The Iranian nuclear issue is back in the news. The negotiators of the P5 + 1 group (the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany) met in Geneva at the end of November with Iranian diplomats to assess whether it was still possible to reactivate the 2015 nuclear agreement. , but the hope of reaching an agreement on this subject appears slim. Especially considering the fact that the nuclear bomb is now within reach for the Iranians.
Let us recall the facts. After more than a decade of tight negotiations, the six had obtained from Tehran an end to its uranium enrichment program and a partial dismantling of some of its facilities. The agreement was accompanied by a very comprehensive set of verification measures that ensured its transparency. In return, the six pledged to gradually lift the economic sanctions that severely limited Iran’s trade and financial capabilities.
An essential detail, the constraints imposed by the 2015 agreement were to be lifted by 2030. Europeans, in particular, were convinced that by then it would be possible to ensure the complete demilitarization of Iran’s nuclear program and the normalization of relations. with Tehran.
The bet would have been likely to be held without the untimely intervention of President Donald Trump who, in 2018, decided to tear up the agreement and reimpose all of the economic sanctions against Iran.
As a retaliatory measure, the Iranian authorities have chosen to gradually relaunch their enrichment program and Parliament voted in 2020 a law announcing the resumption of production of enriched uranium and the relaunch of the project to build a nuclear power plant intended for to the production of plutonium.
The result: if they decided, the Iranians could build a nuclear bomb in a matter of weeks.
We can therefore seriously wonder whether a return to the 2015 agreement is still relevant. This would have a lifespan of less than 10 years and it would probably not be able to erase the significant progress that Iranian scientists have made on the road to nuclear weapons over the past two years. Moreover, the election to the presidency in August 2021 of an ultraconservative cleric, Ebrahim Raïssi, does not bode well for Iran’s return to the international community. Like other countries, Iran seems to be betting that American power is declining and that Washington will not risk a direct military confrontation. The stiffening of Iranian negotiators in recent weeks therefore seems to indicate that they have little will to save the 2015 agreement.
A long-standing decision
It is also increasingly clear that the Iranian decision to develop a military nuclear capability was taken a long time ago, and that the Ayatollah government has not deviated from this decision from the outset.
The most worrying information on this subject dates back to 2019. However, it has long been overlooked. In January 2018, the Israeli secret service managed to get their hands on the Iranian nuclear project’s secret archives from a hangar on the outskirts of Tehran. And it was only a few months ago that Western experts were able to dive into it and present their conclusions. These are alarming.
Contrary to what the Iranian authorities have claimed since 2002, the decision to launch a nuclear weapons development program was taken in 1984, at the highest level of the State, by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, today. still supreme leader of the Revolution.
In his own words, and contrary to his statements describing nuclear weapons as not in accordance with the teachings of the Quran, ” [u]A nuclear arsenal would serve as a deterrent force in the hands of God’s soldiers ”. According to the documents, it was at the end of the 1990s that Iran formally decided to launch an accelerated program, intended to build a nuclear arsenal of at least five bombs. This is the Amad plan. The available data thus prove that Iranian experts already master the techniques of manufacturing a nuclear warhead.
What to conclude? Considering that a military nuclear program rests on three pillars – the capacity to produce fissile material, the expertise necessary to manufacture a bomb and the possession of launch vehicles, namely long-range missiles -, the Iran undoubtedly masters these three capacities. In fact, Iran can be considered capable of producing nuclear weapons “on demand” as soon as the political authorities decide. The only question is when will this take place.
The 2015 agreement is simply no longer relevant and, should Iran formalize its status as a nuclear power, it will be necessary to prepare for the possibility of an acceleration of proliferation in the Middle East, a phenomenon whose seriousness cannot be minimized. Saudi Arabia has already announced that if Iran equips itself with a nuclear arsenal, Riyadh will follow suit.
The great unknown is Israel. For the Jewish state, a hostile neighbor with nuclear weapons poses a deadly threat. Would the Israeli authorities go so far as to take radical military measures to stop Iran’s nuclear program at the present stage? And what could be the repercussions of such an initiative on the international level? We hardly dare to raise the question.
Closer than you think
Iran appears to have reached the threshold of nuclearization, jeopardizing not only the strategic stability of the Middle East, but also the standard of non-proliferation to which the vast majority of the international community subscribes. The subject concerns us all, and one may wonder why Canada, which has a long tradition in the promotion of disarmament and non-proliferation, does not make its voice heard on this subject.