Some Thoughts on the Nuclear Deal with Iran

Now that an agreement has been signed with Iran on its nuclear program, the inevitable debate over whether it’s a good deal is raging in the US (interestingly, I haven’t heard anything about intense opposition to the deal in the European countries that are party to it, though there must be at least a little). Since it is a fairly far-reaching agreement and if implemented it has the potential to transform US-Iranian relations and the politics of the Middle East, numerous aspects of the agreement are being discussed and argued about. Those who favor the deal consider it the best chance to avoid even more conflict in that part of the world and prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, not to mention putting the US and Iran on a path toward more friendly or at least less hostile relations. Opponents call it capitulation to the Iranians, argue that Iran can and will cheat, and warn that reducing or ending sanctions on Iran will free it to cause more trouble in the region by backing violent regimes and terrorist groups. They also lament the agreement’s failure address issues such as Iran’s support for terror, its unlawful detention of several American citizens, or its poor human rights record in general.

I will address the latter concern first. I agree that Iran’s human rights record is terrible, its detention and treatment of both Iranian dissidents and the American citizens currently in its prisons is deplorable, and its support for terror groups and particularly the hideously bloodthirsty Syrian regime is appalling. However, those issues are not what the agreement was negotiated to address. Just as the US negotiated arms control treaties with the USSR that didn’t address human rights issues in the latter, there is no reason to expect an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program to address unrelated issues. This doesn’t mean that these issues don’t have to be addressed, though. It is my understanding that US sanctions imposed due to Iranian sponsorship of terrorism, for instance, will remain in place. It is quite possible, even probable, that the US government (and European governments) could and should do far more to pressure Iran over human rights issues. Many Western governments have shown a bad tendency to prioritize economic ties and business interests over human rights in their dealings with countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and others, and we should put pressure on them to act differently not only in Iran’s case but others as well. But the nuclear agreement should be judge according to its purpose, which is preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons rather than for issues it is not designed to fix.

There are no doubt flaws in the agreement which Iran can exploit. Iran may be able to avoid coming clean about past weapons programs, and it may find ways to hide things from inspectors, especially given the uncertainty about whether inspectors will have sufficient access to military sites. But it will require Iran to dramatically reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium and its number of centrifuges, which at a minimum will put a bomb a little further from reach. It is true that it may not prove easy to re-impose sanctions should Iran violate the agreement, but I don’t think it will be as difficult as critics claim, nor do I think it will be as easy for Iran to cheat as they are asserting. Iran does have many incentives for adhering to the agreement, and if the moderates remain in charge (a point I will come back to), they probably will do so.

In any case, as I and many others have observed in the past, those critics calling this a bad deal, whether it is Republicans in the US Congress or Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have never laid out specifically what they would consider a good deal. From their rhetoric, a “good” deal would be unconditional surrender on the part of the Iranians, involving a complete dismantling of their entire nuclear program. Of course, there was never any chance that Iran would have agreed to such a deal, regardless of the pain sanctions might have been causing. After all, look at how tightly the North Korea clings to its nuclear bombs, even as its economy collapses and its people live at the edge of starvation. If the Iranian leadership is as sinister and power-mad as those most hostile to it claim, they would most certainly not hesitate to continue to pursue their nuclear ambitions in the absence of an agreement regardless of the sanctions, especially if they perceived the West as unremittingly hostile. It is also unlikely that the sanctions regime could be held together for long if the US rejects the agreement, as countries like China and Russia are too eager to do business with Iran. While this is not a good thing, given the authoritarian tendencies of all three, there is not much that the West can do about it at this point.

Given the critics’ lack of a clear vision of what a “good deal” would look like and the extreme unlikelihood of Iran being willing to make more concessions, the alternatives are these. The agreement can be carried out and Iran’s nuclear program can be made at least somewhat more peaceful and subject to a certain degree of scrutiny. Otherwise, the US can reject the agreement, as the Republicans in Congress want. What would follow from that? The Iranians, who are already quite close to acquiring a bomb, would have little reason not to proceed to actually producing one, and the only way the US or Israel could prevent them would be by starting a war. It is by no means certain that a few airstrikes could do sufficient damage to Iran’s facilities to put a bomb out of reach, so we are talking about a major war with a country that is considerably larger and more powerful than Iraq.

