The big news today is that the P5+1 world powers and Iran have reached an historic nuclear agreement. The New York Times headline: IRAN AND 6 WORLD POWERS REACH DEAL TO CURB ITS NUCLEAR PLANS; the Washington Post headline, Historic Iran nuclear deal reached.
Here is a link to the The Full Text of The Nuclear Agreement (Scribd). The White House’s overview is online here.
PHOTO: World leaders pose for a group picture at the United Nations building in Vienna (ABC News)
In the days, weeks and months leading up to this historic agreement, there has been knee-jerk opposition to any deal, or even any negotiations, from the usual suspects: Neocon war mongers in the military-industrial-congressional-media complex that President Eisenhower warned us about, Neocons who opposed President Reagan’s nuclear arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, and who opposed every arms agreement by every president during the nuclear era.
Charles Pierce at Esquire makes a smart point, The Nuclear Deal With Iran, Explained:
Ever since the end of World War II, and the rise of what Garry Wills calls the “Bomb Power” in our politics, any arms-control treaty faced the same opposition on the same grounds from most of the same people. (If you compare Reagan to Chamberlain, you truly have wandered far from the rest of the pack.) Our groaning and bloated arsenal has become such an essential part of our national identity that a) we can’t imagine defining America without it, and b) we can’t imagine that any other country doesn’t feel the same way. The idea that our 4800-odd nuclear weapons — and god alone knows how many chemical and biological weapons we may have — might scare our enemies somehow is construed as weakness because our enemies are always all-powerful and always one small step away from destroying us and taking over the world because an Exceptional Nation requires Exceptional Enemies, and because our arsenal exists largely to protect our lamb-like innocence in a world of wolves.
Expounding on Charlie’s point is Peter Beinart in this must-read analysis at The Atlantic, Why the Iran Deal Makes Obama’s Critics So Angry:
“Mankind faces a crossroads,” declared Woody Allen. “One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
The point is simple: In life, what matters most isn’t how a decision compares to your ideal outcome. It’s how it compares to the alternative at hand. [Or “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” – Voltaire.]
The same is true for the Iran deal, announced Tuesday between Iran and six world powers. As Congress begins debating the agreement, its opponents have three real alternatives. The first is to kill the deal, and the interim agreement that preceded it, and do nothing else, which means few restraints on Iran’s nuclear program. The second is war. But top American and Israeli officials have warned that military action against Iranian nuclear facilities could ignite a catastrophic regional conflict and would be ineffective, if not counterproductive, in delaying Iran’s path to the bomb. Meir Dagan, who oversaw the Iran file as head of Israel’s external spy agency, the Mossad, from 2002 to 2011, has said an attack “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA under George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, has warned that an attack would “guarantee that which we are trying to prevent: an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.”
Implicitly acknowledging this, most critics of the Iran deal propose a third alternative: increase sanctions in hopes of forcing Iran to make further concessions. But in the short term, the third alternative looks a lot like the first. Whatever its deficiencies, the Iran deal places limits on Iran’s nuclear program and enhances oversight of it. Walk away from the agreement in hopes of getting tougher restrictions and you’re guaranteeing, at least for the time being, that there are barely any restrictions on the program at all.
What’s more, even if Congress passes new sanctions, it’s quite likely that the overall economic pressure on Iran will go down, not up. Most major European and Asian countries have closer economic ties to Iran than does the United States, and thus more domestic pressure to resume them. These countries have abided by international sanctions against Iran, to varying degrees, because the Obama administration convinced their leaders that sanctions were a necessary prelude to a diplomatic deal. If U.S. officials reject a deal, Iran’s historic trading partners will not economically injure themselves indefinitely. Sanctions, declared Britain’s ambassador to the United States in May, have already reached “the high-water mark,” noting that “you would probably see more sanctions erosion” if nuclear talks fail. Germany’s ambassador added that, “If diplomacy fails, then the sanctions regime might unravel.”
And it’s what George W. Bush refused to do after 9/11, when he defined the “war on terror” not merely as a conflict against al-Qaeda but as a license to wage war, or cold war, against every anti-American regime supposedly pursuing weapons of mass destruction. This massive overestimation of American power underlay the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of a half-million Iraqis and almost 4,500 Americans, and cost the United States over $2 trillion. And it underlay Bush’s refusal to negotiate with Iran, even when Iran made dramatic overtures to the United States. Negotiations, after all, require mutual concessions, which Bush believed were unnecessary; if America just kept flexing its muscles, the logic went, Iran’s regime would collapse.
