A preliminary agreement on the closure of the Iranian nuclear dossier signed between Iran and the "group of six" was welcomed by the entire world community. Vestnik Kavkaza has learned how Iran's neighbors - Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey - reacted to this event. Experts from these countries agreed that the process of lifting the sanctions against Iran in exchange for curtailing its nuclear program will benefit the entire region.
For example, professor at Western University Fikret Sadikhov stressed that the agreement in the first place means the stabilization of the situation in the region. "Ultimately, the signing of this agreement, albeit temporarily, will give us the opportunity and hope that the situation becomes clear, and the parties are going to meet each other. Creating another source of tension and turbulence in the region close to the South Caucasus would be extremely rash and could significantly worsen the stability in the region, becoming a threat to some extent for both Azerbaijan and neighboring republics, and for Russia as well. I hope this essentially sober agreement will be long-term, and at the end of the six-month period, if the domestic forces in Iran and the West do not stand in the way, the situation will be significantly stabilized”, Sadikhov said.
Director of the Armenian branch of the CIS Institute Alexander Markarov, in turn, recalling that Iran is not only a neighbor but also a strategic partner of Armenia, said that "an agreement that provides Iran with a more active presence on the global economic and political arena is good for Armenia". "It is clear that if we talk about the unfreezing of the Iranian assets we may have questions about some deeper economic cooperation than something that exists today. Armenia in general can only welcome any progress towards the fact that the neighboring country could become more stable, and this is stability on the regional scale", Markarov said.
Associate Professor of the department of international relations of the University of Economics and Technology TOBB (Ankara) Togrul Ismail agreed with the experts that the success of Iranian diplomacy is primarily to ensure stability and security in the region. "Turkey, firstly, welcomes this agreement, because it needs stability around. Reducing tensions around such a complex regional player like Iran is useful for Turkey, and further relief will allow the development of new bilateral energy projects between Turkey and Iran . And it is also important for the country, so Turkey is looking at what happened on Sunday in Geneva positively", Ismail said.
