Eight years after the United States and Iran, along with a half-dozen other international parties, struck a deal to temporarily block Iran’s Nuclear program in return for the removal of heavy economic sanctions against it, a different deal aiming to ease the same problem seems on the verge of being adopted by Washington and Tehran. In the interim, of course, time did not stand still, and neither did the two sides, with the Trump Administration withdrawing from the JCPOA and the Islamic Republic countering by accumulating enriched Uranium and interfering with IAEA monitoring of its facilities. How viable is the reported substitute of an “understanding” rather than an agreement and on freezing the existing status rather than dismantling it? And once the final details emerge officially, will it have the necessary support back home?
Dr. Olli Heinonen, Former International Atomic Energy Agency Deputy Director General and a Distinguished Fellow, Stimson Center, Washington, D.C., Brigadier General (Res.) Mark Kimmitt, Former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, and our own Editor-at-Large, Amir Oren.
