Iran's Nuclear Agreement With The P-5

Background and negotiations of Iran's nuclear program

Describe about the Irans Nuclear Agreement With The P-5.

P5 refers to the five permanent members of UN namely China, Russia, France, United States and United Kingdom. With the joining of Germany, it is known as P5+1. As viewed by Katzman and Kerr (2015)[1], it is a group of six world powers which had joined in 2006 in a diplomatic effort with Iran towards the nuclear program. On July 14^th 2015, Iran Nuclear Deal was made as an international agreement on the nuclear program of Iran. It was under this agreement that Iran agreed to eliminate the available stockpile of medium enriched uranium by 98% and in addition reduce the gas centrifuge for over 13 years. It has been undermined that for the upcoming 15 years, Iran will be enriched with Uranium up to 3.67% (Bowen and Moran 2015)[2]. In addition to this, Iran also agreed on the point that there will not be availability of any heavy-water facilities for the time being (Katzman and Kerr 2015). The Uranium-enrichment activities will be limited to single facility, only by using the first generation centrifuges at least for the next 10 years. Any kind of risks will also be proliferated. The International Atomic Energy Agency was complied with an agreement to monitor and verify all kinds of Iranian nuclear facilities.

Development of Iranian nuclear technology had begun in the 1970s when US had proposed the Peace program to provide assistance to Iran. In this respect, Iran had signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of the Nuclear Weapons to establish itself as a non-nuclear weapon state (Bowen and Moran 2015). In the year 1979, the Iranian Revolution took place that resulted in the disarray of the Iran’s nuclear talent and gave rise to a revolution. It was during this time, Iran got engaged with a costly war with Iraq in the year between 1980 and 1988. In the late 1980s, Iran restarted its nuclear program and by this time got assistance from the countries like Pakistan, China and Russia and started pursuing an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle that developed a uranium mining infrastructure (Katzman and Kerr 2015). This was an evident experimentation of the conversion and enrichment of uranium. It was by this time considered that Iran was no longer using any kind of nuclear cover program for clandestine weapon development. It was thus evident that Iran had always focused on peaceful nuclear work.

Agreements made in the Iran Nuclear Deal

In 2003, with the prospect of being referred to the Security Council of UN, Iran entered into a diplomatic relation with other developed countries like France, Germany and the United Kingdom. However, United States did not involve in this negotiation. With the Tehran Declaration, Iran completely agreed to temporarily suspend the uranium enrichment and conversion of the uranium activities (Bowen and Moran 2015). It was not an easy proposal for the Iranian government but the country felt heavy on demand and light on incentives and sent notification to resume the conversion of Uranium. It was further demanded that Iran should cease the enrichment activities and impose sanctions on Iran that included bans on the transfer of nuclear and missile technology and at the same time freeze on the entities of nuclear weapons to keep the country under pressure (Dupont 2016)[3].

Role of former US President, Barack Obama cannot be declined. In 2009, it was revealed that there is an existence of an underground enrichment facility that was built on another nuclear facility (Katzman and Kerr 2015). It was due to this factor, Iran was considered as the centre of non-proliferation regime and got threatened to take military action from Israel. Further investigation indicated that Iran has a technological as well as industrial capacity that can help the country to produce more nuclear weapons at some point of time. A joint agreement was made to utilize the available nuclear resources (Dupont 2016). This was the Geneva agreement where Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear agreement on the condition that there will be relief from some sanctions. In 2015 the Iran nuclear deal framework was signed and it was accepted that there shall be certain restrictions on the nuclear program at least for the next decade (Bowen and Moran 2015). Negotiation was made towards a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was based on a framework of nuclear deal. With the implementation of this agreement, a long term agreement was established on Iran’s sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities. It was undermined that Iran’s plutonium path to bomb will be eliminated. At least the agreement will be expanded to next 12 months (Dupont 2016). Therefore, a monitoring activity was layered and a safeguard agreement giving access to international inspections for any kind of Iranian facilities concerning military sites to safeguard the required early notification of design or any other nuclear projects by Iran.

