The 60-Day Test: What Iran’s Agreement with the United States Really Means
Three issues that could unravel the deal
Sixty days is enough time to test the deal, but not to settle it. Three issues could each sink it. The first is Lebanon. Iran has set the bar high, and keeps raising it, by tying any final accord to a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, framed in the text of the agreement as respecting Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has signaled that he did not feel bound by the agreement between Washington and Tehran and had no intention of withdrawing his forces from Lebanon. Coupled with Tehran’s standing threat to answer any strike on Beirut, this leaves Iran on a knife’s edge: act on the threat and risk reigniting the war and collapsing even the interim deal, or hold back and watch its credibility erode alongside Hezbollah’s strength. This is the wildest card in play.
The second is the question of the nuclear program and the removal of sanctions against Iran, which is the most technically demanding terrain. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal was a long and granular instrument that spelled out, in detail, the limits on Iran’s nuclear program. The current agreement only gestures at the same questions—enrichment, the fate of the highly enriched stockpile—and leaves the substance for later, which is precisely where deals of this kind tend to come apart.
