A deal between the US and Iran is “scheduled to get signed” on Sunday, President Donald Trump has said – though Tehran has expressed scepticism about the timing.
Prior to Trump’s comments on Saturday afternoon, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said: “We will have to wait and see about the exact date of the signing of the memorandum of understanding, although it will not be tomorrow.”
Either way, the agreement could reopen the Strait of Hormuz in return for the US lifting its blockade on Iranian shipping.
While officials say the deal will also lead to the destruction and removal of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles – a key component of nuclear weapons – the technical details are still being worked out.
If and when an agreement is signed, it will likely be judged against the 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama administration and other nations, which was abandoned by Trump during his first term.
Trump’s ‘nuclear dust’ plans
Uranium is a naturally occurring radioactive element. It contains special properties that can be used to fuel nuclear power plants, but also help develop nuclear weapons.
However, it needs to be “enriched” first, a process that involves increasing the concentration of uranium-235 isotope – the essential component of nuclear fuel.
Since the war started on 28 February, Trump has repeatedly said Iran needs to surrender its stockpiles.
“They’re going to give us the nuclear dust”, he said on 29 March.
He reiterated this in an interview with NBC on 7 June, saying: “If we make a deal now we’re friendly, we’ll all go together. It’ll be our equipment. We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s onsite or whether we take it offsite.”
Iran, however, has previously said “zero enrichment” is a red line and a violation of its rights.
The fate of Iran’s uranium stockpile was central to the 2015 nuclear agreement – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – which imposed strict limits on Iran’s enrichment activities.
“The number one issue that was running at that time was whether Iran was going to go for building a nuclear weapon”, former JCPOA lead negotiator Baroness Ashton told BBC Verify.
When it was introduced, the Obama administration declared that the JCPOA would prevent Iran from building a secret nuclear programme and that Tehran had agreed to “extraordinary and robust monitoring, verification, and inspection”.
In exchange, the US agreed to lift sanctions against Iran, including on oil, trade and banking.
Under the deal, Iran could only keep a small amount of monitored, low-enriched uranium.
It had to reduce its stockpile by 98% (to 300kg; 660lbs), could enrich only up to 3.67% purity and limits were placed on its centrifuges – the machines used to enrich uranium.
Low-enriched uranium – typically 3-5% purity – is enough to produce reactor fuel required for a nuclear power station, but weapons-grade uranium needs to be at least 90% enriched.
The breakdown of the 2015 deal
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, reported that Iran was complying with the agreement until the US withdrew from it in 2018.
“The deal was remarkably successful,” argues Kelsey Davenport from the Arms Control Association (ACA), a national nonpartisan membership organisation.
“Any move to nuclear weapons, any deviation from the JCPOA’s terms would have been detected,” Davenport told BBC Verify, noting that both the IAEA and US intelligence repeatedly assessed Iran was complying.
In an April 2018 report, the US Department of State said Iran was “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the JCPOA”.
However, when President Trump announced the US withdrawal from the agreement in May 2018, he called it a “horrible, one-side deal that should never, ever have been made”.
He said it failed to address Iran’s ballistic missile programme, that the inspection requirements lacked mechanisms “to prevent, detect, and punish cheating” and that Israeli intelligence showed Tehran’s “history of pursuing nuclear weapons”.
Jacob Olidort, chief research officer at the America First Policy Institute, says Trump was right.
“All of these issues were completely pushed to the sidelines, completely deprioritised and not included in the arrangement”, he told BBC Verify.
Baroness Ashton, who negotiated the deal on behalf of the UN Security Council, rejects this.
“There was always a criticism that we should have covered all kind of things. But the critical question was, ‘Could we prevent any fear that Iran was going to build a nuclear weapon?’ And we did that.”
“There was plenty of opportunity afterwards to talk about other issues, ballistic missiles, drones etc. And indeed the Trump administration in its first term could have done that,” she adds.
“If President Trump felt that the deal was inadequate, then the answer was to build on it, not to rip it up.”
Olidort says the time-limited nature of the deal meant Iran could have eventually pursued a nuclear weapon.
“It was always made explicit in the deal that the terms of the deal would expire… The sunset clauses in effect nullify their effectiveness,” he argues.
Davenport says that because some limits on the uranium enrichment level and stockpile size were only set for 15 years, “by January 2031, Iran could theoretically expand its enrichment programme”.
But many other features were permanent, including IAEA safeguards, she said, adding: “There was still a whole host of other provisions that would have provided assurance that any move in that direction [towards a nuclear weapon] would have been quickly detected”.
Lifting sanctions
Money has been a recurring theme of Trump’s criticism, taking aim at former President Barack Obama multiple times.
“Obama signed that stupid deal where he paid them billions, and billions of dollars. He thought he could bribe them,” he told NBC on 7 June.
Under the JCPOA, Iran gained access to billions of dollars in previously frozen assets and benefited from the lifting of international sanctions.
Baroness Ashton, however, says sanction relief was a necessary requirement to secure the agreement.BBC
