The next six to 24 months are going to be the most vital period for Iran-US relations on both the nuclear dilemma and US-Iran relations. Eleven years of diplomatic negotiations on the Iranian nuclear dossier have failed. While the world powers and Iran are working on the next meeting to happen soon, the most critical question remains as to whether a feasible deal is plausible? Under President Obama’s leadership, the most comprehensive sanctions and punitive measures have been imposed on Iran, while Iran, in response, has accelerated its nuclear program. Iran has now accumulated over 7 tons of low enriched uranium, increasing the concerns of the West that if further enriched, it would enable Iran to build nuclear weapons.
The latest visit to Tehran by the IAEA on Dec. 13, 2012 — the first since August 2005 — provided an optimistic outlook for an agreement to resolve the IAEA’s remaining technical ambiguities on the Iranian Nuclear program. After returning to Vienna from Tehran, Herman Nackaerts, the deputy director general of the IAEA, stated: “We were able to make progress … We expect to finalize the structured approach and start implementing it then shortly after that … More talks are due with Iran on Jan. 16.”