The common cause quotation in context. One citizen’s journey toward understanding the Iran Nuclear Agreement and its implications.

When the President told Republican opponents to the Iran Nuclear Agreement that they were “making common cause” with the Iranian hardliners he was criticized from both sides of the aisle. It was said that even thoughtful Democrats should take offense that they were being insulted. It is a terrible shame, and a sad comment on our way of taking in news, that this single line in an otherwise clear, logical and coherent and comprehensive speech has both become the talking point. It has funneled the focus from the far more important general analysis. But that might be expected.

When given a chance to “walk his remarks back”, Obama declined, insisting that his point was factually accurate, that both the American right wing and the Iranian hardline wanted to kill the deal. Still, viewing this line in a certain light gives the opportunity to understand something of important consequence in viewing both the nuclear agreement and the underlying pattern of diplomacy which brought it about.

It has been claimed that the President and Secretary of State don’t know the first thing about negotiations, that they should have been tougher. There is a classic notion of negotiation, which holds that the best negotiations are based on the application of enough pressure so that one’s adversary eventually caves in and accepts one’s own position. Other ideas of negotiation exist, however, which suggest that a better way to negotiate is to look to frame an issue so that both sides are engaged in solving a common problem.

One proponent I have heard of that kind of consensual approach was asked at a management seminar how this kind of ‘softer’ negotiation could work when the negotiation was between perceived implacable foes. His response was that the first thing one needs to know in order to succeed in such a negotiation was that there are moderates on each side, and the moderates have more in common with each other than either does with their more extremist countrymen.

This is what the President was, I believe, trying to say. Hard liners in both countries fear, resent and mistrust any efforts to find a consensus agreement. They view any agreement in which they don’t totally win as a total loss. Those holding these positions have one thing in common; they want to win at the expense of the others loss. The important corollary to the President’s statement about hardliners finding common cause, therefore, might be that there are “moderates” in both nations who also want to make common cause with each other. They wish to to try to solve an issue with diplomacy. That approach changes confrontation into the beginnings of dialogue.

This point could use, I believe, more emphasis than it has received. The moderates on both sides may share more in common with each other than either does with its more hard line co-nationals.

It is typical for the party that wants to shun negotiation to insist to their moderate co-nationalists that they, the moderates, are being naïve and duped. According to this hard line, there exist, in fact no real moderates on the other side. Perhaps history belies this view.

Shortly after President Obama took office, the election in Iran showed us images of millions of moderates who took to the streets trying to shake loose the grip the militant autocratic theocratic held over Iran. The autocrats, the Republican Guard and their henchmen demonstrated to the protesters, the moderates, and the world that they, the hard liners, were still firmly and decisively, if violently, very much in power. They beat, imprisoned, tortured and murdered their more moderate co-nationalists. At that time the old guard in Iran held sway by any means necessary, they crushed the reformers, and insisted to the world that Iran would not step one inch back from its nuclear program.

Times have changed. In the most recent elections, those moderates previously suppressed so brutally rose again and elected someone who told them he would reach out to the West and would end the isolation. In short order, just as everyone in the west was still wondering if this new government were really just more of the same hardcore tyrannical fanatics in softer clothing, secret contacts were made, enrichment of uranium was stopped and negotiations were begun. For the first time, Iran agreed to step back quite a bit from its nuclear program. The hardliners continued to oppose any talks, but the moderates were able to hold their ground and ultimately offered an agreement, one which is held up by the overwhelming majority of our allies and competitors alike to be fair and workable.

Skeptics might still insist that the same ruling despots are still in control, just putting a different face on. One can raise the consideration of whether they are just allowing more palatable voices to talk temporarily, planning to take power again once the sanctions are lightened. These are valid concerns, and will bear continued vigilance and scrutiny, but the fact remains that whoever is now ruling Iran, their voices now are speaking and acting considerably differently than those of the past. Perhaps the time is ripe to try, cautiously, to test their intention.

When moderate agendas fail, extremist ones tend to rise again.

Thus, one important reason to support the agreement with Iran, in addition to its being the surest way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, would be if such an agreement empowered those we would ultimately want to see empowered, and undercuts those whose influence we would wish to see lose sway.

