Saturday, December 31, 2011

Iran: reopening nuclear talks?

After the last round of nuclear program negotiations between Iran and the six world powers - the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany - ended in failure last January in Istanbul, Iran has again proposed a new round of negotiations. During the last attempt for compromise, the US and its allies accused Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover for developing atomic weapons, but Iran denied such alterior motives, stating that it was simply used for peaceful purposes and to generate electricity.

Perhaps this round of nuclear talks will be just as futile and ineffective as the last. After all, the US and Iran have been playing this game for many years - is this just a cover for both sides to simultaneously maintain integrity and plot their own political and military strategies? Or do these talks have the slim potential (considering the shaky relationship between US and Iran) to actually reach some sort of compromise?

3 comments:

JeremyHardy said...

Particularly with the new Iran sanctions bill, which President Obama signed into law yesterday and which Ahmadinejad subsequently disparaged, U.S.-Iran relations are only getting more tense, despite this seemingly peaceful move by Iran for another round of negotiations. The sanctions bill, in my opinion, sends a clear message that the U.S. will not be so soft on negotiations and is willing to make few concessions; meanwhile, Iran stands by its convictions that its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, as you said. For now, I find it unlikely that some sort of compromise will be reached; however, I can't imagine these negotiations lasting perpetually, and I feel that a lengthy compromise will be agreed upon, sometime in the next 15 years I'd estimate.

Calvin Ng said...

I'm with Jeremy on this. Negotiations might take a long time but eventually they will reach some kind of agreement. No matter what it seems no one will start firing nukes and yes the US and Russia were really considering launching nukes at each other but something called MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, seems to kick in and the realization that "hey, if we push this button to launch our nukes, we're basically signing the death wish of millions of citizens in our country because when we fire our nukes they'll fire theirs and both our countries will be blown back to before the big bang." So they eventually have to reach an agreement or else their country is also endanger of nuclear warfare, not just ours.

Alex Zuniga said...

I also agree with Jeremy that sometime in the future a compromise can be reach. However, I believe that this next round of negotiations will be a failure because why would the negotiations work this time and not last year. Something will have to change for these negotiations to work.