In a sign of hope for diplomacy over war, the U.S. and Iran began engaging in serious, high level negotiations over Iran’s civilian nuclear program in April for the first time since President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal seven years ago.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has fully empowered his team to negotiate, with one firm limitation: they cannot negotiate “the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.” So bold is Khamenei’s red line on not negotiating away the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes that he has made it clear to past negotiators that “if Iran is to abandon its right to enrich, it will either have to happen after my death, or I will have to resign from leadership.”
Trump, though, recently posted that “Under our potential Agreement — WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM!”
An innovative solution for bridging this deal-ending divide has emerged. It is not clear who first suggested it. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, says that the Omani mediators made proposals that removed obstacles. Other reports credit Iran with the idea. Others say it was suggested by Oman and adopted by the United States.
The idea is that Iran joins Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in a nuclear enrichment consortium. In some versions, other regional partners are also included. Such a consortium could resolve the paradox created by the American demand that Iran give up its uranium enrichment and Iran’s insistence that it will never give up its uranium enrichment. Components of the enrichment process would be spread across countries with each sharing all but none fully possessing all. Iran could have its enriched uranium, but Iran could not fully enrich uranium.
The plan has the potential to satisfy two goals of the U.S. and its partners. Not only could a regional consortium prevent Iran from engaging in the full enrichment process, granting Saudi Arabia a membership in the enrichment consortium may assuage Saudi Arabia’s felt need to enrich uranium independently and, so, help solve the regional proliferation threat.
The idea of a nuclear consortium is older than the Islamic State of Iran. Barbara Slavin, distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, told RS that the suggestion was made by the U.S. to the Shah. It is often forgotten that it was the U.S. who first suggested Iran develop a nuclear power program. Secretary of State Kissinger said it would provide “for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export,” and declassified documents reveal that the Ford administration “endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry.”
Princeton physicist Frank von Hippel told RS that there have been many versions of the nuclear consortium idea. Iran has even broached precursors to the idea in the past. In 2005, Hassan Rouhani, then Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, offered to share Iran’s enrichment technology with other Persian Gulf States. The same year, then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the U.N. that Iran was “prepared to engage in serious partnership with… other countries in the implementation of [an] uranium enrichment program in Iran.”
The modern incarnation is similar to an idea first proposed by von Hippel and former Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian in a 2023 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that argued that a multinational consortium in the Middle East could ensure that uranium is produced only for peaceful purposes.
Von Hippel says that the idea was inspired by the 1971 URENCO enrichment consortium of Germany, the Netherlands and Britain and by the ABAAAC consortium of Brazil and Argentina. In the URENCO consortium, one country makes the centrifuges, one designs next-generation centrifuges and the third hosts the headquarters.
The advantage, he says, is that a consortium allows nuclear experts from each country to “visit each other’s facilities to assure themselves that the activities are peaceful.” He adds that “decisions that might have proliferation implications are made by the [partner] governments.” Saudi Arabia’s, the Emirates’ and Iran’s watchful eyes would all help the International Atomic Energy Agency ensure that the program is peaceful.
The key question has always been whether Iran will be allowed to enrich uranium on its own soil. And nothing has changed now. Mousavian says that nuclear negotiations with Iran have failed when its right as a signatory to the nuclear non proliferation treaty (NPT) to peaceful uranium enrichment have been denied, and they have succeeded when that right was granted. The key question now in negotiations is whether Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium on its own soil. Since the consortium story broke, the answer to that question has swung back and forth on a reporting pendulum.
The first reports, on May 13, said that Iran would continue to enrich uranium but accept a cap at the 3.67% enrichment required by a nuclear energy program.
Days later, the reporting had changed. Axiosreported that the U.S. wants the enrichment facilities to be outside Iran. The New York Times reported that the document the U.S. gave Iran “calls for Iran to cease all enrichment of uranium.”
By June 2, the reporting had become more nuanced. Axiossaid the U.S. proposal “would allow limited low-level uranium enrichment on Iranian soil for a to-be-determined period of time.” At the same time, Reuters was still reporting that the U.S. was demanding that Iran “commit to scrapping uranium enrichment.”
Reuters said that, as a result of the denial of their right to enrich, "Iran is drafting a negative response to the U.S. proposal.”
The next day, Axiosreported that, according to a senior Iranian official, “If the consortium operates within the territory of Iran, it may warrant consideration. However, should it be based outside the borders of the country, it is certainly doomed to fail.” According to Axios, “the proposal doesn't clearly define where the consortium would be located.” The New York Times agreed, but added that “the United States has said it cannot be in Iran.”
Part of the confusion was undoubtedly because the document the U.S. handed Iran was not a fully developed text but “preliminary ideas” to be discussed in upcoming talks. Furthermore, Iranian officials say the proposal is “vaguely worded on many of the most important issues.” Araghchi says that “a lot of issues… are unclear” and that there are “many ambiguities.”
But part of the confusion may have been because of partial reporting. As the parts are put together, a pattern emerges that seems to resolve the paradox. The reports of continued enrichment are reports of an interim period; the reports of no enrichment are reports of the final goal.
On June 3, the Times reported that while enrichment facilities were being built in other countries, Iran could continue low level enrichment, which would stop when the new facilities were operational.
The problem is that Iran is unlikely to agree to join a consortium that prohibits it from enriching on its own soil. One possible solution, proposed by von Hippel, Mousavian and their colleagues at Princeton, is to let Iran enrich but not on its own soil. In this plan, Iran would build centrifuges and ship them to a partner country where Iranian technicians would operate them.
Another solution, which was first proposed by von Hippel about a decade ago, and now, reportedly being discussed, is to build the enrichment facility on an island in the Persian Gulf. Iran would insist the island be one of theirs, allowing the U.S. to insist that uranium is not being enriched on Iranian soil, while Iran can insist that it is.
Iran is likely to refuse a proposal that insists it surrenders its right to enrich both because, as Slavin told RS, of the country’s well-founded suspicions about the reliability of external sources, and because, as Mousavian told me, denying Iran a right that is granted to every other signatory of the NPT “constitutes a national humiliation.”
The ability to negotiate this detail in the consortium will likely determine if the consortium proposal saves the negotiations or not.
