BICOM

The nightmare scenario of a “bad deal with Iran” looms for three reasons.

First, the West is not putting Tehran under enough pressure from sanctions to get it to accept what would be a bad deal for them on their nuclear program. And now the “Rouhani narrative” surrounding Iran’s new president is persuading the EU and the US to go soft on sanctions with the hope that by doing so they will be bolstering moderates.

Second, Iran has a strategy to keep its nuclear weapons program capacity. President Rouhani—a regime insider and no rebel—will accept greater transparency (short of complete transparency, of course, which would reveal the covert weapons program the regime has long denied), sign an additional protocol, maybe accept 24/7 remote monitoring, but keep the Fordow facility and its enrichment capacity. He will also try to keep alive the plutonium option—an alternative nuclear path that Iran is also pursuing, centered at a facility in Arak.

Read this article in full at World Affairs.