President Obama soon may be forced to deal with an issue he has tried to avoid: Iran’s aggression in the Middle East.
Administration officials have tried to wall off talks on limiting Iran’s nuclear program from the many crises in which Iranian actions play a role, from the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to the implosion of Yemen’s government, to even Iran’s prosecution of U.S. citizens on questionable charges.
But each crisis is heating up and is fueling skepticism in Congress of the president’s negotiating strategy with Tehran, which many lawmakers fear is geared more toward a general rapprochement with the Islamic theocracy than with preventing the mullahs from getting nuclear weapons.
The latest shock came Friday, when Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels announced that they had taken over the country and dissolved the nation’s parliament, after earlier forcing the resignation of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and his cabinet. The rise of the rebels, who are widely believed to be backed by Iran, has thrown U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in Yemen into disarray and caused jitters in Saudi Arabia at a time when it is going through a transition following the death of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.
“This takeover of Yemen by the Iranian-supported Houthi militia is a very dangerous blow to our national security,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif. “Iran is consolidating its grip on the region, our embassy is on lockdown, and al Qaeda has more room to operate.
“The administration must come to grips with the increasingly destructive role Iran is playing in the region.”
That view is shared by an overwhelming majority of Republicans in Congress and many Democrats. It also received an endorsement Wednesday from an unexpected quarter: Ashton Carter, Obama’s nominee to replace Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “I think that we have two immediate substantial dangers in the Middle East. One is [the Islamic State] and one is Iran.”
In response to written questions from the committee, Carter wrote: “Countering Iranian destabilizing activities must be an important priority. Regardless of the outcome of nuclear negotiations, I firmly believe that the United States must also counter these destabilizing regional activities, including Iran’s support to terrorists and militant groups.
“If confirmed, I would work to ensure the department is focused on these issues.”
Meanwhile, there’s growing concern about what concessions negotiators from the “P5+1” group — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — are offering to get a framework for a permanent agreement with Iran by their self-imposed March 24 deadline.
Supporters of new sanctions legislation pending in Congress have agreed to hold off on a vote until after the deadline to give negotiators time to work but are uneasy both about the failure to confront Iranian aggression and the direction in which the talks are going.
Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized the importance of meeting the deadline — the third such deadline in more than a year to replace an interim agreement that was supposed to last six months — when he met Friday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Munich.
The Associated Press reported that U.S. and Iranian negotiators are discussing a potential deal that would let Iran keep most of the nearly 10,000 centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium if they are reconfigured to reduce the amount they produce, while limiting the amount of uranium gas it keeps on hand. Iran also would commit to exporting much of the enriched uranium it produces, according to the report.
Though the compromises would restrict Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon, there’s a concern that they are easily reversible without being detected by international inspectors, which may make such a deal unacceptable to Congress.
“The administration’s reported nuclear concessions to Ayatollah Khamenei will only keep Iran at the threshold of getting nuclear bombs,” said Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., co-author of the sanctions legislation. “A bad nuclear deal will further empower Iran and endanger the security of America, Israel and other allies in the Middle East.”
The direction in which the talks seem to be going also has alarmed many foreign policy experts.
“I am concerned … in the shift of the focus of negotiations from preventing Iran from having the capability of building a nuclear weapon to a negotiation which seeks to limit the use of that capability,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 29, noting that concessions that allow Iran the capability to build weapons will encourage other nations in the region to seek the same things.
“What do the other countries in the region do, if the other countries in the region conclude that America has approved an enrichment capability?” Kissinger asked.
“I wish that this proliferation issue be carefully examined.”
