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US withdrawal from nuclear deal: 'Iran is now a 'threshold state'"

U.S. President Donald Trump showing the document related to the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, May 8, 2018. AP - Evan Vucci

Text by: Guilhem Delteil Follow

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On May 8, 2018, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, signed in Vienna in 2015. For the US president at the time, this agreement was "disastrous", and by disengaging, Washington opted for a more frontal strategy to try to prevent Iran from advancing its nuclear program. Five years later, what conclusions can be drawn from this withdrawal?

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Wendy Yasmine Ramadan is International Development Delegate at the Military School's Strategic Research Institute (Irsem) and Associate Researcher at the Centre for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central Asian Studies (CETOBaC).

RFI: As justified by Donald Trump, the purpose of this withdrawal was to exert more pressure on Iran to prevent it from advancing towards the nuclear bomb. Did it produce the desired effects?

Wendy Yasmine Ramadan: If it was a question of putting pressure on the regime, yes. Since 2017, there have been incessant, unprecedented protest movements. They are primarily due to reasons of corruption of the regime and mismanagement of the country. And since September 16, the Iranian authorities have been challenged by a huge mobilization movement for a poorly worn veil and the death of Mahsa Amini.

But if it was to put pressure on Iran to be more constrained in its nuclear activities and ballistic program, it was a complete failure. Today, the IAEA – the International Atomic Energy Agency – is unable to guarantee the peaceful programme of Iran's nuclear activities. But above all, Iran has considerably freed itself from the constraints that were provided for in the agreement. Today, Iran enriches its uranium to more than 60% while in the agreement, the threshold was set at 3.67%. And according to IAEA criteria, Iran has amassed enough uranium to produce a bomb. This does not mean that the authorities will do so, but in any case, we are very far from the objectives of strengthening the non-proliferation regime.

To the point that Iran is considered today to be among the "threshold nations"?

It is not a term that is part of the IAEA glossary, but it is indeed picked up by the expert media on the subject. The term "threshold State" describes States, such as Japan, that have the capacity to make a bomb but do not necessarily have the political will to do so.

To give you an idea, you need 90% enriched uranium to make a bomb. Iran does not enrich – at least not officially – its uranium to 90%, but to 60%. And it would take 27 kilos of 90% enriched uranium to make a bomb, which corresponds to about 42 kilos of 60% enriched uranium. However, according to the latest IAEA reports, Iran has largely these quantities of uranium at 60%. So yes, we could consider Iran today a "threshold state".

When he arrived at the White House, Joe Biden had restarted negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program. This was one of the top priorities of his foreign policy. However, these negotiations have been at a standstill for eight months. Is there still a future for negotiations on this Iranian nuclear program?

Indeed, negotiations stopped in the summer of 2022. However, what is interesting is the very fact that negotiations took place after the election of Ebrahim Raisi as Iranian president in August 2021. Initially, a part of the right – the political camp of Ebrahim Raisi – was nevertheless very opposed to the holding of these negotiations. And she was very critical of the nuclear diplomacy of Hassan Rouhani, the former president who was perceived as a moderate, at least by the Western media. The multilateral agreement of Vienna in July 2015 was strongly criticized by a part of the Iranian right.

Today, these people are the first to defend negotiations. So on the internal political scene, it is interesting to note that today, we have a large part of the political spectrum that would be more in favor of holding these negotiations.

There is, however, a big caveat: the Iranian parliament is the most far-right parliament in the country's political history. It is dominated by the Front for Stability, which is against negotiations. In addition, he has regained power over negotiations by passing a law that gives him control, at least over the executive, over the holding of negotiations. This was not the case at all before. So, we would have to wait for the next parliamentary elections in Iran, which will take place in February 2024, that we can perhaps see an executive that will be able to conduct these negotiations.

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• Iran
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