The potential pitfalls and windfalls of the nuclear deal with Iran.

Rouzbeh Parsi, Ephraim Asculai, Paul Morris, Negar Partow and Paul Buchanan provide perspectives on the deal.

Dr Rouzbeh Parsi is a senior lecturer at Lund University, Sweden, andformer senior research fellow/analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies for Iran, Iraq and Gulf countries. Dr Ephraim Asculai is a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv; he formerly served at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Prof Paul Morris is director of religious studies at Victoria University. Dr Negar Partow lectures at Massey University's Centre for Defence and Security Studies and is a member of the NZIIA's Standing Committee. Paul G. Buchanan is director of 36th Parallel Assessments, a geo-political and strategic consultancy. Their segments are the edited texts of the presentations they made at the NZIIA's panel discussion at Parliament on 16 September 2015.

Rouzbeh Parsi

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is probably one of the most intrusive and comprehensive multilateral agreements to try and ensure non-proliferation. It will put Iran under scrutiny for many years--up to 25 years depending on which aspect of the nuclear programme you are looking at--and, of course, beyond, because there are certain things for which there is no sunset clause. Iran will be forced not only to sign but also to ratify the Additional Protocol, which is open ended with no time limit. And that will ensure further scrutiny of that programme.

How has this played out inside Iran? I think we can see a rather predictable dichotomy between those who are interested in and willing to engage in greater interaction with the world and can even contemplate some kind of relationship with the United States, or at least less hostility, and the hardliners, who for either ideological or other reasons think that this very process is wrong. So there are those who are against it on ideological and principle grounds. Then there are always people who think that they could have secured a better deal. This is being mirrored very much by the American hardliners, especially in the United States Congress, who believe that the American bargaining position was much stronger and, therefore, should have yielded further concessions from the other side. Both parties believe this. And both are, in my opinion, quite wrong, because they are overestimating their own strength and under-estimating that of their counterparts.

The problem for the Iranian government that has signed this deal is, of course, to manage the expectations of what it will mean for Iran itself. And here primarily it is a question of the economy. Because we have to remember that this government went to the elections, and won, on the promise of resuscitating the Iranian economy, which is in bad shape now. This is because of the way it has been managed to a large degree but also partly because of the sanctions. So one of the ways quickly to be able to resuscitate it would be to have the sanctions lifted in order to be able trade much more with less constraint. So, in a sense, the negotiations and this deal are an extension of an electoral promise that has lot more to do with domestic politics than it has to do with foreign policy. By being able to deliver on the deal, they now have great expectations among this population that voted for them to an overwhelming degree to do exactly that, to bring the economy back into life, and quickly. This is, of course, a problem because the sanctions relief and the actual effects of the relief will take much longer to come into effect than people would expect. So here is a management issue to deal with. This is problem number one.

Problem number two is that this being a victory, it has to be narrated and portrayed as such if the government is to win the parliamentary elections in February next year. So this again has to do with how the government can capitalise on the risk it took by entering these negotiations. And here we can see that the hardliners are now increasingly trying to portray this particular negotiated deal in a very bad light. Because they know very well that they most likely cannot derail it. All the different parties within the system of the Islamic Republic have, more or less, lined up as ducks in a row and agreed to this negotiated deal. So if derailment is unlikely, they will probably try to win the narrative about what it was about. And the best parallel there probably would be the Obama administration's success in bringing something that looks like universal health coverage in the United States--the Affordable Health Act--which in the media narrative, especially on Fox News, became Obamacare. If you listened to the media narrative it looked almost as though it was a failure, even though in legislative terms it was a success. And you can see the same thing in Iran now. The hardliners are trying to say that it is not only a bad deal but also a failure in every sense imaginable. This is a way of stealing the thunder of the government for the upcoming parliamentary...