IRAN’S NUCLEAR DEAL: JUST THE BEGINNING, BUT A HISTORIC ONE
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IRAN’S NUCLEAR DEAL: JUST THE BEGINNING, BUT A HISTORIC ONE
Iran’s Nuclear Deal: Just the Beginning, But a Historic One
In the third round of nuclear talks, since Iranian President Hassan Rohani took office back in August 2013, and after five days of intense negotiations in Geneva, the E3+3 (comprising the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the United States, China and Russia) and Iran finally reached an agreement on the nuclear issue.
The Joint Plan of Action, which was signed on 24 November 2013, is an interim first step agreement, which will substantially halt activities across the Iranian nuclear programme and introduce intrusive monitoring of its facilities for six months, while talks on a comprehensive accord take place. Iran has in fact agreed to suspend all enrichment of uranium above 5 percent, dilute or convert its entire stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium, not increase its stockpile of 3.5 percent lower-enriched uranium, not construct additional enrichment facilities, and finally not commission or fuel the Arak heavy water reactor, a point which raised tensions with the French negotiating team during the previous round of talks two weeks ago. To ensure its commitment to the above steps, Iran also agreed to submit its programme to unprecedented monitoring to be conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In return for the concessions made by Iran on its nuclear programme, the country will gain modest sanctions relief, assessed by the US administration to be worth in total about $6-7 billion, together with the promise that the US, the UN and the EU will refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions over the six-month period. The relief package also includes the licensing of safety-related repairs for Iranian civilian aircrafts and the establishment of a financial channel to facilitate non-sanctioned and humanitarian trade. The easing measures, which are temporary and can be reversed at any time should Iran fail to comply with the terms of the agreement or should the two sides fail to reach a comprehensive accord, do not alter the bulk of international sanctions in place against Iran nor do they remove Iran’s oil and banking sanctions, which severely crippled the country’s economy. However, for the first time in two years of negotiations, Iran was offered unprecedented incentives in return for the limitations to its nuclear programme that the E3+3 were demanding.
Therefore, despite the deal’s narrow economic components and the unlikelihood of dramatically change to Iran’s economic situation in the next six months, the political implications of the agreement reached are on the other hand remarkable.
The Plan of Action constitutes the first accord between the negotiating parties since 2004, when the former E3 foreign ministers, together with former High Representative for the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, signed the Paris agreement with Rohani, who at the time was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator.
The Plan of Action is therefore the first deal reached under the E3+3 umbrella, a framework implemented since 2006, when the nuclear dossier was deferred to the United Nations Security Council. The historic importance of the agreement reached during the weekend, consequently, lies not only on the achievement per se, which translates into a necessary de-escalation of the nuclear crisis, but also on what it represents: the first direct accord between Tehran and Washington since the nuclear issue emerged in 2002.
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