The Iran nuclear deal announced Thursday in Lausanne, Switzerland, is an abject capitulation of Western interests and a sure pathway to a cascade of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.
The Iranian team must be congratulated for an impressive diplomatic victory. Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has achieved the two key goals of Iran’s negotiating strategy: The agreement allows Iran to retain an industrial-sized nuclear infrastructure and it fatally undermines the sanctions regime.
The Obama administration and its European allies entered negotiations with an incredibly strong hand — they had Iran’s economy crippled under an unprecedented sanctions legitimated by six U.N. Security Council Resolutions. Had they dug in their heels and kept the pressure, they could have forced Iran to concede on all their red lines. Zarif, the foreign minister of a state sponsor of terrorism that was repeatedly caught cheating on its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations, had only charm on his side. Charm won.
Zarif convinced his interlocutors that they needed a deal more than Iran and persuaded them that their red lines were unrealistic. Even more impressively, he used deadlines devised to pressure Iran into tools to call their bluff. Every time the Americans and the Europeans hinted that the interim agreement negotiated in November would not be renewed, Zarif played for time. His opponents invariably blinked first, agreeing to extensions and, as it eventually happened this week, endorsing more concessions they had previously rejected as dangerous.
Such was the case with the early recognition for Tehran’s insistence that it had a right to enrich uranium, which the November 2013 interim agreement conceded. Later, negotiators agreed not to discuss Iran’s ballistic missile program. In February, leaked details from negotiations indicated that Iran was also offered to keep around 6,000 centrifuges — a far cry from the symbolic low hundreds initially floated. Then, as negotiations entered a final phase, there were more concessions: Arak and Fordow, two of the most problematic declared nuclear facilities in Iran, will not have to be dismantled and closed as originally demanded. The possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program will not have to be addressed before an agreement is signed. Verification mechanisms to minimize the risk of Iranian cheating will not be as stringent as required. And the deal will eventually sunset in phases, leaving Iran, by 2030, under just the same monitoring and verification mechanisms that Tehran has successfully eluded for the past three decades.
Even after all these Western red lines were eroded, Iran negotiated as if it could afford more than its interlocutors to walk away with no agreement. This posture paid off as the March 31 midnight deadline came and went. In the deal that emerged two days later, Iran extracted even more concessions. Under the agreed terms, Iran will eventually see sanctions irreversibly removed without the need to submit to intrusive “anytime anywhere” inspections, to close down facilities, or to ship machinery and fuel abroad. The deal is, in short, a successful attempt to delay Iran’s march to nuclear weapons’ capability, not to block it.
Western diplomacy may still find this sufficient — after all, it just bought itself an additional 15 years. Except there is a silver lining in this agreement. While Western chanceries will be patting each other’s backs tonight on what they are already touting as a historic deal, Iran’s regional rivals and foes will see through the rhetoric and know this deal’s score — namely, that Iran’s nuclear program will now enjoy full international legitimacy while keeping its regime at best a year away from nuclear breakout. What Iran gets to keep under this agreement, they will also want for themselves. The 6,000 centrifuges that President Obama is leaving intact inside Iran’s heavily fortified enrichment facilities will soon be matched by similar sized nuclear programs in neighboring countries. Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia will expect the right to have the same as Iran and will not ask the Obama administration permission to pursue it.
This will ultimately be the legacy of the Obama presidency. The Middle East has just become a much more dangerous place for that.
Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions for editorials, available at this link.
