A Framework for the Next Step on Iran: Negotiations through the Prism of Regional Dynamics

Efforts by the international community to confront and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions over the past seven years have been marked by tension between two focal points. The first has been the tendency to deal solely with the nuclear activity itself, through the prism of NPT provisions, with the goal of bringing/forcing Iran back into the fold of this international non-proliferation treaty (which Iran is party to as a non-nuclear state). The second tendency has been to include a wider spectrum of regional realities and state interests, with the understanding that these factors are inextricably linked to the nuclear challenge that Iran poses. So far the first tendency has been dominant: although international actors facing Iran no doubt understand the significance of the nuclear challenge’s wider context, concrete efforts have nevertheless focused almost exclusively on the nuclear issue as such.