E11 — Why Scrapping The Iran Deal Is a Bad Idea
Hi everyone and welcome to The Israel Podcast. I’m your host Avishay Ben Sasson Gordis. As I am recording this episode, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump are getting ready for their third official meeting, that will happen on Monday and will reportedly center on Iran, the nuclear deal signed with it in 2015, and on Tehran’s negative activities around the Middle East. Trump has been itching for months to find an excuse to step away from the Iran Deal, and Netanyahu, who’s been silent on the matter for the past two years is again voicing his opposition to the deal and is calling to revise or scrap it. I’ll tell you why I think trying to explode the Iran Deal would be a bad idea, and as I cover this, you’ll also get to know a bit more about what the deal actually says and what is Iran doing in the middle east.
On July 14th 2015 Iran and the 5 permanent members of the UN security council: the US, Russia, China, France, England plus Germany, reached an agreement that would bring Iran to voluntarily roll back its nuclear program for the first time in a decade. When the agreement was signed, Iran was a little over a month away from acquiring enough nuclear material for a nuclear device. The deal set it back to a distance of two years away from having that amount of material, a point at which Iran was last in 2009. It also allowed significantly more access to the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA) to Iran’s nuclear facilities. Finally, it led Iran to dismantle the nuclear reactor it was building that would have been able to produce nuclear weapons grade material. In return, the sanctions placed on Iran by the international community because of its illicit nuclear activities were removed.
But the deal wasn’t without its problems from a western point of view: it effectively acknowledged Iran’s right to enrich uranium, despite having being caught red handed several times in the past in illegal nuclear activity that was probably intended to provide it with the ability to produce nuclear weapons. Iran was not required to accept the blame for its previous attempts at nuclear weapons research. Inspector access to sites Iran claimed were military installments could be stalled by Iran for several weeks, and in 10 years, most of the restrictions imposed by the deal on Iran’s uranium enrichment would be removed. Thanks to Russian insistence, the deal also included the eventual removal of a conventional weapons embargo and ban on missile research. Finally, the deal only dealt with Iran’s nuclear activity and said nothing of its attempts to strategically influence the Middle East and its support of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
At the time, Prime Minister Netanyahu led the charge to have congress torpedo the deal. In what might have been the most daring defiance of Obama in the long and fraught relationship Netanyahu had with him, the Prime Minister accepted an invitation to speak to congress against the President’s policy, without giving the White House advanced notice. But president Obama successfully pushed the deal through Congress nonetheless. Now, the President is required to provide Congress with a certification Iranian compliance with the deal every 90 days. If the President does not provide this certification, Congress has 60 days to reimpose its sanctions on Iran in a very expedited fashion.
In the two years since the deal was achieved, Iran has been keeping to its end of the bargain. Besides two instances in which the amount of heavy-water — material used in some nuclear reactors — on its soil slightly acceded the permissible amount for very short periods of time, the IAEA inspectors have found no evidence of Iranian mischief. Western intelligence agencies too, haven’t reported any Iranian infringements. On the other hand, Iran has continued supporting terrorist organizations and conduct missile testing. These are not prohibited by the deal but are considered by some against its spirit, since the deal was supposed to promote more dialogue with Iran. Consequently, the security establishments in the US as well as in Israel support maintaining the deal.
Under these circumstances one would expect the deal to be safely moving along. But that’s not the case. President Trump, who campaigned on attacking the deal, has already re-certified Iranian compliance twice, in April and July, but in July he made it clear that he hopes to not repeat the process when he is asked to so again on October 15th. He and other senior US officials point to the Deal’s preamble that says participants “anticipate that full implementation of this [deal] will positively contribute to regional and international peace and security” to argue that Iran’s broad support of Hezbollah, the Syrian Assad regime and other terrorist organizations puts them in violation of the spirit of the deal.
And while Israel is not a signatory to the Deal, as one of Iran’s most bitter regional rivals and the recipient of many Iranian threats in annihilation, Jerusalem’s positions on the Iranian issue are usually listened to carefully (even if not adopted). Prime Minister Netanyahu personally has consistently opposed the Iran Deal, and its passage was a personal failure of his. He may have spent the last two years not talking about it much but in recent weeks he went back to calling for a revision or a cancellation of the deal. This is despite, as I’ve said, the almost unanimous positions of the security establishments in both Israel and the US who support re-certification.
Nonetheless, it is likely that President Trump will not re-certify Iran come October. In that case, like in the case of his action on DREAMers, the President will be passing the buck to Congress. He could claim that he allowed Congress to reinstate sanctions and effectively withdraw from the Deal, and if Congress fails it would be their fault. If Congress does deliver, than the US would be truly out of the deal.
This would be, in my opinion, a very bad outcome. To begin with, the deal was preferable to all its alternatives to dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. A military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would have led to a delay of roughly 3 years according to experts, but it would have also led to war and provided Iran with the justification to obtain nuclear weapons. Doing nothing, would have possibly left Iran sanctioned, but too close for comfort to military nuclear capabilities. The Deal gave those who oppose Iran 10 years at least to plan for any attempts by Tehran to breakout for nuclear weapons in the future, and ensured that when the West is dealing with Iran’s negative behavior it doesn’t have to consider the nuclear ramifications of its actions. With the news coming from North Korea, its easy to see the value in this.
If the US pulls out of the deal now, the worst case scenario is that the deal falls apart entirely and Iran goes back to engage in full throttle nuclear activity. It is not clear that the US has a military or diplomatic plan to deal with this case, especially given that the US will be perceived as the aggressor in this chain of events. A less devastating scenario is that the deal won’t collapse — seeing as European powers, as well as China and Russia wish to see it remain in place — but the US will be out of it, diminishing the ability to restrain Iran within the deal. Also, in the long run, US sanctions will probably lead European firms to opt-out of the Iranian market leading to a collapse of the deal and the same negative results of the first scenario. A formal renegotiation of the terms of the deal is highly unlikely since other superpowers are interested and Iran is opposed. In short — an American withdrawal from the Iran Deal is bad for the US, and bad for Israel.
That’s it for this episode. Thank you again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, consider rating the podcast on iTunes and subscribing to it. In the meantime I invite you to continue the conversation on the podcast Facebook page at facebook.com/theisraelpodcast or on soundcloud.com. A full text version of the episode is available on the medium.com page of the podcast. You can also follow me on twitter @avishaybsg and on my personal Facebook page.
