Cooperation Without Reconciliation: US–Iran Deal
Beyond the Concessions Debate
Much of the debate surrounding the US–Iran agreement has focused on a familiar question: who conceded more. Critics argue that Washington has granted meaningful relief and diplomatic engagement to a regime that continues to challenge US interests and those of its regional partners. Supporters counter that diplomacy should be evaluated not by ideological purity but by its capacity to reduce tensions, lower the risk of military confrontation, and create conditions for future engagement.
At the core of this debate is the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which represents an effort to establish a framework for managing specific areas of disagreement without resolving the broader strategic differences that have defined the US–Iran relationship for decades. While both perspectives highlight important considerations, they share a common limitation. They assess the agreement primarily through the lens of immediate concessions rather than its long-term strategic consequences.
More important than the distribution of immediate gains is whether the agreement modifies the strategic incentives that have shaped relations between Washington and Tehran for nearly fifty years. Diplomatic agreements rarely resolve deep geopolitical rivalries outright. More often, they seek to structure competition, mitigate uncertainty, and create mechanisms through which states can pursue their interests without resorting to escalation. The value of any agreement lies less in its text than in its ability to influence future behaviour. Of greatest significance is whether the agreement changes the calculations that have repeatedly pushed Washington and Tehran towards escalation, rather than whether it resolves the deeper disputes that separate them.
The Limits of the Concessions Debate
Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, recurring cycles of engagement, disappointment, and renewed hostility have characterised US–Iran relations. Diplomatic openings have periodically emerged, but domestic political pressures, disputes over implementation, and persistent mutual distrust have repeatedly undermined them. The experience of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is particularly instructive. Although the agreement succeeded in placing temporary constraints on Iran’s nuclear activities and reducing immediate tensions, its long-term viability proved vulnerable to political change in both countries. The challenges faced by the arrangement were not necessarily evidence that diplomacy had failed but a reminder that agreements require durable political incentives if they are to survive shifts in leadership and strategic priorities.
The polarisation surrounding diplomatic agreements often reflects competing assumptions about what constitutes success. Agreements are expected either to resolve longstanding disputes or to be dismissed as failures. Yet most successful diplomatic arrangements do neither. Their purpose is often more modest, focusing on reducing uncertainty, establishing channels of communication, and creating incentives that make escalation less likely. Viewed through this lens, diplomacy serves less to eliminate rivalry than to manage the conditions under which competition occurs.
Incentives, Durability, and Strategic Behavior
The strategic value of the agreement lies in whether it addresses the deeper structural problem that has challenged previous efforts: creating incentives strong enough to sustain cooperation despite changing political conditions.
The structure of the MoU is particularly important in this regard, as it reflects an attempt to formalise limited cooperation without requiring a broader political reconciliation between Washington and Tehran. Rather than resolving the fundamental sources of disagreement between the two governments, the MoU creates a framework for managing specific areas of concern, establishing expectations, and maintaining channels through which disputes can be addressed. Its significance will therefore depend not only on the commitments contained within the agreement itself but also on whether those commitments generate incentives for continued engagement when political conditions become more difficult.
If sanctions relief and diplomatic engagement provide Iran with economic benefits while leaving its broader objectives unchanged, critics may argue that the agreement merely postpones future challenges. Conversely, if reduced tensions create incentives for greater economic integration, more predictable regional behaviour, and continued diplomatic engagement, the agreement may ultimately be judged as a pragmatic step towards a more stable regional order. At present, neither outcome can be confidently predicted.
What makes the agreement particularly noteworthy, however, is what it may reveal about broader shifts in American foreign policy. Since the end of the Cold War, US foreign policy has frequently emphasised not only containing adversaries but also attempting to influence their internal behaviour and strategic orientation through pressure, isolation, engagement, and, in some cases, efforts at political transformation. As Stephen M. Walt argues in Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (2005), the post-Cold War period encouraged a more ambitious American foreign policy approach focused not only on managing threats but also on shaping the international order.
Increasingly, however, Washington appears to be pursuing a more restrained objective: managing risks rather than reshaping rival states. If this interpretation is correct, the agreement may be significant not just for what it says about Iran, but for what it suggests about evolving American strategic priorities. Stability, deterrence, and crisis management may be taking precedence over more ambitious efforts to engineer long-term political change.
This shift reflects a broader pattern identified in international relations theory. From a realist perspective, Kenneth Waltz argued in Theory of International Politics (1979) that durable stability among rival states does not necessarily require the elimination of ideological differences or the transformation of political identities; instead, it often emerges from the recognition of strategic constraints, competing interests, and the costs associated with continued confrontation. From this perspective, states do not need to resolve their fundamental disagreements to establish more predictable patterns of interaction. At the same time, institutionalist scholars such as Robert Keohane, particularly in After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (1984), have emphasised that diplomatic agreements and international institutions can create rules, expectations, and mechanisms that make cooperation possible even among states that remain strategic competitors.
Some of the most durable diplomatic arrangements in modern history succeeded not because they resolved underlying disputes, but because they established frameworks that reduced uncertainty and limited escalation. Rival states do not need to trust one another to cooperate under certain conditions; they need only to recognise that structured competition is preferable to uncontrolled confrontation. In this respect, diplomacy functions less as a mechanism for ending rivalry than as a framework for managing it.
The Real Test of the Agreement
The agreement’s lasting significance will depend on whether it creates incentives strong enough to sustain cooperation when future disputes and political pressures emerge. The decision by both governments to pursue negotiations suggests an acknowledgement that continued escalation carries substantial costs and uncertain benefits. Yet recognising those costs is only the first step. The more difficult challenge lies in maintaining commitments when future disputes arise and domestic political pressures intensify. The durability of the agreement will depend on whether both sides continue to perceive cooperation, however limited, as serving their interests even during periods of tension.
For this reason, contemporary debates about whether the agreement represents a diplomatic success or failure may ultimately miss the central issue. History has repeatedly demonstrated that agreements celebrated at the time of their signing can later prove ineffective, while agreements initially criticised as weak or insufficient can become foundations for long-term stability. The Treaty of Versailles, for example, was presented as the basis for a new European order after the First World War, yet its inability to create a sustainable political settlement contributed to instability in the decades that followed.
By contrast, the 1975 Helsinki Accords were criticised by some Western observers as a concession to Soviet power, but the agreement later provided an important framework for human rights advocacy and political change in Eastern Europe. Similarly, the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué between the US and China did not resolve the ideological and strategic differences separating the two countries, but it created a framework for managing competition and reducing the risk of direct confrontation.
The lesson from these cases is that the significance of diplomatic agreements is rarely determined solely by the concessions exchanged at the moment of signing. Their lasting impact depends on whether they create incentives, expectations, and mechanisms that shape state behaviour over time. The ultimate judgement of the current agreement will therefore depend not on today’s political narratives, but on whether it alters the incentives, expectations, and strategic calculations that have shaped US–Iran relations over time.
The debate surrounding the agreement often assumes that diplomacy’s purpose is to solve geopolitical rivalries. More often, its purpose is to make them manageable. Whether the agreement succeeds will depend not on whether it resolves the US–Iran rivalry, but on whether it institutionalises a form of competition that is predictable, bounded, and less prone to crises. The ultimate measure of success will not be reconciliation, but stability. If the agreement achieves that objective, its concessions will likely be viewed as necessary compromises. If it does not, they will be remembered as evidence of strategic miscalculation.
*This article is co-authored with László Csicsmann, Full Professor and Head of the Centre for Contemporary Asia Studies at the Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies (CIAS) and Senior Research Fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs (HIIA), Corvinus University of Budapest.