I’ve been reading some interesting exchanges on Facebook about the pros and cons of the Iran deal, and though I’ve been snowed under by grading to have much bandwidth for blogging of late, I thought I would start an open thread here.
Fareed Zakaria laid out the case for a deal before it happened in this post, seeing a deal (but presumably not just any deal) as better than the alternatives, continued sanctions and airstrikes, which to him had too many disadvantages and could lead to catastrophic outcomes in the region. David Ignatius had a quick take that suggested the deal was better than expected. David Rothkopf also was also generally warm to the deal on Twitter.
If both the U.S. and Iran think they got a win, can they both be right? Those worried about Israel’s security seemed to think that this was a bad deal and the answer is no, that there is some zero-sum element here. Others worry about what the Gulf states will do and whether or not those states will see this deal as a reason to move forward on their own nuclear programs, given that the deal allows Iran to continue some, albeit reduced, enrichment.
My own view is that much remains to be nailed down, the U.S. and international community should get more time, more transparency if and when Iran decides to break out and pursue nuclear weapons in earnest. In exchange, Iran will get the prospect of removal of sanctions (though not immediate). That’s not a zero-sum outcome, though for the Israelis and Gulf states worried about Iranian influence in the region (and the prospects for what Iran might do with extra revenue from an unsanctioned, more vibrant economy) that may be cold comfort.
What do you think? (Some choices quotes from observers after the jump).
What’s in the deal itself? A CNN explainer including 1) centrifuges 2) enrichment 3) breakout time 4) Fordow 5) research and development 6) inspections and 7) lifting of sanctions
Zakaria suggested that an extended sanctions regime would not be all that effective, noting that Iran has more centrifuges now than it did in 2003. A bombing campaign would lead to even worse outcomes:
That raises option two, a military attack. People speak of a strike on Iran like Israel’s against an Iraqi reactor in 1981 and a Syrian facility in 2007. But those were single facilities. Iran, by contrast, has a vast nuclear industry, comprising many installations spread across the country, some close to population centers, others in mountainous terrain. The United States would effectively have to go to war with Iran, destroying its air defenses, then attacking its facilities in dozens — perhaps hundreds — of sorties. The bombers would be equipped with highly explosive weapons, demolishing buildings, reactors and laboratories, but also producing considerable collateral damage.
What would be the effect of such an attack? When any country is bombed by foreigners, its people tend to rally around the regime. The Islamic Republic would likely gain domestic support.
Ignatius argued here are the elements that were better than expected:
The tentative terms of the deal, as described in the U.S. “parameters” memo, actually exceed what many had thought possible. The Iranians would be allowed to operate 5,060 centrifuges for the next 10 years, rather than the 6,000 or 6,500 that earlier leaks had suggested. For 15 years, enrichment would be banned at the hardened, underground facility at Fordow, longer than some had expected. The Iranians could enrich some uranium at Natanz but only to the 3.67 percent level, vastly below weapons-grade, and the stockpile of enriched material would be capped at 300 kilograms for 15 years.
Ignatius worried about the possible gap between the US detailed facts sheets and the Iranian-European statement that was more general. Do the two sides think they have a different deal?
One signal of the incompleteness of what was announced Thursday was the mismatch between the detail-rich U.S. fact sheet and the thin, page-and-a-half statement read jointly by European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Rothkopf weighed in on Twitter:
Impact of deal appears to be net positive re: nuke program but debatable–but beyond debate that it will increase growing Iranian influence.
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) April 2, 2015
Deal appears to be constructive & step forward but if primary Iranian threat isn’t nuke program & this increases that threat that’s a worry.
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) April 2, 2015
Easy to take issue with elements of Iran deal but huge credit to all involved in tireless diplomacy that has brought us this far.
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) April 2, 2015
I posted two things on this https://saideman.blogspot.com/2015/04/iranian-nuclear-deal.html and https://saideman.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-slightly-less-quick-reaction-on-iran.html which amount to perfect is the enemy of the good enough. We didn’t ask the USSR to change its ideology or stop its support of insurgencies around the world–we just tried via arms control to manage the arms race. Ditto here.
