The more honest defenders of the president’s Iran diplomacy know there are loopholes in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action big enough to drive a car bomb through. So they are calling for some pretty vigorous enforcement.
Dennis Ross, who worked for the Obama administration, concedes the agreement will leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, and “the gap between threshold and weapons status is small and will not take long to bridge.” His solution? Deterrence. “Iran must have no doubts that if we see it moving toward a weapon that would trigger the use of force. Declaring that is a must even now. Proving that every transgression will produce a price will demonstrate that we mean what we say.” To bolster deterrence, he even suggests giving Israel B-52 bombers, even though the Israeli Air Force has not asked for these long-range bombers and does not want them.
Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, while denouncing “shrill Republican attacks on the nuclear deal” as an “embarrassment,” concedes that the agreement will enhance “Iran’s meddling in the region.” “What’s the best way to confront Tehran on these regional issues?” he asks. According to him, “The right strategy is to present Tehran with a sharp choice: Either join serious negotiations to end the regional wars in Syria and Yemen, or face the prospect of much stiffer, U.S.-led resistance.”
Wait a minute. If we have not been successful in deterring Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons and “meddling in the region” before the advent of this deal, what makes anyone think we will have more success after the deal is done? Quite the contrary: This deal will make it considerably harder to contain Iran.
After all, even if Iran complies with the accord, it will, as Ross notes, be left a turn of the wrench away from being a nuclear-armed state. And it will be armed, in addition, with a fearsome arsenal of conventional weapons and ballistic missiles, because the arms embargos are going to be lifted. That will substantially reduce our deterrence. Even if Israel acquires B-52s, they could easily be shot down by the new S-300 air defense system that Russia is keen to sell to Tehran — and now the sale can go through.
Moreover, there is little doubt that some substantial portion of the $100 billion-plus that Iran will get as a signing bonus, probably in the next six months, will wind up in the coffers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is charged not only with overseeing the nuclear program, but also with exporting the Iranian revolution abroad — i.e., exporting terrorism and subverting neighboring states.
The intelligence community may think otherwise; apparently they are convinced that “Iran’s government will pump most of an expected $100-billion windfall from the lifting of international sanctions into the country’s flagging economy and won’t significantly boost funding for militant groups it supports in the Middle East.” But such assessments should be taken with a grain of salt. This is the same intelligence community, after all, that delivered an estimate on September 19, 1962, claiming: “The establishment on Cuban soil of Soviet nuclear striking forces which could be used against the U.S. would be incompatible with Soviet policy as we presently estimate it.” This was just weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis. The intelligence community has, of course, been equally wrong about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, about whether Saddam would invade Kuwait in 1990, and a host of other issues. It takes a truly Pollyannaish mindset to convince oneself that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not use any of its lucre to boost the revolutionary movements that are so integral to its identity.
If we haven’t had any success in stopping Iran from supporting its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and other places under the current sanctions regime, it’s hard to imagine why we will have more luck in stopping an Iran newly fattened with vast financial resources and protected by a plethora of new weapons. Thus far President Obama has shown himself willing to overlook just about any Iranian transgression — from failing to answer the IAEA’s 12 queries about “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program to paying for barrel bombs to be dropped on Syrian civilians to subverting the Iraqi state — because he has been so determined to deliver an agreement on Iran’s nuclear accord. It is hardly realistic to imagine that, having now achieved an accord, he will suddenly turn into a tough guy with Iran. The signing of the agreement, after all, is just the first step. Obama will now be anxious to make sure that Iran abides by its terms, and thus he will hardly engage in the kind of brinksmanship with Iran that might prompt the mullahs to exist the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in a huff once they have pocketed their $100 billion windfall.
The era of American deterrence and containment of Iran is over, at least while this president is in office. We have moved from becoming Iran’s enemy to its enabler. This is based on Obama’s risky proposition that enriching Iran will liberalize it. I can see why the more hard-headed supporters of the deal are skeptical of this logic, but they are engaged in wishful thinking if they imagine that the U.S. will do much, at least for the next 18 months, to stop Iran’s inevitable onslaught.
