After five years, President Barack Obama’s strategy of energetic diplomatic engagement with Iran combined with sanctions pressure has led to an important moment. By marshaling all the elements of America’s power—diplomatic, economic, and military—the United States and its partners are on the cusp of an agreement addressing one of the most pressing challenges in the Middle East: the Iranian nuclear program.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who won a surprising upset victory in June, ran on a platform of easing Iran’s economic difficulties through “constructive interaction” with the international community. Several months of conciliatory statements from Iran culminated in a phone call between President Rouhani and President Obama in late September—the first such contact between the countries’ presidents since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
When nuclear talks resumed in October under the new Iranian administration, U.S. negotiators noticed an immediate change. “I have never had such intense, detailed, straightforward, candid conversations with the Iranian delegation before,” said a senior Obama administration official. Secretary of State John Kerry recently said that the current talks, now in their third round, represent “the best chance we’ve had in a decade, we believe, to halt progress and roll back Iran’s program.”
This opportunity represents the success of a two-track policy that the Obama administration has pursued since the president took office in 2009. While initially dismissed by the administration’s critics as useless gestures, President Obama’s outreach to the Iranian public and its government has proven to be an important force multiplier for sanctions pressure. According to Nobel Peace Prize-winning Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, by demonstrating willingness to engage with Iran, President Obama showed Iranians and the world “that it is the Iranian regime that doesn’t want to talk,” thereby strengthening an international coalition to put pressure on Iran through economic sanctions.
By all accounts, Iran has changed its approach to the nuclear negotiations, and has shown itself ready to seriously and substantively engage with the international community’s concerns about its nuclear program. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s ultimate decision maker, has repeatedly signaled his support for President Rouhani’s and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s diplomatic efforts.
But this window of opportunity will not stay open forever. If Rouhani’s efforts prove fruitless, internal political pressures will eventually cause Khamenei to withdraw his support for the negotiations effort. If this happens, an enormous opportunity—for the United States, Iran, and the region—would be lost. The United States would then face two extremely undesirable possibilities: an Iranian nuclear weapon, or military action to try and prevent one. Both options present dangerous and potentially destabilizing consequences.
Iran currently suffers under the most stringent and comprehensive set of multilateral and unilateral sanctions of any country in history. These sanctions, and the economic difficulties they have exacerbated inside Iran, have clearly influenced Iran’s decision to seek relief through negotiations with the United States and its partners in the P5+1—the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany.
Sanctions pressure is not an end in itself, however, but rather a means to an end. In this case, the end goal is a change in Iranian behavior. If Iran takes steps toward addressing international concerns over its nuclear program, the P5+1 must show that it is willing to affirm those steps in order to enable the process to go farther until Iran satisfactory addresses all outstanding questions relating to Iran’s nuclear program.
The sanctions relief currently being considered in a first-step arrangement is limited and quickly reversible, should Iran prove uncooperative. This relief is valued at less than $10 billion—not the $40 billion that has been claimed elsewhere—and includes:
- Access to about $3 billion in hard currency assets currently frozen, distributed over a period of months according to Iranian compliance
- Suspension of sanctions on automobiles and airline parts, petrochemicals, gold, and precious metals
The Obama administration has the backing of a strong majority of Americans for this first step. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, two-thirds of respondents supported an arrangement that offered some easing of sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
