Iran launched the idea of a consortium of the Middle East country – notably Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (Water) – to enrich uranium, in an effort to overcome American objections to its continuous enrichment program.
The proposal is considered a way to lock the Gulf States to support Iran’s position that it should be authorized to maintain enrichment capacities.
Tehran considers the proposal as a concession, because it would give the neighboring states access to its technological knowledge and made stakeholders in the process.
It is not clear if Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, made the proposal in relatively brief talks of three hours with the United States in Oman on Sunday, the fourth set of such talks, but the proposal would be in circulation in Tehran.
After the talks, Araghchi flew to Dubai where he spoke to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The United Arab Emirates do not enroll uranium for its own nuclear program.
The consortium would be based on Iranian installations with an enrichment rendered at the levels of 3.67% set out in the original nuclear agreement of 2015 between Tehran and six world powers, which Donald Trump finished unilaterally in 2018.
The United States has demanded that Iran end the enrichment and dismantle all its nuclear installations. But in the midst of the divisions in Washington, Trump did not make a final decision on the issue and praised the gravity of Iran in talks.
The idea of the consortium was proposed for the first time by the former Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hosavian and the physicist of Princeton, Frank von Hippel, long before the current discussions of Tehran-Washington, in an article widely read in October 2023 in the bulletin of atomic scientists.
As part of the consortium, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates would be shareholders and donors and would have access to Iranian technology. The involvement of the Gulf States could be considered additional insurance that the Iran’s nuclear program was for fully civil purposes and not the way to build a bomb, as Israel affirms.
If the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates were authorized to send engineers to Iran, an additional form of visibility on the program would become possible, leaving the international community less dependent only for the work of the UN nuclear inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran gradually moved away from the levels of enrichment and limits of stocks set out in the 2015 initial agreement, blaming Trump for leaving the nuclear agreement. The Iranian Foreign Affairs Deputy Minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, said: “For a limited period, we can accept a series of restrictions on the level and volume of enrichment.”
The United States initially gave the impression that it needs an agreement with Iran within two months of the start of the talks, but, as the technical details of any agreement become more complex, it is possible that the talks are allowed to walk throughout the summer.
Iran currently enriches uranium at 60% purity – well above the limit of 3.67% in the 2015 agreement, and a short technical step of 90% necessary for the quality of weapons. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said these uranium enrichment levels are much higher than necessary for civil uses.
In what could have been a reference to the Iranian proposal, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Badr Al Busaidi, referred to “useful and original ideas reflecting a shared wish to achieve an honorable agreement”.
The United Arab Emirates exploit a civil nuclear power plant called Barakah, located west of Abu Dhabi. It is the first nuclear power plant in the Arab world to be fully operational, with the four reactors now online, and should be able to produce a quarter of the water’s electricity needs.
