In defending his nuclear deal with Iran in his speech at American University on Wednesday, President Obama resorted to a familiar strawman. Congress, he said, is faced with a decision: Either accept the agreement as negotiated, or go to war.
In addition to presenting this false choice, the president personally attacked the motives of anyone who differs with him, and he accompanied the attack with outrageous hyperbole. His description of the Iran accord as “the strongest nonproliferation agreement ever negotiated” is not just wrong; it’s demonstrably absurd.
One would have thought the president’s staff would have warned him against stating such an obvious falsehood. Someone in his entourage must be aware of the 2003 agreement with Libya that resulted both in anywhere/anytime inspections and in the total elimination of Qaddafi’s uranium-enrichment program. All associated nuclear equipment, hundreds of metric tons of it, as well as Libya’s longer-range ballistic missiles, were loaded on a ship and taken to the United States. But perhaps President Obama’s staff, which includes many individuals with more experience running political campaigns than dealing with national-security matters, is not aware of the facts — a condition that would help explain many of the other foreign-policy blunders of this administration.
If President Obama’s deal with Iran moves forward, longstanding U.S. nonproliferation goals will be among the foremost casualties, since the agreement will likely lead to more nuclear and missile proliferation in the region. By setting dangerous precedents on inspection procedures and by failing to back up in a meaningful way the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation of Iran’s possible military activities, including the design of a nuclear warhead, the authority of the IAEA will be undermined not just with Iran but with other potential proliferators. And because the deal would legitimize Iran’s illicit enrichment program and permit plutonium reprocessing in the future, U.S. policy dating back to the Carter years — which has successfully discouraged the spread of these capabilities — will lose credibility and effectiveness with other countries, including close allies that may want to pursue these technologies. How can we argue that South Korea shouldn’t enrich uranium if Iran receives an international stamp of approval?
Beyond nonproliferation, the damage to American security interests from the Iran agreement would be immense. Imagine a more aggressive regime in Tehran enabled with hundreds of billions of dollars over time and able to buy more weapons and funnel greater support to its allies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as to terrorist groups like Hezbollah and insurgent Shia movements throughout the Middle East. Clearly, despite the lecturing from the White House, the prospects for war increase rather than decrease with the president’s deal.
So what is the best course of action to protect our national security? First, we need to reject the notion that, if Congress does not ratify the deal, there will be war. The prediction of war is brought to you by the same individuals who predicted that the negotiations would result in a deal that would mandate anywhere/anytime inspections, impose constraints on Iran’s ballistic-missile program, and get to the truth on Iran’s military-related activities — none of which was achieved. A worse track record for prediction would be hard to find.
Moreover, Iran does not want a conventional conflict with the United States at this time, as it would surely lose. Better for Iran to wait until it can cash in on the agreement to get a stronger array of advanced conventional arms while retaining the nuclear option allowed under the agreement. And it is simply incredible that the Obama administration would use force against Iran preemptively. Just recall the president’s red line on Syria and his failure to enforce it when Assad used chemical weapons against his own people.
Second, we need to reject the notion that there is no viable path to return to the negotiations. We can be certain that, if the Supreme Leader demanded a change in the current provisions, all the negotiating partners would be willing to reconvene in Switzerland or Austria. There would be no statement from the White House that this meant war.
That said, the deal negotiated by the P5+1 has made it more difficult to resolve the Iran nuclear threat through diplomacy — and the U.N. Security Council resolution adopted to implement it compounds the difficulty. Economically, the sanctions regime that brought Iran to the table will be weakened. The door is now open for Russia and China to resume business with Tehran, commercial and military, including the provision of advanced air defenses. Some of our key allies will also want to seek commercial opportunities. And politically, Moscow and Beijing will surely criticize us if we fail to implement the deal — even as they continue their respective aggressions in Ukraine and the South China Sea.
Third, we need Congress to reject the agreement as it now stands and insist that its fatal flaws be corrected. These are: failing to impose effective verification that would detect or deter cheating at suspect sites such as the military facilities that have been declared off limits to inspectors; legitimizing Iran’s path to nuclear weapons through uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing; busting the sanctions regime without realistic snap-back mechanisms; failing to prevent breakout in the near or longer term; and failing to limit Iran’s ballistic-missile force, including its ICBM program, which makes sense only in the context of a nuclear front end. We will also need Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran, both direct and secondary, that will over time be able to substantially disrupt the Iranian economy. This is what forced Iran to negotiate in the first instance, and it can do so again.
The costs and risks of accepting this bad agreement far outweigh those of the alternative of returning to negotiations.
This proposed course of action will not be easy. But the costs and risks of accepting this bad agreement far outweigh those of the alternative of returning to negotiations. The initial task is for Congress, with support from enough congressional Democrats, to override the promised presidential veto of a resolution of disapproval of the agreement. But even if Congress can override a veto, it will still take time for the re-imposition of sanctions to get Iran back to the table. And perhaps the Obama administration, in a fit of pique, would refuse to engage in further negotiations. But this is a long-term challenge that will not be solved in the next 17 months in any case. This is a challenge for the next president. With new American leadership, combined with close consultations with allies and sound positions on the issues, we can turn this debacle around, just as we have done at other critical junctures when our national security demanded it.