One of the major sticking points in negotiating the Geneva agreement was reportedly the question whether Iran has the “right” to enrich uranium.The question has two dimensions, one of them technical, the other silly.
Iran claims that the agreement recognizes its enrichment rights. The Obama administration denies this. However, the agreement explicitly permits Iran to continue enriching uranium within certain flimsy limits, and the hoped-for comprehensive agreement contemplates a “mutually defined enrichment programme.” So the Obama administration certainly does accept Iran’s right to enrich uranium. But either way, nothing the administration says or doesn’t say about Iran’s rights has any bearing on what those rights are, because the U.S. is just another sovereign state.
As a technical matter, under international law, Iran clearly does not have the right to enrich uranium. As a signatory to the United Nations Charter, Iran has an obligation to obey the Security Council, which has adopted no fewer than six resolutions prohibiting Iran’s continued uranium enrichment as a threat to the peace under Chapter VII. Iran does not dispute the meaning of those resolutions; it rejects their legitimacy outright, which is the same as rejecting the U.N. Charter. So until those resolutions are rescinded by the Security Council, Iran is not just in violation of international law, but in open abrogation of the charter. It has a right to enrich uranium in the sense that it has a right to withdraw from the U.N. Charter, which it has in effect done, though we pretend it hasn’t. But so long as we’re all pretending that Iran is still a member state in good standing, it categorically does not have the right to enrich uranium, and no agreement taken outside Security Council auspices can change that.
But, like most of Iran’s diplomatic talking points, this question of nuclear rights is ultimately quite silly. Iran has a right to a nuclear program just like we have a right to destroy it if it’s a threat to the peace, which it is, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking about this.