In the Shadow of the War in Ukraine, Iran Is About to Reach the Military Nuclear Threshold.

Iran has enough uranium enriched to 60% to quickly go to 90% and build a bomb.

When looking for the first collateral damage of the war in Ukraine, the word proliferation comes up frequently. In the shadow of the fighting in Eastern Europe, Iran's nuclear program, which has been out of the international spotlight since February 24, 2022, has made spectacular leaps during the spring.

According to the Institute for Science and International Security, a think-tank specializing in non-proliferation, the “breakout time”, i.e. the countdown to the creation of an Iranian nuclear bomb, is now equal to zero. “Iran has enough uranium enriched to 60% to quickly go to 90% and build a bomb,” write specialists David Albright and Sarah Burkhard.

In one month, they assure, the Islamic Republic is capable of producing enough fissile material to make two nuclear weapons. The Iran nuclear deal is dead, but no one wants to acknowledge it yet. European diplomats explain this by the impossibility of managing two major crises at the same time.

Known by its acronym, the JCPOA, the Vienna Compromise, was reached in July 2015 between the international community and Tehran to limit and delay Iran's nuclear program. The unilateral withdrawal of Donald Trump in 2018, then the violations of the Iranian side, had gradually emptied it of its substance. But the Europeans, invested in the subject since 2003, have since made every effort to try to resurrect it. The progress made during the Vienna negotiations was, depending on the week, laborious or null, blocked by the Iranians who were playing for time against the divided Americans.

The war in Ukraine benefits Iran on the international scene

Under these conditions, any agreement would have been a degraded compromise of the 2015 JCPOA, itself considered a bad agreement by Israel, by the Trumpist wing of the Republicans, and more discreetly by some European specialists on the subject. Its provisions, in any case, were destined to fall one after the other from 2025. The war in Ukraine has only precipitated a failure that many saw coming.

At the beginning of the conflict, Russia held the JCPOA hostage by demanding that its cooperation with Iran be exempt from Western sanctions. The issue has since been resolved, but the resumption of negotiations is now stalled by a bilateral disagreement between Washington and Tehran over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Iran demands be removed from the list of terrorist organizations.

Thanks to the war in Ukraine and its indirect effects on energy costs, Iran has also managed to partially overcome Western sanctions. Oil exports, especially to China, have enabled Iran to quadruple its income. At the diplomatic level, the Islamic Republic is less and less isolated on the international scene.

China has concluded a “strategic partnership” with Iran. Russia has strengthened its ties with Tehran since the beginning of the war, and all of Iran's Shiite allies in the Middle East, starting with Syria and Hezbollah, have chosen the Russian camp.

The new world situation following the war in Ukraine strengthens Iran. It is no longer in Iran's interest to return to the JCPOA.

Moreover, Tehran has recently put a new obstacle on the table to the resumption of negotiations. Referring to the risk of a return of Donald Trump to office in 2024, the Iranians have said they intend to wait for the outcome of the American mid-term elections in 2022, which do not look good for Joe Biden and the Democrats, before deciding what to do about nuclear diplomacy...

Unlike Western democracies where elections follow one another at a frantic pace, countries like Iran have time as an advantage. Their relationship to time is not the same as that of the West, which is that of elections.

And in the meantime, the centrifuges are spinning and Iran is reaching the nuclear threshold.

What are the alternative scenarios now that it is too late to save the JCPOA?

The draft resolution at the UN tabled by the Europeans and Americans calling on Iran to cooperate and provide explanations for the presence of nuclear material found at three sites not declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is unlikely to change this. It is too late for diplomacy. Too late to save the JCPOA.

So what are the alternative scenarios? An unstable and dangerous status quo? Or a new conflict in the Middle East? Israel, which has always been against the JCPOA and claims to be preparing for different scenarios against Iran, conducted an exercise this week in the Mediterranean and Red Sea with fighter jets and warships. Prime Minister Naftali Bennet said Israel was ready to use its "right to self-defense" to stop Iran's nuclear program if diplomacy fails.

While there is still no short-term solution to the war in Ukraine, a new conflict could arise in the Middle East in the months and years to come. The world is holding its breath.