This week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) newest report on Iran’s nuclear program was leaked, showing a continued rise in Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.
Nuclear Issue
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2020-11-13
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2020-11-12
This report assesses information in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA’s) quarterly report for November 11, 2020, Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015), focusing on Iran’s compliance with the limits in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
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2020-11-09
Based on information in the Nuclear Archive, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited an Iranian site in the late summer, concerned that the site had possessed undeclared nuclear material, in particular uranium, a violation of Iran’s safeguards agreement. The site was involved in pilot-scale uranium conversion under the Amad Plan in the early 2000s and was dismantled in 2004. In the archive, the site is called the “Tehran site,” despite being located near the village of Mobarakiyeh, about 75 kilometers southeast of Tehran. After resisting for months, Iran finally allowed the IAEA visit, and the inspectors took environmental samples. The inspectors are expected to report on their initial findings soon. This report provides background information on this pilot uranium conversion site.
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2020-11-08
The notion that Iran’s commitment to engagement (and the nuclear deal) is structural was underscored in a November 3 speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Addressing the possible impact of U.S. elections on U.S.-Iran relations, Khamenei stated, “We follow a sensible, calculated policy which cannot be affected by changes of personnel.” Many took the statement to be Khamenei’s way of pouring cold water on the prospect of a Biden victory revitalizing the JCPOA. But again, in the Iranian assessment, the deal is not yet dead. The calculated policy to which Khamenei is referring is the policy of keeping the nuclear deal alive in accordance with Iran’s strategic interests.
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2020-10-24
Most Western analysts expect Iran to start a new round of negotiations with the US in the new year regardless of who wins the election. This prediction has some merit, as Iran’s economy has been in dire straits since Trump’s controversial 2018 decision to withdraw the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal) and impose a new round of sanctions on the country. This severely damaged the Iranian economy, which was already suffering from years of mismanagement, poor governance and corruption. The COVID-19 pandemic also added to Iran’s economic woes, and led to stagflation – a combination of rising inflation and slowing growth. The Islamic Parliament Research Center of Iran predicted that if the state fails to change the direction of the economy swiftly, 57 million Iranian citizens, or some 70 percent of the population, will soon be pushed below the poverty line.
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2020-10-20
While Khamenei’s supporters consider the JCPOA a failure of President Hassan Rouhani and his government, everyone knows that Iran would not have signed the agreement without the Leader’s blessing. Khamenei’s face-saving “heroic flexibility” enabled Mr. Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to sign the JCPOA in 2015 and make several crucial concessions to the West, including curbing Iran’s nuclear program significantly. However, senior Iranian officials have always maintained that signing the JCPOA was part of the state’s overall policy and not a single person’s decision. […] The current situation is similar to that of 2015, except that Trump and his administration have set more stringent conditions for holding talks with Iran. Tehran had a much easier time complying with Obama’s list of demands. The JCPOA allowed Iran to restart its nuclear program after a certain period. Even with a Trump defeat, the future of the nuclear deal is uncertain.
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2020-10-18
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran issued a statement on the termination of the UN arms embargo on Tehran according to the UNSC Resolution 2231 that endorses the 2015 nuclear deal.
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2020-10-03
The foreign minister noted that the world’s lone perpetrator of a nuclear attack “extends blind support to the sole possessor of nuclear arsenal in our region.” He referred to Israel as an outlaw regime that has openly threatened others with nuclear annihilation, while crying wolf about proliferation. “We also call on the General Assembly to declare as a binding norm of international law that a nuclear war cannot be won—and must never be fought,” he stated, adding that this should be followed by a long-overdue, concrete program for time-bound nuclear disarmament and provision of security assurances to non-nuclear-weapon states in the interim. The chief Iranian diplomat concluded his remarks by saying that “last year, $72.9 billion was spent on nuclear weapons—half of it by the U.S. alone. This is higher than the GDP of most countries. Just imagine if the billions wasted on instruments of global annihilation were allocated to help fund the fight against COVID-19.” Enough is enough, he added. […] Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has refused to either confirm or deny the possession of nuclear weapons in its arsenal. The regime is believed to possess 200 nuclear warheads, making it the only country in West Asia that has nuclear weapons. This is while Iran has signed the NPT and its nuclear program is inspected regularly by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA has in numerous occasions certified the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program. IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi has said that the UN nuclear watchdog carried out more than 400 inspections in Iran last year.
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2020-09-18
Statement from France, Germany and the UK delivered to the IAEA Board of Governors at the September 2020 meeting.
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2020-09-14
In the spring of 2017, an Iranian materials scientist named Sirous Asgari received a call from the United States consulate in Dubai. Two years earlier, he and his wife, Fatemeh, had applied for visas to visit America, where their children lived. The consulate informed him that their requests had finally been approved. The timing was strange: President Donald Trump had just issued an executive order banning Iranians from entering the U.S. on the very kind of visa that Asgari and his wife were granted. Maybe applications filed before the visa ban had been grandfathered through, or some career State Department official wanted to give families like his a last chance to reunite.