Lausanne preamble of the first major agreement on the Declaration and the emerging final agreement are Iranian nuclear program since the now-defunct better understood through the prism of a broader Tehran Declaration issued by Brazil, Turkey, and historical perspective on the Islamic Republic’s Iran in 2010. If finalized and put into practice after attitude at times when it was compelled to scale June 30, the agreement potentially signals the end back its aims and activities for compelling of the diplomatic confrontation between Iran and reasons. By looking back at select elements of the West on the former’s atomic program, which Iran’s major negotiations with the outside world has been ongoing since 2003, when an undeclared and at the pattern of decision making in key Iranian nuclear installation was uncovered by incidents, it is possible to discern features and international monitors at Natanz. traits that, in turn, enable us to look ahead to what The Lausanne Declaration paves the way for the future might have in stock for the Iranian a compromise settlement that will enable the nuclear program and its effects on Iran’s ties with Islamic Republic to maintain a fully-fledged but the West and the surrounding region. This article bare-bones nuclear program in operation for the will cast a glance at Iran’s past deal making from near future. It will also place, according to the the acceptance of UN Resolution 598 in 1988, details presented by the US State Department, which ended the war with Iraq, to the nuclear significant limitations on the extent to which agreements of the past decade, with a view to Iran can develop its nuclear program toward providing context and rationale for the decision military capabilities. Openly lauded by figures making that led to the Lausanne Declaration. • • • The Islamic Republic and Deal Making For most of the three and a half decades of war years trying to conquer Iraq. It locked itself its existence, the Islamic Republic has had to into a diplomatic effort to secure international wade through a troubled and an often crisis- recognition of the fact that the conflict had been ridden relationship with the outside world. The started by the invasion of Saddam’s army. By outbreak of the war against Iraq in September emphasizing this fact, the Islamic Republic 1980 pitted an already isolated Iranian state signaled that righteousness and its own moral system, which was still coming to terms with the vision and interpretation were key features of its US embassy hostage crisis, against Baathist Iraq, attitude and behavior toward the outside world, a regime aspiring to assert itself as the harbinger particularly the West. At the same time, Iran’s of a new “Qadisiya,” the battle in which the war effort was supported in no small measure Arab conquerors of Iran defeated the Persian by the successful indoctrination of thousands empire’s army in AD 636. spent most of the of ordinary citizens, who volunteered for often June, 2015 7 suicidal offensives with the blessing given to the in June 1988 and subsequently published by operations by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme the veteran state figure Hashemi Rafsanjani in Leader and the formal commander in chief of 2006, Khomeini listed manifest shortcomings in the army. the supplies of the armed forces, including the The use of Western-supplied chemical inability to secure advanced weaponry such as weapons by the Iraqis – evidence that formally nuclear warheads, and worsening morale among neutral states such as France, West Germany, and the armed forces as reasons for the acceptance Italy were aiding the Iraqi war effort in a way that of UN Resolution 598 which stopped the war was far more extensive than the at best piecemeal without heeding Iran’s demand that responsibility assistance they provided to Iran, imbued a strong for starting the conflict be attributed to Iraq. sense of injustice in all the generations of zealot Iran’s leadership had therefore successfully supporters of Khomeini who flocked to the war persuaded Khomeini that the continuation of front during those years. The surviving elements the conflict would have put the stability and of the younger generation formed the bedrock existence of the political system under strain, a of the political elite in the decades to come. As danger whose prevention Khomeini would later, noted in 2012 by the current president, Hassan in January 1989, decree to be more crucial than Rowhani, in a lengthy monograph covering the basic Islamic obligations such as fasting during nuclear negotiations of 2003–2005, the UN’s Ramadan or performing the Hajj. attitude toward Iran in the 1980s left the Islamic By accepting Resolution 598, Iran had Republic’s upper leadership with a permanent moved from an intrinsically ideological position lack of trust in the organisation’s ability to act to one grounded in the necessity of preserving impartially or to Iran’s benefit, and significantly the state system and ensuring its viability by inhibited its ability to play a positive role in putting an end to an exhausting and stalemated ending the nuclear crisis in the 2000s. conflict. These traits are visible in what was By 1987, Iran was still rebuffing the numerous arguably the most difficult and testing speech initiatives led by a set of international mediators of Khomeini’s long political career, the one in ranging from the UN Secretary General at that which he publicly announced that although the time, Javier Perez de Cuellar, to Middle Eastern, acceptance of UN Resolution 598 was akin to European, and Asian figures that sought to bring drinking a chalice of poison, he was endorsing about a ceasefire between the sides. It also it in direct terms and thus it could not be subject steadfastly kept in use time-honored slogans to further discussion. such as “War, War until Victory” and the “The Khomeini’s speech also underscored another Road to Jerusalem passes through Najaf and key characteristic of the Islamic Republic’s Karbala.” However, the increased American acceptance of onerous conditions for achieving presence in the Gulf area, which culminated a diplomatic agreement with the international with the downing of an Iran Air civilian Airbus community: the need for the supreme political flying between Bandar Abbas and Dubai in July and religious authority to throw his full weight 1988, and the increasing American attacks on behind any major undertaking with outside Iranian vessels and offshore installations in the parties. Only then could an agreement be Gulf compelled the Iranian leadership to replace considered final and binding. Even though ideological convictions, which favored the it has yet to sign a formal peace treaty with continuation of the conflict, with raisons d’état. Iraq, Iran has never violated the essence and In a secret letter sent to the Iranian political elite requirements of UN Resolution 598, as doing June, 2015 www.kfcris.com 8 so would effectively have meant the violation a circumstance that was conducive to the of Khomeini’s own decisions in this regard. agreement’s breakdown and the resumption Crucially, the provisional Tehran Agreement of of uranium enrichment activities by Iran in 2003, signed between Iran and the EU3 (France, the summer of 2005.