Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear deal on Tuesday, capping more than a decade of negotiations with an agreement that could transform the Middle East.The Iranian nuclear deal reached in Vienna contains no reference to the Parchin military facility where most of Iran’s past nuclear arms-related work was carried out.Additionally, the draft agreement made public on Tuesday contains no stated limits on Iran’s Russian-made Bushehr nuclear power facility that analysts say could produce plutonium for dozens of bombs.Also, the accord will lift international sanctions on several Iranian entities currently engaged in supporting terrorism and building ballistic missiles, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-Air Force Al Ghadir Missile Command.The Tehran-based command is a key element in developing nuclear-tipped missiles and is considered to be in operational control of Iranian missiles.
The lifting of sanctions in eight or fewer years will also include removing sanctions on Parchin Chemical Industries—a firm involved in the past in Iranian ballistic missile and chemical explosive work that was possibly related to nuclear arms applications.United Nations arms sanctions blocking military sales to and from Iran will be lifted in five years under the deal, and sanctions prohibiting sales of ballistic missiles to Tehran will end in eight years. U.S. restrictions will remain.Iran and some non-Iranian participants in the Vienna talks had pushed for immediate end to both arms and missile sales.China and Russia, however, could begin selling arms to Iran covertly right away. Both nations have done so in the past.Enmity between Iran and the United States has loomed over the Middle East for decades.Iran is the predominant Shi’ite Muslim power, hostile both to Israel and to Washington’s Sunni Muslim-ruled Arab friends, particularly Saudi Arabia.
Allies of Riyadh and Tehran have fought decades of sectarian proxy wars in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.But there are also strong reasons for Washington and Tehran to cooperate against common foes, above all Islamic State, the Sunni Muslim militant group that has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq. Washington has been bombing Islamic State from the air while Tehran aids Iraqi militias fighting it on the ground.The 159-page Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JPCOA, outlines the steps Iran will take to curb its illegal uranium enrichment program.After those steps are taken, the plan explains how the United Nations, the United States, and Europe will lift sanctions and other penalties imposed after Iran violated its agreement to follow IAEA controls on its nuclear program in the early 2000s.Most observers believe the nuclear negotiations had little to do with Iran’s nuclear industry and everything to do with the belated acknowledgement that for over 3 decades the wrong country has been demonized: Iran has been forced for 35 years to behave ‘ugly’, while U.S.-supported dictatorships have used Iran’s ‘ugliness’ to pursue an agenda responsible for the creation and spread of Islamic terrorism across the globe.