Role of Germany in Iran's nuclear program

An important part has to be mentioned here. Germany plays a vital role in the entire Iran’s nuclear program. Germany had the largest share in exporting goods and Iran is the key trading partner (Bowen and Moran 2015). There are a number of German companies that trades with the petrochemical sectors of Iran. These Companies include Linde, Lurgi, Krupp, Volkswagen and others. In fact, the largest share of Iran’s export market is with Germany (Katzman and Kerr 2015). The export with Germany has increased by 8.9%. Therefore, the overall bilateral trade was as high as 2.98 billion Euros (Dupont 2016). However, there has been a shift in the business ties in the short term and long term business in the interest of US and thus, there remains less chances of any kind of political pressure from the US.

The sanction made on the nuclear impact helped to relief its key nuclear restrictions and other non proliferated commitments. In fact, the sanction served as an incentive for Tehran to follow the obligations in the long term. As pointed out by Chari (2014)[4], that US might believe that by rejecting the agreement there still remained the chance of increased pressure to coerce the leaders in Tehran to dismantle the Iran’s nuclear program and get back to better terms. With the necessary European allies and international support for any basic Iran related sanctions that would significantly help to expand the capacity of the country to produce bomb-grade materials. Iran cannot move rapidly towards the manufacturing of nuclear weapons. It was made clear that all extra centrifuge machines will be removed and all other infrastructures like piping, vacuum and others will be taken out (Grove 2015)[5]. In fact, it has been hoped that Iran shall be using these machines to repair the other broken machines and not to produce any other machines. This had reduced the number of machines under at least 500.

More information was revealed regarding the availability of the stockpile of the uranium and other uranium enriched substances. Approximately, 10, 000 kg of the available uranium was brought down to as low as 300 kilograms (Chari 2014). This can be said that Uranium of all kinds was included in this huge amount of findings. It was with the availability of the uranium, Iran would be able to convert the gas into oxides and the gas can be further enriched to produce the gas back. It was decided that any scrap material will be enriched to 3.67% or even as high as 20% to turn the essential element into fuel (Katzman and Kerr 2015). Therefore, there remained more assurance that Iran cannot obtain the necessary materials required for the production of bomb. It has been observed that Iran’s defense minister had successfully tested two domestically manufactured missiles. The defense minister has stated that there are issues that are at the red line for Iran and there are no such issues to be discussed for the future operations.

The impact of the P5+ was greatly observed Israel. It was one of the fundamental impacts that resulted in waging war against both Iraq and Iran (Grove 2015). American boys were sent to kill and get killed. It has to be mentioned that they were successful in their operation in case of the war at Iraq but somehow failed in Iran. Ex President George W. Bush was convinced to bomb against Iraq even when he planted a neoconservative ally around the presidential vision. Israel had some of its best lobbyists in the highest position at the White House (Chari 2014). Therefore, there has been implementation of tough diplomacy and the policy ultimately resulted in imposing severe sanctions to not attack in the country (Katzman and Kerr 2015). The failure that resulted in great losses that Israel had suffered. Israel had the support of both Europe and US. In the joint session of the US Congress, the activities of Israel were prevented from playing major role in the negotiation of P5. An approach was actually made to kill the US part of bargaining and finish the allies with Iran.

It can be easily argued that any nuclear weapon that is originally manufactured at Israel if Iran is allowed to enrich with uranium, the Arab regions including Saudi Arabia will also be able to develop a nuclear weapon of their own and it might result in some kind of unfavorable characters. It has been found that Iran as an anti colonial had been working for decades and hoped for a sanction of Iran against the attack of both Israel and US. An important point has been pointed out that in the long term running battle, the battle of US over the never ending demand of forces remained at ultimate profit level with certain ethics that could ultimately starve the nation. The P5 impacts that are related to manufacturing of nuclear weapon eventually can be reduced to only some kinds of disputes related to nuclear technology. It has been suggested that more meetings and confrontations will be carried on. The State Department officials and other advisors will be engaged to that kind of agreement that will increase the transparency of the agreement as well as increase the length of the timeline for breaking out any nuclear action capability.