The deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program may make it harder for Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon, but easier for its Shiite Muslim theocracy to continue its push to dominate the Middle East, and that may be its undoing.
In exchange for putting its nuclear ambitions on ice for 10 years and formally swearing off any desire to build a bomb, Iran’s regime gets the equivalent of a “get out of jail free” card after years of being in the dock for violating United Nations restrictions. Iran has won relief from international isolation and sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy, along with some $150 billion dollars in frozen assets.
The deal also would end the U.N. arms embargo against Iran within five years and sunset restrictions on ballistic missile technology in eight — two of many concessions made by the United States and its allies to get Iran to sign.
Though concerns remain about whether the deal actually will achieve its basic goal of ensuring Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, it’s those concessions that have the most potential to unravel it. The terms of the deal strengthen a regime that many of Iran’s neighbors and many in Congress view as the real threat in the Middle East.
“This is a bet not based on fact. In fact this is a bet based on hope over experience,” former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut told the House Foreign Affairs Committee at a hearing Tuesday timed for when the deal was completed.
After declaring early Tuesday that “we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons” in the Middle East, President Obama spent much of the day calling leaders in the region to reassure them that the United States would continue to defend them against the conventional threat from Iran that the agreement does nothing to arrest.
Israel and many U.S. Arab allies in the region already are involved in low-level armed conflicts with Iranian proxies, and their concerns that the deal might empower Iran have repeatedly been brushed aside by the administration, which insists that Tehran will spend the bulk of the sanctions relief on improving the domestic economy.
One of the major concerns raised by critics of the deal is that those countries would react more aggressively toward Tehran, increasing the risk of conflict in the region rather than reducing it as the authors of the agreement intended.
U.S. military leaders also have raised concerns, especially about the lifting of the U.N. arms embargo, which would enable Iran to obtain arms which could greatly increase the risk for U.S. forces operating in the Middle East. Russia already has announced that it was lifting a 2010 ban on the sale of advanced air-defense missiles to Iran and is eager to sell more advanced weaponry that could make it harder to defend U.S. interests in the region.
Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, Obama’s nominee for vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that “the sequential lifting of sanctions will give Iran the access to more economic assets with which to sponsor state terrorism should they chose to do so.”
Though administration officials insisted Tuesday that U.S. sanctions related to Iran’s support for terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere would remain in place, international negotiators acceded to Iran’s demands for relief from sanctions that had blocked access for its banks to the international financial system because of their role in financing such activities. Administration officials also told reporters on a conference call that, though Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and its commander Qassem Soleimani would remain under U.S. sanction, the U.N. sanctions against him would be lifted.
Congress now has 60 days to review a deal and may vote on a resolution opposing it. Lawmakers are extremely concerned about how the lifting of non-U.S. sanctions on those entities would affect the ability to curb Iran’s support for terrorism, Rep. Robert Pittenger told the Washington Examiner.
‘We will of course monitor that in every way possible,” said the North Carolina Republican, who leads a congressional task force on terrorism and is a member of another task force on terrorism financing.
Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., chairman of the task force on terrorism financing, said his group would probe Iran’s financing of terrorist groups around the world to provide “information that I feel is vital to the administration, Congress and American people when reviewing any nuclear agreement with Iran that includes sanctions relief.”
