By Henry Sokolski
This Saturday (Apr. 26), Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, will meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi to flesh out the details of a nuclear deal. They will have to focus on two questions.
First, what kind of agreement, if any, might prevent Iran from getting a bomb. Second, can an agreement be reached on Iran enriching uranium — an activity that can bring a state to the brink of bomb making — without encouraging other states to demand similar treatment?
Four weeks ago, we had an answer. U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio backed the “Libya option” — make Iran dismantle its nuclear plants, the missiles to deliver them, and turn off their hostile proxy activities.
Then, with the support of Vice President JD Vance, Witkoff floated a scaled-back negotiating position — narrowing the administration’s goals to 1) keeping Iranian enrichment capped at 3.67 percent and 2) verifying that Iran was not diverting uranium to make nuclear weapons.
This position lasted less than 24 hours. After a White House meeting that Trump chaired, Witkoff reversed course and adopted Waltz’s position, announcing, “Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.”
This pleased Iran hawks, who believed Witkoff’s earlier scaled-back position simply mimicked the “disastrous” 2015 Obama deal. That understanding mistakenly presumed Iran could enrich uranium without making bombs if these activities were monitored.
Now these hawks are worried. Will Witkoff yet reverse course again, compromise, and allow such a deal? Earlier this week, Rubio floated the idea of allowing Iran to have a civil nuclear program if it eliminated its enrichment program and imported nuclear fuel from foreign suppliers instead.
Iran is not interested: it’s preparing for a possible military strike and fortifying tunnels that experts fear Iran will use to hide near-weapons grade uranium. These twists and turns are cause for concern.
“By the time U.S. intelligence or international nuclear monitors could confirm Iran had done this, it would be too late to intervene to keep Iran from producing its first nuclear weapon.”
First, if Iran continues to enrich, you have to be a diplomat or a politician to believe timely detection or warning of an Iranian military diversion is possible. By the time U.S. intelligence or international nuclear monitors could confirm Iran had done this, it would be too late to intervene to keep Iran from producing its first nuclear weapon.
Second, trying to prevent weaponization – the last step in bomb-making – is not just aspirational, but delusional. The International Atomic Energy Agency has struggled even to detect such activities and our intelligence agencies have not done much better. Detection is conceivable if you have inside agents, something highly unlikely in Iran’s case.
This is unlikely to change: weaponization can be conducted in small, dispersed, remote facilities that are extremely difficult to detect. This painful reality dogged Biden’s attempt to revive Obama’s original nuclear deal: as Iran got closer to getting a bomb, the odds of it sprinting to the finish line only increased.
Finally, there’s the precedent that allowing Iranian uranium enrichment would set. If Trump allows Iran to continue to enrich, other nations that Washington wants to share nuclear technology with – the U.A.E., Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Poland, South Korea, and especially Saudi Arabia – would demand similar treatment.
The Saudi case is of immediate concern. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS) has repeatedly warned that if he thinks Iran is getting a bomb, Riyadh will get one too. That’s why he is demanding that Washington help him enrich uranium on Saudi soil as part of any nuclear cooperative agreement Washington might strike.
This puts us in a pickle. If team Trump fails to get Iran to dismantle its enrichment plants (which is almost certain) but allows MBS to do so, the latter becomes the new normal, supercharging nuclear proliferation globally. On the other hand, if Trump allows Iran to continue to enrich, it is a foregone conclusion Washington must allow MBS to do the same.
All of this raises a number of larger questions. Is it smart for the United States to promote nuclear power in dangerous places – particularly in the gas-and sun-soaked Middle East? After all, we now know that Iran used its “peaceful,” International Atomic Energy Agency-safeguarded Bushehr nuclear power plant as a covert acquisition front to acquire nearly all it needed to make a bomb. Does America want to help other nations in war-torn regions follow this model?
Also, after more than a half-century, it’s time to reconsider the international rules as to which nuclear activities and materials are distant enough from bomb making to keep safe and which are too close to bomb making to be anything but dangerous. When will this begin?
What are we prepared to do if Iran gets a bomb? Can we still get our trading partners to join us in threatening serious sanctions against Iran if it reneges on its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty pledge not to get nuclear weapons? Are we willing to risk going to war with Iran if we can’t?
Or should we hope, as we did in the l960s, when President Kennedy feared 20 or so nations might get the bomb, that we can continue to spread dangerous nuclear technologies and materials without spreading the bomb? The answer should be no.
Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and the author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future. He served as deputy for nonproliferation policy in the office of the U.S. secretary of defense from 1989 to 1993.