A nuclear deal is just one deep breath away |
Michael Axworthy |
The Guardian
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/28/nuclear-deal-iran-us-courage
Behind this is the real problem – quite simply, to do a deal with someone, anyone, or a country, you have to trust them when they say they will keep to their side of the bargain. Thirty-four years after the traumatic events of the embassy hostage crisis, relived so vividly in the recent film Argo, is a US president prepared to go to the American people and say to them that he believes the Iranians will keep to a deal? And signal it by the relaxation of sanctions that the Iranians expect as a quid pro quo?
Some have suggested that impending presidential elections in Iran make it too delicate and too difficult for the Iranian leadership to take the reciprocal step. My view is that the nuclear question is about the central, deep interests of the Islamic republic; the team around Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, that decides such questions is long-standing and largely unaffected by the coming elections. If Khamenei and his team decide the time is right, they could do it.
But there is a feeling that something more is necessary. A deal between Iran and the US over the nuclear question would be a historic event. The talks in Kazakhstan and elsewhere so far do not seem to have had the magic of history about them. It needs more involvement by the key politicians, and, perhaps, more involvement of the many wider security questions (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria) that both sides are preoccupied with