Review of Iran-P5+1 conclusion

Press TV’s Homa Lezgee reviews the landmark conclusion reached on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries in Vienna.

Following is a rough transcription.

Press TV: This document is supposed to have been now open for public viewing, from what I understand. Can you tell us about that and of course anything you would like to add based on this conclusion that has occurred?

Lezgee: There is a lot of information right now and we are kind of being overwhelmed with the huge amount of information and comments that are being made, because over the last nearly 20 days we rarely had any official comment, we had no statement about what was being discussed, official statement, and now suddenly we have different texts being worked out. We have different diplomats giving out their drafts, etc. We have comments by Ms. Mogherini, John Kerry, Mr. Zarif, so a lot of information just to process there, but I can tell you that yes, the text of the JCPOA will be made public. I myself don’t have it at the moment yet, but I’m sure that we are going to have access to the text as was announced in the press conference and it seems that as Mr. Zarif put it, it is a win-win solution. The JCPOA that has been agreed upon is something that both sides are happy with and they have put the effort to make that happen. They have put the extra time to make that happen. Just before I came for this live interview, I was speaking with Ms. Mogherini and she was telling me that she believes this is a very historic opportunity for the world to enter a new chapter with regards to relations with Iran and to change the nature, she said, of Iran’s relations with the international community.

I think what makes this joint plan of action or conclusion of these nuclear negotiations so historic is the fact that it is going to change things at so many different levels. First of all, we are going to see Iran, basically on a practical level, being recognized by the world as a state that has nuclear industry and will keep that nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, and will also of course take the necessary measures to allay any kinds of concerns about its nuclear program.

The fact that from this stage on things will start to get normalized, I think, is a huge achievement, and when we were talking to Iranian diplomats, specifically when we were talking about good accomplishments for Iran, they talk about the text of the United Nations Security Council resolution. You know the crippling sanctions that have been imposed on Iran, most of them were related to the Security Council, of course unilateral US and EU sanctions being imposed as well, there was an agreement even before this latest round of talks in Vienna, back in Lausanne, for the economic and financial sanctions to be removed but the huge amount of effort and time that the Iranian delegation has put to also work on the other nuclear related sanctions that have been part of the United Nations Security Council sanctions, including the arms embargo and including the sanctions on Iran’s military or missile program, I think deserve a lot of attention. The thing is now we no longer can say that there is an effective arms embargo. What has changed in the text of the new resolution - and we are hopefully going to see that in the next week or ten days - is that we are not going to have a reference to an arms embargo, a sanction on Iran with a reference to some restrictions, we are hearing from Iranian diplomats, on Iran’s arms program, which will be lifted eventually around five years – that is the time that has been speculated from the text that I’m getting from various Iranian diplomatic sources. So that resolution in itself is going to be quite historic. It is also going to basically take Iran out of the situation it has now being subject to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, under Article 41. That has been something that legal experts are telling me they have been working on very hard. It is very hard they say to put the right language and wording in the text of such resolution, and they also tell me it is the first time in the history of the Security Council resolutions that a country that is the subject of this resolution and not just one, several of them, is itself negotiating its way out of the resolutions and the international community, in the meantime, is recognizing, on a practical level, its rights to enrich uranium and also agreeing to lift the pressures that have unjustly, Iran says, been imposed on the country.

Press TV: We are curious as to whether there is anything that you are aware of that points to the direction of a guarantee once the next US administration comes, because obviously the noise is coming out of the Republicans in particular, the harshest one being that a standoff with Iran would have been preferred rather than a conclusion of the nuclear talks.

Lezgee: Of course you would expect the rhetoric coming from those in the US Congress who have been against this all along, also coming from Israel, etc. - those who have been always criticizing this deal. I was actually putting this question to Ms. Mogherini earlier and she was telling me that those who are criticizing this deal, you should ask them, ‘what would happen if we did not have this deal?’ I just want to move on to the very important question that you asked about guarantees. At this stage, once we have this announcement - we have already had it once - basically before it becomes operational, we are going to have the legal processes now. So Congress has 60 days to decide if it wants to go with it or not. In any case, President Obama will veto a No vote. Then we will enter into operational phase.

