The Deal to Disarm Iran

Ho New / Reuters Tomorrow the U.S. will meet with Iran to seal the deal that could take the country's uranium away. Michael Adler on why the moment is the ultimate test of Obama's engagement policy.

After a meeting in Geneva that was the first fruit of President Obama’s policy of engagement on Iran comes a new encounter in Vienna. The meeting with Iran in the Austrian capital Monday is technical, with the goal of getting enriched uranium shipped out of the Islamic republic. It is also an “Audacity of Hope” moment in foreign diplomacy, a potentially transformative development which few expected and most doubt is possible. The Iranians agreed, in principle, in Geneva on October 1 to send uranium that can be used to make atom bombs to a safe place outside of the country. This would reduce the threat that Iran could use the uranium for a nuclear weapon and give time for non-proliferation talks. The question Monday is: Will the deal go forward, collapse, or perhaps what is worse, die of a thousand cuts as it is delayed?

Diplomats say they expect a firm decision in Vienna, where the meeting, joining the United States, Russia, France, and Iran, under the auspices of the U.N. watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, starts in mid-afternoon. Yet there is no deadline for decision-making. The goal is to get in writing what was promised in Geneva. Details can come later. As for the timing of the actual shipments, France would like to see all the uranium out of Iran by the end of the year. But such ambitions might not be met. The end result could be that shipping only starts at year’s end.

If Iran follows through with the deal, it would no longer have enough enriched uranium to make an atomic weapon. For now, that is.

This of course leaves daylight for the Iranians, who are brilliant at getting the world to march to their timetable, which so far has seen them develop an industrial capacity to enrich uranium despite five U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on them to suspend enrichment. Diplomats note that Obama has given until the end of the year to decide if engagement is working. The United States continues to work on a dual track, negotiating but at the same time laying the groundwork for sanctions if diplomacy fails. One reason for this is that the only way to get recalcitrant allies Russia and China aboard with punitive actions is for the fullest measure of diplomacy to be tried.

There is a lot of cynicism about Iran. People feel the Islamic republic, which resolutely insists its atomic program is a peaceful effort to generate electricity, will turn any deal to its advantage, or just delay finalizing a deal in order to gain time. There is concern that Iran is concealing even more nuclear facilities, perhaps even enrichment sites, than have already been uncovered. There is wariness Iran would give up most of its stockpile only because its uranium is contaminated, and it needs advanced technology it does not yet have to process the uranium into a usable form.

This is the dark side. It has marked this crisis since Iran was first discovered hiding secret sites in 2002.

The bright side is what the United States and other major powers are going for in Vienna. They want Iran to send some 80 percent of the uranium it has enriched out of the country. It would go to Russia to be refined further and then to France to be made into fuel for the Tehran research reactor that makes radio-isotopes used for medical procedures. The fuel Argentina gave Iran for this reactor in 1993 is running out.

If Iran follows through with the deal, it would no longer have enough enriched uranium to make an atomic weapon. For now, that is. Iran continues to enrich, although only to low levels of 3.5 percent, well below the 90 percent highly enriched levels needed for nuclear weapons. Iran would be able in about a year, depending on how many centrifuges it used, to re-stock, up to the 1,500 kilograms of low-enriched uranium (LEU) it currently has. This figure is also the number of kilograms needed to produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to make one bomb.