Iran’s geopolitical stature is a point worth some additional scrutiny. On the one hand, hyperbolic claims that the Obama administration’s concessions to Iran are equivalent to Neville Chamberlain’s concessions to Adolf Hitler at the Munich Conference are absurd not only in exaggerating the size of the concessions but in implying that Iran is as great a power and as much of a threat to world peace as Nazi Germany, which is not even remotely the case (incidentally, another lesson from that era that many forget is that it was the harsh terms that the Allies imposed on Germany after World War I that facilitated Hitler's rise, which is relevant to a point I'll discuss a little later about the agreement's potential effect of Iranian domestic politics). Conversely, however, Iran is not a small, weak country that the US could easily overpower in a fight. This doesn’t mean that the US should avoid a conflict with Iran no matter what; if, say, Iran actually started assembling a nuclear weapon and declared an intention to carry out the rhetorical threats that some of its more extreme leaders have made in the past against Israel, for instance, a military strike by the US would be justified. But a decision to launch a war should not be taken lightly, and if this agreement is not put into effect, it is hard to see what other options US would have to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

Furthermore, it is worth remembering a bit about Iran’s history and its current society. Over most of the past 2600 years, ever since the rise of the Median and Persian Empires in the wake of the destruction of Assyrian power, Iran has been one of the most dominant nations in West Asia. While its power has waxed and waned. Its current position as one of the major powers in the region is commensurate with its historical position. Of course, history does not give Iran an automatic right to any particular status today, much less the right to push its neighbors around (the same point applies to China, which is fond of misusing history in this manner). But given Iran’s size, population, resources, and relative stability, it is not at all surprising that it has once more become one of the strongest countries in the region.

For these reasons, the Western approach to Iran can’t be merely one of containment. This is not to say that containment of a sort doesn’t have its place. The US and other nations should certainly work to counter problematic Iranian actions in the region, such as its support for the Syrian regime or groups like Hezbollah. But it is necessary to engage Iran too. It is worth remembering that despite the fundamentalist theocracy that is currently in power, Iran has a sizable, well-educated middle class, much of which has a quite secular outlook. Even among the clerics, there are moderate voices. It should be remembered that not all of the Iranian leadership has shown the type of unremitting hostility to Israel and the US that is commonly cited by opponents of the deal. The more moderate leaders should be encouraged as much as possible in the hope that in the future, a new Iranian leadership can take charge, one that will be far less interested in the aggressive approach of the hardliners in the current leadership. It is conceivable that in a few decades Iran could even transform into a secular democracy, if it is allowed to evolve in that direction as moderate forces gain more power. And which option is more likely to help Iranian moderates, accepting the agreement or rejecting it? Since the agreement is, on the Iranian side, the work of the moderate faction in the current leadership, if it proves beneficial to Iran and specifically to the average Iranian citizen, then it will certainly strengthen the moderates. Rejecting it, however, would mean that the hardliners would take over completely. They would probably even gain some support among the secular middle class, as an American rejection of the agreement would support the assertions of the hardliners that the US is completely hostile to Iran and no rapprochement with it is possible. Even those who would still prefer a more moderate approach might feel compelled to publicly support the nationalistic hardline view for fear of being accused of traitors.

All this doesn’t mean that an agreement which entirely favored the Iranians would be acceptable. But the truth is, the Iranians made plenty of concessions of their own. As mentioned above, they are giving up their enriched uranium and most of their centrifuges, as well as submitting to a fairly comprehensive inspection regime, if not as strong as would be considered ideal from a Western viewpoint. Also, the Iranian assertion that they have the right to a peaceful nuclear program is not unreasonable, as many other countries, including some with worse human rights records, also have nuclear power (of course I’d say all of them should be focusing more on renewable energy, but that’s another issue). While a lifting of sanctions may boost Iran’s ability to assist destructive parties elsewhere, the US and its allies can attempt to find ways to counter such actions on the part of Iran, including, if necessary, new sanctions. It is worth reiterating that this agreement, the negotiations that it came out of, and the sanctions that helped bring Iran to the table were all directed at Iran’s nuclear program, not anything else it might have been doing. While resolving the nuclear issue might have both good and bad effects elsewhere, this is unavoidable. As I said above, if the agreement makes it at least a lot less easy for Iran to acquire a bomb and at the same time boosts the moderate forces in the country, then it is adequate – especially considering the very unpalatable alternatives.

[Update: An additional point worth noting is not only do polls show that a majority of Jewish Americans support the agreement, a number of prominent Israeli security figures are also supporting it. Perhaps even more telling is the Iranian side of the debate. As discussed in some detail in this article, moderates, reformists, the majority of Iranian citizens and Iranian Americans and even many dissidents and exiled opponents of the current regime support the agreement, while the conservatives and hardliners have for the most part been critical of it. Not exactly what you'd expect to see if, like the deal's American and Israeli opponents claim, the agreement gave away far too much to Iran.]