Did Iran’s Nuclear Deal Come at Too High a Price?
Published: 20 July 2017
By INU Staff
INU – It’s been two years since Iran’s nuclear deal the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed. The other day, Robert Malley, an American lawyer, political scientist and specialist in conflict resolution, tweeted an article co-written by Philip Gordon, American diplomat and foreign policy expert and Richard Nephew, researcher and expert who dealt with Iran’s nuclear file between 2011 and 2013, in The Atlantic magazine. Malley tweeted ‘Why the Iran deal has worked, and why its critics have it wrong’. Gordon and Nephew’s article was titled, “The ‘Worst Deal Ever’ That Actually Wasn’t!”
Gordon and Nephew argued in their article, “In fact, the deal is doing exactly what is was supposed to do: prevent Iran from acquiring enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, demonstrate to the Iranian public the benefits of cooperation with the international community, and buy time for potential changes in Iranian politics and foreign policy,” and added, “Anyone who thought a deal would immediately change Iran’s regional agenda or who maintains that, if only America and its partners had insisted on such changes in the talks they would have materialized, has a misguided sense of what sanctions and diplomatic pressure can accomplish. Having been deeply involved in the negotiations, we think it’s important to be clear about the purpose, enduring benefits, and inevitable limitations of the agreement.”
The co-writers wrote, “What the deal has done, at least for the next decade, is deter any realistic threat of a near-term Iranian nuclear weapon. The United States should use that decade wisely: standing up to and imposing costs on Iranian transgressions, supporting US allies in the region, making clear to the Iranian public that the West is not an enemy, and preparing for the day when some of the deal’s restrictions will no longer apply. If, by 2030, Iran has not demonstrated that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful and that it is willing to live in peace with its neighbors, the United States and its international partners will have difficult decisions to make about how to handle the issue going forward.”
They conclude, saying, “But since there is a chance that Iran will have different leaders or policies by then—the current Supreme Leader will almost certainly be gone, and a new generation may have come to power—why make those difficult decisions now? The Iran deal has bought valuable time. Squandering that time without a better plan would be foolish.”
It is said that Malley and Gordon were both very close to former President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Many opinion polls showed that they expected to be a members of Hillary Clinton’s team, had she won. Many other Democrats strongly defend the nuclear deal.
In his article for ASHARQ AL-AWSAT, Eyad Abu Shakra talks about what he refers to as ‘Liberal’ Democrats. He says,
“Those ‘Liberal’ may be divided into two camps:
1. ‘Progressive apologists’ led by president Obama himself, who tacitly admire Tehran’s ‘revolutionary’ rhetoric against ‘militaristic’ and ‘conservative’ Arab regimes.
2. Trusted ‘Israel friends’ who believe that civil and sectarian wars within and between its neighboring states would be the best guarantee for Israel’s safety and security.”
He says further that Israel’s interests have always been a strategic policy of every US administration, but “the fate of the Arab countries never occupied a high position in Obama’s list of political priorities, recalling how he reneged on almost everything he promised in what was his ‘historic’ 2009 Cairo speech. This fate hit an all-time low after the collapse of his ‘Red Lines” many had thought existed in Syria to prevent Bashar Al-Assad’s massacring of his own people by chemical weapons and other means.”
Since the nuclear deal, nothing has changed in Iran. Former Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated that the JCPOA negotiations were restricted to the nuclear file, and never touched on other ‘regional issues’.
Eyad Abu Shakra says that “it was well known that among those ‘regional issues’ was the IRGC’s occupation of four Arab capitals, its destruction of cities in both Syria and Iraq, and its uprooting and displacing tens of millions of Syrians and Iraqis most of whom were Sunni Arabs!”
He adds that ISIS has provided “the perfect excuse to redraw the boundaries of the ‘New Middle East’, and the much sought after factor to justify bringing down everything, leaving only ‘failed states’, sectarian animosities, epidemics of ignorance and intolerance, and systematic destruction of institutions, landmarks of civilizations and cultural heritage.”
He concludes, “The whole Middle East has paid – and is still paying – a heavy price for the ‘decade’ the nuclear deal has gifted to Iran.”
