A Ramezani
20 October 2014, Al-Monitor
As Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) finished another round of nuclear talks in Vienna to reach a permanent deal by the Nov. 24 deadline, moderate political elites in Tehran have kept their fingers crossed that the Hassan Rouhani administration’s pledge will resolve the country’s nuclear dossier quickly.
Officials from both sides have repeatedly declared in recent weeks that several important issues need to be addressed if a permanent deal is to be achieved. Last week, Abbas Araqchi, deputy Iranian foreign minister and a top nuclear negotiator, raised the possibility that talks could be extended, saying, "Time passes quickly, we are not still disappointed but if we cannot get a good enough result from this round of talks, it is obvious that we will not reach an agreement by November 24."
Araqchi’s comments came after discussions on the issue in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, which ended on Sept. 26, with large gaps existing between the two sides. He disappointedly said Iran "expected some progress" during those discussions.
The United States is demanding that Iran significantly reduce its current enrichment capacity and maintain such restrictions for up to 20 years, while Tehran insists on building up much larger industrial-scale capacity within a few years.
Despite their insistence on their demands, Iranians desperately want to avoid the return of sanctions, which has caused high inflation and recession in the past few years. Rouhani said in his latest televised interview Oct. 13 that Iran “will never regress” to last year’s situation, referring to the deadlock in nuclear negotiations with the West.
So, even if a permanent agreement seems to be elusive, Iranian negotiators are unlikely to let talks collapse any time soon due to unpredictable consequences. A breakdown of talks would at least result in continuation of sanctions against Iran, pushing the country’s economy back into stagflation. That would also raise risks of political instability, a situation that even ultraconservative leaders try to avoid.
Another temporary deal, however, could consequently be a solution, as it will continue to keep the diplomacy door open. In such a case, Iran would enjoy more easing of sanctions that would facilitate the recovery pace in the country. But to reach another temporary deal, Iran needs to compromise further on its nuclear program.
The ongoing round of talks in Vienna centers on the two biggest areas of contention: Iran's enrichment of uranium and the lifting of US, European and UN sanctions imposed on Iran in recent years.
Under an agreement reached in November 2013 with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran has already responded to 16 of the 18 issues the agency identified as relevant to its nuclear activities. But as IAEA’s Deputy Director General Tero Varjoranta put it, the “technical meetings" on Oct. 19-20 in Vienna — held before the main talks on Oct. 16 between Iran and the P5+1 — did not resolve outstanding concerns of whether Tehran’s nuclear activities had military dimensions.
A US official has already suggested that the negotiators could find “possible solutions” to Iran's Arak reactor, which the West fears could yield plutonium for bombs, according to Reuters.
Iran can agree by late November to make changes in its program for the 40-megawatt reactor, which Iran says is intended to produce isotopes for cancer and other medical treatments.
The United States and Israel argue that Iran could suddenly revert to the original design and build a reprocessing facility to extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel. In April, Princeton University experts said Arak's annual plutonium production could be lowered to less than 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) if Iran changed the way Arak was fueled and lowered its power capacity. US negotiations are now pressing Iran to agree to change the Arak reactor core to one sized for low-enriched uranium fuel.
Regarding the number of installed uranium enrichment centrifuges, which is currently around 19,000, Iran would act more cautiously as it is a matter of national honor. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani has recently said that Washington should stop focusing on the number of centrifuges, which is a "trivial matter."
The West wants Iran to cut its centrifuge capacity to a few thousand so that it would take Tehran a long time to purify enough uranium for an atomic weapon, a demand Tehran has so far rejected, though it might consider minor changes in its centrifuge related activities.
In return, the West could agree to extend the negotiation deadline for another six to 12 months. It would then agree to release another portion of Iran’s frozen assets in international banks, which could not exceed $700 million per month. The partial release of the blocked assets — estimated to be around $100 billion in total — combined with easing of sanctions would allow the Iranian economy to maintain a slow pace of growth as it has experienced since March 2014 after eight consecutive quarters of negative growth.
However, US and European negotiators — Britain, France and Germany — are unlikely to agree with the lifting of UN Security Council’s sanctions. They will keep this key leverage until the end of negotiations when a permanent deal is reached.
Another interim agreement would let Rouhani pass a difficult time, but it would not be the president’s best choice, for certain, as under a “comprehensive” deal only, his moderate administration can get rid of the crippling sanctions and UN resolutions at the same time, a scenario that would give the popular president an upper hand against powerful anti-Reformist groups at home.
