FULL May 27 IAEA IRAN REPORT
Posted: May 28, 2016 Filed under: Nuclear 7 CommentsReaders will likely have read media reports today summarizing the IAEA’s latest official report on Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA and Security Council Resolution 2231, which was presented to the IAEA Board of Governors today. A full copy of the IAEA report has, fortunately, been provided to ACL in the interests of transparency by a source in Vienna. You can find it at the link below.
The five page report finds that Iran is upholding its commitments under the JCPOA, and has been cooperating with IAEA inspectors. It concludes:
The Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and locations outside facilities where nuclear material is customarily used (LOFs) declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement. Evaluations regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities for Iran remained ongoing.
Noticeably absent, of course, is any consideration of whether the other parties to the JCPOA, including particularly the U.S., are abiding by their JCPOA commitments. I think this would actually make for more interesting reading.
Arms Control Law 
Looking forward to the book, any updates?
Thanks Cyrus. The book is scheduled for release in September, which is a bit longer than I’d hope for. But I’ve picked out the cover image and everything, so now all they have to do is basically turn the printers on. They’ve put a link to it up on the OUP website. It doesn’t show the cover yet.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/irans-nuclear-program-and-international-law-9780190635718?q=daniel%20joyner&lang=en&cc=us
The good news is that they’ve agreed to publish in both hardcopy and papercopy from the start, with the papercopy priced at $34.95, which is a lot cheaper than most academic books.
We’re planning to produce another podcast around the time of publication, with me reviewing the book’s conclusions.
By the way have you seen this report by Einhorn./Nephews that argues the JPCOA promotes the proliferation of nuclear weapons “in the region” by legitimizing Iran’s nuclear program?
1- It ignores the fact that many other nations (including ones “in the region”) have or soon will be pursing the same enrichment programs because they don’t want to be indebted to a nuclear fuel cartel, which is how developing nations tend to view efforts to restrict enrichment tech, and in fact the effort to restrict enrichment may be driving other nations to acquire enrichment capability, and 2- the developing world was insisting on its rights to the full nuclear fuel cycle as far back as 1978, long before the JCPOA, and 3- It is ironic that Iran’s agreement to self-impose additional restrictions on its nuclear program, well beyond what the NPT requires of Iran is deemed to promote proliferation and 4- It is even more ironic that Iran self-imposing such restrictions is deemed to promote proliferation, while the actual and existing nuclear arms of another country in the same region are ignored (hwe are arequite literally expected to pretend don’t exist) I mean, what really legitimatizes proliferation more: The JCPOA or Israel’s nukes and 5- Since by now it is obvious that there really was no nuclear weapons program, that the hype the JCPOA preventing Iran from making nukes is precisely hype and Iran had been making better nuclear compromise offers before the deal which the US either ignored or actively undermined, and instead pressed the IAEA to make illegal demands on Iran, and used the UNSC to impose sanctions that violated Iran’s NPT rights, what is the real lesson of the JCPOA to the world? That the NPT and the IAEA cannot be relied upon to protect their rights. What effect does THAT have on legitimizing proliferation or respect for international law in general?
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2016/05/iran-deal-regional-proliferation
The Iran Nuclear Deal: Prelude to Proliferation in the Middle East?
Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Series
Paper 11 • May 2016
That doesn’t make any sense. They’re basically arguing that a deal which severely limits Iran’s nuclear program, and subjects it to unprecedented levels of scrutiny, will lead other countries in the region to go after nuclear weapons. No sense.
Well to be exact they are discussing and analyzing that argument as put forth by others, who are opponents of the deal. The authors then dismiss the argument, by for example saying that it is basically “unlikely” for other regional stated to go nuclear. However I think more cogent criticisms of such an argument can be made, not based on predictions of liklihood but by taking into consideration the full history and background of the dispute over Irans nuclear ptogram and tge JCPOA, as outlined above.
For example if Israel’s actusl, existing nukes don’t promote regional proliferation, then why should Iran’s highly restricted civilian nuclear program do so. And there is also the broader context, where many countries (not just in the region) have sought the same nuclear technology as Iran, long before the JCPOA, bease they want to protect their right to enrichment .
Of course the opening paragraph of the report itself creates a false impression of facts too . Iran was indeed found to be in “violation of nonprilferation obligations,” if by that they mean safeguards provisions rather than the NPT itself , but they leave out the fact according to the IAEA, these breaches consisted of failures to report legal activities which acording to the IAEA involved no diversion of nuclear material and were unrelated to any weapons program.
Furthermore, the IAEA did indeed find that Iran had undertaken studies “relevant to” nuckear weapons, but they leave out thst according to the same report such studies were small scale fragmentary feasibilty studies that again involved no diversion of nuclear material, and so were not in violation of thire NPT, which has nothing to say about “relevant to” as any kind of legal standard either (seems to have been made up specially for Iran. Isn’t basic math or computer science “relevant to” nukes?)
Re: the US and JCPOA commitments, this is revealing: http://www.atomicreporters.com/2016/06/lobelog-interview-with-peter-jenkins-this-american-rose-is-sick/