In Nuclear Talks with Iran, Hardliners – Not Centrifuges– Remain Key Challenge

Last week, representatives of the P5+1 and Iran began a new round of negotiations in Geneva aimed at achieving a final nuclear agreement by the July 20 deadline. This session was the most ambitious to date as the parties begin drafting an actual agreement to replace last November’s Joint Plan of Action.

Optimism ruled the day heading into this most recent round of talks given the relative smooth sailing of the previous four, but a significant obstacle remains: the two sides must come to an agreement about the scope of the Iranian nuclear enrichment capability, defined by the number of centrifuges.

However, this issue is less critical than the dominant media narrative might suggest. Instead, domestic opposition – fervently opposed to the leadership within their respective countries on the basis of blind principle –remains the truly greatest threat to a nuclear deal.

Many commentators are quick to declare that the number of centrifuges a state possesses directly correlates to its ability to build a nuclear weapon. The concern is that Tehran would have a stronger “breakout capability,” or shorter time it would take to develop a nuclear weapon, with ample centrifuges running.

Centrifuges spin rapidly in order to separate out the ‘good’ useful isotope of uranium, which occurs very rarely in nature. Arguably, the more centrifuges are running, the quicker a country can collect enough of the desirable uranium to form the ‘critical mass’ required for a weapon. Iran currently has around 19,000 centrifuges, though some 8,000 of those are not yet operable. Tehran has expressed a desire to expand to up to 50,000 centrifuges in the future – a number in stark contrast to the “few thousand” U.S. negotiators would prefer. 

However, a number as low as 3,000 centrifuges would be sufficient to produce a critical mass of enriched uranium in about a year. The numbers game becomes more complex when considering that civilian power plants require many more centrifuge cascades than would be necessary for a weapon. This is because power plants require a much smaller ratio of good to bad uranium but a much higher volume of both to use as fuel in a reactor.

It should be noted that many other factors besides a number of centrifuges impact a country’s breakout capability. Any nuclear deal with Iran will hinge on nuclear monitoring by international agencies; regardless of how many centrifuges Iran has, its compliance with monitoring (which has so far been forthright) will be the key to preventing cheating.

Moreover, hardware limits are not a surefire means to stop proliferation. North Korea has circumvented export controls on the materials used to construct centrifuges by developing indigenous manufacturing. Clearly, rogue states excluded from the international community can always find a way to build weapons. From that perspective, making centrifuges a sticking point seems unwise; constructive diplomatic relations are the best security solution for the long run.

For this litany of reasons, commentators should be less concerned centrifuge numbers. Instead, the chief challenge to reaching a deal will those who cannot see the forest for the trees; political groups within both countries resistant to any sort of peaceful resolution are actively working to disrupt the talks even as progress is being made.

The U.S. Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, continues to be a hotbed of opposition to the Obama administration’s outreach. The markup of National Defense Authorization Act in the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee resulted in an amendment that would prohibit any deal with Iran that did not involve Tehran renouncing support for terror groups and ceasing its ballistic missile program. More daunting still is the fact that President Obama’s ability to lift sanctions without an act of Congress would require executive waivers issued every four-to-six months.

Hardliners in Iran are also working to disrupt the deal. A conference under the slogan “We’re Worried” convened at the beginning of May, uniting conservative elected legislators, members of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration, and other conservative nationalists.  Moreover, 75 hardliners in the majlis attempted to discredit Foreign Minister and lead negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif with a censure vote early this month simply because he publicly acknowledged the Holocaust as a “horrifying tragedy.”

Thankfully, the hardliners are in the minority in both countries. Poll numbers in the United States show that around 60% of Americans approve of the interim deal. Likewise, a similar majority of Iranians are either ‘very hopeful’ or ‘somewhat hopeful’ that the talks will end with a permanent deal, while less than half of them would support a military nuclear capability.

It is clear that the governments of Iran and the United States, as well as the peaceful majorities in each country, will have work against naysayers for a deal to succeed. There is hope for resolving technical questions, including the number of centrifuges, in negotiations so long as diplomats continue their work. Ultimately, it is the outdated attitudes of those who remain principally opposed to both fresh engagement and their own domestic rivals that remain the most significant danger to a normalization of relations between Iran and the West.