People familiar with the chequered history of Iran’s nuclear programme cannot but view with hope the further extension until June 2015 of the current round of talks between the original five nuclear weapons-states and Germany (P5+1) vis-à-vis Tehran. The new deadline is the second since the November 2013 temporary deal, which paved the way for Iran to open its nuclear infrastructure to international inspections and brought the country relief from sanctions to a substantial extent, mainly in terms of oil export revenues. The tortuous record on the nuclear imbroglio was initially marked by Iran’s willingness to cease uranium enrichment following mediation by Britain, Germany and France. But a blatant refusal by the Bush administration to respect Iran’s right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to strengthen its civilian energy capacity stoked a predictable nationalistic backlash. Washington’s stance subsequently received sanctity through a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw are on record as saying that the dispute could have been long resolved but for the influence of geopolitics in the Middle East.
The credibility of the current negotiations has been enhanced considerably with the Obama administration’s readiness to recognise Iran’s legitimate interests as a state-party to the NPT. This is not to deny the existence of fundamental disagreements. One is Tehran’s demand that a final deal include the immediate and permanent withdrawal of crippling economic sanctions. The U.S. and its partners are unwilling to concede, insisting rather on a reduction of operational centrifuges to a point that it would take at least one year for Iran to generate weapons-grade uranium to produce one nuclear bomb. The other is the pressure building up in the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress to further step up sanctions because of the failure to reach a final agreement. But then, the Iranian leadership has set its political stakes on the removal of these economic obstacles, against which there is growing discontent among even the pro-western sections of the population. Conversely, Washington and its allies, including Britain, would like to exploit this mood to build bridges with a state they see as being relatively stable in an otherwise volatile region. For countries of the subcontinent, as also the non-nuclear weapons-states, the stand-off over Iran testifies to the continuance of a major irony in the unequal global nuclear bargain. That irony is that, except Germany, Tehran’s adversaries are themselves nuclear weapons-states countenanced by the discriminatory NPT. Herein lies the hurdle to disarmament.
