Conservatives may yet derail the Iran nuclear deal

IN A dramatic breakthrough, Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, China, Russia, France, and Germany) reached on Thursday a framework political deal to curb Teheran's nuclear programme while gradually easing international sanctions. Should the outline agreement hold together in coming days it could pave the way for a historic, final, and comprehensive deal between Teheran and the world powers before an end-June 2015 deadline.

The potential importance, complexity and tough nature of the talks is underlined by the fact that John Kerry stayed for over a week in Lausanne, the longest negotiation at a single site by a US secretary of state since at least the 1978 Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt. This underlines that the framework accord could become a very significant (albeit still only partial) foreign policy victory for US and Iranian Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani.

This is not only because, as Mr Obama has said, a final deal will ultimately "take a big piece of business off the table and begin a long process in which the relationship not just between Iran and (the United States) but the relationship between Iran and the world, and the region, begins to change". In addition, any lasting settlement would constitute an important win for long-standing efforts to combat nuclear non-proliferation. And this at a crucial time when, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, over 40 countries have expressed interest in joining the "club" of 30 states with nuclear energy.