By Shyam Bhatia
London, July 14, 2025. When the Iran nuclear agreement — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — was signed in 2015, its architects claimed it blocked Tehran’s path to the bomb. In return for lifting sanctions, Iran agreed to strict limits on uranium enrichment, plutonium reprocessing, and access for international inspectors. For a brief window, the world breathed easier.
But that window has long since closed. The United States pulled out in 2018. Iran has resumed enrichment to near-weapons grade. Talks on reviving the deal have faltered. Yet, curiously, the JCPOA still shapes how the world views Iran’s nuclear programme — and what it chooses to ignore.
Even today, Iran invokes the JCPOA to claim the moral high ground. It tells the IAEA it is the aggrieved party. European diplomats still refer to the deal as the most viable path forward. And intelligence assessments continue to be benchmarked against the JCPOA’s breakout timelines.
“The JCPOA doesn’t cover all weaponisation aspects… It focuses on fissile material, not on triggers, delivery systems, or tritium. These gaps matter,” said Olli Heinonen, former Deputy Director-General of the IAEA, in a 2018 policy briefing.
What’s most dangerous is what the deal left out — three areas central to modern nuclear weapons design: tritium production, laser enrichment, and neutron initiators. All are essential to a compact, efficient, and deliverable bomb. And all were largely unregulated by the JCPOA.
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that boosts the yield of fission weapons and is essential to thermonuclear devices. It is short-lived and must be continually replenished, but it can be produced with modest technology — such as in particle accelerators or heavy water reactors. The JCPOA imposed no restrictions on tritium at all.
“The JCPOA does not limit Iran’s ability to produce tritium… Tritium is not a fissile material, but it is essential for boosted fission weapons and modern thermonuclear designs,” wrote David Albright and Andrea Stricker in Iran’s Perilous Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons (2021).
Iran’s Arak reactor, reconfigured under the deal, once had tritium production potential. Today, Iran could develop tritium capabilities elsewhere under the guise of medical research or fusion studies — and no one would know.
Laser isotope separation (especially AVLIS — atomic vapor laser isotope separation) allows uranium to be enriched without centrifuges. It leaves a minimal footprint, can be done in small facilities, and is exceptionally hard to detect. Yet despite this, the JCPOA focused entirely on centrifuge-based enrichment.
In 2003, the IAEA confirmed Iran had pursued laser enrichment for over a decade:
“Iran acknowledged that it had conducted laser enrichment experiments between 1991 and 2003 at various laboratories,” reported IAEA GOV/2003/75.
“Laser enrichment, if developed and deployed, would be very difficult to detect,” said Robert Einhorn, a former US State Department nonproliferation official, at a Brookings panel discussion in July 2015. “It doesn’t require the footprint centrifuges do.”
If Iran has continued AVLIS research — even on a laboratory scale — it represents a stealthy, unmonitored path to the bomb.
No nuclear device works without a neutron initiator — a small device that creates a burst of neutrons to trigger the chain reaction at precisely the right instant. Typically made from polonium-beryllium or uranium-deuteride, these devices are compact and easily concealed.
The JCPOA imposed no lasting restriction on initiator development. And according to the IAEA:
“Iran conducted a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device… including work on neutron initiators,” noted IAEA GOV/2015/68, published in December 2015.
“Iran had a structured programme and it went quite far… The neutron initiator work they did was clearly weapons-related,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, former US State Department official and senior fellow at IISS, in a Guardian interview that year.
Iran insists this work was historical. But without clear inspections, it’s impossible to verify whether that research has resumed — especially under military cover.
Even in disrepair, the JCPOA is not dead. It is a ghost. It remains the reference framework for the IAEA, for European diplomacy, and — crucially — for Iran’s own arguments. It shapes not only what is monitored, but what is ignored.
“There’s a misconception that stopping enrichment is enough,” said David Albright in a 2015 PBS Frontline interview.
“A real nuclear weapons programme is much more than fissile material — it’s about the bomb design, the initiators, the materials no one talks about.”
As the international community debates how to engage Iran once again, we would do well to remember: the greatest risks lie in the silences of the last deal. Tritium, lasers, and neutron initiators may not have been part of the JCPOA. But they may very well be part of the next bomb.
Note: This is second of a three part series on Iran’s Nuclear Programme.
The Return of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s Ghost: Who’s Really in Charge of Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions?
