US should stop Iran buying material for Arak nuclear plant

Iran has continued to buy essential materials for its heavy water reactor at Arak, according to a leaked United Nations report.

Commentators have since weighed in on whether this procurement, which is clearly in breach of UN sanctions, would also violate the interim agreement signed by America, Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia (or P5+1) and Iran in Geneva in November last year placing constraints on the latter’s nuclear programme.

This deal, known as the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), freezes essential work on the Arak facility, but it does not explicitly mention procurement. In any case, Iran's decision to continue buying material for this plant is unacceptable. Any long term agreement with Iran must ensure that illicit nuclear procurement is both prohibited and prevented.

The UN Security Council has adopted several resolutions against Iran that order the country to halt its uranium enrichment, heavy water-related and ballistic missile programmes (exempted from sanctions at the insistence of the Russian government is the Bushehr light water reactor, as Russia is that project’s biggest external stakeholder).

Since the adoption of the first of the UN resolutions Iran has substantially increased the size of its uranium enrichment capability, has nearly completed the Arak heavy water complex (which is well‑suited to plutonium production), and has continued to advance its ballistic missile effort. All of these have largely been achieved through the use of illicit procurement methods to acquire Western‑origin goods, often through countries such as China, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey.

The UN’s Iran Panel of Experts has repeatedly highlighted cases where Iran has violated the sanctions resolutions. Project Alpha, a King’s College London initiative, and the Institute for Science and International Security, based in Washington, D.C., have also tracked several known cases of illicit procurement over the time that Iran has been under sanctions. Iran, for its part, has dismissed the sanctions as illegitimate and even admits violating them. President Hassan Rouhani said in late August, “We are proud that we bypass sanctions.” But this attitude flies in the face of the efforts by the P5+1 to get a verifiable long term deal.

Cases of illicit procurement must be viewed in the broader context of the Iranian programme. Certainly, as early as the mid-1980’s into the early 2000s, Iran failed to declare aspects of its nuclear programme which were aimed at creating the capability to produce nuclear weapons. It was caught numerous times building or working at covert facilities, such as in 2002 with the revelation of the Natanz enrichment facility, and again in 2009 with its then-covert enrichment facility at Qom. Iran’s programme is also poorly suited to its legitimate civil nuclear energy needs. In addition, there are alleged military dimensions to the programme which Iran has blocked the IAEA from investigating.

Despite this, the US State Department has pointed out, there are no grounds to believe that Iran is not adhering to the Joint Plan of Action , which forms the basis of the current negotiation process. Iran has tested the resolve of its partners in enforcing the spirit of the agreement, namely its commitment to freeze its centrifuge R&D work at Natanz. So far, Iran has ceased production of 20 per cent enriched LEU, has converted its stocks of 20 per cent low-enriched uranium hexafluoride to a less weapons-appropriate form, has accepted additional constraints on centrifuge R&D, and has put a freeze overall on its expansion efforts inside Fordow and Natanz.

Nonetheless, the allegations in the UN report - reported by Foreign Policy magazine - are serious. Controls on the transfer of nuclear-related goods provide a central aspect of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime which acts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. A healthy non-proliferation regime helps to reduce the risks of proliferation as it provides states with confidence that their potential adversaries are not, in fact, seeking nuclear weapons. In the past several decades, the spread of nuclear capabilities via illicit trade has led to the creation of proliferation-sensitive nuclear programs in several states.

While Iran’s use of illicit procurement techniques does not violate the JPOA, it does nonetheless undermine the credibility of the non-proliferation regime and risks achieving a verifiable long term deal. There can be no true confidence in Iran’s declarations about its nuclear programme now, nor in the future, if it retains an ability to procure goods illicitly. It is hard to see how verification would work if Iran is out shopping illegally for goods it could use either in an overt or covert program. For these reasons, it is vital that illicit procurement be prohibited under a long term agreement. Iran should also cease this practice as a show of good faith under the extension of the JPOA.

Proposals have been put forward on how this can be achieved while allowing Iran to service legitimate procurement needs, and core to these proposals is the ability to verify Iran’s procurements for its nuclear programme. The IAEA has the ability to do this. The UN’s Panel of Experts on Iran sanctions also has a mandate to investigate potential sanctions violations and can be empowered to verify the end use of legal exports to Iran’s authorized nuclear programs. A key question, however, is how to marshal these capabilities effectively in a long term deal to ensure that Iran is not obtaining goods for a covert nuclear program while allowing Iran to obtain goods for authorized nuclear programs. Moreover, these capabilities and restrictions must be ensured in the long run.

It is vital that thought be given to how to prevent Iranian illicit procurement. Certainly, the expectation should be set as negotiations proceed that illicit procurement will be seen as a breach of a longer term agreement. Beyond this, however, mechanisms such as UN and national sanctions and export controls should remain in place to ensure that Iranian illicit procurement is prohibited and can be detected well into the future. A failure to ensure this risks undermining any deal that is agreed.

Telegraph