If we reject agreement, those who never wanted agreement will have the upper hand again. Who wants an Ahmadinejad back? Who wants the Republican Guard to be proven right about the chances of rapprochement with the West? Who wants the Iran “Supreme Leader” to learn that it does no good to try to come to terms with us, because we will not keep to the terms we negotiate. Yes, we will have to be vigilant as to who takes the reins if commerce starts again. But to reject any agreement virtually puts the Iranian hard line back in power. That is not in any western nation’s interest.

There is more to say about determining whether those who have actually negotiated this agreement with the western powers are really looking to change their perspective. There remains in place a fairly vitriolic anti-Israeli invective. I will have something more to say on this in conclusion. For the moment, the chance to empower an arguably more moderate voice is point number one.

The most frequently objection voiced against the agreement is the fear that any agreement will be cheated upon, and that Iran will find a way to continue to develop a nuclear weapons capability right under the noses of the inspectors.

No one disputes the rigor or intrusiveness of the inspection regimen as expressed in the agreement. The clause that seems to raise the biggest objection is that we don’t have immediate access to all sites in Iran. Critics frequently raise the issue to be the deal breaker. We have to go through a two-week process to gain access to some sites. Those raising this concern follow immediately with the implication that this time interval would provide enough time for Iran to hide evidence of nuclear weapons production. This would then constitute a violation, one which would thereby escape detection.

This is a fair concern, a cogent question, a crucial argument to have, and potentially persuasive.

According to the agreement we do have 24/7 anytime anyplace access to those sites known to be and to have been Iran’s nuclear sites at present, and those it will declare, such as Natanz, Fordo, Arok, the heavy water facility, the major research areas, the uranium mines. In short we have continual access to every part of the production process that currently is known to exist. In fact, the inspectors are charged with “continually monitoring” these sites. That is not in dispute.

The concern arises where we think we may see something suspicious in a site, one which has not been declared a nuclear site.

True, if we somehow come to suspect that nuclear enrichment or nuclear weapons manufacture is suddenly taking place in a site we have never identified before, there is a process we must undergo to examine. We do not have immediate access to sites that have never been considered nuclear. To inspect new sites we have to go through some preliminary steps. We are obliged to indicate our concern to the Iranians. Then there is a process by which those concerns must be addressed. That process culminates in an on site inspection. This process between our indication of a new suspicion and our entering to inspect the newly suspected site takes between 14 and 24 days. The process sounds cumbersome, sounds time consuming, it sounds obstructive and it is concerning. Those concerns need to be addressed.

It seems of paramount importance, though, in considering this objection, to bear in mind that the only crucial issue, from a standpoint of the ultimate viability of the agreement, is to ask whether a two to three week delay is enough time to conceal and erase the traces of an ongoing nuclear facility.

If Iran were able, as portrayed in the current popular opposing television ad portraying the Mullahs playing a “shell game”, if it were able to simply hide its ongoing enhancement and production, then that would be a serious blow to our comfort and acceptance of the agreement. If a complex could exist, capable of mass producing uranium and plutonium on a scale required to build a nuclear weapon, and that complex could be shut down, hidden, and all traces of it removed in the two to three week interval between the expression of concern and the ultimate inspection, then that would make it difficult to accept the deal. There would exist a very wide gap in the insurability of the inspection process. That is a question that deserves an answer.

If, however, serious questioning of real experts reveals, as I suspect it will, that there was no way a production facility of the required magnitude could be concealed in that interval, that a two to three week window would give inspectors more than adequate time to insure compliance, then that clause should not be an impediment to our approving the agreement. The interval allowed would not inhibit our key capacity to insure that no weapons production is possible. That is, after all, the overriding question, and sine qua non of the agreement.

Why should such a clause exist, if it does not really allow Iran to conceal weapons production? Why don’t we just have, or insist on, absolute 24/7 access to any site we want to see?

Perhaps those who framed the language knew that it would be an insurmountable burden for any negotiator to be able to convince his own population to accept a deal which allowed 24/7 immediate access to any conceivable place just for the mere suspicion that something is going on there. Politics, it is said, is the art of the possible. Perhaps the two to three week delay allowed the Iranian government to claim to its own people some shred of sovereignty by representing to be holding to the principle that they do, after all, retain some control over where and when they are inspected. Perhaps it is a feat of diplomacy to preserve the capacity for Iranian negotiators to present this deal at home with dignity maintained, while at the same time giving the inspectors exactly what they need. What is needed is the certainty that no weapons level enrichment or production can go on undetected.

