By Peter Jenkins
April 12, 2015
With the parties having come so close, it will be surprising if they fail to complete their journey.
The joint statement issued on April 2 in Lausanne did not lie—earlier that day, the EU High Representative, the Foreign Minister of Iran and the six other parties to the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme did take a “decisive step” towards ensuring the exclusively peaceful nature of that programme.
Their primary instrument will be the nuclear inspectorate of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran has offered to grant the IAEA unprecedented access to its programme. Iran will re-apply the Additional Protocol, a legal norm which allows the IAEA to acquire information about, and access to, a wide range of declared or suspected nuclear sites. Iran will also allow the IAEA access to the workshops, where key components of its centrifuges (for enriching uranium) are manufactured, as well as to centrifuge assembly and storage sites.
These provisions will make it extremely hard for Iran to escape detection in the most unlikely event that its leaders were tempted to build a secret enrichment facility to produce uranium enriched to weapon-grade (HEU).
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