Nuclear ambitions defanged in return for historic windfall

THERE was a time when only a naive observer would have predicted a moment when Iran sacrificed the core of its nuclear programme and the West lifted the toughest sanctions.

Yet that was on the verge of happening yesterday. The International Atomic Energy Agency was on the brink of certifying that Iran had defanged its nuclear ambitions in accordance with last year’s agreement; America and its allies, meanwhile, were about to relax the iron grip of one of the most suffocating sanctions regimes in history.

For good measure, Iran released four Americans from the country’s jails, including Jason Rezaian, the

Washington Post correspondent. The first point to emphasise is the historic importance of these events. Iran’s regime used to portray its nuclear programme as an emblem of national pride that would never be relinquished. The rest of the Middle East would shiver over the centrifuges and mysterious reactors that appeared to lack any purpose, save to give Iran’s leaders the option of building the ultimate weapon.

But the IAEA is expected to confirm that Iran has dismantled much of the infrastructure that once caused such nightmares. The fate of one particular nuclear plant is worth examining.

More than 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear warheads are built not from uranium but weapons-grade plutonium. Iran’s heavy water reactor at Arak seemed designed to deliver this vital commodity. But the core of this reactor is understood to have been removed and filled with liquid concrete, meaning that it can never be used again. Unlike other steps that Iran has taken, this one is effectively irreversible.

The air forces of Israel and America used to agonise over how to destroy the plant. Now it has been rendered harmless forever without a bomb being dropped or a person maimed.

No wonder that a hardline newspaper in Iran described Arak’s fate as the “world’s biggest nuclear demolition”, adding that “years of toil and blood of Iranian scientists was buried under concrete”. The peaceful and permanent elimination of the Arak reactor might serve as a textbook example of how diplomacy can achieve more than military might.

Remember the uranium enrichment plant that Iran built inside a hollowedout mountain? The Fordow installation also troubled the best minds of the Israeli and US air forces, leaving them with the conundrum of how to wreck a target buried under hundreds of feet of rock and earth. Yet, in the last six months, Fordow has been converted into a research centre and stripped of two thirds of its centrifuges.

There is, of course, another side to the bargain. In return, Iran is about to be rewarded with an easing of the sanctions stranglehold.

Not all the restrictions will go: the US will continue to shut Iran out of its financial system. But America’s crucial concession is that it will no longer punish other nations for doing business with Tehran. All of the nuclear-related sanctions will be abolished, including the European Union’s oil embargo and financial restrictions.

Iran possesses the second biggest gas reserves in the world – and the third largest of oil. The country will soon be able to reap hundreds of billions of dollars from this natural endowment. Iran will also be able to lay its hands on money from past oil sales that lie in frozen bank accounts across the world.

Estimates of how much is waiting to be reclaimed range as high as $150 billion (£107 billion). But the conservative figure given by Jacob Lew, the US Treasury secretary, suggests that $55 billion (£40 billion) will now be released to Iran.

That sum represents almost 14 per cent of Iran’s entire gross national product. Seldom in history has any country received such a windfall.

Iran’s foes in the Middle East pose a simple question: what will the hard men in Tehran do with this money? Will they give more funding to the likes of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, or Hizbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen?

American officials argue that Iran has an abundance of pressing domestic needs for this cash. Reviving the country’s dilapidated oil and gas industries, for example, will cost as much as $200 billion.

But even supposing that Iran uses 90 per cent of its windfall for inoffensive purposes, that would still leave $4billion - or about eight times the annual funding for Hizbollah – available to help the regime’s unsavoury allies.

America argues that defanging the nuclear programme is enough to justify any extra risks created by the lifting of sanctions. In the past, that was purely an academic argument. It will now be tested in the real world.

‘Now it has been rendered harmless forever without a bomb being dropped or a person maimed’