Iran is Cutting its Losses with a Nuclear Deal

By Thomas Juneau

Published on War on the Rocks, July 7, 2015

This week will likely — and finally — witness the dénouement of the longstanding nuclear dispute between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany). Now that we’ve reached the July 7 deadline, there appears to be a strong chance that the negotiations will result in an agreement. Predictably, this has led to a wave of criticism against the Obama administration. For many critics, in particular, a key problem with the deal is that it will inevitably unshackle Iran’s power and consolidate its place as a rapidly rising regional hegemon.

Tehran’s optimal outcome from these talks is not to consolidate its regional preponderance but rather to cut its losses after years of mounting sanctions and isolation.

Yet Iran does not come close to having the power necessary for the hegemony that anti-Iran hawks in the United States, Israel, and the Sunni Middle East fret over, and a nuclear deal will not change this reality. Iran’s power is brittle: its conventional military is increasingly obsolescent, its economy is strangulated by sanctions and mismanagement, and the country is more diplomatically isolated than it has been for decades. As it finalizes negotiations with the P5+1, Iran is dealing from a position of weakness, not strength. The status quo is, for the Islamic Republic, excessively and increasingly costly. Tehran’s optimal outcome from these talks is not to consolidate its regional preponderance but rather to cut its losses after years of mounting sanctions and isolation.

What Iran has achieved and not achieved with its nuclear program is illustrative of the broader failures of its foreign policy. The program has indisputably provided Iran with some benefits. The country has developed expertise and infrastructure in the nuclear field, which will bring economic gains over the long term. It has also allowed Iran to constrain U.S. options, an important objective of its foreign policy. For Washington, years of negotiations within the P5+1 have been costly: They have exposed divisions with the Europeans and forced difficult negotiations with Russia and China. The latter two, in particular, know the high price Washington attaches to the issue and have thus been able to force repeated dilutions of sanctions. This has kept the United States out of the Iranian market while allowing Russian and Chinese companies to increase their access.

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On the basis of another indicator of influence — the ability to set the terms of the regional debate — Iran has also had some limited success. Its efforts over the years emphasized that negotiations are a pretext for American bullying designed to prevent Iran, a developing nation, from acquiring advanced technology. At a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in 2006, for example, the 118 member states reaffirmed “the basic and inalienable rights of all states to develop research, production, and use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes,” implicitly supporting Iran’s position. The summit statement also called for the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East and for Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — standard Iranian positions. Tehran succeeded in inserting its preferred wording into the statement, but this had no discernible effect on the nuclear dispute. As has often been the case, Iran scored a tactical rhetorical win but failed to make a tangible and sustainable gain…..

Read the rest of this article at War on the Rocks

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