August 28 marked a new, dramatic phase in the Iranian uranium enrichment saga, when the European trio of Britain, France and Germany triggered what is known as the snap-back sanctions mechanism under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) accord that US President Barack Obama reached with Iran in 2015.
The accord was guaranteed by a group of nations known as the P5+1, that is to say, the five permanent members of the United Nations' Security Council -- China, Britain, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany.
Obama created the group to bypass both the UN and the US Congress, which at the time seemed unlikely to ratify any deal with Iran. But to give the informal deal a pseudo-legal cachet, he also engineered a UN Security Council resolution to suspend sanctions imposed on Iran in seven previous UNSC resolutions.
At the time, that seemed a good deal for Iran and was hailed by then President Hassan Rouhani as "a great diplomatic victory," because all it demanded was that Iran not do what it has always said it wasn't doing and would never do: build nuclear weapons.
However, the JCPOA had a sting in the tail, which Iranian negotiators failed to notice: it promised to lift sanctions not to abolish them and included the snap-back mechanism which allows any two members of the P5+1 posse to demand re-imposition of sanctions if and when they feel Iran isn't delivering on its commitments under the UNSC Resolution 2231.
Years later, Iran's then Foreign Minister Muhammad-Javad Zarif confessed that he accepted the deal because he thought that to lift means to abolish, while not gauging the implications of the snap-back trick.
He and Rouhani had been dazzled by promises from the European trio to set up a special business transaction system for Iran known as Instex, allow Iranian banks to operate in Europe and offer routine import-export guarantees for trade with the Islamic Republic.
Ten years later, none of those promises has been fulfilled.
Instex has produced just one transaction, worth 500,000 euros, under which Iran bought medications from Germany. No Iranian bank has been allowed back in Europe and not a single import-export guarantee has been issued.
In other words, Tehran was sold a bundle of goods.
In exchange, Obama released some $1.5 billion in frozen Iranian assets and turned a blind eye to Tehran's activities in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza.
By reducing the problem with Iran to levels of uranium enrichment, set at below 6 percent, Obama created a false narrative. The problem isn't enriching uranium at any level; today, 18 nations do it without causing problems. The problem is who does the enriching and to what end.
In the case of Iran, there is no evidence that enrichment is aimed at producing warheads. Making the bomb starts with a decision, and four successive directors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and all US and European security organs have consistently said that this decision hasn't been taken.
In any event, Iran kept its enrichment at levels allowed by JCPOA for at least three years but received no reward.
However, because nothing concerning Iran is simple, a question arises: Why should a nation that doesn't want to make the bomb invest astronomical sums enriching piles of uranium that it doesn't need, cannot use for any peaceful purpose, and cannot sell?
Iran's enriched uranium can't be used to produce electricity because there are no nuclear power plants in Iran apart from one built by Moscow, with its uranium guaranteed by Russia to the end of its life-span in 2035, after which it would be decommissioned. Nor does Iran have any other nuclear plants planned, let alone under construction.
So, why is the nuclear project the single biggest investment the Islamic Republic of Iran has made in its 46 years of existence?
The project employs over 50,000 people working in 28 centers, some located deep under mountains, spread across 11 provinces. Its budget is treated as a top priority, even compared to crucial defense needs.
For example, Iran, as the recent 12-day war showed, cannot defend its skies because it lacks a proper air-defense system.
Since 2018, the Iranian military have demanded a budgetary supplement to seal Iran's 2,000-kilometer long borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan, to no avail.
According to President Massoud Pezeshkian, Iran needs over $1 trillion to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure of dams, roads, railways, seaports and airports, hospitals and schools.
Rehousing the 25 percent of Iranians who, according to official figures, live in insalubrious units, could be another priority.
Well, let me suggest an answer: I think for the leadership in Tehran, the nuclear project has become a matter of pride and honor and a means of claiming legitimacy.
In a speech this month, "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested as much by saying he would never curtail the project, as demanded by US President Donald Trump. "This is the greatest achievement of our people," he asserted.
In other words, we are dealing with a psycho-political case, in which pride and honor trump all other considerations.
History is full of similar cases.
The pyramids that Pharaohs in Egypt and Aztecs in Mexico built were of no practical use, but generated awe in admiration of the power that erected them. The pyramids drained resources and made Egypt vulnerable to attacks from Nubians in the south and the Hittites in the north, pushing pharaohs into the fog of history. The Aztecs suffered a similar fate.
In pre-Westphalian Europe, the building of cathedrals and châteaux spelled the same fate for principalities and kingdoms struck by folie de grandeur.
In a more mundane mode, some argue that building railways in the Victorian and Edwardian ages drained Britain's resources, leaving it vulnerable on the eve of World War I.
The railway-building madness, with cathedral-like stations, spread across the empire from Uxbridge to Uttar Pradesh and beyond to Patagonia.
In the 1960s, Richard Beeching, alias the butcher of railways, simply closed half of the useless lines that connected nowhere to nowhere.
The leadership in Tehran constantly compares its record with that of the previous regime in Iran and, despite undeniable achievements, feels uncomfortable. Everything it builds has been built before, often better. Everything except one thing: uranium enrichment.
The Shah's regime did have a nuclear program from 1959 onwards, but never enriched uranium. Thus, enrichment is the crown jewel of the Islamic Revolution. Demanding that it be dropped is hard to swallow and is seen by Tehran as a ploy to derail the regime. To insist on stopping the project is to prolong the crisis.
Enriching uranium or not, the Islamic Republic is a danger not only to the Iranian people but to peace and stability in the Middle East and beyond. US President Donald Trump's insistence on an accord to stop enrichment would be nothing but a distraction from that core issue.
Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.
Gatestone Institute would like to thank the author for his kind permission to reprint this article in slightly different form from Asharq Al-Awsat. He graciously serves as Chairman of Gatestone Europe.
