Recently there has been a great deal of debate over whether Iran will remain compliant to its commitments of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCOPA) a.k.a. The Iran Nuclear Deal. The current Iranian administration under the leadership of President Rouhani has been zealously promoting Iran as a more moderate front than ever before. Despite the hindering activities of the Iranian religious hardliners who furiously oppose any deal involving the United States, the vast majority of Iranians are backing the deal. After all, Iran’s economy has been terribly hurting from the international sanctions in the past several years and a deal that can resurge this isolated economy into the world’s economy is undoubtedly welcomed by the Iranian people.

From the perspective of international relations, I believe we can all safely assume that the current Iranian administration is the best of all the administrations that Iran ever had since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Its not easy to negotiate with the six most powerful countries in the world (United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China) and be able to reach an agreement, especially with concurrently convincing the Iranian religious hard-liners who still have a great deal of animosity toward the United States.

I believe the Nuclear Deal is a fair one. It is not the best deal that we were all hoping for but it is the best obtainable deal. Let’s face it, the United States’ relationship with Iran has been very rocky ever since the Iranian revolution of 1979. The amount of distrust between the two countries is insurmountable. Being able to find common ground and agree on a deal, although imperfect, is still a step in the right direction. Lets not forget about the main objective of the negotiations. As President Obama has noted numerous times, this deal, if implemented correctly, will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The key phrase here is: the correct implementation, which has spawned a great deal of controversy in Congress, especially when it comes to the monitoring process of the Iranian Nuclear downgrade. However, as long as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confidently assures us on their ability to monitor Iran’s compliancy of its nuclear commitments, then, in my opinion, we should not be so worried about the minutia of monitoring activities.



Having said that, however, the question on everyone’s mind is not about Iran’s immediate compliance, but instead it is about Iran’s “prolonged’ compliance throughout the duration of the deal. After all, as Senator Menendez has put it, “[the nuclear deal only uses] inferior language” as supposed to a “mandatory language.” This may lead Iran into a false presumption of the ability to bend the unfavorable parts of the deal over the duration of the agreement. This may especially turn to be true upon a change of administration as the deal’s duration is beyond the governance of a single administration, even with considering a second term victory of the current Iranian administration. What if a religious-hardliner administration comes to power after the current moderate administration? If this were to happen, I would suspect, some, if not all, of the terms of the nuclear deal to be challenged by the religious-hardliner administration. Moreover, this deal only addresses Iran’s activities in regards to the Nuclear proliferation. Other issues, such as the human rights and, most importantly, the regional security, still need to be addressed promptly after the implementation of this nuclear deal.

This article was written by Morteza Soleymannezhad  for Forbes on AUG. 13, 2015