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A satirical newspaper in the United States recently ran a headline: “Middle East Quickly Running Out Of Land Area For Violence To Spill Over To.” They quoted a fictitious United Nations analyst, who stated “As more and more of the region’s land area is consumed by armed struggles such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war against ISIS, ongoing rebellions in Yemen and Egypt, and widespread strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the available square footage in which these clashes can further spread is becoming increasingly scarce.”
It is in this context that the recently announced framework agreement between Iran, the United States and other international members involved in the negotiations should be looked at. The last thing the region needs is a nuclear-armed Iran. The only thing worse might be a series of American or Israeli air strikes on Iran, followed in all likelihood a few years later by an angrier nuclear Iran.
Harsher sanctions in the absence of an agreement would no doubt weaken Iran to some extent, which would please Israel, Saudi Arabia and many others. Such sanctions would be very unlikely to stop the regime in Teheran from attaining nuclear weapons should it decide to do so, however. To understand this, we need only consider North Korea, which has been subject to a far more stringent and comprehensive ensemble of sanctions and isolation than anything the United States and her allies could ever successfully impose on Iran. North Korea got the bomb anyhow.
For this reason, any agreement that seriously holds forth the prospect of preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons is good news. The details of the framework agreement revealed last week appear to fit the bill. Stringent inspections, decommissioning of most of Iran’s centrifuges (14,000 of 20,000), surrender of most of the country’s enriched uranium (97%), and the dismantling of the plutonium plant at Arak are not small concessions on Iran’s part. The agreement even apparently includes restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program.
If all the sanctions were lifted the day after they signed on the dotted line, the Iranians could then proceed to play games with the inspectors, hide more nuclear facilities and activities (which they have done more than once in the past) and essentially renege on their commitments. 
In return, Iran understandably wants the international sanctions lifted. The main problem is that sanctions take a good deal of time, legislation, work and political capital to implement. If all the sanctions were lifted the day after they signed on the dotted line, the Iranians could then proceed to play games with the inspectors, hide more nuclear facilities and activities (which they have done more than once in the past) and essentially renege on their commitments. In the process, Russia and other friends of the mullahs would question claims that the agreement is being violated, committees would be formed to investigate things, more talks would be held and the whole sorry saga would drag on for a long time. Things would likely drag on long enough for the Iranians, free of sanctions, to get their economy back on track AND build some nuclear bombs.
More negotiations are therefore necessary in order to set up a timetable of phased relaxation of the sanctions, allowing the parties involved to make sure that Iran is living up to its commitments and specifying consequences if it does not. At the same time, this has to be done in a way that does not permit the United States, on false pretexts, to raise objections to sanctions relief. The agreement thus requires a good deal more work, with a deadline for final terms set for the end of June.
Judging from the reaction of the Israelis, the Saudis and hawkish lawmakers in the United States, however, no agreement that does not involve Tehran’s complete surrender will satisfy some people. Critics point out that with an agreement and an end to sanctions, Iran’s conventional power will grow. A stronger Iran will then throw its weight around Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere even more forcefully.
While true, this is not the kind of thing the nuclear negotiations were ever designed to address. There would be no chance of an agreement if the West’s agenda was simply to keep Iran down in all spheres. It is up to Iran’s competitors in the Middle East to deal with that problem. If a deal allows them to do so outside the shadow of a nuclear arms race, so much the better for everyone. Perhaps a little land will be left that conflict does not spill into.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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