Following up on our inaugural posts last week on the Belfer Center's Iran Matters website, we have again gathered several more “best analyses” that advance the arguments for and against the interim agreement with Iran. The views we cite include perspectives from Iran as well as from the United States.
Best analyses for thumbs up:
- David Ignatius congratulates President Obama for managing a diplomatic process involving “secret diplomacy that a Henry Kissinger could appreciate.” The deal, Ignatius’ analysis argues, was “done (as any serious piece of diplomacy must be) out of sight. . . . It was a classic magic trick: While the eye was distracted by the show of the P5+1 talks, the real work was done elsewhere.”
- Abbas Maleki, professor at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran and former Iranian deputy foreign minister, details in the Eurasia Review seven implications of the nuclear deal. His first point aims to dispel the notion held by hardliners in both the U.S. and Iran that any significant compromise constitutes capitulation: “Any agreement reached at any level is, undoubtedly, in need of ‘gives and takes’. . . . Any change in policies and operational strategies is a kind of resilience without which the possibility for an agreement would be low.”
- In Project Syndicate, Anne-Marie Slaughter’s op-ed titled “Bringing the Iran Deal Back Home” reflects an uncomfortable diplomatic reality. Reaching—and implementing—an agreement requires (as explained in the “negotiations” section of this site) three deals: one within party A, one within party B, and then sufficient overlap between A and B’s minimum requirements. The first and second are often the most challenging.
Best analyses for thumbs down:
- Shirin Abadi and Payam Akhavan, writing in the Washington Post, welcome the deal, but advocate opening a second set of deliberations alongside the nuclear negotiations to discuss human rights in Iran. Abadi and Akhavan make an important analytical point: Iran’s leadership “equates national interests with the absolute power of a small, self-appointed religious-military ruling class rather than with the equal rights of its citizens.” When assessing whether Iran has a singular set of “national interests,” or multiple competing views, it is important to note this distinction.
- The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal published interviews with senior editors from Iran’s influential hard line Kayhan newspaper, generally representative of the Supreme Leader’s views (its editor-in-chief is directly appointed by Khamenei). Two big takeaways from the interviews—one encouraging, one deflating. The possible good news is Kayhanwriter Payam Fazlinejad’s acceptance that “if the right to enrich is accepted, which it has been, then everything that we have wanted has been realized. . . . The details are up to our technicians to determine.” At the same time, Fazlinejad throws cold water on the perception that the nuclear deal puts the U.S. and Iran on a path toward rapprochement. Highlighting Iran’s foreign minister as the poster child for this view, Fazlinejad argues, “If anyone gets the sense from these negotiations, as Mr. Zarif has, that we are getting closer to the West, he is as mistaken as Mr. Zarif.”
