Iran is weighing three options for action in case US President Donald Trump opts out of the 2015 nuclear deal, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told the New Yorker in an interview published on Sunday.
In the first, Tehran could withdraw from the deal, terminate compliance, and resume—even increase—its uranium enrichment, which it agreed to curb under the troubled agreement, Zarif said.
“America never should have feared Iran producing a nuclear bomb,” he said. “But we will pursue vigorously our nuclear enrichment.”
Iran once had the capacity to enrich uranium at 20%, but the deal limited Iran to roughly 3.7% enrichment.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in the toughest inspections ever imposed on any country, has repeatedly certified Iran’s compliance.
Iran’s second option exploits a dispute mechanism in the deal, which allows any party to file a formal complaint with a commission established to adjudicate violations.
Iran has filed eleven complaints—to Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, who heads the commission—citing US violations on three different counts, Zarif said.
The process allows forty-five days for resolution. “The objective of the process is to bring the United States into compliance,” Zarif said.
Britain, France, and Germany, the three European powers party to the deal, have already been trying to achieve that objective, as a May 12 deadline for Trump to issue new waivers on anti-Iran sanctions draws near.
Trump Threat
Trump has threatened to scrap the historic agreement by refusing to renew the waivers, unless his concerns are addressed.
The deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, rolled back Tehran’s nuclear program in return for removing the international sanctions.
Since January, the European signatories have brokered quiet negotiations through the US State Department to address Trump’s objections in order to save the accord.
Those objections involve concerns about the scope of inspections, future tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and so-called sunset clauses, which would eventually allow Iran to resume sensitive activities.
The European effort has reached its final stages, with agreement on most issues except sunset clauses.
But Zarif said any compromise that adds new conditions or interpretations was a non-starter. “We don’t condone it, and we don’t believe it’s useful or fruitful or conducive to a better implementation of the [deal].” Zarif said. “The only scenario that we can deal with is for the Europeans to talk to the Trump administration to start, once and for all, complying with the deal.”
Iran’s third option is the most drastic: the country could decide to walk away from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, the landmark agreement now signed by a hundred and ninety-one nations.
The treaty, enacted in 1970, seeks to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and foster the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The crisis surrounding Iran’s program began in 2003, when the International Atomic Energy Agency claimed that Tehran failed to meet its obligations under the NPT, specifically in declaring its uranium-enrichment program.
Deep Distrust
In Tehran, debate is still intense about which option Iran should choose. “Iran is not a monolith,” Zarif said. But he noted that the public’s mood had shifted over the past year. Distrust is deeper.
Asked whether there was a prospect, if the deal dies, that Iran would negotiate again with the United States, Zarif said, “Diplomacy never dies, but it doesn’t mean that there is only one avenue for diplomacy, and that is the United States.”
Whatever Iran’s final decision, he said, it “won’t be very pleasant to the United States. That I can say. That’s a consensus.”
Elsewhere in a separate talk with al-Monitor, Zarif said the Trump administration’s hostile policies aimed at denying Iran economic benefits from the deal “would give us the necessary justification to make a decision based on our own national interest whether to stay or not. If we decide to leave, it would be fully justified by the JCPOA itself in the view of the international community.”
The top diplomat noted that resuming high-level nuclear enrichment is the “most serious” option Iran is considering.
“At the same time, because of what we have been able to do within the JCPOA on research and development, we can resume the nuclear program in a much more advanced way, still for peaceful purposes, but in a much more advanced way. So that’s one of the options that is open to Iran and probably the most serious one.”
