Iran began dismantling the U.N. monitoring system of its nuclear program this week, partly blinding nuclear inspectors in apparent retaliation …
Iran began dismantling the U.N. monitoring system of its nuclear program this week, partly blinding nuclear inspectors in apparent retaliation over Western criticism and at a moment when, analysts say, Iran is again on the verge of possessing enough fuel for a bomb.
The escalation of tensions was worrisome, experts said, particularly after a warning on Wednesday by the U.N. nuclear agency that Iran was only weeks away from producing enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. Some analysts have said Iran has already reached that milestone, though it would take a year or more to fashion a weapon.
Iran’s deactivation and removal of surveillance cameras was not the “final death knell” on reaching a deal, said Trita Parsi, an analyst and former president of the National Iranian American Council.
“But we’re extremely close,” he said. “The negotiations have been in a state of coma for the last few months, with no real progress and any movement.”
On Wednesday, Iranian state media announced that the government had shut off two cameras monitoring “an online enrichment monitor” at an unidentified site, hours before the United States, Britain, Germany and France submitted a resolution criticizing Iran to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran, the nations said, had failed to explain nuclear material detected at three undeclared sites. Although opposed by Russia and China, the resolution passed on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Iran told the I.A.E.A. it would begin removing 27 surveillance cameras and other monitoring equipment at several sites.
“We are in a very tense situation,” Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the I.A.E.A, told reporters in Vienna on Thursday. He said that the sites included those in Tehran and the cities of Natanz and Isfahan, and that if an agreement were not reached within the next month, the latest update could be “a fatal blow” to the negotiations.
Although some 40 surveillance cameras remain active in Iran under other safeguard agreements, he said, the agency will lose important details within weeks about Iran’s nuclear activities on the ground.
The dismantlement of cameras and sensors at the Natanz site, a major enrichment center, would make it impossible for the I.A.E.A. to know how much uranium Iran is enriching, and how fast. It would also mean losing chain-of-custody information about the produced material, which is the assurance it doesn’t get diverted to a bomb project.
Iran had already been withholding access to data from some surveillance cameras at nuclear sites. It was unclear what would now happen to the data from the sites being cut off, Mr. Grossi said. Inspectors from the U.N. watchdog would be accompanying Iran’s teams as they removed monitoring equipment.
Losing the day-to-day data “is a blow,” said David Albright, a longtime expert on Iran’s nuclear program. He added that Iran was already close to achieving breakout capability — the ability to make a quick leap toward manufacturing a nuclear weapon before being detected. “They’re trying to rock the boat but not capsize it.”
He said that the United States and its allies would “want to have a robust pressure campaign to make sure they don’t build nuclear weapons.”
The I.A.E.A.’s ability to monitor Iran’s nuclear activities is a parallel but vital aspect to the negotiations in Vienna to restore the 2015 deal, which was painstakingly hammered out over years and limited Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the easing of economic sanctions. The monitoring cameras were critical from a Western perspective because they were able to measure radiation and determine the degree of uranium enrichment, Mr. Parsi said.
“These are the eyes and ears,” he said, adding that the instruments were able to send information to the I.A.E.A in real time. “We’ve lost a tremendous amount of insight into what is happening.”
Talks to restore compliance with the deal, which the Trump administration withdrew from in 2018, had been inching toward a revival until early this year.
They have stalled, according to experts, in part over the Trump administration’s designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a branch of the Iranian military, as a foreign terrorist organization — a label that Iran wants revoked.
Lifting that designation would require the Biden administration to expend short-term political capital, Mr. Parsi said. He added that not doing so meant risking costly long-term consequences for the United States related to Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Although President Biden has criticized the decisions of his predecessor on Iran and promised to quickly rejoin the nuclear deal, his administration has become pessimistic about those prospects under Iran’s current president, who took office last year.
“The bottom line is the Biden administration has kept all of the maximum-pressure sanctions that Trump imposed,” Mr. Parsi said. “For how long you are continuing to blame Trump for this continued failure?”
The resolution that criticized Iran fell short on Thursday of a referral to the United Nations Security Council. Had it reached the council, Mr. Parsi said, that could have triggered Tehran to further ramp up its enrichment of uranium.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. An assessment by American intelligence agencies in 2007 concluded that the country once had a nuclear weapons program but halted it in 2003.
Israeli officials have long opposed the 2015 nuclear deal, saying Iran was working toward building weapons, and Israel has repeatedly carried out attacks on the program, according to intelligence officials.
As negotiations were stalling last year, and after an Israeli attack on the plant at Natanz, Tehran said that it had begun enriching uranium to 60 percent at the site. Iran is also enriching uranium at Fordow, a nuclear facility embedded inside a mountain at a base protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
David E. Sanger contributed reporting.