June 20th, 2023 

According to leaks of the agreement’s clauses, Iran will reportedly agree not to enrich uranium beyond the 60 percent level, but contrary to the previous 2015 agreement, it will be able to hold on to the uranium that has already been enriched.

This means that the transition to the military-grade enrichment level of over 90 percent becomes a simple process for Iran, lasting several weeks. It also becomes a matter that depends on an Iranian decision rather than on Iran needing to gain the ability to implement the decision.

It is important to emphasize that Iran’s current level of enrichment of 60 percent has no civilian usage.

In exchange for an Iranian enrichment freeze, Tehran will reportedly pledge to stop attacks on US positions in Syria and Iraq via its proxies in these countries.

In addition, Iran will commit to expanding its cooperation with international nuclear inspectors and to not selling ballistic missiles to Russia.

The US, for its part, will not remove its sanctions on Iran but will avoid making them more severe.

However, a big question mark hovers over the issue of sanctions enforcement.

For example, according to some reports, the agreement would lead to the US allowing foreign tankers carrying Iranian oil to sail through.

Subsequently, the US will thaw billions of dollars in Iranian assets in exchange for the release of American prisoners by Iran.

In the July 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the JCPOA, Iran was granted access to $150 billion dollars of its frozen assets.

Following the JCPOA, Iran’s military deployment in the Middle East changed dramatically. The starting point of Iranian involvement in the Middle East as we know it today, involving tens of Iranian proxy militias in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, and influence in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and more – is the previous nuclear agreement.

Today we see Iranian involvement everywhere in the world. It is occurring through the dissemination of Islamic revolutionary concepts (see, for example, our report on Iran in Europe), in the campaign to turn former Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani into a mythical figure from Kashmir to the Middle East, and in the supplies of weapons, especially UAVs, to Russia in its war in Ukraine. Iranian activities have also stretched out to Venezuela and to countries in Africa.

Nevertheless, it must also be noted that despite it enrichment capabilities, Iran still has a significant gap separating it from an ability to assemble a bomb, known as the weaponization stage.

The Iranian weapons group, as it is dubbed, is responsible for taking over the nuclear program after the uranium enrichment phase is complete. That group was formerly headed by Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated in Iran in November 2020.

There does not appear to be any progress in this area of weaponization involving a nuclear warhead creation and placing it on a missile.

This boils down to an Iranian decision, and if Iran wants to advance down this route, it would take it between one to two years to do so.

The question, therefore, arises: What will prevent Iran from moving forward on these issues? A few months ago, an American senior official issued a statement that could be understood to mean that Washington was giving the green light for an Israeli attack.

US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, appeared to signal a new threat by Washington when he stated on May 4th, “But what I will simply say is that on the deterrence side, working with our partners—including working very closely with Israel, including through that military exercise that I described before, but also through intensive sessions that I have personally participated in with everyone from the prime minister to the national security advisor to the minister of defense—we will continue to send a clear message about the costs and consequences of going too far, while at the same time continuing to seek the possibility of a diplomatically brokered outcome that puts Iran’s nuclear program back in the box.”

If the agreement emerges in line with the leaked clauses, this would mean that Sullivan’s statement was designed to put the Israelis to sleep and to nudge the Iranians to move forward, reviving dormant negotiations.

Unfortunately, the statement did not improve the emerging agreement, and the entire world remains dependent on Tehran’s decision on whether to reach the bomb or not.

In my meetings with groups, I express my displeasure at the world’s expectations of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites if negotiations fail.

Everyone treats the issue as if it were an Israeli problem.

A nuclear Iran with launch capabilities already developed is a global problem. The Saudi and Egyptian ambitions to develop their own nuclear program as a counterweight to the Iranian program is another factor that can eventually undermine global security.

An attack on Iranian nuclear sites should be a joint operation by anyone who cares about world peace. It would form a very strong message, not only to Iran but also to Russia, which has threatened the use of nuclear weapons against the West several times over the past two years.

It’s time to change the framing of this discourse. The goal should be an agreement that excludes Iran any ability to develop nuclear weapons and not one that will be for a regime whose ideology is based on hatred of Western values.

