“Iran’s Nuclear Program: What’s at Stake as the Deadline Nears,” Interview with Hossein Mousavian, John Hockenberry, The Take Away [WNYC Radio], July 16, 2014. (Audio)
Tag: Iran
After The Iran Nuclear Deal
Overcoming a decade of failed nuclear negotiations, Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany) signed an interim nuclear deal, the Joint Plan of Action (JPA), in Geneva on November 24, 2013. The agreement put into motion talks to reach a mutually agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear program would be exclusively peaceful. In a broader sense, the outcome of the nuclear negotiations with Iran will have a profound impact on nuclear non-proliferation. It could be a significant step toward a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone and a Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone in the Middle East.
According to the interim agreement, Tehran “reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek or develop any nuclear weapons.” The comprehensive solution will build on interim steps and aims to resolve the decades-long nuclear dispute between Iran and world powers. It also paves the way for Iran “to fully enjoy its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes under the relevant articles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in conformity with its obligations therein.” To ensure the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program, the comprehensive agreement seeks to define a mutually agreed enrichment program with stringent transparency and verification mechanisms in place. The implementation of the agreement will be based on a mutually reciprocal, step-by-step process, to result ultimately in the comprehensive lifting of all unilateral, multilateral and UN Security Council sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program.
If diplomacy fails and the interim deal reached in November 2013 does not produce a permanent solution, it will ultimately lead to heightened tensions, a possible all-out war, and force Iran to withdraw from the NPT. Now that against all odds, the United States and European Union have made a deal with Iran, skeptics and opponents have started mobilizing again—in both Tehran as well as in many other capitals, including Washington. In Iran, internal opposition to the deal is driven by concerns related to the hostile policies followed during Obama’s first term and by Israel’s continued challenge of Iran’s right to enrich its nuclear stockpile for energy use. In the United States, internal opposition to the deal and concern about Iranian behavior have been reinforced by two of its closest allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The deep uneasiness in those countries is tangible and immediate, for both see Iran as a mortal enemy, bent on Israel’s destruction and regional hegemony.
Finalizing a deal will require compromise by all parties. One of the key challenges will be the likely American insistence that Tehran make concessions far beyond the NPT requirements. Such demands to curb Iran’s nuclear program include dismantling a significant portion of existing centrifuges and low-enriched uranium stockpiles; closure of Fordo, Iran’s second enrichment site near the city of Qom; dismantling of the Arak heavy water research reactor; and intrusive inspections and monitoring that go beyond the NPT and the Additional Protocol. As an NPT member state, Iran would not accept targeted discrimination.
“After The Iran Nuclear Deal,” Cairo Review, Hossein Mousavian. Published by the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, July 6 2014.
Any conflict between Iran and West will be detrimental to all: ex-nuclear negotiator
Hossein Mousavian says since the situation in the region is very volatile, it is neither in the interests of Iran nor the West to engage in a confrontation over Tehran’s nuclear program.
In an interview with the Shargh newspaper published on Saturday, Mousavian said if Iran and the world powers fail to secure a nuclear deal, the confrontation between the two sides would blow up the entire region and its fire would consume all Western and Eastern powers.
Elsewhere in his remarks, he said that Iran and the world powers face many serious threats, such as the emergence of extremist Takfiri groups in the Middle East, production and smuggling of illegal drugs, and instability in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, he said, Iran and the West share many interests in common. Such common threats and interests can help reduce mutual mistrust between Iran and the world powers, he noted.
He went on to say that in the process of talks between Iran and the six world powers, Tehran can accept to sign the Additional Protocol to the NPT provided that it is reciprocated in terms of easing the sanctions and opening the doors for peaceful nuclear cooperation with Iran.
“Any conflict between Iran and West will be detrimental to all: ex-nuclear negotiator,” Interview with Hossein Mousavian, Shargh Newspaper [English synopsis in Tehran Times], July 5, 2014.
Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace (Video)
From Iraq to Syria, from energy to counterterrorism, Iran and the United States share many common interests across the Middle East and ought to put aside their decades of hostility, said author and former Iranian diplomat Seyed Hossein Mousavian.
Speaking at an IPI Distinguished Author Series event on June 25th featuring his book Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace, Mr. Mousavian said that both countries are to blame for their failure to reach a rapprochement after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, but that today’s challenges in the Middle East are a unique opportunity for mending relations.
Mr. Mousavian said that in his book he had tried to explain the Iranian perspective of the relationship, a view that he said has so far been overlooked by the predominantly Western approach to US-Iran relations.
“Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace,” Presentation at the International Peace Institute (IPI), June 25, 2014.
