On MSNBC News, Ernest Moniz, the former Secretary of Energy and the main architect of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, provided a frank and unsettling evaluation of the state of nuclear diplomacy with Iran. The video was published. We are, in effect, starting over, according to Moniz, who spoke with MSNBC, and the situation today is significantly worse than what negotiators experienced when they were creating the ground-breaking agreement over ten years ago.
Moniz blasted the US-Tehran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was just signed, claiming that it was an oil and commodities deal that did not address the most urgent and important issues, rather than a multifaceted Iran deal.
He added that the MOU’s absence of any mention of Iranian proxies, drones, or missiles is a major flaw that jeopardizes any hope for a long-term diplomatic resolution.
He continued by saying that the Obama administration judiciously opted to solve these concerns individually and made significant progress on the nuclear front, but that all ended in 2018 when Trump withdrew from the deal.
Because of the rapid expansion of Iran’s nuclear program, modern diplomats are in an even more dangerous position than Moniz and his colleagues were in 2015.
Moniz said, “We’re back to square one with a nuclear negotiation in a place that’s, to be honest, far less auspicious than even in 2015. ”
He continued by saying that, in essence, the current arrangement has already reverted to the Obama administration’s sequential method. Therefore, for the next talks, the nuclear issue is the sole and most complex subject at hand; regional influence, missiles, and proxies are no longer even options.