‘Valdai’ experts assess prospects for a nuclear deal with Iran

The presentation, organized by the experts of the international discussion ‘Valdai’ club "The agreement on the Iranian nuclear program: opportunities and obstacles for Russian-American cooperation." The director of the program ‘Russia and nuclear non-proliferation’, PIR Center, Andrey Baklitskiy, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Political-Military Analysis of Hudson Institute (USA) Richard Weitz, Director of the European research program Club Foundation ‘Valdai’, Professor, Head of Department EU policies and the functioning of the Council of Europe and the European Studies Institute at MGIMO MFA of Russia Oleg Barabanov worked over it.

A ‘Vestnik Kavkaza’ correspondent interviewed them to find out their opinions about the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program and its prospects.

Andrey Baklitskiy noted that "the joint comprehensive plan of actions on the Iranian nuclear program is very good despite all its disadvantages. It is a good example when the US and Russia decided to cooperate together." ‘‘Despite their disagreement on the Ukrainian and other issues, including nuclear non-proliferation issues, the problem of the Iranian nuclear program was solved successfully,’’ he pointed out.

"The main advantage of the agreement is that we avoided the war. We can recall the high threat of a strike either by Israel, or Israel together with the United States. Now we can just discuss how to improve anything, or make it in a bit different way. The most difficult period has passed and it is a great victory,’’ the expert noted.

‘’Speaking about disadvantages, it was so difficult to harmonize the document and it is still imperfect. It was a compromise in any case, and now we should try to get the maximum, preserving the document,’’ Baklitskiy said.

Richard Weitz also pointed out the positive fact that this agreement was achieved. ‘‘We have tried to achieve it for many years. It really limits the Iranian nuclear capability. The document was signed by Russia, the United States and other countries, so it's a multilateral agreement. I think that the main problem is the limit of time. So we will revise these issues after a few years, as the period of validity on many conditions expires and a lot depends on events in Iran and other countries that is why there is some uncertainty. I hope we will continue to work on it,'' he pointed out.

"I could imagine a more favorable agreement, but would we manage to achieve it? I do not know. I think that what we have received is definitely better than any other variants. Therefore, our main idea is to that it is better when the deal is done and it is being realized, rather than the deal miscarries. The latter would be the worst variant," Richard Weitz concluded.

Oleg Barabanov supported his colleagues’ viewpoints that the agreement is not perfect. "All difficulties are primarily in the area of ​​political mistrust between Iran and the US. Very often these countries cannot communicate directly, and their representatives have to resort to mediation either the EU, or Russia. In addition, the political situation is complicated in the region due to a serious conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia that started during this New year’s holidays after the execution of Shiite preacher al-Nimrah in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia remains one of the most important US allies. The Saudis are extremely disliked the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program and the mitigation. Now we can expect further strengthening of the Saudi lobby in Washington to increase the Washington’s pressure on Iran, and those first positive steps were brought to nought," he said.

"From a technical point of view, there is no big problems, and the authors came to the conclusion that at the moment the agreement is being maintained, but there is a lot of political risks in the region, which could put further implementation of the agreement into question,'' the expert added.

However, despite this, Barabanov expressed a hope ''everything is alright and the agreement will be maintained, as another alternative now would lead only to a further strengthening of military tension in the region."