The Obama administration has denied claims by a Washington thinktank that Iran has secretly been granted exemptions to a multilateral nuclear agreement signed last July in Vienna.
| But nobody believes them. |
A report by the Institute for Science and International Security alleged that a joint commission set up to implement the Vienna deal had allowed Iran to keep more than the agreed maximum of 300 kg of low enriched uranium (LEU) by excluding waste material in Iran’s nuclear facilities. If enriched further, LEU could be used in a nuclear warhead.
The institute’s director and co-author of the report, David Albright, said that this and other exemptions were granted by the commission in secret.
“One of the biggest problems is we are being denied information in these cases,” Albright said. “If the joint commission has so many powers to change this deal, shouldn’t we know what they’re doing?”
The state department denied that the 300 kg LEU limit set down in the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action (JCPOA), had been breached.
“There’s been no loosening of the commitments and Iran has not and will not under the JCPOA be allowed to exceed the limits that are spelled out in the JCPOA,” spokesman John Kirby said. He added the only violation of the terms of the deal had been a temporary surplus in Iran’s export of heavy water (which can be used in nuclear reactors to produce plutonium), but that had been corrected. Kirby also said the secrecy of the work of the joint commission, which represents all parties to the deal, was stipulated in last year’s deal, signed by six world powers (the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China), the EU and Iran.
“This is in compliance with the JCPOA which says the commission’s work should be confidential unless all parties agree otherwise,” Kirby said.
| So how about an audit and release of information? Nobody trusts you. |
As well as noting the heavy-water surplus, Albright’s report said that “lab contaminant” containing 20% enriched uranium was being overlooked by the commission, and that Iran had been allowed to retain 19 “hot cells” larger than the specifications laid down in the JCPOA. Hot cells are special containers that allow technicians to handle radioactive matter with special gloves while being shielded. They can be used to separate plutonium from spent fuel on a small scale.
Kirby noted that the joint commission was given the authority to approve larger hot cells than envisaged in the agreement.
“We aren’t saying anything has been violated here,” Albright said. “But the number of these hot cells is surprising. We don’t know how many are being monitored by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], and again, why is this secret?”
James Walsh, an international security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that it was the norm for arms control agreements to have secret sections.
“Secret doesn’t mean evil. It’s just standard operating procedure, and as this report says itself, Obama notified Congress. Congress has known this from the beginning,” Walsh said. On the question of the “hot cells”, Walsh added: “The report admits these are being used for producing medical isotopes. There is no plutonium reactor in Iran. A reactor is years away, so allowing the existing hot cells is not a proliferation danger.”
James Acton, the co-director of the nuclear policy programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: “The more complicated and comprehensive your arms control agreement, the more questions it throws up in implementation.
“Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, the US had to destroy its stockpile by 2012, but it wasn’t possible to meet that deadline. People didn’t see that as an attempt to undermine the convention, and a pragmatic solution was found,” Acton said. “There is the same principle at work here.”
| Did he say that at the time? |
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