Diplomacy With Iran Is the Best Option
T
he nuclear deal agreed to by Iran and the P5+1 is far from perfect but, if effectively implemented, should deter Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon for years to come. It is a far better outcome than any of the realistic alternatives. The deal’s limitations on Iran’s
uranium-enrichment capacity and the plutonium pathway leave the country at least one year from being able to produce a bomb. That long “breakout time” means Iran will have a strong disincentive to ever move toward producing a bomb — it knows that if it started its dash to produce a weapon, it would be caught quickly and attacked. This fear of being caught is what has deterred Iran for the past 20 years
from going for the bomb, even as it got closer and closer. And the reality is that no country has ever dashed to only one nuclear weapon but, instead, an arsenal. Creating an arsenal would take significantly longer than a year, giving the in- ternational community even more time to respond. The agreement should success- fully deter Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon using secret facili- ties. The inspections regime gives the International Atomic Energy Agency visibility into every ele-
Pro Nuclear Folly W
endy Sherman, a top aide to the secretary of state, testified before Congress
that, “This is no small action.” After protracted negotiations in one of Eu- rope’s idyllic cities, the U.S. had struck an historic agreement: In return for sanctions relief, America’s enemy had agreed to verifiably freeze its nuclear program. The agreement, Sherman argued, represents “our best means of capping and eventually eliminating” the regime’s nuclear weapons threat. The year was 2000; the rogue na-
tion, North Korea; and the accord, the Agreed Framework. Six years into implementation, Sherman was captivated by its possibilities, includ- ing the eventual normalization of relations. Less than three years later, having pocketed American conces-
54 MILITARY OFFICER SEPTEMBER 2015 Con
sions, Pyongyang admitted to a clan- destine nuclear weapons program. Sherman’s role in implementing
the Agreed Framework has not been lost on the rulers in Tehran, Iran, who have unpacked the North Korean playbook to negotiate the Joint Com- prehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The results are unsurprising: The agreement dismantles the interna- tional sanctions architecture, worth billions of dollars, and concedes Iran’s status as a nuclear threshold power in return for temporary constraints on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
ment of Iran’s supply chain, mak- ing it exceedingly difficult for Iran to establish an entirely new secret pathway. Even with less stringent inspections, the U.S. has a good track record at catching Iran’s at- tempts to enrich uranium and did so at Iran’s facilities in both Natanz and Fordow years before those fa- cilities became operational. The U.S. was able to catch Iran even though it had a much weaker inspections regime than the one enabled by the new deal. The agreement also puts in place the right incentives for Iran to comply. Iran receives no relief from punishing sanctions until it already has implemented the key nuclear concessions. The “snap- back” mechanism gives the U.S. an option to retrigger sanctions quickly and without an opportunity for Rus-
Sanctions. Some of these terms might be deemed acceptable — if, that is, we were negotiating with a trustworthy partner. Alas, Iran is not Luxembourg. For decades, Iran’s leadership has backed its chants of “death to America” with action: from orchestrating the Marine Corps bar- racks bombing in Lebanon that killed 241 U.S. troops in 1983 to facilitat- ing the deaths of hundreds of U.S. soldiers in Iraq over the past decade, the regime has ruthlessly pursued an anti-American ideology. Today, Iran’s Quds force maintains an alliance sys- tem that stretches from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Shiite militias in Iraq. These clients depend on Iranian
largesse, running in the billions an- nually, which Iran has provided despite the pain of sanctions. Now, under the JCPOA, the U.S. has
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