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.
Tag: Iran deal
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.