Consensus Gives Security Council Momentum in Mideast, but Question Is How Much

UNITED NATIONS — Within days, diplomats here say, the Security Council is expected to unanimously endorse the agreement reached in Vienna that aims to contain Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb.

Will that consensus among the world powers shape the Council’s ability to contain conflicts that are killing and maiming people across the Middle East? Most certainly — but exactly what the agreement’s repercussions will be in places like Syria and Yemen, and on the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, is a big unknown.

The agreement will lift painful economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for guarantees that its nuclear activities remain peaceful. Supporters of the deal say it will ease, over the long-term, the underlying tensions in the region. Critics say it stands to sharpen the deadly regional rivalry between Iran, the dominant Shiite power, and the Sunni powerhouse, Saudi Arabia. Not to mention Israel: Its prime minister regards Iran as Israel’s principal regional enemy and has called the nuclear agreement an egregious mistake.

The Security Council resolution will formally approve the nuclear accord and detail the conditions for lifting its longstanding sanctions against Iran. The American ambassador, Samantha Power, circulated a 14-page draft to Council members on Wednesday morning.

Under the draft, sanctions can automatically be reimposed if any of the Council’s five permanent members believe that Iran is violating its obligations. In what one diplomat described as a “creative” twist, the Council would need to take a vote to stop the sanctions from snapping back. That effectively gives the United States the upper hand, since its veto would make sure that the sanctions are reimposed.

Diplomats said a vote on the draft resolution could be scheduled as early as Sunday.

The measure would take effect 90 days from passage, so as to allow enough time for Congress to consider it and for President Obama to veto any disapproval, if necessary.

Passage of the resolution, which is considered inevitable — every comma in the draft was negotiated by diplomats in Vienna — is likely to have an immediate bearing on civilians who have nothing to do with the diplomatic bargains.

First, there is Yemen.

Saudi Arabia was deeply anxious about Iran’s growing influence in the region well before the nuclear agreement was finalized. And Saudi Arabia’s Western allies, including the United States, Britain and France — three of the six participants in the nuclear negotiations (China, Germany and Russia being the others) — are likely to want to soothe the kingdom’s fears and in turn refrain from exerting a great deal of pressure on the Saudis’ crippling airstrikes over Yemen.

Indeed, assuaging the Saudis may partly explain why none of the world powers have pressed for a cease-fire in the Yemen conflict despite mounting casualties and the threat of famine.

“It’s clearly a difficult moment for Saudi Arabia,” a senior Security Council diplomat said after the Iran nuclear pact was announced on Tuesday. “We will continue to offer what we can — advice, support — privately.”

Second, the Iran agreement is also likely to further constrain the Security Council from spurring peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, given Israel’s avowed antipathy toward Iran. France, a permanent member, had tried to get the Council involved this year. But Israel dismissed that suggestion, and the United States, having expressed no enthusiasm earlier, could be reluctant to put any additional pressure on Israel.

Third, Iran’s new relationship with the world powers is also sure to influence any attempts to resolve the war in Syria. Iran is Syria’s most crucial backer, and it remains to be seen whether it will harden or soften its stance, now that it has struck a deal with some of the most powerful foreign foes of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.

Either way, said Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, the world powers should seize the momentum of the nuclear deal to nudge Iran toward one on peace. Trust may be short-lived, she argued, and anyway, the battlefield losses are piling up for Mr. Assad’s forces, making it worthwhile for even his staunchest backers to consider an exit strategy.

“There is a sense of urgency,” Ms. Khatib argued, “which gives the international community an opening to use the increased trust, which is going to be one of the outcomes of the nuclear deal, to start reaching out to Iran on Syria.”

Critics of the Obama administration, including Ms. Khatib, have said its focus on winning a nuclear deal has come at the cost of taking a stronger line against the Assad government, a claim that American officials have vigorously denied. They insist that the Syria negotiations and nuclear talks have been handled on separate tracks. It did not go unnoticed that President Obama made no mention of the Syria conflict in his speech on Tuesday.

All the while, the death toll inside Syria has soared past 220,000. The war has spilled over its borders, helped to spawn the Islamic State, and created a growing refugee crisis. Four million people have fled Syria, and tens of thousands of them have tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea on flimsy boats in an effort to reach safety in Europe. The Security Council has been paralyzed to stop the war.

The next test of Council cooperation on Syria is likely to come next week, when it is expected to vote on a measure that would create a new panel to determine who has been using chlorine as a weapon on the battlefield in Syria. The United States drafted the measure, insisting all the while that Mr. Assad’s forces have been dropping barrel bombs filled with chlorine gas, which is illegal under international law. Russia has insisted on the involvement of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the monitor of the treaty banning their use.

The Syria draft resolution, in an apparent nod to Russian concerns, proposes a panel run jointly by the United Nations secretary general and the weapons organization.

To be sure, the nuclear deal does not mean the United States and Iran will necessarily cooperate on regional crises in which both have vital interests.

“As important as it will be to put Iran’s nuke ambitions in the box, that will not solve our regional problem with Iran,” said Derek Chollet, a former Pentagon and State Department official and now with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a research organization. The administration is “very wide-eyed on that,” he added.

What the Iran negotiations have already shown is the degree to which Russia and the West can collaborate when each country’s national interests are aligned. Russia agreed to the Iran nuclear pact, including the “snapback” mechanism to reimpose sanctions, out of its own interest. “Russia is a key partner in the Security Council, but a very demanding, difficult, painful partner,” a second Council diplomat said.

As Richard Gowan, a fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, argued last week in the run-up to the final deal, “Even a show of big-power cooperation in a moment of deep uncertainty might stop the sense of creeping chaos in the international system.”