The recent snapback of international sanctions marks the formal—and final—end to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. That deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, was working at keeping Iran’s program contained until the United States withdrew in 2018. In the years since, it had eroded beyond any reasonable repair.
Snapback was more than warranted. The sunset date for exercising this unique feature of the JCPOA was rapidly approaching, and Iranian nuclear escalations were ongoing. Particularly worrying was Tehran’s production of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity—a level that can be used directly in a nuclear bomb—and lack of cooperation with international inspectors. Bluntly, even though Iran was not the first to abandon the JCPOA’s requirements, these provocations crossed the line.
The Israeli and U.S. military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June severely degraded its nuclear program but did not end the country’s ability to make a nuclear bomb. Achieving this goal will require diplomacy.
In fact, this is an ideal moment for the United States to shape the trajectory of Iran’s nuclear ambitions by forging a new cooperative approach to nuclear energy in the Middle East. Under this plan, Washington and its partners would help the region build a nuclear fuel cycle that was spread across multiple countries or potentially developed jointly by them. This approach, combined with enhanced international inspections, would make it very difficult and costly for any country to build a bomb—while still promoting the use of nuclear technology for energy, medicine, and other peaceful purposes.
If done right, this plan would accelerate nuclear development, bolster guardrails against nuclear proliferation, and enhance regional security and economic growth.
The idea of regional fuel cycle approaches is not new. In fact, Iranian officials raised the possibility during the 2015 JCPOA negotiations. It was not practical then, but times have changed in ways that make it more feasible today. The United Arab Emirates has successfully completed the construction of four large nuclear reactors, and it is looking to apply its nuclear-building skills beyond its borders. Egypt and Turkey are well on their way to constructing their first power reactors. Saudi Arabia has expressed a strong interest in nuclear energy, as has Jordan.
At the same time, international support for nuclear energy expansion has grown substantially. More than 30 countries have committed to triple nuclear energy globally by 2050. International financial institutions, such as the World Bank, have reversed bans on investing in nuclear energy, clearing the way for new financing opportunities. Within the United States, the Trump administration has also committed to nuclear energy deployment domestically and internationally. These developments position the international community to help realize a safe and secure regional fuel cycle in the Persian Gulf.
A regional nuclear condominium would have obvious benefits. Most importantly, it would provide assurance that no country in the region is pursuing a nuclear weapon. Why? Because under this approach, the fuel cycle would be spread across multiple countries, sensitive technologies would be subject to multinational control, and adoption of enhanced transparency measures would be required. All countries in the region could contribute to and benefit from an economically attractive clean nuclear energy initiative. The United States and European countries, for their part, could benefit from helping to strengthen markets in the Gulf region. If all parties agree, they might also participate in various regional fuel cycle activities.
This arrangement would rest on four pillars. First, that Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and other regional parties have access to all aspects of a peaceful nuclear program. Second, the international community must have rock-solid confidence that Iran and all other parties are not pursuing nuclear weapons. Monitoring from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would provide the foundation for that confidence.
These first two pillars are consistent with the essential bargain of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT): States without nuclear weapons have access to peaceful applications of nuclear technologies in exchange for not pursuing nuclear weapons. Almost every country in the Middle East is already a party to the NPT as a nonnuclear-weapon state.
But countries signing up to this new arrangement must go further. This leads to pillar three: Only those countries that are in good standing with their NPT commitments and willing to accept additional robust monitoring and verification measures can be part of this new framework. Crucially, this includes short deadlines for inspector access and further measures designed to detect work on a nuclear weapon.
Fourth, the United States and its partners would provide technical and financial support to expedite the regional scaling of nuclear energy and underpin the necessary supply chain. The heart of U.S. assistance would require regional reactor “order books,” or group orders, for a small number of specific types of utility-scale reactors to be determined through negotiations.
To supply the fuel for these reactors without raising proliferation concerns, parties would divide and conquer the fuel cycle, with each taking responsibility for a particular step in the chain. This arrangement would make it much harder for a party to build a nuclear arsenal. Moreover, if a country were caught cheating, it could be removed from the program, thereby cratering its nuclear energy program.
Ultimately, it will be up to the countries involved to decide who hosts which part. That said, current interests and capabilities suggest a few leading contenders: Saudi Arabia’s emerging mining and milling capabilities could make it a strong candidate for hosting a facility to convert uranium to a form suitable for enrichment. The United Arab Emirates would be a logical option for fuel fabrication given its successfully completed reactors and plans to build a fuel fabrication facility on Emirati territory.
