Nuclear Negotiations and the U.S.-Iran Conflict: Ripeness Theory

Iran and the United States have experienced more than three decades of conflictual relations. Although there have been chances for resolution of their conflict, all conflict resolution initiatives have failed. Despite this, the interim nuclear agreement between Iran and the United States (in the framework of Iran – P5+1) in November 2013, has revived arguments about the possibility of the resolution of the nuclear conflict, despite failure of all the past reconciliatory initiatives? In response to this question and relying on Ripeness Theory, the main argument of this article is that the start of direct negotiations between Iran and the United States and reaching a nuclear agreement are due to the ripeness of the Iran-U.S. conflict as a result of a mutual hurting nuclear stalemate. Along with examination of this hypothesis, the article studies the factors hindering the resolution conflict between the two countries under the condition of ripeness and presents four scenarios for the future of the nuclear conflict resolution and its impact on the resolution of the two countries overall conflict.