Iran the deal

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IRAN – THE DEAL European Union External Action

Brussels, 14/07/2015 150714_01

STATEMENT Joint statement by EU High Representative Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif Vienna, 14 July 2015 Today is an historic day.

It is a great honour for us to announce that we have reached an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue.

With courage, political will, mutual respect and leadership, we delivered on what the world was hoping for: a shared commitment to peace and to join hands in order to make our world safer. This is an historic day also because we are creating the conditions for building trust and opening a new chapter in our relationship.

This achievement is the result of a collective effort.

No one ever thought it would be easy. Historic decisions never are. But despite all twists and turns of the talks, and the number of extensions, hope and determination enabled us to overcome all the difficult moments. We have always been aware we had a responsibility to our generation and the future ones.

Thanks to the constructive engagement of all parties, and the dedication and ability of our teams, we have successfully concluded negotiations and resolved a dispute that lasted more than 10 years.

Many people brought these difficult negotiations forward during the last decade and we would like to thank all of them - as we would like to thank the International Atomic Energy Agency for its critical contribution and close cooperation as well as the Austrian government for the support and hospitality.

We, the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security policy and the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, together with the Foreign Ministers of the People´s Republic of China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United

2 States of America met here in Vienna, following several months of intensive work, at various levels and in different formats, to negotiate the text of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), based on the key parameters agreed in Lausanne on 2 April.

We have today agreed on the final text of this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action The E3/EU+3 and the Islamic Republic of Iran welcome this historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which will ensure that Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful, and mark a fundamental shift in their approach to this issue. They anticipate that full implementation of this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will positively contribute to regional and international peace and security. Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action includes Iran’s own long-term plan with agreed limitations on Iran’s nuclear program, and will produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme, including steps on access in areas of trade, technology, finance, and energy.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action comprises of a main text, and five technical annexes - on nuclear, sanctions, civil nuclear energy cooperation, a joint commission, and implementation. These documents are detailed and specific: that is important because all sides wanted clarity so as to ensure the full and effective implementation of the agreement.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is a balanced deal that respects the interests of all sides. It is also complex, detailed and technical: we cannot fully summarise the agreement now. But the full main text and all its annexes will be made public still today and will be presented within the next few days by the E3+3 to the Security Council for endorsement.

We know that this agreement will be subject to intense scrutiny. But what we are announcing today is not only a deal but a good deal. And a good deal for all sides – and the wider international community.

This agreement opens new possibilities and a way forward to end a crisis that has lasted for more than 10 years. We are committed to make sure this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is fully implemented, counting also on the contribution of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

We call on the world community to support the implementation of this historic effort.

3 This is the conclusion of our negotiations, but this is not the end of our common work. We will keep doing this important task together. 

Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

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Annex I Nuclear related commitments

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Annex II Sanctions related commitments

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Annex II Attachments

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Annex III Civil nuclear cooperation

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Annex IV - Joint Commission

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Annex V Implementation Plan

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Download the statement in PDF

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Watch the video on EBS

4 BuzzFeed News http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeednews/iran-nuclear-talks#.xmkR8O4xk originally posted 13 Jul 2015 updated to 15 Jul 2015 (BuzzFeed caught the full text from the Russian MFA before they took it back down.)

Obama On Iran Deal In Congress: “Not Betting On The Republican Party Rallying Around This” After more than a year of missed deadlines, a deal has been reached in the discussions over Iran’s nuclear program.

Here’s What’s Happening:

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Iran and six world powers, led by the United States, have agreed to a deal that curbs Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling international sanctions.

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The talks with Tehran have been ongoing for more than a decade. The most recent efforts began after President Hassan Rouhani was elected in 2013.

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Since a temporary agreement was reached in November 2013, deadlines have been repeatedly missed and extended after negotiating countries failed to reach deals in July 2014, November 2014, and again on June 30.

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Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful.

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President Obama hailed the deal and said it was not built on trust, but verification. He said he would veto any legislative efforts to derail it.

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Iran’s President said the deal will “put an end to the inhumane and tyrannical sanctions.”

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The European Union’s Head of Foreign Policy, Federica Mogherini, said Iran’s nuclear agreement with world powers was “not just a deal, but a good deal, and a good deal for all sides.”

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Critics believe the deal leaves too much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in place and overlooks Iran’s destabilizing role in the region.

Here Are The Highlights Of The Iran Nuclear Agreement Iran has agreed to never “seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.”

President Obama said Tuesday that “this deal is not built on trust — it is built on verification.”

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Jessica Simeone

Iran signed a historic 159-page deal with six world powers on Tuesday to not produce or acquire any nuclear weapons. The agreement is both highly technical and politically complex. Here are the highlights: – There will be regular monitoring of the deal’s progress: 

World powers will meet with Iran every two years, or earlier if the situation warrants, to review the progress of how the terms of the agreement are being implemented.

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The International Atomic Energy Agency will monitor the “nuclear-related measures” in the agreement and will provide regular updates to a board of governors.

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Inspectors will have 24-hour access to Iran’s nuclear facilities as well as its entire nuclear supply chain to ensure that Iran doesn’t divert materials to covert locations.

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The IAEA’s access to Iran’s nuclear facilities is permanent. Other transparency measures will remain in place for 25 years.

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The IAEA will also have access to complete its investigation into the possible military aspects of Iran’s nuclear research.

– Sanctions will be removed in phases as the deal is implemented: 

All sanctions will be lifted eight years from either the adoption day or when the IAEA concludes that nuclear materials in Iran are being used for peaceful activities, whichever is sooner.

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There will be no new nuclear-related United Nations Security Council sanctions or European Union nuclear-related sanctions or restrictive measures.

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If Iran violates the deal, all sanctions will be reimplemented.

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The agreement also includes a list of people and organizations that have been taken off the sanctions list, including Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force, as well as the entire Iranian Air Force and Quds Force unit.

– Here are some of the more technical points:

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Iran is to begin phasing out its IR-1 centrifuge within 10 years, during which time, it will keep its enrichment capacity at Natanz facility at a total installed uranium enrichment capacity of 5,060 centrifuges. All excess centrifuges and enrichmentrelated infrastructure at the facility will be stored under IAEA’s continuous monitoring, the deal says.

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Iran will have to remove two-thirds of its installed centrifuges and will not use centrifuges to produce enriched uranium for the next 10 years. Put simply, a centrifuge is a machine that produces enriched uranium, a raw material used in the creation of a nuclear bomb.

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The deal also put a 15-year limitation on the amount of enriched uranium that Iran may have, allowing the country to maintain a total stockpile of no more than 300 kilograms of up to 3.67% enriched uranium. Anything in excess of that amount, the agreement says, would be downgraded to natural level uranium or sold in the international market to buyers who will provide natural grade uranium for Iran.

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Iran’s current stockpile is enough to produce up to 10 nuclear weapons — by reducing the stockpile by 98%, there wouldn’t even be enough left over to produce a single weapon, President Obama said.

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Iran must also modify the core of its reactor in Iraq so that it will no longer produce weapons-grade plutonium. In addition, it has agreed to ship, out of the country, all of the used fuel from the reactor. This will remain in effect for the lifetime of the reactor.

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Under the joint agreement, Iran will modernize the Arak heavy water research reactor, halting any ongoing construction at existing unfinished reactor. The deal says Iran will redesign the facility for purposes of peaceful nuclear research, minimizing production of plutonium and not producing any weapons-grade plutonium.

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Iran will also not build any new heavy water reactors for the next 15 years.

Full agreement available at: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicasimeone/here-are-the-highlights-of-theiran-nuclear-agreement#.xrmq5Rpn6

7 Bloomberg News 13 Jul 2015

Iran, World Powers Have Reached Nuclear Agreement

by Indira Lakshmanan, Jonathan Tirone, Stepan Kravchenko Iran and six world powers sealed a historic accord to curb the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program in return for ending sanctions, capping two years of tough diplomacy with the biggest breakthrough in relations in decades.

Diplomats from the U.S., China, Russia, the U.K., France and Germany reached the deal with their Iranian counterparts in Vienna on Tuesday, their 18th day of talks. President Barack Obama said it blocks “every path to a nuclear weapon” for Iran, while Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called it a “win-win” solution.

Full implementation depends on Iran meeting obligations to curb its nuclear program and address concerns about possible military dimensions of its work. Iran has until Dec. 15 to answer 12-year-old questions about its weapons capabilities. Once inspectors verify compliance, the oil-rich nation will be allowed to ramp up energy exports, re-enter the global financial system and access as much as $150 billion in frozen assets.

“This is probably going to go down in history as one of the biggest diplomatic successes of the century,” Ellie Geranmayeh, a policy fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations, said by phone from London.

Congress has 60 days to review the document in Washington, where it will meet resistance from lawmakers who oppose making any nuclear compromises with Iran.

Israeli Opposition Israel, which has threatened military action to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, said it will use “every means” possible to persuade Congress to reject it, though Obama vowed to veto such a move. The House and Senate would each need a two-thirds majority to override a veto.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the deal as a “historic mistake,” saying in a statement that “sweeping concessions were made in all areas meant to block Iran from the ability to arm itself with nuclear weapons.”

Should the agreement survive review, it would become one of the biggest foreign policy achievements for Obama, who kicked off the initiative with a call to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani almost two years ago. The U.S. cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 1980, after revolutionaries seized the American embassy in Tehran and held hostages for more than a year.

Iran agreed to cut 98 percent of its stockpile of enriched uranium and eliminate twothirds of its centrifuges, according to a copy of the accord obtained by Bloomberg News.

UN Inspections “This is a sign of hope for the entire world,” European Union foreign policy chief Federica

8 Mogherini said in Vienna. “And we all know this is very much needed in these times.”

Relief, including sales of aircraft by companies including Boeing Co., would be phased in after Dec. 15 if Iran complies. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency will negotiate access to all suspect sites, including military bases such as Parchin.

Once UN monitors verify Iran has taken all steps to curb its nuclear activities, the U.S. and the EU will also lift restrictions on most of its financial institutions except those sanctioned for terrorism or human rights abuses. Iranian banks, including the central bank, will be able to process transactions once again through SWIFT, the leading global financial messaging system, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. and the EU will also allow any nation to buy Iranian oil and ease curbs on trading refined products, chemicals and natural gas. Iran holds the the second-largest gas reserves in the world, after Russia.

Obama Warning “If Iran violates the deal, all these sanctions will snap back into place,” Obama said at the White House.

The UN ban on conventional weapons imports and exports by Iran will remain in place for five years, while the UN embargo on ballistic missiles will hold for eight years, according to the draft. The unilateral U.S. arms embargo will stay in place.

Banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barclays Plc say it would take six to 12 months for the holder of the world’s fourth-largest crude reserves to revive production by about 500,000 barrels a day. Sanctions cut the country’s crude exports by more than half from a peak of more than 6 million barrels a day in the 1970s.

With new oil flows expected to hit an oversupplied market, Brent, the global benchmark, fell as much as 2.1 percent to $56.63 a barrel and traded at $57.78 at 1:18 p.m. in London. Iran’s benchmark TEDPIX Index, led by oil and gas companies, advanced 0.3 percent at the close, the highest since April.

Shiite, Sunni The accord will also reverberate across the Middle East, where Shiite Iran’s prominence has been growing amid a regional conflict with Sunni Muslim extremists, alarming Gulf rivals led by Saudi Arabia. Iran is a key backer of embattled governments in Iraq and Syria, and supports rebels who control Yemen’s capital, as well as Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah militia.

In China, Europe and Russia, the agreement will be welcomed by companies eager to access an untapped market of 77 million people. With an economy bigger than Thailand’s and oil reserves rivaling Canada’s, Iran is the most important market still closed to major equity investors, according to investment bank Renaissance Capital.

Ending economic penalties could open Iran’s stock market to investors in early 2016, Renaissance’s Charles Robertson and Daniel Salter wrote in a report on Monday. Inflows could total $1 billion in the first year, they said.

9 Bloomberg News 13 Jul 2015 updated 14 Jul 2015

Iran’s Return From Exile Poses a Challenge for U.S., Allies

by Terry Atlas Iran is back. Its agreement with world powers to curb its nuclear program will ease its isolation as an international pariah and let the oil-rich nation resume participation in global commerce.

That prospect presents new challenges to U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, which pursued the nuclear accord while vowing not to ease pressure on the Islamic Republic as a supporter and bankroller of international terrorism.

The chance that the nuclear deal will become a historical inflection point in Iran’s relations with the U.S. and other nations depends first on whether Iran honors the nuclear agreement and then what choices it makes once it’s able to return to global oil markets and the international financial system after years of isolation, according to U.S. Iran-watchers.

While relief will be phased in over months to come provided that Iran meets its obligations under the accord, it stands to gain access to as much as $150 billion in frozen assets and to be freed from sanctions that reduced its crude exports by more than half. Banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barclays Plc estimated before the deal that it would take six to 12 months for the holder of the world’s fourth-largest crude reserves to revive production by about 500,000 barrels a day after sanctions are lifted.

Obama and others have expressed hope that Iran’s reintegration into the global economy will strengthen its middle class and young people and ultimately temper their government’s support for terrorism and subversion.

Helping Rouhani “I don’t think the deal itself will lead to a fundamental transformation of Iran itself, but I think it could be a first step,” said Alireza Nader, a senior international analyst at the Rand Corp.

The deal is likely to provide a major political boost to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, and will help set in motion economic changes that could lead to eventual political reforms, Nader said.

Others say the billions of dollars flowing in over time will only underwrite the ambitions of Iranian’s hard-liners to be the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and the wider Middle East.

“We must all bear in mind that Iran is not a status quo power,” James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month. He said Iran is determined to assert its influence in the region and won’t play by the rules.

‘Flush With Cash’ Republican Senator Bob Corker said in a statement Tuesday that “Iran continues to be the lead sponsor of terrorism in the world.”

10 “Relieving sanctions would make the Tehran regime flush with cash and could create a more dangerous threat to the United States and its allies,” said Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations panel, who will be a leader in congressional review of the accord.

The nuclear talks have rattled America’s allies in Israel and the Persian Gulf, in part because there’s no longer a Sunni Arab counterweight to a reinvigorated Shiite Persian Iran. Egypt is consumed by internal problems; Saudi Arabia has been unable to quell an uprising in neighboring Yemen; and Iraq is struggling to combat Islamic State with support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Doubters such as Israel and Saudi Arabia view Iran as a hegemonic power and have been adamant in opposing a deal that would lift sanctions. In the U.S., some lawmakers have expressed skepticism or preemptive opposition to the deal, which must be reviewed

by Congress before Obama can take action to ease U.S. sanctions against Iran.

‘Axis of Evil’ The nuclear accord presents a rare moment of U.S.-Iranian convergence after more than three decades of hostility since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that was followed by the holding of American hostages in the U.S. embassy in Tehran. President George W. Bush put Iran on his “Axis of Evil” in 2001, as an instigator of regional instability and a supporter of terrorism.

In Iran, hard-line elements in the leadership show little sign of softening their hostility, as they continue to promote the revolution-era chant of “Death to America.”

The accord between Iran and six world powers -- China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. -- requires Iran to curtail its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of international sanctions. The accord also will permit Iran to increase its oil exports and open the way for foreign companies to invest in Iran.

Broader Engagement The nuclear negotiations potentially set the stage for broader diplomatic engagement on the conflicts roiling the region, such as the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, said Gary Sick, who was the principal National Security Council expert on Iran when American embassy personnel were taken hostage during the 1979 revolution.

The U.S. and Shiite Iran share a common foe in the radical Sunni Islamic State, but the U.S. blames Iran for sustaining the civil war in Syria by supporting President Bashar alAssad, its key ally in funneling arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the U.S., European Union and Israel consider a terrorist organization.

Continuing to Talk The U.S. has been conducting nuclear negotiations with Iran for almost two years, “and there’s no reason in the world to believe that after an agreement that ability to talk to each other is going to stop,” said Sick, who’s now an adjunct professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University in New York.

Obama is unwinding a long-standing policy of trying to isolate and contain Iran, which represents a “major shift” by the U.S., Sick said in an interview.

“It represents what I would regard as just realism -- that Iran is too big, it’s too important, it has too much oil, it has too much gas, it has too many people, too much

11 culture to simply be sidelined forever,” he said in an interview. “Basically we did that for 20 years or so. It wasn’t working; Iran was actually becoming more important.”

Camp David Facing the alarm over the nuclear negotiations among the Gulf Arab nations that see Iran as a sectarian as well as political challenge, Obama met with Gulf leaders at Camp David in May to reassure them and promise accelerated delivery of new weapons for defense.

“But they fear far less an outright Iranian invasion than Iranian infiltration of the weak areas in the Arab world, promoting instability and stresses on the Sunni nation states of the region in a religious, political, and psychological sense,” said Jeffrey, the former ambassador who’s a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Pronouncements from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as by hard-liners, have raised concerns about Iran’s post-deal intentions, particularly how Iran will use the financial windfall from the lifting of sanctions. Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, the Iranian ground forces commander, declared this month that the deal doesn’t mean any rapprochement with the U.S. “enemy,” according to Iran’s Fars news agency.

Conventional Arms Any Iranian moves toward producing nuclear weapons has been seen as a strategic game-changer, which would probably draw preemptive U.S. or Israeli strikes on key nuclear facilities.

One consequence of the deal limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities, though, may be a conventional arms race in a region already in turmoil, said William Hartung, an analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington who follows arms sales.

“The public position of the Gulf states has been that they don’t trust that a deal with Iran will adequately slow and/or prevent their pursuit of a nuclear bomb,” he said. “But in fact they are at least as concerned with the impact of a lifting of sanctions on Iran’s ability to upgrade its conventional forces and wield greater economic clout in the region.”

The accord reached in Vienna calls for lifting a United Nations embargo on conventional arms sales to and from Iran after five years, and a bar on ballistic missile sales would end after eight years.

‘Sanctions-Relief Jackpot’ Debate in Congress also may focus on whether Iran will use the billions of dollars in sanctions relief to expand a series of proxy wars against its Sunni neighbors for regional influence, as well as boosting support for groups such as Hezbollah.

Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Obama administration is misreading the Iranian leadership. Administration officials have “talked themselves into the delusion that the regime in Tehran will use a sanctions-relief jackpot to help its people,” the California Republican said in a statement July 4.

In addition to the return of frozen assets abroad, Iran’s oil revenue may increase by as much as $24 billion annually, Martin Indyk, executive vice president of the Brookings Institution, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month.

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“It is reasonable to assume that a good part of that windfall will be used to rehabilitate Iran’s struggling economy and fulfill the expectations of Iran’s people for a better life,” said Indyk, who was the architect of the “dual containment” strategy against Iran and Iraq when he was a National Security Council staff member in President Bill Clinton’s administration. “But it is an equally safe bet that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Ministry of Intelligence and the Iranian Armed Forces will be beneficiaries, too.”

Russian Missiles Iran already has discussed with Russia moving ahead with the purchase of its sophisticated S-300 surface-to-air missile system. It signed an $800 million deal for the S-300s in 2007, but Russia held off delivery after the U.S. and Israel objected that Tehran could use them to protect its nuclear facilities.

Still, most of the financial benefits of the nuclear deal will be “internally consumed on a wide array of projects, whether it’s infrastructure development, investments for the energy sector, health care, education, subsidies,” said Nader. “A significant amount will go to the elite,” including powerful religious foundations and groups such as the Revolutionary Guard that hold vast business interests.

Paul Pillar, a former top U.S. intelligence official for the Mideast, said he doubts the lifting of sanctions will make much difference in how much Iran funds its proxies, such as Hezbollah or commits to conflicts in Syria and Yemen. These decisions are politically driven, and there’s no evidence that the sanctions squeeze has curtailed Iran’s actions, he said.

‘Not Bookkeepers’ “The Iranians are not bookkeepers who add up how many rials they have in their bank account and that determines what they’ll do elsewhere in the region,” said Pillar, a 28year veteran of the intelligence community. “No, it’s other interests. They have the relationship with the Syrian regime, for example, for reasons that have nothing to do with how many rials they have in their bank account.”

While there may be some gestures to mollify hard-liners, the principal political effect in Tehran of concluding and implementing this agreement “will definitely be a boost to Rouhani and the more pragmatic and moderate elements in the regime” who have promised to repair the economy, said Pillar, who’s on the faculty of the security studies program at Georgetown University. “Rouhani has invested a great deal politically in the success of this negotiation and in the prospect of some economic improvement.”

13 The Christian Science Monitor 14 Jul 2015

Historic nuclear deal reached in Vienna: What does it mean for Iran?

Negotiators hail nuclear deal, reached after more than three years of talks, as a 'win-win.' For Iran, the deal to curb its nuclear program and greatly open it up to international scrutiny should pave a path to economic revival, analysts say.

By Scott Peterson, Staff writer Tehran, Iran Iran and six world powers led by the United States have reached a historic agreement, a victory of diplomacy over war that verifiably limits Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

Hailed by negotiators as striking a “win-win” balance, amid significant compromises by both sides, the complex and detailed agreement – running to 159 pages, with annexes – caps a 13-year dispute over Iran’s nuclear program that resulted in more than three years of talks, including the last 20 months of intensive negotiations in Switzerland and Austria.

The final – sometimes angry and emotional – 18-day push in the Austrian capital, Vienna, blew through four self-imposed deadlines before a deal was reached early Tuesday.

American officials say the agreement effectively cuts off four possible pathways to a nuclear weapon for more than a decade by strictly limiting Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity, stockpiles of nuclear material, and use of facilities, and by adding far more intrusive inspections.

Iranian officials say the deal will prove that Iran has no desire for nuclear weapons, and that it can pave the way for cooperation on other issues afflicting the Middle East.

“Today could have been the end of hope on this issue, but now we are starting a new chapter of hope, and let’s build on that,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. He said the deal was “not perfect for anybody,” but could “open new horizons for dealing with [other] serious problems.”

The deal is a “new chapter” and shows that diplomacy can “overcome decades of tensions and confrontations,” said Federica Mogherini, the European foreign policy chief who has led the talks on behalf of the so-called P5+1 group – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the US, Russia, China, Britain, and France) and Germany.

"With courage, political will and mutual respect, we delivered what the world was hoping for," said Ms. Mogherini. "A shared commitment to peace, and to join hands in order to make our world safer."

Which direction for Iran?

The deal, which follows a diplomatic process often overshadowed by the risk of war, is bound to have a profound effect on Iran, and raises the question of how the Islamic Republic’s regional role might change, if at all.

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Will the Islamic Republic be empowered by a $100 billion post-sanctions windfall, as some of its rivals have warned, to exert more influence in the region via proxy armed forces that threaten Israel, Saudi Arabia, or other US allies?

Or will Iran – which faces regional challenges such as the Islamic State (IS) jihadists, sectarian strife, and the conflicts engulfing Syria, Iraq, and Yemen – look for areas of overlapping interests with the US and focus instead on its crippled economy?

The short answer, say analysts who know Iran, is the pocketbook: Tehran’s top priority will be resuscitating the economy as sanctions ease to improve the daily lives of 80 million Iranians and ensure stability at home. That issue helped elect President Hassan Rouhani in 2013.

“The mood is really for renewal rather than expansion, and to revive the economy and to keep the country going,” says Shahram Chubin, an Iran analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Geneva.

“I don’t think [the nuclear deal] will empower them to think that now they can run riot in the region at all,” he says. “After all the neglect that happened these last few years, they really have a lot of catching up to do, for the quality of life for their own people.”

For decades, Iran has opposed the US-dominated regional order and challenged Israel and US allies in the Gulf like Saudi Arabia, notes Mr. Chubin.

“Now … the ‘regional order’ has collapsed; nobody’s in charge of it,” and in some places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the interests of Iran and America overlap for the first time, he says. The result is the nuclear deal isn’t the end, rather “it’s the beginning of a process.”

Indeed, both President Barack Obama and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have hinted that a successful nuclear deal could be the basis of future negotiations.

Moreover, resolving the once-intractable nuclear issue is an example of what may be possible, say Iran analysts, with other hard-to-crack problems like Syria, where Iran’s policies and interventions are diametrically opposed to Western ones.

So what are the key factors likely to shape Iran’s post-deal actions, at home and abroad?

Domestic expectations in Iran Despite warnings from some US and Israeli politicians that Iran would use the freed-up revenues from the deal to spread “regional mischief,” the talk inside Iran focuses on easing economic pain.

“Those who say sanctions are not important don’t know what is happening in people’s pockets,” Mr. Rouhani said at a provincial rally in late June. He promised that with the deal “we will enrich both uranium and the economy.”

Since Iran’s oil industry – the country’s main source of foreign currency – is still stateowned and revenue flows through the central bank, the Rouhani administration “will get first dibs, and they have [domestic] priorities right now,” says Kevan Harris, of the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University.

Iranians have been stung by soaring inflation in recent years, raising the cost of everything from tomatoes to medicine. So Iranian politicians have been talking up the

15 economic benefit of sanctions removal, from foreign investments to more employment.

In April, lawmaker Ahmad Tavakkoli said Iran’s human resources, diverse climate, and geopolitical situation “have not been effectively used,” and that “concentrating on foreign issues would waste such opportunities and keep us away from reality.”

Estimates of Iran’s spending needs are vast, according to data compiled by Bijan Khajehpour, head of the Vienna-based arm of the Iran analytical firm, Atieh International. Rouhani’s top priority is the “empowerment of domestic industry,” including for export, and creating more value in the energy sector – all of which make jobs, he said in a presentation June 29.

But the initial pricetag will be $122 billion, with the banking sector alone requiring $25 billion to partly settle the previous government’s debts, estimates Mr. Khajehpour.

Construction contracts, with their multiplier effects on jobs and the economy, will require a minimum of $30 billion, and the petroleum industry will need an interim $40 billion – just over half of the $70 billion necessary to bring oil production levels back to 2012 levels. Another $7 billion will be required for infrastructure projects from the Internet to telecoms.

Lifting sanctions will “be surely felt in people’s lives long-term,” said MP Abouzar Nadimi, deputy chair of parliament’s Economic Commission, in April. The nuclear deal will lead industry “to fulfill its full capacity."

Regional aspirations: Hegemony?

The nuclear deal was achieved even as the Middle East lurches into its most volatile period in decades.

While some Iranian officials hold fast to the rhetoric of “resistance” against US and Israeli influence – claiming that the ideals of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution are spreading – others recognize that Iran and the US are on the same side when it comes to fighting Sunni militants.

But will this deal enable a more antagonistic Iranian posture? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who tried to block it – said in March that Iran was “gobbling up four countries right now,” and would control more if sanctions were lifted.

And Martin Indyk, a former senior US official now at the Brookings Institution, testified to the Senate in early June that a new regional security network must “contain and rollback Iran’s nefarious hegemonic ambitions.”

But as painful as they have been for Iran’s economy, the sanctions have hardly been a deterrent to its military endeavors: Iran has still rearmed Lebanese Hezbollah with tens of thousands of rockets for any future battle with Israel; spent billions of dollars a year backing Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in a war that has taken more than 220,000 lives; and resurrected Shiite militias in Iraq to fight IS – ironically in concert with US airstrikes.

“I don’t think the release of funds, which after all is going to be very gradual, is going to change the pace or intensity of any of [Iran’s] significant involvements,” says Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Iran now at the Chatham House think tank in London.

“It’s all very opaque, so we don’t know whether there’s updating of a Hezbollah capability, or they have a wish list from Assad that they’ve been gagging to respond to and haven’t been able to,” he says. “There could be. But ... these will be incremental.”

16 From Beirut to Kabul, Iran’s model now is defensive, says Carnegie’s Chubin. Syria, especially, has been costly in cash and dead Iranian generals, and also has tarnished Hezbollah. “Iran is not madcap about doing more,” he says.

Seeking to engage Iran The narrative that Iran will “plow its hard-won sanctions relief into regional adventurism … is powerful, compelling, and frightening. It is also not true,” wrote Richard Nephew, a former director for Iran at the US National Security Council and former member of the US nuclear negotiating team, in a mid-June column for Reuters.

Such analysis defies history, he argued, because when Iran had $100 billion in restricted oil funds just over two years ago, it “was not plowing it all into Assad, the Houthis [in Yemen] or troublemaking along the Gulf.” When Iran was making $88 billion a year from high oil prices in 2012, he wrote, “no one alleges that all of that money was going to terrorists.”

With the nuclear deal done, the European Council on Foreign Relations is proposing engagement with Iran. In a report this week, the London-based think tank calls for “high-level and high-intensity” talks similar to the nuclear negotiations, to focus on “deescalation and conflict resolution.”

Princeton’s Mr. Harris argues for just such an approach.

“The places where Iran has influence tend to be the places where the region has collapsed,” he says. “If one truly believes that Iran is on the march, then the best way to block it is to come up with a regionally-agreed-upon pathway to a more stable Middle East.”

Abiding US-Iran distrust Despite the nuclear deal triumph and unprecedented face time between top diplomats, US-Iran détente is not around the corner.

The US last month declared that “Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished” in 2014. And in Iran, hardliners still chant “Death to America,” even in parliament.

Throughout the nuclear talks, Khamenei often described his mistrust of the US, and listed the reasons why. If before the deal that level of suspicion scored 100, now Khamenei’s “inherent distrust of the US is going to stay at 85 or 90,” says Dalton of Chatham House.

He expects ad hoc US-Iran consultations on overlapping interests “to move things forward incrementally,” but no pro-Iran tilt in Washington that disadvantages either Israel or America’s Gulf allies. At least both the US and Iran now can “pick up the phone and know who to talk to.”

“Diplomatic communication is going to be more effective,” says Dalton. “But whether [it] will be more influential? That is a completely different question.”

17 LobeLog/foreign policy 14 Jul 2015

The Iran Nuclear Agreement: The Choice

By Paul Pillar Completion of the agreement to restrict the Iranian nuclear program puts into sharp relief the choice for anyone who weighs in on the topic and especially for the U.S. Congress, which will have an opportunity to accept or reject the deal. Gone is any meaningful kibitzing on how well the negotiators are doing their jobs. Gone are endless speculative permutations of how different issues might be resolved. Gone is conjecturing about how the outline that was the framework agreement announced in April will be fleshed out with detailed terms. The question has been stripped down to a simple and easy-to-understand form: it is a choice between the agreement that has just been announced, and no agreement at all about the Iranian nuclear program.

We can finally get beyond the sterile rhetoric about good deals and bad deals and the vacuous cliché that no deal is better than a bad deal. Comparison between this agreement and no agreement is what determines whether the agreement is bad or good.

A good deal is one that is better than no deal; a bad deal is one that is worse.

It has always been a fantasy that a “better deal” than what emerges from these negotiations would somehow be possible. The long, arduous, deadline-extending nature of the negotiations that ended in Vienna makes the notion that something “better” could have been wrung out of the Iranians seem all the more phantasmagorical. Awareness that five other countries besides the United States and Iran are parties to this agreement, and that some of the most recent hard negotiations have taken place within the P5+1, ought further to dispel this notion.

The alternative to the agreement—i.e., no agreement—would mean no restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program beyond the basic obligations that apply to Iran as a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It would mean that Iran could spin as many centrifuges as it wanted. It would mean Iran would be free to enrich as much uranium as it wanted, to whatever level of enrichment it wanted. It would mean Iran could configure nuclear reactors however it wanted no matter how much plutonium this produced. It would mean an end to unprecedented levels of international monitoring and inspection. It would mean discarding the most restrictive regimen that any state had ever negotiated to be placed on its own nuclear program.

It is remarkable how, on the very issues on which many opponents of any agreement with Iran claim to be focusing, matters would be much worse if they achieved their goal of killing the agreement. If a supposed problem is, for example, that Iran is being permitted to have too much enrichment infrastructure, it would be worse under the alternative of no agreement, in which Iran could expand that infrastructure without limit.

Or if it is a problem that certain restrictions would be binding for only ten years or so, it would be worse under the no-agreement alternative, in which there would be zero years of restrictions. And so forth.

As the inevitable obfuscation about this agreement ensues over the coming weeks, the public and the Congress need to be reminded of exactly what the choice is, and of how simple and clear that choice is notwithstanding the obfuscation.

18 And those who argue or vote against the agreement should be held to account for what they in effect are arguing or voting for. They should be made to explain to the rest of the country why, whatever may be the true reasons for their opposition, they are supporting a step that would not only kill the best chance for ensuring the Iranian nuclear program remains peaceful but also would remove the special restrictions and scrutiny to which that program is subject now. They should be made to explain why, after their endless alarms about Iran’s nuclear activity, they are supporting a step that would unleash that activity.

19 International Crisis Group 14 Jul 2015

The Triumph of Nuclear Diplomacy Vienna/Brussels The International Crisis Group welcomes the 14 July agreement between Iran and the P5+1/E3+3 (five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany). The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) provides for a peaceful Iranian nuclear program, in accordance with its rights and obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and rolls back sanctions. The accord promises a balanced, diplomatic resolution to one of the world’s most complex security challenges.

Preserving the momentum that enabled the deal will be essential for implementing it.

Each side must fulfil its commitments under the accord while refraining from any provocation, particularly strident declarations of victory, which could lead its counterparts to repudiate their own.

Attention now moves from the multilateral to the domestic stage, where any attempt to renegotiate the accord will torpedo it. Thirteen years of nuclear tensions and intermittent talks to resolve them have made clear that no better agreement is possible; the only alternative to endorsing this one is renewed crisis and, potentially, an escalation that could spiral out of control. Accordingly, we urge the U.S. Congress and Iranian Majlis to promptly review and approve this accord and the UN Security Council to endorse it.

Like all arms control agreements, the JCPOA addresses a narrow but perilous threat. It will not solve the region’s many other problems, neither the proxy wars pitting Iran against its neighbours nor the hostility that still embitters Tehran’s relations with the West. Indeed, in the short term at least, it is likely to reinforce the sense in regional capitals that Iran’s star is ascending, which could exacerbate the clashes along regional fault lines. Thus the achievement of this agreement, laudable in itself, is incomplete unless it prompts an effort by all the key stakeholders to secure a broader reduction in regional tensions with the goal of establishing an inclusive regional security framework.

Overcoming decades of animosity, both within the region and between Iran and the West, likely will prove even more challenging than reaching today’s accord. But as the past two years of arduous talks have shown, even seemingly intractable predicaments can be addressed through persistent and patient diplomacy.

20 Reuters 14 Jul 2015

Iran deal reached, Obama hails step towards 'more hopeful world'

BY PARISA HAFEZI, LOUIS CHARBONNEAU, JOHN IRISH AND ARSHAD MOHAMMED Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear deal on Tuesday, capping more than a decade of negotiations with an agreement that could transform the Middle East.

U.S. President Barack Obama hailed a step towards a "more hopeful world" and Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said it proved that "constructive engagement works". But Israelpledged to do what it could to halt what it called an "historic surrender".

The agreement will now be debated in the U.S. Congress, but Obama said he would veto any measure to block it.

"This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction," Obama said. "We should seize it."

Under the deal, sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and United Nations will be lifted in return for Iran agreeing long-term curbs on a nuclear program that the West has suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb.

Iran will mothball for at least a decade the majority of its centrifuges used to enrich uranium and sharply reduce its low-enriched uranium stockpile.

The agreement is a political triumph for both Obama, who has long promised to reach out to historic enemies, and Rouhani, a pragmatist elected two years ago on a vow to reduce the isolation of his nation of 80 million people.

Both face scepticism from powerful hardliners at home in nations that referred to each other as "the Great Satan" and a member of the "Axis of Evil".

"Today is the end to acts of tyranny against our nation and the start of cooperation with the world," Rouhani said in a televised address. "This is a reciprocal deal. If they stick to it, we will. The Iranian nation has always observed its promises and treaties."

Delighted Iranians danced in the streets of Tehran, whole motorists sounded car horns and flashed victory signs in celebration after the announcement a deal they hope will end years of sanctions and isolation.

For Obama, the diplomacy with Iran, begun in secret more than two years ago, ranks alongside his normalization of ties with Cuba as landmarks in a legacy of reconciliation with foes that tormented his predecessors for decades.

"History shows that America must lead not just with our might but with our principles," he said in a televised address. "Today's announcement marks one more chapter in our pursuit of a safer, more helpful and more hopeful world."

REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION Republicans lined up to denounce the deal. Presidential candidate Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, called it a terrible deal that would make matters worse.

21 Senator Marco Rubio suggested he would re-introduce sanctions if elected to the White House next year.

The Republican-controlled Congress has 60 days to review the accord, but if it votes to reject it Obama can use his veto, which can be overridden only by two-thirds of lawmakers in both houses. That means dozens of Obama's fellow Democrats would have to rebel against one of their president's signature achievements to kill it, an unlikely prospect. Leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called the deal "an important step that puts the lid on Iran's nuclear programs".

The Senate was not expected to vote on the deal before September.

While the main negotiations were between the United States and Iran, the four other U.N. Security Council permanent members, Britain, China, France and Russia, are also parties to the deal, as is Germany.

Enmity between Iran and the United States has loomed over the Middle East for decades.

Iran is the predominant Shi'ite Muslim power, hostile both to Israel and to Washington's Sunni Muslim-ruled Arab friends, particularly Saudi Arabia. Allies of Riyadh and Tehran have fought decades of sectarian proxy wars in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

But there are also strong reasons for Washington and Tehran to cooperate against common foes, above all Islamic State, the Sunni Muslim militant group that has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq. Washington has been bombing Islamic State from the air while Tehran aids Iraqi militias fighting it on the ground.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters that the deal was about more than just the nuclear issue: "The big prize here is that, as Iran comes out of the isolation of the last decades and is much more engaged with Western countries, Iranians hopefully begin to travel in larger numbers again, Western companies are able to invest and trade with Iran, there is an opportunity for an opening now."

"HISTORIC MISTAKE" Still, Washington's friends in the region were furious, especially Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has cultivated a close relationship with Obama's Republican opponents in Congress.

"Iran will get a jackpot, a cash bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars, which will enable it to continue to pursue its aggression and terror in the region and in the world," he said. "Iran is going to receive a sure path to nuclear weapons."

His deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, denounced an "historic surrender" and saidIsrael would "act with all means to try and stop the agreement being ratified", a clear threat to use its influence to try and block it in Congress.

In phone call with Netanyahu, Obama underscored the United States' commitment to Israel's security, the White House said.

Some diplomats in Vienna said the strong Israeli response could actually help, by making it easier for Rouhani to sell the agreement back in Iran.

The National Council of Resistance, the exile Iranian opposition group that first exposed Iran's secret nuclear program, said the deal "would neither block the mullahs' pathways

22 to deception nor their access to a nuclear bomb".

While Saudi Arabia did not denounce the deal publicly as Israel did, its officials expressed doubt in private.

"We have learned as Iran's neighbors in the last 40 years that goodwill only led us to harvest sour grapes," a Saudi official who asked to remain anonymous told Reuters.

Nor were hardliners silent in Iran: “Celebrating too early can send a bad signal to the enemy,� conservative lawmaker Alireza Zakani said in parliament, according to Fars News agency. Iran's National Security Council would review the accord, "and if they think it is against our national interests, we will not have a deal".

It will probably be months before Iran receives the benefits from the lifting of sanctions because of the need to verify the deal's fulfillment. Once implementation is confirmed, Tehran will immediately gain access to around $100 billion in frozen assets, and can step up oil exports that have been slashed by almost two-thirds.

The deal finally emerged after nearly three weeks of intense negotiation between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif unthinkable for decades, since Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

Hatred of the United States is still a central tenet of Iran's ruling system, on display only last week at an annual protest day, with crowds chanted "Death to Israel!" and "Death to America!".

But Iranians voted overwhelmingly for Rouhani in 2013 on a clear promise to revive their crippled economy by ending Iran's isolation. Hardline Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not block the negotiations.

"NEW CHAPTER OF HOPE" "Today could have been the end of hope on this issue, but now we are starting a new chapter of hope," Zarif, who studied in the United States and developed a warm rapport with Kerry, told a news conference.

Kerry said: "This is the good deal we have sought."

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said: "I think this is a sign of hope for the entire world."

Tehran has long denied seeking a nuclear weapon and has insisted on the right to nuclear technology for peaceful means. Obama never ruled out military force if negotiations failed, and said on Tuesday that future presidents would still have that option if Iran quit the agreement.

France said the deal would ensure Iran's "breakout time" - the time it would need to build a bomb if it decided to break off the deal - would be one year for the next decade.

This has been a main goal of Western negotiators, who wanted to ensure that if a deal collapsed there would be enough time to act.

Obama said Iran had accepted a "snapback" mechanism, under which sanctions would be reinstated if it violated the deal. A U.N. weapons embargo is to remain in place for five years and a ban on buying missile technology will remain for eight years.

23 Alongside the main deal, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced an agreement with Iran to resolve its own outstanding issues by the end of this year. The main deal depends on the IAEA being able to inspect Iranian nuclear sites and on Iran answering its questions about possible military aims of previous research.

For Iran, the end of sanctions could bring a rapid economic boom by lifting restrictions that have shrunk its economy by about 20 percent, according to U.S. estimates. The prospect of a deal has already helped push down global oil prices because of the possibility that Iranian supply could return to the market.

24 The Los Angeles Times 14 Jul 2015

Iran deal could prevent a nuclear-armed foe, but it comes with risks

By Paul Richter The U.S. and five other world powers sealed a sweeping accord with Iran on Tuesday to curb Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for easing of oil and economic sanctions, setting the stage for a bitter fight in Congress and a potential transformation of the Middle East.

At the heart of the historic deal lies a harsh trade-off: If it succeeds, Iran will be blocked from building a nuclear bomb for more than a decade, easing a major security threat to the U.S. and its allies, but Iran’s economic and conventional military clout will almost certainly grow in a turbulent region.

The 109-page agreement is designed to strictly limit Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, prevent any production of weapons-grade plutonium and give United Nations nuclear inspectors broad powers to detect any secret nuclear activities.

The accord is one of the most consequential and controversial diplomatic achievements in decades. It brings to a close nearly two years of negotiations, capped by a 17-day marathon of intense and sometimes acrimonious bargaining that lasted into Monday night.

Critics in Congress and virtually all Republican presidential hopefuls warned that the deal will serve to empower Iran, not defang it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, long an opponent of the diplomacy, called the agreement “an historic mistake for posterity.”

If Iran meets its commitments, it will gain access to about $100 billion in frozen assets, perhaps as soon as January. Although it says it will use the money for domestic infrastructure, America’s allies in the Middle East and some U.S. experts fear Tehran will boost support for its proxies and allies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere.