In either event, our concern is not why the clause exists, but only whether or not this clause impedes our real ability to monitor and deny the capacity to enrich uranium. If it makes complete inspection impossible, we should change it. However if this clause does not inhibit our ability to be certain that Iran is not making weapons, then any insistence on it being meaningful objection might be meant more to humiliate Iran than to actually protect against production of nuclear material. It would not be ultimately relevant to the proposed effect of the agreement. That is just to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

We are asked to consider what are our realistic alternatives to this agreement?

Let us imagine, just for the sake of argument, that the US Congress kills this deal, that they vote to reject it and they override the Presidential veto. What would be the next steps?

Some might think that if this deal fails, then we just apply more pressure and we can get a better deal. I suppose one could imagine that those negotiating teams and leaders who spent the last two years negotiating this agreement and then publicly representing to the world that it is a very good agreement might simply back down. They might just turn around and admit that they were wrong. They might be persuaded that the Israeli Prime Minister and the American right wing were seeing things more clearly than they, and that now they were ready to go for the “better deal”. Yes, it is imaginably possible, Presidents Putin, Xi, Merkel, Obama and Holland might thank those who had prevented the implementation of this agreement for opening their eyes to the fact that they, the negotiators, had been just like Chamberlain at Munich. They might keep the sanctions going, even tighten them, and come back to the table to negotiate a ‘better deal’. They might.

Please forgive my facetious tone. It is probably out of place. But it is meant to illustrate the folly in thinking that negotiators will keep up the sanctions and return to the table if the American Congress rejects this deal. Almost certainly they won’t.

Isn’t it much more likely that what would inevitably happen would be for Britain, Russia, China, France and Germany, to feel that any fair and serious agreement was going to be rejected? Isn’t it more likely that they then might no longer consider themselves bound by a set of sanctions, which, after all hurt them almost as much as they do Iran? Isn’t it more likely that the sanctions would simply be allowed to expire? In that case, although Iran’s recovery would be by no means as robust as it would be given our participation, still it would be robust enough to cause the more practical among our business community to regret not being a part of it. And more importantly, the one window of opportunity for our influence to have any chance of penetrating into contemporary Iranian thought would be lost.

And, as the sanction regime crumbled and world commerce again (sans US influence and benefit) came to Tehran, there would be

No inspections, and
No limitations on uranium enrichment, and
No destruction of ten thousand centrifuges, and
No dilution of Iran’s current Uranium stores to 3.67%,
No 24/7, no 14-24 days,
Nothing.

That brings up the military option.

Obama assured those fearful of Iran that no one disputes that we could prevail against Iran’s military sites. Even so, no military strategist, to my knowledge, has publically stated that a strike against Iran would be anything but risky, difficult, costly, uncertain of success, and extremely dangerous. Our recent experiences with what was supposed to be a short simple engagement to dazzle with “Shock and Awe” had long, protracted and unpredictable consequences, many of which we are still coping with. Iran is larger, more mountainous, further away, stronger, more populous, more technologically advanced, and much more unified than Iraq ever was.

War is an unpredictable business. Downed planes. Captured pilots. The constant question of “boots on the ground.” Killed, wounded, hundreds of billions in equipment. Hundreds more in the uncertainty of oil price spikes. Maybe not so convenient as it sounds in a debate.

What about a real nightmare scenario? Imagine a successful strike by Israel (who has refused to rule it out) followed by a mutual defense pact between Iran and Russia and a subsequent sale of half a trillion dollars in advance missile technology from Moscow to Tehran, all under a Russian nuclear ‘umbrella’.

Would that be a better deal?

Because one leading assumption of this argument is that approving this deal has the potential to strengthen more moderate voices in Iran, it is worth trying to come to terms with the question of whether there really are more moderates. And the arena in which we most gauge Iran’s moderation, and it’s moral position is, at least in western discourse, the rhetoric out of Iran regarding Israel, and regarding Jews. It is absolutely true that Israel has every reason to be concerned about any proposal which would allow a nuclear armed Iran.

