Expert: Flawed Nuclear Deal Allows Iran to Emerge As “Regional Power”

The flawed nuclear deal reached yesterday “maps Iran’s emergence as a regional power, with the full blessing … of the United States,” Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, wrote in an op-ed published today in The New York Daily News.

Satloff identified several weaknesses in the agreement, which allows Iran to delay inspections for 24 days, fails to spell out the consequences of Iranian violations, and leaves a huge loophole in the terms of the “snap-back” of sanctions by allowing any contracts signed before their re-imposition to be honored.

This assessment of the nuclear agreement echoes that of former administration official Michael Doran, who wrote in February that the administration’s intent in warming up to Iran was to “provide a foundation for building a concert system of states—a club of stable powers that could work together to contain the worst pathologies of the Middle East.”

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Other experts including Tony Badran and Jonathan Spyer have noticed that the United States has, in practice, been legitimizing Iran’s interests in the Middle East.

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Read the full article here.