Iran, World Powers Announce Historic Nuclear Deal

Celebration in Tehran as Deal Poised to End Sanctions

After several false starts over the past two weeks, Iran and the P5+1 have finally managed to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s on a final nuclear agreement, which was reached today. The deal caps years of negotiations and decades of hemming and hawing about Iran’s civilian nuclear program.

The terms of the agreement largely were in keeping with the various reports that have emerged in recent weeks. It remains to be seen how well some of the more complicated aspects of the pact are going to work in practice, particularly the plans for votes on IAEA access to Iranian conventional military sites when they have “unresolved questions.”

The international community mostly met the deal with guarded optimism. The financial markets saw the price of oil drop early after the deal was announced, and rebound amid Republican talk of trying to veto the deal with supermajority votes in Congress.

The Republican leadership is mostly in favor of killing the deal, and Israeli officials have promised to throw intense effort into lobbying Congress to kill the deal, though it is seen as extremely unlikely for the deal will actually be foiled in this manner.

Beyond that, Israel is insisting they “won’t be bound” by the Iran deal, and are talking up their willingness to attack Iran at any time going forward, even with the deal in place. US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter followed this up with his own threat to attack Iran at any time.

Threats to attack Iran in the wake of the deal are seen as an empty gesture to the hawks opposed to the deal on the grounds that it will get in the way of the war they’ve long sought. From the Israeli government’s perspective, however, the years of calling an Iran deal a threat to Israel is backfiring, with many seeing Netanyahu’s inability to kill it as a major failure of the far-right government.

With some token efforts from the administration to “reassure” Israel expected to continue, the eventual resolution will likely be to finalize a massive one-off increase in Israeli military aid.

Final Text of Iran Nuclear Deal

Nuclear Medicine: Deal Ensures Iran Access to Medical Isotopes
Obama Warns Congress, Reassures Israel on Iran Deal
Rand Paul Opposes Iran Deal
Secretary of Defense: US Prepared to Attack Iran for Israel
Netanyahu: Israel Won’t Be Bound by Iran Nuclear Deal
Top Republicans Loudly Condemn Iran Deal

 

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.