The Iranian nuclear deal: long-term implications for the Middle East.

• Author: Ayoob, Mohammed
• Position: COMMENTARY

It is now certain that the agreement between Iran and the P5+1 concerning Iran's nuclear program will move to the implementation stage. The attempt by Republicans in the U.S. Congress to scuttle the deal has been defused by a procedural vote in the Senate that precludes that body from repudiating the agreement and thus forcing President Obama to veto the Senate resolution. However, there are still strong forces opposed to the implementation of the agreement, viz. Israel and the Israel lobby in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and the Republican right, that will try their best to derail the deal which they see as the beginning of a rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran--a prospect that they find highly undesirable for their own different reasons.

The nature of the opposition to the agreement points to the long-term importance of the deal. The nuclear agreement is important above all because it portends a sea-change in the relationship between the United States and Iran--the preeminent global power and the preeminent regional power in the energy-rich Persian Gulf. It was clear to close observers that the controversy regarding the Iranian nuclear program was not so much a consequence of the major powers' attachment to the non-proliferation goal as it was a function of the antagonistic relationship between Iran and the United States since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

The major nuclear powers' reaction to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Israel, India and Pakistan bears out this point. Israel, because of its special relationship with the U.S., escaped any negative consequence despite the fact that it has been well-known for at least four decades that it possesses a sophisticated nuclear arsenal and matching delivery capabilities from the land, sea, and air. The only cost to India and Pakistan was the cutting off of dual use technology and material--a handicap that both were able to overcome either through the development of indigenous capacity, as was the case with India or through clandestine procurement as was the case with Pakistan. The type of harsh economic sanctions which Iran faced, affecting such areas as oil sales, banking, and trade, were not even remotely contemplated in the case of Pakistan and India.

The adversarial relationship between the U.S. and Iran was, and continues to be, the independent variable that explains the harsh treatment meted out to Iran. The crucial significance of the nuclear agreement is that it signals that it is not impossible to reverse the nature of the American-Iranian relationship; in fact, it signals that this may be the right time to do so. It is this indication that has upset Israel and Saudi Arabia because such a rapprochement has the potential to radically change the strategic environment on which Tel Aviv and Riyadh have based their foreign policy calculations for the past several decades. It was remarkably easy for Saudi Arabia and Israel to sell their strategic value to Washington as long as the latter's relations with Tehran continued to be tense and antagonistic. Their strategic value to the U.S. is likely to diminish as American-Iranian relations improve.

However, looked at from both Washington and Tehran, the improvement of American-Iranian relations is a desirable end in itself. First of all, it has become clear that the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and even Yemen cannot be resolved without their mutual cooperation. Although this is not the declared policy of either government, the U.S. and Iran have already begun to cooperate in shoring up the Iraqi government's military capabilities vis-a-vis ISIL. While the U.S. has been occupied in conducting air strikes against ISIL targets, training the Iraqi military, and arming anti-ISIL Sunni militias, Iran has been busy...