News Digest

Landmark deal: World leaders reach historic pact on Iran’s nuclear powers

After 18 days of intense and often fractious negotiation, diplomats Tuesday declared that the United States, five other world powers and Iran had struck a landmark deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in relief from international sanctions — an agreement designed to avert the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and another U.S. military intervention in the Muslim world. The deal reportedly includes a compromise between Washington and Tehran that would allow U.N. inspectors to press for visits to Iranian military sites as part of their monitoring duties. But access at will to any site would not necessarily be granted and could be delayed, a condition that critics of the deal are sure to seize on as possibly giving Tehran time to cover any sign of noncompliance with its commitments. Under the deal, Tehran would have the right to challenge the U.N request and an arbitration board composed of Iran and the six world powers that negotiated with it would have to decide on the issue.

Iran Deal is the victory of diplomacy & mutual respect over the outdated paradigm of exclusion & coercion. And this is a good beginning.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani posted on Twitter

Such an arrangement would be a notable departure from assertions by top Iranian officials that their country would never allow the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency into such sites. Iran has argued that such visits by the agency would be a cover for spying on its military secrets. Washington says that Iran must cooperate with the agency’s probe as part of any overall deal before all sanctions on it are lifted. The Iranians insist that they have never worked on weapons and have turned down agency requests to visit sites where the agency suspects that such work was going on, including Parchin, the military complex near Tehran where the agency believes explosives testing linked to setting off a nuclear charge was conducted. Any deal will go to the U.N. Security Council, which is expected to endorse it by the end of the month.