The Iranian Nuclear Programme: Practical Parameters for a Credible Long-Term Agreement, comes just two weeks before the interim agreement with Iran is set to expire. This timely publication provides a comprehensive yet easily-accessible examination of the underlying technical requirements for a deal between Iran and the P5+1 states (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and outlines the verification regime necessary to assure the international community that Iran’s nuclear programme is for civilian purposes along internationally-agreed parameters.
The report warns that any credible and durable deal must include intensified, sustained verification – undertaken by the IAEA – and a suitable degree of irreversibility. Furthermore, In constructing the parameters under which Iran retains a civilian nuclear programme, the basis to operate on must also be to recognise that we do not have a full picture of the programme. The IAEA has not been able to establish a full inventory of all types of centrifuges manufactured in Iran, and their current location. Technical parameters will have to be crafted to keep ambiguities to a minimum. Parameters therefore include:
- Iran must provide an expanded declaration on all aspects of its past and current nuclear programme.
- Iran must allow the IAEA to address the whole picture of the military dimension concerns and decommission, dismantle or convert to non-nuclear or peaceful use in a verifiable and irreversible manner nuclear related equipment, materials, facilities and sites that contradict the provisions of the safeguards agreement or the spirit of Article III of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
- Iran must ratify and implement the Additional Protocol expeditiously as well as implement fully the verification and clarification requirements of the relevant resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors and the UN Security Council. It must meet fully its obligations underthe IAEA Statutes, Iran’s Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA, including the modified Code 3 of the Subsidiary Agreements.
- Iran must provide information on the production source material, which has not yet reached the composition and purity suitable for nuclear fuel fabrication or for being isotopically enriched, including imports of such material. Iran will provide information on imports and domestic production of single and dual-use items listed in the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
- Iran must provide the IAEA with unconditional and unrestricted access to any and all areas, facilities, equipment, records, people, materials including source materials, which are deemed necessary by the IAEA to fulfill its requirements under the safeguards agreement, and to verify Iran’s declarations made under the items above