On 2 April 2015, a political framework agreement was reached on Iran’s controversial nuclear programme. This agreement, negotiated between Iran and the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany (the ‘P5+1’) serves as a framework for a comprehensive nuclear agreement on Iran’s nuclear status (called the ‘Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’) which will replace an interim agreement reached on 23 November 2013.
The deadline for this ‘JCPOA’ is 30 June 2015, and much is at stake in the negotiations: If successful, this agreement will end the 12-year long nuclear conflict with Iran. This being the most important foreign policy priority for the Obama and Rouhani administrations, their critics, domestic and international, are gathering to derail the diplomatic process. To be sure, a nuclear agreement with Iran has the potential to change traumatised US-Iranian relations, change the regional security architecture in the Middle East, and re-define Iran’s terms of engagement with ‘the West’ at large.
BSIS PhD student Moritz Pieper is currently finishing his doctoral dissertation on the diplomacy surrounding the Iranian nuclear crisis with a particular emphasis on the positions and policies of China, Russia, and Turkey. Based on fieldwork in these three countries, his research sheds light on an understudied dimension of the Iranian nuclear conflict, namely that between ‘the West’ and actors whose policies have often been crafted in reaction and partial opposition to ‘Western’ approaches. His research reflects on the emergence of alternative narratives on the Iranian nuclear crisis in a world of conflicting power centers and changing conceptions of security culture towards Iran.
A book chapter of his on Turkish Iran policy is forthcoming in an edited volume by the SETA Foundation, Washington, an article on Russian Iran policy is forthcoming in the journal International Politics, and a co-authored policy brief on Russian interests in the Iran nuclear talks will be published shortly by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).
His researcher profile can be accessed here: http://www.kent.ac.uk/brussels/staff/profiles/research/pieper.html