Lobe Log:

Shireen T. Hunter is a Research Professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Her latest book is Iran's Relations with Arab States: Dynamics of Conflict and Accommodation (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming May 2019).

With the failure of the latest mediation efforts between Iran and the United States by the prime minister of Japan, followed by attacks on two tankers in the Gulf  of Oman, Iran has decided to speed up the process of reducing its commitments under the nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA).

First, Iran practiced what it termed “strategic patience” in the face of the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement and Europe’s inability or unwillingness to shoulder its own commitments under the agreement. Now, Tehran has begun gradually to increase its stockpile of enriched uranium beyond 300 kilograms.

It also announced recently that if Europe does not take immediate action to ease trade at least in essential goods such as food, medicine, and airplane parts, it would stop the process of transforming the Arak heavy water reactor, which was also part of the nuclear deal. Iran has taken pains to explain that all its actions are within the provisions of the nuclear deal and thus totally legal. Perhaps more important, some politicians, including Hojjat al-Islam Mojtaba Zolnour, a representative of the Supreme leader to the Revolutionary Guards Corp, hinted that if restrictions on Iran are not eased Tehran would consider withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

From a purely logical and legal perspective, Iran’s actions are not only understandable but also quite justifiable. In an agreement based on mutual concessions, if one side reneges on its commitments, the other side cannot be expected to continue adhering to its part of the bargain. But the real question here is not whether Iran is justified in reducing and perhaps eventually abandoning its commitments under the JCPOA and potentially even the NPT. The important question is whether these Iranian actions can force America and Europe to fulfill their part of the bargain or  merely lead them to increase pressure on Tehran even further and thus increase the risk of military confrontation.

Incremental Increases in Enriched Uranium Production

Unless Iran has the required knowledge and the determination to produce a nuclear device quickly, something that it denies, then such incremental actions as noted above should not produce a drastic change in American behavior towards Tehran. But it would give further ammunition to Iran’s detractors in the West and also in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East to say that “we told you so” that Iran had not given up its ambitions to acquire a nuclear weapons capacity. Some regional countries and U.S. hawks will clamor for military attacks at least on Iran’s sensitive military sites, which the U.S. military has already prepared to do, on the pretext that they might be hidden centers for nuclear weapons production. Should such attacks take place they are unlikely to remain limited to those sites, because often military operations have a way of acquiring their own independent momentum and going beyond their initial objectives.

Iranian withdrawal from the NPT would intensify such concerns and might prompt an even harsher U.S. reaction. It would certainly increase pressure for some sort of preemptive strike on sensitive Iranian military and industrial centers. Moreover, Iran does not have the knowhow and ability to produce a viable system of nuclear deterrence or even a dirty bomb without lengthy efforts. Despite hyperbolic assertions since 1993 that Iran is only a year or six months away from having a nuclear device, it is unlikely that Tehran has such knowledge and certainly not the fissionable material. Given Iran’s strategic vulnerabilities, notwithstanding the claim that Islamic beliefs have prevented Iran from developing nuclear weapons, if Tehran had the capacity, most probably it would have been  sorely tempted secretly to develop such a device.

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