With the approach of the E3’s end-of-August deadline, the September 10-19 IAEA Board of Governors meeting and General Conference and the October 18 termination of UNSC/RES/2231 (2015) and JCPOA , hopefully there is thinking about how to make progress on the Iran nuclear case without causing a crisis. The worst-case outcome would be notice by Iran of its withdrawal from the NPT.
I was pleased to see my old colleagues Mark Goodman and Mark Fitzpatrick capably address “What if Iran withdraws from the NPT?” in the June 25 Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Here are several points they made and my thoughts.
Israel’s war of choice is likely to have the … effect of speeding up a step off the cliff.
On June 16, the foreign ministry spokesperson announced that Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, was preparing a bill that would withdraw Iran from the NPT.
Yes, the possibility of Iran’s NPT withdrawal should be taken seriously.
If Iran were to withdraw from the NPT, then, the IAEA inspectors would lose the legal basis for sending inspectors to monitor Iran’s nuclear facilities.
More precisely, the legal basis under the NPT would be lost. As they write, a State, e.g., Russia, could require that IAEA safeguards be applied to nuclear equipment and material they supply, using the earlier safeguards agreement, INFCIRC/66 (as is applied with Israel, India and. Pakistan today). But, as they note, safeguards on the Bushehr nuclear power plant and its fuel would not provide assurance that other nuclear activities in Iran are peaceful.
If Iran announces formal withdrawal from the NPT, other members should do whatever they can during the three months’ notification period to persuade it not to follow through.
There is little prospect of effective multilateral responses to an Iranian withdrawal notification…This does not preclude other forms of pressure exerted by individual countries or ad hoc coalitions. Those could take the form of economic sanctions or coercive military actions, but to be effective they would have to be accompanied by a credible diplomatic alternative.
Invoking the NPT’s withdrawal clause in the near term would risk military escalation.
Yes, this is a real conundrum with no easy way out.
It is conceivable that Iran could withdraw from the [NPT] and maintain a policy of nuclear hedging, even as it reconstituted its enrichment program in secret. A decision to actually build a nuclear weapon could be made down the road when the capabilities are again in place.
I disagree with the unstated assumption that Iran will in any case go nuclear. It is indeed unfortunate that Western experts accept that assumption rather than believing in and working to avoid it, which in my view, is possible.
In my view, withdrawal-and-hedging is the most likely withdrawal scenario. Being outside NPT does not have to result in sanctions and military attack. That is true even if the State goes nuclear. Look at the case of Israel. Look at India and Pakistan.
Iran can state its basis for withdrawal from JCPOA and NPT is that Israel and the U.S. have ‘jeopardized the supreme interests’ of Iran, having already carried out unprovoked, illegal military attacks. To counter the further attacks Israel and the U.S. have already declared they will carry out, Iran will not disclose, to the IAEA or anyone else, what nuclear material it has and where it is. And Iran will reiterate that it is not developing nuclear weapons, which they consider to be forbidden by Islam. Iran will intend to become a non-NPT threshold state.
Preparing for what States will do in that case - at IAEA, at the UN and individually - is hopefully being given attention in capitals now.
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