Fall 2017 JPI

positional theory of negotiation.
So, what was the final outcome of these negotiations? As stated earlier, for Iran, the pressing
need was to gain relief from sanctions that increased in severity and had a crippling effect on its
resource-dependent economy. In particular, restrictions on its oil and gas exports, its ability to import
technology to exploit its energy resources, and being cut off from SWIFT (the financial-messaging
system used to transfer money between the world’s banks) had taken toll. Iran wanted all sanctions to
end from the moment a deal was signed.
According to the agreement reached, Iran would reduce its installed enrichment centrifuges
from 19,000 to 6,000, only 5,000 of which would be spinning. Further, Iran’s second enrichment
facility, which was buried deep within a mountain and thought to be impregnable to conventional air
strikes, would cease all enrichment and be turned into a Physics Research Centre. Iran would also not
produce or house any fissile material for at least fifteen years, reducing its stockpile of low-enriched
uranium from 10,000kg to 300kg for the next fifteen years. The heavy-water reactor at Arak, which
would have produced significant quantities of weapons-grade plutonium, would be removed and
destroyed. No other heavy-water reactor would be allowed to be built for fifteen years.
All of these undertakings hinged on the assurance that Iran would abide by the new rules.
Under the terms of the JCPOA, inspectors from the IAEA would be able to inspect any facility,
declared or otherwise, as long as it was deemed to be “suspicious.” The agreement also stated that
Iran would address the IAEA’s concerns about what it called the Possible Military Dimensions of its
nuclear program.
ANALYSIS OF NEGOTIATIONS
So, if this was truly an interest-based-negotiation, was it still the best outcome two parties could
achieve? Why was it still one of the most controversial foreign policy issues during the US 2016
presidential election? President Barack Obama argued that “because America negotiated from a
position of strength and principle,” the deal successfully constrained Iran’s ability to develop nuclear
weapons and thus strengthened the security of the US A different approach, however, sheds a
divergent light on this certainty. Analyzed from the perspective of structural realism, a realist theory
of international relations, which postulated that structural constraints, determine the behavior of major
players.
According to traditional interpretations of this theory, it would have been more advantageous
for the US to pursue a unilateral, competitive policy on the issue instead. Even though the deal limited
Iran’s nuclear capabilities for fifteen years, it empowered it in other ways. The deal removed
international sanctions and enabled Iran to integrate back to the global economy, which was likely to
strengthen its relative power regionally and internationally. In addition, the competitors of the US,
Russia and China, were likely to benefit from the deal through oil market implications and the ability
to engage in arms trade with Iran. While a traditional structural realist approach would conclude that
these aspects made the Iranian nuclear deal disadvantageous to the relative power position of the US,
an alternative view of the theory could be used to explain the agreement’s strategic significance and
logic. 24
The basic assumption in structural realism is that the international system is anarchic, lacking
24 Henrietta Toivanen “The Structural Realist View,” April 6, 2016.
JPI Fall 2017, pg. 9