Vardan Voskanyan, head of the Department of Iranian Studies of the YSU Faculty of Oriental Studies, reflected on the developments surrounding Iran, writing:
"Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Washington ahead of schedule is an indication that the planned agenda of the upcoming Iran-US negotiations is not in Tel Aviv's interests.
The Iranian side limited that agenda exclusively to the nuclear issue, while Israel is also worried about Iran's missile program and the issue of regional satellites of this country, which Tehran is not going to make a subject of negotiations.
On the other hand, due to Iran's effective diplomatic efforts and regional objective realities, a unique "diplomatic buffer" of Middle Eastern states has been created around Iran, which includes Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Egypt and Pakistan, which exert significant pressure on Washington to rule out a US-Iran military conflict.
In this regard, the diplomatic part of the US President Trump's administration has found itself in a difficult situation, when it is necessary to take into account the Israeli interests on the one hand, and the interests of its other allies in the region, which are radically opposite to Israel's, on the other.
In case of success, the regional "diplomatic buffer" mentioned in the more far-reaching vision, also with the involvement of Iran, has a certain potential to turn into a separate pole with tangible geopolitical independence, but for now there are only weak signs of it, which will either develop or fade."