Unless Americans make the mistake of electing a Republican president in 2016, then the Neocon architects of the Iraq war débâcle will return to power with a vengeance, their hearts set on getting their war on with Iran.
Why it’s worth giving peace a chance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmpDEFO7-oQ
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122302/iran-deal-victory-obama-diplomacy-over-bush-warmongering
As a result of the deal, the International Atomic Energy Agency will have eyes on Iran’s nuclear program at every level: mining, procurement, production, enrichment, etc. Not only does this deep visibility create a deterrent to cheating, but it also means that, when the intensive inspection period expires years from now, the IAEA will possess far more detailed information and understanding of Iran’s program than any other in the world.
And by demonstrating to the Iranian regime that a positive change in its behavior can produce benefits, the deal could empower more moderate elements within Iran calling for broader reforms. This is one reason why the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has supported this diplomacy all along, and hailed the agreement this morning as “a victory of diplomacy and peace,” and why Iran’s hawks remain hostile to any agreement, a position they’ve long shared with U.S. hardliners. (It’s no secret why the most ardent supporters of the Iraq war have been the loudest critics of Iran diplomacy: The failure of the former and success of the latter utterly discredits their claims about how the world works.)
We won’t make trust an issue. It will be verified.
Steve, you might also want to read this from and organization that has made this their life’s work…
http://www.ploughshares.org/
https://twitter.com/adamseip/status/620936608875982848/photo/1
I occasionally listen to the short-wave broadcasts from Iran at night. It is interesting to compare what Iran says to the world at large and what it says to it’s people and it’s neighbors in the Middle East. They bear no resemblance to one another. The Quran makes it clear that is acceptable, even admirable, to lie to non-believers if it is furtherance of Islam to do so. That is one of the things that Westerners never take seriously, and they are doing so in this so-called agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear efforts to peaceful uses.
When Iran plays “hide-and-seek” with the inspector, when Iran refuses access to the inspectors and when Iran finally sets off it’s first nuclear bomb, I hope you remember this article and all the praise you heaped on the negotiators and how the Agreement meant “peace in our time”. You see, in the short-wave broadcasts, the Iranian Imams and Government makes it clear that they will soon have a true “Islamic bomb”. A bomb that, unlike the Pakistani’s Islamic Bomb, will be used used as Allah wills.
I take them at their word…
Oh, geeze! I actually KNOW Iranians, as friends, and they are nothing like you describe. I have some good articles for you to read…
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/14/its-a-damn-good-deal-iran-nuclear-agreement-joint-comprehensive-plan-of-action/
I’ll find the other one and post it later… Honestly, you must be on the radio with the mullahs…no one else thinks /says things like that.
Steve, in reality, do you think the P5+1 are relying exclusively on the inspections, or do you think they know their surveillance capabilities will fill in any gaps?
That is a really good question, Bob. The problem with our surveillance capabilities is that, as good as they are (and they are formidable), they still cannot see what is going on inside an underground facility. The radiation detection assets cannot detect what is under 15-20 feet of concrete, so we wouldn’t have much success with those. Most of what Iran has been doing in the nuclear arena has been done in underground bunkers spread out and located in very difficult to reach terrain. It will require inspectors on the ground to see what is happening in these facilities. I am fairly certain that we know where most, if not all, of these facilities are located. We could destroy them with our deep penetration bunker buster bombs, but we would never do that and I don’t think it would be a good idea if we did. After all, do we really have a right to keep another sovereign nation from developing nuclear weapons if they choose to do so? I think we can discourage it, but stop them through the use of military force? I don’t think so.
I am a pessimist about Iran. My greatest hope is that the Treaty works and Iran lives up to the bargain. I would love nothing better than to eat my words and admit I was wrong. I don’t know, perhaps the voice of moderation and a desire to come back into the world family will prevail in Iran. That just isn’t what I am hearing from them. I am not opposed to the Treaty. I applaud the efforts and think the negotiators did more than I thought was possible, I am just afraid that we are dealing with a country that feels no particular compunction to live up to the Treaty. Not if I believe what they are saying.
This is an excellent piece for you to read, Steve. It addresses some of the issues that you spoke of…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/opinion/thomas-friedman-obama-makes-his-case-on-iran-nuclear-deal.html?smid=tw-share