WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Iran and the United States are likely to dramatically improve ties after the nuclear agreement was reached on Tuesday, but other Middle East nations will remain suspicious of Tehran, US experts told Sputnik.
“[The agreement] is a meticulously negotiated framework for managing an exit from the largely pointless confrontation over an Iranian nuclear weapons program that the world's best intelligence agencies assert does not exist,” former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Middle East Policy Council President Emeritus Charles Freeman, Jr. told Sputnik on Tuesday.
“Now that the arguably nonexistent has been made verifiably infeasible, a process of normalizing relations with Iran can begin,” Freeman said.
However, Freeman cautioned that the process would have to be a gradual one.
“This will take considerable time,” he said. “Israel and the Gulf Arabs remain concerned about Iran's ambition to dominate their region.”
US negotiators had taken such fears into account by insisting upon “the extension of international sanctions on arms sales to Iran for five years and on trade in missile-related technologies for eight [years],” the veteran envoy explained.
“This is an attempt by the United States to reintegrate Iran into the US imperial order for the Persian Gulf,” Boyle told Sputnik.
Up to 1979, Iran served as “the imperial policeman throughout the Persian Gulf region for the United States under the Shah, but this ended with the 1979 Islamic Revolution,” Boyle said.
In the background to the successful agreement, “the United States used the pretext the nuclear issue to bludgeon Iran into submission by means of the economic sanctions,” he added.
However, now that the deal has finally been reached, “We are going to see a gradual relaxation of tensions between the United States and Iran,” Boyle predicted, adding that the détente between the two countries could go far further than was generally anticipated.
Boyle suggested the Iranian government might cut back its support for Syria.
“They very well might cut back their support for Hamas in Gaza. They very well might cut back their support for Hezbollah in Lebanon,” he stated.
Since the Shia Islamic Republic in Iran opposed the Sunni Muslim fundamentalist Taliban forces, Tehran might even “support the United States continuing its presence in Afghanistan, Boyle suggested.
“I suspect this deal will have wide ranging implications stretching across the Middle East and Central Asia,” he said. “Iran has made a strategic choice to align itself with the United States.”
Because Iran is a significant regional power in the Middle East, Washington hopes to cooperate with Tehran in many areas, both economic and geopolitical, the professor argued.
“Iran is potentially a useful partner to Washington in energy projects that work against Russian interests, not least of them pipelines serving to 'diversify' Europe's gas supplies,” Boyle said.
The two countries might also now more openly seek to extend their cooperation in the struggle to roll back the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Boyle concluded.
