By Shlomo Brom
Negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are approaching a March 24 deadline for a political agreement on principles that will govern a later comprehensive deal. If the P5+1—the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany—and Iran reach this agreement, they will then have an additional three months to conclude a detailed final agreement.
The proximity of this deadline sharpens the dilemma facing both sides of the negotiating table. As Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged following three days of negotiations with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Lousanne, Switzerland, “We have made some progress but there are still gaps, important gaps, and important choices that need to be made by Iran in order to move forward.”
The deadline also increases the pressure that the negotiating parties face from both opponents and proponents of a possible agreement. Two highly visible and controversial examples of such pressure are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the U.S. Congress on March 3, in which he fiercely attacked what he has perceived as the coming agreement, and the open letter to Iran signed by 47 Republican senators on March 9, which advised the Iranian regime not to rely on any agreement with President Barack Obama without the approval of Congress. However, other U.S. allies are applying pressure in less obvious ways. Secretary Kerry flew after a previous negotiations meeting directly from Montreux, Switzerland, to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in an effort to reassure the new Saudi King Salman that any nuclear deal with Iran will be in Saudi interests, indicating just how concerned this significant Middle Eastern partner is about the content of the talks with Iran.
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