(CNN) Aaron David Miller - Any really good deal was lost once Iran mastered the fuel cycle, the international community conceded Iran's right to enrich uranium, and the regime created a vast nuclear infrastructure. The issue for any deal now is managing and reducing risk. The deal is coming. It will produce a slower, smaller, more easily monitored Iranian nuclear program. But we should be under no illusion that this agreement will produce an end state in which Iran will give up its nuclear weapons aspirations. Only transformation of the regime into something else - a more moderate, normal state - might allow for the possibility that Iran would give up permanently its desire to remain a nuclear weapons threshold state. But the odds of a quick transformation are pretty small. And freed from sanctions relief and open for business, Iran will have additional resources to pursue its regional aspirations. The writer is a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
2015-07-02 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive