For another, it would remove or circumvent the biggest obstacles in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme. The Iranians have long insisted on their right to peacefully enrich uranium, an activity that is explicitly allowed by both the international Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
As part of the consortium, they would still be doing that. But now their joint-venture partners and outside monitors would be able to verify that the uranium would be enriched only to a low grade, unsuitable for warheads.
MUCH TO LIKE ABOUT THE DEAL
The Saudis and Emiratis too would find much to like. They also want to get into the market for nuclear energy, and will need uranium. They could start enriching on their own (as countries such as Brazil and Japan do), but that would also enable them to build their own nukes in a hurry if they ever felt threatened by Iran or anybody else, which would in turn accelerate nuclear proliferation globally.
In the proposed scenario, they’d instead take their shares from the consortium.
And Trump? He wants to prove (especially to the committee in Oslo that hands out the Nobel Peace Prize) that he’s a “peacemaker”, and of course that he’s a consummate dealmaker.
The permanence of the new deal would allow him to claim that he negotiated something better than the JCPOA he cancelled in his first term. And by having US business in on the consortium, he could point to all the money they’ll soon be raking in.
It’s easy, of course, to see the prospects of such a consortium as implausible, and to view the Middle East, with its ancient hatreds and deadly weapons, as due for a major war. But that was said about Europe in 1951 too. Trump must stay ready to use force if needed; but first he should study this Iranian overture.
