If nearly everything had been agreed in April, why did it take so long to get the final deal done?

While what became known as the Lausanne accord was very detailed on matters such as the number of centrifuges Iran would be allowed to keep and the size of the low-enriched uranium stockpile it could hold, several sensitive details still needed nailing down. The final round of talks began on June 26th and went through three deadlines before the deal was done. John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, spent 19 days on the negotiation—the longest period of time a secretary of state has been away from home since the second world war.

The potential stumbling blocks related to the access required by the IAEA’s inspectors to confirm that Iran is living up to its undertakings and ensure its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful; the need for Iran to give a full account of any “possible military dimensions” (IAEA jargon for work on weaponisation) relating to its nuclear programme; the penalties for violation of the agreement, including a mechanism for the re-imposition of sanctions; whether the arms embargo would be lifted along with other UN nuclear-related sanctions; and how much research and development on advanced centrifuges Iran would be allowed to do during the first 10 years of the agreement. [back to top]

What did the P5+1 nations hope to get out of the deal?

In short, to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, or at least to stop it from being able to get one very quickly. To that end the negotiators have compromised over allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium, concluding that complete dismantling of its huge infrastructure was unrealistic. However, they sought strict limits on Iran’s enrichment programme, the redesign of a plutonium-producing heavy water reactor under construction and a highly-intrusive inspection regime to prevent cheating. Their aim has been to extend Iran’s “breakout capability”—the key yardstick of the time needed to produce enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon—from the current estimate of a couple of months to at least a year, and to maintain it there for a decade. In years 10-15, the breakout period is expected to reduce to six months and less thereafter as limitations fall away. But the new inspections regime, based on what is known as the Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), will continue in perpetuity making all Iran’s future nuclear activities much more transparent and tightly monitored than before. [back to top]

What does Iran get in return?

For Iran, the pressing need is to gain relief from sanctions that are having a crippling effect on its resource-dependent economy. In particular, restrictions on its oil and gas exports, its ability to import technology to exploit its energy resources, and being cut off from SWIFT, the financial-messaging system used to transfer money between the world’s banks, have taken an increasing toll. Iran would have liked all sanctions to end from the moment of a deal being signed. But relief will be staged on the basis of good faith implementation of the deal. Sanctions related to other aspects of Iran’s behaviour, such as human-rights issues, support of terrorism and its ballistic-missile programme will not be affected. Furthermore Barack Obama, the American president, can only suspend sanctions that Congress has legislated. [back to top]

What are the new details of the deal?

The agreement announced on July 14th was more detailed than most expected. Under its statement of intent Iran will reduce its installed enrichment centrifuges from 19,500 to 6,100, only 5,000 of which will be spinning. All of them will be first-generation centrifuges: none of its more advanced models can be used for at least 10 years, and R&D into more efficient designs will have to be based on a plan submitted to the IAEA. Fordow, Iran’s second enrichment facility (its main one is at Natanz) which is buried deep within a mountain and thought to be impregnable to conventional air strikes, will cease all enrichment and be turned into a physics research centre. It will not produce or house any fissile material for at least 15 years. Iran will reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium (which can be spun further into weapons-grade material) from 9,000kg to 300kg for the next 15 years. The country’s alternative plutonium path to a bomb also appears to have been satisfactorily dealt with. The heavy-water reactor at Arak will be redesigned and its original core, which would have produced significant quantities of weapons-grade plutonium, will be removed and destroyed. No other heavy-water reactor will be built for 15 years.