Council on Foreign Relation
International negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 powers went into overtime (Al Jazeera) on Wednesday after missing a self-imposed midnight deadline to reach a framework agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program. Amid mixed messages and hints of optimism, significant hurdles (NYT) remain between the parties over uranium enrichment, the restrictions imposed on Iran's nuclear research, and which sanctions against the country would be lifted and when. Washington signaled that if a political deal is not reached, the United State will not wait (WaPo) until June 30 to walk away from the negotiating table. As nuclear talks press on, Iran called (WSJ) on the Saudi-led coalition to cease their air campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen and urged all parties involved in the conflict to hold political talks.
ANALYSIS
"Longtime
observers of U.S.-Iran relations believe that both governments have invested so
much political capital in these negotiations over the past 18 months that they
cannot afford to allow them to fail. For
Obama, an Iran nuclear agreement would be a crowning foreign policy achievement,
while for Iranians, a deal would bring a welcome injection of oxygen to an
economy choked by sanctions, low oil prices and government mismanagement,"
writes Barbara Slavin for Al Jazeera America.
"But
even if an agreement is reached, four decades of hostility between Iran and the
United States will not be erased overnight. A number of
observers have cited shared interests between the U.S. and Iran in defeating
Islamic State or in a stable Iraq. President Rouhani and his team would like to
build on those shared interests, but Ayatollah Khamenei will continue to seek a
major regional role for Iran—a goal that puts Iran in competition with the U.S.
in the Middle East," writes Haleh Esfandiari in the Wall Street
Journal.
"This
process of engagement is a significant
achievement of the Obama administration, even if the nuclear accord unravels.
Iran is now a diplomatic and political factor in regional and world politics,
for better or worse. The right U.S. strategy was to prevent this rising Iran
from getting nuclear weapons, not to pretend that it didn’t exist," writes David
Ignatius in the Washington Post.
