For Dr. Olli Heinonen, a Finnish national who spent almost three decades with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including a long stint as Deputy Director General, and who is now a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Security, any optimism about the deal is tempered by the understanding that weaponisation of the nuclear programme remains a realistic prospect. An additional worry, Heinonen told me during a wide-ranging interview, is that the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who has emerged as the key interlocutor of the so-called P5+1 (the five members of the UN Security Council, along with Germany), is not someone who can be regarded as the final authority when it comes to Iran’s internal conflicts over the nuclear issue. ‘Do we know the person, and are we talking with him?’ Heinonen asked rhetorically when I put it to him that Western negotiating efforts might not be directed towards the right elements of the Iranian leadership. ‘Most likely not. So there will be very few people who know all the aspects of this programme, and how far it’s gone, and what is the true purpose.’

Why scepticism persists

The nagging sense that the unknown aspects of the nuclear programme will eventually wreck any deal has overshadowed the international debate over the Joint Action Plan (as the agreement reached in Geneva is called). That plan should not be understood as a final agreement; it is an interim step, whereby Iran will receive sanctions relief over a six month period in exchange for freezing certain critical aspects of its nuclear programme, along the road to a fully negotiated outcome. This includes strict curbs upon the enrichment of uranium, discontinuing the development of installations like the enrichment facility at Natanz, the heavy water reactor at Arak, and the enrichment facility at Fordow (a location that was exposed by Western intelligence services in 2009, much to the chagrin of the Iranian leadership), as well as strengthened monitoring and verification under the auspices of the IAEA.

Read the article in full at Fathom Journal.