Explainer: Tehran’s civil nuclear programme far from dead

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on Wednesday that Iran would accelerate its civilian nuclear programme. He added, “Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation will suspend its cooperation with the IAEA until the security of the nuclear facilities is guaranteed.”

Three days after being hit by US’ bunker-buster bombs, it appears, Iran’s civil nuclear programme is not dead, rather could be back within months.

Even as the ceasefire between Iran and Israel announced on Monday, is now holding, signals from Tehran are clear, there is no rolling back its civilian nuclear programme.

Ironically, Iran’s nuclear programme started in 1960’s under a US backed ‘Atoms for peace’ launched by President Dwight D Eisenhower to share civilian nuclear technology with allies like Iran — then ruled by monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — a west-leaning Cold War-era partner.

Meanwhile an initial assessment, post the latest set of strikes, by the Defense Intelligence Agency under the US Department of Defense has concluded “key components of Iran’s programme, including centrifuges, were capable of being restarted within months”.

It may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites. The DIA, reports was based on a preliminary battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in West Asia.

IAEA had been implementing an inspection regime after Iran signed a 2015 accord called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This restricted Tehran’s nuclear activity in return for relief from US sanctions. The country’s co-operation with the IAEA declined after US President Donald Trump abandoned the JCPOA in 2018.

Hard-line opinions in Iran have been seeking a nuclear weapon — and not just a civil nuclear programme

Now, in the 1960’s, the ‘Atoms for Peace’ project led US to help install the Tehran Research Reactor, train Iranian scientists at institutions like MIT, and encouraging partnerships with European allies.

To Washington, it was to contain the Soviet’s. The Shah’s, ambitions grew and insisted on uranium enrichment – legal under the NPT. Post-Islamic Revolution, in the 1990’s Iran turned to Pakistan for designs and components of enrichment centrifuges. By the early 2000s, the world discovered Iran’s secret enrichment sites.

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