The previous president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was universally condemned both for what was perceived to be his denial of the existence of the Holocaust, and his threat, as it was reported, to wipe Israel off the map. In fact, careful scrutiny of his actual statements calls into question both of those interpretations, but I will not digress into that here. That controversy, actual quotations and contexts are available. Stipulating that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric and stance were hateful, and hate filled, our question is whether it is possible to find meaningful distance between his tone and substance, and the tone of the present leadership.

Much was made of the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s attempts to soften his approach to the West in his first days in office.

“Unfortunately in recent years the face of Iran, a great and civilized nation, has been presented in another way,” Rouhani said, according to comments published on his official website. “I and my colleagues will take the opportunity to present the true face of Iran as a cultured and peace-loving country.”

He made special ‘outreaches’ to Jews. He tweeted out Rosh Ha Shanah greetings to “all Jews”. He changed the law in Iran to allow Iranian Jews to stay home from school on the Sabbath, something denied by his predecessors. As some middle east publications summarized it, “President Hassan Rouhani’s administration has taken steps to address the concerns of Iranian Jews, who wish to observe the holy Sabbath without sacrificing their education.” Whether that would be permanent was questioned in the same publication, with the ever-present possibility of harder governments coming back to power. “Iranian politics is full of twists and turns. Politicians fall in and out of favor. The same could happen to Rouhani. Once that happens, it could be the end of the what has comparatively been a golden era in relations between Iranian Jews and their government. Let’s hope not.”: ( http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/iran-hassan-rouhani-iranian-jews.html#ixzz3iYFS0JNq)

As to the denial of the Holocaust, Rouhani has been quoted as saying,

“I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis created toward the Jews, is reprehensible and condemnable,” he said. “Whatever criminality they committed against the Jews, we condemn.”

Still, when it comes to the state of Israel, he has remained confrontational. He has repeatedly said that if Israel attacked, it’s own cities would be annihilated. He has said that the Iranian army would defeat the Israeli army. He has said that if we attacked him, we would be defeated (this warning carried the graphic of a gun to the head of President Obama).

And, most notably, he is quoted as saying,

“The Zionist regime will soon be destroyed, and this generation will be witness to its destruction.”

It is concerning. Extremely concerning. Genuinely concerning.

But it is also worth noting, that in this comment, and in a reasonable preponderance of such comments under both the present and the former government, it is far more often than not the “regime” which is targeted for threat and not the people. Threats against another nation, and the prospect of “regime change” raise their own moral concerns. It may not be appropriate to paint them with the same brush, as is often done, with the threat to physically exterminate a race as being genetically inferior. It is difficult to build a case that withstands real scrutiny on the assumption that the Iranians are the equivalent of the Nazis. And it is not morally creditable to try to do so.

This one citizen’s reading of the situation, all considered, suggests that approval of this agreement and our best attempt to insure it is properly implemented is by far our best course of action for the following reasons.

1) It supports the efforts of the people in Iran whom we might want to succeed, those who at least behave more like moderates. It strengthens their hand in the future fate of Iran. The opposite course would delegitimize the moderates, and re-empower the confrontational hard line.

2) It offers quite rigorous enough verifiability according to the clear preponderance of experts to cut off every path to a weapon for the next ten to fifteen years, even, most likely, given the two to three week inspection process for a newly suspected site.

3) Failure to approve will almost certainly result in the collapse of sanctions anyway, and much to our disadvantage. It might cause significant damage to our regard in the world and our ability to be trusted and to be partnered with.

4) There is no realistic diplomatic alternative. No other deal. The European powers are not going to return to the table and keep the sanctions in place. They are not going to turn around, proclaim to be wrong, naïve and in appeasement. There is not going to be a “better deal”. It is a dream.

5) There is no viable military option that does not entail far more risk, blood and treasure than any responsible leader would undertake.

The prevention of a nuclear-armed Iran is, at this point, a key and necessary goal of American foreign policy. However it is not the only goal. The furtherance of peace and prosperity, and of exchange of ideas, of culture, of commerce and community for all nations is not an unreasonable corollary goal

I can only hope these thoughts, expressed in this way, if they do have merit, also have legs, and reach enough people who are willing to entertain them.

Thanks for taking the time reading it, whether you got this far or not.

Sincerely,

Dr. Richard Nierenberg
A citizen