Now once that operational phase begins, the sides would take their measures and then the IAEA would also get involved and verify those measures. But the important thing, I think, that creates that legal guarantee that the sides have been looking for is again the UN Security Council resolution, because I was talking earlier today with a senior Iranian official and he was telling us that what happens is that the JCPOA will be an attachment to the text of the UN Security Council resolution. So once that is officially adopted at the level of the United Nations, it would also include the attachment, which is the JCPOA. And that senior official didn’t go into the details of what that would imply, but if you look on the face of it at least, it shows that there is legal commitment there. As well as this issue, I also have to tell you that certain mechanisms have been put in place. This has been one of the issues the sides have been discussing as part of the JCPOA and according to that mechanism, if any side brings up an allegation, for instance, one of the P5+1 members says that Iran is not living up to its commitments, that Iran is secretly trying to build a new nuclear site, etc., this is not just going to be the grounds for some kind of further inspection or access or even a claim that the JCPOA should be nullified, etc. What happens is that based on the mechanism that has been worked out and we are going to see in clear detail as soon as we have our hands on the full text, of course, and as soon as it becomes law is that once that claim is made, there will be a board, and there will be, I’m hearing, at least 3 different bodies that will be consisting of, for instance, representatives of the UN, the EU, Iran and the P5+1. This was what I was hearing off the record maybe before this announcement was made by diplomats close to the talks and they were telling me that what they have done is basically they have created a mechanism that is so complex that if a country does make an unfounded claim, then it would have a huge political cost for that country, because at the end, if there were still no agreement based on an even advisory board that would be made of impartial people in it, then it would be referred to the Security Council and that would be the final stage of any kind of claim being made.

So it wouldn’t be as easy maybe as it is at the moment so also that mechanism I think as well as the fact that the JCPOA will be seen as an attachment to the UN Security Council resolution these can be seen as legal guarantees here.

Press TV: We talked a couple of times there about how you spoke to Federica Mogherini. Tell us more about that.

Lezgee: We did have an interview with Ms. Mogherini. I think it was important for her to be able to speak with an English speaking Iranian TV channel to have her views heard. We had a one-on-one interview with her just before I came into this live position. What she was saying is that she believes that, as Mr. Zarif said this is a win-win solution, this is a time when the international community, instead of trying to criticize or reject this conclusion or this plan of action, should help at the implementation of it and also she was saying that it is time that the world opens a new chapter with Iran.

So I am getting a lot of positive energy there from Ms. Mogherini. Let's just take a look at what this joint plan of action means in terms of Iran’s nuclear activities. Now the important thing for the Iranians, they have said all along, is that they don’t want any kind of suspension or halt to their activities, and they say that they do not have that based on this plan. That is why this is what, they say, is a good agreement. They would want to keep their nuclear activities without any suspension and at the same time they would want the sanctions to be removed and they say they have achieved that.

However, there are restrictions. Iran does acknowledge that it has accepted certain restrictions but it is doing this in order to build the confidence and trust to move forward because it believes that diplomacy has a way and diplomacy can resolve these kinds of issues.

I think it is a major achievement because there were powers in work to try and stop this from happening. Iran will continue, based on the draft that I am getting, its uranium enrichment up to 3.67 percent; just more than 5,000 centrifuges it will keep in the Natanz enrichment facility; just over a 1,000 centrifuges will also remain at Fordow, the enrichment facility there. However, there will not be any enrichment there. The 1,000 centrifuges there will be kept, basically as a deterrent policy I could say, if there is an instance, which I hope will not come, when the JCPOA falls apart, for instance, then it would be very easy, Iranian negotiators say, for Iran to go back to where it was before the JCPOA. It is accepting these limitations to its nuclear activities to make this diplomatic process move forward.

