U.S. President Donald Trump said on June 23 that Iran had agreed to nuclear inspections into "infinity," while Tehran said it had made no such concession in negotiations, raising questions about the viability of their fragile peace deal. [Reuters]
What our government officials and ‘experts’, and therefore journalists, continue to say or write about the Iran nuclear situation is quite often off-base. Is it too much to ask them to absorb the following nuclear nonproliferation fundamentals?
It starts with the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970. Iran is one of almost two hundred countries whose status under the NPT is a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS). (Five states are nuclear weapon states (NWS)). When a NNWS adhered to NPT, it committed to the following:
- Not to “manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons” (Article II);
- To “accept safeguards, as set forth in an agreement to be negotiated and concluded with the International Atomic Energy Agency” (Article III).
So, Iran made the commitment not to manufacture nuclear weapons, under the NPT.
Under NPT, each NNWS enters into a standardized ‘NPT safeguards agreement’ with IAEA, which sets out the obligations of the NNWS to cooperate with IAEA in the implementation of safeguards, and what IAEA can do and its limitations so as to minimize interference in the State’s nuclear program.
The wise men who established the standardized safeguards agreement, The Structure and Contents of Agreements Between the Agency and States Required in Connection With The Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (INFCIRC/153), in 1972 took as the basic principle that without the nuclear material, the state cannot manufacture nuclear weapons. Therefore, NPT safeguards is focused on verifying the nuclear material declared by the State in order to detect (in a timely manner) potential diversion to military use.
NPT safeguards does not monitor or verify non-nuclear material or equipment, e.g., enrichment centrifuges. Inspectors interface with all that at nuclear facilities to the extent necessary to carry out the nuclear material verification or monitoring. But they do not make reports, e.g., on the number of centrifuges in cascades, or the production of centrifuges.
But, you will say, IAEA has been reporting quarterly details about Iran’s uranium enrichment cascades. Yes, they have done that as part of the additional monitoring specified in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of 2015. It is not done, has not been done, for any other NNWS except Iran. The UN Security council mandated IAEA to carry out the activities beyond NPT safeguards, as agreed with Iran under the JCPOA.
In 2018, the United States withdrew from JCPOA. That led to Iran and the other parties moving away from their JCPOA commitments. Now JCPOA is effectively dead, as none of the parties are meeting their commitments. That means that Iran is under just NPT safeguards once again.
Iran has not fully met its obligations under its NPT safeguards agreement with IAEA, i.e. Iran is in non-compliance. That has resulted in several resolutions by the IAEA Board of Governors addressing Iran’s NPT commitments, most recently in June 2026.
So, yes, as President Trump said, IAEA will carry out NPT inspections in Iran ‘into infinity’, or as long as their NPT safeguards agreement remains in force. And yes, as Tehran has said, Iran has not agreed to any verification or monitoring beyond NPT; that remains to be negotiated between Iran and the U.S.
If the negotiations are successful, paragraph 14 of the Islamabad MOU kicks in:
14 — The final deal will be endorsed by a binding UNSC resolution.
To be clear, Iran will not accept more than NPT verification unless it has been endorsed and mandated by the UN Security Council. That raises an interesting possibility. China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom were part of the negotiation of JCPOA. This time the U.S. has excluded them. Might one of them use its veto?
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