In that they did not break up in rancor and disagreement, the talks in Geneva between Iran and US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China, can be counted a success.

Afterward, American negotiators were prepared to go on record as saying that “there was the possibility of an agreement”. All sides in the talks were sufficiently comfortable with the negotiations to issue a joint statement describing the two days of meetings as positive.

It was agreed that all parties would get together early next month to go into technical details of a deal. Although there has been a general agreement not to go into great detail about what has been discussed, it has emerged that it has been accepted that the negotiations can advance on the basis of a three-point plan advanced by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.

This scheme has as its first step, the building of “mutual confidence”. This means that the Iranians will slow their nuclear enrichment program in return for an easing of international sanctions. The second step will be that Iran and the six powers, China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and US will agree the “end state” of the Iranian program, but there will be no weaponization of this nuclear fuel. In return Tehran will be granted the right to enrich uranium “in perpetuity”.

The third and final part of the deal will be to hammer out “common goals” that will restrict Iran’s nuclear program so that it can be purely for civilian use, in return for which sanctions will be reined back.

It is said that in November, the negotiations will be about the technicalities of this deal. Yet what is odd is that there has been little emphasis on the inspection role of the International Atomic Energy Agency within this process. As a signatory to international agreements, Iran is obliged to permit its nuclear facilities to be inspected by the IAEA. That indeed has been the basis upon which the US-led sanctions program has been based. It is inevitable that whatever deal is cut, the results will have to be signed off by the inspectors from the IAEA. However, what must not happen is that a special set of rules will be drawn up purely for Iran, meaning that it can shield any part of its nuclear activities from the agency.

Full compliance is necessary to ensure that Iran is not building nuclear weaponry. It is also important that when the international community turns to the issue of Israeli’s undeclared nuclear arsenal, as one day it must, the Israelis too will be required to permit a full IAEA inspection. Any exceptions for Iran in terms of compliance, will surely be grabbed at by the Israelis. Maybe this is what Washington would actually welcome, since it has so stoutly refused to admit Israel’s nuclear capability and certainly is not prepared to accept that Israel built it with technology given or stolen from the United States.

Therefore there is very probably far more than Iran’s nuclear activities that are in play here. The key consideration for the six powers facing the Iranians is the issue of sanctions. The election of Hassan Rowhani earlier this year may have presented a gentler, more acceptable Iranian face to the world, but Rowhani remains a front man for a regime which has invested considerable political capital, as well as billions of dollars in the country’s nuclear program. Iran would not be talking now, if it were not for the catastrophic damage that the sanctions are wreaking on an economy already crippled by corruption and inefficiency. The one thing that could bring down the Iranian regime would be economic collapse which completely pauperizes millions of its citizens.

Thus for Iran, as it sat across the negotiating table in Geneva this week, the real issue was actually political survival. The international community should understand from what a strong position it is negotiating. Maybe the adoption of Zarif’s plan is a manoeuver to save the Iranian regime’s face. Hopefully it is. What needs to come out of these talks is a deal that removes, once and for all, any possibility that Iran will become the second nuclear power in the Middle East. To ensure that this happens, there must be no softening of the international communities current position. Tehran needs to understand clearly that sanctions stay until the possibility of it building itself a nuclear weapon is disproved entirely.