Experts raced to make sense of the 159-page nuclear agreement between international powers and Iran on Tuesday, taking to social media and bursts of online commentary to give their take on what the deal actually means. The agreement claims to cut off several paths the country could take to developing a nuclear weapon, while what Iran gets in return is the lifting of sanctions that have hurt its economy.
Here’s a roundup of what experts are saying.
‘Victory for diplomacy’
Vali Nasr, Iranian-born author and former U.S. state department senior adviser, said the deal was a victory for diplomacy. Mr. Nasr highlighted the fact that two years ago, both the U.S. and Iran did not think the other country would ever sign a deal.
In 2013, reformist Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was elected on a promise to lift international sanctions. Serious negotiations between world powers and Iran soon followed.
Mr. Nasr counted the Iran deal, along with the U.S.’s thawing of relations with Cuba and Myanmar, as President Barack Obama’s key foreign policy legacies. And he offered a glimpse of how the deal’s importance will be spun within Iran.
#Iran hardliners will minimize imp of deal, reformists win if economics benefits come quickly. Winner will be decided by implementation
— Vali Nasr (@vali_nasr) July 14, 2015‘We are not Rome, Iran is not Carthage’
Nuclear weapons proliferation expert Joe Cirincione, author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before it is Too Late, points to reductions in Iran’s uranium stockpile and centrifuges.
If Iran were to renege on the agreement and pursue nuclear weapons, it would take a year at least to produce enough uranium for a single bomb – “more than enough time to detect the effort and take economic, diplomatic, or military steps to stop it,” Mr. Cirincione writes in Slate.
Read The Slate's article, A Huge Deal.
Meanwhile, the plutonium path to a nuclear bomb is blocked by Iran’s commitment to reconfigure its Arak reactor, and a covert attempt to create a nuclear bomb is virtually impossible because of the agreement’s verification and monitoring system.
“It would be better if the entire nuclear complex was razed to the ground and the earth salted so it could never be rebuilt. But we are not Rome and Iran is not Carthage,” Mr. Cirincione writes.
‘Over-selling the deal’
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, focused on Mr. Obama’s statements on what the deal means for nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Mr. Obama predicted the deal will stop the spread of nuclear weapons in the region, and said walking away from an agreement with Iran could have sparked a nuclear arms race in the volatile region. “Put simply, no deal means the chance of more war in the Middle East,” he said.
Mr. Haass cautioned against such claims.
WH needs to be careful not to over-sell #Iran deal. will not stop spread of nuclear weapons in the region & could come to make things worse
— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass) July 14, 2015A nuclear deal could be viewed by Saudi Arabia – Iran’s regional rival – as a capitulation and embolden the kingdom to pursue its own nuclear weapons path, experts warn.
‘Supporting terrorism’
David Makovsky and Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy focused on the financial windfall that is coming Iran’s way and the ways state authorities could use that money to finance activities in the region – whether supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Assad regime in Syria. Iranian bank accounts have been frozen by world powers as they sought to curb the country’s weapons program.
“Even if a large majority of the Iranian financial windfall goes to invigorate the moribund domestic economy, a relatively small slice of the $100-billion to $150-billion can go a long way in ramping up what the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] is already doing in destabilizing the Middle East,” Mr. Makovsky and Mr. Levitt write in Foreign Policy.
Read Foreign Policy Magazine's piece, Keeping Iran's feet to the fire
They fear that the lifting of sanctions under the agreement will apply to Iranian individuals and entities that are involved in spreading terrorism.
“Following the conclusion of the nuclear deal, the basis for sanctions due to WMD [weapons of mass destruction] proliferation may be gone – but a number of Iranian concerns will remain just as guilty of supporting terrorism as before and should continue to be sanctioned,” they write.
‘Tremendous achievement’
Richard Dalton, former British ambassador to Iran and associate fellow at Chatham House, a U.K.-based think tank, said the Iran deal is a “tremendous achievement” and that there are reasons to believe “it will stick.”
Iran, he writes in The Guardian, is tired of being punished for something it has not intended to pursue – nuclear weapons – and recognizes that it cannot grow as a country unless it allays international concerns.
Read The Guardian's piece,This Iran nuclear deal is built to last
“It also values its reputation. Reneging on its commitment not to build nuclear weapons, or withdrawing its agreement to the utmost transparency, either during or after the agreed 15-year limits on its enrichment activities, would demolish that reputation, with no appreciable gain to its security because of the retaliation and regional arms race that would follow,” he writes.