This essay describes the background behind the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was negotiated to redress the crisis that had developed around Iran’s nuclear activities, and summarizes some of the agreement’s key features. The essay then highlights political and strategic factors that enabled the diplomatic breakthrough, and draws lessons that could inform approaches to future proliferation challenges. The conclusion suggests how some of the agreement’s innovative features could be built upon and applied more broadly to reduce risks that civilian nuclear energy programs could be diverted for military purposes and to inform approaches to nuclear disarmament in the future.
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“
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
,” Vienna, July 14, 2015, available at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/245317.pdf2.
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Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, “
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David E.
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and William J.
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CITATION FROM IAEA.
6.
This secret operation, now known as Operation Olympic Games, began in 2006. David E. Sanger, “
Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran
,” New York Times, June 1, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all&_r=07.
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How the Iran Deal Became the Most Strategic Success of Obama’s Presidency
,” Washington Post
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Kenneth
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,” Congressional Research Service Report
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This important point is not fully appreciated, especially in the U.S. For example, in a December 2015 article, the eminent New York Times reporters David Sanger and William Broad reported that the IAEA had concluded that Iran in 2009 ceased conducting activities to design nuclear weapons – http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/world/middleeast/Iran-nuclear-report-atomic-agency.html. Sanger and Broad wrote that Iran’s efforts “ended after 2009, or just as Mr. Obama was taking office and accelerating the sanctions and cybersabotage program against Iran’s nuclear facilities that ultimately brought Iranian officials to the negotiating table.” Sanger and Broad did not mention the possibility that Obama’s willingness to negotiate forthcomingly with Iran, including the acceptance of ongoing enrichment in Iran, also played a role in Iran’s decision. Nor did they mention that Iran had negotiated with the EU-3 between 2003 and 2005, and that those negotiations collapsed in part because the EU-3 (and the U.S. in the background) would not agree to accept that Iran had a right to enrich uranium in the future. The point here is not that the Iran’s position should have been accepted then or in 2009 and thereafter. Rather, the point is that many reporters, commentators, and officials fail to recognize that coercion alone did not cause Iran to curtail activities related to acquiring nuclear weapons and negotiate the JCPOA. Positive inducements were necessary too.
13.
These cases involved violations of a range of sanctions against Iran, not just those related to its nuclear activities.
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Jose
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, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142412788732473490457824430292317854816.
See, for example, the debate between Robert Einhorn and Olli Heinonen, “Beyond the Vote (Part 2): Implications for Proliferation in the Middle East,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, September 21, 2015, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/beyond-the-vote-part-2-implications-for-proliferation-in-the-middle-east
17.
Barbara Plett Usher, “Iran deal could start nuclear fuel race – Saudi Arabia,” BBC News, March 16,
2015
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David E.
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, “Saudi Arabia Promises to Match Iran in Nuclear Capability
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, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-promises-to-match-iran-in-nuclear-capability.html?_r=019.
Saudi-Pakistani relations soured in 2015 when Pakistan declined Riyadh’s request to send ground forces to augment the Saudi military campaign in Yemen.
20.
“
Egypt, Russia sign deal to build a nuclear power plant
,” Reuters
, November 19, 2015
, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nuclear-russia-egypt-idUSKCN0T81YY2015111921.
Sinan
Ulgen
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” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, January 13, 2016
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Turkey
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Sinan Ulgen and George Perkovich, eds.,
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(Washington, DC
: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
, 2015
), 214
.24.
JCPOA, ANNEX 1, para 2
25.
JCPOA, para 12.
26.
JCPOA, para 80.2
27.
JCPOA, para 16.
28.
Paragraph xi of the JCPOA states: “All provisions and measures contained in this JCPOA are only for the purpose of its implementation between E3/EU+3 and Iran and should not be considered as setting precedents for any other state or for fundamental principles of international law and the rights and obligations under the NPT and other relevant instruments, as well as for internationally recognised principles and practices.”
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Author(s)