Iranian state television announced Thursday that the core of the Arak heavy-water reactor has been removed in compliance with the July 2015 agreement that curtails the nation’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. The almost completed reactor was configured in such a way that it would produce enough plutonium annually for a couple of nuclear bombs.
If inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirm that Iran has removed the reactor core, it will pave the way for European Union and U.S. sanctions to be removed, and all U.N. sanctions relating to the nuclear program to be nullified. This could happen as early as Saturday. About $30 billion of Iran’s $100 billion or so in frozen assets are expected to be immediately released.
You could see the gleam in some Republicans’ eyes on January 12, after Iran took two U.S. riverine command boats and 10 sailors into custody. If this had turned into an international crisis, they saw it possibly undermining the nuclear agreement, and their saber-rattling was obviously designed to do just that. But quick diplomacy turned it into a non-event, and the detained sailors and their boats were released at dawn on the following day.
House Republicans nonetheless proceeded once again, trying later in the day to wreck the agreement with a bill designed to delay implementation with a series of provisions. When 137 House members failed to show up, however, the vote was scuttled. The GOP leadership may try again on January 26, but by then the agreement will probably be implemented and any vote won’t matter.
The IAEA’s report on the dismantling at Arak and the rest of Iran’s actions in fulfillment of its part in the agreement—formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—is expected Friday. Saeed Kamali Dehghan and David Smith report:
The lifting of sanctions, which will include an end to an EU embargo on the imports of Iranian oil, will have huge ramifications internationally, most notably on the global oil market as Tehran is expected to immediately add almost half a million barrels per day to its crude exports. This will affect plummeting oil prices in a market already struck by oversupply. [...]
Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister and senior nuclear negotiator, said on Wednesday that the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due on Friday to verify that Tehran had fulfilled all its obligations under the nuclear agreement, including unplugging thousands of centrifuges and significantly reducing its stockpile of low-enriched uranium.
Most critics have focused on the importance of curtailing the uranium-based side of Iran’s nuclear program—in particular, its thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Depending on what level such enrichment is taken to, the resulting concentration could be used for fueling electricity-generating reactors or for nuclear weapons. Iranian authorities say their program is meant exclusively for civilian uses.
But 95 percent of the world’s 15,000 or so nuclear warheads are plutonium based. Iran has always said that the 40-megawatt Arak reactor would be solely for civilian research and producing medical isotopes. Critics declared, however, it would be a problem if Iran decided to build a reprocessing plant capable of removing the plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel. That is now a moot point. Under the nuclear agreement, Iran is barred from reprocessing spent fuel for 15 years. Indeed, all spent fuel must be shipped out of the country. And China has agreed to work with Iranian engineers in reconfiguring the Arak reactor to produce far less, lower-quality plutonium in a project expected to take at least five years to complete.
In both the United States and Iran, the nuclear agreement has been pummeled by hard-liners. In the U.S., the argument has been that the Iranians cannot be trusted and will secretly cheat. In Iran, the hard-liners are concentrated in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose powerful leaders view the agreement as an affront to Iran’s sovereignty. They have only toned down their public comments in the matter as a consequence of Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei’s support for Iran’s negotiators, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The consequences of lifting sanctions could be valuable for Hassan Rouhani, the relatively moderate reformist who is serving as the seventh president of Iran since the 1979 revolution. He has two more years in his term as president, but showing that his efforts can produce results may help him boost the moderate faction’s clout in the Iranian parliament when elections take place next month. More importantly, perhaps, is that the success of his diplomatic approach may also help elect him to the Council of Experts, the group that will select the next Supreme Leader.