By Ray Takeyh
After years of painstaking effort, the Obama administration has managed to craft a framework agreement with Iran. In the next three months, this structure is meant to be filled out with details regarding the scale of Iran’s enrichment capacity and the stages of sanctions relief. If the devil is in the detail, much mischief may await us.
However, even before all this happens, the Iranian nuclear drama is proving to be one of the most curious arms control episodes in history. As the scale of American concessions becomes evident, the White House and its defenders seldom justify the emerging accord strictly on terms of the proliferation threat that remains. Their response is often limited to claiming that an admittedly imperfect agreement is still preferable to the alternatives. And the alternatives are usually painted in hysterical terms with Iran surging toward the bomb, the sanctions regime collapsing and an isolated United States helplessly watching all this unfold. Not for the first time, the Obama administration is demonstrating a poor understanding of Iran’s strategies, the resilience of the sanctions regime and the nature of the international system.
By this time the essential contours of the agreement are all obvious. The accord will leave Iran with a sizeable enrichment capacity and none of its facilities will be shuttered as was once contemplated. The agreement’s most important sunset clause will be 10 years upon whose expiration, all essential restriction on Iran’s enrichment infrastructure will collapse. In essence, Iran can then move toward an industrial-size nuclear program similar to that of Japan. This means that the Islamic Republic will be in a position to manufacture numerous bombs on short order. The ballistic missiles, which are an essential part of any nuclear weapons program, will be excluded from the deal. And previous Iranian experiments with the military dimension of nuclear energy are postponed from scrutiny. Thus, any verification regime will not be informed by the history of Iran’s clandestine program.
The proponents of this deal have to account for why they are not bothered by such a large residual enrichment capacity. Why do they think a sunset clause is a wise idea? Why do they believe ballistic missiles should be ignored and how can once craft an intrusive verification system that has no historical memory? An arms control agreement has to be justified first and foremost on technical grounds and whether it meets the essential non-proliferation standards.
The path that the proponents of this accord have chosen is to avoid such questions and take refuge in the world of ominous alternatives. One of their favorite talking points is to suggest that coercion has not forestalled Iran’s nuclear path and that since 2003 as sanctions were imposed Iran has gone from 200 to 19,000 centrifuges. They neglect to mention that only approximately 9,500 of those machines are operational. Thus, during this period Iran increased its capacity by an average of 800 centrifuges a year. Although this is hardly ideal it is not an unmanageable situation. The notion that without this agreement Iran would immediately surge to a bomb is belied by the evidence that the proponents of this accord present.
Beyond that what is often missed is that Iran’s ingenious strategy is to advance its program incrementally and not provocatively. Iran has always been cautious to step and not leap forward.
This way as Iran’s program inches forward, the international community routinely accedes to its new gains. In absence of an agreement, Iran will certainly take measures to advance its program, but those moves are likely to be cautious and incremental so to avoid a military reaction.
It is often suggested that should there be breakdown in the talks, the sanctions regime will collapse. The European states and Asian powers will rush back into Iran in defiance of American prohibitions. This notion ignores the fact that U.S. sanctions are secondary in nature, meaning that if there is European bank or an Asian firm that wishes to invest in Iran then it will lose its access to the U.S. market.
There is no way that such firms will risk losing access to a U.S. economy estimated at $16.8 trillion dollars for sake of an Iranian economy of $368 billion. To be frank, the U.S. sanctions can succeed even if there is a perception that they are unfair. That is one of the advantages of being a superpower with the largest economy in the world.
None of this means the Iran deal is beyond repair. In the next three months, Secretary of State John Kerry has an opportunity to craft an agreement that addresses some of the deficiencies of the framework accord. He may wish to reconsider the wisdom of such a shortened sunset clause. The need for Iran to come clean on all its previous attempts at nuclear weaponization is critical if the agreement is to have a reliable inspection regime. And the ballistic missiles that are already part of UN resolutions should be addressed as part of this agreement and not separately. Finally, there has to be a mechanism in place for how to deal with Iranian violations. The history of arms control suggests that violations are rarely prosecuted and reversed in a timely manner.
Should he do so, he would have forged a deal that reliably restrains Iran’s nuclear appetite, enjoys bipartisan support at home and is embraced by our allies in the region. And that agreement would be worthy of the appellation historic.
Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
