Derek H. Burney was Canada's ambassador to the U.S. from 1989-1993. He was directly involved in negotiating the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S.; Fen Osler Hampson is a distinguished fellow and director of Global Security at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Chancellor's Professor at Carleton University. They are the authors of Brave New Canada: Meeting the Challenge of a Changing World
As the nuclear negotiations with Iran are pushed down the road yet again beyond yet another "absolute" deadline, one is left to wonder whether the opprobrium of failure is more of a driving force than the potential substance of an agreement. Whatever happened to the axiom of "no deal is better than a bad deal"?
The exodus of the foreign ministers of China, France and Russia from the talks while U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hangs on is more a sign of U.S. desperation than an imminent deal. If "progress" is declared it will be progress on fumes not substance.
No matter how noble the objective, this initiative has been fraught with huge problems and a distinct lack of trust from the outset. The United States having a lumpy negotiating team on one side (the "P5 plus One") and a shady regime on the other does not help. Nor does the absence of a real deadline, which shifts by the day.
The gaps on basic issues are profound and divergent goals have plagued talks from the outset. The U.S. ostensibly wants to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons – or at the very least to have a year's warning of an impending breakout – and has been prepared to relax sanctions to that end. The Iranians want sanctions lifted but show less enthusiasm about completely abandoning their nascent plans to develop nuclear weapons. For a country awash in oil, it is difficult to believe that peaceful use of enriched uranium is the actual goal. The fact that North Korea is the likely sponsor of nuclear weapons technology in exchange for Iranian oil makes the prospect of enforcement even more dubious.
The previous track record of monitoring North Korea, which broke all of its negotiated commitments and crossed the nuclear threshold, is inauspicious. It hangs like the dead albatross in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner over these becalmed talks, which continue "day after day" stuck in "idle as a painted ship."
Any negotiation has to be worked on different levels – the local, the regional, and the global – with negotiating partners and key stakeholders who are not soul mates but "teams of rivals" motivated by competing interests and concerns. The Iranian nuclear talks are no exception. The "P5 plus One" is not a cohesive entity. The Russians and Chinese have strategic and commercial interests of their own with Iran not necessarily in line with these negotiations. Some of the Europeans seem more interested in deriving commercial advantage once sanctions are eased than in preserving nuclear non-proliferation.
America's allies in the region – notably Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia – have not concealed their staunch opposition to the negotiations and their deep-rooted concern about what they predict will flow from a flawed deal – an Iran that retains the capacity to cross the nuclear threshold and reap greater mischief once sanctions are lifted.
The U.S. Congress has gone to unusual lengths to signal its dismay. Leadership is not just about take the helm at the negotiating table, but building domestic support for any new initiative. On this score the administration has failed to secure Congress's support for any kind of deal with Iran.
Remember, too, that what is being negotiated is simply a framework of principles and not the text of an actual agreement in which the devil will inevitably have ample scope to exploit the detail and the loopholes. Repeated promises that the details will emerge in the final agreement in June ring increasingly hollow as Iran backs away from its promises such as its earlier "agreement" to hand over its reprocessed fuel to Russia. Tangible commitments are a sign of progress and in this case there appear to be none.
All this leaves an embattled U.S. administration out on a precarious limb of its own making – and with little hope of sustaining with Congress whatever might be agreed at the negotiating table. Given all the uncertainties, it is not a bad time to hit the pause button, if not suspend negotiations outright and concentrate on the battles raging against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq, Syria and Yemen and in a region where American strategy and leadership more generally is unravelling. What Iran is up to in Iraq, Syria and Yemen should be a more immediate concern in any event for the U.S. and its putative allies.