Fate of the Iran Nuclear Talks Hangs on Three Questions

WSJ

It's crunch time with Iran. Negotiators from the U.S. and five other international powers have until Sunday to reach a long-term deal with Iran on reducing its nuclear program, declare the negotiations a failure, or make the politically awkward decision to extend their self-imposed deadline for a deal.

U.S. officials don't want to talk about extending the deadline—that would just reduce pressure to get an agreement—though an extension seems the likeliest outcome as a bevy of high-level negotiators wrestle in marathon talks in Vienna.

The mood of the talks has gone from optimistic weeks ago, as Iran made concessions on items such as the future of its Arak nuclear reactor, to pessimistic in recent days as it becomes clear a giant gap remains on the crucial question of how much capacity Iran will retain to enrich uranium for what it insists is a peaceful nuclear program.

The details are important, of course. But the fate of these talks turns on three much broader questions about Iran:

Does Iran consider a deal vital? Obviously Iran thinks it would be nice to get a deal, which would ease international economic sanctions that Iranian officials themselves have candidly acknowledged are creating painful problems.

Indeed, there is ample reason to believe that the administration of Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, who took office last year, was constructed specifically to reach a deal that would ease the economic pressure. As an indication of how intensely Mr. Rouhani is following the stretch run, the president's own brother, a special adviser, just arrived in Vienna in recent days to take part in the deliberations, Iran's news agency reported.

But there is a difference between wanting a deal and considering one essential. Would economic relief be simply convenient, or does Iran consider failure to achieve it an existential threat to the regime? The negotiations won't succeed unless Iran wants a deal more than its international interlocutors do. And there's probably no way to know for sure exactly how much urgency Iran attaches to a deal until talks reach their 11th hour.

Who is calling the shots? U.S. officials had thought that President Rouhani and his able, American-educated foreign minister, Javad Zarif, had the latitude and authority to reach an agreement. But in recent weeks they have come to doubt that they really are free agents.

Instead, officials say there are new signs the Iranian team may not have the full backing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the powerful leaders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The most obvious sign came last week, when Ayatollah Khamenei rocked the talks with a speech in which he appeared to say that Iran needs to not only retain the ability to enrich uranium, but also to do so on a much larger scale than it does currently.

Considering that the amount of uranium-enrichment capacity Iran will retain has become the most important unresolved issue in the talks, the signal to the U.S. and the other countries involved in the talks—Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany—was discouraging. Yet despite that signal, and compounding the uncertainty about Iran's bottom line, Iranian negotiators on Monday indicated for the first time that they are willing to accept a modest reduction in nuclear-enrichment capability, according to people involved in the talks.

Does Iran think its strategic situation is changing for the worse? This is in many ways the broadest and most intriguing question. Iran's calculation on whether its position is eroding in a rapidly destabilizing Middle East could go a long way in determining how eager it is to end its isolation by striking a deal.

For a long while, Iran had reason to think its strength as a regional power was growing. Iraq, its big neighbor and longtime nemesis, was being run by a friendly fellow Shiite, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Iran's principal regional ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was firmly ensconced in Damascus. Tehran's friends in the Hamas movement were overtaking more-moderate figures as leaders of the Palestinian cause.

But suddenly all those trend lines have reversed. Mr. Maliki is besieged, Mr. Assad's control of Syria has shrunk dramatically amid civil war, and Hamas is estranged from its former ally in Egypt, under siege from Israel and on strained terms with Iran over its unwillingness to help the Assad regime.

Most important, the rapid emergence of a powerful and extreme Sunni movement, a group calling itself Islamic State, poses a severe threat to Iran's interests. It is violently anti-Shiite, bent on destroying the regimes friendly to Tehran in both Syria and Iraq, and intent on establishing a Sunni caliphate in Iran's backyard.

In theory, at least, this development means Iran now shares fear of a common and frightening new foe with moderate Sunni states in the Persian Gulf and beyond, with the U.S., and even with Israel. That should make Iran eager to find some common ground with those feeling similarly threatened.

In theory, that is. We'll see soon.