The world can be said to have entered a new era. The US and the European Union have lifted sanctions on Iran after almost three decades. Iran, in turn, responded to the gesture by releasing five Americans held inside the country on various charges. The US had imposed sanctions on Iran after the 1979 hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran. Since then, the heat between the countries had only increased with sanctions routinely increased every decade for one reason or another. The removing of the sanctions after tough negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme shows that diplomacy has the ability to triumph as opposed to war-mongering (or that the US now has a different foreign policy interest). One must remember that Iran was among the countries that US President George W Bush had labelled as part of the ‘axis of evil’ during his time in power. Iranian President Rouhani has rightly called the moment a ‘golden page’ in history. This also brings hope to Iranian citizens who have been facing international isolation for decades. The US has even agreed to repay Iran $1.7 billion in debt and interest accrued since before the Iranian revolution.
The lifting of sanctions has come at a crucial time in Middle Eastern politics as tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia are at their highest. While it opens up a new chapter in US-Iran relations, there has been little that Saudi Arabia has been able to do to convince the US of the need to hold back. Neither has Israel, another sworn enemy of the Iranian regime. That the US has gone ahead with negotiating peace and the removal of sanctions against Iran despite the opposition of its two biggest Middle Eastern allies speaks hints at the possibility that we may well have entered a new era – of American foreign policy. That said, there is still a long way to go before ties between Iran and the US return to normal. After the Iranian revolution, the US doubted the staying power of the new Iranian regime. By now, the Iranians have demonstrated unequivocally that they are here to stay – and somewhat in the way they wish to. But unlike North Korea, Iran has been bold by showing willingness to come to the talks table to remove concerns over its nuclear programme. While the nuclear deal with Iran may be the last great triumph of the Obama presidency, it has come against strong opposition within the US, especially amongst the Republican Congress. The fragility of the Iran-US relationship became clear only a day after the lifting of sanctions as the US imposed sanctions on 11 Iranian entities connected with a missile test. As the US goes to the polls at the end of the year, these celebrations of better relations may just be short-lived.
