A young couple beaming at the prospect
of seeing sanctions lifted
on their country, await the return of Tehran's
negotiating team. Led by
Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif,
they received a hero's welcome.
Iranian Nuclear
Deal: By Far the Least Appalling Option (Le Monde, France)
"Whiners
should examine the other options. All are catastrophic. The sanctions regime
that has been constantly enhanced and to which Iran is subject has failed to
prevent it from pursuing a program that represents a flagrant violation of its
commitments as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The burden
of sanctions has without doubt brought Tehran to the negotiating table, but has
in no way deterred the country from boosting its capacity for uranium
enrichment – which is the path to obtaining a nuclear weapon. … In this case, the
status quo will not suffice. To wait is to take the risk of allowing an Islamic
Republic working day in and day out to enrich more fissile material for
military purposes."
The "preliminary" deal agreed to on Thursday,
April 2 in Lausanne, Switzerland, marks a historic breakthrough on the Iranian
nuclear issue - on the condition that it results in a "final"
agreement by June 30, which is not guaranteed. For the first time since the
talks with Tehran first began twelve years ago, a specific framework of rules
intended to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon has been defined. This
is a success in the battle against proliferation.
Whiners should examine the other options. All are
catastrophic. The sanctions regime that has been constantly enhanced and to
which Iran is subject has failed to prevent it from pursuing a program that
represents a flagrant violation of its commitments as a signatory to the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. The burden of sanctions has without doubt brought
Tehran to the negotiating table, but has in no way deterred the country from
boosting its capacity for uranium enrichment – which is the path to obtaining a
nuclear weapon.
In this case, the status quo will not suffice. To wait is to
take the risk of allowing an Islamic Republic working day in and day out to
enrich more fissile material for military purposes.
The other option
is war: bombing raids on Iranian installations with the attendant risk of retaliation
from the Islamic Republic in the Gulf and another conflict in a region already a
bloody battlefield. That is to say nothing of the fact that neither war nor the
status quo would guarantee Iran's eventually attainment of the bomb. On the contrary.
Possible stabilizing factor in the Middle East
President Barack Obama was right to revive the talks, with
the support of other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - China,
France, Britain, Russia - and Germany. At the cost of a major concession to
Tehran, which is granted the right to enrich low-level uranium on its
territory, they have reached their goal: to place the Iranian program under such
constraints that the international community would have a period of a year to
detect a breach of the agreement and react.
To be finalized in June, the Lausanne document will at least
be an accord contributing to a healthy non-proliferation in the greater Middle
East, which already has at least two non-NPT nuclear
powers (Israel and Pakistan) and certainly doesn't need a third. Yet Mr. Obama
is even more ambitious. He sees the agreement as an outline for a possible
normalization of relations between the United States and Iran, which have been frozen
for thirty five years. That would lead to a greater openness on the part of the
Islamic Republic toward the West, and hence its moderation. Such a development
would be a genuine stabilizing factor in the Middle East.
[Posted By Worldmeets.US,
April 2, 2015, 5:15pm]
That day has not arrived - far from it. An odd coalition has
been formed - Saudi Arabia leading the Sunni Arab world and Israel and the
Republican majority in the U.S. Congress - to denounce an agreement that it believes
will strengthen the Islamic Republic and make it even more expansionist. They
have "demonized" Iran as the number one strategic threat in the
region even ahead of the jihadist Islamic State. Mr. Obama will need all of his
tenacity to reassure members of this coalition in order to make manifest the
deal arrived at in Lausanne. It is essential that he succeeds in this, his second
political-diplomatic mission.
The other option
is war: bombing raids on Iranian installations with the attendant risk of retaliation
from the Islamic Republic in the Gulf and another conflict in a region already a
bloody battlefield. That is to say nothing of the fact that neither war nor the
status quo would guarantee Iran's eventually attainment of the bomb. 
