If anything, the recent Iran nuclear deal with representatives of the international community achieved one of the prime objectives of successful negotiation, Günter Walzenbach, Senior Lecturer at University of the West of England, Bristol told Armenian News – NEWS.am.
According to him, all of the parties involved come out of 12 years of lengthy and protracted entanglements with a better position than they thought they had at the start of this mutual process.
“In this case, though, the agreed ‘Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’ among Iran, the five members of the UN Security Council, Germany and the European Union does constitute much more. Its complex set of components reflects an almost textbook like implementation of modern thinking about the shape and substance of international relations in the 21 century. The result – a civilian constraint on Iran’s nuclear capability for the next 10-15 years – has been achieved on the back of complex compliance and monitoring mechanisms, the linking up with the institutional network of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and an extended time horizon for an eventual embedding of the deal in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” he said.
All these elements, according to Walzenbach, can be easily connected with a liberal conception of regional order based on multilateralism and global governance as championed by the Obama administration and the European Union in their respective foreign policies for some time.
“As much as the new agreement has been needed as a real world confirmation of this strategic orientation as well as a boost for similar endeavours in the broader region, its problems rest elsewhere: not in the realm of international relations but in the Nitty-gritty of domestic politics,” he added.
To be sure, Walzenbach said, the supporters of the deal have also made an obvious connection between the gradual lifting of sanctions and the immense benefits economic liberalization will offer to reform minded groups within Iranian society as well as the larger Western business community.
“However, as some notable country examples have shown in the past, semi-authoritarian systems can also be quite inventive in channelling market forces in less benevolent directions towards increasing state power and external influence,” Günter Walzenbach said.
