Some urge US to pursue bigger nuclear deal with Iran
Former US government officials including former White House and State Department Iran official Dennis Ross have said the US should pursue a comprehensive deal which may recognize Iran's right to enrichment but at the same time be acceptable to the United States.
With Iran nuclear talks on hold until after the August inauguration of Iranian President-elect Hassan Rouhani, some US national security experts are urging the Obama administration to pivot from trying to get a small nuclear deal with Iran, to going for a more comprehensive deal.
“Going ‘Big for Big’ now potentially gives Rouhani something substantial to use to claim he got the P5+1 to recognize Iran's ‘rights,’ something his predecessors didn't get, and thus perhaps help him build an elite consensus around a nuclear deal,” former Pentagon Middle East advisor Colin Kahl told Al-Monitor Thursday.
“We should move now to presenting an endgame proposal,” former Obama White House Iran strategist Dennis Ross wrote in the New York Times this week (June 25). “One that focuses on the outcome that we, the United States, can accept on the nuclear issue.”
Negotiations over the past year between six world powers and Iran have focused on trying to get Iran to curb its 20% uranium enrichment in exchange for limited sanctions relief. (See the most recent P5+1 offer to Iran here.)
