TEHRAN – There is a view among some analysts and Iranian officials that the U.S. and some other Western countries in the 5+1 group are seeking to impose a new legal regime on Iran under the Additional Protocol to the NPT.

“What the other side is asking Iran to do is not simply to sign and ratify the Additional Protocol,” South Alabama University Professor Nader Entessar says.

“It is asking for ‘Additional Protocol-Plus’ which no other signatory of the NPT has been subjected to.  In other words, the West is asking Iran to accept a whole new set of legal obligation by creating a new legal regime just for Iran,” Entessar tells the Tehran Times.

Entessar also says demand for inspection of Iranian military sites or interview with nuclear experts “remains the most significant challenge to the ongoing negotiations between Iran and the 5+1 countries, especially the Western countries in the group.”

Iran has unequivocally declared that it will not allow the inspection of its military sites or interview with its nuclear experts.

“In hindsight, one wishes that Iran had brought up this issue at the very beginning of the negotiations and before the Geneva framework was signed in November 2013.The public statements from Tehran and the Western capitals are diametrically opposed to each other and one doesn't know which side will blink first in this ‘eyeball-to-eyeball’ confrontation.”

Iran and the 5+1 group missed the June 30 deadline to agree on a final deal on Tehran’s nuclear program. However, days before the deadline both sides said they are not bound by the deadline and what is important for them is a “good deal”.

“It is possible that the impending agreement will still have a number of significant loopholes with unanswered questions that will require more rounds of negotiations in the future,” Entessar, a political scientist, says.

Analysts and politicians consider a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program as a foreign policy success for the Obama administration and this has unnerved Obama’s Republican opponents and hardliners.

“All the declared Republican candidates in the 2016 U.S. presidential election have expressed their opposition to the Iran nuclear talks as they are conducted by the Obama administration.  They will make this into a foreign policy issue in their campaign.  Of course, Iran will be one of several foreign policy issues that the Republicans will use to attack Obama's foreign policy, but given the animosity of the Republican establishment and their supporters towards Iran, the ‘Iran card’ will play a prominent role in their presidential campaign.”

Except Germany all the other 5+1 countries that are negotiating with Iran have stockpiled hundreds of nuclear weapons. These countries have signed the NPT but so far they have failed to annihilate their nuclear arsenal.

Entessar says, “It is very clear that those members of the NPT that have developed nuclear weapons have not upheld their end of the bargain under their NPT obligations. 

“None of the nuclear weapon states are remotely interested in meaningful disarmament measures and are simply content to maintain their nuclear monopoly and nuclear apartheid.”  

Entessar says through such a policy nuclear weapons states “maintain their top-dog position in the hierarchy of nation-states”.


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“None of the nuclear weapon states are remotely interested in meaningful disarmament measures and are simply content to maintain their nuclear monopoly and nuclear apartheid.”