Over time, Iran also will be free to import and export conventional arms and ballistic missiles, and see several notorious Iranian officials, including the head of the elite Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard, removed from a United Nations blacklist.

President Obama, who has made a nuclear deal a priority for his administration, said the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran is too great and must take precedence over other concerns.

He said strict monitoring will ensure that “every pathway to a nuclear weapon” is cut off.

“This deal is not built on trust,” Obama said in the East Room at the White House. “It is built on verification.”

Obama vowed to veto any legislation in Congress that could scuttle the accord, saying it “would be irresponsible to walk away from this deal.”

The alternative, he warned, means “a greater chance of more war in the Middle East.”

25 That’s precisely the danger his critics say the Islamic Republic will present if the deal goes forward. They fear that Iran, once it is free of sanctions and other restrictions, will emerge stronger than ever and will resume its quest for nuclear weapons.

Obama later spoke by phone with Netanyahu and King Salman of Saudi Arabia, as well as President Francois Hollande of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and other key leaders.

In Tehran, where Obama’s remarks were televised live before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced the deal, people poured into the streets, waving flags, chanting “Freedom!” and honking horns to celebrate.

Gathering after the beginning of Iftar, the daily breaking of the Ramadan fast, many people said they hoped for an end to Iran’s years of isolation and the sanctions that have caused widespread hardship.

“It’s another revolution! Be happy!” a group of girls shouted, music blaring from their car.

The final talks proved more difficult than expected as officials from Iran and the sixnation diplomatic bloc — the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — wrangled over the U.N. Security Council resolution that will set out a blueprint for the new agreement, including easing of sanctions.

The Security Council is expected to approve that resolution within weeks.

The last-minute haggling dealt with Iran’s demand — backed by Russia — for the end to U.N. embargoes on its trade in ballistic missiles and conventional arms. Under the agreement, the arms embargo will be lifted in five years, and the missile embargo in eight.

Both embargoes could be eliminated early if the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, determines Iran’s nuclear program is entirely peaceful and in compliance with international rules. But such determinations take time.

The final accord was built on concessions by both sides. The Obama administration dropped its opposition to Iran’s production of any enriched uranium, abandoned demands that Iran roll back its missile program and stopped calling for complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Iran, in turn, gave ground by agreeing to give the IAEA wide access to nuclear sites and scientists. It also acceded to restrictions that will last years longer than it was originally willing to accept, and settled for a smaller inventory of uranium-enriching centrifuges than it had demanded.

The restrictions and inspections are designed to lengthen the so-called breakout period, the time Iran would need to build a nuclear bomb if its leaders decided to do so.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe Iran’s current breakout time is two to three months.

The deal would extend that to at least a year, which Obama says is enough time for the U.S. to respond — militarily, if necessary.

During the final talks, the U.S. and its allies won significant battles over how to resolve

26 disputes over inspectors’ access to nuclear facilities and the ability to “snap back” sanctions if Iran tries to cheat.

Those trade-offs won support from some nonproliferation experts who had remained undecided or skeptical until now.

Robert Einhorn, a former top administration advisor on Iran, who had been uncommitted on the deal, said the agreement will reduce Iran’s key nuclear infrastructure and allow unprecedented monitoring of nuclear activities.

“Taken as a whole, the deal will achieve the administration’s stated objective of preventing a nuclear-armed Iran for a 10-to-15-year period,” said Einhorn, now with the Brookings Institution.

The deal will shrink the number of centrifuges Iran has installed by two-thirds, require it to give up 98% of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, and halt production of mediumenriched uranium, which can be turned into bomb fuel.

Iran also pledged not to undertake activities associated with nuclear weapons development, such as computer modeling of nuclear explosions and experiments with certain sophisticated detonators.

The U.S. and its allies in the talks gained ground in a tough struggle over U.N. inspectors’ access to Iran’s military sites.

The agreement sets up a system under which the IAEA can turn to a joint commission to adjudicate disputes if Iran refuses to allow inspectors in.

That commission will have eight members, representing Iran, the six powers and the European Union. A simple majority will rule on access questions so that the U.S. and European allies will be in a strong position to prevent Russia, China and Iran from blocking inspections.

Disputes over access must be decided within 24 days under the agreement. U.S. officials say that doesn’t give Iran enough time to hide major infractions, such as attempts to build a uranium enrichment plant.

The sanctions will not be eased until Iran has complied with its obligations under the agreement. The Iranians had demanded sanctions relief at the outset.

Another key battle involved how to put sanctions back into place if Iran is caught in clear violation of its commitments.

The Security Council resolution that will lay out the deal will suspend, but not terminate, U.N. sanctions once Iran comes into compliance with the terms of the deal.

If a Security Council member believes Iran has violated the agreement, it can force a vote within 65 days on whether to continue the suspension. The U.S. or another Security Council member could veto that vote, however, and reinstate the sanctions.

That is “an effective snap-back mechanism that the Russians and Chinese can’t block,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration official now with the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington.

27

The group also worked out a compromise on the sensitive issue of Iran’s suspected research on nuclear weapons.

Iran has not wanted to confess to previous violations of nuclear agreements. Under the deal, it will have to perform a list of specified tasks to give the IAEA more information about its efforts.

The sanctions won’t be lifted until the IAEA certifies that Iran has fulfilled its requirements. The specified tasks are limited, however, and won’t require Iran to fully come clean on its past activities, diplomats acknowledge.

Once the IAEA has verified that Iran has met its obligations, the United States and European Union will quickly suspend sanctions that have cut 1 million barrels a day from Iran’s oil sales and severed it from the international financial system.

On this “implementation day,” Iran will be able to sell oil, rejoin the international financial system and gain access to tens of billions of dollars in overseas accounts.

U.S. officials have said it may take Iran six months to get to that point. But a senior Iranian official told reporters that the country could do it all in “a matter of weeks.”

As details of the agreement became public, congressional reaction fell quickly along expected lines.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who bypassed the White House this year by inviting Netanyahu to criticize the deal in an address to Congress, promised a fight.

“This isn't about Republicans versus Democrats,” Boehner said. “We will fight a bad deal that is wrong for our national security and wrong for our country.”

Congress will have 60 days to review the deal, and the Republican majorities in both houses will try to pass a resolution disapproving it.

But Republicans will need some Democratic support to get a disapproval measure through the Senate and may not have the votes. In any case, they are not expected to have the votes to override Obama's promised veto.

After Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed support for the deal, few Democrats stood up publicly to oppose it.

Obama has authority to waive most U.S. economic sanctions without congressional approval, although the restrictions would remain on the books unless Congress votes to remove them.

28 The New York Times 14 Jul 2015 video clips, photos, graphics: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-dealis-reached-after-longnegotiations.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=span-ab-topregion&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Iran Nuclear Deal ‘Built on Verification,’ Obama Says

By DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL R. GORDON VIENNA — Iran and a group of six nations led by the United States said they had reached a historic accord on Tuesday to significantly limit Tehran’s nuclear ability for more than a decade in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions.

The deal culminates 20 months of negotiations on an agreement that President Obama had long sought as the biggest diplomatic achievement of his presidency. Whether it portends a new relationship between the United States and Iran — after decades of coups, hostage-taking, terrorism and sanctions — remains a bigger question.

Mr. Obama, in an early morning appearance at the White House that was broadcast live in Iran, began what promised to be an arduous effort to sell the deal to Congress and the American public, saying the agreement is “not built on trust — it is built on verification.”

Mr. Obama made it abundantly clear that he would fight to preserve the deal from critics in Congress who are beginning a 60-day review, declaring, “I will veto any legislation that prevents the successful implementation of this deal.”

Almost as soon as the agreement was announced, to cheers in Vienna and on the streets of Tehran, its harshest critics said it would ultimately empower Iran rather than limit its capability. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called it a “historic mistake” that would create a “terrorist nuclear superpower.”

A review of the 109-page text of the agreement, which includes five annexes, showed that the United States preserved – and in some cases extended – the nuclear restrictions it sketched out with Iran in early April in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Yet, it left open areas that are sure to raise fierce objections in Congress. It preserves Iran’s ability to produce as much nuclear fuel as it wishes after year 15 of the agreement, and allows it to conduct research on advanced centrifuges after the eighth year. Moreover, the Iranians won the eventual lifting of an embargo on the import and export of conventional arms and ballistic missiles – a step the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, warned about just last week.

American officials said the core of the agreement, secured in 18 consecutive days of talks here, lies in the restrictions on the amount of nuclear fuel that Iran can keep for the next 15 years. The current stockpile of low enriched uranium will be reduced by 98 percent, most likely by shipping much of it to Russia. That limit, combined with a twothirds reduction in the number of its centrifuges, would extend to a year the amount of time it would take Iran to make enough material for a single bomb should it abandon the accord and race for a weapon — what officials call “breakout time.” By comparison, analysts say Iran now has a breakout time of two to three months.

But American officials also acknowledged that after the first decade, the breakout time

29 would begin to shrink. It was unclear how rapidly, because Iran’s longer-term plans to expand its enrichment capability will be kept confidential.

The concern that Iran’s breakout time could dramatically shrink in the waning years of the restrictions has already been a contentious issue in Congress. Mr. Obama contributed to that in an interview with National Public Radio in April, when he said that in “year 13, 14, 15” of the agreement, the breakout time might shrink “almost down to zero,” as Iran is expected to develop and use advanced centrifuges then.

Pressed on that point, an American official who briefed reporters on Tuesday said that Iran’s long-term plans to expand its enrichment capability would be shared with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other parties to the accord.

“It is going to be a gradual decline,” the official said. “At the end of, say, 15 years, we are not going to know what that is.” But clearly there are intelligence agency estimates, and one diplomat involved in the talks said that internal estimates suggested Iran’s breakout time could shrink to about five months in year 14 of the plan.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who led the negotiations for the United States, sought in his remarks Tuesday to blunt criticism on this point. “Iran will not produce or acquire highly enriched uranium or plutonium for at least 15 years, he said. Verification measures, he added, will “stay in place permanently.”

He stressed that Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency had “entered into an agreement to address all questions” about Iran’s past actions within three months, and that completing this task was “fundamental for sanctions relief.”

Compared with many past efforts to slow a nation’s nuclear program – including a deal struck with North Korea 20 years ago – this agreement is remarkably specific. Mr. Kerry said he had insisted it must be “airtight.” But some mysteries remain. For example, it is not clear whether the inspectors would be able to interview the scientists and engineers who were believed to have been at the center of an effort by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to design a weapon that Iran could manufacture in short order.

In building his argument for the deal, Mr. Obama stressed that the accord was vastly preferable to the alternate scenario: no agreement and an unbridled nuclear arms race in the Middle East. “Put simply, no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East,” he said. He said his successors in the White House “will be in a far stronger position” to restrain Iran for decades to come than they would be without the pact.

As news of a nuclear deal spread, Iranians reacted with a mix of jubilation, cautious optimism and disbelief that decades of a seemingly intractable conflict could be coming to an end.

“Have they really reached a deal?” asked Masoud Derakhshani, a 93-year-old widower who had come down to the lobby of his apartment building for his daily newspaper. Mr. Derakhshani remained cautious, even incredulous. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “They will most probably hit some last-minute snag.”

Across Tehran, many Iranians expressed hope for better economic times after years in which crippling sanctions have severely depressed the value of the national currency, the rial. That in turn caused inflation and shortages of goods, including vital medicines, and forced Iranians to carry fat wads of bank notes to pay for every day items such as meat, rice and beans.

“I am desperate to feed my three sons, said Ali, a 53-year-old cleaner. “This deal should bring investment for jobs so they can start working for a living,” he said.

30

National dignity, a major demand of Iran’s leader, did not matter to him, he said. “I really do not care if this is a victory for us or not,” he said. “I want relations with the West. If we compromised, so be it.”

Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, who was elected in 2013 on a platform of ridding the country of the sanctions, made a brief statement, saying that the Iranian people’s “prayers have come true.” A senior Iranian official in Vienna, speaking to reporters on the condition on anonymity, in accordance with diplomatic protocol, called the agreement “a good deal that the Iranian people will support.”

One of the last, and most contentious issues, was the question of whether and how fast an arms embargo on conventional weapons and missiles, imposed starting in 2006, would be lifted.

After days of haggling, Secretary of State Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, agreed that the missile restrictions would remain for eight years and that a similar ban on the purchase and sale of conventional weapons would be removed in five years.

Those bans would be removed even sooner if the International Atomic Energy Agency reached a definitive conclusion that the Iranian nuclear program is entirely peaceful, and that there was no evidence of cheating on the accord or any activity to obtain weapons covertly.

The provisions on the arms embargo are expected to dominate the coming debate in Congress on the accord.

Even before the deal was announced, critics expressed fears that Iran would use some of the billions of dollars it will receive after sanctions relief to build up its military power in the region. Iranian officials, however, have said that Iran should be treated like any other nation, and not be subjected to an arms embargo if it meets the terms of a nuclear deal.

Defending the outcome, Mr. Kerry told reporters here that China and Russia had favored lifting the entire arms embargo immediately, suggesting he had no choice but to try to strike a middle ground.

Mr. Kerry appeared to secure another commitment that was not part of a preliminary agreement negotiated in Lausanne. Iranian officials agreed here on a multiyear ban on designing warheads and conducting tests, including with detonators and nuclear triggers, that would contribute to the design and manufacture of a nuclear weapon. Accusations that Tehran conducted that kind of research in the past led to a standoff with international inspectors.

Diplomats also came up with unusual procedure to “snap back” the sanctions against Iran if an eight-member panel determines that Tehran is violating the nuclear provisions.

The members of the panel are Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, the European Union and Iran itself. A majority vote is required, meaning that Russia, China and Iran could not collectively block action. The investigation and referral process calls for a time schedule of 65 days, tight compared with the years the I.A.E.A. has taken to pursue suspicious activity.

With the announcement of the accord, Mr. Obama has now made major strides toward fundamentally changing the American diplomatic relationships with three nations: Cuba, Iran and Myanmar. Of the three, Iran is the most strategically important, the only one with a nuclear program, and it is still on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of

31 terrorism.

While the agreement faces heavy opposition from Republicans in Congress, and even some Democrats, Mr. Obama’s chances of prevailing are considered high. Even if the accord is voted down by one or both houses, he could veto that action, and he is likely to have the votes he would need to override the veto. But he has told aides that for an accord as important as this one — which he hopes will usher in a virtual truce with a country that has been a major American adversary for 35 years — he wants a congressional endorsement.

Mr. Obama will also have to manage the breach with Mr. Netanyahu and the leaders of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states who have warned against the deal, saying the relief of sanctions will ultimately empower the Iranians throughout the Middle East.

32 The New York Times 14 Jul 2015

Iran Celebrates Nuclear Deal, Tempered by Cynicism and Hard-Liner Warnings

By THOMAS ERDBRINK TEHRAN — Weary of sanctions and isolation, many ordinary Iranians rejoiced on Tuesday over a historic nuclear agreement with world powers led by the United States, the main enemy for nearly four decades.

But their excitement was tempered by an accumulated cynicism over false hope and by warnings from hard-liners that public celebrations would undermine Iran’s position.

“The West will take advantage of the people’s happiness,” a conservative analyst, Mehdi Fazaeli, told Fars, a news agency that is associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. “It shows us as if we are desperate for a deal.”

The agreement announced in Vienna will lift the onerous economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for verifiable guarantees that its nuclear activities are peaceful.

While there were some celebrants out on the streets of Tehran, the capital, in the late evening, the turnout was not enormous.

In Vanak Square, families and youths showed up holding balloons and waving flags, some shouting “Iran!” as if the country had won the World Cup. But police officers soon showed up and the party ended. The police were also deployed at Vali-Asr Square, another meeting place for celebrations, and many neighborhoods and parks were quiet.

On social media, however, many Iranians started a virtual party, extolling Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as a hero. Some said Mr. Zarif, a career diplomat educated in the United States, deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.

Others created digital banners, posting them on the country’s Persian-language Telegram messaging app, calling for everybody to come out and celebrate in the streets of Tehran after the day’s summer heat dissipated.

“Nuclear party!” one read, showing a picture of Mr. Zarif smiling. “History will stand up to salute you.”

Others lauded President Hassan Rouhani, whose popularity declined over a failure — at least so far in his two years in office — to make good on a promise to change laws and provide people with more personal freedoms.

Many here joke of the key that was his election symbol, representing a way to unlock a solution to Iran’s problems. “Oh Hassan, they said your key was lost, but it was found in Vienna,” Bahram Ahmadi, a poet, wrote on a Telegram app posting. “Goodbye falafel, hello McDonald’s,” she added.

The news of a nuclear deal surprised many Iranians, some having grown suspicious after false hope over the years, from their own leaders as well as those from the West.

“The structures of our system are not changing,” said Mostafa Zeidabadi, a zinc importer. “If sanctions are lifted in four months or so, where will that money go? To us?

I don’t think so.”

33

“I don’t know whether I’m angry or happy,” he said. “Have I been told lies for the past 12 years?”

Some recalled how over the past decade Iran’s leaders had mocked the sanctions as meaningless. “I never cared about nuclear energy but was told that we gave so much for this,” said Vahidreza Haqparast, 38, an English teacher.

Mr. Haqparast said he expected many problems to remain because of mismanagement and corruption in Iran. “They need improvement, our politicians and managers.”

Others were even more fatalistic. “Who are we but a toy in the hands of world powers,” said Ahmad Razavipour, a pensioner.

Iran’s influential hard-liners, who have criticized Mr. Rouhani in much the same way that President Obama has been denounced by Republicans in the United States, signaled their intent to undercut the agreement.

Some hard-liners were saying that even a first glance at the document showed what they called breaches of the “red lines” laid down by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

“I don’t want to comment on the record now,” said one influential hard-line politician, “but it seems our negotiators have gone too far with some of their promises, especially on the level of inspections. And the system for the lifting of sanctions is also not clear,” he said by telephone.

Members of Parliament said they would scrutinize the document, asserting that the red lines decreed by the ayatollah were the only criterion, most notably the lifting of all sanctions.

“We would not accept that the other party gives us promises for the future while they ask us for immediate implementation of our commitments,” Hossein Naghavi Hosseini, an influential member of Parliament, was quoted as saying by Tasnim, a leading Iranian news agency. “People expect the Parliament to follow up removing all of the sanctions.”

34 The New York Times 14 Jul 2015

Arab World Split Over Iran Nuclear Deal

By BEN HUBBARD BEIRUT, Lebanon — The agreement between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program provoked sharp reactions Tuesday across the Arab world, with some hoping the diplomatic success would reduce tensions and others fearing it would empower Iran and increase instability.

The deal added a new, unpredictable factor to a region where many major players are closely allied with or supported by either Shiite Iran or Sunni Saudi Arabia, and any gain by one is often seen as a loss by the other.

For decades, the United States has been closer to the Saudi camp, so the agreement – and the great effort President Obama invested in reaching it – led parties on both sides to suspect it marked a strategic realignment, with the United States moving away from its traditional Sunni allies.

That feeling has caused alarm in Saudi Arabia, which has long counted on its alliance with the United States for security.

Saudi Arabia and its regional allies see Iran as the driver of much of the region’s violence, pointing to its deep support for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

In its focus on reaching a nuclear agreement, many Saudis say, the United States effectively ignored Iran’s destructive policies.

“Iran is an aggressor,” said Jamal Khashoggi, a veteran Saudi journalist who has advised government officials. “It has ambitions and plans that it is implementing in the region, and it is using force, not diplomacy.”

His fear, shared by many of Iran’s adversaries, is that sanctions relief for Iran will give it greater resources to fund its militant proxies.

“Iran under sanctions was a pain in the neck for the Saudis, and it will be more of a pain in the neck without sanctions,” he said. “There is no sign that the Iranians are going to change and bring peace.”

American officials have expressed hopes that the deal and the economic benefits it could bring to the Iranian people will empower the country’s moderates in a way that could make it easier for the United States to work with them on regional issues.

Whether Iran is interested in changing its regional posture remains an open question.

Iran has long branded itself as the lodestar of the “resistance,” by which it means the regional forces opposed to the United States and Israel. While most members of this alliance are Shiite, Iran has also supported Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are Sunni. And it has spent years investing in proxy forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite militias in Iraq, groups whose rallies are punctuated by chants of “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

For more than four years, Iran has also shown no sign of decreasing its support for Mr. Assad in Syria, despite his growing international isolation because of his brutal efforts to

35 put down an uprising against him.

More recently, Iran and its allies have tried to cast themselves as bulwarks against terrorism, noting that they are fighting the extremists of the Islamic State on the ground in both Iraq and Syria.

Some of Iran’s supporters saw the intense American interest in the nuclear agreement as a de facto recognition of Iran’s strength. They also said the rise of the Islamic State as well as Qaeda-linked groups like the Nusra Front in Syria had led the United States to see Iran as a necessary partner.

“The deal shows that the U.S. decided to outsource fighting terrorism to Iran,” said Ahmad Moussalli, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, who is close to Hezbollah.

Referring to extremists known as takfiris, Dr. Moussalli said, “They found that only Iran can fight the takfiris since the Americans are no longer ready to put their soldiers on the ground.” This would give Iran a greater role in the region, Dr. Moussalli said.

Like many of Iran’s regional allies, Mr. Assad lauded the nuclear agreement, calling it “a great victory” and a “historic achievement,” according to the Syrian state news service, SANA, which ran a photo of Mr. Assad next to images of Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“We have no doubt that the coming days will see momentum for the constructive role of the Islamic republic of Iran to support the rights of the people and strengthen the bases of peace,” Mr. Assad said in a message to Mr. Rouhani, according to SANA. Even some who doubt Iran’s motives cautiously supported the agreement, but said its true significance would depend on implementation.

“On the technical side, it is a good deal, and should be welcomed,” said Abdulkhaliq Abdulla, a political science professor from the United Arab Emirates. “But there is a huge gamble, and you are betting that Iran will fulfill all of its obligations.”

36 The New York Times 14 Jul 2015 MIDDLE EAST | NEWS ANALYSIS

Bet for Obama on Iran Nuclear Deal May Take Years to Pay Off

By DAVID E. SANGER VIENNA — In his opening to China more than 40 years ago, Richard M. Nixon made a huge Cold War gamble that he could forge a working relationship with a Communist country that had built a small arsenal of nuclear weapons and clearly had long-term ambitions for global power.

For President Obama, the deal struck Tuesday morning with Iran represents a similar leap of faith, a bet that by defusing the country’s nuclear threat — even if just for a decade or so — he and his successors would have the time and space to restructure one of the United States’ deepest adversarial relationships.

Mr. Obama will be long out of office before any reasonable assessment can be made as to whether that roll of the dice paid off. The best guess today, even among the most passionate supporters of the president’s Iran project, is that the judgment will be mixed.

Little in the deal announced on Tuesday eliminates Iran’s ability to become a threshold nuclear power eventually — it just delays the day. To Mr. Obama’s many critics, including Henry A. Kissinger, the architect of the China opening, that is a fatal flaw. It does nothing, Mr. Kissinger wrote recently with another former secretary of state, George P. Shultz, to change “three and a half decades of militant hostility to the West.”

Yet it is a start. Senior officials of two countries who barely spoke with each other for more than three decades have spent the past 20 months locked in hotel rooms, arguing about centrifuges but also learning how each perceives the other. Many who have jousted with Iran over the past decade see few better alternatives.

“The reality is that it is a painful agreement to make, but also necessary and wise,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who drafted the first sanctions against Iran, passed in the United Nations Security Council in 2006 and 2007, when he was undersecretary of state for policy. “And we might think of it as just the end of the beginning of a long struggle to contain Iran. There will be other dramas ahead.”

Mr. Obama certainly signaled where he was going, starting with his first inaugural address. When he offered on that bitterly cold afternoon in January 2009 to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” even to governments “who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent,” there was little doubt that he had Iran’s leaders in mind.

At the time, it was also meant as a signal that the era of George W. Bush had ended, and that a renewed reliance on diplomacy had begun. But the reality once Mr. Obama took office was a little different.

Faced with a recalcitrant supreme leader in Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr. Obama’s aides figured out how to impose the ultimate economic sanction — cutting off much of Iran’s oil revenue — as well as isolating it from global banking systems. They also deployed the world’s most sophisticated cyberweapon, later dubbed Stuxnet, to slow Iran’s nuclear progress.

37

And then they waited.

Now, six years later, after coaxing a new Iranian government into negotiations even many of Mr. Obama’s top aides predicted were doomed to failure, the outreach to Iran has morphed into a far more complex experiment in engagement than Mr. Obama’s previous two, first with Myanmar, then with Cuba.

Neither of those countries posed a significant threat to the United States’ interests, and there was little risk in ending sanctions. Iran is different.

Tehran’s nuclear program is just one of its instruments of power to destabilize the Middle East. And there is risk, especially in the next few years, that Iran’s generals will compensate for the loss of a nuclear program by stepping up their financing of Hezbollah and the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and by flexing their muscles in other conflicts across the region. They have already built up a talented “cybercorps” of their own and turned it on Saudi Arabia and, in more limited ways, the United States.

Within a year or so, they will have a new influx of cash to finance those efforts.

Assuming Iran makes good on its promises to ship most of its nuclear fuel out of the country and to mothball nearly three-quarters of its centrifuges, its oil revenue will start to flow and its financial ties to the outside world will strengthen.

Mr. Obama is essentially betting that once sanctions have been lifted, Iran’s leaders will have no choice but to use much of the new money to better the lives of their longsuffering citizens. He has told his aides that he expects relatively little to be spent to finance terrorism or the emerging corps of Iranian cyberwarriors, a group now as elite as Iran’s nuclear scientists.

Ayatollah Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards generals, dedicated to preserving the principles of the 1979 revolution, are taking the other side of that bet: that they can use the money and legitimacy of the accord to advance their interests and to keep in check a young Iranian population that is clearly a lot less interested in next-generation centrifuges than it is in getting visas to visit and study in the West.

Then there is the question of whether the deal will eventually lead to some uneasy cooperation in those areas where American and Iranian interests overlap, starting with the battle against the Islamic State.

Yet, the chief goal was always to break away from “a spiral toward conflict,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, one of Mr. Obama’s deputy national security advisers, the architect of the outreach to Cuba and a central player for the past six years on Iran. “The president said many times he’s willing to step out of the rut of history.”

In the wake of Nixon’s overture to China, Japan wondered if it would be cut adrift and Taiwan felt betrayed. Mr. Obama’s agreement with Iran may have unintended consequences as well. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia see a reconciliation as a threat. They fear that it will help Iran gain money, power and influence — and that it could be the opening wedge of a broader realignment of American interests in the region. For Mr. Obama and his successor, managing that fear may become as complex as managing Iran.

But no one in the White House expects that the Iranian government, having made the necessary nuclear concessions to get its accounts refilled and its oil flowing again, is really interested in a far broader relationship anytime soon.

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” said one of the American negotiators who has spent the most time

38 with the Iranian team. “This isn’t Cuba. You are not going to see embassies open for a long, long time.”

Just days before the agreement was signed, there were ritual, if not especially energetic, “death to Israel” and “death to America” demonstrations, perhaps an offering to disappointed hard-liners.

In fact, anyone along for the ride during the 20 long months of these negotiations saw how deeply conflicted the Iranian leadership was about the entire enterprise. The American-educated foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, spent as much time managing the hard-liners in his government as he did negotiating with Secretary of State John Kerry.

“Four decades ago, it was clear that Mao had made a fundamental decision about his strategic shift, and he opened relations with the United States after concluding that the Soviet Union was a fundamental challenge to both of them,” said Karim Sadjadpour, who examines Iran policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “In Iran, there is hope for a strategic shift, but it will take years to know.” And it may take a new supreme leader.

For Mr. Obama, the end of the negotiations with Iran signifies the beginning of a negotiation with Congress, which now has 60 days to approve or disapprove the arrangement. The numbers suggest Mr. Obama will prevail; if Congress rejects the Iran accord, he promised on Tuesday to veto the legislation, and he has enough Democrats to win that contest. Yet he clearly does not want the biggest diplomatic achievement of his presidency to turn into yet another political melodrama.

His desire, aides say, is to convince the country of his logic: While sanctions and sabotage brought Tehran to the table, more sanctions and more sabotage, Mr. Obama argues, would not force Tehran to scrap every one of its nuclear facilities. In fact, until Mr. Kerry and Wendy R. Sherman, the chief American negotiator, struck an interim deal with the Iranians in late 2013 to allow the final negotiations to begin, every new round of sanctions was answered with an escalation in the size and aggressiveness of the Iranian program to enrich uranium.

“It’s a matter of pragmatism,” William J. Burns, who conducted much of the secret diplomacy with Iran that began these talks when he served as Mr. Kerry’s deputy secretary of state, said recently. “A nuclear-armed Iran, or an Iranian nuclear program unconstrained by any serious long-term restrictions, multiplies exponentially the dangers in an already chaotic region.”

Mr. Burns said he had no expectations of “any overnight transformation of Iranian behavior in the region, which is likely to threaten our interests and those of our friends for some time.”

39 The White House 14 Jul 2015

The Historic Deal that Will Prevent Iran from Acquiring a Nuclear Weapon How the U.S. and the international community will block all of Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/foreign-policy/iran-deal

FULL TEXT OF THE DEAL 

Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

http://eeas.europa.eu/statements-eeas/docs/iran_agreement/iran_joint-comprehensive-planof-action_en.pdf 

Annex 1: Nuclear Related Commitmment

http://eeas.europa.eu/statementseeas/docs/iran_agreement/annex_1_nuclear_related_commitments_en.pdf 

Annex 2: Sanctions Related Commitments

http://eeas.europa.eu/statementseeas/docs/iran_agreement/annex_2_sanctions_related_commitments_en.pdf 

Annex 3: Civil Nuclear Cooperation

http://eeas.europa.eu/statementseeas/docs/iran_agreement/annex_3_civil_nuclear_cooperation_en.pdf 

Annex 4: Joint Commission

http://eeas.europa.eu/statementseeas/docs/iran_agreement/annex_4_joint_commission_en.pdf 

Annex 5: Implementation

http://eeas.europa.eu/statementseeas/docs/iran_agreement/annex_5_implementation_plan_en.pdf

40 U.S. Department of State 14 Jul 2015

Press Availability John Kerry Secretary of State Austria Center Vienna, Austria July 14, 2015

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, good afternoon everybody. I want to begin by thanking you, as others have, for your extraordinary patience. I know this has been a long couple of weeks for everybody, including, above all, the press, who have waited long hours during the day for very little news, and we’re very grateful for your patience. This is an historic day, but for me, it’s an historic day because it represents the first time in six weeks that I’ve worn a pair of shoes. (Laughter.)

Today, in announcing a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the United States, our P5+1 and EU partners, and Iran have taken a measureable step away from the prospect of nuclear proliferation, towards transparency and cooperation. It is a step away from the specter of conflict and towards the possibility of peace.

This moment has been a long time coming, and we have worked very hard to get here. A resolution to this type of challenge never comes easily – not when the stakes are so high, not when the issues are so technical, and not when each decision affects global and regional security so directly. The fact is that the agreement we’ve reached, fully implemented, will bring insight and accountability to Iran’s nuclear program – not for a small number of years but for the lifetime of that program. This is the good deal that we have sought.

Believe me, had we been willing to settle for a lesser deal, we would have finished this negotiation a long time ago. But we were not. All of us – not just the United States, but France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, China, and the EU – were determined to get this right. And so we have been patient, and I believe our persistence has paid off.

A few months ago in Lausanne, we and our international partners joined Iran in announcing a series of parameters to serve as the contours of a potential deal. Experts and commentators were, in fact, surprised by all that we had achieved at that point.

After three more months of long days and late nights, I’m pleased to tell you that we have stayed true to those contours and we have now finally carved in the details.

Now I want to be very clear: The parameters that we announced in Lausanne not only remain intact and form the backbone of the agreement that we reached today, but through the detail, they have been amplified in ways that make this agreement even stronger.

41 That includes the sizable reduction of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium and the number of centrifuges that it operates.

It also guarantees that Iran’s breakout time – the time it would take for Iran to speed up its enrichment and produce enough fissile material for just one nuclear weapon – that time will increase to at least one year for a period of at least 10 years.

And contrary to the assertions of some, this agreement has no sunset. It doesn’t terminate. It will be implemented in phases – beginning within 90 days of the UN Security Council endorsing the deal, and some of the provisions are in place for 10 years, others for 15 year, others for 25 years. And certain provisions – including many of the transparency measures and prohibitions on nuclear work – will stay in place permanently.

But most importantly, this agreement addresses Iran’s potential pathways to fissile material for a bomb exactly as we said it would – with appropriate limitations and transparency in order to assure the world of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.

Now, let me explain exactly how it will accomplish that goal.

To start, the participants have agreed Iran will not produce or acquire either highly enriched uranium or weapons-grade plutonium for at least the next 15 years, and Iran declares a longer period of intent.

Iran’s total stockpile of enriched uranium – which today is equivalent to almost 12,000 kilograms of UF6 – will be capped at just 300 kilograms for the next 15 years – an essential component of expanding our breakout time. Two-thirds of Iran’s centrifuges will be removed from nuclear facilities along with the infrastructure that supports them.

And once they’re removed, the centrifuges will be – and the infrastructure, by the way – will be locked away and under around-the-clock monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Uranium enrichment at Natanz will be scaled down significantly. For the next 15 years, no uranium will be enriched beyond 3.67 percent. To put that in context, this is a level that is appropriate for civilian nuclear power and research, but well below anything that could be used possibly for a weapon.

For the next 10 years, Iran has agreed to only use its first-generation centrifuges in order to enrich uranium. Iran has further agreed to disconnect nearly all of its advanced centrifuges, and those that remain installed will be part of a constrained and closely monitored R&D program – and none will be used to produce enriched uranium.

Iran has also agreed to stop enriching uranium at its Fordow facility for the next 15 years. It will not even use or store fissile material on the site during that time. Instead, Fordow will be transformed into a nuclear, physics, and technology research center – it will be used, for example, to produce isotopes for cancer treatment, and it will be subject

42 to daily inspection and it will have other nations working in unison with the Iranians within that technology center.

So when this deal is implemented, the two uranium paths Iran has towards fissile material for a weapon will be closed off.

The same is true for the plutonium path. We have agreed Iran’s heavy-water reactor at Arak will be rebuilt – based on a final design that the United States and international partners will approve – so that it will only be used for peaceful purposes. And Iran will not build a new heavy-water reactor or reprocess fuel from its existing reactors for at least 15 years.

But this agreement is not only about what happens to Iran’s declared facilities. The deal we have reached also gives us the greatest assurance that we have had that Iran will not pursue a weapon covertly.

Not only will inspectors be able to access Iran’s declared facilities daily, but they will also have access to the entire supply chain that supports Iran’s nuclear program, from start to finish – from uranium mines to centrifuge manufacturing and operation. So what this means is, in fact, that to be able to have a covert path, Iran would actually need far more than one covert facility – it would need an entire covert supply chain in order to feed into that site. And to ensure that that does not happen without our knowledge, under this deal, inspectors will be able to gain access to any location the IAEA and a majority of the P5+1 nations deem suspicious.

It is no secret that the IAEA also has had longstanding questions about the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. That is one of the primary reasons that we are even here today, and we and our partners have made clear throughout the negotiations that Iran would need to satisfy the IAEA on this as part of the final deal.

With that in mind, Iran and the IAEA have already entered into an agreement on the process to address all of the IAEA’s outstanding questions within three months – and doing so is a fundamental requirement for sanctions relief that Iran seeks. And Director Amano announced earlier this morning that that agreement has been signed.

Now, our quarrel has never been with the Iranian people, and we realize how deeply the nuclear-related sanctions have affected the lives of Iranians. Thanks to the agreement reached today, that will begin to change. In return for the dramatic changes that Iran has accepted for its nuclear program, the international community will be lifting the nuclear-related sanctions on Iran’s economy.

And the relief from sanctions will only start when Tehran has met its key initial nuclear commitments – for example, when it has removed the core from the Arak reactor; when it has dismantled the centrifuges that it has agreed to dismantle; when it has shipped out the enriched uranium that it has agreed to ship out. When these and other commitments are met, the sanctions relief will then begin to be implemented in phases.

43 The reason for that is very simple: Confidence is never built overnight. It has to be developed over time. And this morning, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif expressed his hope that this agreement can be a beginning of a change of the interactions between Iran and the international community.

That is why none of the sanctions that we currently have in place will, in fact, be lifted until Iran implements the commitments that it has made. And some restrictions, including those related to arms and proliferation, will remain in place for some years to come. And I want to underscore: If Iran fails in a material way to live up to these commitments, then the United States, the EU, and even the UN sanctions that initially brought Iran to the table can and will snap right back into place. We have a specific provision in this agreement called snapback for the return of those sanctions in the event of noncompliance.

Now, there will be some who will assert that we could have done more – or that if we had just continued to ratchet up the pressure, Iran would have eventually raised a white flag and abandoned its nuclear program altogether. But the fact is the international community tried that approach. That was the policy of the United States and others during the years 2000 and before. And in the meantime, guess what happened? The Iranian program went from 164 centrifuges to thousands. The Iranian program grew despite the fact that the international community said, “No enrichment at all, none.” The program grew to the point where Iran accumulated enough fissile material for about 12 – 10 to 12 nuclear bombs.

I will tell you, sanctioning Iran until it capitulates makes for a powerful talking point and a pretty good political speech, but it’s not achievable outside a world of fantasy.

The true measure of this agreement is not whether it meets all of the desires of one side at the expense of the other; the test is whether or not it will leave the world safer and more secure than it would be without it. So let’s review the facts.

Without this agreement or the Joint Plan of Action on which it builds, Iran’s breakout time to get enough material – nuclear material for a weapon was already two to three months. That’s where we started. We started with Iran two months away with enough fissile material for 10 bombs. With this agreement, that breakout time goes to a year or more, and that will be the case for at least a decade.

Without this agreement, Iran could just double its enrichment capacity tomorrow – literally – and within a few years it could expand it to as many as 100,000 centrifuges.

With this agreement, Iran will be operating about 5,000 centrifuges for a fixed period of time.

Without this agreement, Iran would be able to add rapidly and without any constraint to its stockpile of enriched uranium, which already at 20 percent was dangerous and higher than any of us were satisfied was acceptable. With this agreement, the stockpile will be kept at no more than 300 kilograms for 15 years.

44 Without this agreement, Iran’s Arak reactor could produce enough weapons-grade plutonium each year to fuel two nuclear weapons. With this agreement, the core of the Arak reactor will be removed and filled with concrete, and Iran will not produce any weapons-grade plutonium.

Without this agreement, the IAEA would not have definitive access to locations suspected of conducting undeclared nuclear activities. With this agreement, the IAEA will be able to access any location, declared or undeclared, to follow up on legitimate concerns about nuclear activities.

There can be no question that this agreement will provide a stronger, more comprehensive, and more lasting means of limiting Iran’s nuclear program than any realistic – realistic alternative. And those who criticize and those who spend a lot of time suggesting that something could be better have an obligation to provide an alternative that, in fact, works. And let me add this: While the nations that comprise the P5+1 obviously don’t always see eye-to-eye on global issues, we are in full agreement on the quality and importance of this deal. From the very beginning of this process, we have considered not only our own security concerns, but also the serious and legitimate anxieties of our friends and our allies in the region – especially Israel and the Gulf States. And that has certainly been the case in recent days, as we worked to hammer out the final details.

So let me make a couple of points crystal-clear: First, what we are announcing today is an agreement addressing the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program – period – just the nuclear program. And anybody who knows the conduct of international affairs knows that it is better to deal with a country if you have problems with it if they don’t have a nuclear weapon. As such, a number of U.S. sanctions will remain in place, including those related to terrorism, human rights, and ballistic missiles. In addition, the United States will continue our efforts to address concerns about Iran’s actions in the region, including by our providing key support to our partners and our allies and by making sure we are vigilant in pushing back against destabilizing activities.

And certainly, we continue to call on Iran to immediately release the detained U.S. citizens. These Americans have remained in our thoughts throughout this negotiation, and we will continue to work for their safe and their swift return. And we urge Iran to bring our missing Americans home as well.

And we also know there is not a challenge in the entire region that would not become worse if Iran had a nuclear weapon. That’s why this deal is so important. It’s also why we met at Camp David with the Gulf States and why we will make clear to them in the days ahead the ways in which we will work together in order to guarantee the security of the region. The provisions of this agreement help guarantee that the international community can and will address regional challenges without the threat of a nucleararmed Iran.

45 Second, no part of this agreement relies on trust. It is all based on thorough and extensive transparency and verification measures that are included in very specific terms in the annexes of this agreement. If Iran fails to comply, we will know it, because we’re going to be there – the international community, through the IAEA and otherwise – and we will know it quickly, and we will be able to respond accordingly.

And before closing, I would like to make – I would like to say thank you to some folks who really made a difference in the course of all of this. And I want to begin by thanking my president, President Obama, who had the courage to launch this process, believe in it, support it, encourage it, when many thought that the objective was impossible, and who led the way from the start to the finish. The President has been resolute in insisting from the day he came to office that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, and he has been equally – equally strong in asserting that diplomacy should be given a fair chance to achieve that goal.

I want to thank my Cabinet colleagues – excuse me – for the many, many contributions that they have made – Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, the entire DOD – the department, but I especially want to thank my partner in this effort who came late to the process but has made an essential contribution to our achievement of this agreement, and that is Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz, who has put many long days here in Switzerland – here and in Switzerland – during these negotiations and, frankly, whose background as a nuclear scientist just proved to be essential in helping us, together with former foreign minister and Vice President Salehi, to be able to really work through very difficult issues, some of the toughest and technical issues.

I want to thank the members of Congress – my former colleagues – for their role in this achievement, particularly in designing and passing sanctions legislation that did exactly what the UN resolution set out to do, and that is bring Iran to the table in order to negotiate. It helped us achieve the goal of these negotiations, and I appreciate their counsel and I look forward to the next chapter in our conversations. Whatever disagreements might sometimes exist, we all agree on a goal of a Middle East where our interests are protected and our allies and our friends are safe and secure.

