President Trump will announce his decision on the Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday at 2 p.m. While there is speculation that he might walk away from the Iran deal (and he might), the deadline on his desk is not whether or not to scrap the deal but rather whether or not to refuse to issue a waiver on banking sanctions that the Obama administration had lifted to entice Iran into the deal.
Given revelations that Iran maintained an archive of its nuclear work and Tehran’s failure to declare or provide it to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Trump would be right to refuse to extend sanctions until such a time as Iran comes clean to the IAEA and the IAEA can meticulously go through and report on the documentary trove. After all, it is Tehran that is not in compliance, and therefore it should not receive the rewards of compliance.
Partisans have sought to downplay the importance of the nuclear archive, but in doing so they have simply exposed their dishonesty. Any non-proliferation organization that argues that tens of thousands of secret documents are immaterial without reviewing them are simply showing how partisanship (or receipt of Ploughshares Fund money) corrupts their core mission. After all, precedent is full transparency. When South Africa gave up its nuclear program in 1991, it was not allowed to keep its nuclear archive nor would it have needed one if it was serious about permanently foreswearing nuclear weapons.
What will the aftermath of Trump’s likely decision to re-impose sanctions on Iran’s central bank be? Certainly, expect the blame game. Iran will try to blame Trump and the United States for the collapse of the nuclear deal. But it was Iran that cheated, and for it to treat sanctions waivers as an entitlement absent compliance with the agreement is to make a mockery of all non-proliferation agreements.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry will likely side with Tehran over Washington. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. As I documented in Dancing with the Devil, my history of U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes and terrorists groups, those invested most in the 1994 North Korea negotiations blamed Washington for refusing to ignore Pyongyang’s subsequent cheating and the eventual collapse of the agreement. As for Kerry, he increasingly cuts a pathetic figure as he puts his own ego and quest for legacy above U.S. national security and shills, illegally, for Tehran. He has become the Walter Duranty of diplomacy.
What about Europe? European governments have always been motivated more by mercantile interests than security. They may be angry with Washington. But can they simply ignore Trump? Again, no. We’ve seen this play before. Between 1994 and 1996, President Bill Clinton imposed numerous unilateral sanctions on Tehran, including extraterritorial sanctions on European firms investing in Iran. European diplomats complained, but ultimately European companies complied. The metric by which European officials exist is length of speech. That by which European companies operate is profit, making them very reluctant to risk their access to the U.S. banking system or the dollar for the sake of an elected (or, in the case of the European Union, appointed) leader’s diplomatic point. The same dynamic largely holds true for Russia and China, both of which will face a stark choice: do business in Iranian rials or do business in U.S. dollars, but not both.
More broadly, what will sanctions mean for the nuclear deal? Could Iran restart its centrifuges? Absolutely. Through President Obama and Kerry’s poor judgment, Iran was able not only to keep more centrifuges than Pakistan had when it built not a nuclear bomb but an arsenal, but it was also able to keep the facility at Fordow that Iran and perhaps North Korea secretly built under a mountain. Then again, the unwillingness of the IAEA to inspect military sites for fear of violating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s red lines or angering the ayatollah means that the IAEA can’t really say that Iran ever stopped its nuclear program. And the sunset clauses to which Kerry signed off mean that it is time to address a post-nuclear deal era anyway.
The silver lining in Trump’s decision might be to exacerbate Iran’s already faltering economy. The Iranian regime has not yet been able to stamp out the protests which began in late December, and Iran’s currency continues to devalue to a record low. Certainly, the Iranian government will try to shift blame to the United States in order to deflect responsibility from its own poor economic stewardship, but the Iranian public has consistently blamed their leaders rather than the United States and sanctions for Iran’s dire situation.
Still, it behooves the Trump administration to point out each day in Persian as well as English that the reason for the re-imposition of sanctions has been Iranian cheating. Truth is effective.
As the smoke clears from Trump’s decision, what are the lessons the United States should learn? If critics of Trump’s move say he risks American credibility by putting the nuclear deal at risk, they should understand that the real risk to American credibility comes by trying to create shortcuts. Not only was the nuclear deal not a treaty, since it was never ratified by the Senate, but Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., arranged its airing in the Senate to not even need majority approval. Negotiating an agreement capable of receiving Senate ratification is hard, but perhaps had Kerry been a more skilled negotiator and had he and Obama been willing to apply the full force of American leverage, they could have done so.
This is the reason why complaints that walking away from a flawed nuclear deal would undercut any future arms control agreement with North Korea or other rogues fall short. By insisting on an agreement that lives up to its promises rather than only to the illusion of the promises, Washington signals that it is interested only in reality rather than sleight of hand. Give Washington substance, and agreements will have staying power.
The nuclear deal was never meant to be a “get out of jail free card” on other Iranian malfeasance. The United States should wage economic warfare against Iran’s ballistic missile program and use all available means to disrupt Iranian terrorism. Trump will err if his decision stands alone. However, if it is part of a broader and hopefully multilateral strategy, he can advance regional security.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
