Will U.S. - Iranian Ties Continue After President Obama Has Left Office?

US President Barack Obama delivers a statement on Iran at the White House in Washington, Jan. 17, 2016. Obama signed an executive order lifting sanctions on Iran related to its nuclear program after Tehran fulfilled requirements under a nuclear agreement with world powers. (photo by REUTERS/Yuri Gripas)

Laura Rozen, Al-Monitor: Can US, Iran maintain ties after Obama?

WASHINGTON — As Secretary of State John Kerry flies back from Saudi Arabia to New York for his second meeting this week with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on April 22, some US officials and outside experts are thinking about how the functional diplomatic channels that have been established with Iran over the past few years between the Obama and Rouhani governments might be maintained in the next US presidential administration.

The channels established between the United States and Iran during the last three years of intense Iran nuclear deal negotiations that culminated in implementation of the landmark deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in January, have included unprecedented one-on-one contacts most frequently between Kerry and Zarif and their top deputies, but also between other Cabinet chiefs — US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Iranian Atomic Energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi, and last week, for the first time, between US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Iranian Central Bank governor Valiollah Seif, as well as consultations between dozens of midlevel diplomats and experts. Indeed, as Kerry meets Zarif in New York on the sidelines of the signing of the UN Paris climate agreement, new US Undersecretary of State Tom Shannon and Stephen Mull, the State Department’s JCPOA implementation czar, will be meeting in Vienna with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and others on the eight-member Joint Commission established to oversee implementation of the Iran nuclear deal.

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WNU Editor: There are ties between the U.S. and Iran!?!?!?!? If there were "normal" ties you would not be doing this .... Obama secretly requested Rouhani meeting — report (Times of Israel). This relationship exists only because Iran believes they have someone in the White House that they can wring concessions from .... absent that .... there are no ties. President Obama continues to have hope that ties will get better .... but Congress and many of America's allies have a different point of view. My prediction on what will happen after President Obama has left the White House .... there will be low level U.S. - Iranian diplomatic exchanges, but the intensity and focus will not be the same.