Whether the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei will ever give his blessing to the compromise reached in today’s early hours in Geneva with its factual far-reaching retrenchment of Iran’s nuclear program is seriously doubted. What actually has been negotiated by world powers P5+1 and the Iranian delegation led by foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is already disputed. The crux of the matter, Iran’s right (haqq) to enrich uranium under the NPT, seems still to be denied by the White House. That was certainly one of the red lines drawn by Khamenei himself just before the talks in Geneva resumed.

It may quickly turn out that the alleged breakthrough was actually a bad preliminary deal, not only for Israel as Benjamin Netanyahu unsurprisingly concluded, but also for the Iranians. There seems to be no face-saving aspect in the final result. The deal (that what has been made public so far) may be considered a capitulation by the Iranian people after 34 years of cold war with the U.S. and other western powers. President Obama’s statement this morning unmistakably uses language of the victorious power.

“[T]he United States and our friends and allies have agreed to provide Iran with modest relief, while continuing to apply our toughest sanctions. We will refrain from imposing new sanctions, and we will allow the Iranian government access to a portion of the revenue that they have been denied through sanctions. But the broader architecture of sanctions will remain in place and we will continue to enforce them vigorously. And if Iran does not fully meet its commitments during this six-month phase, we will turn off the relief and ratchet up the pressure.”

So, whether sanctions will ever be lifted is completely unclear. The likelihood for another war in the region increased today, not attenuated.

24 November 2013 @ 8:23 am.

Last modified November 24, 2013.