And I want to especially thank my friend and my exceptional colleague, the Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who has piloted – (applause) – she has led our team, which you can tell is still pretty enthusiastic, notwithstanding the long stay – and she has really done so with just an amazingly strong will, with a clear sense of direction, very steady nerves, hardly any sleep – and she’s been doing that for several years, folks, with amazing periods of time away from home and away from family. She and our absolutely brilliant, tireless team of experts and diplomats have done an absolutely incredible job, and frankly, they deserve the gratitude of our nation. (Applause.) I also want to thank those who’ve served on the U.S. negotiating team in the past who were not here for the close but who were indispensable in helping to shape this negotiation – particularly former Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, Jake Sullivan, who were absolutely essential in the earliest days.

46 I also want to thank my counterparts from every other delegation. All of the political directors were absolutely stunning in this. It’s been a privilege of my public service to be able to work with the teams that I have worked with here and in the other cities we’ve been. Our counterparts have made absolutely critical contributions to this. This was a team effort. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius; British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond; Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov; German Foreign Minister FrankWalter Steinmeier; and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. I also want to thank the high representatives of the EU, there’s several – Javier Solana, Dame Cathy Ashton, and her successor, Federica Mogherini, who helped shepherd these past weeks in such an effective way. I also want to thank her deputy to the high representative, Helga Schmid, who, together with Wendy, they just formed an incredible unity, and they facilitated and guided our talks with enormous dedication and skill.

All of these leaders and the legion of aids who contributed countless hours to assisting us really set a new standard for international cooperation and hard work. And the fact that we have stood together and maintained our unity throughout these 18 months lends enormous weight and credibility to the agreement we have forged, but it also offers everybody a sign of possibilities, a sign of encouragement for those who believe in the power of diplomacy and of negotiation.

Thank you also to the Government of Austria, which has very generously hosted this last round of talks – perhaps for a bit longer than it may have expected – (laughter) – and it has also hosted countless rounds before this one, so they’ve made a very special contribution to this. And I’ll tell you, all the police and the folks in the hotels and everybody in Austria, Vielen dank. We thank you for a really remarkable welcome.

(Applause.)

I want to thank the other nations that have hosted these talks – this has been sort of a traveling circus – in particular Switzerland, Oman, Turkey, Russia, Kazakhstan, Iraq, and my home country, the United States.

And I am particularly grateful – we are particularly grateful, all of us, to the sultan of Oman, for his very personal engagement and support for the possibility of an agreement. He and his government were there to help every step of the way.

And I finally want to express my deep respect for the serious and constructive approach that Iran’s representatives brought to our deliberations. The president of Iran, President Rouhani, had to make a difficult decision. We all know the tensions that exist. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, a tough, capable negotiator, and patriot, a man who fought every inch of the way for the things he believed, and sometimes these were heated and passionate exchanges. But he and his team, while tough, always professional, always dedicated to finding solutions to difficult problems. And we were, both of us, able to approach these negotiations with mutual respect, even when there were times of a heated discussion, I think he would agree with me at the end of every meeting we left with a smile and with a conviction that we were going to come back and continue the

47 process. We never lost sight of the goal that an agreement could bring and the best long-term interests of all concerned.

Now, we are under no illusions that the hard work is over. No one is standing here today to say that the path ahead is easy or automatic. We move now to a new phase – a phase that is equally critical and may prove to be just as difficult – and that is implementation.

The 109 pages that we have agreed upon outline commitments made on both sides. In the end, however, this agreement will live or die by whether the leaders who have to implement it on both sides honor and implement the commitments that have been made.

There is reason to be optimistic. In January of last year, we took the first step by adopting the Joint Plan of Action. Man, were we told by skeptics that we were making a mistake of a lifetime – that Iran would never comply, that this was a terrible agreement.

But you know what? They were dead wrong. All sides met their obligations. The diplomatic process went forward. And we are already nearing almost two years of Iran’s compliance, full compliance, with the agreement.

The entire world has a stake in ensuring that the same thing happens now. Not only will this deal, fully implemented, make the world safer than it is today, but it may also eventually unlock opportunities to begin addressing regional challenges that cannot be resolved without this kind of an agreement being in place in the first place. The past 18 months have been yet another example of diplomacy’s consummate power to forge a peaceful way forward, no matter how impossible it may seem.

Obviously, every country that has been at the table over the past 18 months has had its own domestic perspective to consider. The United States is no exception. Back home, the future of Iran’s nuclear program has long been the focus of a lot of debate, and I have absolutely no doubt that debate is going to become even more intense in the coming days. I’ll tell you what, we welcome the opportunity to engage. These are vitally important issues, and they deserve rigorous but fact-based discussion. I’ve heard more talk in the last days about concessions being made and people racing. We have not made concessions. Lausanne is more than intact. And the facts are what should define this agreement.

From the start, President Obama and I have pledged that we would not settle for anything less than a good deal – good for Americans and good for our partners, our friends, our allies, good for the future of the Middle East, and good for the peace of mind of the world. That is what we pursued and that is what we insisted on through long months of hard negotiations, and that is precisely what we believe we have achieved today.

I will just share with you very personally, years ago when I left college, I went to war.

And I learned in war the price that is paid when diplomacy fails. And I made a decision that if I ever was lucky enough to be in a position to make a difference, I would try to do so. I believe this agreement actually represents an effort by the United States of

48 America and all of its member – its colleagues in the P5+1 to come together with Iran to avert an inevitability of conflict that would come were we not able to reach agreement. I think that’s what diplomacy was put in place to achieve, and I know that war is the failure of diplomacy and the failure of leaders to make alternative decisions.

So we have a chance here and I hope that in the days ahead that people will look at this agreement hard for the facts that define it and that we will be able to fully implement it and move forward.

I’d be happy to take a few questions.

MS HARF: The first question, it’s from Indira Lakshmanan of Bloomberg News. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Mr. Secretary, what do you say to critics who say that lifting the UN arms embargo will fuel an arms race that endangers U.S. allies in the Middle East?

SECRETARY KERRY: Can you put it a little closer? I can’t hear you very well.

QUESTION: Sorry. What do you say to critics who say that lifting the UN arms embargo will fuel an arms race that endangers U.S. allies in the Middle East, making it unlikely that Congress will endorse the deal? And what’s the Administration’s plan if Congress rejects the agreement with a veto-proof majority? And last, what do you say to U.S. energy companies and other businesses who will remain under U.S. primary sanctions, putting them at a disadvantage against nations who now will be allowed to return to investment and trade in Iran? Thank you.

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, let me answer the second one first. With respect to companies that want to rush to do business in Iran, it is absolutely true that because of the embargo by the United States, American companies will not be part of that rush – unless specifically exempted, and very few are. So the reality is that, indeed, other countries will make a different choice. This is something Congress is going to have to consider, whether or not over the course of time, Iran, if they fully comply, whether they think it makes sense to continue.

But let me underscore, because this goes into your first question, and that is about the arms embargo. First of all, there were seven participants in this negotiation. Three of them believe there should be no embargo whatsoever, and four of them believe there should be a continuation. The result of the negotiation is that it not only continues for five full years, which is a pretty lengthy period of time during which a lot of other things can begin to happen, but it also continues under Chapter VII, Article 41, so that it is fully enforceable and has the force of the United Nations Security Council. Now, to have achieved that when three of the nations could have said no deal and walked away or you could have had a different outcome I think is significant, number one.

49 Number two, and this is very important, the United Nations Resolution 1929, which is the resolution that basically brings us here and set in motion the sanctions, says specifically that if Iran comes to negotiate – not even get a deal, but comes to negotiate – sanctions would be lifted. We’re not doing that with respect to the arms embargo, even though not only have they come to the negotiation, they have in fact negotiated a deal.

So we have plenty of time over the next few years to address whatever the next steps will be in that issue, but I think that we did very well to hold on to that particular restraint, and we’ll see where we go in the future.

QUESTION: Congressional – the congressional override and the veto? On the – what will the Administration do if Congress has a veto-proof majority rejecting the deal?

SECRETARY KERRY: If Congress were to veto the deal, Congress – the United States of America would be in noncompliance with this agreement and contrary to all of the other countries in the world. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I really don’t believe that people would turn their backs on an agreement which has such extraordinary steps in it with respect to Iran’s program as well as access and verification.

This agreement will withstand the test of scrutiny in the next days, and I look forward to being part of that debate, obviously. We will brief Congress immediately. We will be deeply engaged in it. But I am confident that people will not choose to turn their back on the rest of the international community, on this opportunity to change a relationship, and this opportunity which is the only viable alternative to be able to guarantee there is a peaceful nuclear program and that they will not succeed or choose to get a weapon.

MS HARF: The second question is from Arash Azizi of Manoto.

QUESTION: Secretary Kerry, it wouldn’t be a surprise to you that the sanctions – both the nuclear sanctions and others – have deeply hurt the Iranian people, from the airplanes that are falling, to the children who have needed medicine. When the Iranian people watch this presser tonight, mostly are thinking when and how quickly will the sanctions lifted, and how quickly can they see the result?

And they’ll also be wondering that in a political atmosphere, when every single Republican contender has promised to scuttle the deal, aren’t you worried that the hard efforts that you’ve made during this last little while will be undone by the next Administration? And what guarantees can this Administration make to prevent that?

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, as I said, there are a series of steps that are spelled out very, very clearly in this agreement that Iran has agreed to take, that are necessary to expand the breakout time and to begin to build confidence. Those steps will begin the moment after Congress has had its review time of this agreement. At that point Iran, when it sees the results, will begin to reduce its enrichment, begin to dismantle its centrifuges and take the steps necessary to expand the breakout time and provide confidence. So that is about 60 days away. And then a few months after that the IAEA will conclude and the other things will happen. So somewhere in the vicinity of four to six

50 months or so, depending on how rapidly Iran is able to perform its initial functions. It’s really dependent on Iran how fast that will happen, but I expect it to be somewhere in a matter of months – maybe six or so; hard to say exactly – and that will begin to make a difference.

With respect to this agreement, look, surviving the future, I really believe deeply that if Iran fully implements with two years already under Iran’s belt, during which time Iran’s program has effectively been frozen, and they have begun to show people that they’re not able or ready to make a bomb, I am convinced that no one will see the common sense of turning away from that so that all of a sudden the next day Iran can go out and enrich more and do everything that you’ve just tried to prevent. I am convinced that whoever is our next president will see the wisdom of this agreement and they will leave it in place.

MS HARF: Our final question is from Jay Solomon of The Wall Street Journal.

QUESTION: Thank you. Secretary Kerry, Iran’s most powerful political figure, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, was not here in Vienna, and has repeatedly voiced skepticism or suspicion about agreements with the United States. He’s also said in recent days that his country will continue its opposition to U.S. foreign policy. What assurances did you get from Minister Zarif and other Iranian officials that the supreme leader does, in fact, back this agreement? And why are you confident Tehran won’t back out of the deal like they did in 2009 on the nuclear fuel swap? Thank you.

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, first of all, I never said I was confident that – I am like everybody else here, and I said this very clearly in my comments a few minutes ago. I said the fact of the signing of this agreement does not eliminate all of the challenges. It’s the implementation that will matter. And I’m not going to stand here and tell you that everything’s going to work without a bump, without a hitch in the road, without some misunderstanding or some effort that needs clarification.

What I do know is that the negotiators absolutely affirmed to us on several occasions, and most importantly in the last 24 hours, that they are operating with a full mandate from the president, Rouhani, and from the supreme leader.

And in a negotiation, you lay down the procedures that are expected to be taken and you lay down the consequences for not doing that. Both of those are absolutely evident and clear in this agreement, and so we obviously look forward to the implementation, but I’m not the person to vouch for the fact – which I can’t – as to exactly every step or moment in time that’s going to be taken in the next days in terms of compliance. But we have put in place ample mechanisms with respect to compliance and with respect to accountability. So I feel very confident about our ability to protect our interests, to protect the security interests that are stake, and I full, frankly, expect over the next days to see this process at least begin to be followed up on.

MS HARF: Thank you all very much.

51 QUESTION: For the Iranian (inaudible) -MS HARF: Thank you. Thank you very much.

QUESTION: -- not saying anything.

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, I answered some, but you got to bear with me because this is the longest I’ve stood up for quite a while, guys. So I’m going to move out.

(Applause.)

52 LobeLog/foreign policy 14 Jul 2015

Iran Deal: Key Excerpts of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

by Jim Lobe In the interests of providing information that can promote hopefully rational debate on a key issue, we are presenting below “key excerpts” of the JCPOA announced today in Vienna as released by the State Department.

Preamble and General Provisions  The full implementation of this JCPOA will ensure the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.  Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons.  This JCPOA will produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program.  A Joint Commission consisting of the E3/EU+3 and Iran will be established to monitor the implementation of this JCPOA and will carry out the functions provided for in this JCPOA.  The IAEA will be requested to monitor and verify the voluntary nuclear-related measures as detailed in this JCPOA. The IAEA will be requested to provide regular updates to the Board of Governors, and as provided for in this JCPOA, to the UN Security Council.  The E3+3 will submit a draft resolution to the UN Security Council endorsing this JCPOA affirming that conclusion of this JCPOA marks a fundamental shift in its consideration of this issue and expressing its desire to build a new relationship with Iran.

Nuclear Enrichment, Enrichment R&D, Stockpiles  Iran’s long term plan includes certain agreed limitations on all uranium enrichment and uranium enrichment-related activities including certain limitations on specific research and development (R&D) activities for the first 8 years, to be followed by gradual evolution, at a reasonable pace, to the next stage of its enrichment activities for exclusively peaceful purposes.  Iran will begin phasing out its IR-1 centrifuges in 10 years. During this period, Iran will keep its enrichment capacity at Natanz at up to a total installed uranium enrichment capacity of 5060 IR-1 centrifuges. Excess centrifuges and enrichment-related

53 infrastructure at Natanz will be stored under IAEA continuous monitoring. (Note: Iran currently has about 19,000 IR-1 and advanced IR-2M centrifuges installed)  Based on its long-term plan, for 15 years, Iran will keep its level of uranium enrichment at up to 3.67%.

(Note: Prior to the Joint Plan of Action, Iran enriched uranium to near 20%)  Iran will refrain from any uranium enrichment and uranium enrichment R&D and from keeping any nuclear material at Fordow for 15 years.

(Note: Iran currently has about 2,700 IR-1 centrifuges installed at Fordow of which about 700 are enriching uranium)  Iran will convert the Fordow facility into a nuclear, physics and technology center.  1044 IR-I machines in six cascades will remain in one wing at Fordow. Two of those six cascades will spin without uranium and will be transitioned, including through appropriate infrastructure modification, for stable isotope production. The other four cascades with all associated infrastructure will remind idle.  During the 15 year period, Iran will keep its uranium stockpile under 300 kg of up to 3.67% enriched UF6 or the equivalent in other chemical forms. (Note: Iran currently maintains a stockpile of about 10,000 kg of low-enriched UF6)  All other centrifuges and enrichment-related infrastructure will be removed and stored under IAEA continuous monitoring.

Arak, Heavy Water, Reprocessing  Iran will design and rebuild a modernized heavy water research reactor in Arak, based on an agreed conceptual design, using fuel enrichment up to 3.67%, in the form of an international partnership which will certify the final design. The reactor will support peaceful nuclear research and radioisotope production for medical and instructional purposes. The redesigned and rebuilt Arak reactor will not produce weapons grade plutonium.  Iran plans to keep pace with the trend of international technological advancement in relying on light water for its future power and research with enhanced international cooperation including assurance of supply of necessary fuel.  There will be no additional heavy water reactors or accumulation of heavy water in Iran for 15 years.  Iran intends to ship out all spent fuel for all future and present power and research nuclear reactors.

54 Transparency and Confidence Building Measures  Iran will provisionally apply the Additional Protocol to its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement in accordance with Article 17 b) of the Additional Protocol.  Iran will fully implement the “Roadmap for Clarification of Past and Present Outstanding Issues” agreed with the IAEA, containing arrangements to address past and present issues of concern relating to its nuclear program.  Iran will allow the IAEA to monitor the implementation of the above voluntary measures for their respective durations, as well as to implement transparency measures, as set out by the JCPOA and its Annexes. These measures include: a long-term presence in Iran; IAEA monitoring of uranium ore concentrate produced by Iran from all uranium ore concentrate plants for 25 years; containment and surveillance of centrifuge rotors and bellows for 20 years; use of IAEA approved and certified modern technologies including on-line enrichment measure and electronic seals; and a reliable mechanism to ensure speedy resolution of IAEA access concerns for 15 years, as defined in Annex I.  Iran will not engage in activities, including at the R&D level, that could contribute to the development of a nuclear explosive device, including uranium or plutonium metallurgy activities.  Iran will cooperate and act in accordance with the procurement channel in this JCPOA, as detailed in Annex IV, endorsed by the UN Security Council resolution.

Sanctions  The UN Security Council resolution endorsing the JCPOA will terminate all the provisions of the previous UN Security Council resolutions on the Iranian nuclear issue simultaneously with the IAEA-verified implementation of agreed nuclear-related measures by Iran and will establish specific restrictions.  The EU will terminate all provisions of the EU Regulation, as subsequently amended, implementing all the nuclear related economic and financial sanctions, including related designations, simultaneously with IAEA-verified implementation of agreed nuclearrelated measures by Iran as specified in Annex V.  The United States will cease the application, and will continue to do so, in accordance with the JCPOA, of the sanctions specified in Annex II, to take effect simultaneously with the IAEA-verified implementation of the agreed upon related measures by Iran as specified in Appendix V. (Note: U.S. statutory sanctions focused on Iran’s support for terrorism, human rights abuses, and missile activities will remain in effect and continue to be enforced.)

55  Eight years after Adoption Day or when the IAEA has reached the Broader Conclusion that all the nuclear material in Iran remains in peaceful activities, whichever is earlier, the United States will seek such legislative action as may be appropriate to terminate or modify to effectuate the termination of sanctions specified in Annex II. Implementation Plan  Finalization Day is the date on which negotiations of this JCPOA are concluded among the E3/EU+3 and Iran, to be followed promptly by submission of the resolution endorsing this JCPOA to the UN Security Council for adoption without delay.  Adoption Day is the date 90 days after the endorsement of this JCPOA by the UN Security Council, or such earlier date as may be determined by mutual consent of the JCPOA participants, at which time this JCPOA and the commitments in this JCPOA come into effect.  Implementation Day is the date on which, simultaneously with the IAEA report verifying implementation by Iran of the nuclear-related measures described in Sections 15.1 to 15.11 of Annex V, the EU and the United States takes the actions described in Sections 16 and 17 of Annex V.  Transition Day is day 8 years after Adoption Day or the date on which the Director General of the IAEA submits a report stating that the IAEA has reached the Broader Conclusion that all nuclear material in Iran remains in peaceful activities, whichever is earlier.  UN Security Council resolution termination day is the date on which the UN Security Council resolution endorsing this JCPOA terminates according to its terms, which is to be 10 years from Adoption Day. Dispute Resolution Mechanism  If Iran believed that any or all of the E3/EU+3 were not meeting their commitments under this JCPOA, Iran could refer the issue to the Joint Commission for resolution; similarly, if any of the E3/EU+3 believed that Iran was not meeting its commitments under the JCPOA, any of the E3/EU+3 can do the same. The Joint Commission would have 15 days to resolve the issue, unless the time period was extended by consensus.  After Joint Commission consideration, any participant could refer the issue to ministers of foreign affairs, if it believed the compliance issue had not been resolved. Ministers would have 15 days to resolve the issue, unless the time period was extended by consensus.  If the issue has still not been resolved to the satisfaction of the complaining participant, and if the complaining participant deems the issue to constitute significant non-performance, then that participant could treat the unresolved issue as grounds to

56 cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part and / or notify the UN Security Council that it believes the issue constitutes significant nonperformance.

57 LobeLog/foreign policy 14 Jul 2015

President Obama’s Middle East Plate Is Still Full

by Robert E. Hunter Robert E. Hunter served as US ambassador to NATO (1993-98) and on the National Security Council staff throughout the Carter administration, first as Director of West European Affairs and then as Director of Middle East Affairs. In the last-named role, he was the White House representative at the Autonomy Talks for the West Bank and Gaza and developer of the Carter Doctrine for the Persian Gulf. He was Senior Advisor to the RAND Corporation from 1998 to 2011, and Director of the Center for Transatlantic Security Studies at the National Defense University, 2011-2012. He has been Chairman of the Council for a Community of Democracies since 2002 and is a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

With agreement in Vienna between the P5+ 1 countries and Iran on its nuclear program, there will be a rapid shift to dealing with the aftermath. What will now happen in Iran is an important story. This article is about what will—and should—happen now in the United States.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry can rightly celebrate what they have achieved. In getting from “there to here,” they have had not only to deal with Iran, its ambitions, its suspicions, its calculations of advantage, and its internal politics that are largely opaque to outsiders, but even more with the opponents of just about any deal who make up a large part of the coalition the US president has to convince that he has done the right thing.

After a few hours of well-deserved satisfaction at a “job well done,” the president and his team will have to get back to work: no rest for the weary.

Dealing with Pushback There are at least six tasks immediately ahead.

First will be countering the inevitable pushback from the opponents of the agreement, some perhaps on the merits after they read the lengthy documents, some who made up their minds even before the terms were settled. Saudi Arabia, some other Persian Gulf Arab states, and Israel will try to derail the deal in Congress, which now has 60 days in which to express its views. Most Republicans have all along wanted the president to fail here, just as they have blocked him elsewhere. And there is much gnashing of teeth in the Republican caucus on Capitol Hill, today.

But in addition to the carefully negotiated details in the agreement that rival any USSoviet nuclear arms control agreement during the Cold War, Obama has some trump cards. The American people don’t want another Middle East war. They don’t want young Americans put at risk in combat. And, in the final analysis on a crucial US security issue, most will support the commander-in-chief against naysayers-without-responsibility in

58 Congress. The polls bear this out, and members of Congress will ignore these facts at their (political) peril.

To add to the winning cards he has in his hand, Obama was inadvertently aided by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his outrageous act of speaking before a joint session of Congress to ask its members to choose between the president of the United States and a foreign leader in determining what is best for the security of this country (and, with self-interest rightly understood, also the true security of America’s partners in the Middle East!). He also has one further card. The US private sector wants back into Iran, any remaining sanctions be damned, in order to compete with the flood of investment and order books that will be flourished by European countries, Russia, and China.

The attacks on the agreement will be loud, intense, divisive, heavily-financed, and wellorchestrated. But—spoiler alert—President Obama will prevail.

Dealing with Expectations Second, the president needs to tamp down expectations that ”everything will now change” in relations with Iran. It won’t. Debates over the agreement—in the West and in Iran—must take place first, and the agreement will need to be incorporated into both sides’ politics. Although the United States and Iran have some compatible interests, at many levels and in many ways the two are still at loggerheads and in some matters are likely to continue to be so no matter how much good will the nuclear deal may now generate. Differing interests and 35 years of mutual hostility don’t just dissolve in the face of euphoria at what has been achieved and hopes for the future.

Third and related to the second point, Iran will have to “behave itself” beyond hewing to every last jot and tittle of the agreement, overseen by a modern-day Argus Panoptes, the many-eyed figure of Greek mythology. This means demonstrating beyond doubt that it is not engaged in exporting terrorism, a real deal-killer (Saudi Arabia: take note of American sensitivities about countries whose nationals export terrorism). It has to mean Iran’s backing off on its full-blown support for Hezbollah and stopping unacceptable comments about Israel. At some point, Iran and Israel will need to cut their own deal before the United States can truly accept Iran. Although this is in Teheran’s interest, it is still well in the future.

Fourth, the US will need to continue “reassuring” other countries in the region about Iran. The US was not going to withdraw from the region, even if Iran had agreed to everything that the United States and others had on their initial wish lists. Washington will now be even more tied to the region, at least for the foreseeable future, in order to show that Iran has not “suckered” the United States and to shore up other’s defenses against whatever it may have in mind. Already, some have elevated Iran to 10-foot-tall status. They claim that a flood of cash will now go into imperial ambitions, which one former senior US military officer argues is built into its DNA, from Cyrus onward!

59 Yes, there are challenges from Iran. But they are not military at the moment and are unlikely to be so in the future. The real challenge is that Iran is a big country, with a highly-educated and entrepreneurial people—look at all the successful Iranians in the US private sector—with cultural and religious ties to many countries of the region, and with a rapidly reforming internal debate over its future. Like it or not, Iran is becoming more modern than any of its neighbors, and this scares the daylights out of the Gulf monarchies. More women than men are in Iranian universities; in Saudi Arabia, they still can’t drive a car.

American support for countries worried about an Iran even partially liberated from sanctions is in major part being denominated in arms sales, training, and other military evidence of our concern for the futures of our Middle East partners, however much this is not the cure for what really ails these societies. Israel will want—and get—more military support. The US might even consider new formal security arrangements in the Persian Gulf region, as though these would substitute for the inherent American interest in regional security and stability. Who knows: any formal arrangements might one day also include Iran, and an “empty chair” should be set for it at the table. That would be preferable to any security structure based on the assumption, which is not in America’s interest, of an immutable confrontation between the two sides of the Persian Gulf.

Identifying Common Interests Fifth, the administration will need to continue, most gingerly, considering ways in which US and Iranian interests in the region are compatible and potential reinforcing. This is certainly true in regard to countering the Islamic State (ISIS or IS). In their concern about Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states have failed to recognize that they can only keep the US and Iran from jointly bearing the brunt of opposition to IS by ending their own ambivalence toward it. To do this, particularly in Saudi Arabia, the governments must stop indulging the aspirations of their own terror-supporting politicalcultural-religious elites.

The US, Iran, and everyone else have a common interest in the free and protected flow of commerce in the Persian Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz. It is past time that the countries moving ships through the Gulf concluded something akin to the 1972 USSoviet Incidents at Sea Treaty, formalizing cooperation already taking place informally.

The US and Iran also have a similar interest in reducing the chances that the Taliban will take over Afghanistan once Western troops leave. Such cooperation worked in 2001, when Iran helped overthrow the Taliban (until President Bush’s most unfortunate dubbing of Iran as a member of an Axis of Evil, which ended Iran’s cooperation and thus vastly complicated US efforts in Afghanistan since then). It could be possible, again.

Part of America’s promoting its interests with Iran and others involves working to get all regional countries to understand that the US will not support either side in the struggle between Sunnis and Shias – however little we may be able to moderate this competition.

We will also not take sides in the geopolitical competitions that pit so many countries against one another, including Iran and the Gulf Arab States, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, and

60 one day perhaps again Syria and Iraq. As such, we need to back off the formal policy, more honored in the breach than the observance, that Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has to go – butcher though he is — as a sop to Sunni ambitions. Without a clear and practical plan for Syria’s future, which does not now exist, there is likely to be a widening sectarian war throughout the region.

In sum, the US approach to the region needs to be “America’s interests first.”

A Strategic Plan for the Region Last and most difficult of all, the Obama administration needs to do something that has so far eluded it. It needs to work toward a comprehensive, coherent, strategic approach to the region as a whole. It’s understandable to an extent that the administration has failed to do this since it has been working hard simply to keep the US out of another war that is not in our interests to fight while dealing with Iran (difficult) and the enemies of a nuclear agreement (equally difficult if not more so).

To devise a more strategic approach to the regions, the president will need to add to his team, make some changes, and reach out both to the US expert community and to the State Department, most of whose able people have been sidelined by the unprecedented concentration of power in foreign and security policy in the White House.

Maybe it is too late in the Obama administration to do this. It should have been done years ago. Nevertheless, with the Iran agreement, the president has done three big things that will be recognized by history. He has reduced the chances of more war in the Middle East (beyond those already going on). He has offered some hope of a better future in the region, as difficult as it will be to achieve. And he has handed to his successor something precious, like Obamacare (big) and the opening to Cuba (not so big).

With Iran, he is taking the heat for something important to the United States and the American people, so that his successor will not have the problem of a possible Iranian nuclear bomb on his or her plate. The next president should say “thank you” to this president for his foresight and political courage.

61 LobeLog/foreign policy 14 Jul 2015

A Long Road Reaches Iran Deal, But No Guarantees Going Forward

by Jasmin Ramsey A final deal was reached on Iran’s controversial nuclear program in the early morning hours of July 14 in Vienna, over a decade after talks between Iran and world powers began.

“This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can bring about real and meaningful change — change that makes our country, and the world, safer and more secure,” said U.S. President Barack Obama.

“Put simply, no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East,” said Obama during remarks made from the East Room of White House.

The “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA), drafted during 18 consecutive days of intensive negotiations in the Austrian capital by Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany), freezes Iran’s nuclear programme for the next decade in exchange for gradual sanctions relief.

The agreement “establishes a strong and effective formula for blocking all of the pathways by which Iran could acquire material for nuclear weapons,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association.

“When implemented, the P5+1 and Iran agreement will establish long-term, verifiable restrictions on Iran’s sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities—many of these restrictions will last for 10 years, some for 15 years, and some for 25 years,” he added.

New Era of U.S.-Iran Relations “With courage, political will, mutual respect and leadership, we delivered on what the world was hoping for: a shared commitment to peace and to join hands in order to make our world safer,” Iran’s top negotiator, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, said Tuesday during a joint statement issued in Vienna with EU High Representative Federica Mogherini.

“This is a historic day also because we are creating the conditions for building trust and opening a new chapter in our relationship,” he added.

The deal was made between Iran and the P5+1, but direct U.S.-Iranian engagement— jumpstarted after a historic phone call between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and U.S. President Barack Obama in 2013—has proven to be the key ingredient of success.

This is not the first time Tehran and Washington have cooperated.

62 Iran’s assistance—led by Zarif when he was ambassador to the U.N.—proved crucial to the U.S. mission to establish a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan.

But it is the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution that Tehran and Washington have negotiated during an extended period of time, openly, directly and (mostly) respectfully at the highest level to bring about an internationally sanctioned, historic accord.

“That’s what they mean by confidence-building measures,” said Gary Sick, a former national security official and Columbia University scholar who has been studying U.S.Iran relations for decades.

“This is the beginning of what could be a process of the U.S. and Iran developing a better and more normal relationship,” he added. “I don’t expect that to be instant…but you have to begin some place, and it’s a good beginning.”

12 Years in the Making The process that led to the deal has taken more than decade.

The Europeans, known then as the EU-3 (France, Germany, UK), began the negotiations with Iran in 2003 before the U.S., along with China and Russia, finally joined the talks in 2006 and formed the E3+3 (or P5+1).

It would take five more years of desultory talks, threats of war, “crippling” sanctions, sabotage, assassinations, cyber warfare, and a change of presidents in Tehran and Washington before an interim agreement was finally reached in 2013.

The U.S. and Iran have been enemies since Iranians brought down their U.S.-backed monarch in a widely supported revolution premised on the notion of independence from foreign exploitation.

Throughout the negotiations chants of “Death to America” from Iranian hardliners and its supreme leader’s public disdain for the U.S. have continued.

During the final round of talks in Vienna, while Iran’s foreign minister posed for photographs at one-on-one meetings with the U.S. Secretary of State—their nation’s flags side-by-side behind them—Iranian hardliners burned American flags at the government-sponsored Qod’s Day festivities.

The U.S. government has meanwhile made no secret of its enmity with Iran.

The State Department has officially listed the Islamic Republic as a state sponsor of terrorism every year since the revolution. Both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations have issued threats of war and imposed sanctions that have also severely harmed Iran’s economy.

63 Although Democratic President Obama adopted a softer stance than his Republican predecessor, some congressional hawks have continued Bush’s aggressive anti-Iranian rhetoric.

Iran is a “pariah nation” determined to acquire nuclear weapons to deploy “against us and our allies,” wrote GOP presidential candidate Lindsay Graham in the Wall Street Journal in May. “I met a lot of liars, and I know the Iranians are lying,” said the senator a week later. “[D]eception is part of the DNA,” said Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, the U.S.’s top negotiator until Kerry stepped in, during testimon aimed at convincing Congress to delay imposing new sanctions on Iran in 2013.

Nothing, however—not Zarif’s public outrage after the U.S. released “fact sheets” following the 2014 accord that he said “underplays concessions” to Iran and “overplays Iranian commitments,” nor vitriolic displays of anti-Americanism in Tehran, or even the Israeli prime minister’s ongoing warnings about Iran’s allegedly evil ambitions—has pushed either side away from the negotiating table.

Road Ahead Congress has 60 days to review the final deal. Republican lawmakers have already threatened to block it.

“This ‘deal’ will only embolden Iran – the world’s largest sponsor of terror – by helping stabilize and legitimize its regime as it spreads even more violence and instability in the region,” said House Speaker John Boehner in a statement.

“We will fight a bad deal that is wrong for our national security and wrong for our country,” he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the deal a “historic mistake,” will also lobby Congress, as he did in March, to reject the deal.

President Obama vowed, however, to veto any bill that delays its implementation.

“This is not the time for politics or posturing,” he said Tuesday. “The world would not support an effort to permanently sanction Iran into submission.”

The Iranian parliament, which has expressed consistent criticism of the negotiations, will also review the deal though no timeframe has been set.

Before the final deal was announced, officials on both sides were already suggesting that a successful conclusion to the talks could lay the groundwork for further U.S.-Iran cooperation.

64 But even though a cartoon of Obama taking a selfie in Tehran has already made its way into an Iranian magazine, experts argue that hopes for a Nixon-to-China historical replay are premature.

“Thirty-five years of mistrust and hostilities cannot be resolved through only the nuclear issue,” Hossein Mousavian, who served as the spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team when Rouhani was its chief, told IPS. “A deal is a success and big step toward lessening tension…but the wall of mistrust is so thick that breaking it down would take some years,” he said.

65 Rand 14 Jul 2015 The Rand blog

The Iran Nuclear Deal: RAND Experts Answer Questions About the Days Ahead

by Lynn E. Davis, Dalia Dassa Kaye, Alireza Nader, Jeffrey Martini Now that a nuclear agreement with Iran has been concluded, the United States faces a series of important policy decisions that will help shape the days ahead and the relationship that will emerge between Iran and the other parties involved.

For nearly two years, RAND experts have been engaged in a broad, forward-thinking exercise to explore what the “Days After a Deal” might look like in terms of U.S. policy options, Iran's foreign policy, and regional responses from Israel and Saudi Arabia.

We asked several RAND researchers who were involved in the “Days After a Deal” project to reflect on what they think may be coming next. The researchers were Lynn Davis, a senior political scientist; Dalia Dassa Kaye, director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy and a senior political scientist; Alireza Nader, a senior international policy analyst; and Jeffrey Martini, a Middle East analyst.

Given Iran's past history of misbehavior and the concerns of American allies in the region, should the United States “wait and see” whether Iran complies or “seize the opportunity” to engage Iran and seek to open the door for the two countries to emerge from a prolonged deep freeze in their relationship?

Davis: Before falling into the easy way ahead, it is time to seriously consider different ways to encourage a new and improved dynamic between the United States and Iran.

Any pursuit of engagement would, of course, hinge on Iran's complete cooperation with the terms of the nuclear deal; anything less, and harsh consequences such as tougher sanctions or even military action could follow.

One way would be for the United States to open up further talks with Iran and hold out the possibility of future incentives—such as greater easing of economic sanctions—while still maintaining a strong military presence in the region to put allies at ease, and also to continue the fight against the Islamic State. Those areas where interests could converge include the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Should the United States de-emphasize military threats against Iran in the region, through U.S. declaratory statements or in U.S. military preparations or through other means?

Davis: Underlying such an approach would be the view that Iran's behavior is at least in part driven by its sense of threat and that assuaging Iran's perceived vulnerability is a way to elicit a positive change in behavior. Any path the United States takes will be risky on all sides. Anything less than a hard line against Iran would alarm U.S. partners and

66 almost certainly face strong opposition from Congress, where strong skepticism about Iran continues. But a continuing hard line also jeopardizes Iran's acceptance of a deal, and possibly even its cooperation in meeting its promises.

Isn't doing nothing a viable option?

Davis: There is no question that the easiest way ahead is to adopt a “wait and see” attitude and make no changes in policies. But the stakes are too high not to give alternative policies much more serious consideration than has been apparent to date.

What kind of reaction can be expected from the old guard, anti-American conservatives who hold the real power in Iran, especially Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

Nader: That part of Iran's leadership needs the United States as an enemy. A nuclear deal—and, more importantly, the lifting of some economic sanctions—would give President Hassan Rouhani a boost and may buy him some freedom to pursue his domestic and foreign-policy reforms. But Khamenei and his conservative allies will still maintain a tight grip on Iran's economy, military, and security forces. That means any improvement in Iran's relationship with the United States after a nuclear deal will be neither sudden nor dramatic. It also means a deal will not likely lead to any great breakthrough in Iran's anti-Israel stance. However, an improved and more open economy and a less isolated Iran could facilitate long-term changes in Iranian society and politics.

What does the deal and the possibility of warmer U.S.-Iran relations mean to Israel?

Kaye: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been blunt in his assessment that the nuclear deal with Iran is a bad deal. He and other Israeli leaders have warned that any deal that falls short of stripping Iran of all nuclear-enrichment capabilities will pose an unacceptable threat to Israel. Israel has even threatened military strikes in the past, but it is unlikely to go it alone with a military offensive after the rest of the international community accepts a nuclear deal with Iran.

More likely, Israel will encourage the U.S. Congress to reject the deal and if that effort fails, we can expect Israel to continue pressing for continued economic sanctions until Iran is in full compliance with the agreement, as well as the preservation of non-nuclear sanctions related to terrorism and human rights issues. Israel will also advocate bolstering credible military options should Iran violate the agreement and will likely play an active role in exposing potential Iranian cheating during the deal's implementation phases. Israeli officials have made it clear that they have zero confidence that Iran will abide by the deal.

All that said, despite initial opposition to the interim nuclear deal in 2013, some Israeli leaders noted benefits of that deal in largely freezing Iran's program, and former highlevel Israeli officials have been critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu's strident opposition to nuclear negotiations. So we might see some debate among Israel's security elite after the deal about its potential merits and risks, and whether continued Israeli opposition is productive.

67

What about Saudi Arabia?

Martini: Although surviving in a rough neighborhood is nothing new for the Saudis, the Kingdom feels particularly vulnerable today. Domestically it faces a terrorism threat from the Islamic State the likes of which the Saudis haven't experienced since the early 2000s. Externally, the Kingdom feels challenged by Iran's staying power in Lebanon and Syria, its surge in Iraq and Yemen, and Tehran's continued military and technological advance. And further enflaming Saudi threat perceptions, all of these developments are taking place against the backdrop of succession as well as Saudi unease with the reliability of Washington as a security guarantor.

In this context, the Saudis are pursuing a more activist foreign policy that is intended to deter Iran and signal to the United States that it is Riyadh, and not Tehran, that serves as the backbone of the regional order. This predisposes the Saudis to oppose a nuclear deal that they see as another step in legitimating Iran as a regional power. Saudi Arabia's most troubling response to a deal—although not especially likely—would be to pursue the acquisition of its own nuclear bomb to match what it sees as Iran's threshold nuclear capability. More likely, and already underway, would be for the Saudis to step up their support for armed groups opposing Iranian “proxies” in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. The approach is designed to shut down opportunities for a broader U.S.-Iranian détente that would shift the regional balance of power away from Riyadh.

How can the United States deal with such regional opposition?

Kaye: The opposition to a deal from two of the region's most important players means that the United States will have to keep the lines of communication open at the highest levels as a nuclear deal goes forward. Among the greatest challenges: assuring both Saudi Arabia and Israel that any failure by Iran to live up to the terms of its agreement will be met with strong consequences brought by an international coalition. Such assurances will be difficult in an environment where both actors view U.S. influence in the region as being in decline.

The United States must also be careful to balance reassurances to our partners with efforts to integrate Iran into the regional security landscape to reduce sectarian tensions that are destabilizing the region.

68 Slate 14 Jul 2015

Why Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Neocons Hate the Iran Deal Hint: It has nothing to do with the deal.

By Fred Kaplan Here’s the thing to keep in mind about most critics of the Iran nuclear deal that was signed Tuesday morning: Their objections have nothing to do with the details of the deal.

The most diehard opponents—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi King Salman, and a boatload of neocons led by the perennial naysayer John Bolton—issued their fusillades against the accord (“an historic mistake,” “diplomatic Waterloo,” to say nothing of the standard charges of “appeasement” from those with no understanding of history) long before they could possibly have browsed its 159 pages of legalese and technical annexes.

What worries these critics most is not that Iran might enrich its uranium into an A-bomb.

(If that were the case, why would they so virulently oppose a deal that put off this prospect by more than a decade?) No, what worries them much more deeply is that Iran might rejoin the community of nations, possibly even as a diplomatic (and eventually trading) partner of the United States and Europe.

European leaders, especially Federica Mogherini, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, and Philip Hammond, Great Britain’s finance minister, have said that the deal holds out hope for the reopening of broad relations with Iran—and that is precisely these critics’ fear.

Netanyahu and King Salman believe to war-war is better than to jaw-jaw.

The fear is hardly without reason. The lifting of sanctions, which this deal will trigger in the next few years, will certainly enrich Iran. This might embolden the government’s expansionist tendencies and its support of militant movements across the Middle East— or it might moderate the country’s stance, as the population (much of it literate and proWestern) interacts more with the rest of the world and the reigning mullahs die off.

There is some basis for this hope of transformation. How long can the mullahs sustain their cries of “Death to America” and their claims of Western encirclement—the rationale for their oppressive domestic policies—when the country’s president and foreign minister, clearly with the approval of the supreme leader, are shaking hands and signing deals with the Great Satan’s emissaries? Nonetheless, the hope is a gamble, and one can’t blame Israelis for refusing to stake too much on its payoff.

The Saudi royal family is another matter. King Salman sees the entire Middle East through the prism of a grand Arab cold war between Sunnis and Shiites—with the Shiites led by Iran and all Shiite movements, for instance the Houthi rebels in Yemen, as nothing more than Iranian proxies. It’s a zero-sum game: American diplomacy with Iran, in this view, amounts to an American betrayal of Saudi Arabia.

What Netanyahu and King Salman want Obama to do is to wage war against Iran—or, more to the point, to fight their wars against Iran for them. That is why they so virulently oppose U.S. diplomacy with Iran—because the more we talk with Iran’s leaders, the less likely we are to go to war with them. Their view is the opposite of Winston Churchill’s: They believe to war-war is better than to jaw-jaw.

69 LobeLog/foreign policy 14 Jul 2015

Broader Geopolitical Implications of Iranian Nuclear Accord

by Mark N. Katz Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. He earned a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982. He is the author of many books and articles, including Leaving without Losing: The War on Terror after Iraq and Afghanistan (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).

