It's Called Capitulation

"Today’s meeting was useful and facilitated a better understanding between the two sides."
"The discussions focused on the need to resolve, as soon as possible, all outstanding issues related to Iran’s nuclear program."
International Atomic Energy Agency

Parchin military installation, Iran

Outstanding issues? That would of necessity include the outstanding issues dating from November of 2011 where twelve sets of questions about Iran's past work were to have been resolved, and simply have not been. Promising two weeks later to step up cooperation with the IAEA, Iran has managed to partially tackle but one of those issues. Talks surrounding them have made no progress since last summer when Iran managed to miss a deadline to provide fresh information on two of the issues.

Details, boring details. Setting aside those details which may be of immense importance of disclosure aiding the world to understand just what it is that Iran is aiming for, and which the Islamic Republic is determined to avoid having that clarity proceed with, it would seem now that its recalcitrance has paid off rather handsomely. Stalling techniques and diplomatic overtures to demonstrate its earnestness in attempting to satisfy its unreasonable critics have had their result.

Numerous reports now suggest that the obstacles remaining to the completion of a deal have been narrowed. Get that? Refusal to cooperate in the guise of wanting to, but not quite understanding the efforts required to get there have caused a narrowing of the gap between what Iran intends and what the international community feels is required to put a stopper in the bottle of the nuclear genie's escape.

The resulting deal is seen by some as representing one of the most important international agreements to cloud the future, of the past half-century. Some believe the result will guarantee that Iran will be forced to surrender its nuclear weapons-state dream, while others insist it will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran; perhaps not immediately but in the medium to longer term; guaranteed.

If any side to the negotiations has faltered in original intent, it has certainly not been Iran. The United States, on the other hand had an unambiguous goal, to eliminate Iran's potential of producing a nuclear weapon, and in the process roll back those key elements of its program that would enable it to succeed. A second goal was to have a verification regime installed to ensure Iranian compliance.

In each of these areas, Iranian overtures and successful efforts at finessing doubts of its sincerity have resulted in American back-tracking, giving the benefit of the doubt to Iran, a country which has expressly threatened the safety and security of other countries, a country which has distinguished itself as a supporter of terrorist groups, a country which has excelled in the past at gulling its adversaries.

But the U.S. has made critical concessions in the areas it had initially said were non-negotiable; the elimination of Iran's ability to enrich uranium whose potential for weaponization has defaulted to the American administration now preparing to accept an infrastructure of thousands of Iranian centrifuges; because Iran has resisted putting them to rest. The revised goal now is to monitor and limit the industrial base to prevent Iran's production of material for a warhead in under a year.

Such a deal would leave Iran a threshold nuclear state, giving the international community time to respond should Tehran proceed with weaponization. So who actually is in charge here? Looks like Iran is guiding the United States in the direction it wants, not the reverse. Iran has insisted on a five to seven year period where the agreement would remain in force, freeing Iran up afterward for expansion of its production of potential bomb materials.

As for the 2003 signing of the Additional Protocol granting the IAEA authority to undertake more intrusive inspections of Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty member states, Iran somehow overlooked ratifying it. And stopped its adherence to the protocol in 2006. Since then it has refused to revisit its position, continuing to resist IAEA access to military installations, such as the Parchin facility where the IAEA suspects nuclear weapons research has taken place; the site of a massive explosion last fall.

Iran's international relations, its actions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen gave a fairly good picture going forward into the future of a country with alarming aspirations. Alarming at the very least in Jerusalem, Riyadh and Amman for what those aspirations portend for their very own futures. But then, the United States, China, Russia, Germany, France and Britain are not next-door neighbours to Iran.

Their reaction time to a nuclear breakout won't concern them as much as it does Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, needless to say.