What international legal ...
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Placing demands on the country’s diplomatic apparatus that international law itself cannot fulfill does little to advance Iran’s national interests and may ultimately complicate efforts to secure its rights.
Global trends suggest that international law and the broader international order are increasingly moving toward more flexible, power-based instruments, including non-binding political agreements and evolving customary law. In some circumstances, these tools may reflect actual power balances more accurately than traditional legal agreements such as treaties, which helps explain why major powers increasingly favor them.
For smaller countries, however, this trend may create long-term challenges, even if it has become an undeniable reality. Taken together, the current framework of understanding, regardless of its formal legal status, provides a practical foundation and a roadmap for any future agreement. The larger challenge remains implementation, particularly on the US side. The American record of inconsistent compliance with international commitments continues to stand as the greatest obstacle facing Iran, and the answer cannot be purely diplomatic or purely legal. Most likely, as with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, both sides will eventually seek to strengthen the international legal standing of a final agreement through mechanisms such as United Nations Security Council resolutions. Even then, one lesson should not be forgotten: the old tale of ‘Mouse and Cat’ by Iranian satirist and poet Ubayd Zakani about “belling the cat” remains relevant. Placing restraints on a criminal cat is far easier said than done.