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Opinion | Alan Berger

Iran’s desperation, isolation led to deal

Contrary to the claims of some critics, the interim nuclear deal Iran has signed in Geneva qualifies as a diplomatically disguised capitulation by the Islamic Republic.

Under the terms of the temporary accord, Iran must cap enrichment of uranium, freeze current stockpiles, and abstain from installing advanced centrifuges. Tehran also accepts more intrusive monitoring and agrees to answer crucial questions about any past pursuit of the means to manufacture and deliver a nuclear weapon. In return, Iran merely achieves access to about $7 billion in its own frozen funds. Devastating restrictions on Iranian oil sales remain in place, as do the banking and financial sanctions that have effectively crippled Iran’s economy.

The critical question to ask about the six-month deal is whether it will culminate in a comprehensive agreement that prevents Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon capability — or whether it will merely allow Iran to keep striking more temporary deals that do not prevent it from becoming a nuclear weapons state.

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Another, very different anxiety is shared by the Saudi royals and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have been issuing vehement denunciations of the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran. They fear that the Geneva negotiations will succeed, crushing sanctions will be lifted, and Iran and the United States will then enter into a kind of détente, or rapprochement — diplomatic terms meant to describe cooperation between states that, without being allies, seek ways to advance geopolitical interests they have in common.

Both sides stand to benefit from a transformed relationship. Although the Revolutionary Guard commanders and clerics who rule Iran maintain a ruthless police state, they now find themselves embattled within and without. They confront an economy devastated by sanctions. Their blatant backing for the war criminal Bashar Assad in Syria has turned much of the Sunni Arab world against Iran.

The involvement of Shiite Iran in Syria’s civil war has raised the specter of a region-wide conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. To make matters worse, Iran’s willingness to dispatch its ally, Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah, into Syria to fight for Assad has ruined the once heroic reputation of Hezbollah in the Arab world.

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Iran today is very much on the defensive. It shares with Washington a need to roll back the incursions of Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq and Syria. It looks out on a de facto anti-Iran alliance that includes not only the Gulf Arab states and Israel along with the US, but also the European and Asian powers imposing unprecedented sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Tehran cannot break out of its isolation without striking a nuclear deal. After such a deal is achieved, Iranian leaders will need a modicum of cooperation with Washington if they hope to counter the regional threat from Al Qaeda, whose holy warriors commonly justify their bombings of Shiite Iraqis by calling them Iranians, thereby invoking two longstanding conflicts: one between Arabs and Iranians, the other between Sunnis and Shiites.

Washington and Tehran have the same enemies from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan. They cooperated in the past against Al Qaeda and the Taliban and they could do so in the future.

Iran, the United States, Israel, and the Saudi royal family share a profound interest in preventing the establishment of an Al Qaeda emirate across a great swath of the Middle East. The chances of those disparate actors forging a regional front against Al Qaeda would improve greatly if Israel were to reach a just peace with the Palestinians and the Saudis were to grant full rights to their Shiite citizens.

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Americans dubious about the chances for a deal on Iran’s nuclear program leading to détente between Washington and Tehran need only recall FDR cooperating with Stalin against Hitler or Nixon and Mao acting to balance the power of the Soviet Union. As the old adage goes, states have no friends, only interests.


Alan Berger wrote foreign affairs editorials for the Globe for 29 years.