By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Latest: U.S. VP, Iranian Officials in Switzerland to Launch Talks Under MOU

United States Vice President JD Vance and senior Iranian officials arrived in Switzerland on Sunday to formally start negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme, build out the fragile interim deal to end the war in Iran and keep the Strait of Hormuz open (AP/Associated Press, June 22).

Now the top American and Iranian negotiators are in a 60-day sprint to reach an agreement on the technical details that hold massive implications for the world economy and global security.

Vance first sat down for talks with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshall Asim Muni, who has served as a key intermediary between Washington and Tehran throughout the conflict. Sharif met separately with Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who is leading the Tehran’s delegation, and Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi.

Mediators from Qatar were also on hand at the mountain resort near Lake Lucerne.

The U.S. vice president was joined by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law for Sunday’s talks.

The Iranian officials were to hold their own meetings with Pakistani and Qatari

mediators before a planned four-way in-person meeting that would include the U.S. negotiating team.

The accord reached between the United States and Iran is neither victory nor defeat for either side. For the time being, an unstable peace has been reached. The situation of ‘neither war nor peace’ has at least been overcome.

It is now up to the former antagonists to fulfil the hopes and aspirations embedded in the ‘memorandum of understanding’.

Of course both the warmongers and peaceniks have been disappointed.

In an opinion piece in The New York Times, the current managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the former member of the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration, Michael Singh sums up succinctly that Trump’s preliminary agreement with Iran appears at its core to be a simple trade – Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz and the United States ends the blockade of Iranian ports, waive oil-related sanctions and unfreeze certain Iranian assets (June 20-21).

The whole agreement is dressed up with promises from both sides to negotiate a grander bargain down the road.

Considering the long history of confrontation, conflict and crises in US-Iran relations (47 years), it was to be expected that the deal would satisfy neither adherents or opponents of a peace deal and, therefore, came under immediate fire.

Critics on the left charge that it compares unfavourably to Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement that Trump tore up in his first term of office.

Hawks on the right, many of whom supported the war, argue that Trump should have held out for more nuclear concessions from Iran.

As Singh writes, Trump’s plan doesn’t need to be perfect, but concerns about what may come next, be it renewed fighting or a flawed final bargain, are well founded.

He correctly notes that notions that the United States should have held out for more upfront nuclear concessions get things backward.

At the current state of the international economy, the United States and the world in general need shipping to resume immediately through the Strait of Hormuz.

They do not need an immediate nuclear agreement with Iran as a priority.

Win-win or lose-lose scenario?

For all the operational capability demonstrated by the U.S. military over the course of this conflict, the preliminary outcome cannot by any term be considered a resounding American victory.

* Food and energy costs have spiked everywhere.

* U.S. military resources have been depleted.

* America’s alliances in the Middle East, Europe and the Pacific have suffered enormously.

Nor was the war a win for the Iranian regime, whose

• Conventional military capability has been diminished.
• The Economy crippled.
• And its first rank leadership demolished.

Singh insists that these results obscure an important detail, namely that the United States under Trump has significantly reduced the nuclear threat posed by Iran.

However, it can also be argued that it was Trump itself who enhanced Iran’s nuclear capability by scrapping the original international deal with Iran.

So much so that at the start of Trump’s second term, Iran’s nuclear programme was advanced enough that it was capable of producing sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon within a matter of days, and a small arsenal’s worth within just weeks, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

Critics, therefore charge that this situation was the result of Trump’s own decision to withdraw from the International-Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

Singh writes that today Iran’s nuclear programme is arguably the weakest it has been since the early 2000s, when its military nuclear activities were publicly exposed.

For the first time in decades, Iran may not be able to enrich uranium, largely owing to last year’s U.S. and Israeli strikes on its key nuclear sites.

To produce a nuclear weapon, Iran would need to reconstitute that infrastructure, which is believed to have been largely destroyed, while facing the prospect of additional strikes as it tried to rebuild.

Additionally, as of last September, the United Nations Security Council re-imposed an array of international sanctions on Iran after several members accused Tehran of “continued nuclear escalation.”

Singh speculates that it is possible that Iran’s new leaders will redouble their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

But it is just as likely that after all it has suffered in the last year, Tehran will conclude that its decades-long military nuclear enterprise was a costly mistake that provoked the very attacks it was meant to deter.

That is to say, whether Iran still aspires to the North Korean model will entail much soul-searching among Iran’s current fragmented leadership, which is no longer clerical, but led by a military junta.

This context makes comparisons between the current diplomatic efforts and the negotiations of the 2015 nuclear agreement inappropriate.

In 2015, Iran possessed a large-scale nuclear complex and could have, some experts estimated, built a bomb within months.

President Barack Obama considered the agreement, which temporarily restricted Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief, as an alternative to war.

Today, the United States has fought that war, and Iran’s nuclear programme is in ruins.

No doubt, the U.S. paid a heavy price. But it is time to consolidate the gains.

But Iran’s nuclear programme has not disappeared.

Elements of this programme still remain, the most worrisome of which is its stockpile of enriched uranium.

Much of this material is reportedly buried deep underground, and the risk it poses is manageable

if the United States exercises vigilance.

This would be necessary even with a nuclear deal in place, given the risk Iran would deceive the international community.

The U.S. must also be ready to act if Iran undertakes to recover it.

The danger Iran’s residual nuclear capabilities present must also be weighed against other threats posed by Tehran, such as Iran’s missile and drone development and its support for regional militant proxy forces like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Huthis in Yemen and Shiite groups in Iraq.

If and when the U.S. starts negotiations with Iran, Washington will be in a stronger position to do so with shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf restored.

Most experts reckon that much of the global economic pressure that has been built up as a result of the U.S./Israeli-Iran war will dissipate once the Strait of Hormuz remains open.

However, Iran has now developed a taste for wielding the power of opening/shutting off the Strait at will.

The U.S., the other Gulf countries and the international community have yet to develop a mechanism to control and deter Iran in this connection.

This is the bald situation even as Iran’s economy remains in tatters.

The regime struggled to meet Iranians’ basic needs before the war.

Although the U.S. has lifted its naval blockade after the MOU and waived certain restrictions, broader sanctions will still constrain Iran’s capacity to rebuild and reconstruct.

Singh argues that the U.S. should not lift the sanctions cheaply.

The real challenge for the U.S. will be containing and deterring Iran while rebuilding trust and cooperation with its regional Gulf partners, which bore the brunt of this unnecessary conflict.

The writer can be reached at: shashimalla125@gmail.com