By John Ford
Killing the deal now won’t bring a better one.
The recently concluded nuclear agreement with Iran is a terrible bargain for the United States. It gives Iran sanctions relief, which means Iran will have a lot more money to spend sowing chaos in the Middle East. The accord reached in Vienna is actually weaker than the preliminary agreement struck in Lausanne earlier this year, which failed to address Iran’s ballistic missile program at all. The deal reached in Vienna actually lifts the existing embargo on selling ballistic missiles. Even worse, the agreement essentially puts the world’s leading powers on record that Iran has the right to enrich uranium to weapons grade after just fifteen years. Taken together, all this means that in all likelihood, in a little over a decade Iran will have the ability not only to build a nuclear bomb but to deliver it against Israel.
Because of the obvious shortcomings of the agreement, many in Congress are demanding that the deal be rejected outright. As bad as the Iran deal is, this would be a mistake. The smarter choice would be to go along with the deal for now but vigorously enforce the oversight provisions under the Corker-Menendez legislation. That way, if Iran cheats on the agreement the sanctions can be put back in place and it will be Iran, not the U.S., that is seen as having wrecked the accord.
The fundamental problem with the notion that Congress ought to reject the Iran deal is U.S. sanctions alone are not enough to force Iran to give ground on its nuclear ambitions. In order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, sustained international sanctions are required. Congress can only vote to keep American sanctions in place. International sanctions are already coming off. The UN Security Council has voted to approve the Iran deal, meaning that UN sanctions are already coming off. The EU has also begun the process of terminating its sanctions on Iran.
An international sanctions coalition is required for sanctions to have enough of an effect on Iran’s economy to force a change in their behavior. American sanctions alone won’t do the job.
Read the full story at The Diplomat