Now that an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue has been reached, attention is turning to how it will affect Israel and the Gulf Arabs. The accord, though, also has implications for the broader geopolitical competition between Russia and China on the one hand and America and their neighbors on the other.

Many in Asia look fearfully at what they see as not just an increasingly powerful but also an increasingly assertive China. The Obama administration’s “pivot toward Asia” is focused on just this concern as well.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea, support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, numerous military aircraft intrusions over several European countries, and other aggressive actions have resulted in raising American and European fears about Putin’s intentions. Further, the fact that Moscow and Beijing are increasingly cooperating with each other is also a cause for concern in America, Europe, and Asia.

With tensions rising between America and its allies on the one hand and Russia and China on the other, it is especially remarkable that Russia and China have worked so cooperatively with America, Britain, France, and Germany to reach a nuclear accord with Iran. What explains this?

Reasons for Cooperation Many observers have pointed out that despite their differences, the P5+1 governments (America, Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia) all have a common interest in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet neither Moscow nor Beijing ever seemed as fearful as America and Europe, much less Israel and the Gulf Arab states, about the prospect of a nuclear Iran. “A pro-American Iran is more dangerous for us than a nuclear Iran” is a view that I have heard frequently expressed in Moscow. Russia and China would quickly accommodate a nuclear Iran even if (indeed, perhaps especially if) America and its allies did not.

Other factors, then, must have motivated Beijing and Moscow to cooperate with the West in achieving an Iranian nuclear accord. China’s economic calculation, for instance, seems fairly straightforward. China needs petroleum. Iran has lots of it. China, thus,

70 sought an accord that would lift international restrictions on its buying petroleum from Iran. Beijing could, of course, have simply ignored these restrictions, but this would have complicated its extensive economic ties with the West. China is better off with a Western-approved accord that allows it to buy Iranian petroleum without damaging its trade with the West.

For Russia, the economic calculation is not so straightforward. Unlike China, Russia is a petroleum exporter and so competes with Iran in this realm. Russia has benefited from international sanctions keeping Iranian petroleum off the world market. Especially after suffering both from Western sanctions and from the overall petroleum price decline recently, Moscow cannot be pleased that the announcement of an Iranian nuclear accord led to an immediate drop in the price of oil. Still, the end of economic sanctions against Iran opens other economic opportunities for Moscow, including the prospect of Russian investment in the reviving Iranian petroleum sector as well as increased exports of Russian arms and other goods to Tehran.

Whatever their economic motivations (or lack thereof), Moscow and Beijing also have important political reasons to support the accord. Since Rouhani became president of Iran in 2013, Tehran itself has sought both a nuclear accord and improved ties with the West. So long as the Iranian government wants such ties, then for Moscow (which has less to gain from the end of international sanctions on Iran than Beijing) to try to oppose it would risk damaging Russia’s own relations with Tehran. In the worst case (from the Russian point of view), attempting to block an Iranian nuclear accord may have led Tehran and the West to simply ignore Moscow and work out an agreement on their own, thus hurting Putin’s efforts to build the image of Russia as a great power. For both Russia and China, it was far better to support Iran’s efforts to get a deal with an America with which they are both at odds than to risk damaging their ties to Iran by attempting to thwart Tehran on this.

The Geopolitics of the Accord Relations between America and its European and/or Asian allies on the one hand and either Russia, China, or both on the other may further deteriorate. This possibility provides a strong incentive to improve relations with Iran. Each side would prefer Iran to ally with it against the other, and at minimum wants to prevent Iran from siding with the other against it. Although Tehran is not likely to actively ally with Washington against either Moscow or Beijing any time soon, American interests would be well served at a time of increased tensions with Russia and China if Iran does not ally with either or both of them against the U.S. Moscow in particular is fearful that the Iranian nuclear agreement will lead to a broader Iranian-American rapprochement that it does not see as being in Russia’s interests. As noted earlier, so long as Tehran and Washington both want to improve their ties, Moscow really cannot stop them from doing so. Moscow, though, can take heart that there is plenty of opportunity for Iranian-American relations to sour without Russia doing anything. Conservative forces in both the U.S. and Iran have already announced their

71 strident opposition to the agreement. America’s Middle East allies—Israel and the Gulf Arabs—also oppose the agreement and have considerable ability to rally opposition against it inside the U.S. If, for whatever reason, the nuclear accord is not implemented and Iranian-American relations sour, Moscow and Beijing can both be expected to pounce on the opportunity this will present. Both will join Tehran in blaming Washington as being responsible for the breakdown of the agreement. American efforts to restore sanctions against Iran might not only drive Tehran closer to Moscow and Beijing but might also alienate some of America’s allies more concerned with improving economic ties to Tehran than with the possibility of an Iranian nuclear threat. In the worst case, growing hostility between Iran and the U.S. at a time when tensions with Russia and/or China are also growing could result in Iran becoming their informal or even formal ally. This would neither be in the interests of America nor of America’s Middle East allies who genuinely fear Iran.

The opponents of the Iranian nuclear accord claim that it involves too many risks and not enough benefits. But at a time when increased geopolitical competition with Russia and China looms, it is the failure of the Iranian nuclear accord that would incur serious risks while providing no benefits to the U.S.

72 Atlantic Council 14 Jul 2015

The Middle East Transformed by Iran Agreement? Take a Deep Breath; Here’s Why Not

BY RICHARD LEBARON The reactions to the nuclear agreement with Iran announced July 14 were utterly predictable. Those against the agreement yesterday are those against the agreement today. Those for it are still for it. The Obama administration will fight for its approval by Congress and the Netanyahu administration will fight against it. Republican presidential hopefuls are all against it. Democratic hopefuls (at least one) is for it. And all this was before ten in the morning.

Only the really crazy people decided that they wanted to learn in some detail what was in the agreement before passing judgment. After all, it could take up to a couple days to get a feel for the details, nuance, and the series of compromises that went into the final agreement. By that time, Twitter will have moved on to something else. By that time, what you think won’t be re-tweetable by even your most enthusiastic followers!

Take a deep breath, and let it out very slowly … Here are a few things that are going to be the same for a while: 1) The Middle East is not going to suddenly become a better or worse place. It will take time to see if the agreement has any legs in the Congress and among Iranian hardliners.

Both still have opportunities to sabotage it this year and for the next ten years. Israel did not become a less safe place to live today and the Gulf did not become less secure.

They may think that, but there is no reason to believe it.

2) Iran has not normalized relations with the West with a stroke of the pen. It remains on the US list of nations supporting terrorism. It remains the lifeblood of Hezbollah. It remains on the wrong side in Syria. It can’t be “normal” until it figures out how to drop its worst clients, including Bashar al-Assad.

3) Nobody is going to make big money quickly. Just because sanctions are eliminated doesn’t mean Iranians will have lots of money to spend. They could go through unfrozen assets fairly quickly, and the declining price of oil is not going to help them. Youth unemployment is around twenty-five percent. Exports other than oil are negligible, (although I’ll be checking my pistachio futures). The state and the Revolutionary Guard own most of the major economic enterprises and run them badly. Trading with Iran, let alone investing there, has never been simple—it ranks close to Djibouti in ease of doing business.

73 The Nation 14 Jul 2015

With the Nuclear Deal, the US and Iran Start a New Chapter Diplomacy prevailed over warmongering. But reactionary forces on all sides are still trying to scuttle the deal.

By Ali Gharib Just two years ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was still the president of Iran. His crude manner and belligerent obstinacy inspired threats from the West—from Congress and from its allies in Israel’s right-wing government. A few years before, a massive Atlantic cover story had declared a 50-50 chance of war. It seemed all but assured that the probability of such a confrontation, universally regarded as a disastrous proposition by anyone who didn’t have an ideological commitment to it, could only increase. Those were dark days.

Twenty-five months ago, Iranians went to the polls and elected a mullah—from among the much demonized Iranian mullahs—as president. The man at the pinnacle of power in Iran, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, would remain firmly in place, but Hassan Rouhani’s win signaled flexibility nonetheless. The bellicose Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the American airwaves to deride Rouhani’s “smile.” The remark was not without irony: Ahmadinejad smiled a lot himself, but his grins were those of a mischievous child, the needling of authority that came after a misdeed. That Netanyahu didn’t recognize the smiling precedent and the distinction with a difference that Rouhani represented spoke ill of his interpretation of events. Both smiled, but the new Iranian president was clearly of another breed.

By August 2013, Rouhani was in power; by September, he was on the phone with Barack Obama, the first such contact between the heads of Iran and the US since Jimmy Carter rang up the last Shah; in November, an interim deal was signed between Iran and world powers. These small rays of light shone through the ominous clouds that had hung over the Iranian nuclear crisis for a dozen years.

This morning, daybreak came before dawn on the East Coast. Negotiators from the socalled P5+1—the US, China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom along with Germany—and Iran announced a historic comprehensive nuclear deal. The 20 months of negotiations were a long haul: There were extensions, blown deadlines, and attempts to scuttle the deal by Congress and Iran’s hardliners. But the talks finally culminated in a marathon session of 27 days in Vienna, blowing through another few deadlines and finally ending with this morning’s announcement.

The accord places long-term curbs on Iran’s nuclear progress, even rolling back its past progress in key areas like enrichment capabilities and fissile material stockpiles, and imposes the most stringent negotiated inspections regime in the history of the world.

The life of the restrictions and intensified inspections vary according to the specifics—the toughest limitations will be in force for at least 10 years, some for 15; some of the new verification measures will hold for 25 years and a few are permanent. In exchange, the Iranians get relief from the sanctions that have bitten its economy.

“Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not—a comprehensive, long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Obama said in early morning remarks welcoming the deal. He harkened back

74 to what things were like before the talks got under serious way, making the stakes clear: “Put simply, no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East.”

For the moment, that fate has been averted; perhaps that’s what has the deal’s main stateside opponents—neoconservatives, Israel lobby groups and much of the congressional GOP—positively apoplectic. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had the hottest of hot takes this morning, telling Bloomberg View that the accord was “akin to declaring war on Sunni Arabs and Israel by the P5+1.” That’s right: Graham is saying the aversion of war is actually the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (plus Germany, for good measure) bombing Israel. The catch: Graham told CNN later in the morning that he hadn’t read the deal, whose core runs only 20 pages, with scores more of annexes.

Those sorts of evaluations should merit nothing but eye-rolls, but sadly one cannot ignore the halls of American power entirely, despite their proclivity to ignorance. The deal will, after all, need to pass through a congressional review. According to a procedure passed by Congress and reluctantly accepted by the administration, the people’s representatives have 60 days to review the accord. If they disapprove of a deal, they must pass a resolution saying so in order to block its implementation (the US sanctions relief is achieved by Obama’s waiving the laws that impose them, which Congress could block). In his remarks, Obama vowed to reject any measure that attempted to do so. Such a veto would then need the support of only one-third-plus-one of either chamber to be sustained. Despite Graham’s prediction of congressional rejection, Obama seems likely to be able to marshal enough support from his party to keep the deal on track.

The agreement’s opponents may be shocking in their shamelessness, but not their substance. The objections are entirely predictable, with neoconservative pundits and Israel lobby groups like AIPAC forecasting them for months as the contours of the agreement became apparent in media reports. The deal won’t last long enough, they say, though by that they mean Iran won’t accept draconian permanent curbs, something no nation would do. Iran’s behavior hasn’t changed, they stammer, citing the Islamic Republic’s foreign-policy alliances with dictators like Bashar Assad, rebel groups like Yemen’s Houthis, and the unpalatable anti-Israel militants of Hamas and Hezbollah. That much is true, but the negotiations were strictly about the nuclear issue—which, by the way, the same hawks in Washington and Tel Aviv have been grousing about for years as the gravest threat to mankind since the White Walkers.

Now there is a deal that without question reduces that grave threat, at least for a longterm period. The deal includes provisions to “snap-back” sanctions if Iran violates its terms, ingeniously designed to prevent the malcontents among the veto-wielding UN powers—Russia and China—from blocking their reimposition on spurious grounds. The deal, crucially, has international buy-in because of the participation of the world powers.

Netanyahu and his congressional allies may complain endlessly, but they are swimming against the overwhelming international tide.

That said, the central players of this drama were always the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. They will continue to be so, by virtue of the history of enmity between the nations, which will not evaporate overnight. The United States will continue to criticize and counter Iran, both in its near abroad—the Middle East, our sometime playground—and at home, where the human-rights violations of the regime are sure to continue, if not initially get worse. And yet there is hope: nothing is certain, but many proponents of the deal, including stern critics of Iran’s malfeasance over the years, hope that the lifting of the clouds of war and Iran’s economic opening will lead to political and civil rights reforms.

75 “The fight after a nuclear deal is really going to be about the future of Iran, not about the deal itself,” Vali Nasr, the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former Obama administration official, told me late last week.

“Most of the people who are supporting the deal, myself included, they’re supporting it not because of the narrow details of, y’know, 1,500 centrifuges for so many sanctions.

They’re supporting it in the belief that it will do something much bigger in terms of sociopolitical change.”

The reactionaries of Iran’s hard-line institutions are likely to resist those changes. Their grip may hold for a time, even for the long term. But this much is clear: the path of isolation and punishment—the path, that is, toward confrontation we were all set on before these nuclear talks started—wasn’t yielding any fruits. Iran achieved milestone after milestone in its nuclear program. It meddled in its neighbors affairs. And it violated its own people’s human rights. That path held no prospects for reform—think Cuba—but now there is an opportunity, a reason for hope. The critics of this deal offer no alternative to it; theirs is a vision bereft of anything near the accomplishments of the agreement and the possibilities it proffers. Obama is right: The status quo of two years ago meant a path to war. This deal was itself the alternative, but not the one which Washington’s hawks wanted to see.

If, after more than three decades of the most vitriolic hostility, Iran and the United States can sit at the negotiating table and hammer out a deal that gives the world security from a potentially nuclear-armed Iran and presents economic opportunities for the Iranian people, then no one can deny the possibility of further movement between these two nations. Critics will holler that Obama “caved,” but that is just a code word for “compromised.” A willingness to bend without breaking was always necessary for a deal; the perfect has been the enemy of the good throughout the talks.

The forces of reaction, in the United States, in Iran, in Israel, and in the Sunni Arab states, will be furiously advocating for retrenchment. But there’s is a perspective cast into doubt by what has already been achieved so far. A new day has come.

76 The New York Times 14 Jul 2015

Congress to Start Review of Iran Nuclear Deal

By JONATHAN WEISMAN and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in Congress said Tuesday that they were prepared to reject the Iran nuclear deal, while many Democrats remained skeptical but willing to hear out President Obama’s pitch.

Under the terms of legislation passed in May, Congress has 60 days to scrutinize the accord between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany, and then to vote to accept or reject it — or to do nothing. The president can veto any resolution of disapproval. Congress needs a two-thirds majority in each house to override the veto, so to put the deal into force, Mr. Obama only needs one-third of one of the houses to stand with him.

But even potential supporters say the spectacle of a majority of Congress rejecting such a delicate international accord could do real damage.

“If I were in their shoes and I was responsible for this, I would want to win over a majority of the American people and convince them the deal is in their interest,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Who wants their legacy to be a deal that is barely approved by the narrowest of margins and is opposed by the majority of Congress? That would indicate a depth of division that would put the whole venture into question.”

At the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Obama began what promises to be an arduous process of pitching the historic agreement to Congress even as he was announcing its outlines. He said it was based on strict verification requirements that would leave nothing to chance when it came to Iran’s compliance and to thwarting its means of obtaining a weapon.

Saying he welcomed congressional scrutiny, the president offered “extensive briefings” from members of his administration on the deal, and threatened to veto any effort by Congress to block it. But he also previewed an overarching theme that senior officials and those close to the White House cite as a key component of their argument for the pact.

“Consider what happens in a world without this deal,” Mr. Obama said, arguing that without an accord there would be “no lasting constraints on Iran’s nuclear program,” prompting other countries in the area to race for a weapon and “threatening a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region in the world.”

The House Foreign Relations Committee will open a review of the deal on Tuesday with hearings before the details are widely known. The committee’s chairman, Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California, expressed his concerns in an interview on Monday, as a deal appeared imminent.

“We have given up not just all the leverage we had on Iran with the sanctions. We’ve also sent a message of weakness in the way this has been handled,” he said.

Administration officials argued on Tuesday that a decision by the United States to walk away from the agreement would in essence free Iran from crippling sanctions, including limits on oil sales, which European leaders and those from China, India, South Korea and Japan agreed to impose, in some cases at great economic cost to their countries.

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“If, having gotten this deal, we then kill it, it is hard to see why those countries would then go back along with additional sanctions,” one senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the strategy behind the agreement. “A vote to kill this deal could potentially be a vote to kill the sanctions regime.”

Mr. Obama and White House aides have already begun the wooing. At a White House reception last week for Senate Democrats, Mr. Obama spoke at length about the deal’s importance to his legacy, trying hard to assure his own party that he would not rush into an accord just to have the accomplishment.

“My foreign policy legacy in this area will be judged on whether or not the deal works, not just over the next 18 months but over many years,” Mr. Coons said Mr. Obama had told the gathering. “If I put together a deal that fails to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, that would be part of my legacy as well,” the president added, according to Mr. Coons.

The White House chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, met last week with the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, and its ranking Democrat, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, to hear their concerns, Mr. Cardin said. After some initial reluctance to share classified information on the talks, the White House has become far more forthcoming, Mr. Cardin added.

“There are people who have already made up their minds, no question about that, and I think that’s unfortunate,” Mr. Cardin said. “But at this point, a majority of Congress believes we have to objectively review what’s in the agreement before we decide what course we’re going to take.”

Mr. Cardin said the Iran review, while proceeding in Congress initially over the White House’s objections, probably played to the West’s advantage. Under the terms of the law that established the review, Congress has 30 days to examine the agreement before sanctions can be lifted on Iran. But because Congress will be in its August recess when that review period ends, the deal effectively has an additional month of public scrutiny before Congress can decide its actions.

Mr. Cardin said the Iranians thought they could force negotiators to accept terms more favorable to Tehran to avoid that extra 30-day period. But American negotiators in the end let that deadline slip.

“Iran thought they’d blink at the last minute, and they didn’t,” he said.

White House officials must now decide whether the president should try to win over a majority of Congress, including hostile Republicans, or focus on shoring up a Democratic base to sustain a veto. Mr. Royce said he thought the strategy to protect the veto was already in play.

“I don’t see them convincing skeptical Democrats this is a good agreement. I see them pressuring Democrats to go along,” he said.

Democrats see a broader strategy. Mr. Coons said earlier this summer that he had told administration officials he did not just want political reassurances. He was trained as a chemist, and he said he had wanted to hear the science backing the administration’s contention that a deal could stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. White House officials then arranged a classified briefing with Ernest J. Moniz, the energy secretary; a Nobel Laureate; and three nuclear weapons scientists.

“It was substantively reassuring,” Mr. Coons said.

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Mr. Cardin added, “They will be lobbying hard, not just with Congress but with the American people.”

Several left-leaning groups, including many of the antiwar activists who helped propel Mr. Obama into the White House, said on Tuesday that they would be working aggressively to defend the deal.

“The diplomatic negotiations between the United States and five world powers have yielded a strong, verifiable deal with Iran,” said Anna Galland, the executive director of MoveOn.Org Civic Action.

The group called the agreement “a historic foreign policy success for the Obama administration,” and said it was urging all members of Congress to back it.

“Persuading senators and representatives to do so will be MoveOn members’ top priority over the next 60 days,” Ms. Galland added.

Win Without War, a coalition of national groups, said it too was launching a “national campaign” in favor of the agreement.

“This is a good deal and a historic opportunity to win without war,” Stephen Miles, the group’s advocacy director, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, congressional opponents of any deal with Iran will stop at nothing to scuttle this agreement and put our nation on the path to yet another war in the Middle East. We have seen this movie before and we know how it ends. We will not stand idly by while those who pushed for war with Iraq try to push us into war with Iran.”

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group, said his organization was likely to support the deal “because the primary interest of the United States and Israel was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and that is the outcome of this deal.”

But the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel group known as Aipac that is likely to campaign against the deal, said it was “deeply concerned” about the contents.

In a statement, the group said it feared the agreement had fallen short of “critical requirements” it had insisted upon for a “good deal,” which included “anytime, anywhere” inspections of Iranian nuclear sites and a duration of multiple decades.

“We are deeply concerned based on initial reports that this proposed agreement may not meet these requirements, and thereby would fail to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon and would further entrench and empower the leading state sponsor of terror,” Aipac said.

79 The New York Times 14 Jul 2015 Taking Note: The Editorial Page Editor's Blog

Republicans Race to Condemn the Iran Deal

By ANDREW ROSENTHAL The Republican presidential candidates fell all over themselves today trying to see who could condemn the nuclear deal with Iran the most quickly and in the most cataclysmic terms. It made no difference whether they actually knew anything about the deal, about Iran, about nuclear arms, or about foreign policy in general. They had their attacks ready, just as they have had and will have to anything President Obama does or wants.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who reportedly has been getting briefings on foreign affairs because he’s the governor of a Midwestern state with no actual experience in the area, announced: “The deal allows Tehran to dismantle U.S. and international sanctions without dismantling its illicit nuclear infrastructure — giving Iran’s nuclear weapons capability an American stamp of approval.”

Actually, no. It requires Iran to dismantle a great deal of its “illicit nuclear infrastructure” before sanctions start to be lifted, would restore them and impose more if Iran cheats, and keeps in place many sanctions based on Iran’s human rights record and its support for terrorist organizations.

“Shame on the Obama administration for agreeing to a deal that empowers an evil Iranian regime to carry out its threat to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ and bring ‘death to America,’” said Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor.

Mr. Huckabee, like the rest of the G.O.P. field, offers not a clue as to how he would prevent Iran from doing those things, which don’t actually require a nuclear weapon, which the United States and Israel have, by the way.

“Based on what we know thus far, I believe that this deal undermines our national security,” said Marco Rubio, the Florida senator. Mr. Rubio said the United States should ratchet up sanctions until Iran agrees to completely dismantle its nuclear program. It’s long been clear that won’t happen, and it could never be verified in any case without a deal like the one Mr. Obama and other world leaders signed.

“A comprehensive agreement should require Iran to verifiably abandon – not simply delay – its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability,” said Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida. Well, yes, that would have been comprehensive. Again, it was never going to happen.

Would Mr. Bush argue that a succession of United States presidents should not have negotiated arms deals with the Soviet Union because they did not lead to full, unilateral disarmament and a renunciation of communism? I hope not.

The same applies to a comment by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who said: “The deal threatens Israel, it threatens the United States, and it turns 70 years of nuclear policy on its head.” It does not do those things.

80 One of my favorite lines of attack was the one voiced by (among others) Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas and former spectacular failure in the Republican primary process. “President Obama’s decision to sign a nuclear deal with Iran is one of the most destructive foreign policy decisions in my lifetime,” he said.

Seriously?

How about the Bay of Pigs; Vietnam; the secret bombing of Cambodia; the invasion of Cambodia; the C.I.A. plot to overthrow and perhaps murder the president of Chile, ushering in decades of military dictatorship and the slaughter of countless Chileans; Iran-Contra; the failure to take prompt action against the Balkan genocide; the decision to retreat from the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and invade Iraq based on propaganda and disinformation; and the botched invasion of Iraq, which laid the groundwork for regional warfare and the formation of the Islamic State terrorist group?

Going back just a few years before Mr. Perry was born in 1950, there was the decision to carve up Europe with Stalin, creating the Soviet bloc, sparking a nuclear arms race and leaving entire nations in bondage to the Kremlin for a half century.

Meanwhile, over in the land of reality TV, Donald Trump predicted that the Iranians would cheat. Perhaps they will, but this assessment comes from the man who reportedly told some Hollywood conservatives last Friday that the United States should have invaded Mexico instead of Iraq.

81 The New York Times 14 Jul 2015

Republican Lawmakers Vow Fight to Derail Nuclear Deal

By JONATHAN WEISMAN and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS WASHINGTON — Before Congress had even begun its official review, Republican leaders vowed Tuesday to kill President Obama’s nuclear accord with Iran, setting up a fierce fight to save the president’s signature diplomatic achievement.

Congress will have 60 days to review the deal, once all documents have been sent to the Capitol, after which it can pass a resolution of approval, pass one of disapproval or do nothing. Mr. Obama would veto a resolution of disapproval, and the opponents could derail the agreement only if they could rally the required two-thirds vote of Congress to override his action.

“I want to go through this process and make sure we fully understand what we’re voting on,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “In the end, those who believe this truly is going to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon will vote for it. Those who believe that is not the case, and the world is not going to be safer — in some ways it may pave the way for them to get a nuclear weapon — will vote against it.”

Mr. Corker, the chief author of the review act, strongly implied that he was in the latter camp.

Republican opposition to diplomatic overtures dates at least to President Richard M. Nixon’s visit to China. Even President Ronald Reagan faced a backlash after raising the prospects of deep nuclear arms reductions after meeting Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland.

For the White House, selling the deal to Congress, including doubters in the president’s own party, may prove almost as difficult as reaching agreement with Iran.

Mr. Obama defended the deal in a lengthy interview with the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, and scheduled a formal news conference at the White House on Wednesday to address questions about it, while Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to meet with House Democrats on Capitol Hill to build support among lawmakers.

There was no similar effort to assuage Republicans, whose repudiation of the Iran deal was a blow not only to Mr. Obama but also to conservative leaders the party usually backs, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

“In the next couple of months, the international community is going to be focused on Congress. I got that,” Mr. Corker said in an interview. “I understand the position we’re in.”

After decades of war in the Middle East, it is unclear whether such opposition will reflect broad public opinion or a narrow, passionate core of hawkish conservatives and proIsrael Democrats.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, expressed support for the deal both publicly and behind closed doors with congressional Democrats.

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“This is an important step in putting the lid on Iran’s nuclear program,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters during a visit with Democrats at the Capitol. All Republican presidential contenders who offered an opinion said they strongly opposed the deal.

On Iran, the bellicose position may be the easiest one politically. Republicans saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between Democratic politicians and the Jewish voters who traditionally support them. One senior House Democrat said party leaders were trying to show that a presidential veto would be safe from an override, but they were struggling to find a third of the House willing to publicly state support for the deal.

In talks with foreign policy analysts, Jewish groups and other prominent stakeholders whose support or opposition could be pivotal, White House nuclear experts and State Department officials argued that the deal would place strict, verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear program and cut off Iran’s paths to a nuclear weapon.

“We have cut off every pathway for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Obama said in the interview.

Mr. Obama said he anticipated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel would lobby Congress to reject the deal. He added that at some point he was prepared to discuss additional security aid that the United States could offer Israel to allay its concerns.

Mr. Netanyahu “perhaps thinks he can further influence the congressional debate, and I’m confident we’re going to be able to uphold this deal and implement it without Congress preventing that,” Mr. Obama said in the interview.

But critics were also preparing a large-scale mobilization during the August congressional recess, when lawmakers are in their home states and districts, to stoke opposition to the agreement and agitate for Congress to block it, just as supporters of the president were preparing their own counteroffensive.

Without waiting for the details, Republicans lined up to blast the deal, from presidential candidates to congressional leaders to back benchers. Jeb Bush evoked Nazism and denounced “appeasement.” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, another Republican White House hopeful, promised that the next president would undo it.

“We’ll do everything we can to stop it,” Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio vowed.

White House officials focused on making as strong a case as they could for the deal — then scrounging together enough votes to make sure it survives.

Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California and an opponent of the deal, said Washington knew exactly how the issue would play out. “We will have a resolution of disapproval,” he said during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the deal on Tuesday. “It’ll pass. It will be vetoed. The veto will be sustained. And we will get the deal in the weakest, most pitiful way possible.”

Even potential supporters say the spectacle of a majority of Congress rejecting such a delicate accord could be damaging.

“Who wants their legacy to be a deal that is barely approved by the narrowest of margins and is opposed by the majority of Congress?” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That would indicate a depth of division that would put the whole venture into question.”

83 Mr. Obama and his aides have already begun the wooing. At a White House reception last week for Senate Democrats, Mr. Coons said Mr. Obama spoke at length about the Iran deal’s importance to his legacy, trying hard to assure his own party that he would not rush into an accord just to have the accomplishment.

Still, White House officials were bracing for difficult questions about the implications of the agreement, including what happens after the strictest limitations phase out after 10 years and how to address what Iran may do with the money — at least $100 billion in sanctions relief — to which they will gain access through complying with the deal.

The White House lined up its allies, including liberal and antiwar groups, to weigh in strongly in favor of the deal. Many did so on Tuesday, promising national campaigns to defend a deal they called the only alternative to endless war in the Middle East.

White House officials now must decide whether Mr. Obama should try to win over a majority of Congress, including hostile Republicans, or focus on shoring up a Democratic base to sustain a veto. Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he saw the veto strategy already in play.

“I don’t see them convincing skeptical Democrats this is a good agreement,” he said. “I see them pressuring Democrats to go along.”

84 The New York Times 14 Jul 2015

Iran Deal Denounced by Netanyahu as ‘Historic Mistake’

By Isabel Kershner JERUSALEM — Furiously denouncing the accord to limit Iran’s nuclear program on Tuesday as “a historic mistake,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would not be bound by the agreement and warned of negative repercussions in a region already riven with rivalries and armed conflict.

Contrary to President Obama’s assertion that the agreement will cut off every pathway for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, Israel’s leaders rejected the deal as a dangerous compromise that will exacerbate regional tensions and pave the way over time for Iran to produce multiple bombs — “an entire arsenal with the means to deliver it,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

Israel views a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to its survival. For Mr. Netanyahu, the accord is the bitter culmination of a long struggle that has severely strained Israel’s relations with the United States, its crucial ally. Even before the deal was formally announced Mr. Netanyahu accused the United States and the other five world powers of making “far-reaching concessions” in their determination to reach a deal “at any cost.”

The disagreement showed no sign of abating. In a phone call hours after the signing of the deal, Mr. Obama told Mr. Netanyahu that it “will remove the specter of a nucleararmed Iran, an outcome in the national security interest of the United States and Israel,” according to a statement from the White House. Mr. Netanyahu told Mr. Obama that the agreement raised the danger that Iran would obtain nuclear weapons either by waiting out the 10 to 15 years of restrictions specified by the accord, or by violating it.

Referring to the expected lifting of sanctions Mr. Netanyahu said in a televised statement in English: “In the coming decade, the deal will reward Iran, the terrorist regime in Tehran, with hundreds of billions of dollars. This cash bonanza will fuel Iran’s terrorism worldwide, its aggression in the region and its efforts to destroy Israel, which are ongoing.”

Describing Iran as a “rogue regime,” he added, “We will always defend ourselves.”

Israeli experts said that even though the agreement contained positive aspects that freeze or even roll back Iran’s nuclear program over the coming decade, it was still deeply problematic given the Israeli conviction that Iran is patient when it comes to building its nuclear capabilities.

Ephraim Asculai, who worked at the Israel Atomic Energy Commission for over 40 years, said the main problem he foresaw after reading the agreement was verification of Iranian compliance, particularly inspecting sites other than declared nuclear installations.

Mr. Asculai said the verification mechanism “is lacking.”

“Access is limited,” said Mr. Asculai, who is now at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “One cannot go and search for undeclared facilities or undeclared materials and activities.”

Permission to visit an undeclared facility depends on inspectors presenting evidence of why they want to go there, he said. Since he speculated that that would involve revealing sensitive intelligence to the Iranians, he said “their hands are tied from the beginning.”

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Emily Landau, the director of the institute’s arms control and regional security project, asked, “If there is no perceivable change in Iran’s military aspirations in the nuclear realm, the question is, why would sun-setting the deal be a good idea?”

More fundamentally, Israeli experts say the agreement empowers Iran and affords legitimacy to its nuclear program, which it insists is for peaceful purposes. That, they say, is likely to trigger a nuclear arms race in the region, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey likely to want to acquire similar capabilities.

In a rare display of Israeli consensus, criticism of the deal crossed the political lines.

Isaac Herzog, the leader of the center-left Zionist Union party and head of the opposition in Parliament, said that Israel was on the verge of “a new era in the Middle East that poses security and diplomatic challenges for Israel that are more dangerous and complex than any we have known before.”

Avigdor Lieberman, the former foreign minister and leader of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, which is also in the opposition, compared the accord to the Munich Agreement reached with Nazi Germany in 1938, saying, “It is an agreement of total capitulation to unrestrained terrorism and violence in the international arena.”

But Mr. Netanyahu’s domestic opponents have differed on Israel’s approach, particularly toward relations with the Obama administration. Some critics are portraying the deal as a personal failure for the prime minister, who infuriated the White House by addressing a joint meeting of Congress in the spring to attack the negotiations. They say that the spoiled relations with the Obama administration harmed Israel’s ability to influence the outcome.

Mr. Netanyahu is now gearing up for the next fight: to lobby Congress to reject the deal and ultimately override any presidential veto. But that is likely to lead to further confrontation between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama at a time when many Israelis say what is needed is the rebuilding of trust and intimacy between the allies.

Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israel’s military intelligence, said in an interview that his recommendation was for Israel “not to meddle in internal American affairs.”

But he said that Israel could still come to understandings with the United States about what happens if Iran violates the agreement or decides to race toward building a bomb.

At the same time, Mr. Yadlin said, Israel should maintain its “operational options,” including a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities “for when all other options are exhausted.”

Aside from a possible nuclear arms race in the Middle East, Israeli experts are also concerned that American compensation for the deal in the form of arms packages for other United States allies in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, could also erode Israel’s so-called qualitative edge when it comes to weapons.

Although Israel and Saudi Arabia share joint concerns about Iran, they do not have diplomatic relations.

“There is an agreement between Israel and the United States, which I hope won’t be violated, that Israel should keep its qualitative edge under any circumstances,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser who is now at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “This is not compensation but an obligation,” he added.

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“In the Middle East,” Mr. Amidror said, “the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but another enemy.”

87 The New York Times 14 Jul 2015 Video interview with President Obama: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/opinion/thomas-friedman-obamamakes-his-case-on-iran-nuclear-deal.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Obama Makes His Case on Iran Nuclear Deal Thomas L. Friedman Only hours after the conclusion of an agreement with Iran to lift oil and financial sanctions in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, President Obama is a man who evinces no second thoughts whatsoever about the deal he struck. In a 45-minute interview in the Cabinet Room, the president kept stressing one argument: Don’t judge me on whether this deal transforms Iran, ends Iran’s aggressive behavior toward some of its Arab neighbors or leads to détente between Shiites and Sunnis. Judge me on one thing: Does this deal prevent Iran from breaking out with a nuclear weapon for the next 10 years and is that a better outcome for America, Israel and our Arab allies than any other alternative on the table?

The president made clear to me that he did not agree with my assessment in a column two weeks ago that we had not used all the leverage in our arsenal, or alliances, to prevent Iran from becoming a threshold nuclear power, by acquiring a complete independent enrichment infrastructure that has the potential to undermine the global nuclear nonproliferation regime. Personally, I want more time to study the deal, hear from the nonpartisan experts, listen to what the Iranian leaders tell their own people and hear what credible alternative strategies the critics have to offer. But the president certainly argued his case with a conviction and internal logic with which his critics and Congress will have to seriously contend.

“We are not measuring this deal by whether it is changing the regime inside of Iran,” said the president. “We’re not measuring this deal by whether we are solving every problem that can be traced back to Iran, whether we are eliminating all their nefarious activities around the globe. We are measuring this deal — and that was the original premise of this conversation, including by Prime Minister Netanyahu — Iran could not get a nuclear weapon. That was always the discussion. And what I’m going to be able to say, and I think we will be able to prove, is that this by a wide margin is the most definitive path by which Iran will not get a nuclear weapon, and we will be able to achieve that with the full cooperation of the world community and without having to engage in another war in the Middle East.”

To sell this deal to a skeptical Congress, President Obama clearly has to keep his argument tight. But I suspect his legacy on this issue will ultimately be determined by whether the deal does, in the long run, help transform Iran, defuse the U.S.-Iran Cold War and curtail the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East — not foster their proliferation. That, though, will be a long time in determining. For the near term, the deal’s merit will be judged on whether Iran implements the rollback of its nuclear enrichment capabilities to which it has agreed and whether the deeply intrusive international inspection system it has accepted can detect — and thereby deter — any cheating.

Here are some highlights from the interview: Asked about whether we failed to use all of our leverage, including a credible threat of force, the president said: “I think that criticism is misguided. Let’s see exactly what we obtained. We have cut off every pathway for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. The reason we were able to unify the world community around the most effective sanctions regime we’ve ever set up, a sanction regime that crippled the Iranian economy and ultimately brought them to the

88 table, was because the world agreed with us, that it would be a great danger to the region, to our allies, to the world, if Iran possessed a nuclear weapon. We did not have that kind of global consensus around the notion that Iran can’t enjoy any nuclear power whatsoever. And as a member of the nonproliferation treaty, the NPT, their argument was, ‘We’re entitled to have a peaceful nuclear program.’

“And what we were able to do,” the president continued, “is to say to them, ‘Given your past behavior, given our strong suspicion and evidence that you made attempts to weaponize your nuclear program, given the destabilizing activities that you’ve engaged in in the region and support for terrorism, it’s not enough for us to trust when you say that you are only creating a peaceful nuclear program. You have to prove it to us.’ And so this whole system that we built is not based on trust; it’s based on a verifiable mechanism, whereby every pathway that they have is shut off.”

The president argued that his approach grew out of the same strategic logic that Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan used to approach the Soviet Union and China.

“You know, I have a lot of differences with Ronald Reagan, but where I completely admire him was his recognition that if you were able to verify an agreement that [was negotiated] with the evil empire that was hellbent on our destruction and was a far greater existential threat to us than Iran will ever be,” then it would be worth doing, Mr. Obama said. “I had a lot of disagreements with Richard Nixon, but he understood there was the prospect, the possibility, that China could take a different path. You test these things, and as long as we are preserving our security capacity — as long as we are not giving away our ability to respond forcefully, militarily, where necessary to protect our friends and our allies — that is a risk we have to take. It is a practical, common-sense position. It’s not naïve; it’s a recognition that if we can in fact resolve some of these differences, without resort to force, that will be a lot better for us and the people of that region.”

Asked if he believed that, given the depth of Iran’s civil society, which in 2009 launched a “green revolution” challenging clerical rule, the forces there for greater integration with the world would be empowered by this deal, the president said: “With respect to Iran, it is a great civilization, but it also has an authoritarian theocracy in charge that is anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, sponsors terrorism, and there are a whole host of real profound differences that we [have with] them,” said the president. “And so, initially, we have a much more modest goal here, which is to make sure Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. …

“What’s interesting, if you look at what’s happened over the last several months, is the [Iranian] opponents of this deal are the hard-liners and those who are most invested in Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, most invested in destabilizing Iran’s neighbors, most virulently anti-American and anti-Israeli. And that should tell us something, because those hard-liners are invested in the status quo in which Iran is isolated, and they are empowered. They become the only game in town. Not just militarily they call the shots, but economically they’re able to exploit the workarounds from sanctions in order to fatten themselves in a situation in which you have a different base of business people and commerce inside of Iran that may change how they think about the cost and benefits of these destabilizing activities.

“But we’re not counting on that,” the president stressed, “and that’s the thing I want to emphasize, because even over the last several weeks and today, as we announce the deal, what’s been striking to me is that, increasingly, the critics are shifting off the nuclear issue, and they’re moving into, ‘Well, even if the nuclear issue is dealt with, they’re still going to be sponsoring terrorism, and they’re going to get this sanctions

89 relief. And so they’re going to have more money to engage in these bad activities.’ That is a possibility, and we are going to have to systematically guard against that and work with our allies — the gulf countries, Israel — to stop the work that they are doing outside of the nuclear program. But the central premise here is that if they got a nuclear weapon, that would be different, and on that score, we have achieved our objective.”

Asked if President Vladimir Putin of Russia was a help or a hindrance in concluding this deal, Mr. Obama said: “Russia was a help on this. I’ll be honest with you. I was not sure given the strong differences we are having with Russia right now around Ukraine, whether this would sustain itself. Putin and the Russian government compartmentalized on this in a way that surprised me, and we would have not achieved this agreement had it not been for Russia’s willingness to stick with us and the other P5-Plus members in insisting on a strong deal.

“I was encouraged by the fact that Mr. Putin called me a couple of weeks ago and initiated the call to talk about Syria. I think they get a sense that the Assad regime is losing a grip over greater and greater swaths of territory inside of Syria [to Sunni jihadist militias] and that the prospects for a [Sunni jihadist] takeover or rout of the Syrian regime is not imminent but becomes a greater and greater threat by the day.

That offers us an opportunity to have a serious conversation with them.”

My biggest concern and that of many serious critics who would actually like to see a deal work is that Iran is just not afraid of a serious U.S. military retaliation if it cheats. I asked the president, Why should the Iranians be afraid of us?

“Because we could knock out their military in speed and dispatch if we chose to,” he said, “and I think they have seen my willingness to take military action where I thought it was important for U.S. interests. Now, I actually believe that they are interested in trying to operate on parallel levels to be able to obtain the benefits of international legitimacy, commerce, reduction of sanctions while still operating through proxies in destructive ways around the region. That’s been their pattern, and I think it is very important to us to make sure that we are surfacing what they do through their proxies and calling them into account. That is part of the conversation we have to have with the gulf countries.”

With such a crowded pool of Republican presidential candidates competing over the right-wing base, it seems unlikely the president will get much support for this deal from G.O.P. members of Congress. ”I think it’s doubtful that we get a lot of current Republican elected officials supporting this deal,” Mr. Obama said. “I think there’s a certain party line that has to be toed, within their primaries and among many sitting members of Congress. But that’s not across the board. It’ll be interesting to see what somebody like a Rand Paul has to say about this. But I think that if I were succeeded by a Republican president — and I’ll be doing everything that I can to prevent that from happening — but if I were, that Republican president would be in a much stronger position than I was when I came into office, in terms of constraining Iran’s nuclear program.

“He will be in a position to know that 98 percent of their nuclear material has been shipped out. He would know that the majority of the centrifuges had been removed. He would know that there is no heavy reactor there. He’d know that the international community had signed on to this. He would know everything that we’ve learned from the inspection regime. And he’d still be in possession of the entire arsenal of our armed forces, and our diplomatic and intelligence services, to deal with the possibility that Iran was cheating. ... They’re not going to admit that now. And that’s entire hypothetical, because I feel good about having a Democratic successor. But I think that this builds on bipartisan ideas, bipartisan efforts. We could not have succeeded without the strong

90 support of Congress on a bipartisan basis to impose the sanctions we did on Iran. They deserve enormous credit for that. And as we implement this I think it will prove to be not just good for us but good for the world.”