Appreciated your point Steve that progress on an arms control agreements doesn’t mean that Iran stops doing things we don’t like. How hard is it to maintain segmented pieces of a relationship, where we make progress on some dimensions but on others remain steadfastly in conflict? Is that a sign of a mature relationship or is it an illusive quality imposed artificially by policymakers in an attempt to ringfence one area from another? Is there something different about the US-USSR relationship and the capacity for keeping things separate from the contemporary US-Iran relationship which is bound up in a region in wider turmoil (Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Israel and North Africa)?
These things will always overlap–but it makes little sense to prevent progress in one area because there is tension in another. US/USSR managed it. So can US/Iran especially as we now have some common interests fighting ISIS…
Starting in to get the thread rolling…
Dan Drezner identifies 5 ways the deal falls apart in the coming months, from domestic politics to disagreements between the parties over what was agreed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/03/how-can-the-iran-deal-fall-apart-let-me-count-the-ways/
Michael Gerson sees this as a victory for Iran, with much remaining to be nailed down while Iran gets more influence in the region
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/irans-remarkable-achievement/2015/04/03/365e263c-d994-11e4-8103-fa84725dbf9d_story.html?postshare=2341428073612731
I’ve been involved in some of the Facebook discussion.
Here’s what I’ve written on the basic provisions given in the fact sheet:
https://nucleardiner.com/2015/04/02/a-framework-agreement-with-iran/
And what remains to be negotiated:
https://nucleardiner.com/2015/04/03/the-iran-framework-agreement-the-good-the-bad-and-tbd/
I appreciated this line Cheryl in your comment ” Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani stand behind the deal, which they would not do if the details of the fact sheet seriously contradicted discussions within the negotiations” which at least signals there is not much daylight between the fact sheet and the more general EU-Iran statement. All the TBDs on dismantled equipment, reactor core at Arak, the timing of when sanctions get lifted all seem important. Equally important may be the domestic reception Obama gets here. Are there prominent Republicans willing to bless this agreement?
A translated version of the Iranian fact sheet is now available and is broadly consistent with the American fact sheet. Some emphasis is slightly different, and the discussion of sanctions is muddled, but it looks like as much agreement on the TBDs as can be expected at this point.
I have updated the post to reflect this.
I think Zakaria’s assessment is spot on. While there are still details that need to be worked out, this deal is far better than the two alternatives he presents and offers quite a bit of detail on the specific steps to limit the Iranian program.
Despite what the critics are arguing, this deal by no means translate into blanket approval for Iranian domestic and foreign policy—something Obama explicitly addressed in his statement.
The idea that this deal will initiate an arms race in the region is problematic on two fronts. First, this deal seems to be the best guarantee that Iran won’t pursue a weapon (although I am not convinced given national intelligence estimates and statements from the leadership in Tehran that there is substantial political interest in a bomb). So wouldn’t curbing their enrichment capacity reduce the likelihood of an arms race?
Furthermore, in 2003 the Saudis were reviewing options to obtain a nuclear weapon due a
cooling in U.S.-Saudi relations, instability in the region, the Iranian program, and Israel’s program. See: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/18/nuclear.saudiarabia
To assume that the Iranian program, and beyond that a significantly weakened Iranian program, will trigger an arms race misconstrues the complex calculations of states when considering to pursue the bomb. The threat of an arms race strikes me as more political posturing.
So the line I heard was that if Iran gets to keep their low-level enrichment, would the Saudis want to have the same option? So not a proliferation arms race but a potential dual-use escalation so that the Gulf states start to keep their options open in case they feel like they need a deterrent. Maybe starting an enrichment program might not gain them that much time and experience but I would be curious about what more technical people think about what a nuclear “energy” program of sorts might do for the Saudis or other Gulf states.