Enrichment is clearly the most sensitive fuel cycle capability given that it can be misused to create weapons-usable nuclear materials. The fact that Iran enriched more than 400 kilograms of uranium to 60 percent for no plausible civilian purpose underscores this point. To prevent this from happening again, no enrichment would occur in mainland Iran. Instead, the United Nation could be given a 99-year lease to administer either a Gulf island—possibly an Iranian one—or land in another Middle Eastern country, such as Oman.
The IAEA would closely monitor all enrichment activities. The facility could be based on a consortium model, chosen through a competitive technology-selection process. This might resemble Europe’s Urenco enrichment corporation, a cooperative arrangement governed by the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands, with strict controls on technology access. Either the IAEA or an alternative organization deemed acceptable to the international community would need long-term rights and access control to the location.
In addition, the creation of new regional fuel banks could reassure countries that their access to nuclear fuel won’t be denied or disrupted. The banks would hold a secure supply of nuclear fuel for each country in accordance with the reactor types that had been selected. Each fuel bank would operate as a business, supplying fuel and restocking on a rolling basis. The existing IAEA Low-Enriched Uranium Bank in Kazakhstan could provide the material for fuel fabrication.
As the condominium’s parties embark on building a new regional nuclear supply chain, they must also strengthen their nonproliferation standards. To close off the other route to a nuclear weapon—producing plutonium—countries should commit to not reprocessing spent fuel.
Monitoring and verification would need to be significantly enhanced as well—and updated in accordance with evolving nuclear proliferation challenges. In addition to having an Additional Protocol (which provides international inspectors with access to undeclared sites), all states should accept supplemental, enhanced monitoring and verification techniques aimed at quickly detecting undeclared activities. This would include specific timelines for inspector access to sites and an adjudication process of the sort that was included in the JCPOA.
Countries receiving or developing nuclear energy technology as part of this framework would also need to accept monitoring and verification to detect weaponization-related activities. This would require additional funding for the IAEA so that it has the financial and technical resources to carry out this work.
The benefit of incorporating other countries—and not just Iran—into this framework is that all would be required to sign up to the same restrictions on nuclear activities and accept the same transparency measures. Iran has long objected to being singled out and forced to accept onerous limits and inspections (even if these measures were more than justified by Tehran’s behavior). This approach would avoid that problem by raising the bar for everyone, and indeed, it could eventually provide a model for expanding the scope of IAEA safeguards more broadly.
So what is the diplomatic path for realizing this ambitious plan? With U.N. sanctions snapped back, all parties can start from a clean slate.
First, Iran would be required to eliminate its 60 percent uranium through either dilution or shipment out of the country and restore cooperation with the IAEA at least to the levels seen under the JCPOA. In return, the United States and its European allies would commit to facilitating public and private sector investment in Iran following the completion of a new agreement. This commitment would also involve facilitating investment in nuclear energy projects.
While those steps would not magically restore mutual trust, they would prepare the way for fruitful negotiations with the United States, Europe, and other key players. The other partners in the original Iran deal, including Russia and China, would also be invited to play a constructive role (as they did in those negotiations) in structuring a regional nuclear initiative, but the process should proceed with or without their involvement.
Given Iran’s distrust of the international community, it is unlikely to abandon enrichment on Day 1 of the new deal. Iran could be allowed to temporarily continue with tightly controlled enrichment activities (such as limiting its domestic enriched uranium stockpile to 300 kilograms of uranium enriched to less than 5 percent purity). Once the new regional fuel cycle is online, Iran would end domestic enrichment in favor of regional enrichment.
In exchange for Tehran’s willingness to end enrichment on the Iranian mainland and accept strong transparency measures, the United States, Europe, and perhaps others would commit to helping Iran build its civilian nuclear energy program, including through facilitating direct investment from the private sector. U.S. foreign direct investment would be available to all regional parties to the agreement. Investments in other sectors of the Iranian and regional economies could also be part of a broader agreement that advances global economic integration with the Gulf countries.
Other Gulf states would benefit considerably from this approach by gaining Western support for developing their nuclear capacities. Perhaps even more important, resolving the Iran issue would allow other Gulf states to focus on ambitious plans for diversifying their economies beyond hydrocarbon production.
This endeavor would not be easy and would require all countries involved to make tough choices. But ultimately, it would put the security and economic well-being of the United States, Iran, and the entire Middle East on a more positive and sustainable path.