The president spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel by phone just before the start of the interview. Mr. Obama did not try to sugar coat their differences, but he hinted that his administration has in the works some significant strategic upgrades for both Israel and America’s gulf allies.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to discuss specific details about security agreements or work that we may be doing,” the president told me. “What I can tell you is that that process is in train. Now, with respect to the Israelis, I think it’s fair to say that under my administration, we’ve done more to facilitate Israeli capabilities. And I’ve also said that I’m prepared to go further than any other administration’s gone before in terms of providing them additional security assurances from the United States. The thing I want to emphasize is that people’s concerns here are legitimate. Hezbollah has tens of thousands of missiles that are pointed toward Israel. They are becoming more sophisticated. The interdiction of those weapon flows has not been as successful as it needs to be. There are legitimate concerns on the part of the gulf countries about Iran trying to stir up and prompt destabilizing events inside their countries. So they’re not just being paranoid. Iran is acting in an unconstructive way, in a dangerous way in these circumstances. What I’ve simply said is that we have to keep our eye on the ball here, which is that Iran with a nuclear weapon will do more damage, and we will be in a much worse position to prevent it.”

The president argues that preventing Iran from having any enrichment capacity is simply impossible. The key, he insists, is how well you curb it and verify its limitations: “Now, Prime Minister Netanyahu would prefer, and many of the critics would prefer, that they don’t even have any nuclear capacity. But really, what that involves is eliminating the presence of knowledge inside of Iran. Nuclear technology is not that complicated today, and so the notion that the yardstick for success was now whether they ever had the capacity possibly to obtain nuclear weapons — that can’t be the yardstick. The question is, Do we have the kind of inspection regime and safeguards and international consensus whereby it’s not worth it for them to do it? We have accomplished that.”

The president said he knows he is going to have a fight on his hands with Mr. Netanyahu and those in Congress who share the prime minister’s views, but he seemed confident that in the end he would prevail.

Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Obama said, “perhaps thinks he can further influence the congressional debate, and I’m confident we’re going to be able to uphold this deal and implement it without Congress preventing that. But after that’s done, if that’s what he thinks is appropriate, then I will sit down, as we have consistently throughout my administration, and then ask some very practical questions: How do we prevent Hezbollah from acquiring more sophisticated weapons? How do we build on the success of Iron Dome, which the United States worked with Israel to develop and has saved Israeli lives? In the same way I’m having conversation with the gulf countries about how do we have a more effective interdiction policy, how do we build more effective governance structures and military structures in Sunni areas that have essentially become a void that [the Islamic State] has filled or that, in some cases, Iranian activities can exploit?”

The president added: “And what I’ve also tried to explain to people, including Prime Minister Netenyahu, is that in the absence of a deal, our ability to sustain these sanctions was not in the cards. Keep in mind it’s not just Iran that paid a price for sanctions. China, Japan, South Korea, India — pretty much any oil importer around the world that had previously import arrangements from Iran — found themselves in a

91 situation where this was costing them billions of dollars to sustain these sanctions.

“In some ways, the United States paid the lowest price for maintenance of sanctions, because we didn’t do business with Iran in the first place. They made a significant sacrifice. The reason they did was because my administration, our diplomats, and oftentimes me personally, were able to persuade them that the only way to resolve this nuclear problem was to make these sanctions bite. And if they saw us walking away from what technical experts believe is a legitimate mechanism to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon — if they saw that our diplomatic efforts were not sincere, or were trying to encompass not just the nuclear program, but every policy disagreement that we might have with Iran, then frankly, those sanctions would start falling apart very rapidly. And so, maybe Iran wouldn’t get $150 billion, but they’d get a big chunk of that, because we would not be able to sustain that support.”

It strikes me that the one party that we have heard the least from, but in the end could count the most, is the Iranian people and how they ultimately react to this opening of Iran to the world as a result of this deal. What would Mr. Obama say to them?Continue reading the main story “What I’d say to them is this offers a historic opportunity,” the president said. “Their economy has been cratering as a consequence of the sanctions. They have the ability now to take some decisive steps to move toward a more constructive relationship with the world community. … They need to seize that opportunity, their leaders need to seize that opportunity. And the truth of the matter is that Iran will be and should be a regional power. They are a big country and a sophisticated country in the region. They don’t need to invite the hostility and the opposition of their neighbors by their behavior. It’s not necessary for them to be great to denigrate Israel or threaten Israel or engage in Holocaust denial or anti-Semitic activity. Now that’s what I would say to the Iranian people. Whether the Iranian people have sufficient influence to fundamentally shift how their leaders think about these issues, time will tell.”

Maybe, I suggested, it was time for the U.S. to launch a new peace process — between Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia and Shiite Persian Iran. After all, without some lowering of tensions between the two any empowerment of Iran is only going to increase tensions between these two historic rivals, whose internecine war is tearing the region apart.

“I have long believed that we have to encourage at least a lessening of the hostilities that currently exist between Shia and Sunni factions in the region,” Mr. Obama responded. “Now, I think when I talked to my gulf allies when we were at Camp David, they’d be very clear in saying that ‘We view ourselves as Arab nations, not Sunni and Shia,’ and I think they mean that sincerely. And many of them would say that our Shia citizens are full citizens and are treated fairly, but what I think is undeniable is that the sectarian forces that have been unleashed are adding to the viciousness and destructiveness of what’s happening in a place like Syria, what’s happening in a place like Yemen, what’s happening certainly in Iraq. And that our best chance at at least reducing the scope of those conflicts is for the Saudis and other Sunni states or Arab states to be at least in a practical conversation with Iran that says, `The conflict we are fanning right now could engulf us all in flames.’

“Nobody has an interest in seeing [the Islamic State] control huge swaths of territory between Damascus and Baghdad. That’s not good for Iran. It makes it very difficult for them to sustain a buffer, which has always been a significant motivator for them since the Iraq-Iran War. It’s not good for the Saudis. It leaves them vulnerable in all sorts of ways, and the truth of the matter is that, most importantly, it’s not good for the people there. You watch the news reports preceding the Arab Spring, but certainly since the Arab Spring started to turn into more an Arab Winter, and you weep for the children of this region, not just the ones who are being displaced in Syria, not just the ones who are

92 currently suffering from humanitarian situations in Yemen, but just the ordinary Iranian youth or Saudi youth or Kuwaiti youth who are asking themselves, `Why is it that we don’t have the same prospects that some kid in Finland, Singapore, China, Indonesia, the United States? Why aren’t we seeing that same possibility, that same sense of hopefulness?’ And I think that’s what the leaders have to really focus on.”

The president also said: “America has to listen to our Sunni Arab allies, but also not fall into the trap of letting them blame every problem on Iran. The citizens of more than a few Arab Gulf states have been big contributors to Sunni Jihadist movements that have been equally destabilizing.

“In some cases, for example, the Houthis in Yemen, I think Iranian involvement has been initially overstated,” said Mr. Obama. “When we see our intelligence, we don’t get a sense that Iran was strategically thinking, ‘Let’s march the Houthis into Sana.’ It was more of an indicator of the weakness of the government in Yemen. They now seek to exploit it. Oftentimes, they’re opportunistic. That’s part of the reason why my argument has been to my allies in the region, let’s stop giving Iran opportunities for mischief.

Strengthen your own societies. Be inclusive. Make sure that your Shia populations don’t feel as if they’re being left out. Think about the economic growth. Make sure that we’ve got better military capacity for things like interdiction. The more we do those things, that’s the level of deterrence that’s necessary because it is highly unlikely that you are going to see Iran launch a direct attack, state to state, against any of our allies in the region. They know that that would give us the rationale to go in full-bore, and as I said, we could knock out most of their military capacity pretty quickly.”

I noted to Mr. Obama that one of the issues most troubling nonpartisan critics of the deal is what happens if we suspect that Iran is operating a covert nuclear program at a military base not covered by this deal. There is a process in place that allows for inspections, but it could take over three weeks for international inspectors to get access after raising a complaint. Couldn’t Iran use that time to just scrub clean any signs of cheating?

“Yeah, but here’s where having somebody like [Energy Secretary] Ernie Moniz is pretty helpful, because he assured us that if, in fact, we have good mechanisms to scoop up and sample earth, this stuff has got a long half-life. My high school physics probably isn’t equal to Ernie Moniz’s, but I do remember it’s not that easy to suddenly just hide potentially radioactive material that’s been developed. The same is true, by the way, for the possibility that Iran might import materials that could be used for nuclear programs but might have a dual use. We’ve set up unprecedented mechanisms to be able to look at each one of those imports and say, ‘You got to show us how this is being used to ensure that it’s not being converted.’ ” The president added: “If you hear a critic say, `Well, this inspection regime is not 100 percent foolproof,’ I guess theoretically, nothing is 100 percent foolproof. But if the standard is what is the best, most effective, most rigorous mechanism whereby it is very, very, very difficult for Iran to cheat, then this is the mechanism, and it goes far beyond anything that was done, for example, in North Korea.”

In conclusion, I noted to Mr. Obama that he was now the U.S. president who’d had the most contact with Iran’s leadership since the 1979 Islamic Revolution there and the onset of the U.S.-Iran Cold War. What had he learned?

“Well, I haven’t learned yet to trust the Iranian leadership,” said Mr. Obama, “although I think that what John Kerry learned in his interactions with Foreign Minister Zarif — and that then traces back to President Rouhani — is that when you nail down an agreement, they do seem to follow it to the letter, perhaps thinking there may be a loophole here or there, which is why you have to button this stuff down. But the notion that once you put

93 something down on paper that somehow they’re just going to ignore it and try to pocket what they’ve gained, that’s not what we saw during the last two years of the interim agreement. There is, I think, restraints that they feel when they have an agreement and they have a document, that they need to abide by it. So I think we’ve learned that.

“I think that we’ve also learned that there are different voices and different forces inside of Iran, and that those may not be consistent with our values. The so-called moderate in Iran is not going to be suddenly somebody who we feel reflects universal issues like human rights, but there are better or worse approaches that Iran can take relative to our interests and the interests of our allies, and we should see where we can encourage that better approach.

“And then I think the last thing that — this is maybe not something I’ve learned but has been confirmed — even with your enemies, even with your adversaries, I do think that you have to have the capacity to put yourself occasionally in their shoes, and if you look at Iranian history, the fact is that we had some involvement with overthrowing a democratically elected regime in Iran. We have had in the past supported Saddam Hussein when we know he used chemical weapons in the war between Iran and Iraq, and so, as a consequence, they have their own security concerns, their own narrative. It may not be one we agree with. It in no way rationalizes the kinds of sponsorship from terrorism or destabilizing activities that they engage in, but I think that when we are able to see their country and their culture in specific terms, historical terms, as opposed to just applying a broad brush, that’s when you have the possibility at least of some movement.

“In the same way that when Ronald Reagan and others negotiated arms agreement with the Soviet Union, you had to recognize, yes, this is an evil, terrible system, but within it are people with specific historic ideas and memories, and we have to be able to understand those things and potentially try to make some connection. And the same was true with respect to Nixon and Kissinger going to China, which ended up being a very important strategic benefit to the United States.”

94 The New York Times 14 Jul 2015 The Opinion Pages | EDITORIAL

An Iran Nuclear Deal That Reduces the Chance of War

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD The final deal with Iran announced by the United States and other major world powers does what no amount of political posturing and vague threats of military action had managed to do before. It puts strong, verifiable limits on Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon for at least the next 10 to 15 years and is potentially one of the most consequential accords in recent diplomatic history with the ability not just to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon but also to reshape Middle East politics.

The deal, the product of 20 arduous months of negotiations, would obviously have provided more cause for celebration if Iran had agreed to completely dismantle all of its nuclear facilities. But the chances of that happening were effectively zero and even if all of Iran’s nuclear-related buildings and installations were destroyed, no one can erase the knowledge Iranian scientists have acquired after working on nuclear projects for decades.

As described by Mr. Obama and other officials, the deal seems sound and clearly in the interest of the United States, the other nations that drafted it and the state of Israel. In return for a phased lifting of international economic sanctions, Iran will reduce by 98 percent its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, which can be processed further into bombgrade fuel, and reduce the number of operating centrifuges used to enrich that fuel by two-thirds to 5,060. These limits mean that if Iran ever decided to violate the agreement and make a dash for a nuclear bomb, it would take a year to produce the weapons-grade fuel needed for a single bomb, compared with a couple of months now.

Many of the various restrictions in the agreement will be in force for 10 to 25 years.

Some, notably Iran’s agreement to constant and technologically advanced monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, will last indefinitely, as would its commitment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to never produce a nuclear weapon.

Inspectors will have access to suspicious sites “where necessary, when necessary,” President Obama said, and if Iran cheats, that will be detected early enough to respond, including by quickly reimposing sanctions or taking military action.

The deal nearly faltered on a demand by Iran and Russia that United Nations bans on the purchase and sale of conventional weapons and ballistic missiles be lifted immediately.

But in the end, the accord requires that the conventional weapons ban remain in place for five years and the missile ban for eight years — assuming Iran abides by its commitments.

It is deeply unsettling that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel derisively dismissed the deal immediately as a “historic mistake.” He, Republicans in Congress and most candidates for the Republican presidential nomination have opposed negotiations with Iran from the outset yet offered no credible alternative to a negotiated settlement.

The Republican presidential hopefuls repeated that formula today — condemnation of the deal with no credible alternative to offer.

That said, no one should have any illusions about Iran, which considers Israel a sworn enemy; often condemns the United States; supports Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations; and aspires to greater influence in the region. Once sanctions are lifted, it stands to gain access to billions of dollars from accounts in international banks that have been frozen and from new oil exports and other business deals.

95

American officials say that Iran will get that money over time, and that its immediate priority will be to deal with pressing domestic needs. More important, many American sanctions will remain in place even after the deal is implemented, including those relating to Iran’s support for terrorism and its human rights violations. The United States has to be extremely vigilant in monitoring how Iran uses those new funds and in enforcing those sanctions.

Agreeing on the nuclear deal is just the first step. Congress gets to review and vote on it. Powerful forces, like Mr. Netanyahu, have vowed to defeat it and Mr. Obama may have to make good on his vow to veto any resolution of disapproval. It would be irresponsible to squander this chance to rein in Iran’s nuclear program.

96 The Wall Street Journal 14 Jul 2015

Iran, World Powers Reach Nuclear Deal Accord sets White House on course for months of political strife with dissenters in Congress, Mideast allies

By LAURENCE NORMAN and JAY SOLOMON VIENNA—Iran reached a landmark nuclear agreement with the U.S. and five other world powers, a long-sought foreign policy goal of President Barack Obama that sets the White House on course for months of political strife with dissenters in Congress and in allied Middle Eastern nations.

The accord, which comes after a decade of diplomatic efforts that frequently appeared on the verge of collapse, aims to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons in exchange for relief of economic sanctions.

The Obama administration and its partners hope the deal will resolve a dispute that at times threatened to spark a military conflict. In the optimistic view, it would ease tensions with Tehran over time and pave the way for fresh attempts to resolve some of the region’s many other conflicts.

In an address from the White House early Tuesday, Mr. Obama hailed the deal, threatening to veto any vote in Congress against it.

“Today, because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region,” he said, adding it wasn't a deal built on trust. “Because of this deal, the international community will be able to verify that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon.”

Critics in Washington, Israel and the Gulf nations that neighbor Iran say the deal will merely delay the country’s path to nuclear weapons. After 10 years of restraint on its activities mandated by the agreement, Iran will then be able to ratchet up its nuclear program and potentially unleash a nuclear arms race in the region, they fear.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deal a historic mistake.

“Wide-ranging concessions were made in all of the areas which should have prevented Iran from getting the ability to arm itself with a nuclear weapon,’’ Mr. Netanyahu said.

“The desire to sign an agreement was stronger than everything else.”

The deal could provoke new strains in U.S. ties with Israel and other traditional Middle Eastern allies like Saudi Arabia. All have warned that lifting tight international sanctions will deliver an economic windfall that enables Iran to expand its regional influence by boosting funding for proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere.

The last two years of diplomacy were the most intense dialogue between Washington and Tehran since diplomatic relations were ruptured after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“Today, a new page has turned,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a nationally televised speech, adding that the deal met all of his country’s goals.

The final round of negotiations stretched for more than two weeks and was punctuated by tensions and setbacks, at times devolving into shouting matches among international officials. The U.S. repeatedly warned it was willing to walk away from a bad deal while

97 Iranians said they were ready to rev their nuclear program back up.

The deal came together shortly after warnings by Western officials that Iran had been given enough time and negotiations couldn't drag much past Monday. People involved said the maintaining of some U.N. sanctions and a process for ensuring sanctions snap back if Iran cheats were the two issues that held the negotiations up in the last few days.

Those issues didn’t just pit Iran against the six powers but also set Russia and China against the U.S. and its three European partners. Russia, already lining up arms sales to Tehran, has long said the arms and missile embargo on Iran should be scrapped up front and was eager to ensure that a sanctions snapback mechanism didn't undermine its veto right as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

In the end, diplomats said, a compromise kept the arms and missile embargo in effect for the next few years while allowing for some exemptions in special cases.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has spearheaded negotiations over the past two years, praised his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif as a tough negotiator and a patriot, saying the two had maintained mutual respect throughout often heated talks.

However, Mr. Kerry said the administration was fully aware that the nuclear deal wouldn't resolve Washington’s concerns about Iran’s actions.

“From the very beginning of this process, we have considered not only our own security concerns but also the...legitimate anxieties of our friends and our allies in the region— especially Israel and the Gulf States,” he said.

“What we are announcing today is an agreement addressing the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Period.”

At the heart of the agreement between Iran and the U.S., U.K., Russia, China, Germany and France is Tehran’s acceptance of strict limits on its nuclear activities for 10 years.

These are supposed to ensure that the country remains a minimum of 12 months away from amassing enough nuclear fuel for a bomb.

After the 10-year period, those constraints will ease in the subsequent five years although U.S. officials couldn't say how quickly. In exchange, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations will lift tight international sanctions on Tehran, a move that Western diplomats say could help Iran’s economy to expand by 7% to 8% annually for years to come.

Iran, which analysts say could double oil exports quickly after sanctions are lifted, will also receive more than $100 billion in assets locked overseas under U.S. sanctions.

Mr. Obama has cast the nuclear diplomacy as an effort to avoid another costly, risky war in the Middle East. He recently said that even if the U.S. took military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it would only partially set back Tehran’s program, not eliminate it.

The agreement still faces significant hurdles before it is fully implemented, a process Western officials said could take six to nine months.

Iran must take an array of specific steps. It must disable two-thirds of its centrifuges used to enrich uranium, which can be used as fuel for nuclear energy or nuclear weapons. It must slash its stockpile of enriched uranium and redesign its nuclear reactor in the city of Arak, part of a wider redesign ensuring it produces less plutonium, which

98 can also be used in a weapon.

Oil-rich Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for entirely peaceful purposes, such as producing electricity and medical isotopes.

After years of stalling, Iran also must shed light on its past nuclear activities, which many Western officials suspect was aimed at gaining nuclear weapons know-how. It must provisionally implement an agreement giving United Nations inspectors much broader access to nonnuclear sites including military installations inside the country and eventually get parliamentary approval for that agreement.

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency and Iran set out a short-term road map that says both sides will aim to finish their discussions of past nuclear work by the end of the year.

That will include answers about work Iran carried out in its Parchin military site, where the country is believed to have tested high explosives that could be used to detonate nuclear weapons.

The nuclear deal immediately fanned intense political debate in Washington, where Congress may vote within 60 days on the agreement. As a last resort, the Obama administration may have to rely on the support of Democrats to uphold a presidential veto if the Republican-led Congress votes to overturn the agreement. Western officials said they expected to introduce a new resolution backing the deal into the Security Council in the next 10 days.

The new resolution will replace past resolutions imposing broad sanctions on Iran.

The U.S. will maintain energy and financial sanctions on Iran linked to its rights abuses, ties to terrorist groups and to support for Syria’s regime among others.

Observers warned that given the complexity of the agreement, which contains one main text and five detailed annexes and totals about 100 pages, the risks of disputes over implementation of terms could cause delays or even derail the deal.

“The technical obstacles can be surpassed with goodwill and diligence, but political hurdles can turn into poison pills,” said Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst at Crisis International, an international conflict resolution group.

According to senior U.S. officials, the agreement will allow a Security Council ban on conventional arms sales to or from Iran to end after five years—or earlier if the U.N. nuclear agency gives its final, full all-clear that Iran’s nuclear program is purely peaceful.

That is expected to take many years.

In addition, a ban on trading ballistic missiles and parts with Iran will expire after eight years unless the IAEA gives its all-clear earlier. Iran is committed to using a special procurement channel to buy a wide range of products that could be used in a nuclearweapons program, the official said.

The agreement also raises doubts about how quickly U.N. sanctions could be snapped back on Iran if Tehran reneges on the deal. It sets up a process that could take two months.

However the deal includes specific oversight measures that few other countries have ever agreed to. There will be monitoring and oversight of Iran’s uranium mines, plants for manufacturing key parts of centrifuges and a range of activities that could be used to develop a nuclear warhead.

99 The Wall Street Journal 14 Jul 2015

Iran Deal Worries Mideast Neighbors Israel and Sunni Powers such as Saudi Arabia worry the nuclear accord between Iran and global powers will further destabilize the Middle East SAM DAGHER BEIRUT—A nuclear deal signed Tuesday between Iran and global powers aims to make the world a safer place. But many in the Middle East fear the opposite will prove true.

Regional critics say the pact appears to reward Tehran for a series of interventions in conflicts that have ratcheted up sectarian tensions, from Syria to Iraq to Yemen. The conflicts have fueled perceptions in Sunni-dominant countries—and shared by rival Israel—that Shiite Iran is waging stealthy proxy wars to widen its role as a regional power broker and check Saudi Arabia’s influence.

Case in point, said Ahmed Ramadan, a Syrian opposition leader based in Istanbul, are the billions of dollars Iran has spent propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime since the start of that conflict more than four years ago. Mr. Ramadan held little hope that the nuclear deal could pave the way for a change in Iran’s stance in Syria, where it has also dispatched thousands of fighters to support Mr. Assad’s Shiite-aligned government.

“Iran’s hands are dripping with the blood of Syrians,” Mr. Ramadan said. “It will have to do a lot to wash this away.”

For his part, Mr. Assad sent telegrams on Tuesday to both spiritual leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani, congratulating them on Iran’s “glorious victory,” according to Syrian state media. “We are confident the Islamic Republic will continue to back and with more vigor the just causes of all people,” he said.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the agreement an “historic mistake” and warned that lifting economic sanctions on Iran will give it “hundreds of billions of dollars” to boost support for allies in the Middle East that are also Israel’s enemies. He and other Israeli officials warned they would aggressively lobby against the deal.

Iranian officials have pledged to use freed-up funding from sanctions relief to revive the domestic economy and restart projects that had stalled for lack of funds during the sanctions era. But these officials, including deputy foreign minister Hossein AmirAbdollahian, have recently underlined Iran’s continued support for regional allies, particularly Syria.

Mr. Rouhani said after the deal Tuesday that Iran only sought closer relations with its neighbors, and wouldn’t exert pressure on them. He urged Iran’s neighbors not to fall for “the propaganda of the Zionist regime.”

“Our relations start afresh today,” he said. “We seek more closeness, unity, brotherhood and better relations.”

Hassan Hassan, an associate fellow with the London-based think tank Chatham House, said Gulf Arab states including Saudi Arabia—which despite its rivalry with Iran stands to benefit from increased business ties with it—will outwardly embrace Mr. Rouhani’s olive branch. But he warned this won’t diminish the proxy wars both sides are waging against each other in places like Syria and Yemen, and could feed the sense of victimhood

100 among the region’s Sunni majority who now see the U.S. conspiring with Iran against them.

“ISIS will benefit a lot from this deal; segments of the Sunni community in the region will see Iran as having won and brought in from the dark,” he said, referring to the Islamic State extremist group.

Since 2011, when popular uprisings and then civil wars engulfed some Middle East countries, Iran has projected its military and political might to safeguard a sphere of influence spanning from Tehran to Beirut and from Baghdad and Damascus.

Its efforts, many say, have plunged the region into a full-fledged sectarian war between Iran and its Shiite allies against Sunni groups of all stripes. These people fear a rapprochement between Iran and the U. S.—absent any change in Tehran’s behavior in the region—will only add to Sunni grievances, which have increased since the U.S. invasion of Iraq more than a decade ago.

So while Turkey welcomed the nuclear deal, the country’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu hoped it would present an opportunity for Iran to change what he called its “sectarian-driven policies” in the region.

“Iran needs to review its role in Syria, Iraq and Yemen,” said Mr. Cavusoglu speaking to reporters during a visit by Iraq’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. “We need to emphasize political dialogue -that’s our expectation from our brothers in Iran.”

In Iraq, where Iran has played a pivotal role in supporting the country’s Shiite majority, many Sunnis worried the agreement would embolden Tehran further and complicate efforts to build more of a cross-sectarian consensus to battle Islamic State, which controls swaths of Iraq and Syria.

News of the deal comes one day after Iraq’s religiously and ethnically divided security forces announced an incursion into Anbar, the vast Sunni majority province that has long been seen as an incubator for Sunni extremism and resentment against the Shiitedominated government in Baghdad.

Monday’s offensive marked the first time that Shiite-majority militias—many of them backed by Iran—launched a large-scale invasion into Sunni areas that remain heavilypopulated with civilians.

“We believe this nuclear deal will make Iran more stable and stronger and this will mean more negative interference in Iraq,” said Sadoun Sadeq al-Dulaimi, a tribal leader from Anbar.

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday cautiously welcomed the deal and said that it has always supported an agreement with Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons with strict verification measures and mechanisms to snap back sanctions if Iran violated it.

“In light of the nuclear program agreement, Iran must use its resources to serve its internal development and improve the conditions of the Iranian people instead of using them to cause instability in the region,” said an unnamed official quoted by state news agency.

The official said the kingdom is looking forward to build better relations with Iran as a neighboring country on the principle of non-interference in the affairs of others.

However, the kingdom has adopted a more assertive foreign policy since the new king ascended in January. Saudi Arabia has conducted a punishing air campaign against

101 Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are seen as allied with Iran.

“What Saudi Arabia is doing is standing up to Iranian influence, which is now decreasing in some regions,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said in Amman last week. “We are insisting that Iran doesn’t have a direct interference in the affairs of the Arab region.”

Some of Iran’s allies say Saudi Arabia and others may take the deal as an opening to increasing funding for its own regional proxies.

“We need to see how Saudi responds to this agreement. They are also fueling the proxy wars of the region,” said Mohammed Obeid, a former government official in Beirut close to Hezbollah’s senior leadership. “I believe they’ll accelerate their activities in Yemen, Syria and Iraq to have a chip on the table as talks continue.”

Throughout the talks and even during its final hours this week, Iran has assured Hezbollah that there will be no change in its support for the Lebanese political and militia group, said Mr. Obeid. Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah affirmed that during a televised speech to his supporters in Beirut on Friday, saying Iran would never recognize Israel’s right to exist and would continue its support for allies like the Syrian regime and what he called “resistance movements” across the region including in the Palestinian territories.

He said Arabs who cared about the Palestinian cause are mistaken to see Iran as their foe. “If you are an enemy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, then you are an enemy of Palestine and Jerusalem,” Mr. Nasrallah said.

102 The Wall Street Journal 14 Jul 2015

Congressional Republicans Signal Deep Resistance to Iran Nuclear Deal Republicans have warned that the accord will face a wall of resistance in the GOP-controlled Congress

By KRISTINA PETERSON WASHINGTON—The nuclear deal between Iran and six global powers is set to spark a fierce foreign policy fight on Capitol Hill, pitting Republicans and potentially some Democrats against President Barack Obama in his push to implement what would be a cornerstone of his international legacy.

Implementation of the accord depends on whether Mr. Obama can retain the support of enough of his party’s lawmakers in the face of what is almost certain to be widespread GOP opposition. Congress is expected to review the agreement and vote on it in early September, and the initial Republican reaction signaled deep resistance to the deal.

The prospect that the GOP-controlled Congress will try to block the deal puts Mr. Obama in the familiar position of trying to minimize defections from his own party and leaves Democrats considering whether they can back an agreement vilified across the aisle.

“The deal that we have out there, in my view, from what I know of it thus far, is unacceptable. It’s going to hand a dangerous regime billions of dollars in sanctions relief while paving the way for a nuclear Iran,” Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said Tuesday. “If in fact it’s as bad a deal as I think it is at this moment, we’ll do everything we can to stop it.”

Under the deal reached Tuesday in Vienna, Iran accepted strict limits on its nuclear activities for 10 years. These are intended to ensure the country remains a minimum of 12 months away from amassing enough nuclear fuel for a bomb.

But many lawmakers said they worried the deal would still leave Iran capable of producing a nuclear weapon at the decade’s end and questioned what type of access international inspectors would have to ensure Iran was complying with the deal.

After the 10-year period, those constraints will ease in the subsequent five years. In exchange, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations will lift tight international sanctions on Tehran.

The deal “appears to further the flawed elements of April’s interim agreement because the Obama administration approached these talks from a flawed perspective: reaching the best deal acceptable to Iran, rather than actually advancing our national goal of ending Iran’s nuclear program,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).

Democratic leaders applauded the deal as a diplomatic achievement that could stop the spread of nuclear weapons in the region.

“A nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable to the United States, unacceptable to Israel, and unacceptable to the world,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who spoke with Mr. Obama by phone Monday night. “Aggressive restrictions and inspections offer the best long-term plan to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Congress will closely review the details of this agreement.”

103

Many other top Democrats remained noncommittal Tuesday, saying they awaited answers from the administration about key provisions. Congressional Democrats defied the White House earlier this year to demand the right to review and vote on the deal, but it remained an open question Tuesday whether they would back the president’s diplomatic efforts.

“I go into this skeptical, I have been skeptical, and I am not going to make a final decision until that skepticism is fully relieved,” said Rep. Steve Israel of New York, the highest-ranking Jewish Democrat in the House.

In the Senate, a key figure will be Sen. Charles Schumer of New York,poised to succeed Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada as Democratic leader. Mr. Schumer said Tuesday that he planned to scrutinize the deal closely and consult with experts before deciding whether to support it.

“There are certainly areas of interest and concern,” said Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Even Republicans with whom administration officials thought they could work early on in the talks expressed concerns over the contours of the deal.

“I begin with skepticism because two years ago we had a roguish country with a boot on its neck and we went from dismantling their [nuclear] program to managing their proliferation,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) told reporters Tuesday.

Many lawmakers have also raised questions about provisions in the agreement ending a United Nations Security Council ban on conventional arms sales to or from Iran after five years or earlier, and a similar easing of a ban on trading ballistic missiles and parts with Iran after eight years.

GOP resistance is likely to be bolstered by opposition from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the deal a “historic mistake.” Israel is expected to actively lobby U.S. legislators against the deal.

Both Republicans and Democrats said their assessment of the deal would depend on how quickly sanctions on Iran would be rolled back, whether inspectors would be allowed to enter sites at any time to confirm that Iran wasn’t cheating, as well as when and how the deal addresses the lifting of a U.N. arms embargo on Tehran, among other issues.

To proceed with the deal, the White House can afford to lose the support of most Republicans, as long as a veto-proof majority of Congress doesn’t coalesce against the accord.

Mr. Obama, in an early-morning national address from the White House, called on Congress to approve the deal and threatened to veto any vote against it. The president, who had made an Iran nuclear agreement his signature foreign policy goal, said “no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East.’’

Under legislation passed in May, Mr. Obama won’t be able to ease any sanctions against Iran during a 60-day period designated for lawmakers to review the deal. The 60-day period doesn’t begin until the administration has submitted the completed deal’s full text and any appendices to Congress. Had negotiators struck a deal by July 9, that review period would only have been 30 days.

After the initial review, lawmakers have an additional 12 days if they try to pass a

104 resolution through both chambers disapproving or approving the deal. Congress could also opt not to vote on it at all.

If lawmakers pass a resolution disapproving the deal and Mr. Obama vetoes it, Congress has a final 10 days to attempt to override his veto, which requires a two-thirds majority of both chambers. Mr. Obama can still implement the deal if Congress can’t override his veto.

Lawmakers and aides consider an override an unlikely prospect, given how many Democrats would need to reject a potential cornerstone of the president’s foreign policy legacy, particularly in the Senate, where Republicans hold 54 seats. It would take 67 votes to override a veto in the Senate, requiring at least 13 Democrats to oppose the deal. But with many Democrats still studying the agreement, some GOP lawmakers and aides have suggested a veto-proof majority could be a possibility.

Because Congress will be out of session for much of August during its summer recess, any vote on the accord is most likely to come when lawmakers return in September, Mr. Corker said.

Democrats applauded Mr. Obama for completing the deal, but made clear they planned to scrutinize the accord before endorsing it.

Some sounded more hopeful about the deal on Tuesday, saying the agreement appeared to offer a better path to curbing Iran’s nuclear ability and preserving peace in the Middle East.

“The alternatives are very grim,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Jewish Democrat from Illinois, who predicted the House would be able to sustain Mr. Obama’s veto. “You can’t judge a deal in isolation—the alternative is that we could have a nuclear arms race in the region.”

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, a member of Democratic leadership, said Tuesday he had spoken with 15 to 20 lawmakers since the announcement of the agreement. “On the Democratic side, they have all said, ’we want to take the time to read this. It’s embarrassing the Republicans are standing up and saying they’re against it when the ink is hardly dry,’ ” he said.

105 The Washington Post 14 Jul 2015

Historic deal reached with Iran to limit nuclear program

By Carol Morello and Karen DeYoung VIENNA — The United States and other world powers reached a historic agreement with Iran here Tuesday, aimed at preventing the Islamic Republic from building a nuclear weapon in return for the lifting of sanctions that have isolated the country and hobbled its economy.

President Obama, after announcing the agreement in Washington, quickly turned to what may be the more arduous task of selling the deal to skeptical lawmakers and U.S. allies in the Middle East.

“This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can bring about real and meaningful change,” Obama told a nation that awoke to news of the accord agreed overnight. He said it would ensure that Iran had no possibility to achieve rapid nuclear weapons “breakout” for at least the next decade.

“Every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off,” Obama said.

In Vienna news briefings and Washington conference calls, senior administration officials joined the president in hailing the agreement, which limits Iran’s nuclear capability and imposes strict international monitoring in exchange for lifting international economic sanctions, as a way to make America and the world more secure.

Officials suggested it might also help build momentum inside Iran to move away from radicalism and toward greater ties with the West.

“This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction. We should seize it,” Obama said. As a first order of business, one senior administration official said, Iran should seize “this important opportunity to make a humanitarian gesture” by releasing three jailed Americans it is holding and help find a fourth who disappeared there years ago.

Obama called congressional leaders late Monday to apprise them of the deal, and officials said he would expand his outreach in the coming days to include other key lawmakers. Under compromise legislation he signed in May, Obama must now give Congress 60 days to review the deal before using his executive power to waive statutory sanctions.

“I welcome scrutiny of the details of this agreement,” Obama said. But he warned that he would veto any legislation that tried to prevent its implementation. “We do not have to accept an inevitable spiral into conflict. And we certainly shouldn’t seek it,” he said in response to Republican charges of appeasement.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday that Obama had “abandoned” initial goals to strip Iran of its nuclear capability. “If, in fact, it’s as bad a deal as I think it is at this moment, we’ll do everything that we can to stop it,” Boehner told reporters.

Obama dismissed such threats as “posturing,” adding that “tough talk from Washington does not solve problems.”

Obama also called leaders in the Middle East, officials said. Reaction from U.S. allies ranged from concern among the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf that lifting

106 sanctions would increase Shiite Iran’s efforts to expand its powers, to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment that Iran would not only get a nuclear weapon out of the agreement, but also a “cash bonanza” to continue support for terrorism once sanctions are gone.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who spearheaded the talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, said the calls to keep pressuring Iran, rather than seeking a diplomatic solution, were unrealistic.

“Sanctioning Iran until it capitulates makes for a powerful talking point, and a pretty good political speech,” Kerry told reporters here. “But it’s not achievable outside a world of fantasy.”

In Tehran, a live broadcast of Obama’s White House remarks was interrupted for an address by President Hassan Rouhani, who said that “all of our objectives” had been realized in the planned lifting of sanctions, and what he said was the world’s recognition of Iran’s nuclear program for civilian use.

Rouhani also suggested that Iran’s relations with the world, particularly the West, would change. “If this deal is implemented correctly,” he said, “we can gradually eliminate distrust.” There was no immediate public comment from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in some recent statements took a hard line on what Tehran would accept in an agreement.

The final accord came at the end of marathon Monday meetings that stretched past midnight, the culmination of more than two weeks of up-and-down endgame negotiations that the administration insisted it was willing to abandon if its own red lines were not accepted.

The agreement will not take effect until Iran is certified by the International Atomic Energy Agency to have met its terms — something Iran says will happen in a matter of weeks but that Western diplomats have said could take at least until the end of the year.

Administration officials said a new United Nations Security Council resolution, which would incorporate old sanctions resolutions and the conditions for lifting them, has already been drafted and could be introduced within the next week. A U.S. trade embargo, as well as other non-nuclear U.S. sanctions, would not be affected.

A senior administration official, one of several who briefed reporters here and in Washington via conference call under imposed conditions of anonymity, said that until Iranian compliance is verified, an 18-month-old interim agreement restricting Iran’s nuclear activities will remain in place, as will sanctions.

In the end, the basic outline of the agreement hewed closely to, and in some areas expanded, a political framework reached in early April between Iran and the P5+1 — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — along with the European Union.

Iran has long insisted that it does not seek an atomic arsenal and wants the capability to produce nuclear fuel to power reactors for energy and medical applications.

The deal would reduce Iran’s current number of centrifuges — which enrich uranium — from about 19,000 to about 6,000, and limit the level of enrichment to 3.67 percent, far below weapons grade, for at least 15 years.

At Natanz, Iran’s primary enrichment facility, where there are approximately 16,000 first-generation centrifuges, about 5,000 will remain operational.

107 In the underground facility at Fordow, about one-third of the current 3,000 centrifuges will remain, none of them to be used for uranium enrichment for at least 15 years.

Russia is to help Iran convert the remaining Fordow centrifuges to isotope production.

Iran’s current stockpile of low-enriched uranium will be reduced by 98 percent, from about 10,000 kilograms to 300. The remainder, administration officials said, would likely be sold to Russia.

Iran must also, with international assistance, remove the core of its heavy-water reactor at Arak, capable of producing spent fuel that can yield plutonium. “With international partnership, it will be redesigned and rebuilt,” a senior administration official said, and converted into a reactor “to produce zero weapons grade plutonium in normal use.”

The overall scope of the deal seeks to put Iran at least one year away from nuclear weapons “breakout” levels — the time it would take to produce enough fissile material for one nuclear bomb.

Beyond dissatisfaction with any deal allowing Iran to keep some components of its nuclear program, critics said that time limits of between 10 to 25 years on many of the restrictions effectively gave Iran a sanctions-free rein to develop nuclear weapons in the future.

Other issues raised have included the need for Iran to acknowledge previously concealed weapons activities; Iran’s insistence that current U.N. embargoes on sales and purchases of conventional weapons and ballistic missile technology be removed; the ability of international inspectors to conduct “anytime, anyplace” access to all declared and suspected Iranian nuclear facilities — including military installations — and mechanisms to settle disputes over possible violations and to “snap-back” lifted sanctions if Iran cheated.

Based on leaks from the negotiations over the past several weeks, critics had charged that the United States had compromised on all those issues. The final deal provided ammunition for both sides in the upcoming political debate.

On the so-called “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s previous nuclear programs, the IAEA said it signed an agreement Tuesday morning with Iran that allows international inspectors to resolve all such outstanding questions. It permits the agency to place more inspectors inside Iran, as long as their native countries have diplomatic relations with Iran — in other words, no Americans — and provides for high-tech monitoring equipment to be installed at nuclear facilities.

On conventional weapons and ballistic missiles, negotiators split the difference between lifting current U.N. prohibitions and keeping them indefinitely in place. The new U.N. resolution will include an ongoing eight-year missile ban and continuing prohibitions on most conventional weapons sales for five years.

Iran will also immediately adhere to the Additional Protocol of the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows IAEA inspectors to demand access to any site in the country, including military facilities.

Once it submits a request to Iran to visit an “undeclared” facility, the IAEA and Iran will have 14 days to agree on the terms of access. If IAEA concerns are not met within that period, a joint commission made up of the seven negotiating countries — Iran and the United States and its partners — plus the European Union, will have up to seven days to review the dispute and decide what Iran needs to do.

Only five of the eight members need to agree, effectively ensuring that Iran, Russia and

108 China cannot prevail if they vote together. Iran then has three days to implement the decision. If it does not, “then we can begin snap-back” of sanctions, an administration official said.

Even as some lawmakers and allies criticized the deal Tuesday, a number of top nonproliferation experts offered largely positive reactions.

Robert Einhorn, who held senior nonproliferation and arms control positions in both the Clinton and Obama administrations — and was among a group of experts who last month expressed skepticism about the terms of a deal — said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the amount of detail in the agreement and its five annexes, totaling 109 pages.

While cautioning that he had not had a chance to read and fully digest the document, Einhorn, currently at the Brookings Institution, said he believed it met the administration’s objectives of “preventing a nuclear-armed Iran for a 10-15-year period.”

The final deal, he said, made “very clear . . . that sanctions will not be suspended until Iran fulfills all of its key nuclear obligations.”

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, described inspection mechanisms — requiring inspectors to produce evidence of cheating before teams can visit undeclared nuclear sites — as a troubling vulnerability in an otherwise promising accord. As a result, he said, “foreign intelligence services and the IAEA are going to have to find ways to be more intrusive.”

George Perkovich, head of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, called the agreement “quite impressive,” including several “important, innovative elements” that detail prohibited Iranian activities and ensure transparency.

“There are nits to be picked,” Perkovich said, “but most of the critics are not actually interested in details. They don’t want any deal with the Islamic Republic that allows it to have any nuclear capability or to obtain any sanctions relief.”