Here is a nice argument against proliferation in the Gulf. I tend to agree with it.
https://turkeywonk.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/nuclear-chain-nonsense/
It’s hard to see the Saudis developing a nuclear program like Iran’s. They don’t have the technical people to run it. An enrichment plant or plutonium production reactor is really an expensive ornament, and power reactors like Bushehr and some that Gulf states have ordered aren’t much good for plutonium production. Besides, the states that sell them usually want to sell a contract to provide and take back fuel as well.
Is it possible to envision the Iran agreement working toward DE-proliferation in the ME? There’s already been an article in the NY Times today, of all places, suggesting that a more cooperative Iran could enhance world pressure on Israel to clean up its relationship with the Palestinians. There continue to be efforts at a ME WMD-Free Zone. Pressure there too?
I get awfully optimistic, especially when my optimism is reinforced, as it has been with the Framework Agreement this week.
I’d be curious about how the commenters react to Jeffrey Goldberg’s critique. He praises the agreement as a the least worst option but worries on some level that success was defined down (as if regime change was ever a realistic option).
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/on-iran-the-least-worst-option/389598/
“But the truth remains that this provisional agreement can be considered a success mainly within a specific reality created by Obama and his European partners. This reality is one in which the goal was to moderate Iran’s behavior on a single issue, and not to remove the regime responsible for this behavior; this reality was one in which the Western powers preemptively agreed that Iran possessed an inherent “right” to enrich uranium on its soil, and possessed a right to maintain a nuclear infrastructure; this reality was one in which sanctions may not have been given sufficient time to work.”
He also worries about what the regime does when lifted from the yoke of sanctions:
” I don’t believe that a bullying, terror-supporting, Assad-backing would-be regional hegemon whose ideology is built on anti-Americanism becomes more reasonable once it becomes richer and more empowered.”
Goldberg is a pro-Israel hasbara-hack (heck, he used to be an Israeli prison guard). This piece is surprisingly moderate, for him, but his traditional views come out in his perception of Iran, which is divorced from all reality (ideology BUILT on ‘anti-americanism,’ really? go check the history books.)
I have a general critique of all IR discussions on this topic: the use of the word ‘we.’ To quote your earlier post, Josh: “an arms control agreement doesn’t mean that Iran stops doing things WE don’t like,” “”where WE make progress on some dimensions….” Or, to quote Steve, “WE didn’t ask the USSR to change…”
Does the irony of these remarks not strike anybody making them? Most of the people posting here are part of a ‘conservative’ IR/PS, in the sense that they don’t employ more ‘critical’ theories and methods in their analyses. One strong critique of that critical school is their normative biases. Why is there not a similar critique of this tendency to view everything through the lens of ‘WE’ (i.e.: The Great America/its friendly sibling Israel)?
This deal is excellent news and it damn well shouldn’t be critiqued on the grounds that Iran still does things “we don’t like.” Much less, Israel, of course. In fact, imagine a world without Israel. Now tell me if anybody would even be questioning this deal. The only people really against this deal are the syncophants in the Israeli government who want a war more than anything else and/or the complete capitulation of Israel.
Last word should read Iran, naturally.
John,
Thanks for your comments. I think it says something that Goldberg thinks the deal is a pretty good one. When you get someone who you otherwise might expect to oppose the deal to support it, then on some level that unexpected endorsement adds credibility to the agreement.
I suppose my post was from the perspective of someone who is engaged in U.S. foreign policy so the “we” is either the United States or the West. One has to take a point of view so I’m not writing from the perspective of a neutral observer or the international community, but I don’t see anything wrong with that, as long as those biases are clear. The audience for the blog though you are right might be broader than the U.S. or West, though it originates in the U.S. and is in English
Speaking of lumping people together uncritically, Netanyahu vehemently opposes the agreement, but Israel’s security and intelligence professionals are much more positive.
The quoted Goldberg passage has this nonsensical stuff about the Western powers having agreed “pre-emptively” that Iran has the right to a nuclear infrastructure. But how can it be argued that Iran does *not* have the right to a civil nuclear power program? The NPT is explicitly about nuclear weapons. There is no legal basis of which I’m aware for saying Iran does not have the right to a civil nuclear power program. That raises problems of dual use, sure, but that is no reason to reach the blanket, unwarranted conclusion that Iran has no rt to civil nuclear power.
