LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For more on this possible, maybe deal that would lead to more talks, we turn to Ali Vaez. He directs the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, which is a think tank that works to prevent war. Good morning and welcome back to the program.
ALI VAEZ: It's good to be with you, Leila.
FADEL: So hearing the details of this preliminary deal, what went through your mind?
VAEZ: Well, this is really a superficial deal. It's just a one-page understanding versus the 159-page deal that we had in 2015 to put Iran's nuclear program in a box and under very rigorous monitoring. It is obviously much better compared to the alternative, which is a return to a conflict which had turned into a lose-lose dynamic. But we have to be honest about what it can achieve. It can end the war. It can start the process of reopening the Strait of Hormuz. But it would not resolve the problems in a fundamental or sustainable manner.
FADEL: What are the odds that this gets beyond this initial agreement to keep talking and reopen the strait?
VAEZ: The odds don't look very promising, Leila. Let me just give you one example, one piece of this puzzle, just to describe how difficult it would be. And that's the fate of the stockpile of highly enriched uranium, about half a ton of 60% enriched uranium in Iran. You first off have to negotiate, who is going to go dig out this material? It's under rubble in a site that was bombed by the U.S. and Israel last year. There are unexploded, massive ordinances in that area, so they have to be neutralized.
Once you take out the material, you have to account for it. The IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, would have to account for it. And if there's even 10 kilograms of this material missing, it would be a major crisis. All the problems Iran has had with the U.N. nuclear watchdog over the years have been about a few grams of unenriched uranium dating back to 25 years ago.
Now, if you have all the material accounted for, then you have to start the process of diluting it or shipping it out. Maybe half diluted, half shipped out. And in return for each installment that is neutralized, the Iranians would expect tens of billions of dollars of sanctions relief in advance because they no longer trust the United States. Negotiating that process would take weeks, implementing it would take months.
FADEL: I mean, given that nuclear enrichment, which is the stated biggest concern of the U.S., isn't even on the table for the initial part of this agreement - it will be talked about down the line - and that Iran is making its own demands of the U.S., and among them, as you mentioned, sanction relief, what has U.S. military intervention accomplished in these months of war?
VAEZ: Well, that's the irony of this war, isn't it? That the U.S. went in shooting for regime change, nuclear disarmament and missile limits and has landed basically with, in the best-case scenario, a reopened Strait of Hormuz and pending understanding on the uranium stockpile and future of enrichment in Iran, meaning that this issue never had a military solution to begin with. And the conflict has only hardened, not softened, Iran's position.
FADEL: So where does that leave the region and regional allies, places, you know, Gulf Arab states and other regional leaders who are also invested here?
VAEZ: Well, on the edge because if we have this understanding, yes, maybe there will be a period of relative calm, even though that is also fragile because of the linkage with Lebanon. And there, Israel has, basically, a veto power over this understanding because if it even temporarily stops the war, it can always restart the conflict against Hezbollah, and through it, undermine any understanding that Iran and the United States have. But because some of these problems will be fundamentally unresolved, we would still be living with the specter of return to hostilities in the coming months and years. And that's a disastrous situation for a region that is hoping to get back to stability, and the kind of peace that will allow investment and prosperity and trade and all of those things to resume. But unfortunately, I don't think that we're moving in that direction.
FADEL: What direction is this going?
VAEZ: It's basically an attritional kind of conflict - that it will be on and off unless one side would be willing to fundamentally accommodate the other. And at this point, there is no sign of it.
FADEL: That's Ali Vaez with the International Crisis Group. Thank you for joining us and for your insights.
VAEZ: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
