Sidra Hamidi of Northwestern University looks back at the 2008 U.S.-India nuclear deal to answer: What’s really at stake in the Iran deal? Spoiler alert: Identity politics.
POMEPS Director Marc Lynch investigates the potential for regional transformation and asks can the Iran deal be a new Camp David? He writes,
Total failure is of course still possible, given the wide range of potential spoilers and the complexity of the deal. It is easy to envision the positive relationship rapidly going sour over accusations of cheating, hostile rhetoric, military escalations in other theaters or political setbacks. But should the deal hold, what seems more likely to be at stake in the coming politics is the degree of transformation in regional order: Will the deal be the starting point for a fundamental regional realignment, or will it remain limited to the narrow nuclear realm?
And Henry Farrell of George Washington University argues that the Iran deal reflects the U.S.’s overwhelming power over the world’s financial system.
For more on the negotiations that led up to the Iran deal, see POMEPS Studies 13: Iran and the Nuclear Deal.
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Also, don’t miss the latest contributions to the “Islam and International Order” symposium:
“Frames at Play: Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism,” by Nora Fisher Onar, University of Oxford
“Rethinking religion and politics: Where the fault lines lie in the Arab world,” by Nathan J. Brown, George Washington University