Btw, tho I don’t expect Prof Busby to read my blog or even be aware of its existence, there has been some discussion there in recent wks about this and related topics.
p.s. Above comment intended not to be directed to John but to J. Busby. I guess it’s my fault for not inserting it in the rt place in the Disqus thread. Whatever. I’ve never liked Disqus all that much.
Regarding the possibility of a regional arms race, setting aside for the moment the technical question of whether a nuclear power plant readily gets you to a nuclear weapon, what should concern the Saudis is whether Iran gets a bomb, not whether Iran gets an agreement per se. Riyadh’s concern about the agreement is based on an assumption that an agreement will lead to a bomb. If the Saudis believe that but, in fact, it is the failure to reach an agreement that leads to a bomb, then either outcome could lead to an arms race, either because the Saudis believe a bomb is coming or because a bomb actually comes. The thing to do is to try to convince the Saudis to at least wait and see what an agreement leads to.
I’m an enthusiastic supporter of the agreement, but lately a curious–if improbable–possibility has occurred to me. The Iranians are really not as hell-bent on acquiring a bomb as people say. They’ve had the capacity to produce bomb-grade uranium for six or eight years, and they haven’t done it. They (apparently) had a bomb-design project, and they shut it down a dozen years ago. They have a break-out capacity of two or three months, and they’re negotiating to extend it to a year. Is it possible that they’re just pretending they want a bomb in order to be able to negotiate the nonexistent program away in exchange for sanctions relief?
Posted something on this at the Monkey Cage: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/04/06/iranian-scientists-and-the-nuclear-deal/
tl;dr: This deal is about Iran’s prestige and binding the scientific community, and we shouldn’t worry about sneak out since the US intel community’s track record is more likely to err towards false positives than false negatives.
Appreciate your post and drawing attention to it Alex. I fear however the North Korea example give grist for opponents of this deal. What’s your counter to the claims by opponents that North Korea eventually getting a bomb suggests that leaving in place some nuclear program as a matter of prestige sets the stage for later acquisition of the skills needed for a dual use program?
In the North Korean case, the prestige deal was for light-water reactors, which played no part in the collapse of that deal. In the Iranian case, there simply is no deal without face-saving measures, and those measures won’t advance the program any further than it’s already gotten. North Korea has much less fissile material now as a result of a freeze than it would have otherwise, and there the deal collapsed because the US (including the later Clinton Administration) didn’t hold up its end of the bargain. The Bush administration then treated the discovery of a nascent uranium enrichment program as a deal-breaker rather than as a reason to return to the bargaining table.
Alex, thanks for weighing in on the particulars of the North Korea deal.
PBS had some good interviews with Ash Carter, Bob Gallucci, Bill Perry and others on whether we lived up to the deal. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/themes/lessons.html
I wonder if the later non-compliance on the US side in the North Korea situation is a cautionary tale…
Here are Kissinger and Schultz in the WSJ on the problems in the deal though they are not outright opposed to it, though pretty close. They fear regional proliferation, absence of automaticity of snapback punishment in the event of an Iranian violation, IAEA incapacity to really handle inspections, and ultimately that Iran will be emboldened rather than tempered in its efforts to destabilize the Middle East (through proxies or otherwise). https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iran-deal-and-its-consequences-1428447582
The momentum of Iran Deal should be used to kill the cobra – that is getting rid of nuclear weapons altogether. It is proposed that an international bank be set up to park nuclear bombs safely. Physically the bombs stay in the Nations themselves BUT under lock and key. The password to access the nuclear bombs resides with all the nuclear Nations and only in agreement of all the Nations the bombs come out of the bank. Given digital technology such a key can be easily generated. To start with just some bombs are parked but with time it is possible to get rid of all nuclear bombs by this simple method. A by-product would be that Iran seeing the rest of the world disarming would have more of a motivation keeping its promises.