Seven Realities That Made an Iran Deal Almost Inevitable

Shai Feldman, Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University and member of the board of the Belfer Center, writes in The National Interest that the recent nuclear deal with Iran was made inevitable for the United States due to the constellation of political and diplomatic realities in the Middle East and the World. First, he argues that the defeat and dismantling of the Iraqi state in 2003 allowed Iran to expand its influence throughout the region without any force balancing it, meaning that sanctions pressure would not be successful in forcing Iranian capitulation on the nuclear issue. He also argues that the war weariness of the American public effectively removed the likelihood of the United States using military force against Iran and that the growing realization among political elites that force has had a limited utility in effecting policy goals in recent years. Other realities he notes are the increased US and Israeli energy independence from events in the broader Middle East, the reality that the JCPOA is a compromise between Iranian and American priorities and narratives, the steady growth of the threat of Sunni jihadism in the form of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and the complexity of the Middle East in the post-Arab Spring era all resulted in impacting the importance of achieving an agreement and the contours of the final deal.