A nuclear deal with Iran by 20 July is still on the cards

Up to last week there was reason for cautious optimism about the outcome of talks over Iran’s nuclear programme, whose deadline expires tomorrow. Although the talks are structured formally between Iran on one side and the US, the UK, Germany, France, China and Russia on the other, everyone knows that Iran and the US are the two countries that must reach agreement, and that if a deal is struck between those two, the rest can be expected more or less to fall into line. In both Iran and the US the will of the main political figures to reach an agreement remains strong, and if anything can only have been reinforced further by the effect of recent events in Iraq, where both found themselves pitchforked into a de facto (if awkward) alliance of interests against the rapid advances of Isis.

Yet many informed observers have been predicting that the talks will be extended; perhaps by three months, possibly by six. One reason is that Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made a speech on 7 July that appeared to make compromise more difficult on the central question of Iran’s ability to enrich uranium. He said the west wanted to limit Iran to 10,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium, but that Iran would need the equivalent of 190,000 in order to meet long-term needs.

The speech was not necessarily a deal-breaker. Khamenei spoke deliberately of Iran’s long-term requirements, opening the possibility that Iran’s enrichment capability could be more tightly constrained in the short term, so that the constraints could relax later after (presumably) international trust in Iran’s good faith had correspondingly increased.

Trust is, plainly, a relative concept; and “long term” a fuzzy one. Khamenei also allowed some room for creative negotiation by speaking of 190,000 “work units” rather than actual centrifuges – so if Iran were allowed new-generation centrifuges that can produce enriched uranium at 20 times the rate of the ones that are spinning now, it might be able to make do with less than 10,000. Few will be taken in by cosmetic adjustments of that kind, but it may open up some negotiating possibilities.

The problem with extending the negotiations is that it could open up an opportunity for those in the US, Iran and elsewhere who have been hostile to the talks to scupper them altogether. In the US, there might be some who would say extension showed the talks had failed and could never succeed, so sanctions must be ramped up again. New sanctions really would wreck the negotiations.

Why did Khamenei intervene in this way at this juncture? Probably to assert his ownership of the Iranian side of the process (which could, perversely, indicate that a deal is actually imminent); maybe to stiffen the apparent Iranian position ahead of necessary compromises. In Iran, putting back the deadline could have some beneficial effects – the longer the talks go on and appear to be heading in a positive direction, the more people on the hardline side become acclimatised to the idea of a rapprochement with the west.

But extension would also mean delay over sanctions relief, and many Iranians are already impatient for economic relief. That impatience – combined with impatience over other elements of President Hassan Rouhani’s declared political programme that are also perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be hanging fire on a nuclear deal (press freedoms, release of political prisoners, human rights generally) – is potentially a threat to Rouhani’s whole project of moderation and normalisation. It could also threaten Khamenei himself.

The continuing crisis in Iraq has shown clearly the convergence of Iranian and western interests in the Middle East (a convergence that has been there, for those with eyes to see it, for a long time). The potential benefits on all sides of a better relationship between Iran and the west are large, and are now in plain view; a nuclear settlement that releases those benefits is overdue.

It is difficult for anyone outside Vienna to assess the likely outcome of these talks. Extension may be on the cards, but positive statements earlier this week from the US and Iranian negotiators, John Kerry and Muhammad Javad Zarif, gave hope that they may yet settle before the 20 July deadline.

Many negotiations only break through to agreement in the final hours, when higher-level political pressure is applied to overcome what appeared previously to be insuperable technical problems. If the current problems in Vienna can be solved in three months, it may also be possible to solve them in two days, or indeed in a few hours, if the will is there. A deal by 20 July may still be on the cards.

theguardian.com