109 The Washington Post 14 Jul 2015

The historic nuclear deal with Iran: How it works

By Ishaan Tharoor After more than two weeks of wrangling and missed deadlines in Vienna, Iran and its international interlocutors have finally clinched a historic accord over Tehran's nuclear program. The diplomacy with Iran, an endeavor that faced vociferous opposition throughout, was aimed at curbing the Islamic republic's ability to produce a nuclear weapon. A tentative framework was inked in April between Iran and its negotiating partners, which include the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China and Germany.

The deal's proponents argue that the talks have yielded the best guarantee possible that Iran won't be able to move toward nuclear weapons, while also, for the time being, reducing the risk of yet another military escalation in the Middle East.

"This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction. We should seize it," President Obama said Tuesday.

Here's a guide to how it works.

Extending the breakout time The main benchmark by which analysts gauge Iran's ability to produce an atomic bomb is the "breakout" time — the time needed for Iran to produce enough weapons-grade enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb. It is currently estimated at a couple of months; under the terms of the deal, that time frame has been extended to at least one year.

The implication here is key: One year gives world powers enough time to mobilize action to interrupt Iran's pathway to a bomb. The extended breakout time also presents, in its own right, a strategic obstacle to Iran's leadership, raising the stakes if it ever considered rushing toward building a nuclear arsenal. To be sure, Tehran has always insisted that it has no interest in obtaining a nuclear weapon, but its covert activities in the past raised the world's suspicions and led to tough international trade, banking and financial sanctions.

Iran's nuclear facilities The deal focuses on limiting Iran's ability to produce and maintain the fissile material needed to build nuclear weapons. Along the lines of the April framework agreement, Iran will cut its number of centrifuges — the devices used to enrich uranium gas — from 19,000 to 6,000. Its stockpile of enriched uranium will be reduced from about 10,000 kilograms to 300.

The heavy-water reactor at Arak will be reengineered so that it does not yield material that can be turned into weapons-grade plutonium, and all of its spent fuel is to be shipped out of Iran for the life of the reactor. Iran has committed to not building a similar reactor for the next 15 years.

Uranium enrichment at the underground facility in Fordow — a concern because some outside observers believe it would be difficult to hit with an airstrike — will be strictly curbed. Iran will be prevented from bringing fissile material into the site over the next 15 years; Fordow will lose more than half of its 2,800 centrifuges and be converted into a nuclear physics research center.

110 Inspections and enforcement In all these instances, the deal outlines tight guidelines for monitoring and verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. IAEA inspectors will be granted regular access to all these major nuclear sites and will monitor Iran's nuclear infrastructure, from its uranium mills to centrifuge storage facilities, for up to 25 years.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz unpacks how access will be guaranteed at Iran's most sensitive sites: According to the agreement, UN inspectors will be able to enter any suspect facility in Iran within a maximum period of 24 days. Iran will be able to present reservations to the IAEA's requests to visit suspicious facilities. In such cases, a special arbitration committee will be established to make a decision. The committee will include representatives of the six world powers, Iran and the European Union. Iran will be in the minority, with only Russia and China holding positions close to Tehran's.

Sanctions The deal, in the next week to 10 days, will be sent to the U.N. Security Council — Iran's negotiating partners included all five permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany. There, it will be codified by a new resolution once the IAEA certifies that Iran has stuck to its commitments regarding its enrichment capabilities.

This will lead to the Security Council dropping its wide-reaching sanctions on the Iranian regime, which have crippled the country's economy. If Iran violates any terms of the deal, sanctions could be snapped back within 65 days.

Separately, a U.N. embargo on conventional weapons sales will be lifted within five years, while a ban on missile sales to Iran will be lifted within eight years. In the last few heated days of talks, this particular element of the dispute appeared to be the most intractable, with Russia pushing aggressively for an end to the arms embargo, but it appears both sides have met halfway.

Oil prices have already dropped at the prospect of Iran's huge petroleum industry returning to the fold. ... and how it doesn't work Critics of the deal, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Republican hawks in Washington, warn that, contrary to the Obama administration's talking points, it gives Iran a ticket to becoming a nuclear superpower. These claims are somewhat undermined by the many tough provisions within the deal.

For opponents, though, the issue lies less in the technical details and mechanisms negotiated in Vienna and more in Iran's track record in the region. Since 1979, the Islamic republic has been an avowed enemy of the United States and its interests, and has supported proxy militias across the Middle East, including some groups deemed terrorist organizations.

The Obama administration has been clear that the goal of the negotiations was to place ironclad controls on Iran's nuclear program, not fundamentally change the Iranian regime's outlook or policy.

"Tough talk from Washington does not solve problems," Obama said. "Hard-nosed diplomacy, leadership that has united the world's major powers offers a more effective way to verify that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon."

111 The Washington Post 14 Jul 2015

To sell a deal, Obama speaks to the Iranian people

By Greg Jaffe For President Obama, the historic deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program reflects U.S. foreign policy and the world as it should be: Negotiation, mutual respect and rationality had triumphed over tough talk and the prospect of war.

Obama spoke at the White House on Tuesday only hours after his secretary of state concluded more than 20 months of intense negotiations with one of the United States’ oldest and most hostile enemies.

A president who often speaks of the limits of American power, especially military power, described the deal in sweeping, optimistic and even historic terms.

“The United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not: a comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Obama said. “This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can bring about real and meaningful change.”

Four months ago, when the initial framework of a deal was announced, Obama cast the agreement as the only alternative to war and better than any of the bad options available to him. That speech was full of “ifs”: “If Iran violates the deal. . . . If there is backsliding. . . . If Congress kills the deal.”

On Tuesday, Obama displayed no such uncertainty as he rattled off the steps Iran will take to scale back its nuclear program: “Because of this deal Iran will remove two-thirds of its installed centrifuges,” Obama said. “Because of this deal Iran will modify its core reactor . . . because of this deal inspectors will be able to access any suspicious location.”

Taken together, these moves will extend to one year the “breakout” time it would take for Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to make one nuclear bomb. All steps must be completed before Iran receives relief from the tough sanctions that brought its leaders to the negotiating table, Obama said.

Inside the White House, there have long been divisions over whether the deal was solely a mechanism to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon or something larger. “It is still just a nuclear deal,” said Phil Gordon, who formerly served as special assistant to Obama for Middle East policy. Others in the White House saw the potential in the deal to change Iranian behavior and gradually open a more positive relationship with one of the United States’ most openly hostile enemies.

Obama’s remarks, coming at the conclusion of 17 straight days of negotiation, put him squarely in the latter, more optimistic camp.

Republicans blasted Obama in the first hours after the deal for not demanding more from Iran. The agreement would not require Iran to dismantle its uranium-enrichment program, which Tehran maintains is intended only to produce fuel for peaceful nuclear energy generation. “A comprehensive agreement should require Iran to verifiably abandon — not simply delay — its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability,” Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush charged.

Free of punishing economic sanctions, Iran will soon have billions of dollars in new revenue that it could use to sow disorder in an already chaotic region. Republican critics

112 of the deal said some of that money will likely be used to prop up the government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad or bolster militant groups and proxies such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

“Iran will receive billions in sanctions relief, a windfall to pursue its aggressive, destabilizing agenda in the region and beyond,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “Whatever the claimed gains we get from this deal, it clearly does not outweigh the risks to the security in the region and to the United States and its interests.”

As president, Obama has repeatedly observed that there are “no military solutions” to many of the United States’ most vexing foreign policy and national security problems.

The phrase has been invoked as a mantra by the White House to explain the administration’s reluctance to plunge the country more deeply into conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Often it has led the White House to accept unimaginable human suffering in places such as Syria, where millions have been killed or displaced in savage fighting.

In the Iran negotiations, Obama posited another model for exercising U.S. influence in the world. “Tough talk from Washington does not solve problems,” he said. “Hard-nosed diplomacy — leadership that has united the world’s major powers — offers a more effective way to verify that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon.”

To most Middle East experts, the months of painstaking negotiations demonstrated that the Iranians, although maddening and mistrustful, are capable of making concessions.

“As the revolution ages, it has become more like a normal state,” said Cliff Kupchan, an Iran specialist and chairman of the Eurasia Group. “That doesn’t mean it’s a normal state. But its trajectory is in that direction.”

Obama’s remarks at the White House suggested that he saw the possibility forsomething more. In April, when the general framework for the nuclear deal was reached, Iranian youths took to the streets to celebrate the accord. Obama’s Rose Garden address was broadcast live on Iranian television.

Four months later, again speaking from the White House, Obama used part of his speech to talk directly to those Iranians who yearn for a deeper connection with the rest of the world. Here Obama’s “hard-nosed diplomacy” carried a message of transformative hope that characterized his earliest and most optimistic foreign policy addresses.

“I believe that we must continue to test whether or not this region, which has known so much suffering, so much bloodshed, can move in a different direction,” he said. Even as he acknowledged differences and a difficult history that “cannot be ignored,” Obama urged Iranians to believe that “it is possible to change.”

“A foreign policy based on threats to attack your neighbors or eradicate Israel, that’s a dead end,” he said. “A different path, one of tolerance and peaceful resolution of conflict, leads to more integration into the global economy, more engagement with the international community and the ability of the Iranian people to prosper and thrive.”

Obama sought to calm the United States’ Sunni Arab allies, many of whom worry that the deal is one piece of a broader U.S. pivot toward Iran. He also promised to continue “our unprecedented efforts to strengthen Israel’s security,” and followed up those remarks later in the day with a fence-mending call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The president’s main audiences, though, were the American people, a skeptical Congress and a young Iranian population that has endured tough economic times and seems eager to reconnect with this world. He warned his congressional critics of the

113 consequences if the United States walks away from the agreement.

“Put simply, no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East,” Obama said.

His message to the American and Iranian people was far more aspirational.

“This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction,” Obama said. “We should seize it.”

114 The New Yorker 14 Jul 2015

An Iran Deal, At Last

BY ROBIN WRIGHT “This has always been a Rubik’s Cube,” a senior U.S. negotiator told me. “In the early morning hours of July 14th, the last cubes clicked into place. It was an incredibly arduous and incredibly complex process.”

It was also the longest mission of a Secretary of State in more than three decades. Since October, 2013, Kerry has flown some four hundred thousand miles—the equivalent of circling the world sixteen times—to prevent a tenth country from getting the bomb.

The agreement is the Obama Administration’s boldest foreign-policy initiative. It marks the first success in dealing with Iran since its 1979 revolution and the prolonged seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran.

“This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction,” the President said in an early-morning address at the White House. “We should seize it.”

The deal—a hundred pages of technical nuclear and financial minutiae—is designed to contain Tehran’s ability to produce a bomb for at least a decade. It will also introduce broader U.N. inspections to monitor, permanently, both declared and suspected nuclear facilities, even after the deal expires.

“We got far more than we needed, particularly in the areas most important to us,” a State Department official in Vienna told me. “It will be well perceived.”

The terms, however, are likely to give both proponents and opponents new arguments for their positions. No party got all it wanted; there’s a shortcoming to every benefit.

And, in geopolitical terms, while the deal may check Iran’s nuclear prowess, critics will note that it recognizes the Islamic Republic as a legitimate interlocutor—and takes regime change off the table. Iranian hard-liners will make the same claim, since Tehran is now dealing with a country they call the Great Satan.

The agreement, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, seeks to extend the period required for Iran to produce a bomb—the so-called breakout time—to at least a year. It is currently two to three months. The deal would allow the international community more time to mount any of several responses if Iran went forward with a weapons program.

The combination of restrictions and time frames—ranging from ten to twenty-five years—is also designed to give the international community more insight into Iran’s program and capabilities. “I have no doubt that, ten or fifteen years from now, the person who holds this office will be in a far stronger position, with Iran further away from a weapon and with the inspections and transparency that allow us to review the deal,” Obama said this morning.

But the deal will not eliminate Iran’s capabilities permanently. Tehran has now acquired the knowledge required to build a bomb. “We have gone from preventing Iran having a nuclear ability to managing it,” Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and

115 former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week.”

After the deal expires, he said, “They will have a pathway toward a nuclear bomb, should they choose to do so.” The Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum called the deal a “catastrophic capitulation.”

The deal will, however, significantly shrink several aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran has long insisted is only for peaceful energy. It reduces the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium by two-thirds. It cuts back on the number of facilities that enrich uranium—down to one—and requires the conversion of a facility being built to produce plutonium.

But Iran will still be able to enrich uranium, the fuel cycle for both a peaceful energy program and a bomb, albeit at a minimum level, at its Natanz facility. Several members of Congress, as well as Israel and the Gulf sheikhdoms, wanted to stop Iran from enriching at all. “The concessions agreement Iran is about to receive paves the way for it to arm itself with nukes and continue disseminating terror worldwide,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted last week. On Monday, Netanyahu launched a twitter account in Farsito press the message.

The hope is that the deal will make another Middle East war less likely, at a time when the United States is engaged in air wars in Iraq, Syria, and Libya and selling arms to Saudi Arabia to wage its war in Yemen. It may stall or prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, the world’s most volatile region. “As Congress and the American people review this deal, it will be important to consider the alternative,” Obama said. “Without this deal, there is no scenario where the world joins us in sanctioning Iran until it completely dismantles its nuclear program.”

If Iran cheats or strays from the deal’s terms, the United States still has its military option. The arrangement is not going to defuse the deeper sectarian and political rivalries in the Middle East. Conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen pit Iran’s Shiite government against its Sunni Arab neighbors, who have expressed their unhappiness with the deal. Indeed, the agreement may deepen concern among Sunni regimes fearful of Iran’s reëmergence as a player rather than a pariah.

American and Iranian officials have told me that the renewed contact between Iran and the West could facilitate discussion of other flashpoints in the Middle East.

But the deal does not signal a renewal of diplomatic relations or an end to tensions over Iran’s behavior, especially its support for terrorism and its human-rights abuses. The basics of its foreign policy may not change. “Regardless of whether there’s an agreement or not, my expectation is that Iran will continue the malign activity across the Middle East that we have seen over the past several years,” Marine General Joseph Dunford told the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last Thursday.

Over the weekend, Iran burned large American and Israeli flags as part of the Qods (Jerusalem) Day protests. Despite almost two years of diplomacy, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office tweeted, “Leader in meeting with university students: The US is perfect instance of Arrogance. Prepare yourselves for more fight against Arrogance.”

And yesterday, even as the negotiators in Vienna went into their final session, the jailed Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian was back in a Tehran courtroom for his third hearing, on espionage charges. “I wish Jason was out so he could cover this

116 wonderful story of Iran and the U.S.,” his mother, Mary Rezaian, told ABC on Monday.

She flew to Iran for the trial but was not allowed in the courtroom. Two other IranianAmericans, the Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and a former Marine, Amir Hekmati, are also still imprisoned in Tehran. The former F.B.I. agent Robert Levinson was last seen on an Iranian island, in 2007.

As a result of the deal, lifting various punitive economic sanctions will open up Iran’s consumer-hungry citizens to international markets. The country’s population has more than doubled since the revolution, to almost eighty million people. A Western envoy in Iran described it to me as “the last gold mine on Earth.”

But U.S. businesses will still find Iran largely off-limits, because other U.S. sanctions, tied to human-rights practices and support for terrorism, remain in place. Iran will be able to reclaim more than a hundred billion dollars of its oil revenues trapped in foreign banks by sanctions. Skeptics warn that Tehran may use the funds to arm or aid its allies, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas, Yemen’s Houthis, or assorted Shiite militias across the region.

“We have to make very clear that there is a deterrence in the longer term, because, if not, in twelve, thirteen years, we will be exactly back to where we are today,” Menendez said. “Except that Iran will have one hundred billion dollars to one hundred and fifty billion dollars in its pocket and promoting its terrorism throughout the Middle East.”

But, in Vienna this morning, the euphoria of epic diplomacy prevailed. For the first time in decades, a country on the verge of obtaining of a nuclear weapon has been forced to stop its program, at least for a while. Diplomacy had failed to do that with the last four members of the nuclear club—North Korea, Pakistan, Israel, and India. Those countries are now estimated to have more than three hundred bombs altogether.

As diplomacy got down to the final hours, Zarif tweeted Monday, “If #IranDealreached, triumph of diplomacy means we all will have won when we all could have lost. Plain and simple; no spin needed.”

By Tuesday afternoon, reality had sunk in. Kerry and Zarif flew out of Vienna to begin selling their deal back home.

117 Yediot Aharonoth (Israel) 15 Jul 2015

It’s Actually Good for Israel Chuck Freilich translated by the author Israel’s leaders, along with most of its pundits, have been repeating the same mantra for months; the agreement with Iran is bad for Israel and will endanger it. In reality, it is a compromise agreement that postpones an existential threat to Israel, opens the possibility for a strategic change in the Middle East and strengthens Israel’s security.

There is no doubt that the agreement does not address all of our concerns and that it has deep flaws, chiefly that Iran will be able to keep most of its nuclear infrastructure intact and that most of its provisions are limited to 10-15 years. Moreover, it is clear that Iran has not given up its long-term nuclear aspirations and that it will take advantage of every loophole and ambiguous word in the agreement to achieve its ends. When the agreement expires, Iran will even be recognized as a state like all others and will be able, so the critics claim, to promote its nuclear program as much as it wishes.

Conversely, the agreement’s critics have to explain what could have been done differently and especially what the alternatives they suggest are. The claim that the US could have conducted the negotiations more resolutely, and that a better agreement could have been negotiated, is probably correct. Given the choice, however, between that which is desirable and that which is extant, this is the agreement the Americans believed that they could actually reach, not the agreement that they wanted, but the one that was feasible. The only alternative from the administration’s point of view, after it took to be military option off the table, was to return to sanctions. The sanctions brought the Iranians to the table, but it is doubtful whether they would have led to the complete capitulation that Israel sought, especially given the weakened sanctions regime likely to exist after a collapse of negotiations.

In the absence of an agreement, Israel would have been left with the sole option of a military attack, an option which we may still have to resort to in the future. It is abundantly clear, however, that this is an option that Israel’s decision-makers were not avid to adopt, and that they had good reasons for this. An Israeli strike would have entailed severe military and political ramifications, especially in the absence of American support, and could have postponed the Iranian program by a few years at most. The agreement, on the other hand, provides Israel with a 10-to 15 year respite.

In practice, the agreement creates a situation in which Israel will not have to face an existential threat for many years and in which it will be able to divert precious resources to the immediate threats of Hezbollah, Hamas and ISIS, as well as to pressing domestic needs. In Israeli strategic thinking, a gain of a decade or more was always considered to be an important achievement.

The question is whether there is some practical military measure that we can take today, that we will not be to take in another decade. The answer is not entirely clear, but what is clear is that the US will be able to act militarily at any time. In the meantime, the agreement’s intrusive inspections mechanisms ensure that Iran will not be able to breakout to a nuclear capability, without it becoming known, with high confidence.

The nuclear threat has not been completely removed, but it has been postponed for a lengthy period, and we are really speaking about another stage in the ongoing struggle to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Benjamin Netanyahu should have accepted American policy long ago, rather than positioning himself as the primary and maybe sole opponent

118 among US allies. The defamation campaign now expected against the agreement in the Congress is destined to fail, and even if the totally unexpected occurs, it will be the Israeli Prime Minister will have personally blocked the primary foreign policy initiative of the Obama presidency. Given Israel’s dependence on the US, indeed, the question whether we can even survive without US today, this will not be a victory.

119 AP 15 Jul 2015

In Iran deal, Obama sees validation for diplomatic gamble Julie Pace The sheer amount of time and political capital Obama invested in the Iran talks has fueled speculation that he had too much at stake to walk away from the negotiating table, no matter the compromises in a final deal. Obama authorized secret talks with Iran in 2012, followed by nearly two years of formal negotiations alongside Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. His rapprochement with Iran sent U.S. relations with Israel plummeting to near-historic lows and deepened tensions with Congress.

Even with the high-stakes implications of an Iranian nuclear program, the talks over time seemed to represent more than just the quest for a deal. They were a referendum on Obama's belief that even America's most ardent enemies can be brought in line by wielding diplomacy and economic pressure instead of military might.

"It represents the core of who he is and what his presidency stands for," said Julianne Smith, a former Obama White House and Pentagon official. "He needs it to validate that approach."

With the deal now in hand, one of Obama's top priorities is selling its virtues to skeptical lawmakers and world leaders, as well as the American public. He spent much of Tuesday calling leaders in Europe and the Middle East. On Wednesday, he planned to discuss the deal in a news conference, while dispatching Vice President Joe Biden to Capitol Hill to meet with House Democrats.

"I'm here to answer questions and explain what the deal is and I'm confident they'll like it when they understand it all," Biden told reporters as he entered the closed-door session.

Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas, said Biden was trying to make a case for the agreement's longevity and said the reaction to the vice president's remarks were "pretty favorable."

Green added, "I'm pretty close to my Jewish community in Houston so I still have some questions."

Senior U.S. officials say Obama is sensitive to the perception he was desperate for a deal. With big gaps remaining as a June 30 deadline neared for a final agreement, officials said the president urged his team to send clear messages to Iran both publicly and privately that the U.S. was ready to end the talks without a deal.

"He did not want people to have the impression that this is something we needed to have," one official said, adding that Obama was frequently among the most pessimistic members of his national security team about the prospects of a deal.

Officials also pointed to a video conference Obama convened with Kerry and other negotiators last week as an example of his willingness to forgo a deal. With momentum for an agreement building in Vienna and a deadline to limit congressional oversight looming, officials said Obama essentially rejected the deal at hand because timetables for keeping restrictions on Iran's nuclear program and a U.N. arms embargo in place were insufficient.

Negotiators blew through the congressional deadline and were able to extend the timelines, according to the officials, who insisted on the condition of anonymity in order

120 to discuss the president's thinking.

Obama first planted the seeds for engagement with Iran as a presidential candidate, saying in a 2007 Democratic primary debate that he would be willing to meet with Iranian leaders without preconditions. His statements were ridiculed by Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, who went on to be his secretary of state and help jumpstart the secret negotiations with Iran.

The president's opening months in office included public and private overtures to Tehran, all with a more conciliatory tone aimed at signaling a shift from predecessor George W. Bush, who cast Iran as part of an "axis of evil."

In a veiled reference to Iran in his inaugural address, Obama said he was willing to "extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your first." He exchanged letters with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He used conciliatory language in a videotaped message to both the people and government of Iran on the Persian new year, calling for engagement "that is honest and grounded in mutual respect."

Obama has taken a similar approach - clandestine diplomacy, prioritizing negotiations over military action - to other foreign policy challenges, with mixed results. Plans to negotiate an end to Syria's bloody civil war have gone nowhere. A resumption of diplomatic relations with Cuba after a half-century of hostilities is moving along largely as planned.

Yet the stakes and the scope of the Iran effort stand apart, a reality not lost on Obama.

While he talked of American strength and long-sought change Tuesday, he acknowledged in an interview with The Atlantic earlier this year that if Iran does ultimately get a bomb, "it's my name on this."

121 Politico 14 Jul 2015

Key Democrats skeptical of Iran deal The White House has its work cut out to solidify its firewall in Congress.

By Manu Raju and Burgess Everett Joe Biden was on the phone Tuesday morning with a fellow Delaware native, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, hoping to lock down his support for the Obama administration’s sweeping nuclear accord with Iran.

But the vice president quickly learned the administration has a lot more work to do with congressional Democrats.

After the 30-minute call, in which Biden walked Coons through his concerns, the senator ticked off a list of technical questions that he wanted the administration to answer thoroughly. Coons said the talk with Biden was helpful, but until he hears more, he’s reserving judgment on the deal.

“Iran has seriously earned our distrust,” Coons said in the Capitol on Tuesday.

Coons is among a group of roughly a dozen Democratic senators who constitute President Barack Obama’s firewall on the Iran deal. In interviews with several of them Tuesday, it was clear the White House has its work cut out to shore up a veto-proof foundation: In the Senate, the White House can lose no more than 12 Democrats from the 46-member caucus to keep the deal alive.

With Congress about to begin a 60-day review period, and the deal expected to linger for critics to attack during the August recess, senators said Tuesday that the administration needs to mount a sustained lobbying push just as aggressively as it did on the recent issue of international trade.

“They are getting a lot of pressure from constituents who are suspicious of any agreement,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said of fellow Democrats. “[Obama] has his hands full.”

Most Democrats are supportive of the deal, hoping that the effort to curb Iranian nuclear ambitions diplomatically could prevent the United States from engaging in yet another war in the Middle East. And with Obama needing to hold just 34 Senate Democrats to keep his deal alive, the betting on Capitol Hill remains that the agreement will survive at least in the short term.

But with Republicans almost universally opposed to the deal, a chunk of Democratic defections could put a real scare into the centerpiece of the president’s foreign policy legacy. And if public opposition mounts, Congress could pursue other avenues to rein in the president — either through appropriations legislation or passing further sanctions.

Key Democrats are so far withholding support for the White House’s Iran deal, worried that the plan would undermine national security, threaten Israel and too easily let Tehran escape punishing economic sanctions. Many of them will be in office beyond the end of Obama’s term, so an affirmative vote means they will effectively own the deal when they face voters again. That means they could pay a dear price politically if the accord fails to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and proves to be a failure.

Even members of Senate Democratic leadership, like Chuck Schumer and Jon Tester, were explicitly noncommittal, a sign of the challenges ahead for the president.

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“Verification, verification, verification, verification,” said Tester (D-Mont.). “That’s the big thing. Look, I don’t trust these guys, I want to make sure that whatever we’ve agreed to, we’ve got verification that’s going to happen.”

Could he vote against the deal if those concerns aren’t satisfied?

“Oh sure,” Tester said.

Speaking at the White House on Tuesday morning, Obama strongly defended the 109page agreement, saying it would stop Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon. He promised “extensive briefings” on Capitol Hill but also vowed to veto any bill that would undo the agreement. No deal, he said, would further enable Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon.

“This deal is not built on trust,” Obama said, with Biden standing beside him. “It’s built on verification.”

The agreement between the United States, five other world powers and Iran is aimed at forcing the country to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for the loosening of sanctions against the regime. Some of the details, however, have caused ample concern from both parties.

Most notably, the deal would lift the United Nations’ arms embargo on Iran after five years for conventional weapons and eight years for ballistic missiles. While sanctions on oil and financial sectors will be eased, they will be “snapped back” if a panel reviewing the matter believes Iran is circumventing the requirements. The International Atomic Energy Agency can access sites anywhere in the country, though Iran has as long as 24 days to heed such a request.

Skeptical Democrats said the administration needs to explain its rationale on those issues — and address their belief that Iran should have to clearly detail the scope of its military dimensions and its ability to develop advanced centrifuges — before they’ll commit. Several lawmakers said they want technical briefings on the timeline for a theoretical path back to the bomb. Others were worried that it would be too difficult to win support for new sanctions after they have been eased.

And many want an explanation of how relaxing an international arms embargo on Iran become part of the deal after the April interim agreement appeared to be silent on that matter.

“I want to find out why it came back in. It was not part of the original talks,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). “What did we get for that?”

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a harsh critic on Iran, said it appeared the Obama administration had crossed red lines set by the president by lifting the arms embargo and not having so-called anytime, anywhere inspections allowing IAEA inspectors into Iranian nuclear sites.

Menendez said he needs to hear strong reassurances directly from the president that if Iran cheats there will be consequences beyond just strict economic sanctions.

“I wish the president [made] a very clear definitive statement that Iran will never be allowed to achieve a nuclear weapon and that we will take any actions necessary to ensure that,” Menendez said in an interview.

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Schumer, the Democratic leader-in-waiting, is stuck between his pro-Israeli allies, who strongly oppose the deal, and the progressive wing of his party, which backs diplomacy with the rogue nation. How he comes down could influence other skeptical Democrats.

“I’m going to talk to the administration, I’m going to talk to people on both sides,” the New Yorker said, citing his support for the bill requiring a congressional review period.

“You’ve got to use [the review period] well and wisely. It’s a decision that requires very careful study. And that’s what I’m going to give it.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expecting to begin probing the deal this month, but Congress will take a break during the August recess. At that point, Republicans hope, lawmakers will hear from voters, forcing nervous Democrats to buck their president when Congress takes an up-or-down vote in September.

Sen. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said it was “particularly important” for the administration to hold thorough briefings to solidify support on Capitol Hill.

“There are many aspects of this agreement that I need clarification” on, Cardin said.

“There are certainly areas of interest and concern.”

Coons, the Delaware Democrat who occupies Biden’s old Senate seat, said that given Iran’s past record of “supporting terrorism globally,” he enters the review process “with a position of suspicion and distrust of Iran.” He added that he must be convinced that the inspections regime and the way the sanctions relief is structured won’t enable Iran’s long-term ability to build a bomb.

Though Democratic leaders said it was premature to try to predict how their caucus will end up voting, liberals are confident at least 34 Democrats will back Obama. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) spent most of the morning poring over the agreement; after he was finished, he issued one of the strongest statements of support on Capitol Hill.

Eventually, he predicted, most of his colleagues would do the same.

“It’s a much better deal than a lot of people would have given the secretary credit for ahead of the negotiations,” Heinrich said of Secretary of State John Kerry. “So I think at the end of the day that there’s going to be adequate support for the president’s position.

The reality is the Republicans have nothing as an alternative.”

124 IAEA 14 Jul 2015

IAEA DG Amano's Statement on the Signing of the Roadmap https://www.iaea.org/press/?p=5071 “I have just signed the Road-map between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IAEA for the clarification of past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear programme.

“The text has been signed on behalf of Iran by the country’s Vice-President, and President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Mr Ali Akbar Salehi.

“This is a significant step forward towards clarifying outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear programme.

“The Road-map sets out a process, under the November 2013 Framework for Cooperation, to enable the Agency, with the cooperation of Iran, to make an assessment of issues relating to possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme by the end of 2015.

“It sets out a clear sequence of activities over the coming months, including the provision by Iran of explanations regarding outstanding issues. It provides for technical expert meetings, technical measures and discussions, as well as a separate arrangement regarding the issue of Parchin.

“This should enable me to issue a report setting out the Agency’s final assessment of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme, for the action of the IAEA Board of Governors, by 15 December 2015.

“I will keep the Board regularly updated on the implementation of the Road-map.

“Implementation of this Road-map will provide an important opportunity to resolve the outstanding issues related to Iran’s nuclear programme.”

Road-map for the Clarification of Past and Present Outstanding Issues Regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme http://www.iaea.org/press/?p=5058 14 July 2015 Announcements http://www.iaea.org/press/?cat=, Featured http://www.iaea.org/press/?cat=8, Press Releases http://www.iaea.org/press/?cat=4 1. On 14 July 2015, the Director General Yukiya Amano and the Vice-President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi signed in Vienna a “Road-map for the clarification of past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program”. The IAEA and Iran agreed, in continuation of their cooperation under the Framework for Cooperation, to accelerate and strengthen their cooperation and dialogue aimed at the resolution, by the end of 2015, of all past and present outstanding issues that have not already been resolved by the IAEA and Iran.

125 2. The “Road-map for the clarification of past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program” is herewith attached for the information of the Board of Governors. *Joint Statement by the IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano and the Vice-President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, **President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi* IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano and the Vice-President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi agreed on 14 July 2015 the following *Road-map for the clarification of past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear **program* The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran) agree, in continuation of their cooperation under the Framework for Cooperation, to accelerate and strengthen their cooperation and dialogue aimed at the resolution, by the end of 2015, of all past and present outstanding issues that have not already been resolved by the IAEA and Iran.

In this context, Iran and the Agency agreed on the following: 1. The IAEA and Iran agreed on a separate arrangement that would allow them to address the remaining outstanding issues, as set out in the annex of the 2011 Director’s General report (GOV/2011/65). Activities undertaken and the outcomes achieved to date

by Iran and the IAEA regarding some of the issues will be reflected in the process.

2. Iran will provide, by 15 August 2015, its explanations in writing and related documents to the IAEA, on issues contained in the separate arrangement mentioned in paragraph 1.

3. After receiving Iran’s written explanations and related documents, the IAEA will review this information by 15 September 2015, and will submit to Iran questions on any possible ambiguities regarding such information.

4. After the IAEA has submitted to Iran questions on any possible ambiguities regarding such information, technical-expert meetings, technical measures, as agreed in a separate arrangement, and discussions will be organized in Tehran to remove such ambiguities.

5. Iran and the IAEA agreed on another separate arrangement regarding the issue of Parchin.

6. All activities, as set out above, will be completed by 15 October 2015, aimed at resolving all past and present outstanding issues, as set out in the annex of the 2011 Director General’s report (GOV/2011/65).

7. The Director General will provide regular updates to the Board of Governors on the implementation of this Road-map.

8. By 15 December 2015, the Director General will provide, for action by the Board of Governors, the final assessment on the resolution of all past and present outstanding issues, as set out in the annex of the 2011 Director General’s report (GOV/2011/65). A wrap up technical meeting between Iran and the Agency will be organized before the

126 issuance of the report.

9. Iran stated that it will present, in writing, its comprehensive assessment to the IAEA on the report by the Director General.

10. In accordance with the Framework for Cooperation, the Agency will continue to take into account Iran’s security concerns.

For the International Atomic Energy Agency: (signed) Yukiya Amano Director General For the Islamic Republic of Iran: (signed) Ali Akbar Salehi Vice-President of the Islamic Republic of Iran President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Place: Vienna Date: 14 July 2015

127 VOA Voice of America 14 Jul 2015

For the U.S., the Choice Between Saudi Arabia and Iran Should be an Easy One

By Fahad Nazer

Fahad Nazer is a political analyst with JTG, Inc. and a former political analyst at the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, CNN and Foreign Policy and it has been published by The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Atlantic Council and The Middle East Institute. His writing was also included in ”The Kingdom: Saudi Arabia and the Challenge of the 21st Century” (Columbia University Press, 2009s the P5+1 nations seal an agreement with Iran over its nuclear energy program, some in the United States and Iran are hoping that an agreement over this contentious issue will usher in a new era in U.S.-Iranian relations. Some advocates of the nuclear deal are even suggesting that it could potentially transform Iran from an avowed enemy of the United States to its most important strategic partner in the Persian Gulf, supplanting the long-time U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, in the process.

However, those envisioning such a scenario are overlooking two incontrovertible facts.

First, although the United States and Saudi Arabia are not necessarily “natural” allies, the two countries have maintained close and mutually beneficial political and economic relations for seven decades. Second, since the outbreak of the Iranian revolution in 1979, Iran’s government has directly – and officially – supported various militant groups which have vowed to bring death and destruction on the United States. These organizations have killed hundreds of American military personnel and civilians. Unless the Iranian government is prepared to fundamentally change its policies towards the U.S., the notion that Iran represents a viable alternative to Saudi Arabia as a reliable partner to the U.S. in the Gulf, should give every American long pause.

While Saudi citizens comprised the majority of the perpetrators who conducted the terrorist attack against the United States on September 11th, 2001, and other Saudis continue to fill the ranks of terrorist organizations, including the so-called Islamic State, there is no evidence that the Saudi government supports militant groups that target American citizens and interests. Recently declassified CIA documents confirmed what Saudi government officials have long maintained. The documents concluded that there was “no evidence that the Saudi government knowingly and willingly supported al-Qaida terrorists.” This is consistent with the findings of the Congressional inquiry which concluded in 2004 that investigators “found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” al-Qaida. As for the mysterious 28 pages of the “The 9/11 Commission Report” which are still classified, Saudi officials have supported their release, arguing that they would further exonerate them.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. and the 2003 targeting of expatriate housing compounds inside Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government took measures to ensure that its citizens do not become easy prey for terrorist groups’ recruitment. This multi-

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pronged approach was part security operation, part public awareness campaign. It has led to the arrest of thousands of militants and the rehabilitation of hundreds more. The Saudis have also brought charities under tight regulations to curtail terrorism financing.

In addition, the government has taken a hard look at what is being preached from its mosque pulpits and what is being taught in its schools.

Recently, as the so-called Islamic State has unleashed its wrath on the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has criminalized fighting in foreign conflicts and has participated in a very public manner in the U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State strongholds in Syria. That is not to say that the Saudis have vanquished religious extremism and militancy, as the recent bombings of two Shia mosques in the kingdom’s Eastern Province suggest. However, both political and religious leaders have condemned terrorism in all its forms.

In addition, as the world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia continues to be a major player in international energy markets, in which it has always favored moderate oil prices. Iran on the other hand has traditionally been a price “hawk”. Saudi Arabia has also purchased tens of billions of dollars’ worth of advanced U.S. weapons over the years. Just as importantly, the United States continues to be the favorite destination of Saudis pursing their education, with an estimated 70,000 students currently studying in the U.S., contributing $3-billion annually to the U.S. economy.

Iran on the other hand, has had a very different relationship with the United States. Iran is one of only three nations that is designated as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. government. The Iranian government supports several militant groups in the Middle East and has been implicated in terrorist operations that targeted U.S. military personnel and civilians. In Iraq, the so called “special groups” with ties to official Iranian regime elements targeted hundreds of U.S. soldiers in 2007 and 2008. In Lebanon, the militant group Hezbollah carried out an attack against a U.S. Marines compound in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 American servicemen in the process. A federal judge ruled in 2003 that it was at the direction of the Iranian government. In 1996, Shia militants with ties to Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence officials killed 19 U.S. servicemen when they targeted their barracks in al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Even in Yemen, Iran is supporting the rebel Houthis whose slogan contains the phrase “death to America”. It is also worth mentioning that U.N. officials have estimated that the Iranian government’s support for Bashar Assad’s murderous reign in Syria is costing it $6-billion annually. U.S. officials have correctly said that the world has not witnessed such savagery since the Holocaust.

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Just as importantly, and despite the claim that Iran is on the same page as the U.S. in its opposition to the terrorist group IS, the fact remains that Iran has not been targeted

by Islamic State or even al-Qaida before it. It is also documented that some senior alQaida leaders sought refuge in Iran, including some close relatives of Osama Bin Laden, after they fled Afghanistan in 2001. While there is no evidence suggesting that Iran and Islamic State or al-Qaida are collaborating in some fashion, it is hard to believe that this anomaly is simply a function of the stellar work of Iran’s intelligence services.

The turmoil in the Middle East in recent years has forced many nations to reevaluate their relations with the countries of the region. It is only natural that the U.S. would do so as well. However, and despite their ideological and sometimes political differences, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have managed to sustain what has been a mutually beneficial relationship. Iran on the other hand is yet to renounce its decades-long animosity to the U.S. and continues to support militant groups which have targeted Americans in the past. It took a modest step by no longer referring to the U.S. as the “great Satan�.

However, its words must be matched by its actions.

130 New America Media 14 Jul 2015

Iran Won the Vienna Accords By Agreeing to Stop What It Never Was Doing Commentary by William O. Beeman William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He has lived and conducted research in Iran for over 40 years and speaks fluent Persian. His 2008 book, The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, shows how the current nuclear crisis arose. He traveled throughout Iran for three weeks in June.

Iran has won the diplomatic struggle over its nuclear program in Vienna. Its success was not due to United States negotiators’ fecklessness as Republican critics and Prime Minister Netanyahu have been quick to assert. Iran was able to win because it was very easy for it to bluff, by giving up activities in which it had never engaged and never intended to engage.

On the other side of the negotiating table, the United States had already abandoned its Bush-era goal of effecting regime change in Iran, making its negotiating position considerably weaker. Moreover, the talks were tightly constrained by the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which guaranteed Iran and all other 190 signatories to the treaty the “inalienable right” to peaceful nuclear development, providing this development is carried out for peaceful purposes.

Many lies have been told about the Iranian nuclear program that have made the negotiations difficult: 1. Iran’s nuclear program was carried out in secret. In fact, the program is more than 40 years old and was instigated by the United States. The United States provided Iran with its first research reactor.

2. Iran had or has or will have a nuclear weapons program. There is no evidence anywhere that such a program exists or ever existed as verified by the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran’s leaders have regularly denounced nuclear weapons as un-Islamic.

3. Enrichment of uranium was tantamount to a nuclear weapons program. In fact, there are nineteen other non-nuclear weapons’ signatories to the NPT enrich uranium just as Iran is doing. Several of these uranium enriching nations had or have stated that they might have a nuclear weapons program in the future. None of them have ever been targeted by the United States or other nuclear weapons’ states, cementing Iran’s contention that they were being specially targeted not for their nuclear activities, but just because they were “Iran.” Given the Bush-era declaration that the United States wanted regime change in Iran and was using the nuclear weapons issue to garner American public support, this was highly plausible.

4. Iran might plan some kind of clandestine program to “race” to a bomb. This fantasy never seems to die. The fact is that Iran has no infrastructure to weaponized fissile material, produce a bomb or develop a delivery system for such a bomb. It has taken Iran years to produce enough low-enriched uranium (less than 5%) to produce even one bomb. That uranium would have to be enriched to a 95% level and even if Iran could somehow construct a bomb in short order, it would have to be tested, and then there

131 would be no bomb. Additionally, any such activity would be immediately detected by IAEA inspectors.

The talks were further inhibited by people who insisted on attaching all kinds of extraneous issues that fell outside of the purview of the talks. Chief among these was an embargo on conventional arms sales to Iran, which had nothing to do with the nuclear question. Other issues included some kind of guarantee of release of political prisoners, recognition of Israel and withdrawal of support for the Assad regime in Syria—all utterly irrelevant to the talks themselves. No matter what Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Lindsay Graham or Prime Minister Netanyahu said, these issues were off the table completely.

Iran thus had an enormous space in which to negotiate. It was already guaranteed to have its nuclear program preserved by virtue of the NPT. The idea of dismantling its nuclear capacity completely would have impacted all the other NPT signatories and created havoc in the world of arms control.

It was also easy for Iran to give up a nuclear weapons program that never existed, and that it never intended to implement. As a bargaining position this is unassailable as your counterpart at the table insists and insists on something that has no value, it is possible to use giving way on such an empty demand to extract other concessions. Such a move is in effect a bluff, and the United States, saddled by the Bush-era assertion that Iran was building a bomb, could never backtrack on this without extreme embarrassment.

On the Iranian side, the Tehran leadership has benefitted considerably over the years from enmity with the United States. Every failure in economic and social policy has been blamed in the United States, and official hostility toward the United States has shored up those in power for decades. Giving up this domestic political advantage was going to be very difficult, but it could be done if the population could be brought to see the accords as a sacrifice. This was another bluff, but a bluff directed at the Iranian public. Jubilation in the streets in Iran shows that this was a very good move. By giving up their advantage in attacking the United States, Iran’s leader actually increased their popularity.

