US president, Barack Obama, used the word “historic” to describe the framework agreement with Iran at the P5+1 (or E3+3) discussions in Lausanne, as Iranians took to the streets of Tehran to celebrate what the view as an agreement to end the sanctions.
If the final agreement is reached by 30 June, as stipulated in the framework, it might indeed be proved to be a historic turning point, on par with the 1972 Nixon opening to China. The potential is there, but not everything is expected to be straightforward.
From the European perspective, the 3 EU member States that participate in the discussions on Iran's nuclear programme since 2003 (UK, France and Germany) don't face major challenges, nor does Russia and China. (The P5+1 is comprised of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany). For Europe, a normalisation of the relationship with Iran is long overdue and made more important by the need to face up to the new challenges in Europe’s southern neighborhood posed by the rise of ISIS.
Russia and China have already a good working relationship with Iran with Russia participating in Iran's nuclear programme and are certainly not expected to undermine a final agreement, unless it undermines their preferential relationship with Iran.
It is the US and Iran itself that are challenged to finalise the deal. The Obama administration's efforts can be undermined by the Republicans in Congress. It is also, directly or indirectly, pressured by Israel whose Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has already blasted the deal as an “existential threat” to Israel.
Washington can be pressured by other allies, like Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government cautiously “expressed hope for attaining a binding and definitive agreement that would lead to the strengthening of security and stability in the region and the world” and expressed the hope that it will lead to a “Middle East and the Arabian Gulf region free of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons,” an obvious reference to both the Iranian and the Israeli nuclear programme.
But Saudi Arabia, together with most of the Sunni states like Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf States is already involved in a proxy war with Iran in Yemen, while Syria and Lebanon look eastwards to Iran.
From the European as well as the wider Western perspective, if one excludes the first post revolutionary years and the rhetoric coming out of Tehran and Qom and looking beyond the Israel/Palestine issues, no serious challenges ever came from the Shi'a as opposed to the Sunni. Today's main challenge, the spread of ISIS, a Sunni entity like “al Qaeda”, in the Middle East and North Africa promotes Shi'a Iran to a natural ally.
An ally that is greatly strengthened after the US invasion in Iraq and the destruction of the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein that was initially used by the West in order to contain the Iranian Islamic revolution.
The last challenge to the agreement may come from Iran itself. But Iranian society is today very different from the one that gave the 1979 revolution against the Shah its Islamic characteristics. It is the society that brought today's moderate president Hassan Rouhani to power. It is centered on a large middle class, the same one that celebrated the framework agreement in the streets of Tehran, last week and it is eager to see Iran return to the international fold as a “normal country”.
Both Iran and the US may face internal dissent regarding the agreement. But both have to gain by it. Iran by consolidating it's growing regional influence and the US by gradually disengaging from the distractions that prevent it from pursuing the refocusing of its policy on the Pacific region.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/iran-nuclear-agreement-will-refocus-global-politics