The JCPOA, 159 pages to prevent the development of a nuclear bomb in Iran

Preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb in less than a year. That remains the great goal of the JCPOA, the atomic agreement signed five years ago and celebrated at the time as one of the greatest diplomatic feats of the 21st century. For 20 months, an army of hundreds of diplomats and nuclear experts from Iran, on the one hand, and six major powers on the other - China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States - negotiated word for word a document known as the JCPOA, its official name.

The final document, closed in Vienna on July 14, 2015, is 159 pages long and details in detail a series of limitations of the Iranian nuclear program, as well as dispute mechanisms in case of non-compliance and other doubts. The final agreement came after a final round of negotiations at the level of foreign ministers that lasted 19 consecutive days in an exclusive hotel in Vienna. To illustrate the point: never in the history of the United States had a secretary of state (in 2015 it was Democrat John Kerry) spent so much time outside of Washington without interruption.

The aim was to break the long "tradition" of responding to nuclear suspicions in the Middle East with wars, Mark Hibbs, nuclear expert at The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) think tank, told Efe. "Until now, any allegation of serious violations of the (nuclear) non-proliferation regime in the Middle East has been dealt with by war, occupation and military strikes against suspected atomic facilities," the analyst recalls in reference to US and Israeli interventions in Iraq and Syria.

But what does the JCPOA stipulate and how has it been complied with since then? Iran committed itself not to enrich uranium for at least 15 years above 3.67%, a level of exclusively civilian use, far from the 90% required for military purposes. In addition, Iran reduced the number of its centrifuges for uranium enrichment to less than a third, limited to about 5,000 units during the first decade of the agreement. And it should not develop more modern and faster enrichment machines for 15 years, nor should it store more than 300 kilos of this material. With these measures, Iran would need about a year to acquire a bomb, compared to less than three months until 2015. The idea: the international community would have enough time to react if the Islamic Republic broke all agreements and fully resumed its programme.

In addition, the agreement stipulates a design change and refurbishment of the heavy water research reactor located in the city of Arak, which Iran complied with. This will prevent the production of plutonium for 15 years, as the heavy water in this reactor is needed for this purpose.

After exporting a large part of its heavy water reserves, Iran is currently storing around 130 tonnes of this material, just the maximum allowed by the JCPOA. The Islamic Republic will not build any additional heavy water reactor in the country until 2030.

A very sensitive point of the JCPOA is the veto imposed on Iran to import or export heavy weapons, a measure that was extended for five years and therefore expires next October. But both the US and the three European countries (France, UK and Germany - known as E3) that remain in the agreement are against lifting this international embargo on the sale of arms by Iran.

Tehran, for its part, is threatening to abandon the JCPOA and also the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) definitively if the US makes good on its threat to denounce it in the UN Security Council and tries to activate the mechanism to restore international sanctions against it.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verifies compliance with the nuclear aspects of the agreement, with a special team of inspectors, the largest ever assigned to a single country. Until May 2019, Iran complied strictly with all the stipulations of the agreement, such as not enriching uranium above 3.67% purity or storing more than 300 kilos of this material, which could be used for both military and civil purposes. Only once, in November 2016, did Iran briefly exceed the permitted heavy water limit (130 tonnes) and then claimed that this was a technical and logistical problem.

Within its relationship with the IAEA, Iran's commitment to always grant inspectors full access to its facilities, even on an unannounced and unplanned basis, is also noteworthy. In case of suspicion, the agency's experts can also access military facilities, and a joint commission of the parties reviews disputed cases every three months.

In May 2019, after a year of waiting to see if E3 could deliver the financial and economic benefits promised in the agreement, Iran gradually began to fail to comply with the JCPOA on key points such as uranium production, material purity and the upgrading of its technologies.

In their quarterly reports, the IAEA inspectors, since last December with a new Director General, the Argentinean Rafael Grossi, have been denouncing since then violations of the limitations to which Iran is subjected. The stored reserves of uranium increased to more than 1,500 kilos, Iran purified some of this material to 4.5% and started new Research and Development (R&D) programs.

Tehran assures that at any time it can reverse these breaches, as long as the US lifts its sanctions and Europe provides it with the promised trade benefits. Still, the future of the agreement is bleak with Donald Trump in the White House, Hibbs says.

"As long as Trump remains president, the JCPOA can't hold out. If Joe Biden succeeds him, the U.S. will return to diplomacy with Iran, although the JCPOA will not be simply restored," he predicts. "Both the Democrats in the US and the moderates in Iran hope for a future in which the JCPOA can be amended or even expanded, to create a more sustainable arrangement," the expert concludes.