Skip to main content

If Iran had its Additional Protocol in force

Everyone wants to know what the situation is at the nuclear facilities attacked by Israel and the U.S. Of primary interest is where the 60% and 20% enriched uranium cylinders are and whether some were destroyed and the material released to the environment. Of secondary interest is the status of the centrifuges, especially the advanced centrifuges at Fordow and at Natanz. 

When will Iran submit revised information to IAEA on the nuclear materials at the bombed nuclear facilities? When will Iran permit IAEA inspectors to visit the bombed nuclear facilities? Do the inspection arrangements before military attack remain valid? The IAEA inspectorate must be interacting with Iran on such questions. 

If Iran had its Additional Protocol (AP) in force, IAEA could request “Complementary Access,” the additional access provided by it. But would that help much in the current situation? 

The AP states that Iran shall provide the Agency with access to any place on a site. [AP, Article 5a.(i)], and the Agency may perform visual observation, item counting of nuclear material, non-destructive measurements and sampling, utilization of radiation detection and measurement devices, examination of records relevant to the quantities, origin and disposition of the material, collection of environmental samples; and other objective measures…agreed by the Board and following consultation between the Agency and Iran. [AP, Article 6b]. 

That sounds like the Agency would be able to determine a lot about the situations at the bombed facilities in the near future. 

But Iran does not have its AP is force. Iran stopped its provisional AP implementation under the JCPOA.

So here we have a solid case for why it is important that Iran adhere to the current NPT safeguards norm of a comprehensive safeguards agreement (CSA) and an Additional Protocol (AP). (More than 140 NPT States are so conforming.) The IAEA Director General repeatedly calls on Iran to put its AP in force, without effect to date. What is needed, in my view, is for NPT States, in the IAEA Board of Governors and outside it, to exert “maximum diplomatic pressure” on Iran to conform to the NPT safeguards norm now!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘New war with Israel at any moment’, ‘still digging through rubble’

The news about Iran has taken an ominous tone in the last couple days. Here is some reporting and commentary.  Newsweek on August 18, 2025, reported that Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior military adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said ‘ We are not in a ceasefire; we are in a stage of war. No protocol, regulation, or agreement has been written between us and the U.S. or Israel. A new war with Israel could break out at any moment .’  Yonah Jeremy Bob commented in The Jerusalem Post on August 19, 2025, that ‘ Khamenei can either “drink from the poisoned chalice” of diplomatic concessions … or face more airstrikes, possibly next time some targeting him directly ’.   Bob also noted that ‘ right now Iran is still digging through rubbl e’. The U.S. attacked Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan on June 22. Two months of digging. No surprise that there has been no public news about that.
Post a Comment
Read more

Assessing possible outcomes of the snapback mechanism

The initiation by the E3 of the 30-day snapback mechanism in the UN Security Council makes everything more difficult and there is great uncertainty about the outcome. Will it be peaceful with a new nuclear deal with Iran, negotiated by the U.S., endorsed by the UNSC and verified by IAEA, or will Iran withdraw from NPT with further military action by Israel and the U.S.?                 To perhaps shed a little light on what the outcome will be, here is my analysis of how the players - Iran, U.S. and E3 - may be assessing the acceptability of the range of outcomes. Four levels of acceptability were used: 1 Fully acceptable; 2 Less acceptable; 3 Just acceptable; and 4 Not acceptable. Four near term 30-day outcomes are listed, and two optimistic outcomes with an interim U.S.-Iran agreement reached within a 6-month extension.                 For the 30-day near term, the best outcome would b...
Post a Comment
Read more

‘Making nuclear fuel’ under the NPT

It is with some hesitation that I take issue with the latest publication of the renowned Henry Sokolski and Sharon Squassoni on August 15 in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, titled: “ Actually, the NPT doesn’t guarantee a right to make nuclear fuel .”  But someone should defend the IAEA and international safeguards! Here are points in question.            ‘ The [NPT] treaty was designed to prevent dangerous bombmaking activitie s.’  NPT is far more complex than that. It is common to state the three pillars of NPT: nuclear disarmament; nuclear nonproliferation; and peaceful uses of nuclear technology. Nonproliferation involves the commitment of non-nuclear states not to pursue nuclear weapons and to accept IAEA inspection to confirm that commitment is being followed. Perhaps Sokolsky intends to refer to INFCIRC/153, which lays out how IAEA and the state cooperate to carry out that confirmation. If so, INFCIRC/153 is not designed to ‘prevent’...
Post a Comment
Read more