Atlantic Council:

As a bruising and dispiriting US election campaign draws to a close, it is time to start planning for a transition that builds on the legacy of the Barack Obama administration and looks for new opportunities for resolution of foreign as well as domestic conflicts.

This is particularly the case with Iran, given the important achievement of the landmark nuclear agreement and the breaking of longstanding taboos about US-Iran official contacts.

In a new paper for the Atlantic Council, Ellen Laipson, a distinguished former vice chair of the National Intelligence Council and former president of the Stimson Center, outlines a strategy that is open to new opportunities without minimizing continuing challenges from the Islamic Republic.

Entrenched hostility on both sides precludes a “grand bargain,” Laipson said at an event Oct. 19 at which the paper was launched. But incremental progress is possible because “Iran is not a pure adversary,” she said. “I’d like to see us take a little more risk in deepening the channels for engagement.”

The first step is to make sure that the avenues established by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) do not atrophy after Obama leaves office. Outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry, Laipson said, should facilitate contact between his successor and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to make sure the “baton is passed.”

The Joint Commission set up to implement the JCPOA also provides a conduit for lower-level interaction between the departments of State, Treasury and Energy and Iranian counterparts.

“Diplomatic engagement must be the lead component … to prepare for the possibility of gradual change in the US-Iran relationship,” Laipson writes in the paper...

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