Last week, as negotiators in Vienna came close to concluding a new version of the 2015 nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued two reports on the state of the country’s nuclear program. The IAEA currently monitors Iran’s atomic research, and would be charged with verifying its adherence to any new agreement. David Albright, Sarah Burkhard, and Andrea Stricker examine these two reports, which show that Iranian scientists have been violating the terms of the nonproliferation treaty, signed in 1970:
In an important conclusion, the IAEA reports that Iran violated its safeguards agreement by possessing and processing uranium metal at Lavizan-Shian. . . . The lack of additional IAEA follow-up likely reflects the difficulty of dealing with Iranian non-cooperation and dissembling actions about its past—and possibly ongoing—nuclear-weapons program. More than likely, this issue or an equivalent one will come up again.
In any nuclear deal, sanctions should not be reduced unless Iran cooperates with the IAEA and fully addresses its concerns. In other words, if Iran continues its deception during the implementation period of a new nuclear deal, a practice it followed during the implementation period of the JCPOA, sanctions should not be reduced.
Moreover, the Islamic Republic is closer than ever to accumulating enough nuclear fuel to produce a bomb:
Due to the growth of Iran’s 20- and 60-percent-enriched uranium stocks, breakout timelines have become dangerously short, far shorter than just a few months ago. Iran now has enough 20- and 60-percent-enriched uranium to use as feed for production of enough weapon-grade uranium for two nuclear weapons.
In total, Iran has enough 60-, 20-, and 4.5-percent-enriched uranium to make sufficient weapons-grade uranium for four nuclear weapons. . . . Alternatively, 40 kg of 60 percent enriched uranium is more than enough to fashion a nuclear explosive directly, without any further enrichment. . . . Iran’s current production rate of 60-percent-enriched uranium is 4.5 kg per month, meaning that it could accumulate its first amount of 40 kg in less than two months from now.
Read more on Institute for Science and International Security: https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/analysis-of-iaea-iran-verification-and-monitoring-report-march-2022