An agreement was tentatively reached on 21 October in Vienna between Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), France, Russia and the US. Details of the deal are still not public and the deal is not sealed yet (the Iranian delegation needs clearance from Tehran). Still, the general elements of the deal are known and they raise important questions and leave some critical matters of Iran’s nuclear dossier essentially unresolved. Iran has agreed to ship a significant share of its Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) stockpile to Russia for further enrichment. The fuel will then be processed into fuel rods and returned to Iran for use in its Tehran Research Reactor, under IAEA safeguards. Pending clarification of what additional elements the deal addresses and includes, here are five questions that presumably remain unanswered.

First, Iran has no right to enrich uranium — not since the UN Security Council said so in five successive Chapter VII resolutions that were triggered by the fact that the IAEA had found Iran in noncompliance of its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations. By negotiating a deal over its illegally enriched uranium that does not even ensure immediate suspension of all future enrichment activities, the U.S., Russia and France — the three powers negotiating in Vienna — will effectively undermine the UN Security Council and hand a victory to Iran: its enrichment can continue.

Second, unless Iran’s enrichment activities are verifiably suspended, the deal will gain only a little time for the international community. Part of the reason for the deal stems from a desire to reduce Iran’s LEU stockpile to the point where Iran does not have sufficient declared fissile material to build a nuclear weapon (once it has been reprocessed). It is generally agreed that the minimum quantity of LEU required to do that is approximately one ton — and under the deal Iran would transfer more than that. But Iran is currently capable of enriching approximately 2.77 kilograms of uranium per day at least according to recent IAEA reports. At that pace, Iran would replenish the stockpile in less than a year if enrichment continues.

Third, the deal does not appear to address the issue of undeclared nuclear sites. Given that Iran is still refusing to provide design information for the new nuclear-power plant it intends to build in Darkhovin, and given the recent exposure of the underground clandestine enrichment facility at an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base near Qom, any Western offer of the kind under discussion should obtain, at a minimum, an Iranian agreement to immediately implement the Additional Protocol that it signed (but not ratified) in late 2003 and that stipulates, inter alia, that under new provisions, facilities must undergo IAEA supervision from the moment they are being planned and not from the moment nuclear material is introduced into the facilities.

Fourth, the deal appears to stand in contradiction to various clauses in the aforementioned UN resolutions, which expressly forbid third countries from taking nuclear material from Iran and prevents Iran from exporting it abroad. A negotiated deal of this kind stands against the UN resolutions in more than one way, in that, it would require the Security Council to reverse itself — a dramatic and unprecedented step, which, no doubt, will be noticed and taken stock of by any other nation planning to build a clandestine nuclear program in its own backyard.

Fifth, reportedly, the deal is silent about Iran’s ongoing breach of all its other NPT obligations and says nothing of the need for Iran to comply — or indeed to change course on the path of transparency and allow the IAEA to conduct a full, unrestricted series of controls across the country.

Unless these matters are addressed in the deal, Iran can hail it as a significant victory, where it gave up little in exchange for a significant set of concessions from the international community.