President Obama is putting a lot on the line to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, his top foreign policy priority and a key element of the legacy he hopes to leave behind after his term in office expires.
Critics say he might be risking too much.
Negotiators are racing to craft a deal before a Nov. 24 deadline that would require Iran to permanently suspend activities that could allow it to produce a nuclear weapon in exchange for relief from international sanctions. The deal would replace an interim agreement negotiated a year ago.
Obama told CBS News last week that “there’s still a big gap” between Iran and the six nations negotiating a deal: the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany.
“We may not be able to get there,” he said.
But critics of the administration’s approach believe Obama is willing to sacrifice vital U.S. interests to achieve the deal as the first step in what has been called his “Nixon-to-China” moment — a rapprochement with Iran ending 35 years of hostility that would take its place in history alongside President Nixon’s opening to China in 1972. There are persistent reports of secret and not-so-secret overtures from Washington to Tehran about issues not related to whether Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.
“There’s no question” that Obama’s top priority in the Middle East is rapprochement with Iran, said Tony Badran, a research fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “There’s not been a single U.S. effort to roll back Iranian influence in the region.”
Concerns that the president is risking too much led the co-sponsors of a new sanctions bill to warn against accepting a bad deal from Tehran, hinting that the bill, which had been shelved to give administration officials room to negotiate, could quickly resurface.
“We believe that a good deal will dismantle, not just stall, Iran’s illicit nuclear program and prevent Iran from ever becoming a threshold nuclear weapons state,” Sens. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said Wednesday. “This will require stringent limits on nuclear-related research, development and procurement, coming clean on all possible military dimensions issues and a robust inspection and verification regime for decades to prevent Iran from breaking out or covertly sneaking out.
“Gradual sanctions relaxation would only occur if Iran strictly complied with all parts of the agreement. If a potential deal does not achieve these goals, we will work with our colleagues in Congress to act decisively, as we have in the past.”
Actions by Obama that have raised concerns include his refusal to get tough with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an Iranian ally whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam, the sect of Iran’s clerical regime. This has put the president’s strategy against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria at risk by angering Arab allies and Syrian rebels whose support is crucial to its success. Though the administration reportedly is reviewing its Syria policy, there is no indication that includes plans to take military action against Assad, as many U.S. allies in the region would like.
While Israel’s vehement objection to any U.S. dealing with Iran gets most of the headlines, Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf countries also have watched nervously as Tehran and the Shia groups it backs have gained influence in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen at the expense of their Sunni brethren without a response from Obama.
“He’s managed to impose a new set of priorities on everybody in the region,” Badran said.
Obama recently wrote a letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran’s theocracy, suggesting that the two countries could cooperate against the Islamic State terrorist group once a nuclear deal is reached.
Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, which runs the country’s nuclear program, responded Wednesday by saying the letter, the existence of which U.S. officials refused to confirm, bore clear contradictions and noted Iran will insist in any deal on maintaining the capability to enrich uranium.
“The letter is an act purported to influence the domestic climate in the U.S.; Iran’s clear and strong positions in the nuclear negotiations reminded the U.S. president our strong will not to accept a nominal enrichment program,” he said, according to the official Mehr News Agency, insisting that “Iran would not accept obligations beyond those ordained by the [Non-Proliferation Treaty].”
Shamkhani’s tough talk came just days after the International Atomic Energy Agency warned in a confidential report obtained by news agencies that Iran was not providing enough information to address suspicions that it may have conducted research into developing a nuclear weapon.
Any workable deal must give IAEA inspectors complete access to the Iranian program, backed by a Security Council resolution, said Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director of the U.N. agency.
“These transparency mechanisms need to be legally binding,” he said, noting that “it sets a very bad precedent for other proliferators” if Iran is not forced to uphold its international obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty as well as those imposed by the Security Council.
Meanwhile, the administration has refused to push for the release of Americans held in Iran, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Iranian-American pastor Saeed Abedini and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, along with retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and whose fate is unknown.
A senior Iranian judicial official said last week that Rezaian, who has been held without charge since his arrest July 22 after the start of the latest round of nuclear talks, would not be released anytime soon as his case was still under investigation.
