By James Conca

Forbes

Since Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, the other signatories of the Deal are trying to make the essential parts stick. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran said this week that they had agreed to "further reinforce their cooperation and enhance mutual trust" to facilitate the full implementation of Iran’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and the Additional Protocol, which has been provisionally applied by Iran since early 2016.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi travelled to Tehran earlier this week to discuss access for IAEA inspectors to Iran's nuclear sites with Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

In a joint statement issued August 25th, the IAEA and Iran said that, after intensive bilateral consultations, they had reached an agreement on the resolution of the safeguards implementation issues specified by the IAEA.

Iran is voluntarily providing the IAEA with access to the certain nuclear locations specified by IAEA and facilitating IAEA verification activities to resolve these issues. Dates for the IAEA access and the verification activities have been agreed, they said, without naming them.

While not the Iran Nuclear Deal per se, the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and the Additional Protocol involves most of what was in it, especially after we got most of what we wanted anyway.

Iran had shipped nearly its entire fissionable stockpile, over 12 tons of enriched uranium, to Russia last month. Iran mothballed thousands of centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium for an atomic bomb. And Iran removed the core of its heavy water reactor at Arak, and filled it with concrete. That reactor could have produced plutonium for the other type of atomic bomb.

Iran giving up both pathways to an atomic weapon, both uranium and plutonium, was not a small thing. And for these actions, Iran was to get about $60 billion of its own money released back to itself. Some Iranian citizens would be removed from U.S. government blacklists, Europe would allow trade in software, gold and metals, and transportation equipment, and Iran would be allowed to rejoin the international banking system and sell oil on the open market.

Saudi Arabia wasn’t happy at all with this deal and neither was the Republican Party. Thus, the scuttling by Trump.

But Iran doesn’t really want a nuclear weapon, just the respect that comes along with being able to make one. Having nuclear weapons brings on its own set of headaches that Iran had determined wasn’t worth it. But America pulling out of the Deal puts them in a strange position. Their radical side wants to start making weapons again but their more reasonable side wants the financial relief and some kind of economic normalcy.

They will probably do both to some degree. But Iran wants to comply with the IAEA. If nothing else, to be able to sell oil from their prodigious reserves openly on the global market and not just surreptitiously to players like China, Russia and Turkey which has cut their sales by 80%.

The IAEA verification activities agreed to this week by Iran is IAEA’s standard verification practice as implemented for all its Member States on an equal basis and without discrimination.

"In the context of resolution GOV/2015/72 adopted by the Board of Governors on 15 December 2015, the IAEA and Iran recognize that these safeguards implementation issues are exclusively related to nuclear material and activities subject to safeguards under the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and the Additional Protocol," the statement said. 

"In this present context, based on analysis of available information to the IAEA, the IAEA does not have further questions to Iran and further requests for access to locations other than those declared by Iran under its the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and the Additional Protocol," it added.

The IAEA said it will continue to take into consideration Iran's security concerns by protecting all safeguards confidential information in accordance with the IAEA's Statute, the relevant provisions of the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and the Additional Protocol, and the established IAEA confidentiality regime, standards and procedures.

In June, the IAEA Board of Governors adopted a resolution calling on Iran to fully cooperate with the IAEA in implementing its NPT Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol, and satisfy the IAEA's requests without further delay. 

Last week, the United States asked the United Nations Security Council to re-impose sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but it was the United States that broke the agreement, not Iran, so it would be hypocritical, and illegal, to snap these sanctions back on.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Grossi's visit was not related to this snapback. But…Really?

James Conca has been a scientist in the field of the earth and environmental sciences for 33 years, specializing in geologic disposal of nuclear waste, energy-related research, planetary surface processes, radiobiology and shielding for space colonies, subsurface transport and environmental clean-up of heavy metals.