The Iran Nightmare
Problems stemming from the nuclear deal start now.
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman Jul 17, 2015
The nightmare is now. It doesn’t begin the day 10 years from now when Iran could break out with a nuclear weapon. It doesn’t begin next year, the year after or the year after that, when we begin to worry that the designated inspectors are being sporadically stalled in seeking swift access to a suspicious site. The experience with North Korea is the template. We will be alarmed at successive deceptions – and irresolute. And with Iran, the nightmare will continue.
It won’t be abated if, through all these years, Iran meticulously dots every “i” of the agreement so painstakingly sought by Secretary of State John Kerry, all six big powers and the European Union and so rapturously hailed by both President Barack Obama and President Hassan Rouhani. So habituated are we to the lying and cheating of the mullahs, we haven’t given enough attention to the risks in a paradox underlined by the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass.
“Even without violating the accord, Iran can position itself to break out of nuclear constraints when the agreement’s critical provisions expire. At that point, there will be little to hold it back except the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a voluntary agreement that does not include penalties for non-compliance.”
The focus on Iran’s nuclear future is inevitable, but the nightmare is irrefutably now. Whatever we decide about the nuclear deal – and I will return to it – we are letting the tiger out of the cage. We’re ready to feed the beast by approving the release of more than $100 billion in frozen assets without any commitment on how it will be spent. Relief for the Iranian people? Yes, some day care centers and paying down debt, enough to keep the lid on discontent. That and a certain national pride is why the crowds in Iran cheered but the country still remains the central banker for Murder Inc. Millions of dollars will go to sustaining revolutionary Iran’s vision of restoring a Persian empire, establishing a “Shiite” arc from Tehran through Syria, Lebanon and Iraq to the Mediterranean.
It would be nice to reciprocate the cordial sentiment of Rouhani: “Our relations start afresh today. We seek more closeness, unity, brotherhood and better relations.”
Tell that the families of the more than 200,000 Syrians killed by Bashar Assad’s barrel bomb and chlorine gases, courtesy of Iran’s lethal investments. Tell it to the 4 million Syrian refugees begging for sanctuary in Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon. Tell it to the people of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, coping with subversion financed by Iran. Tell it to the relatives and colleagues of officials murdered in Lebanon.
A day after Iran and the world powers shook hands on the deal, Rouhani did a little bragging: “No one can say Iran surrendered,” he said. “The deal is a legal, technical and political victory for Iran. It’s an achievement that Iran won’t be called a world threat anymore.”
Hello? If that’s the ambition, it’s easy to make good. Stop encircling Arab states while inciting their Shiite populations. Stop menacing Israel with funding of your proxy Hezbollah’s installation of more than 100,000 rockets and missiles to strike deep into Israel. Remember Gaza where you did the same thing with such desperate outcomes for the people of Gaza. Stop joining with Qatar in rebuilding Gaza, stop the heinous war of words, the primitive blood libels of Jews. Stop trying to kill Jews, wherever they may be, and inconvenient Arabs and Kurds.
The concentration on Iran’s nuclear ambitions has also taken eyes from the matter of conventional arms, more of a postscript on the deal but very much part of the nightmare scenario in the export of terror and the human rights abuses so prolific in Tehran (where Rouhani has increased ghastly public executions). Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Kagan cogently emphasizes that this international arms control agreement isn’t as locked into the agreement as Obama implies. It all depends on a U.N. Security Council resolution this summer.
“Nothing in the text of the agreement itself supports President Obama’s assertion that the embargo will last for another five years although he may have that time frame in mind,” Kagan wrote. The Russians are too eager to sell military equipment to count on Obama prevailing. “The current embargo was implemented by two resolutions: No. 1696 (2006) and No. 1929 (2010). The first bars the sale or transfer to Iran of any material or technology that might be useful to a ballistic-missile program, and the second does the same for ‘battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles, or missile systems,'” Kagan writes.
It is urgent for the U.S. to work on a resolution that retains the prohibitions for the sake of anything like peace in the Middle East. As it is, sanctions are set to end against the instruments of aggression, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force, which take the cream of Iranian military spending.
Aren’t we forgetting Obama’s breezy reassurance to Congress and the public that any breach of the deal and U.N. sanctions by the 5+1 powers can snap right back? The sanctions took years to put in place, a rare consensus provoked by a rare mix of deceit and defiance. They run out after 10 years. Maintaining them will be difficult. A draft U.N. resolution seen by the Associated Press on July 15 states that none of the seven previous U.N. resolutions on Iran sanctions “shall be applied” after 10 years, and “the Security Council will have concluded its consideration of the Iranian nuclear issue.”
By 2016, businesses everywhere will have done well trading with Iran – it’s a big market of 80 million people. The eager traders will be a drag on the diplomats. The Russians and Chinese are unlikely to be reflex snap-backers. The Russians love their veto power. There may be a way through the U.N. complications to restore these international sanctions, especially if Iran outrages everyone and there is nothing to stop the U.S. acting on its own. But it’s all a long way from the presumption that succeeding U.S. administrations will inherit the power or the will.
The 60 days before Congress votes can be spent parsing the 159 pages of the agreement to compare what the 5+1 say and what the Iranians say. We have to drill down and then some to hit rock. Rouhani’s boast of a political victory may be too lightly taken as pap for the masses. An analysis by Dov Zakheim in Foreign Policy of the Iranian Mehr News Agency shows that Iranian media – not the freest press in the world – are jubilant. The Iranian Mehr News Agency wrote: “All nuclear facilities in Iran will retain their activities. Contrary to the initial demands of the other side, none of the nuclear sites will be shut down. …Iran will continue nuclear enrichment. … Arak heavy water reactor will remain as such…”
Only Congress can now stop what I believe will be an unmitigated disaster. But whether Congress votes yes or not there is urgent work for this administration. Our friends, among the Arab nations as well as Israel, feel betrayed, exposed to Iranian imperialism. They are right. We have left the Saudis and Egyptians alone to cope with the threat of Iran’s expansionism. The danger to them, and to the U.S. is such, and the wounds to friendship are such, that our partners are looking for two things: a push back against Iranian arrogance and a deeper relationship with us. Arab societies have much to do themselves, from civil rights for all religions to judicial procedures, education and the treatment of women and minorities. They won’t be content with soft words and hard dollars. They look to the United States for a readiness to act with force when Iran defaults, and with vision of a secure and civilized future for their people. Are we up to that kind of leadership?
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