1. The United States succeeds most when we work through consensus and diplomacy. Whenever possible, long lasting, workable solutions to problems which then stay fixed occurs when we reach a fair and mutually beneficial agreement with all parties involved. When we act unilaterally, militarily, and contrary to the expressed wishes of majorities of our friends and allies, we have created unstable, unsatisfying and costly solutions to problems which were better solved otherwise. We also produce unintended consequences. Look at Iraq.
2. You make peace with your enemies, not your friends. The same is true of arms control agreements. We don’t try to limit or inspect the arsenals of Israel, Britain, France, and the like because we are their allies. We try to limit the arsenals, or have done, of the then USSR, and now Iran. The fact, as much of the arguments of the opposition like to emphasize, that the Iranians chant “Death to America” and the like are not reasons to oppose the deal. They are reasons to support it. Present day Iran is not our friend. That’s why we worked so hard to cut off their path to a bomb.
3. The best negotiations are win – win. There is extensive literature, much of it from Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, which supports the notion that reaching consensus and finding mutually acceptable goals is far more fruitful than trying for a ‘zero-sum” game. When I win and you lose, we both ultimately lose.
4. In Reagan’s words, “Trust but verify”. Much is made of Iran’s history of deception. When did Iran before agree to accept the principle of limiting its weapons in exchange for tangible goals? This deal is not based on trust. It has a very robust and intrusive inspection regimen. That regimen is receiving considerable debate. Opponents seize onto small clauses and side bars to invalidate it. However, the fact remains that every single known Iranian nuclear site is subject to twenty four/seven inspection, that this recent flap about the Iranians collecting their own soil samples has been clearly called within usual IAEA standards. Experts can debate, and I hope they will, whether the procedural delay in inspecting new suspected sites is of any consequence, but so far many have pointed out that you can’t erase all traces, even in 24 days, of a facility capable of developing enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb. Can’t be done.
5. Coming to the table by itself was a huge step for Iranian moderates. The tone and substance of the current leader of Iran, who has acknowledged the Holocaust, said the Israel’s end should come from diplomatic means and agreed to even talk and accept conditions from the world’s powers is a large step forward. Perhaps it is only in comparison with the bellicose previous president of Iran, but by comparison the new leadership is moderating, heading toward moderate, and indicating their willingness to do so. To support this effort is to encourage further moderation in Iran. To reject it is to immediately demonstrate to the hardliners in Iran that there is no chance for an acceptable negotiation with the West. That would solidify, perhaps permanently, an increasingly dangerous confrontation. Support the moderates when they are willing to reach out, and they may reach out more than we know. Kick them in the face by rejecting this agreement, especially with the rhetoric used to do so, and we will once again and perhaps forever have a very warlike, rigid Iran back. Who wants to return to the days of Ahmadinejad?
6. The deal stops Iran’s paths to a bomb in their tracks for much longer than estimates of how long a military strike would stop it. There are analyses of the military options. They call in general for a substantial, robust, continued US involvement which would set Iran back by only two years by some estimates, five to ten by others. Even leaving all other considerations aside, the deal is much more effective than the military option in preventing Iran’s attainment to nuclear weapons status.
7. The notion that we can negotiate a “better deal” is a pipe dream. What have the opponents been smoking? Does anyone really believe that after spending two years negotiating a long, complex, and detailed agreement which the leaders of all involved say is a good deal, does anyone really believe that the leaders and diplomats of Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany would come back to the table? Even if the US were enthusiastic to do so, which it would not be, they would not join. Why would they? Because they have been accused of being like Chamberlain at Munich?? Because the Republican right wing presidential candidates have told them they were leading Jews back to the camps?? There will be no further negotiations. You know that. If there ever was a “better deal”, which one doubts, there is no better deal now.
8.Any military strike would be difficult, dangerous, costly, risky and would only put the US further back in the eyes of our rivals and friends. Leave the morality aside of an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation who is universally seen as doing everything possible to accommodate the demands of its negotiating partners…leave that aside. The fact is that our last attempt at “shock and awe” didn’t seem to go so well in the long run. Iran is larger, more populous, more mountainous, further away and far more united than Iraq ever was. Let’s imagine some unintended consequences of a military strike – extensive civilian “collateral damage”, downed and captured airmen, lost materiel from expensive and advance planes down (they could probably get a few). Imagine Iran’s response to attack. Thousands of rockets from Lebanon into Israel? Attacks on Americans abroad? American casualties. The issue rising of whether we send “boots on the ground”? And if we do? Is that really a better deal?
9 The sanctions are going to erode anyway. One right wing organization, has recently argued, in their “Ten reasons to oppose the deal”, that European leaders are already more than eager to resume business with Iran. Doesn’t that mean that any imagined tougher sanctions regime is dead before it starts? More importantly doesn’t that mean that the future commercial and cultural relationships, the mutually profitable opportunities which are going to come regardless of whether the US congress allows this deal, whatever benefits there are would then come exclusively to our rivals, even our friendly rivals. If Russia, China, Germany, France and Britain are already preparing the ground for mutually profitable business, is it in our best interests, either commercially or culturally, to be excluded?
