Iran: Administration officials think they have bought time; they think they have retained leverage; and they believe the power of moderates could grow within Iran as the process unfolds.

Gerald Seib writes in The Wall Street Journal:

Getting to step one with Iran was hard enough. It took years of fits and starts, a long period of secret negotiations and an Iranian leader bringing a new tone to produce the preliminary and temporary deal struck over the weekend to freeze much of Iran's nuclear program in return for limited sanctions relief.

 

So, given the difficulties in reaching this point, why do Obama administration officials think they can take the next, even bigger step: completion within the next six months of a permanent and comprehensive deal that reins in Iran's nuclear program permanently?

 

Basically, there are three reasons: Administration officials think they have bought time; they think they have retained leverage; and they believe the power of moderates could grow within Iran as the process unfolds.

 

Skeptics—in Congress, Israel and Saudi Arabia—doubt each of those premises. But those reasons form the basis for hope that the six-month deal struck over the weekend can turn into something lasting that gives the world assurances Iran won't be able to build nuclear weapons and that provides Iran permanent relief from international economic sanctions.

 

Consider the three premises:

The West has acquired the most precious resource needed to strike a broad deal, which is time. For more than a decade, the world has feared that Iran might simply use negotiations to buy time to continue work on its nuclear program. The new deal, U.S. officials say, reverses that: Nuclear advances are frozen, creating time and space for negotiations without fear that talking equals nuclear program by the Iranians.

Were we not to reach this type of agreement, six months from now Iran could make significant progress in increasing its stockpiles" of enriched uranium, says one senior administration aide. "That is the outcome that we prevent with this agreement, by halting the progress of the program and rolling it back."

 

Israel and critics in Congress, however, don't consider that much of an achievement. They complain that little of Iran's progress in stockpiling centrifuges that can enrich uranium is rolled back, meaning the nuclear program is frozen at a fairly advanced level and can resume from there if and when negotiations break down.

The U.S. and its allies still have plenty of leverage. Administration officials contend that the sanctions relief Iran receives over the next six months is limited enough that the international community can continue to exert significant pressure.

 

Iran will be allowed to bring home $4.2 billion of revenue from oil sales and generate perhaps an additional $1 billion from petrochemical exports under the sanctions relief. It also will begin to bring in auto parts to revive its troubled auto industry and resume gold and precious-metals trade.

 

But U.S. officials insist that the core of the international economic sanctions imposed on Iran—which limit oil sales and restrict the country's access to the international banking system—will remain in place. In this view, that means Tehran's incentive to abide by the preliminary deal and make concessions to get a long-term deal will remain high.

In particular, officials argue, Iran actually will lose more revenue from oil-sales proceeds that it won't be allowed to bring home over the next six months than it will gain from the limited relief. "So just looking at oil revenue alone, Iran will actually be worse off at the end of this six-month deal than it is today," one official says.

Israeli officials argue, though, that this misses the broader point: The international stigma of doing business with Iran has faded, and that will steadily and inevitably erode the economic barriers over time.

The power of moderates could grow as the process continues. This is both one of the most intriguing and most contentious possibilities.

The key to the preliminary deal was the election of Hasan Rouhani as Iran's new president in June. U.S. officials consider Mr. Rouhani a moderating force within Iran's power structure—and, more important, think he has been given a mandate from supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to begin repairing Iran's ties with the outside world.

One reason to strike a preliminary deal now, in the eyes of U.S. and European officials, is to test that proposition and to see whether a bit of diplomatic success now can allow Mr. Rouhani and like-minded forces within Iran to gather strength internally to go further.

If that proves to be the case, the U.S. might, as President Barack Obama said over the weekend, begin to "chip away" at other problems, including Iranian support for terrorism, for the Hezbollah extremist group and for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

This may be the biggest test of all—and the area where Israeli and Saudi officials, who fear the character of the regime is unchanged, are most skeptical.