Inside view of Iran, Iraq, & US relationship (Video)
To understand the questions of the present, we have to look to the answers of the past. U.S. relations with Iran carry a long and complex narrative that is overflowing from decades before.
Seyed Hossein Mousavian served in Iran’s Foreign Ministry, was an advisor for their national security council, and worked with current Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. His extensive knowledge of the area and their foreign relations with the U.S. led to his latest work, Iran and the United States: An insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace.
MSNBC sat down with the ambassador to discuss the path for a peaceful relationship between the superpowers.
“Inside view of Iran, Iraq, & US relationship,” Interview with Hossein Mousavian, Krystal Ball, MSNBC, June 25, 2014. (Video)
Do Iran and US have mutual interests in Iraq? (Video)
“Do Iran and US have mutual interests in Iraq?” Interview with Hossein Mousavian, Krystal Ball, MSNBC, June 25, 2014. (Video)
Opinion: A Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Middle East
The Middle East is witnessing too many challenges: a return of a regional cold war, the increasing role and weight of non-state actors, the threat of failed or failing states, the reemergence of strong transnationalism through the rise of Islamism and sectarianism, the rise and consolidation of jihadist terrorism on the shores of the Mediterranean, and the revival of sub-national identities fearful of the present or of the future. All of this threatens the fabric of existing states, providing an attractive space for interference, intervention, and confrontation by proxy.
The people of the Arab world, Iran and Turkey are forever condemned to live together in this region. They need to talk to, rather than about, each other. They are facing common threats, and they each have huge potential and influence in the region and beyond. Restoring peace and stability in the Middle East will not be possible so long as individual preferences and influences are not channeled into a coordinated approach to securing the common interest.
Once established, the conference would convene at the ministerial level at regular intervals; it could convene any other time at a lower level as well. It could also entrust small committees of experts and officials with exploring solutions to certain crises or ways to contain issues, or with developing confidence-building measures for such purpose. Such committees could, perhaps, report to the general conference with policy suggestions.
The four major regional powers—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Turkey—can and should take the initiative to launch such a process. This quartet, along with other countries in the region, have too many overlapping, intersecting and interdependent issues and areas of mutual interest. Such concerns can be better addressed within the framework of a conference such as we are proposing, which would give the opportunity to avoid new crises, contain existing ones, develop better understandings, and work out common approaches to problems.
Indeed, there are crises in this region that could escalate into war—and this is a region witnessing a proliferation of crises. Most of them are complex in nature, bringing together internal and external factors in a highly volatile Middle East. Even more, all sorts of links exist between these various crises.
The question that remains now is whether these four main powers will rise to this challenge and take the initiative to develop a comprehensive vision of the role of such a forum. Will they join forces with others to turn this idea into a working reality, or will they remain entangled in an increasingly fragmented Middle East?
“Opinion: A Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Middle East,” Hossein Mousavian with Nassif Hitti, Asharq Al-Awsat, June 10, 2014.
Agreeing on Limits for Iran’s Centrifuge Program: A Two-Stage Strategy
An early version of this article appeared online June 9 because of the high interest in the ongoing negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program. The version below, which also appears in the print edition of the July/August issue of Arms Control Today, was updated to reflect minor editorial changes to the previously posted version.
Iran is negotiating with a group of six states over the future of its nuclear program. In November 2013, Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) agreed to a Joint Plan of Action that seeks to reach a “comprehensive solution” by July 20, 2014. The goal is to agree on a set of measures that can provide reasonable assurance that Iran’s nuclear program will be used only for peaceful purposes and thus enable the lifting of international sanctions imposed on Iran over the past decade because of proliferation concerns.
A key challenge is to agree how to limit Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, which is based on gas centrifuges, in a way that would enable Iran to meet what it sees as its future needs for low-enriched uranium fuel for nuclear research and power reactors while forestalling the possibility that this program could be adapted to quickly produce highly enriched uranium at levels and in amounts suitable for nuclear weapons.
This article proposes a compromise based on a two-stage approach that involves Iran maintaining a capacity for enriching a small amount of uranium annually for research reactor fuel in the short term and developing a potential enrichment capacity in the longer term that would be appropriate to fuel power reactors. Iranian supply needs for its power reactors will develop in 2021 if Tehran decides to fuel the existing Bushehr power reactor domestically, in whole or in part, rather than renewing its fuel supply contract with Russia or buying fuel from another foreign supplier.
The proposed compromise also reflects Tehran’s plan to shift from its current low-power, first-generation centrifuges to high-capacity machines that are still under development.
