The Obama administration’s strategy for negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran is unworkable because the international community wouldn’t be able to react quickly enough if Iran cheats, according to an op-ed published Monday.
The op-ed in the Washington Post by former CIA Director Michael Hayden; Olli Heinonen, former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency; and Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations; says the administration’s goal of putting Iran a year away from the ability to produce a nuclear weapon may not leave enough time for the international community to stop that from happening.
They said that is why Congress should approve any deal, as most Republicans and many Democrats want. Obama, however, has refused to submit any deal to Congress for approval.
“In the midst of all the typical Washington political cacophony about the progress of the negotiations, what is lost is that an accord between the United States and Iran would be the most consequential arms-control agreement of the post-Cold War period. It would determine the level of stability in the Middle East and impact global nuclear nonproliferation norms,” the three wrote.
“With stakes so high, we need a national debate about the nature and parameters of any agreement. The right venue for that debate is the halls of Congress. No agreement can be considered viable or enduring without such legislative approbation.”
But the current CIA director, John Brennan, told Fox on Sunday that Iran’s leaders understand “there will be tremendous costs and consequences” if they decide to build a nuclear weapon.
“If they decide to go down that route, they know that they will do so at their peril,” he said. “I am confident that our intelligence capabilities are sufficiently robust that we have a good understanding of what the Iranian nuclear program entails.”
The op-ed’s authors, however, said the bureaucratic process of validating any reported violation through the IAEA and the United Nations could allow Iran to break free before the international community can act, even after the United States had enough evidence to make its case. And even though the administration has pledged to quickly reimpose sanctions if Iran is caught cheating, those also would take time to work.
“And the reality is that any cheating by Iran would always be incremental and never egregious. Throughout the duration of an agreement, there would be occasional reports of Iran enriching to unacceptably high levels and revelations of unreported nuclear installations and experimentation in weapon designs,” they wrote.
“Iran’s habit of lulling the world with a cascade of small infractions is an ingenious way to advance its program without provoking a crisis. In the end, a year simply may not be enough time to build an international consensus on measures to redress Iranian violations.”
For example, the Institute for Science and International Security examined whether Iran had violated the current interim nuclear agreement by feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into a research centrifuge at an enrichment facility at the Natanz nuclear site. The independent, nonpartisan organization concluded in a Dec. 16 final report that the move violated the spirit if not the letter of the interim deal.
The Iranians agreed to stop feeding the centrifuge as part of the agreement reached Nov. 24 to extend the interim deal for another seven months, and U.S. officials downplayed the incident as an error rather than an act of cheating.
But the incident, and the administration’s reaction, was widely seen by critics of the deal as the latest example of Tehran bargaining away something Washington says it shouldn’t be doing in exchange for new concessions from international negotiators.
“If Iran won’t comply with the IAEA now, we’ll have an even harder time verifying its nuclear program if a comprehensive agreement is reached. This just goes to show what many of us fear, and what the administration continues to ignore: There is no way to fully monitor and verify Iran’s program, and that’s why the only option must be a complete dismantling of its nuclear program,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee set to examine the issue in a hearing Tuesday.