It is not going to be forever, of course, the restrictions that have been imposed on Iran. They have got different timeframes. I just want to make that clear as well. For instance, we have got eight years, 10 years, 15 years. They are different. We can’t say that the whole JCPOA has certain duration. The longer years related to the transparency measures that Iran has accepted and that, Iranian negotiators say, is not a problem for them because they have nothing to hide and they have nothing against being transparent about their nuclear activities.

As for the other parts of the JCPOA, we also have the issue of the Arak heavy water reactor, the Arak facility. We know that that is where Mr. Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization (of Iran), has put in a lot of effort with US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and some negotiators were telling me off the record that if it wasn’t for Mr. Salehi, it would be very difficult to resolve this Arak reactor issue, because there is a plan, of course, to change or reconfigure the Arak heavy water reactor in a way that would reduce the amount of weapons-grade plutonium that is produced as a by-product. Iran has said all along that it doesn’t want to reprocess that, has no intention of any use for that plutonium, but now it is being redesigned in a way that would reduce that plutonium and at the same time Iran would retain its ability to produce heavy water.

And another issue that Iran has also managed to retain is its access to research and development. At the moment Iran has basically centrifuges that are known as the IR-1 and it is also working on IR-8 centrifuges, which are more advanced centrifuges. There was a lot of pressure, I know, during these negotiations to stop Iran from doing research and development on the more advanced centrifuges, but Iran, based on the drafts that I’m getting, has managed to retain that right to be able to continue research and development in that area as well.

So it is not just the issue of sanctions and the resolution. In the nuclear issue, I’m hearing from negotiators, although of course we can’t deny that there are restrictions in place, Iran has managed to retain its research and development activities and also the most important thing, it says, its enrichment activity.

Iran says that for the eight years that it is going to be enriching uranium - I think up to 3.67 percent - that, I think, is going to be taking place, if I’m not mistaken, for 8-15 years – I will have to check that again in the text - that is the amount of time that Iran needs on a practical, technical and scientific level to be able to produce the IR-8 centrifuges when, of course, the JCPOA’s duration is over, when Iran’s nuclear program is normalized and everything is normalized, then it would be able to continue its nuclear activities at a more advanced level and while it has proven through the JCPOA that its activities have always been and will continue to be transparent.

Press TV: How is there going to be a nuclear cooperation when it come to the different power plants? How is that cooperation going to be executed?

Lezgee: The JCPOA has a main text and five annexes. One of those annexes is related completely to the cooperation that Iran will have with the international community on peaceful use of nuclear technology. And that annex, indeed, has been seen as one of the major achievements. One of the areas where significant progress was made during the talks - and in fact it was one of the areas where an understanding was reached in the early stages of this latest round of negotiations here even when we were hearing still a lot of issues remain to be resolved – was an area that the sides had already reached an understanding on, because it is very easy, basically, to figure out what areas are required for peaceful use of nuclear technology that Iran can work with the international community and could prove to the international community that it has the technology and it is ready to work with them and normalize this relation at another level. We have several areas outlined based on the JCPOA, I am hearing, based on the drafts that I have had, and in these drafts – when I say draft, it does not mean it is a different draft from the JCPOA, it is just what I am getting from Iranian diplomats parts of it that they have outlined to me as being the more important parts, the whole draft is around a hundred pages. It is difficult to read all of it in one go – I was looking at the various areas that this cooperation has been defined. For instance, in the area of research, development, reactors, heavy water; these are some of the areas that I have in my mind, but this again was an area where Mr. Salehi and Mr. Moniz worked on a lot. About the countries that are going to be involved, as of yet I am not sure about that, but I was hearing from Iranian negotiators previously that there has been a lot of suggestions, proposals, and Iran has seen a welcoming attitude from the P5+1 countries themselves – they were saying Russia, China, I even heard France but specifically Russia and China – they would be interested in opening these new fields of cooperation with Iran now that its nuclear issue is being normalized. Also the fact that Iran will be able to act in the international market with nuclear products is being seen as a very good sign.

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