Iran sanctions to go as it gives up N-programme

Despite the frontloading of Iranian nuclear concessions in the P5+1 nuclear agreement, titled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), concluded Tuesday at Vienna may sail through the Majlis (Iranian Parliament), because Iranian people – especially the youth who voted in large numbers for President Hassan Rouhani – are tired of austerity.

Called a win-win deal by the Western experts, the agreement caps the Iranian nuclear programme in their favourite nomenclature of being ‘peaceful.’ Contrast this with the recent testing by the USA of gravity nuclear bombs that can now be guided, thus better targetted to kill people, and an independent analysis becomes skewed.

Take, for example, the nuclear fuel cycle that closes at 3.67 per cent enrichment level of Uranium Hexaflouride for Iran (while International Atomic Energy Agency allows up to five per cent), is an intermediate stage of the cycle. This also limits the ability of Iran to fuel reactors for more efficient power generation, and even more, produce ultimately a nuclear weapon.

The compound in a gaseous form is run through the thousands of centrifuges to be produced as Uranium Oxide that finally is enriched to the level five to 20 per cent for use as fuel rods to power the nuclear reactor. 

In the case of Iran, the number of centrifuges have also been limited to about 5000, according the US Secretary of State John Kerry, while the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani told the Iranians in a televised address that the number is 6500.

Tehran has been also asked to reduce Uranium Oxide plates that has remained stockpiled  already, to Uranium Hexaflouride gas of the same level mentioned above. Plus, it has signed on to an agreement that says the enriched Uranium will have to be transferred out of Iran in a commercial deal that cuts down the increased ability of the country to enrich and produce weapons grade Uranium. While this deal certainly reduces the chances of further nuclearisation of West Asia - though Israel retains its nuclear arsenal - Iran gains in terms of economic and trade sanctions being removed at a pace of ten years with progressive reduction of nuclear technological capability.

This process also includes the striking down of all the anti nuclear-Iran resolutions of United Nations Security Council (UNSC), besides those of the European Union. The USA has also made pledges in terms of unblocking bank deposits of Tehran that had even targetted individuals, who were in Iranian government and the nuclear establishment.

There had also been reports that Israeli Mossad had ‘killed a few Iranian nuclear scientists’ to stall their programme, besides of course attacking computers of Iranian nuclear establishments through release of the Stuxnet malware.

Finally, the world today witnessed not a step towards full nuclear disarmament as promised in the Treaty of Nuclear Non-Proliferation’s (NPT) Article six, but a success of disarming a West Asian regional power remaining within the fold of the latter treaty that had otherwise been a dead letter. This can be considered the one of the most important legacy of President Barack Obama, who has till November this year to become lame duck.