10. This is an opportunity to turn a page on a thirty five year epoch of mutual hatred, distrust and enmity with a nation of ninety million people, many of them young, educated and technologically savvy. Isn’t it worth it to try to have an increasing dialogue and common cause with them? The consequences of increasing contact, under the umbrella of this very robust very meticulous plan to prevent, at least for ten to fifteen year any hope of their being a nuclear threat to us and our friends allows us an opportunity to transform so many aspects of the middle eastern quagmire that I will save for another time a discussion of them.
In short, this is a good deal for moral, intellectual, strategic, commercial and military reasons. It’s opponents do not have anywhere near a compelling argument to prevent it, so, if you look carefully at their arguments, most are really arguments in favor of it. And that is good, since it is a very good deal.
Month: August 2015
When you really listen to the opponents of the deal, you might hear the drums of war…
Opponents of the Iranian nuclear arms control agreement frequently insist that they are not looking for war, and that the next appropriate step is to negotiate “a better deal”. When one listens more deeply to some of the rhetoric, however, one can hear the call to war. One admittedly very right wing opponent recently wrote to me, as an alternative to the deal, that, in his words, “A much better solution than the Agreement would be to intensify sanctions and/or to empower and assist Israel in destroying Iran’s nuclear capability”.
Words matter, and the way they are put together matters, so when this critic of the deal says “sanctions and/or…war”, the strict meaning one can read is that war will be a better solution, with or without sanctions. Look at the syntax and see if that isn’t the strict meaning of “and/or war”.
Now it isn’t, perhaps, fair to judge all opposition to the agreement as war-monger, and in fact is wrong to do so. However it can’t be minimized either. In a recent comment on a post intended to dissuade a US senator from continuing her support for the war, one commentator opined, “If Iran wants an atomic bomb, we should be the ones to deliver it to them!”
One can, even at a cursory listen, hear the drum beats of war.
Let’s set aside the moral issue. For the nation which invented weapons to ‘empower and/or assist’ the one nation in the area assumed to possess them in attacking a country who doesn’t have them as an alternative to a negotiation which most participants say will prevent them from achieving them is morally, well, somewhat ironic. At best.
We have plans in place for the possibility of war, if needed. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/IranReport_091112_FINAL.pdf, for one readily available report). This activity would be, according to recent analysis such as this one, a extended, large scale operation, requiring the US military in an extended and comprehensive commitment, and would set back Iranian nuclear activities by 4 years. Other estimates have said that 5-10 years would be possible.
Admitted, these military strategists are just giving the considered estimates that are publicly available. Let us still consider them.
The argument, then, that the agreement would “only set the Iranian program back by 10-15 years”, perhaps twenty, would seem on its surface to be much preferable, if the only agenda is to prevent Iranian access to nuclear weapons.
Two news reports surfaced today. One reports that Iran continues to test fire its own regional rockets. Critics of the deal would perhaps argue that this is more reason we shouldn’t come to agreement. If the agreement prevents development of a nuclear weapon for longer than military action, though, as most estimates say it would, it should seem that Iranian rocket technology is one more reason to support the agreement. Plus, if Iran is showing that they can develop their own rocket capability, then what would be the next step after a destruction of their nuclear facilities? A continued sustained attempt to locate every rocket, every facility capable of building rockets? How long would such an effort take? How many lives? How many hundreds of billions. The last time we tried to prevent the possibility of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in a middle eastern country, it didn’t work out so well, and that was still true even when we had over a hundred thousand troops in Iraq taking double digit casualties every month. Iran is larger, more populous, more mountainous, further away and more united than Iraq ever was. What makes us think we would there fare better?
The second news report in todays (August 22) times was also interest. Businesses in Iran are ramping up to welcome Western capital and sell themselves to western capitol. Would it really make war with the US, or an attack on Israel more likely if there were, eventually, US owned businesses in Iran than it will be if we spontaneously attack them while they are trying to make an agreement with us?
For moral and practical reasons, agreement is preferable to war. And, despite all the rhetoric about a “better deal”, if you listen to many of the opponents to the deal, albeit still the more right wing and less public of them, you can faintly hear the call to war.
Let us not listen to that call. We already have the possibility of a much better “deal”. We just have to approve of it.
You don’t make arms agreements with your friends. You make them with your enemies.
Support for the Iran Nuclear Arms Agreement, the “Deal”, comes from a set of basic principles, or should. Many of these principles have been articulated by known conservatives and hawks, which might surprise some of the opponents of this deal.
The first principle is:
“You don’t make peace with your friends. You make peace with your enemies”.
This was not articulated by some new age liberal, it was said by the famous Israeli General Moshe Dayan.
The same can be said of Arms Deals. Reagan, it might be remembered, was compared with Chamberlain at Munich (sound familiar) when he negotiated extensive reduction in US arms with the Soviet Union in exchange for comparable reductions in theirs. At the time, no one thought Gorbachev was Reagan’s “friend”. He called them an “Evil Empire”.
No one is trying to limit Israel’s centrifuges. That is because they are our friend.
The largest proportion of criticism for the proposed agreement seems to be in the form of “They are evil, they call for ‘Death to America and Israel’, they held our hostages and send money to bad guys!”. All true. Iran is not our friend.
If Iran were our friend, we wouldn’t be trying to get an arms reduction deal.
You don’t make peace, or, for that matter, arms deals with your friends. You make them with your enemies.
All the rhetoric about how evil the Iranian empire is, just like all the rhetoric about how evil the Soviet empire was should just push us more into getting an arms reduction agreement.
We aren’t friends. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make arms control agreements. It is the very reason we should.
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