The sanctions actually helped Iran in many ways. Far from being “crippling,” they forced Iran to become self-reliant in nearly every conventional industrial and commercial activity as well as agriculture. To be sure, Iran could not have lived under the sanctions indefinitely. The lack of access to the international banking system was debilitating, but there is no question that Iran’s internal economy was strong enough to continue for many years under these restrictions. Iran’s GDP growth as measured by the IMF and the World Bank was 3% last year, and its poverty rate was lower than the United States.

I recently returned on June 21 from a three-week trip throughout Iran and the incredible development of industrial infrastructure there as well as the plentiful agricultural supplies were evident everywhere.'

Thousands of foreign investors were ubiquitous even in provincial towns salivating at the opportunities that would emerge at a successful conclusion of the accords. One German industrialist said: “I had no idea how rich and developed Iran was. We will not have to build anything here. We just want to expand the industrial activities that already exist and increase marketing efforts. We will all make a great deal of money.”

Not well known is the fact that Iran has now become nearly self-sufficient in conventional arms manufacture. In fact, Iran is an arms exporter. In the final Vienna

132 accords, a bargain was struck to maintain an embargo on conventional arms trade. This was another bluff. Iran doesn’t really need to import much in the way of arms, but by putting up a big show of resistance, the negotiators created a bargaining chip that really didn’t exist.

The United States would have done better had it actually known something about Iran, or had become realistic about its hyped-up rhetoric about the danger of Iran’s nuclear program before heading into these negotiations. The Bush-era sanctions against Iran created a false crisis and an utterly unnecessary sanctions regime. The resolution of this situation will certainly be good for the world, but Americans should be clear that this was a crisis of our own making, and most of the energy our negotiating team expended in the last 18 months was directed at saving face and backtracking from the mistakes of the Bush-era hyped-up crisis that never really existed.

133 The Atlantic 14 Jul 2015 Why the Iran Deal Makes Obama's Critics So Angry The nuclear agreement highlights the limits of American power—something the president’s opponents won’t accept.

Peter Beinart Peter Beinart is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and National Journal, an associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York, and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

“Mankind faces a crossroads,” declared Woody Allen. “One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

The point is simple: In life, what matters most isn’t how a decision compares to your ideal outcome. It’s how it compares to the alternative at hand.

The same is true for the Iran deal, announced Tuesday between Iran and six world powers. As Congress begins debating the agreement, its opponents have three real alternatives. The first is to kill the deal, and the interim agreement that preceded it, and do nothing else, which means few restraints on Iran’s nuclear program. The second is war. But top American and Israeli officials have warned that military action against Iranian nuclear facilities could ignite a catastrophic regional conflict and would be ineffective, if not counterproductive, in delaying Iran’s path to the bomb. Meir Dagan, who oversaw the Iran file as head of Israel’s external spy agency, the Mossad, from 2002 to 2011, has said an attack “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA under George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, has warned that an attack would “guarantee that which we are trying to prevent: an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.”

Implicitly acknowledging this, most critics of the Iran deal propose a third alternative: increase sanctions in hopes of forcing Iran to make further concessions. But in the short term, the third alternative looks a lot like the first. Whatever its deficiencies, the Iran deal places limits on Iran’s nuclear program and enhances oversight of it. Walk away from the agreement in hopes of getting tougher restrictions and you’re guaranteeing, at least for the time being, that there are barely any restrictions on the program at all.

What’s more, even if Congress passes new sanctions, it’s quite likely that the overall economic pressure on Iran will go down, not up. Most major European and Asian countries have closer economic ties to Iran than does the United States, and thus more

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domestic pressure to resume them. These countries have abided by international sanctions against Iran, to varying degrees, because the Obama administration convinced their leaders that sanctions were a necessary prelude to a diplomatic deal. If U.S. officials reject a deal, Iran’s historic trading partners will not economically injure themselves indefinitely. Sanctions, declaredBritain’s ambassador to the United States in May, have already reached “the high-water mark,” noting that “you would probably see more sanctions erosion” if nuclear talks fail. Germany’s ambassador added that, “If diplomacy fails, then the sanctions regime might unravel.”

The actual alternatives to a deal, in other words, are grim. Which is why critics discuss them as little as possible. The deal “falls apart, and then what happens?” CBS’s John Dickerson asked House Majority Leader John Boehner on Sunday. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” Boehner replied. “And from everything that’s leaked from these negotiations, the administration has backed away from almost all of the guidelines that they set out for themselves.”

In other words, Boehner evaded the question. The only way to determine if a “bad deal” is worse than “no deal” is to consider the latter’s consequences. Which is exactly what Boehner refused to do. Instead, he changed the subject: Rather than comparing the agreement to the actual alternatives, he compared it to the objectives that the Obama administration supposedly outlined at the start of the talks.

After a commercial break, Dickerson interviewed Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who did the same thing. “We have to remember the goal of these negotiations from the beginning,” Cotton said. “It was to stop Iran from enriching uranium and developing nuclear-weapons capability.”

Again, Dickerson tried to steer the conversation away from American desires and toward real-world alternatives. “You have taken the position that if the United States just … walked away from a bad deal, ratcheted up sanctions, that Iran would buckle and come to the table with more favorable terms,” Dickerson said. But “what about an alternative explanation, which a lot of experts believe, which is that they would say, ‘Forget negotiations, we’re going to race towards a breakout on a nuclear bomb?’”

Cotton’s answer: present a “credible threat of military force” and the Iranians will abandon “their nuclear-weapons capabilities.” The senator never explained why threatening war would make Iran capitulate now, given that the United States and Israel have been making such threats for over a decade. Nor did he address the consequences of a military strike, which former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said could “prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations.”

Instead, Cotton returned to comparing the nuclear deal to America’s ideal preferences.

The Obama administration, he said, should “get back to that original goal of stopping Iran from developing any nuclear-weapons capabilities.”

Whether the current deal represents the abandonment of Barack Obama’s “original goal” is less clear than Cotton suggests. In fact, even before talks with Iran began, Obama infuriated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his GOP allies by refusing to adopt the red lines they wanted. For instance, notes the Rand Corporation’s Alireza Nader, Obama never declared that Iran could not enrich any uranium, something Cotton incorrectly claims was “the goal of these negotiations from the beginning.”

135 But let’s assume that Obama, or George W. Bush before him, did outline goals that the current deal doesn’t meet. So what? Those goals are irrelevant, unless Cotton and company have a plausible plan for achieving them by scrapping the existing deal, which they don’t.

When critics focus incessantly on the gap between the present deal and a perfect one, what they’re really doing is blaming Obama for the fact that the United States is not omnipotent. This isn’t surprising given that American omnipotence is the guiding assumption behind contemporary Republican foreign policy. Ask any GOP presidential candidate except Rand Paul what they propose doing about any global hotspot and their answer is the same: be tougher. America must take a harder line against Iran’s nuclear program, against ISIS, against Bashar al-Assad, against Russian intervention in Ukraine and against Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.The United States cannot bludgeon Iran into total submission, either economically or militarily. The U.S. tried that in Iraq.

If you believe American power is limited, this agenda is absurd. America needs Russian and Chinese support for an Iranian nuclear deal. U.S. officials can’t simultaneously put maximum pressure on both Assad and ISIS, the two main rivals for power in Syria today. They must decide who is the lesser evil. Accepting that American power is limited means prioritizing. It means making concessions to regimes and organizations you don’t like in order to put more pressure on the ones you fear most. That’s what Franklin Roosevelt did when allying with Stalin against Hitler. It’s what Richard Nixon did when he reached out to communist China in order to increase America’s leverage over the U.S.S.R. And it’s what George W. Bush refused to do after 9/11, when he defined the “war on terror” not merely as a conflict against al-Qaeda but as a license to wage war, or cold war, against every anti-American regime supposedly pursuing weapons of mass destruction. This massive overestimation of American power underlay the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of a half-million Iraqis and almost 4,500 Americans, and cost the United States over $2 trillion. And it underlay Bush’s refusal to negotiate with Iran, even when Iran made dramatic overtures to the United States. Negotiations, after all, require mutual concessions, which Bush believed were unnecessary; if America just kept flexing its muscles, the logic went, Iran’s regime would collapse.

In 1943, Walter Lippmann wrote that “foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power.” If your commitments exceed your power, he wrote, your foreign policy is “insolvent.” That aptly describes the situation Obama inherited from Bush.

Obama has certainly made mistakes in the Middle East. But behind his drive for an Iranian nuclear deal is the effort to make American foreign policy “solvent” again by bringing America’s ends into alignment with its means. That means recognizing that the United States cannot bludgeon Iran into total submission, either economically or militarily. The U.S. tried that in Iraq.

It is precisely this recognition that makes the Iran deal so infuriating to Obama’s critics.

It codifies the limits of American power. And recognizing the limits of American power also means recognizing the limits of American exceptionalism. It means recognizing that no matter how deeply Americans believe in their country’s unique virtue, the United States is subject to the same restraints that have governed great powers in the past. For the Republican right, that’s a deeply unwelcome realization. For many other Americans, it’s a relief. It’s a sign that, finally, the Bush era in American foreign policy is over.

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Foreign Policy 14 Jul 2015

In the Iran Deal, Sharing Names Is a Dangerous Game

By Siobhan O'Grady To individuals sharing nearly the same name — but different transliterations from Farsi to English — led some to claim that the nuclear deal arrived at Tuesday in Vienna included quickly lifting sanctions on a notorious Iranian spymaster.

Not long after the Iranian nuclear deal was made public Tuesday, Twitter began to flood with rumors that Qassem Suleimani, the leader of the Quds Force, a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards responsible primarily for operations outside of Iran, had received groundbreaking sanctions relief as part of the historic deal.

Suleimani has multiple sanctions listed against him by the U.S. Treasury Department, including one for his alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. The U.N. Security Council put Suleimani on a list of sanctioned officials in 2007.

But a spokesperson for the Treasury Department and an official at the State Department confirmed to Foreign Policy Tuesday that although Suleimani will eventually receive sanctions relief from the United Nations, Tuesday’s deal will in no way alter his status on U.S. sanctions lists. And his relief from the U.N. sanctions will not go into effect for another eight years, the longest amount of time for sanctions to possibly last under the new terms reached Tuesday.

His eventual removal from the U.N. sanctions list, according to a State Department official who spoke to FP on the condition of anonymity, was nonnegotiable. Iran would only come to the negotiating table if every Security Council resolution related to Iran, including any designated names or companies included on the sanctions lists, were lifted.

Part of the deal struck Tuesday is that those U.N. sanctions will be lifted in two phases.

The first will be implemented as soon as Iran takes the first necessary steps to prove it is complying with the standards laid out in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The second will be implemented in eight years, at the very last moment the U.N. will still be authorized to lift sanctions.

Strangely enough, part of the confusion over what Suleimani’s sanctions relief really means, and during which phase his name will be removed from sanctions lists, is due to the transliterated spelling of his name.

The document spelling out Tuesday’s deal included extensive lists of people and businesses who will be relieved from various sanctions lists at one point or another, including one “Ghasem Soleymani” and another “Qasem Soleimani.” Fars News Agency, an Iranian news outlet, even tweeted the name “Ghasem Soleymani” as “proof” Gen. Qassem Suleimani was being relieved of sanctions held against him.

But according to both the State and Treasury Departments, Ghasem Soleymani has nothing to do with the notorious spymaster at all. In fact, he was included on a sanctions list by the U.N. for his role as director of uranium mining operations at the Saghand Uranium Mine in Iran, not for any involvement in the Revolutionary Guards. The 2008 U.N. Security Council resolution named him “as a person linked to Iran’s proliferation sensitive nuclear activities or development of nuclear weapon delivery systems,” the

137 Treasury spokesperson, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, told FP. He will be relieved from the sanctions list during the first phase.

The other name, however, is indeed the well-known leader of the Quds Force, who will be relieved of U.N. sanctions in eight years, but will remain on U.S. sanctions lists.

“The U.S. sanctions in place have a significant impact because of their secondary nature,” the Treasury spokesperson said. “This means that individuals, companies, and banks around the world would be exposing themselves to sanctions if they did business with IRGC — even if delisted at U.N. — as the U.S. will not be delisting the IRGC. ”Republican lawmakers opposed to the deal were quick to voice their discontent with Suleimani’s inclusion in Tuesday’s sanction relief lists. Speaking to MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said the deal was a terrible mistake, in part because of people like Suleimani who are included in sanctions relief.

“Today, we are giving sanctions relief to organizations like the Revolutionary Guard Corps and men like Qassem Suleimani, the general that leads that corps, who are responsible for killing American soldiers,” he said.

But the truth behind his statement depends largely on who he considers to be “we.”

The same State Department official told FP that “we the U.S. are not giving any sanctions relief to Qassem Suleimani or to any IRGC entities.”

“But separately, it is accurate that every individual … anyone who’s ever been designated under these Iran-related UNSC resolutions is going to have their name lifted eventually by the U.N,” he added.

Caroline Rabbitt, Cotton’s communications director, said that to Cotton’s office, whether it is U.S. or U.N. relief is not the most relevant question.

“Our point is that Qassem Suleimani is getting sanctions relief,” she told FP. “Regardless of whether it’s U.N. or U.S. relief or whether it’s now or in eight years, it’s happening.”

138 The Washington Institute 14 Jul 2015

What's Really Wrong with the Iran Nuclear Deal Robert Satloff Robert Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute.

Tactically, the impressively detailed Iran nuclear accord masks major flaws; strategically, it heralds a profound shift in U.S. regional strategy.

I have read every mind-numbing page of the Iran nuclear agreement. It is a serious document, negotiated by serious people. It includes a series of impressive restrictions on all aspects of Iran's nuclear program for many years, some lasting a quarter century.

But it is much more than just a technical accord. It is a strategy paper that maps Iran's emergence as a regional power, with the full blessing -- even support -- of the United States and the international community.

To start, it is important to note how far the Iran issue has evolved from the days when far-sighted lawmakers first pressed past administrations to impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic for its destabilizing nuclear program. Originally, diplomacy with Iran was supposed to be based on a straight trade-off: America (and its partners) would end nuclear-related sanctions while Iran would end its domestic nuclear program.

Then, the United States conceded to Iran the right to have its own nuclear reactors but not to develop indigenous capacity to enrich nuclear fuel, which doubles as the core element of nuclear weapons. Then, the United States conceded to Iran the right to enrich but under strict limitations. Then, the United States conceded to Iran that the strict limitations on enrichment would expire at a certain point in the future.

The result was that a deal originally conceived as trading sanctions relief for Iran's nuclear program evolved, over time, into a deal trading sanctions relief for time-limited restrictions on Iran's ambitious nuclear plans, enforced through a vigorous monitoring, verification and consequences regime. Perhaps that new, lesser deal -- one that kicks Iran's potential to be a nuclear weapons threshold state into the future -- is still in America's interest, but one should begin any analysis by recalling how far we have come from the original intent of sanctions and U.S. diplomacy.

A close reading of the text suggests that there are potentially significant gaps even in the vigor of the new regime defined by the agreement. Here are three: When will inspectors get into suspect sites? According to my read of the agreement, Iran has a total of 24 days to delay any set of inspections. While it may take more than 24 days to scrub clean a massive underground enrichment facility, there is a lot of illicit activity that Iran can hide with 24 days notice.

What are the consequences for Iranian violations? According to my read of the agreement, there is only one penalty for any infraction, big or small -- taking Iran to the UN Security Council for the "snapback" of international sanctions. That is like saying that for any crime -- whether a misdemeanor or a felony -- the punishment is the death penalty. In the real world, that means there will be no punishments for anything less than a capital crime.

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What does "snapback" mean in practice? Let's say that the UN Security Council does order the reimposition of sanctions. According to my read of the agreement, all contracts signed by Iran up until that point are grandfathered in and immune from sanctions. That means one can expect a stampede of state-to-state and private sector contracts -- some real, many hypothetical -- all designed to shield Iran from the impact of possible reimposition of sanctions, thereby weakening the impact of the punishment.

But the problem with snapback gets worse. The agreement includes a statement that Iran considers a reimposition of sanctions as freeing it from all commitments and restrictions under the deal. In other words, the violation would have to be really big for the Security Council to blow up the agreement and reimpose sanctions. That effectively gives Iran a free pass on all manner of small to mid-level violations.

These and other gaps are substantial. They deserve close scrutiny by lawmakers and clear answers from the Administration. But concerns about the agreement are much broader.

The Iran deal also includes a dramatic rollback of all "nuclear-related" sanctions -whether imposed by the United Nations, the European Union or the United States. This includes all energy, financial, transportation and trade sanctions. Indeed, the agreement includes page after page of names of people and companies whose assets will be "unfrozen." In addition, sanctions relief includes, in year five, the lifting of the conventional arms embargo on Iran and, in year eight, the lifting of limits on delivery of ballistic missile components to Iran.

Moreover, there is a key commitment in the agreement that signatories are prohibited from "re-introducing or re-imposing the sanctions" and, later in the text, are banned from "imposing discriminatory regulatory and procedural requirements in lieu of the sanctions and restrictive measures covered by the [agreement]." Does this mean the U.S. has tied its hands on applying these sanctions against Iran for other nefarious activity, from terrorism to human rights violations? At the very least, it appears that the United States did not make clear enough its intent to preserve sanctions for these nonnuclear purposes. Indeed, Iran may believe it is the only country in the world against whom a long list of penalties can never be applied for any crime it may do. That will only invite the bad behavior we hope to prevent.

The Iran accord goes further. On top of refraining from penalizing Iran for bad behavior, the U.S. and its partners commit to assist Iran to develop in energy, finance, technology and trade. The idea that America and its allies will actually help Iran grow stronger in these areas will sound a discordant note around the Middle East, where the Tehran regime is viewed as the eminence grise behind Bashar Assad's brutal suppression of his people, the Houthi rebellion against state authority in Yemen, the creeping expansion of radical Shiite influence in Iraq and the activities of some of the most extreme Palestinian terrorist groups.

In that vein, this agreement is truly historic. It marks a potential turning point in America's engagement in the Middle East, a pivot from building regional security on a team of longtime allies who were themselves former adversaries of each other -- Israel and the Sunni Arab states -- in favor of a balance between those allies and our own longtime nemesis, Iran.

This deal does not mean that America and Iran are now partners; far from it. But it

140 sends tremors throughout the region in laying out the potential for that partnership. And Iran doesn't have to pay for this huge strategic gain by giving up its use of terror, subversion or other problematic policies. The only payment Iran makes for this huge strategic gain is postponement of its nuclear ambitions.

Perhaps, even with all these problems, the deal will achieve what the Obama administration promised it would achieve -- to block Iran's multiple pathways to the bomb for at least the next decade. And perhaps achieving that goal is worth the many sacrifices and concessions Washington made along the way.

Before that judgment can be rendered, the administration needs to explain the apparent flaws and complications in the agreement. No less important is the need for the administration to spell out the logic of strategic balance -- or perhaps, strategic competition -- between our old allies and our potential new one that this agreement seems to imply.

141 Middle East Institute 14 Jul 2015

The Iran Deal: The Big Surprise is No Surprises

By Daniel Serwer

Dr. Daniel Serwer is a scholar at the Middle East Institute and a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

The Iran nuclear deal has only one big surprise: it is consistent with the April 2 “parameters” that preceded it and contains no surprises. No one caved. Nothing got walked back.

But there are some interesting additions. One is this: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” This is a written confirmation of the Supreme Leader’s controversial “fatwa” against nuclear weapons. It was not so long ago that Iran’s critics in the United States were complaining that the fatwa was only oral and not written. I have not noticed anyone welcoming the written version.

The “reaffirmation” wouldn’t be worth the paper it is printed on except for the detailed limits and intrusive inspections that the agreement provides. No softie on Iran, Dennis Ross confirms that these fulfill previous Iranian commitments to limit centrifuges, enrichment, and enriched uranium; end all plans for separating plutonium; and no longer engage in any research and development related to a nuclear explosive device.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring will be more comprehensive and intrusive than for other countries. While no system is foolproof, nuclear weapons have never been developed within an IAEA safeguarded program.

That leaves the possibility of a clandestine nuclear program outside the purview of the IAEA. There is reason to believe that Tehran had such a program until 2003, when it was allegedly stopped. Iran, which previously stonewalled IAEA inquiries on this subject, has now committed in the nuclear deal to clarifying its past nuclear activities with “possible military dimensions” by October 15, with a final assessment due from the IAEA on December 15. This will be an important early milestone in implementation (or not) of the nuclear deal. It is not the first time the Iranians have promised clarification. Beyond that date, the IAEA can request access to locations of concern. Iranian objections can be overridden by five of eight members of a joint commission overseeing implementation of the agreement. That joint commission includes five Western members (the United States, the UK, France, Germany, and the EU) as well as Russia, China, and Iran.

The agreement provides for sanctions to be lifted once Iran implements its obligations or passes certain time limits in compliance with the agreement. No sanctions get lifted without implementation, and some—like the arms embargo—remain in place for five or

142 eight years (depending on the weapons involved). While most restrictions are lifted within 15 years, some remain in place in perpetuity, including strict IAEA safeguards and the prohibition on nuclear weapons research and development.

The question is what happens if one or another obligation is breached. There is an elaborate, but quick-paced (I count 35 days), dispute resolution mechanism. At that point, UN Security Council sanctions would be reinstated, unless the Council votes within 30 days to continue lifting them. This is a “snapback” mechanism, unprecedented so far as I know in the Security Council. It would give the United States (and other permanent members) a veto over sanctions lifting. Iran has stated that it would treat reinstatement of sanctions as grounds to cease performing its commitments.

So, is this agreement a good thing or a bad thing?

It depends on what you think the alternative might be. At worst, it would be no constraints on the Iranian nuclear program, no IAEA monitoring, and no multilateral sanctions, as the EU and China are champing at the bit to do business with a cash, oil, and gas-rich Iran. At best we might in the absence of an agreement be able to sustain the sanctions for a while but not likely the IAEA monitoring and technological constraints, giving others in the region reason to initiate their own programs to produce weapons-grade uranium or plutonium. War might set back the Iranian nuclear program for a few years, but it would also give them incentive to finish the job and unleash even more chaos than the region is currently enduring.

Relief from sanctions will unquestionably provide the Iranians with resources. Tehran is owed upward of $100 billion that will flow into its coffers, in addition to whatever its renewed exports will bring in today’s bearish oil market, likely to go down further because of Iran’s reentry into it. The Islamic Republic is a profoundly anti-Western regime that even without much available cash has managed to contribute to instability in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Its anti-Americanism may sound hollow after this agreement, which engages Iran in a continuing process involving the United States and three of its allies as well as the European Union, but unless there is a dramatic and unexpected change of heart at the top in Tehran we can anticipate more trouble from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies in the region and even beyond.

America’s friends in the Gulf will therefore be nervous about the implications of this agreement, though the United Arab Emirates was quick to say it welcomed it. Israel denounced it even before the ink was on the page. But soon enough both the Gulf states and Israel will become keen about insisting on fulfilling its every letter, as they have with the interim agreement currently in effect.

143 The debate in Congress will be vigorous. Most Republicans and a good number of Democrats will oppose the deal on the grounds that it licenses Iran to become a nuclear threshold state, ignoring the Obama administration’s conviction that this would happen faster and with fewer controls in the absence of an agreement. But the opponents are unlikely to muster the two-thirds majority in both houses required to override a presidential veto. The Supreme Leader is thought to have given the green light for this deal, but he has not yet pronounced on it. Assuming he says a dramatically reluctant “yes,� the Iranian Majlis will not block it.

The saga of implementation has not yet begun. It will last 10-15 years. If the agreement holds and prevents Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, it will have made an enormous contribution to peace and stability. If it fails, we will have to deal with the ugly consequences: war or a nuclearized Middle East.

144 Arms Control Law 15 Jul 2015

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Regarding Iran’s Nuclear Program Dan Joyner The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed to by the P5+1 (Germany, France, the U.K., the U.S., China, Russia) and Iran on July 14 is a major success of international diplomacy, possibly to be credited with the avoidance of war. It is the culmination of twenty months of negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran since the initial Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) was agreed by the parties in November 2013. See my analysis here of the JPOA when it was concluded.

The JCPOA is comprised of 159 total pages of text, consisting of 18 pages of the JCPOA itself, with a further 141 pages divided among five annexes. All of the documents can be found at this link. It is a carefully drafted, well organized document, and compliments are due its drafters.

That being said, it is an extremely complex document, which attempts to address all of the issues in dispute between the parties concerning Iran’s nuclear program, from how many and what type of uranium enrichment centrifuges Iran can maintain in operation, to the technical specifications of transforming the Arak heavy water reactor into an alternate less-proliferation-sensitive design, to excruciatingly detailed provisions on the precise sequencing of sanctions lifting by the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. and the E.U. The general gist of the JCPOA is easy enough to summarize. It is a quid pro quo agreement under which Iran agrees to significant limits on its civilian nuclear program, and to an enhanced inspection regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify the continued peaceful nature of its program. In return, the P5+l agree to a coordinated lifting of the economic and financial sanctions that have been applied against Iran over the past six years by both the Security Council acting multilaterally, and the U.S. and E.U. in particular acting unilaterally. The end goal of the JCPOA is stated to be that Iran will ultimately be treated as a normal nuclear energy producing state, on par with Japan, Germany and many other Non-Nuclear Weapon States party to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The precise sequencing of the implementation of the JCPOA’s commitments was one of the most difficult issues in the negotiations, and the JCPOA has one full annex, Annex V, devoted to the issue. The implementation plan provides for approximately a 10 year timeline over which the main commitments are to be implemented by the parties. Technically “UNSCR Termination Day,” on which all Security Council resolutions on Iran will terminate, and on which the Council will no longer be seized of the Iran nuclear issue, is set to occur 10 years from “Adoption Day,” which is scheduled for 90 days after the endorsement of the JCPOA by the Security Council.

Sanctions relief will be staggered, but will begin in earnest on “Implementation Day,” on which date the IAEA will certify that Iran has implemented its primary commitments limiting its nuclear program. This could occur within approximately six months from “Adoption Day.” The final, full lifting of all multilateral and unilateral sanctions is set to occur on “Transition Day,” which is defined as 8 years from “Adoption Day,” or when the IAEA reports that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful use, whichever is earlier. So the JCPOA envisions a full lifting of all nuclear-related sanctions on Iran within the next eight years at a maximum, with significant sanctions lifting to occur hopefully within the coming year.

145

There are a number of important legal observations to make about the JCPOA text. I’ll mention only a few of them here briefly, but I’ll be writing more about them over at my blog, Arms Control Law, where you can also find background information on the issues.

1. It is important to note that the JCPOA is not a treaty. This is made explicitly clear on Pg. 6 of the JCPOA, when the text refers to all of the subsequently detailed commitments as “voluntary measures.” This fact of course has important implications for both international law, and the domestic law of the parties. Significantly from an international law perspective, it means that neither Iran’s legal obligations, nor the legal authority of the IAEA, are affected by the terms of the JCPOA itself. The JCPOA is simply a diplomatic agreement, consisting of political and not legal commitments. This is an important distinction to bear in mind inter alia when considering the expanded access for IAEA inspectors in Iran which is provided for in Annex 1, Section Q. The fact that these enhanced access procedures, under which IAEA inspectors can request access to sites in Iran that have not been declared by Iran to have any connection to its nuclear program, are simply political in nature, should provide incentive for all sides to be reasonable and measured in their approach to disputes about this access. Excessively aggressive and unreasonable demands made by either side could result in a collapse of the entire JCPOA framework.

2. Also on the subject of IAEA safeguards, the JCPOA provides that Iran will only provisionally apply its Additional Protocol agreement with the IAEA for the next 8 years, and only after that time will it formally ratify the Additional Protocol and bring it into force. Having the Additional Protocol only provisionally applied during this period could make for some complicated and perhaps controversial questions concerning its application. The most recent reports of the International Law Commission’s Special Rapporteur on Provisional Application of Treaties will be useful in clarifying these questions. Regarding the purpose for this lengthy period of provisional application, while it may have some basis in the normal delay associated with domestic ratification procedures, I suspect that this was in fact a feature of the agreement specially negotiated by Iran in order to allow it continued leverage with the IAEA, with which it has a longstanding tense relationship.

3. One reason for that tense relationship is the IAEA’s allegations since 2011 that Iran has not been forthcoming about past nuclear weaponization work conducted in Iran prior to 2003. This is the so-called Possible Military Dimensions (PMD) issue, which was also a significant point of contention during the negotiations. The JCPOA handles the PMD issue in a manner that has surprised many observers. In brief, in paragraph 14 of the JCPOA the parties agree that the entire PMD issue is to be resolved between Iran and the IAEA within the next six months, pursuant to a “Road Map” document agreed separately between the IAEA and Iran on the same day as the JCPOA. This short time frame for resolving this complex issue, which has been hotly contested between the IAEA and Iran for the past four years, appears to demonstrate the JCPOA parties’ overall intent to focus on the present and future, and not on the past. This is a particularly prudent and pragmatic view, in my opinion, and avoids what could have been a poison pill for the JCPOA, in the form of attempts to force Iran to admit to past nuclear weaponization work.

There are many other interesting legal issues that bear observation, but I will end this guest post at this point, and invite interested readers to comment, and to follow my further writing on this and all other matters armscontrollawish at my blog.

146 USA Today 15 Jul 2015

Iran deal not a panacea, but a pragmatic necessity: Column Alireza Nader

Alireza Nader is a senior international policy analyst at the non-profit, non-partisan RAND Corporation.

The nuclear agreement signed between Iran and theP5+1 (United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France, Germany) will remain a point of contention in Washington for many years to come.

Supporters of the deal claim that it will effectively constrain and roll back Iran's nuclear efforts while providing space for meaningful change in Iran. Critics claim that the deal leaves most of Iran's nuclear infrastructure intact and does not compel the Iranian government to change its regional policies and behavior at home. The nuclear agreement is not perfect and certainly does not attain the ideals of either side. However, on balance, it prevents Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability in the near future while giving some space for Iranian proponents of change. The nuclear deal is a pragmatic necessity rather than a panacea.

The nuclear agreement, nearly 100 pages, is long on technical details that will be parsed by highly experienced non-proliferation experts. But it has several components that diminish and limit Iran's nuclear capabilities. According to the agreement, Iran has decided to drastically cut back on its number of centrifuges. The Fordow facility, built under a mountain and impervious to most military options, will be turned into a research and science facility, a smart compromise between Iran and the P5+1. The Arak heavy water reactor will be modified so it cannot be used for production of nuclear weapons.

And Iran agrees to keep its stockpile of enriched uranium to a minimum. The Iranian nuclear program will also come under the close scrutiny of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Critics have claimed that Iran should be subjected to "anytime, anywhere" inspections, but it is completely unrealistic to expect any sovereign country undefeated in war to accept such measures. Iran may object to IAEA requests for inspections, but a majority of the P5+1 can overrule its objections. This is a formula that gives a clear advantage to the United States.

Iran must comply with the agreement before it receives sanctions relief; it will not receive a "signing bonus" for signing the agreement, as critics have claimed. Over time, Iran may repatriate nearly $150 billion of its own funds, which have been "frozen" within the international financial system due to nuclear sanctions. This is a reasonable quid pro quo. Iran rolls back its nuclear program for sanctions relief. President Hassan Rouhani seeks to spend much of this money and any future oil proceeds on Iran'sailing economy; he was elected on a platform of improving living standards for the average Iranian.

However, Iran's highly corrupt political establishment, including theRevolutionary Guards, is likely to take its cut of the economic windfall. Some of Iran's sanctions relief may also be spent on Iran's regional activities, although Iran's domestic needs are likely to outweigh expenditures for foreign adventures.

The nuclear deal will not transform Iran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards will maintain control and attempt to prevent any meaningful changes. Rouhani, while pragmatic enough to sign a nuclear deal, is also cautious enough not to make any sudden moves that could jolt the political system and undermine his own political authority. But millions of Iranians that seek change will be given more space to breath. The 2009 mass Green Movement demonstrated a thirst for

147 change in Iran. Iranians have been waiting for a deal for years, but they, more than anyone, are realistic enough to realize its limitations.

The deal is not perfect. The strongest limitations on Iran's nuclear program will last 10 to 15 years. Iran will be more free to expand its nuclear program after that period, but it will still remain under international inspections. And a deal will not change the Iranian regime or its support for anti-American forces in the Middle East. However, the nuclear deal is a first step for change in Iran. Change may be slow to come, as Iranians have long expected. After all, the 1979 revolution, seemingly sudden and full of promise, transformed Iran forever and for the worse as many Iranians are concerned. So slow changes may be the best option for them. Washington, for now, has come to the same conclusion. Positive change in Iran cannot be achieved through war, sanctions, and unending pressure. It will take incremental steps. The nuclear deal, while not perfect, is a step in the right direction.

148 Foreign Affairs 15 Jul 2015

Dollar Diplomacy in Tehran How Promoting Business in Iran Boosts the Nuclear Agreement

By Eric Lorber and Elizabeth Rosenberg The United States and international partners have signed ahistoric agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, but they still face important choices about just how far to go in allowing Iran back into the global economy. In the short term, U.S. companies will be limited in their ability to join the corporate march back to Iran when sanctions are lifted, and many in the West who have advocated for Iran’s isolation for decades do not want to see their nations’ companies and banks participate in Iran’s economic reintegration.

Keeping Western companies on the sidelines, however, would be a strategic mistake.

Allowing—or even encouraging—Western companies to invest in Iran provides Tehran with incentives to abide by the deal and gives Washington more leverage over Iran in the future.

The new nuclear accord lays out a path for international companies to initiate broad new trading and investment activities once Iran meets key nuclear commitments. For the private sector, this relaxation presents significant opportunities as well as a minefield of commercial risks. The sanctions on Iran for state-sponsored terrorism, regional destabilization, and human rights violations will remain in place. Investors thus face tremendous uncertainty in balancing an emerging market opportunity with the potential for expensive, damaging business losses if they inadvertently violate remaining sanctions. Over the past few years, regulators in the United States have already imposed billions of dollars in fines against Western companies for violating sanctions, even when they have done so unintentionally. This precedent might lead many European and Asian businesses to conclude that Iran’s potential financial rewards are simply not worth the risks. U.S. corporations are even more cautious. For many global companies and banks, hanging back will be the easiest and safest course of action.

U.S. policymakers should take a more strategic approach to Iranian sanctions relief and encourage the international business community to pursue commerce in the nation. It is not the United States’ job to rehabilitate the Iranian economy, of course, but clarifying the legal pathways toward Western investment in Iran is an important and necessary task. Doing so will increase Washington’s credibility as a good-faith actor, strengthen the nuclear deal, and, most important, provide future economic leverage with Iran.

Clarifying the new rules for would-be investors would also limit Iran’s ability to claim that the United States has violated the agreement by stymieing much-needed relief.

Likewise, streamlining Iranian investment policy will also pressure Tehran into becoming a better financial actor. Iran’s financial system has been blacklisted for its lack of integrity, and it received ahorrendous report card from the Financial Action Task Force, the preeminent global standard-setting body against money laundering and terrorism financing. Western companies can begin business activities in Iran once sanctions are lifted, and this can provide an effective form of commercial diplomacy. Iran will have to accelerate its nascent efforts to reduce corruption and illicit financing if it is to make deals with the reputable international companies it is courting.

Opening financial channels between the West and Tehran may mitigate—although not remove—concerns that Iran could use a revitalized economy to increase its support of terrorism and destabilization throughout the Middle East. If the country’s economic institutions have a financial interest in being responsible actors within the global economy and international financial system, they will be less likely to participate in illicit

149 activities. There is also a strategic advantage for the West in having a broad array of international companies operating within the Iranian energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing markets. U.S. policymakers should ensure that Western companies receive equal footing with their Chinese and Middle Eastern counterparts, who will be quick to enter Iran once sanctions are relaxed. This will help ensure that Iran’s new commercial relationships do not pivot exclusively to Asia.

Facilitating U.S. and European commercial investments in Iran should involve three key components. First, U.S. President Barack Obama has to instruct U.S. regulators to provide the private sector with detailed guidelines on how to do business in the country.

The U.S. Treasury Department has offered little guidance for companies on how to navigate Iranian sanctions in the past—what it has offered was often vague, contradictory, and not legally binding. If the Treasury Department provides inadequate guidance, companies will be unable to navigate a broad rollback of the most complicated sanctions regime in history.Second, the U.S. government must establish a better, institutionalized system to engage with the business community. To do so, the Treasury Department should create a dedicated “Iran sanctions” hot line, host monthly public meetings with the business community, and release legal opinions and specific licenses for permitted activity with Iran. This will go a long way to make clear which types of activities Washington will and will not support, thereby allowing the business community to begin working within Tehran sooner.

Third, the Treasury Department should allow U.S. companies to engage in targeted investment in Iran by expanding the issuance of general licenses. As demonstrated by the recent relaxation of certain Cuban sanctions, general licenses can allow U.S. banks and investors to fund development in Iran—thereby empowering the nation’s youth, entrepreneurs, and civil society through new projects and businesses. This approach could, in turn, help advance U.S. interests by promoting positive changes in Iran.

Moreover, a connection between Iran and Western business sectors will provide essential economic leverage in the future. If the nuclear deal breaks down, U.S. policymakers will be best positioned to impose punishing new sanctions if large sums of foreign investment are at stake.

Implementing any deal would be fraught with challenges. But if the United States is to uphold credible nuclear diplomacy with Iran, it will need to chart a clear course for the private sector to navigate the changing landscape of sanctions. Promoting the return of European and U.S. business in Iran is a smart new way to advance U.S. interests within the country.

150 The New York Times 15 Jul 2015

Obama Begins 60-Day Campaign to Win Over Iran Deal Skeptics at Home and Abroad

By GARDINER HARRIS and MICHAEL D. SHEAR WASHINGTON — President Obama eagerly took on critics of the Iran nuclear deal on Wednesday, inviting question after question on an agreement he suggested that many of his political adversaries had not even read.

Mr. Obama used a formal East Room news conference to begin what White House officials said would be an aggressive effort by the president and his top advisers over the next 60 days to combat critics in both parties and to sell the Iran deal to members of Congress, the public and allies in the region.

While Mr. Obama is expected to win enough votes to sustain a veto of any legislation rejecting the deal, his goal over the next two months is to persuade enough Democrats to support the accord so that he can paint opponents as driven by politics rather than diplomacy.

He appeared to relish the fight as he adopted a bring-it-on demeanor and invited reporters to ask him more about the deal.

“Have we exhausted Iran questions here?” he asked at one point. “I think there’s a helicopter that’s coming, but I really am enjoying this Iran debate.”

He then disregarded a prepared list of reporters to call on and, like a boxer beckoning someone to throw a punch, asked for more questions on Iran from the room.

“I just want to make sure that we’re not leaving any stones unturned here,” he said. As Mr. Obama spoke, his critics continued to hammer against it. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, one of the deal’s most ardent critics, said it represented a “nuclear agreement with an outlaw regime” and predicted that “the American people will repudiate this deal and Congress will kill the deal with a veto-proof majority.”

Most American Jewish groups were also mobilizing strongly against the accord. The proIsrael lobby Aipac denounced the deal as one that “would facilitate rather than prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and would further entrench and empower the leading state sponsor of terror.”

“Proponents of the proposed agreement will argue that the only alternative to this agreement is military conflict,” Aipac said in a statement calling on Congress to reject the deal and to insist on a better one. “In fact, the reverse is true. A bad agreement such as this will invite instability and nuclear proliferation. It will embolden Iran and may encourage regional conflict.”

The Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America issued a joint statement saying they had scrutinized the pact and found it “seriously wanting,” calling the inspection regime insufficient and the billions of dollars in sanctions for relief for Iran unacceptable. They said they would be mobilizing rabbis and synagogues across the nation to oppose the measure and urge lawmakers to reject it.

In the past, Mr. Obama has often appeared defensive or defeated as he faced questions about the failure of his health care website or other foreign policy challenges. But in this

151 case he avidly raised and dismissed many objections without even being asked. For those who argue that the administration could have forced the Iranians to agree to a deal that would leave Iran with no nuclear capacity, “there is nobody who thinks that Iran would or could ever accept that,” he said.

And for those who say that the current sanctions on Iran are better than the negotiated deal, Mr. Obama said that without a diplomatic agreement the present sanctions regime would break down.

“Without a deal, the international sanctions regime will unravel with little ability to reimpose them,” he said.

The president did concede that the people of Israel — where the deal has been met with hostility and skepticism from across the political spectrum — have “legitimate concerns” about whether Iran emerges with a greater ability to back terrorism and disrupt its neighbors.

“You have a large country, with a significant military, that has proclaimed that Israel shouldn’t exist, that has denied the Holocaust, that has financed Hezbollah,” Mr. Obama said, speaking of Iran. “There are very good reasons why Israelis are nervous about Iran’s position in the world, generally.”

But Mr. Obama insisted that “those threats are compounded if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.”

With a better deal impossible, Mr. Obama said that the only viable alternative to the negotiated settlement his administration had presented was war. And he challenged critics of the deal to acknowledge that what they really wanted was a military solution.

“And if the alternative is that we should bring Iran to heel through military force, then those critics should say so, and that will be an honest debate,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama said he hoped the agreement would pave the way to a more constructive relationship with Iran. But he rejected the idea that the deal deserved to be opposed because it failed to address Iran’s support for terrorism or its destabilizing activities in the Middle East.

“My hope is that building on this deal, we can continue to have conversations with Iran that incentivizes them to behave differently in the region, to be less aggressive, less hostile, more cooperative,” Mr. Obama said. “But we’re not counting on it.”

The agreement, he said, “solves one particular problem,” which is the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.

He finally said he had to go, but promised to return to the subject of the Iran deal.

“I think we’ve hit the big themes, but I — but I promise you I will — I will address this again, all right?” he said. “I suspect this is not the last that we’ve heard of this debate.”

152 The Huffington Post 15 Jul 2015

Managing Post-Nuclear Deal Expectations: Rouhani's Difficult Road Ahead Ebrahim Mohseni, PhD, Research Associate at Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (CISSM) As difficult as it was for President Rouhani to secure a deal, it will be even more difficult for him to sustain popular support for it when all the excitement dies down. In a new poll that IranPoll.com, an independent Toronto-based opinion research firm, conducted for the University of Maryland, a majority (57 percent) of Iranians expressed support for the deal.

