Research and development has surfaced as a barrier to progress with only a week until the deadline to agree on the parameters of a final nuclear deal. If past performance is an indicator, pursuit of research and development (R&D) is likely to be a key domestic selling point of any comprehensive agreement for the Iranians. The pertinence of this stumbling block should not be underestimated.

Throughout his campaign in the run-up to his June 2013 election, President Hassan Rouhani defended heavily criticized policy decisions when he was chief negotiator in 2003-05 by pointing to parallel pursuit of scientific development. Specifically, he sought to sell Iran’s voluntary and temporary freeze on uranium enrichment by arguing that it allowed necessary time and space to master technologies that Iran lacked at the time, with specific reference to the Uranium Conversion Facility at Esfahan.

Indeed, without directly referring to Rouhani’s point, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, made a similar argument Sept. 17, 2013, in a key speech before Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders. In that address, which laid bare the logic of “heroic flexibility” — later heralded as the foundation for discourse embracing more extensive nuclear diplomacy — Khamenei said “a wrestler sometimes shows flexibility for technical reasons.” Khamenei’s “heroic flexibility” preceded the beginning of overt and direct engagement between Iran and the United States at the UN General Assembly in late September 2013.

Subsequent statements by Khamenei lend credence to the point that R&D will be a key aspect of any comprehensive agreement. On Iran’s last National Nuclear Technology Day on April 9, Khamenei stated: “The nuclear achievements that have been made so far are, in fact, a message to the people of Iran that they can take the paths that lead to the lofty peaks of science and technology. Therefore, this scientific-nuclear movement should not be stopped in any way or slowed down.”