The majority view among Israeli and US officials is still that US President Donald Trump will end up attacking Iran.
But if he chooses not to, it seems the general formula being floated to reach a deal is: unprecedented nuclear inspections in place of a zero enriched uranium requirement.
In other words, Israel wants the nuclear program scrapped entirely, of which zero uranium enrichment is just one major component, as well as limiting the Islamic Republic's ballistic missile program and its support for terror proxies like Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas.
Yet Trump may decide to forego an attack if he can secure a new nuclear deal, which he believes he can present to the world as monumentally better than the 2015 Obama nuclear deal.
To date, Washington and Tehran have been floating the idea of some extended period of zero or close to zero uranium enrichment in Iranian territory. So enriched uranium would be lower than it has been in decades, even if not gone.
This complex formula would then be coupled with a consortium that would provide solely civilian use enriched uranium to Iran, while preserving the country's "right" to enrich, offset by the most aggressive IAEA nuclear inspection regime ever.
The problems of a potential deal
Israel opposes such a deal and might still need to later strike Iran’s ballistic missiles program on its own if that issue is unresolved and gets out of hand. However, if Jerusalem gets stuck having to swallow such an agreement for now, what kinds of inspections would be necessary to offset Trump’s concession to Iran that it would not need to stay at zero enrichment forever?
It seems that the starting point would be that, immediately upon the signing of any such deal, Iran would finally need to provide a fully accurate and complete declaration of its current and past nuclear sites, activities, materials, and equipment.
Until now, the ayatollahs have toyed with the IAEA. They have provided at most a partial window into their nuclear activities. Further, they usually have not mentioned any undeclared nuclear sites until the Mossad, the CIA, or some other Western intelligence agency has exposed them.
The above declaration would serve as the baseline for conducting an accounting and audit of all of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear operations. It would also finally home in on where certain undeclared nuclear materials were hidden or destroyed.
Another critical element could be ratification and permanent adherence to the strictest interpretation of the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, including implementing standard safeguards obligation Modified Code 3.1 and UNSCR 1929.
The Additional Protocol and UNSCR 1929 provide for short-notice IAEA inspections of sites that could be connected to undeclared nuclear activities.
The idea would be that the IAEA would finally have “anytime, anywhere” immediate snap inspection access within Iran. This would apply whether to a civilian or military site, so that the IAEA could follow up on leads before the regime might be able to cover up or move any signs of nuclear violations.
Under the 2015 deal, Obama administration officials correctly stated that the IAEA inspection regime was extraordinary in its breadth and depth.
However, the IAEA still never had the ability to go anywhere it wanted at any time, and, paradoxically, was especially often kept away from “military” sites.
The most glaring example of this came when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outed the Turquzabad nuclear site in September 2018. The ayatollahs only allowed the IAEA to inspect the site around eight months later, after burning and moving large aspects of the nuclear violations.
Anytime, anywhere access would also apply to documents and to nuclear scientists and officials, whom Iran has generally tried to keep away from IAEA officials (though Israel has successfully assassinated many of them over the years).
In addition, the Additional Protocol would obligate the regime to report information relating to its nuclear imports and exports.
Under the 2015 nuclear deal and UNSCR 2231, Iran was obligated to submit requests for approval of any new nuclear or dual-use procurements through a channel supervised by the IAEA, the US, and other parties to the deal. But the channel’s standards were not fully enforced.
Now, there would need to be clear and automatic mitigation and punitive measures to ensure enforcement of the channel’s limits.
Modified Code 3.1 would require the Islamic Republic to provide early notification and design information to the IAEA regarding the construction of new nuclear facilities as soon as the decision to construct is made, well before actual construction.
Iranian violations of the previous deal
Iran has persistently violated this code.
On top of all this, the US and, potentially, other allies would need some kind of additional tactical oversight of the IAEA. The IAEA itself is culturally and politically often too moderate and diplomatic to keep up with Iran’s aggressive and rapid cover-up culture. The oversight would make sure that the ayatollahs would not be running circles around the inspectors.
Finally, a committee of the US and potentially other allies would also need to supervise the strategic enforcement of all nuclear limits that any future deal would impose on Iranian enrichment, the development of centrifuges and long-range aerial launch technologies, and the manufacturing of other dual-use items.
Enforcement would need to be highly specific and defined, both for immediately eliminating aspects of the nuclear program and for supervising those aspects that would be allowed to continue.
The IAEA would need to ensure the destruction or comprehensive oversight of all components, equipment, computer programs and models, and military or “civilian” research, while all weapons designs would need to be destroyed.
Any deal would need quick mitigation and punitive measures that would automatically take effect even for small, seemingly unintentional violations. This would ensure that Iran could not draw out a weeks- or months-long debate about whether a nuclear violation was a mistake that should be ignored.
This enforcement issue came into play in a major way in February 2023. At the time, IAEA inspectors accidentally stumbled onto a spot where Iran had enriched some of its 60% uranium up to 84%, essentially weaponizing it, given that 90% is the standard weaponization level.
Instead of Tehran facing major consequences for this violation, the regime downplayed it as an accident and then kicked out of the country several of the IAEA inspectors who made the discovery.
Even after all of the above new aggressive standards, Israel would still far prefer a deal with zero enrichment and other features to a deal trying to offset allowing some low-level enrichment by virtue of much stronger nuclear inspections.
But if such a deal had all of the above elements, and just as importantly, if an aspect of the potential punitive measures involved independent military action by either the US or Israel against certain new Iranian nuclear violations, Jerusalem would find it an easier pill to swallow.