U.S. negotiators should be prepared to walk away from a bad deal with Iran, experts told a Senate committee on Thursday, amid growing concerns that concessions aimed at meeting Tehran’s “red lines” won’t ensure its nuclear program is peaceful.
Those concessions, along with a hardening of Tehran’s stances on key points, have called into question whether the deal being negotiated in Vienna will meet the goals of the United States and its international partners, most notably to prevent Iran from ever developing a nuclear weapon.
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“I think the U.S. has to consider walking away if its red lines or basic goals are not met,” David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Albright, one of several technical experts who have advised the Obama administration during the talks, said Iran’s “intransigence” on key points has made people more pessimistic about the prospects for a deal that would meet the goal of verifiably preventing the militarization of its nuclear program.
That pessimistic tone was struck in an open letter released Wednesday by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and signed by former Obama administration advisers on Iran, along with a number of other former officials, including former CIA Director David Petraeus and retired Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The letter outlined conditions necessary for a “good” deal and said Iran’s other hostile behaviors in the Middle East needed to be addressed as part of the process.
The agreement that appears to be taking shape “will not prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons capability,” they wrote.
“[The agreement] will not require the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment infrastructure,” they added, expressing their concern that “the current negotiations, unless concluded along the lines outlined in this paper and buttressed by a resolute regional strategy, may fall short of meeting the administration’s own standard of a ‘good’ agreement.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the letter “thoughtful” and said President Obama “won’t sign something that falls short of what was in the political agreement in April.”
But even the framework for a final deal released April 2 has raised concerns among lawmakers and experts, just as the ongoing negotiations have bred more concerns.
Iran has achieved its negotiating objectives in the talks, Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations told senators. “Conversely, the United States has made a series of concessions that make the possibility of a good deal difficult to envision.”
Of greatest concern are reports that International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors would not have access to military sites or get an accounting of Iran’s past work on nuclear weapons as part of a deal. These are the first two of five conditions for a good deal identified in the open letter.
“The IAEA needs to know what Iran knows,” Albright said. “I think without knowing the past, the IAEA can not verify that Iran’s program is peaceful.”
After a week of controversy over reports that negotiators would not demand a full accounting of Iran’s past weapons work, Secretary of State John Kerry held a series of phone conversations with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to tell him the issue must be resolved in the talks, Reuters reported Thursday.
Concerns also have been raised over the fact that important parts of the agreement taking shape expire after 10 to 15 years, which even Obama has acknowledged may leave Iran free to develop a nuclear weapon.
Albright and Takeyh told senators that the sunset requirements demanded by Iran and outlined in the April 2 framework could thwart any agreement from meeting its most important goal and leave Tehran with an industrial-size nuclear program that can fairly easily be weaponized.
“I have never seen anyone defend the sunset clause,” Takeyh said.
The authors of the letter suggested negotiators give up on trying to reach a deal by their self-imposed deadline of Wednesday and concentrate on nailing down Iranian compliance on those points, a position endorsed by Foreign Relations Chairman Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
Though officials from other countries have suggested that deadline will slip, Earnest said the White House is not planning to extend the talks.