• A recent border clash between Iranian and Taliban forces marked the latest phase of a longstanding water rights dispute between the two countries.
• The fighting might upend Tehran’s relationship with Taliban leaders, which is already burdened by the Taliban’s brutal treatment of Shia Muslims and some Persian-speaking Afghan groups.
• Both governments are adversaries of the United States and its allies, but U.S. officials engage Taliban leaders on a range of issues and support their efforts to combat more radical Islamist terrorist groups.
• During the clashes, the Taliban used U.S.-made military equipment left behind when American forces and allies withdrew from the country in August 2021.

The recent clashes have contributed to growing tensions between the two countries over the sharing of water from the Helmand River, one of two rivers that flow from Afghanistan into Iran. According to the bilateral Afghan Iranian Water Treaty of 1973, Afghanistan is expected to provide 850 million cubic meters water to Iran every year from the river. However, due largely to climate change and the country’s inefficient water management system, Afghanistan has been facing drought-like situations in recent years and has not met its obligation to Iran. Facing its own water challenges, Iran has been pressing for its agreed share of water from that source.

Drought has been a problem in Iran for some 30 years, but has worsened over the past decade. According to a joint report by the Iranian Space Agency and UN-SPIDER, the UN’s space-based disaster management organization, “most rivers in [Iran] are either dry or severely depleted” ever since a particularly harsh three-year drought concluded in 2002. The Iran Meteorological Organization says an estimated 97% of the country now faces some level of drought. In 2021, these conditions led to protests across multiple Iranian cities. This eventually led to a violent government response, as police dispersed demonstrations by burning down tents and firing teargas into crowds. A week before the most recent border skirmish, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned the Taliban to respect Iran’s rights to water under the 1973 treaty. Iran has previously accused Afghanistan of withholding water as a punishment for Iran’s treatment of Afghan refugees in the country. A statement shared by Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid on Twitter said that Raisi’s “frequent demands for water” were “harmful” in light of Afghanistan’s own drought situation and warned that Iranian statements on the matter had put the countries’ bilateral relations at risk.

The fighting has threatened Iranian diplomacy with its neighbor. Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Iran has hosted meetings with Taliban figures, and although Iran still does not formally recognize the Taliban’s governing authority, it allowed the Taliban to operate the Afghan Embassy in Tehran as of February 2023. Some Iranian officials sought to limit the diplomatic fallout of the clashes by attributing threatening Taliban statements against Iran to “low-ranking” members of the Taliban who have since been “dismissed” by the organization. Meanwhile, the deputy spokesman of the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told a Saudi newspaper that the group sought to preserve relations with its neighbors and did not want to see the situation to escalate.

The global community, and particularly the United States, has been hesitant to take any position on a dispute between two regimes, and no country has yet recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. U.S officials remain suspicious of the Taliban’s commitment to deny safe haven to al-Qaeda figures, particularly since the killing of Ayman al Zawahiri by a U.S. airstrike in July 2022 revealed he was residing comfortably in Kabul. They also oppose the group’s treatment of women and minorities, as well as its human rights practices more generally. However, a wide range of diplomats, primarily from the region but also from the United States and its allies, engage Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and in Qatar, where Taliban leaders maintain a significant diplomatic presence. U.S. and other Western leaders are also at odds with the leaders in Tehran over issues including the expansion of its nuclear program, its provision of missiles and armed drones to regional armed factions, and its supply of drones to the Russian war effort in Ukraine. Some U.S. leaders assess that Iran’s clashes with the Taliban can serve to weaken or embarrass Tehran’s forces and distract the Iranian government from its objectives in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere where its own forces or proxy forces are operating.

The border skirmishing also exhibited the lingering consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as videos on social media depicted Taliban fighters deploying to the Iran border with U.S-made weaponry, including multiple Humvees (at least one of which appeared armed with an M240 machine gun) in addition to an American military truck transporting a Soviet Howitzer. Following the rapid collapse of the previous Afghan government’s security forces, the Taliban seized control of their weapon stockpiles. Of the $18.6 billion worth of military equipment provided to the Afghan National Security Forces by the United States over 16 years, some 37 percent of that – approximately $7 billion worth –  was left behind, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.