Six world powers (the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) and Iran have failed to reach an agreement over Teheran’s nuclear development programme by the November 24 deadline, but thankfully agreed to extend talks for seven months. The aim is to reach a political agreement by March 1, 2015, and conclude the technical details of the deal by July 1.
No deal is, of course, better than a bad deal, so the news that all sides agreed to extend the deadline by another seven months is very much to be welcomed. Such an agreement has the potential to change the dynamics of the politics of the Middle East, to enable Iran to play a constructive role in the region and to open a new chapter in US-Iranian relations – which if both sides become less suspicious of each other could contribute greatly to regional stability.
US Secretary of State John Kerry and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius both said that progress had been made on key issues, including on limiting Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium, the key stumbling block during the talks. Mr Kerry said that “real and substantial progress” had been made, but acknowledged significant differences between the two sides, and said the talks are “going to stay tough”. In the end, no agreement was reached, but all parties seem willing to go the extra mile and continue the talks over the next seven months.
A nuclear pact with Iran is indeed desirable; a failure to reach a deal over the next seven months could lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, such as to countries like Saudi Arabia, or an Israeli military strike against Iran. Either development would be an absolute disaster and would lead to a new cycle of instability and turmoil in the region.
All six powers negotiating with Iran have an important role to play in these talks but there is little doubt that the US is the major player, the one with the most clout and the one which will ultimately decide if an agreement is to be reached or not. Unfortunately, the US and Iran are mutually suspicious of each other and have a rather turbulent history of relations that has done nothing to help the negotiations.
A look at the last 60 years shows why this suspicion exists. In 1953, the US (and UK) orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, who had planned to nationalise Iran’s oil industry. The US then installed the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, whose excessively pro-American policies and reign of terror alienated much of the population.
A nuclear deal has the potential to change the dynamics of the politics of the Middle East
The Shah was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution led by religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The new regime in Teheran was ferociously anti-American and allowed the US Embassy to be stormed and its diplomats taken hostage. The hostages were eventually freed after 444 days in captivity, but the whole episode severely damaged US-Iranian relations for the next three decades.
On July 3, 1988, the American warship USS Vincennes shot down an Iran Air flight in the Gulf, killing all 290 people on board, mistaking it for a fighter jet. A few months later, on December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board. Although Libya was later implicated in this bombing it is widely believed that Iran was somehow involved in this atrocity, probably as a revenge attack for the downing of the Iran Air plane.
Although Iran was ruled by President Mohammad Khatami, a ‘moderate reformist’ from 1997 to 2005, no real thaw in relations took place with Washington, and President George W. Bush included Teheran in his 2002 ‘Axis of evil’ speech – considered by many to be a mistake. In 2002, news reports first emerged that Iran was developing nuclear facilities, including a uranium enrichment plant.
The election of the populist fanatical Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, in 2005, plunged relations with the US to a new low, as did his flawed re-election in 2009. During a 2010 speech at the UN, for example, Ahmadinejad claimed that most people believed the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks.
A real hope for an improvement in ties between the US and Iran, however, came in 2013 with the election of the reformist Hassan Rouhani. On September 27 last year, during a trip to New York, Rouhani held a phone call with President Barack Obama – the first conversation between US and Iranian heads of state for 30 years.
As a result of Rouhani’s election, and, I believe, the presence of a level-headed person in the White House, the possibility of a landmark nuclear deal with Iran is a very real possibility, despite the many obstacles, including very hardline elements in the Iranian Parliament and Revolutionary Guards as well as the final decision being in the hands of Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni.
Hopefully, an agreement, which will see the lifting of sanctions against Teheran, will lead to an Iran more at ease with itself, more open to the outside world and more willing to bring about economic and political reforms. This will be a slow process, as Iran is not a democracy, but neither is it, as The Economist recently said, “a straightforward dictatorship”.
There are various factions of clerics, politicians, soldiers and businessmen who have various degrees of influence and authority, and the country’s Parliament cannot be considered a rubber stamp for the government.
The size of educated middle class sector, furthermore, is on the increase, so the potential for a slow but steady path to more democracy and pluralism is there. A viable nuclear pact, which will help the country concentrate on political and economic reform, will be a good step in that direction.