This article therefore suggests that, during the next five years, Iran should modernize its enrichment facilities and in doing so, keep its operating capacity at about the current level rather than begin to operate the many thousands of first-generation machines that it already has installed and continue setting up more. During this period, Iran could phase out its first-generation machines in favor of the second-generation centrifuges it already has installed but has not yet operated. At the same time, it could develop, produce, and store components for a future generation of centrifuges that would be suitable for commercial-scale deployment. These later-generation centrifuges would not need to be assembled, except for test machines, until at least 2019.
To maintain the confidence of the international community that there will be no diversion of centrifuge components to a secret enrichment plant, the current transparency measures that Iran has undertaken for its centrifuge program would continue. These transparency measures should become the standard for transparency for centrifuge production worldwide.
Finally, the article suggests that the five-year period created by this proposal be used as an opportunity by Iran, the P5+1, and other interested states to explore in a second stage of the negotiations a multinational uranium-enrichment arrangement that would see Iran deploy its advanced centrifuges in a new regional, multinational facility rather than a national enrichment plant. By committing to working on such multinational arrangements for the Middle East and, ultimately, around the world, Iran and the P5+1 could chart a path to greatly reduce the proliferation risks that stem from national control of enrichment plants, regardless of location.
Latest Version:
“Agreeing on Limits for Iran’s Centrifuge Program: A Two-Stage Strategy,” Arms Control Today, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian, Seyed Hossein Mousavian and Frank von Hippel. Published by Arms Control Today, July/August, 2014.
Older Version:
“Agreeing on Limits for Iran’s Centrifuge Program: A Two-Stage Strategy,” Arms Control Today, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian, Seyed Hossein Mousavian and Frank von Hippel. Published by Arms Control Today, June 9, 2014.
A compromise proposal for nuclear talks with Iran
As American and Iranian officials meet in Geneva to try to find a way through the impasse holding up a comprehensive multilateral deal onIran‘s nuclear programme, a group of Princeton University academics have sent them a proposed road-map on how to get around the blockage.
The Princeton report, published on the Arms Control Today website, focuses on the core issue that has proved most problematic in the four months of talks so far – Iran’s future capacity for enriching uranium. This has hitherto been such a gap to bridge because Iran and the West come at it from entirely different perspectives.
The Princeton compromise is a two-stage approach, allowing a very limited enrichment capacity for the existing research reactor in Tehran in the short term, but with the flexibility to expand that capacity to keep pace with the construction of future nuclear power stations in the long term. The existing contract for Russian nuclear fuel rods for Bushehr expires in 2021. If Tehran decides it wants to use it own rods after that, then its enrichment capacity would be stepped up as that deadline approaches, but not before 2019.
In the intervening five years, Iran would focus on modernising its enrichment plant, replacing the now ancient and inefficient IR-1 centrifuges, based on half-century old technology, with a new generation of IR-2m centrifuges, with about five times the capacity. As the new machines were installed in this first phase, total capacity would remain the same. Even more advanced centrifuges would be developed with an eye to the future.
“A compromise proposal for nuclear talks with Iran,” Interview with Hossein Mousavian, Julian Borger, The Guardian, June 9, 2014.
Princeton experts propose possible solution on Iran centrifuges
As American and Iranian officials meet June 9 in Geneva, a former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiators, Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, and several physicists at Princeton are proposing a possible solution to the dispute over how many centrifuges Iran can retain under a long-term nuclear agreement.
Their draft proposal, prepared for publication by the magazine Arms Control Today and made available to Al-Monitor, would permit Iran to transition from the rudimentary machines it currently employs to enrich uranium to more-advanced centrifuges over the course of five years. This would reduce the numbers of centrifuges Iran would require to meet the needs of even an expanded civilian reactor program, but it still raises concerns about Iran’s ability to “break out” and produce fuel for nuclear weapons.
To deal with these concerns, the authors — Mousavian, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian and Frank von Hippel — suggest that Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, the P5+1 nations, explore creating a multilateral uranium enrichment facility that could supply Iran and other countries in the region with nuclear fuel. Such an arrangement, they say, “could provide a long-term solution to the proliferation concerns raised by national enrichment plants in the Middle East and elsewhere.”
With the interim agreement due to expire July 20, there is mounting pressure on all sides to resolve disputes over the scope of Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions relief. If no deal is reached, the interim agreement can be renewed for six months, but political and bureaucratic realities argue for resolution by this fall, when the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and US Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns are due to retire and Americans will vote in congressional elections that could flip control of the Senate to the Republicans. Without a deal, pressure is sure to increase in the US Congress for more sanctions legislation against Iran, which could embolden Iranian hard-liners.
“Princeton experts propose possible solution on Iran centrifuges,” Interview with Hossein Mousavian, Barbara Slavin, Al-Monitor, June 9, 2014.
