The Other MoU: Launching a Europe-Gulf Resilience Initiative After the US-Iran Deal
The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the United States and Iran may have ended one of the most consequential Middle Eastern crises in decades, but it has not resolved the strategic problem it exposed. Whether the 60-day talks it set in motion will produce a final agreement remains far from certain.Yet the central lessons are already clear: Iran has preserved significant leverage, Washington has had to scale back its ambitions, and Europe and the Gulf face the prospect of protracted regional tension. Europe and the Gulf should therefore use the aftermath of the US-Iran deal to articulate their own “other MoU”: a Europe-Gulf Resilience initiative.
A Post-War Model for Verifying Iran’s Missile Arsenal
This study proposes a model for constraining and verifying Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal by employing a layered Strategic Verification Model with seven components: comprehensive baseline declarations; missile test and launch monitoring; intrusive inspections; quantitative and qualitative limits on missile capabilities; production controls, especially on solid-fuel manufacturing; a robust enforcement and compliance architecture; and regional confidence building measures.
It is only fitting that “The Iranian Revolution at 30” begin with an introductory essay by R.K. Ramazani and that this project be dedicated to him. For 55 years, Professor Ramazani has been a teacher and mentor to many scholars and practitioners of the Middle East. His body of work on Iran is unrivalled in its scope and originality. Many of his articles and books on Iranian foreign policy are standard works.
This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel on April 9, 2012
BERLIN – If at one time European governments believed the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran was far more frightening for the United States than for those across the Atlantic, those days are in the past. As talks near on Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran should know that European officials’ views are somewhere in the middle between America’s caution and Israel’s alarm.
The Russian government, like its counterparts in the West, the Middle East, and elsewhere, was caught off guard by the outburst of Arab uprisings beginning in January 2011 that swept away long-ruling authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and (it appears) Yemen, and have threatened to topple those in Bahrain and Syria. The response of the Russian government to these events has, like that of Western governments, often been confused and inconsistent. Just as Western governments have done, Moscow has sought to protect its interests in the region.
Let us assume that nobody will bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, at least for quite a while. There is no Iranian nuclear test in the offing. Until now, the inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have uncovered no diversion of declared stocks of uranium for use in a nuclear explosive device. Of course, clandestine activities could always take place in some remote stretch of the vast Iranian territory, unknown to the inspectors of the Vienna Agency.
A View From the Gulf: A Discussion of Gulf Politics and Security
The Middle East Institute is proud to host Gulf Research Center experts Abdulaziz Sager, Mustafa Alani, and Christian Koch for an examination of recent developments in the Gulf in the wake of the Arab Spring. The speakers will address the crises in Yemen and Bahrain, US-Gulf relations and the question of reform in the region.
The oldest peer-reviewed publication dedicated to the study of the modern Middle East, MEI’s flagship journal covers politics, society, and culture in the region.
