New Delhi, July 3 -- After decades of economic sanctions and months of military confrontation accompanied by diplomatic threats, the United States and Iran finally agreed on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) while negotiations over the uranium enrichment dispute, a key issue that had predated the conflict, will continue over the next 60 days.

Ironically, the most consequential feature of the high stakes agreement lies not in what is being agreed, but in what has been left out of this deal. Washington's pre-war stated goals of destroying Iran's ballistic missile capability and dismantling its regional proxy network have gradually faded from the negotiating table. Yet these were the very elements that had given Tehran the strategic postu...