The Obama administration keeps saying opponents of its “historic understanding” with Iran haven’t offered any alternatives to what officials admit is an imperfect process. They hope the potential deal will keep Tehran’s atomic ambitions contained to the point that it would take at least a year to develop a nuclear weapon in the event of a breach.
But alternatives do exist. It’s just that the administration doesn’t like them. And officials from President Obama on down know they exist, having raised them in the past just long enough to dismiss them out of hand, or say they will lead to war — the one outcome which seems even more unthinkable than a nuclear Iran in the administration’s current rhetoric.
And those alternatives are getting looks from a lot of experts and policymakers concerned about the widening gap in perception between Iran and the United States on what, if anything, was agreed to in the framework announced April 2 by negotiators in Lausanne, Switzerland. Though Obama called it a “historic understanding,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has shrugged it off and accused the United States of lying about what it contained.
There also are concerns that any final agreement based on the details already released still might not prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, especially after it expires — something Obama himself admitted was possible in an NPR interview which aired Tuesday.
Here are three alternatives that have been proposed as serious options to the current process:
1. Keep the interim deal in place
The idea behind this alternative is that if the November 2013 agreement has worked as well as Obama says it has, then replacing it with a bad deal would be a step backward. Though the deal was only supposed to last six months and already has been extended twice, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., suggested in a March 22 interview with CBS that this option would be preferable to a final deal with loopholes that allow Iran to ultimately develop a nuclear weapon.
The administration insists that the interim deal has at least halted, and in some cases rolled back, the progress of Iran’s nuclear program, most notably by preventing enrichment of uranium to 20 percent — a key step toward making it pure enough for a bomb. And officials say the sanctions relief of $700 million a month offered in exchange is not enough to let Iran’s economy fully recover from the impact of its international isolation.
When asked if Iran might press ahead with its program anyway, Corker responded: “I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.”
On the other hand, most Republicans, including Corker, saw the interim agreement as too weak, mainly because it conceded that Iran would continue to enrich uranium, which had been forbidden by U.N. Security Council resolutions. And lawmakers of both parties have been concerned for some time that the administration has been willing to tolerate Iranian cheating on the interim deal to keep current talks going.
2. Tougher sanctions
This option is most closely associated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since he offered it in his March 3 speech to a joint meeting of Congress. But it’s also the thinking behind bipartisan legislation in Congress that would impose tougher new sanctions on Iran if the current talks fail.
“Iran’s nuclear program can be rolled back well beyond the current proposal by insisting on a better deal and keeping up the pressure on a very vulnerable regime, especially given the recent collapse in the price of oil,” Netanyahu told lawmakers. “Now, if Iran threatens to walk away from the table — and this often happens in a Persian bazaar — call their bluff. They’ll be back, because they need the deal a lot more than you do.”
The legislation by Republican Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois and Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey would put that idea into practice, tightening restrictions on Iran’s oil industry and financial markets in particular to try to force its leaders to give up their nuclear ambitions.
On the negative side, it’s clear that current sanctions have not so far prevented Iran from advancing its nuclear program, even if they have played a role in bringing Tehran to the negotiating table. Opponents of this option fear Iran will continue to advance its program incrementally to the point where it will eventually become a nuclear power, even under sanctions pressure.
3. Military pressure
Advocates for this approach, such as Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and former ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, say Iran’s Shiite Muslim theocracy is the real threat, not its nuclear program and note that even Obama has repeatedly said that the military option remains on the table. They have offered options ranging from U.S. airstrikes aimed at destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities to complete regime change.
“The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure,” Bolton wrote in a March 26 New York Times op-ed.
“The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.”
Those arguing for the regime change note that the nuclear question is just one of a whole host of threats Iran’s ruling Shiite Muslim theocracy poses to U.S. interests, including its proxy war against Israel and allied Arab nations, global support for terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds of Americans and the holding of U.S. citizens on questionable charges.
“The goal of our policy must be clear – regime change in Iran,” Cotton said at a Heritage Foundation conference in January. “We cannot and will not be safe as long as Islamist despots rule in Iran.”
But the downside on this is huge: It would lead to yet another war in the Middle East after 14 years of continuous U.S. involvement in conflict in the region.
