Amid an ongoing row between Washington and Tehran over whether international monitors can verify Iranian compliance with its nuclear nonproliferation commitments, former officials have told RFE/RL that the scale, scope, and degree of access are crucial to the success of inspections.
Details on those have yet to be determined, though Raffael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the UN body “will be working on the modalities — dates, procedures, places — very soon.”
That doesn’t mean, according to experts, that the organization hasn’t already drawn up a wish list for any eventual inspections.
“They almost certainly have a plan for when they go back in, what the priorities are, where they would want to go first, second, third,” Laura Rockwood, a former IAEA negotiator on Iran, told RFE/RL.
“The key thing is to find out where in particular the enriched uranium is…. I’d be willing to bet you that they have in place a plan for the day they need to go back in,” added Rockwood, who took part in high-level negotiations on Iran during a 28-year career at the IAEA before retiring in 2013.
Downblending Uranium
While US President Donald Trump has said that Iran has agreed to the highest level of nuclear inspections and Iran says it has no plans to allow the inspections, point No. 8 of the US-Iranian memorandum of understanding (MOU) states the two sides have agreed on a “minimum methodology” that Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium (HEU) will be “downblended on site under the supervision of the IAEA.”
But the details of this could also prove contentious.
“If IAEA inspectors were able to measure and characterize both the high and low enriched material before the downblending, then simple arithmetic gives a good sense of what the product is. They’d then want to measure to confirm, and seal that product for future accountability,” Matthew Sharp, who served as director for Iran nuclear issues on the US National Security Council (NSC) from 2021-2022, told RFE/RL.
“If, on the other hand, Iran does the downblending itself and then provides the product to inspectors, it would be much more difficult to know how much HEU Iran started with, which could create uncertainties as to whether all of the 60 percent or other enriched material had been downblended or if some remained out of our awareness,” said Sharp, now a senior nuclear fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies.
Right now, the location of Iran’s roughly 450 kilograms of HEU is unclear. After the US and Israeli air strikes, it could be buried under rubble in a bunker beneath a mountain, or the Iranian authorities may have moved some or all of it elsewhere to hide it.
But if it can be successfully located and downblended, the next step is stopping Iran from re-enriching it again at a later date.
Monitoring Enrichment
The MOU says the two parties agreed “to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs, based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final deal.”
Experts told RFE/RL that verifying this must include a role for the IAEA.
“Any suspension on uranium enrichment is relatively meaningless if it cannot be verified and if the IAEA does not have the access to ensure that there are no covert nuclear activities related to enrichment going on elsewhere in the country,” said Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association.
“The level of access, the provision of information to the International Atomic Energy Agency, how quickly Iran has to comply with IAEA requests for access — all of that is going to be crucial,” she told RFE/RL.
“Once the enrichment level is low, below 5 percent, it’s much safer to ship out that material. It could be stored under an international fuel bank in Kazakhstan,” Davenport added.
The idea of shipping the downblended uranium out of Iran is something US officials appear keen on. At a recent background call with reporters, one official said dilution within Iran was “the floor” but that “we will push for more than that.”
A senior US official said Washington would rely heavily on the UN nuclear watchdog and US technical teams for verification. “We’re not in the trusting business,” the official said.
The IAEA has previously verified Iran’s compliance with its commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it ratified in 1970, and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Lessons From The Past
Experts say many lessons have been learned from these experiences. They point to the importance of the IAEA’s Model Additional Protocol, which provides additional tools for verification.
Rockwood, now a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, was the principal author of the protocol.
“Under the additional protocol, instead of just routinely being limited to nuclear material, nuclear facilities, we have access to information and locations concerning the entire nuclear fuel cycle including the production of centrifuges,” she said. “So, if you know roughly how many centrifuges they are capable of making, you want to know where they are, and we can ask for that kind of access with an additional protocol.”
Iran signed the additional protocol in 2003 but has not sent an official letter to the IAEA that would bring it into force.
Iran has provisionally implemented its provisions, between 2003-2006 and for a period under the JCPOA. However, noted Rockwood, “there were lots of indications of noncompliance by Iran” during this time.
This, she said, could be expected to continue — with added complications.
Iran stopped granting the IAEA access to sites hit by US and Israeli strikes on its nuclear facilities in June last year. This has disrupted what Rockwood calls the “continuity of knowledge.” In other words, the IAEA has lost track of what Iran has and where it is. Also, the extent of damage is unclear, potentially complicating access, and there may also be unexploded ordinance onsite.
“There will be uncertainties, and there may be more uncertainties than there were before. In fact. I would expect that to be the case. Yeah, really, a heavy slog,” Rockwood said.