Yet, the expressed support heavily rests on the assumption, held by most Iranians, that the deal will result in better access to foreign medicines and medical equipment (61 percent); significantly more foreign investment (62 percent); and tangible improvements in living standards (55 percent), all within a year.

If these expectations are not realized quickly, Rouhani will be left with the unpleasant task of explaining who has pocketed the benefits of the deal and what Iran got in return for rolling back the nuclear program. This will be particularly difficult since 83 percent of Iranians think it is "very important" for Iran to continue developing its nuclear program and Rouhani would need to show that what Iran got in return was better. This level of Iranian support for Iran to develop its nuclear program has remained essentially unchanged across various polls conducted in Iran since 2006.

The national telephone poll of 1,009 Iranians was conducted by IranPoll.com and University of Tehran Center for Public Opinion Research (UTCPOR) for University of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) on 12-28 May 2015, with a margin of error of 3.2 percent.

In reaction to the nuclear deal, Ali Tayebnia, Iran's minister for economic affairs and finance, acknowledged these challenges: With the deal, we need a few months after the implementation of the agreed processes

by Iran and the west before the full effects of the lifting of the sanctions can manifest. At the same time, people are worn down by the pressures of the past few years and expect a swift resolution to the country's economic problems.

The deal could introduce other problems for President Rouhani as well. Iran's economy suffers from many structural deficiencies that are mostly the byproducts of mismanagement and corruption. To this date, Iranian officials had the luxury of blaming Iran's sluggish economy on "unjust" foreign sanctions. The post-deal environment, however, will be different and Iranians are more likely to place the blame for Iran's underperforming economy on Iranian policymakers. With a diminished scapegoat, Rouhani will quickly come under increasing pressure to explain why he has not been able to turn things around.

153 More significantly, Iran's economy is in dire need of foreign investment, particularly in its oil and gas sectors. While the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will lift many restrictions that were placed on such investments in Iran's economy, by no mean does it advocate such investments. To this date, the United States has been able to impose staggering fines on global financial institutions that have been found to evade US sanctions and the pain of these fines are not likely to be forgotten by banks for the years to come. With most US sanctions on Iran still in place and the snap-back provisions that are included in the deal, major multinational companies are unlikely to accept the risks of investing in Iran.

The most likely scenario, considering Iran's impressive cash reserves held in foreign banks and a middle-class with an acquired taste for foreign goods, is that most companies would want to exploit Iran's market by selling their goods to Iran in return for fast risk-free cash instead of investing in it. While this will lower the cost of consumer goods in Iran, the competition is likely to force many Iranian industries into bankruptcy, resulting in higher unemployment rates. Of course, Iran could prevent this by introducing tariffs with equal effect of the sanctions, in which case the whole economic point of the deal would be lost.

Still, the positive psychological effects of the deal, the initial catch-up effect of suppressed inherent development capacities of a well-educated 80 million strong population, and Iran's relatively unique stance as an unexploited large economy might help Rohani carry public support in the short term. In the long run, however, there is no substitute for effective governance and sound economic management.

154 The New York Times 15 Jul 2015

Clearing Hurdles to Iran Nuclear Deal With Standoffs, Shouts and Compromise

By DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL R. GORDON VIENNA — One by one, the roadblocks to a nuclear accord between Iran and the United States had been painstakingly cleared. But as the negotiations went into their third week in the neoclassical Coburg Palace hotel this month, a major dispute lingered over whether a ban on Iran’s ability to purchase conventional weapons and missile technology would remain in place.

The American delegation, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, insisted on extending the ban. But Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister and his country’s chief negotiator, was opposed. Backing him were the Russians and Chinese, equal parties in the talks, who saw a lucrative market in selling arms to Tehran.

A compromise was struck that fully satisfied neither side: a five-year ban on the sale of conventional weapons and an eight-year ban on ballistic missiles.

Privately, Mr. Kerry told his team that any lifting of the ban was bound to inflame many in Congress, where fears of empowering Iran would mix with presidential politics. But shortly before midnight on Monday he called President Obama, and together they agreed that it was not worth losing what they saw as the best chance to roll back Iran’s nuclear program simply because there was a risk that sometime in the future Iran would be able to acquire far less dangerous weapons.

Over the 17 long days here in Vienna, the standoffs, trade-offs, shouts and confrontations — some real, some staged for negotiating advantage — sometimes obscured the fact that the two countries were negotiating with entirely different agendas.

As Mr. Obama made clear again Wednesday, the alternative he saw to the deal was a steady slide toward another war — perhaps, aides thought, in just a year or two as Iran’s nuclear abilities accelerated. Throughout the talks, he had one goal: to diminish the prospect that Iran could develop an atomic bomb — or could race for one before the United States and its allies could react — and buy time to try to restructure the relationship.

For the president, everything else — Iran’s support for terrorism, its imprisonment of dissidents and even some Americans, its meddling in Iraq and Syria, its arms trade — was secondary.

For the Iranians, this was a negotiation first and foremost to get rid of what Mr. Zarif often called the “unjust sanctions” while trying to keep their nuclear options open. And while they treasured their nuclear program, they treasured the symbolism of not backing down to American demands even more. But Mr. Zarif was walking his own high-wire act at home. While he had an important ally in Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, hard-liners did not want to reach any deal at all; many were making a fortune from the sanctions because they controlled Iran’s black markets.

And conservatives around the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were looking for any signs that their Americanized chief negotiator, who studied at the University of Denver, was ready to give away too much nuclear infrastructure without getting Iran the sanctions lifted in return, as the ayatollah had decreed.

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There was no single event, no heart-to-heart conversation between adversaries or game-changing insight that made the Iran deal happen. Instead, over a period of years, each side came to gradually understand what mattered most to the other.

For the Americans, that meant designing offers that kept the shell of Iran’s nuclear program in place while seeking to gut its interior. For the Iranians, it meant ridding themselves of sanctions in ways they could describe to their own people as forcing the United States to deal with Iran as an equal, respected sovereign power. And in the end they reached agreement because a brief constellation of personalities and events came into alignment: The sultan of Oman, who convinced the White House that he could establish a back channel to the Iranians. The election of Mr. Rouhani, who Mr. Obama thought would be more receptive to his overtures than Iran’s aging supreme leader. A series of insights from the Energy Department’s nuclear laboratories that allowed the physics of enrichment to create new space for compromise among the political leaders. And the presence of two top diplomats, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Zarif, driven by the conviction that they could break an ugly 35-year history.

At one point last week the simmering tension between the two negotiators boiled over when Mr. Zarif felt his American counterpart was pressing too hard. “Never threaten an Iranian!” he shouted. At the other end of the table Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, who has had his share of disputes with Mr. Kerry, tried to break the tension.

“Or a Russian!” he said, as the room broke out in nervous laughter.

But during a break on one particularly discouraging March day in Lausanne, Switzerland, where negotiations were held before adjourning to Vienna, Mr. Zarif struck a different tone as he invoked the names of the key figures on two sides, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the top energy officials of the United States and Iran, Ernest J. Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi.

“We are not going to have another time in history when there is an Obama and a Biden and a Kerry and a Moniz again,” he said, according to notes of the conversation. “And there may be no Rouhani, Zarif and Salehi.”

A Shift to Sanctions Barack Obama came to office hoping for a dialogue with Tehran but focused on the problem of nuclear proliferation. After Ayatollah Khamenei responded to Mr. Obama’s private letters with long diatribes about America’s efforts, the president turned to squeezing the country economically.

“Obama seemed very comfortable with the shift to sanctions after the Iranians failed to reciprocate to his overtures,” said Gary Samore, then a senior White House aide. He pressed the Russians to delay selling the S-300, a sophisticated air defense system, to Iran, and sent a delegation to persuade Beijing to reduce China’s purchases of oil.

But when an offer to help get secret talks started with the Iranians came from Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, the president was intrigued. Eventually the White House turned to a trusted ally to tease out the possibilities: Mr. Kerry, then a senator from Massachusetts. Meeting in Oman in December 2011, the sultan said an accord could be reached.

There was a high likelihood it could happen, the sultan said, if the Obama administration showed its seriousness about a diplomatic solution. But making a point that would recur time and again — down to the last days of the Vienna talks — he said that a way would

156 need to be found to allow the Iranians to “keep their honor.”

It took seven months — until July 2012 — before secret envoys sent by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with the Iranians, and that meeting went poorly. Then, in June 2013, came the election of Mr. Rouhani, whom the supreme leader had allowed to run, largely on a platform of ridding Iran of the sanctions that were squeezing the elite and middle class.

“The president said we had to work up a letter to him right away,” one of Mr. Obama’s senior aides said. “He sensed it was a moment we had to seize.”

As Mr. Obama’s aides sketched out how the negotiations might play out, they faced a threshold decision: Would they abandon the Bush administration’s mantra that “not one centrifuge spins,” a position they knew the Iranians would never accept? Or were they willing to allow a token Iranian program — a face-saving one — if the trade-off was two decades or so of restrictions?

A consensus quickly emerged that a contained program was far better than a smoldering confrontation that seemed headed toward a military strike. “The idea was that if we accepted enrichment it would be at a very small level,” said Dennis B. Ross, who served on the National Security Council during Mr. Obama’s first term. “By being very limited, it would be a manifestation that they really had a peaceful nuclear program.”

But it became clear that Iran envisioned something different: a sizable nuclear infrastructure that would take a pause of a few years, the price of ending sanctions, but then resume its march to “industrial scale” uranium enrichment. The gap between the American numbers of acceptable centrifuges and the Iranian numbers seemed unbridgeable.

Looking for a way to break the deadlock without forcing the Iranians into a corner, the nuclear experts at the Energy Department began to present other, more complex options. The focus, they suggested, should not be simply on the number and type of centrifuges, but the “breakout time,” the amount of time it would take for Iran, under a “best reasonable” estimate, to produce a single weapon’s worth of material. Put simply, Iran could have centrifuges running if it agreed to a far smaller stockpile of fuel.

“There were many intense meetings on this,” recalled Antony J. Blinken, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser at the time, and now the deputy secretary of state. “We had to present a lot of permutations to the president to meet his bottom lines.”

The military said it could live with a “breakout time” of a year; that was plenty of time to launch a strike to destroy Iran’s production facilities. But the optics of allowing thousands of centrifuges to remain was not good.

“Throughout this process,” Mr. Blinken said, “we’ve been faced with a choice between what is politically feasible and what is practically necessary.”

It would be the first of many such choices.

Progress Is Halting A series of secret negotiations with the Rouhani team, led by Mrs. Clinton’s top aide, Jake Sullivan, and one of America’s most experienced diplomats, William J. Burns, explored the possibilities.

“I have about six months to get this through,” Mr. Zarif said in New York in September 2013, on his first trip to the United Nations as foreign minister after many years of

157 academic exile. After that, he feared, the opponents of dealing with the United States would rise again. He was wrong: It turned out the process went on for another 22 months.

A first agreement, just to get Iran to freeze its current nuclear activity and blend down some stockpiles of fuel that the West feared was approaching weapons-grade, took months to negotiate. Then came halting progress, as the Americans began to realize that at every stage the Iranians were fighting to preserve every major nuclear facility. “It was all about perception,” one negotiator said. “They fought to keep the buildings and tangible equipment. It was easier for them to give up fuel or parts of the equipment people didn’t see.” That preserved a narrative that nothing had been surrendered.

Last summer, Iran’s supreme leader made the problem even harder, pronouncing in a speech (which took Mr. Zarif by surprise) that Iran should eventually have an industrialscale enrichment program — with 190,000 centrifuges — to provide fuel for power reactors. The logjam was not broken until several extensions of the talks, and a marathon set of meetings in Lausanne, where a critical treaty had been negotiated at the end of World War I. By this time, Mr. Moniz and Mr. Salehi, a former foreign minister and now head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, joined the talks to work out the nuclear details — in a less political, more scientific environment.

The officials working under Mr. Salehi “were mostly hard-liners, and they would give on nothing,” one American official said. But when Mr. Salehi, who got his nuclear training at M.I.T. before the Iranian revolution, showed up and developed a rapport with Mr. Moniz, the secretary of energy and a former chairman of the M.I.T. physics department, the Iranian bureaucrats were often sidelined, or overruled. (Mr. Moniz played the connection to the hilt, showing up one day with M.I.T.-logo baby gifts for Mr. Salehi’s first grandchild.)

Over intense days, in which proposals were sketched out on rolling white boards so that nothing was on paper, where it might have to go back to Tehran for approval, they worked out a framework.

The two scientists found ways to achieve the one-year breakout time, at least for the first 10 years, by reducing low enriched uranium stocks to a mere 660 pounds, down from about nine tons that Iran has now produced. In return, Iran would be allowed over 6,000 centrifuges, and an agreement to keep 1,000 of them in Fordo, the deep underground enrichment site that worried Israeli officials because it was impermeable to Israeli bombing. But no fissile material — the stuff of enriched uranium — would be allowed at Fordo, and last week the Iranians agreed to pull most of the piping out of the facility, making it even harder to restart operations.

Still, Mr. Obama had talked about the need to close the facility when he revealed its existence in 2009. There were other compromises. One Western diplomat said an initial hope among some of the nations involved in the talks was that the central provisions of an agreement would last 20 years. They got 10, with restrictions on how much of a stockpile Iran could maintain that last for 15 years.

“By the time we left Lausanne, most of the nuclear issues were solved, we just had to work out the specific wording,” one of the negotiators said.

But tellingly, in the ensuing two and a half months, the two sides described their agreements in very different terms. Mr. Kerry described an Iranian capability that had been neutralized; the Iranians a capability that had been preserved. That set up a collision course for the last negotiations, in Vienna.

Political Requirements Differ

158 Mr. Kerry arrived in Vienna on June 28, hobbling on crutches after breaking his femur in a bicycle accident in France. His chief negotiator, Wendy Sherman, a tenacious, detailoriented diplomat who had broken two or three bones of her own during the talks, had already been in Vienna for a week.

The Iranians, she reported, were intent on getting bigger, faster relief from sanctions, claiming Mr. Rouhani’s political survival depended on it.

The United States also had its requirements. On the nuclear side, it needed to cut off all three of Iran’s pathways to a bomb: enriching uranium, producing plutonium or covertly manufacturing or purchasing a weapon. Each of those carried enormous complexities.

Politically, it needed to show that Iran met all its major obligations before sanctions were lifted, and that there was a mechanism to reimpose them quickly if Tehran stopped cooperating.

Mr. Obama had already given ammunition to critics of a deal when he said in an April interview that after year 13 of the accord Iran’s breakout time could be down to nearly zero. That seemed to acknowledge the main critique of the emerging agreement — that it constituted the medium-term management of the Iranian program, not its elimination.

American negotiators believed the deal was better than that, but to constrain Iran’s ability to emerge from the accord as a nuclear threshold state they had to pin the Iranians down on some of the technical details, including the development of more efficient centrifuges.

The problem was that the principal Iranian interlocutor for settling precisely that issue, Mr. Salehi, was missing: He had undergone three abdominal operations in the previous two months, and on a conference call a few weeks before Mr. Moniz thought he sounded weak. “We didn’t know if Salehi was reluctant to come, or too weak,” said one senior American official. But without him, “we were getting nowhere.”

Two days after Mr. Kerry arrived, Mr. Zarif took a quick trip to Tehran, ostensibly for consultations. Most important, he returned with Mr. Salehi on his plane. The atmosphere at the Coburg Palace was tense. But on July 4, the Iranians broke the ice by inviting the Americans for lunch, at which Mr. Zarif complained about ads in Tehran that were inveighing against the deal. Mr. Kerry talked about complaints he was getting from critics at home, who he said were attacking an agreement without even bothering to learn the details.

But the talks dragged on. The Iranians appeared to think they could exploit a deadline for submitting a finished accord to Congress for a 30-day review. The deadline was July 9. “It was working against us,” one diplomat said. “The Iranians saw that deadline and they were convinced we would give in on key details to avoid the longer review.”

At the White House, Mr. Obama, monitoring the talks every few hours, was getting concerned about a narrative that he and Mr. Kerry wanted a deal too much — three mornings in a row Mr. Obama reminded his aides, “I don’t need this.” They were not certain what he meant, but they had a theory: After big victories in the Supreme Court on health care and the gay rights, he could afford to be patient.

The days ticked by, with halting progress. Mr. Moniz finished the nuclear details, often in meetings in the impressive stone basement of the Coburg, built from the ramparts of old Vienna. The negotiators called it Fordo because, if you ignored the 60,000 wine bottles, it looked a little like Iran’s underground enrichment center.

The last stretch was taken up largely with the wording of a United Nations Security Council resolution that would lay out the terms of the arms embargo. Finally, on

159 Tuesday, the agreement was announced.

When the photo ops were over, the seven foreign ministers who had negotiated it met for the last time. Each spoke briefly about the importance of the moment. Mr. Kerry spoke last, but then added a personal coda. Choking up, he recalled going off to Vietnam as a young naval officer and said he never wanted to go through that again. He emerged committed, he said, to using diplomacy to avoid the horrors of war.

160 The Wall Street Journal 15 Jul 2015

U.N. Nuclear Agency Chief Sees Challenges in Iran Deal Yukiya Amano says five-month timeline is doable if Iran cooperates fully

By Laurence Norman VIENNA—The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog expressed confidence that five months would be enough time to investigate and report on Iran’s past nuclear work while conceding the challenge was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is charged with ensuring Iran complies with a nuclear agreement reached this week with six world powers.

Action began on the deal Wednesday. The U.S. circulated a U.N. Security Council resolution to endorse it and eventually lift most U.N. sanctions on Tehran but allow the U.S. to use its veto to restore them if Iran is seen to be violating the nuclear deal. The terms were negotiated in Vienna by the five permanent Security Council members and is expected to be passed in the coming days, a U.S. official said.

Iran’s past nuclear activities were always one of the thorniest issues in the negotiations.

Many Western officials believe the work was aimed at developing nuclear weapons knowhow. Tehran denies it ever worked on weapons technology, saying its program was for peaceful purposes only.

U.S. and European officials have long demanded that any sanctions relief be linked with Tehran’s willingness to shed light on 12 sets of concerns about its past work that IAEA chief Yukiya Amano first raised in a 2011 report—a condition that was included in Tuesday’s final agreement.

Mr. Amano moved center stage in the long negotiations when he made a snap visit to Tehran to discuss the emerging deal with Iranian leaders on July 2.

In an interview in his Vienna office, the 68-year-old diplomat said that a side agreement he struck with Iranian authorities for completing the probe by Dec. 15 was doable—if Iran is serious about engaging.

Iran will have until mid-August to present written explanations responding to all the agency’s 2011 questions. The IAEA will have a month to analyze this and respond.

Follow-up work will be done in Iran in September and October. By December, Mr. Amano will report his findings to the IAEA board of governors, which will have the final say on whether Iran is in compliance.

The “measures are identified and what we are planning to do is to make maximum use of these,” he said. “We need to fill the different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and we need to understand the whole picture” of Iran’s work before drawing up a new report.

The trouble in the past “was not the time needed for clarification but their reluctance to move from one issue” to the next, he said. “This is the first time that we can address all the issues at one time.”

Mr. Amano declined to say whether the IAEA would be able to make repeat visits to people and places in the coming months. But he said it is in Iran’s interest to deal rapidly with Western doubts about its actions. He insisted the IAEA won’t pursue a tick-box approach.

161

“Our method is to ask questions, receive explanation in writing and substantiate it.” Mr. Amano said, adding that he was confident Iran understood what was needed.

There is a secret annex to the deal governing IAEA questions about Parchin, the military site where Iran is believed to have carried out high-explosives work of a sort that could be used to detonate a nuclear bomb. Iran has long denied the agency access to the site.

Mr. Amano wouldn’t say if inspectors would finally get access.

Critics of the deal have long accused the Obama administration of shifting its red lines on the past work issue, which U.S. officials once set as a condition to be resolved before an accord could be reached.

Some critics have said that with the U.S. and its five partners—the U.K., France, Germany, Russia and China—dominating the IAEA’s board, Iran could still face an easy pass even if Mr. Amano’s December report reveals only half answers.

Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank that advises Congress on Iran sanctions, said a proper assessment of Iran’s activities depended on comprehensive access to key scientists, sites and documentation.

“Whether the IAEA receives a full accounting will impact the credibility and the effectiveness of the agency in implementing the Iran agreement,” he said.

Another concern about the nuclear agreement involves the IAEA’s long-term ability to police it. One concession allows Iran to appeal an IAEA request to visit a sensitive site, like a military location, to a special commission. While the U.S. and its European allies will hold a majority on the commission, a decision would take three weeks—during which time Iran could move material and activities.

The agreement gives Iran an incentive to cooperate by offering an earlier-than-planned lifting of a ban on sales of arms and missiles and missile parts if the IAEA declares Iran’s nuclear activities are fully peaceful. But it doesn’t require Tehran to win this all-clear from the agency as a condition for terminating U.S. and EU sanctions after eight years.

Mr. Amano said the fact that Iran will have to implement the Additional Protocol, which obliges a country to allow IAEA inspectors to visit all suspicious nonnuclear sites, will help the agency prevent a covert program. He notes extra provisions the agreement grants to monitor the entire supply chain of Iran’s nuclear program.

“For us the Additional Protocol and additional measures beyond are quite powerful verification tools,” he said.

162 Washington Examiner 15 Jul 2015

The Iran nuclear talks: Failure was not an option

By DANIEL BRUMBERG

Daniel Brumberg is a special adviser at the United States Institute of Peace.

At the end of the day, one supreme reality kept the P5+1 negotiators in Vienna: the belief that the consequences of failure would be far worse than forging an imperfect deal on Iran's nuclear program. It was this basic assessment of the stark alternatives that led to the historic accord signed yesterday in the Austrian capital.

Of course, Secretary of State John Kerry did not (and could not) articulate this point directly. On the contrary, he warned that the U.S. was ready to walk away from the table. But his admonition was mostly meant for his U.S. critics, many of whom denounced the Vienna talks before the negotiators had sipped a single coffee or munched one Twizzlers stick.

As for the Iranians, they happily chimed in that they would not be the first ones to leave the negotiations, thus calling what they deemed to be an American bluff.

In this game of chicken, the Iranians probably calculated that if the talks collapsed the following might happen: 1.) Iran could selectively endorse those provisions of the April 2 "Framework Deal" that favored Tehran's interests, thus appearing cooperative despite the failed talks. 2.) The international coalition that had sustained sanctions would soon fray, removing any further impetus for Iran to compromise. 3.) Iran would then be well-positioned to pursue enrichment without suffering the intrusive inspections regime that would have been imposed by a negotiated agreement. 4.) The U.S. then would have to choose between a policy of containment and going to war with Iran. 5.) If the U.S. resorted to force, Iran's nuclear program would absorb a tremendous blow, but it would probably be rebuilt with the full support of the Iranian populace and sympathy from much of the international community.

Iran's leaders believed that a failed deal could be better for Tehran than for Washington.

This perception was hardly unreasonable. In the lengthy run up to the June 2015 talks, U.S. leaders repeatedly asserted that "sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table."

In point of fact, from the very start of the P5+1 talks, geo-strategic conditions in the region and beyond did not favor Washington. These conditions included the rising power of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, a development that Tehran believed enhanced its diplomatic leverage.

But the bigger and more fundamental strategic problem was two decades of incoherent U.S. Iran policy. Based in part on the unrealistic demand that Iran accept "zero enrichment" as the basis for any deal, this policy unwittingly abetted the expansion of Iran's nuclear program.

Indeed, by the time President Obama arrived at the White House, Washington had to wrestle with a much more inauspicious context: an Iran that had thousands more spinning centrifuges and an international community that was divided precisely because "zero enrichment" was a nonstarter for any serious negotiations. Dropping this policy surely helped to unite the international community behind a common negotiating position. But by 2012, Tehran also had far more room to "bargain down" its program, thus complicating the Obama administration's diplomatic task.

163

This does not mean that Washington lacked cards to play or that Iran had so many advantages that it could reject compromises that would greatly attenuate its nuclear program. The prospect of sanctions relief fed hopes in Iran's struggling middle class for better times. Having pinned their very political careers to these hopes, President Hassan Rouhani and his foreign minister were loathe to abandon talks that, if collapsed, could undermine their project of political and social reform at home.

Thus their calculation — which the Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei's surely shared — that accepting some difficult compromises on, for example, the timing of sanction relief, was smart diplomacy. These calculations kept the talks going, despite rising tensions between Iran and the U.S. during the hot days of late June.

These tensions apparently escalated after Tehran's last-minute assertion that a final deal should end the U.N. arms embargo on Iran. Given the progress that had been made on other hard issues, it is interesting that Iran chose to push the embargo issue in a manner that apparently shook the trust that had been carefully nurtured between Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Still, both men knew that because the arms embargo engages a far wider strategic issue than the nuclear question — namely the regional role that Iran will play after an agreement — it could not be directly or usefully litigated in Vienna. Thus they stepped back from the brink.

It may very well be that the U.S. had more to lose than Tehran from a collapse of the talks. But this fact alone does not diminish the importance of what was accomplished in Vienna. For both the U.S. and Iran, the risks of the accord are far outweighed by the potential benefits, particularly given alternatives that neither country could confidently or safely predict. For all concerned, failure was not an option.

164 Foreign Affairs 15 Jul 2015

Iranian Politics After the Deal Why It Is Time for Optimism

By Mohsen M. Milani MOHSEN M. MILANI is the Executive Director of the Center for Strategic & Diplomatic Studies and Professor of Politics at the University of South Florida.

The historic nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 negotiators announced on July 14 is a transformative event for the Middle East, a victory for U.S. nonproliferation strategy, and will surely be one of U.S. President Barack Obama’s most consequential foreign policy achievements.

Auspicious as this occasion is, though, there is no guarantee that the agreement will survive, given how contentious the implementation phase is likely to be. Nor can the deal by itself end the lingering animosity between the United States and Iran, which predates the nuclear program. The landmark nuclear agreement will only be sustainable if it continues to serve the national interests of both countries. And here, if they think beyond their strategic divorce in 1979 and the recent deal itself, they will realize that they have much to gain from improved ties—and that the agreement will be crucial to this process.

To be sure, those in Tehran and Washington who oppose the deal—and those countries in the Middle East that have benefited from Iranian-U.S. estrangement—won’t make things easy. Still, the agreement is a risk worth taking, considering how unattractive the other alternatives are. Indeed, although the United States and Iran did not get everything they wanted in the negotiations, the agreement is the best they could possibly attain at this juncture. It is a “win-win” for both countries, and a triumph of diplomacy and hope over war and cynicism.

TURN DOWN FOR WHAT? As Congress begins deliberations about the agreement, opponents will relentlessly lobby legislators to reject the deal on the grounds that it has not closed all pathways to a nuclear bomb and has legitimized Iran as a threshold nuclear power. But they will not be able to offer a viable alternative to it. Should Congress vote to reject the agreement anyway, Obama has promised to veto their decision. Overriding his veto would require a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress, which is unlikely. Moreover, doing so would profoundly tarnish U.S. prestige and make it extremely difficult for Washington to sustain the existing sanctions regime on Iran. In other words, the chances that the agreement will survive Congressional opposition are good.

If opponents fail to scuttle the deal under Obama, though, they will seek to convince Congress and the next president to continue and possibly intensify Washington’s containment of Iran. They will warn that lifting the sanctions and unfreezing Iran’s estimated $110 billion in foreign assets will make the country more eager to destabilizing the Middle East. They will insist that anti-Americanism remains a foundational principle of the Islamic Republic. What they will not mention, of course, is that the U.S. policy of containing Iran for years has not worked and has helped transform Iran into a regional power The P5+1 agreed to lift nuclear-related sanctions on Iran because the negotiators were convinced that all pathways for Tehran to build a bomb Iran had been satisfactorily

165 closed and that its key nuclear activities would be seriously curtailed or frozen for at least a decade. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, released on July 14, is a detailed and highly technical document that outlines in methodical detail the responsibilities of Iran and the six global powers. According to the document, Iran offered major concessions. It agreed to stop enriching uranium at 20 percent, a process only a few countries have mastered. Iran also consented to reduce the number of its centrifuges by two-thirds and to redesign the core of the heavy-water reactor at Arak so that it cannot produce weapons-grade platinum. Altogether, Iran will be compelled to get rid of 98 percent of the entire stockpile of its enriched uranium, which it can ship out of the country or sell. At any one time, Iran will be allowed to have inside the country only a fraction of the enriched uranium it would need to build a bomb.

The net result of these restrictions is that the breakout time for Iran to build a bomb, should it ever decide to do so, will be extended from the estimated two to three months to more than one year. This will give the West ample time to stop Iran from going nuclear.

The critics of the deal insist that they still don’t trust Iran. They shouldn't. Nor does Iran trust the West. That can come only slowly and through confidence-building measures, of which this deal is a good start. Verification, transparency, and continuous monitoring of the Iranian nuclear facilities will also help. In fact, Iran has accepted the most intrusive inspection and monitoring regime ever imposed on a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, including continuous monitoring of the Fordow facility, which is a highly fortified underground facility designed to withstand aerial bombardment. Iran has agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect, where and when necessary and in consultation with Iran, any suspected Iranian military facilities. Tehran has also agreed to answer all questions pertinent to the military dimensions of its past nuclear activities.

HARDLY HARDLINE It will not be easy to sell the deal in Iran. Some hardliners will lament that Tehran has capitulated to the West. One such critic sarcastically tweeted that Iran’s nuclear program is reduced to centrifuges that only can produce atomic carrot juice. But hardliners will have no better alternative than the new deal. And those in Congress who worry about them should not dismiss the profound changes that have taken place in Iran and their potentially positive impact on the U.S.-Iranian relations. As I argued in a 2009 Foreign Affairs article [1], Iranian foreign policy rests on two pillars: the survival of the Islamic Republic and anti-Americanism. For a while now, those two pillars have been mutually reinforcing; ruling elites believe that Washington seeks regime change, so Iran has seen itself as being on the defensive, trying to deter the United States and expand its regional influence as a hedge. A recently declassified report by the Pentagon from 2010, “Military Power of Iran,” supports this perspective.

But there are signs that the Islamic Republic’s and the Iranian population’s perceptions of the U.S. threat are gradually changing. Polls of Iranians unambiguously reveal that a significant portion of Iran's highly educated population, particularly its technology-savvy youth, favor improved relations with the United States.

Opponents of the deal dismiss these facts, arguing that Iran's hostile policies are not made by its people but by its authoritarian leaders. But that line of thinking ignores the development of a new faction within the governing elite that seeks to improve relations with the United States without undermining Iranian sovereignty. Although there are powerful forces that still oppose any rapprochement with the United States, direct nuclear negotiations between Tehran and Washington seem to have convinced many in the country that the United States has finally and explicitly recognized the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic as well as its right to indigenously enrich uranium.

166 This elite faction, of course, is not new. Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was president from 1989 to 97, for example, offered Conoco, an American oil company, a $1 billion deal in 1995 to develop the Sirri oilfields in Iran. U.S. President Bill Clinton scuttled the deal and imposed new sanctions on Iran. Mohammad Khatami, a reformist president who served from 1997 to 2005, reached out to the United States as well—but his efforts were futile.

Even the pugnacious Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president from 2005 to 2012, sought to negotiate with the United States to resolve the nuclear impasse. But his repugnant denial of the Holocaust made him so toxic that Washington refused to deal with him. But it was President Hassan Rouhani, backed by popular mandate, who started open negotiations. His success in getting a nuclear agreement is likely to strengthen members of this faction and increase their chances of winning in the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Skeptics might argue that real power does not reside in the presidency, but rather in the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guards. And Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, they maintain, is an inflexible zealot who will never make nice with Washington. But they are simply wrong. No Iranian president could have reached out to the United States without the Supreme Leader’s approval. Moreover, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, which are exclusively accountable to Khamenei, cooperated with U.S. Special Operations Forces in 2001 to dislodge the Taliban government in Afghanistan. More recently, he has said that if “the U.S. behaves in a humane way, we will have no problem with it,” which, in the convoluted vernacular of Iran means we are ready to talk. It is also highly likely that the world will witness changes in Iran’s top leadership within the next decade, as Iran’s mostly septuagenarian leaders are replaced by younger and hopefully less idealistic ones.

All this presents a unique opportunity for Washington to improve relations with Tehran.

The two have been tangled in a covert war for 37 years. Both have a long list of legitimate grievances. Without any introspection, hardliners in both Tehran and Washington will focus only on those grievances. Instead of focusing on that past, though, they should concentrate on common goals for the future. In truth, the United States shares more strategic interests with Iran in Afghanistan and Iraq, and against the Islamic State (also called ISIS) than it does with its other Persian Gulf allies.

Today Iran is a spoiler regional power—one that is insufficiently powerful to shape the Middle East to its own liking, but sufficiently powerful to make it costly for the United States to achieve its own goals. Its zone of influence stretches from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Levant and even to Yemen. Its power, particularly its soft power and its advances in asymmetric warfare strategies, cannot be ignored. Iran did not create the turmoil in these countries, but took advantage of the chaos to empower marginalized forces and expand its own sphere of influence. For Iran to become a part of the solution to stabilize the region, it must moderate its regional policies, particularly toward Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime and toward Lebanon. The new agreement can provide a unique opportunity for Iran to move toward real moderation in its regional policies.

The key challenge for the United States is to provide strategic incentives to transform Iran from spoiler power to a cooperative one. The two powers can engage in managed tactical cooperation where their mutual interests coincide and compete with each other where their interests are irreconcilable. A good place to start would be on ISIS, which poses a profound threat to both countries and to the entire region. ISIS has expanded beyond Iraq and Syria to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, and even Paris.

The United States does not want to put boots on the ground in Iraq or Syria to fight ISIS. But its aerial bombardment of ISIS facilities and fighters will not defeat the terrorist organization. Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are unlikely to be willing to send troops; after all, the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad and the Assad regime in

167 Damascus will vehemently oppose such an intervention. The powerful Turkish military is more interested in overthrowing Assad than defeating ISIS. And the Kurdish Peshmerga has the desire to fight ISIS, but not the capability to defeat it. And it is unlikely that the United States can train moderate, indigenous Arab forces as quickly as ISIS can recruit new members.

Iran, however, has the will and the power to “degrade and defeat ISIS” and has already done more to weaken the group than many of the United States’ Persian Gulf allies.

Iranian-trained militias have a good record of fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Members of the Revolutionary Guards have been in direct combat with ISIS. Iran was the first country to provide logistical support and equipment to Iraqi Kurds when they were threatened by ISIS in 2014. Iran has even helped Baghdad and Iraqi militias liberate a few towns in Iraq from ISIS control.

Skeptics say that any tactical cooperation between the United States and Iran will only antagonize the region’s Sunni population. Although there is an element of truth to this, it is essentially a subtle attempt to prevent detente between Tehran and Washington. Such a tactical cooperation should worry moderate Sunnis far less than ISIS does. Although the media often talks about Sunni alienation, it is worth remembering that the Shias are a majority in the oil-rich Persian Gulf and that the West should not seek to alienate them either. Moreover, the two main terrorist organizations, al Qaeda and ISIS, are Sunni not Shia.

Part of the problem is the role Saudi Arabia has been playing in trying to prevent an accord between Iran and the United States. For years, the Saudis have known that, as long as the United States remained dependent on imported oil and was antagonistic toward Iran, Riyadh could count on Washington’s unconditional support to pursue its regional ambitions. Today, however, Riyadh is in a state of panic. First the recent boom in U.S. oil production, backed by a new fracking technology, had made the United States less dependent on imported oil. And now there is also a possibility of a rapprochement between the United States and Iran, which will diminish the Kingdom’s strategic value.

For too long, Washington has given a free pass to the Saudis even as it has been rightly critical of Iran’s regional behavior. Saudi Arabia was one of the three countries that recognized the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, it sent troops to smash the pro-democracy uprising in Bahrain in 2011, and it provided financial support to the military takeover in Egypt in 2013 that overthrew the first democratically-elected president of that country.

Some Saudi clerics continue to provide ideological justification for violent extremist groups, and some private citizens provide financial support to extremists. To prevent any serious discussion of whether these behaviors help or hurt U.S. interests in the region, Riyadh simply maintains that Iran is the main source of instability and that Washington needs to “cut off the head of the snake.”

Washington must slowly move away from its traditional and unconditional support of Saudi Arabia, but without fully undermining its alliance with the Kingdom. There, Washington can take a few risks. After all, Saudi Arabia cannot and will not find a better ally than the United States.

Washington must also seek a more balanced and nuanced approach toward the SaudiIranian cold war. A good place to start would be discussions among all three about Yemen and then Syria. But without the nuclear agreement and reduction of tensions with Iran, the United States would not be able to play this role, which would give it some maneuvering room to protect its national interests with minimal cost in the Persian Gulf and beyond.

168 When much of the Middle East is descending into unpredictable civil and sectarian wars, Iran is a regional lynchpin. A U.S. detente with the country can potentially help Washington achieve many of its goals in the Middle East. But this demands strategic imagination and patience. Almost two years ago, I wrote for Foreign Affairs [2] that we can and should do business with Rouhani to resolve the nuclear impasse. Now its time to do even more.

Source URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2015-07-15/iranian-politics-after-deal Links [1] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2009-07-01/tehrans-take [2] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2013-06-25/rouhanis-foreign-policy

169 The New Yorker 15 Jul 2015

Javad Zarif on Iran’s Post-Deal Future

BY ROBIN WRIGHT e long slog of diplomacy with Iran—a pariah nation since its 1979 revolution—was always about more than the bomb. It was about the return of the world’s eighteenthlargest country—and its vast military, population, and consumer base—at a time when the Middle East is crumbling. A nuclear deal could alter the regional dynamics. The chaos in the Middle East and the rise of the Islamic State, which has come within twenty-five miles of Iran’s borders, have redefined the dangers to Iran, as well as its priorities.

During the nuclear talks in Vienna, Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, released a YouTube message to the West, in English, about how a deal could “pen new horizons to address important, common challenges.” Even Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, amid his customary anti-American bombast, offered a tantalizing remark. “If the other side gives up its usual diversionary tactics,” he told a group of poets, in April, “this will become an experience for us that, very well, we can negotiate with them on other issues.” Throughout the spring, Tehran was abuzz over the prospect of coöperation with the United States.

During the final weeks of negotiations, I spoke to Zarif in Tehran about Khamenei’s statement and how a deal might impact other conflicts in the world’s most volatile region.

So what does the day the deal is signed look like?

The Leader said that, if the United States shows that it is serious, that it is willing to abandon the language of coercion and threat, and is prepared to deal with Iran with mutual respect as far as the nuclear issue is concerned, then we will consider other options. That is an extremely important offer that’s on the table. …

The day after a deal, it will be a lot of work for a lot of people to get it implemented. And it’s a huge process, both in Iran and, particularly, in the United States, because some people have been accustomed to the sanctions. … Bureaucracies have been formed, careers have been advanced. And then we hope that will remove, in my view, a smokescreen that enabled many to hide the real problems in our region. … And we and our neighbors in the region will move in a coöperative way to deal with the real issues.

When you talk about the real issues in the region, what do you mean?

I’m talking first and foremost about extremism and terrorism, which is a menace in the region that threatens everybody. We see that Daesh [the Islamic State] is spreading its influence in spite of all the efforts. … Sometimes countries in the region have even helped promote the underlying causes for attraction of new recruits to these organizations.

Sectarianism is a challenge first and foremost for every government in this region, but also a global challenge, because the wider global implications of violent sectarianism are extremely difficult to predict now. … The only way of dealing with them is regional coöperation, not just on a political level but cultural, educational, and people-to-people contacts, which are unfortunately not on the rise but diminishing.

How does a nuclear deal change Iran?

170 Well, it will provide for greater interaction and greater integration. … You cannot enhance confidence through isolation. Isolating people will push them to be distrustful and will push you to be distrustful of the other side, and that entrenches the concept of “enemy.”

So that’s, in my view, the most important gain.

I don’t expect, all of a sudden, a revolution in a different situation. We will have more trade; we will have less United States interference in our trade with other countries. Iran is a huge investment opportunity, and the human resources in Iran are probably second to none in this region. The pool of educated, serious, hardworking labor force in Iran is probably the best in the region. … This is the most stable place in the neighborhood. So it is an opportunity. A lot of people are already interested to come to Iran.

But that perspective, while appealing, is not a panacea. We need to make adjustments, and sanctions have enabled us to make some of those adjustments, moving away, to the extent possible, from a rentier economy to a more serious economy, which would not have been possible without the sanctions or without the drop in oil prices. So some of these are blessings in disguise.

You said to me eighteen months ago that your next priority after a nuclear deal would be improving relations, particularly in the Gulf.

The Persian Gulf: that has always been my priority, not after a nuclear deal. … My first trip outside Iran was to this neighborhood. Iran can only prosper in a stable and prosperous neighborhood. For us, security in both the Central Asian and Caucasus region, as well as in the Persian Gulf region and in Turkey, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, is extremely important.

I’m interested in how you close the gap with Saudi Arabia—the major Sunni power, the guardian of Islam’s holy places—at a time when rhetoric is reaching unprecedented levels. It’s not just about Yemen.

It’s about Iraq. It’s about financing Al Qaeda. It’s about financing the Taliban. It’s about financing Daesh. It’s about financing al-Nusra. It’s about creating all sorts of havoc in this region. So it’s not just about Yemen; it’s about financing terrorist organizations that are abducting Iranian civilians and are killing Iranian diplomats in Beirut, in eastern Iran. It’s about all sorts of shortsighted, panicking activities that these people are engaged in.

Let me play devil’s advocate. The current foreign minister of Saudi Arabia was the target of an assassination plot, according to a U.S. court.

Well, according to many U.S. courts, we were behind 9/11. Nineteen Saudi and Emirati citizens were killed in action. … There are many court cases from New York and from Washington where Iran has been ordered to pay restitution for being part of the 9/11 plot. So the U.S. courts are not, for me, the best measure of reality.

Do you see a time when you and the new Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, will sit down and have a constructive conversation about coöperation and mutual interests in the region?

Why not? I have no problem in sitting down with anybody from this region, provided they are not engaged in acts of criminal atrocity against their neighbors.

What does Iran want next?

We just want to live a normal life. We are content with our size, with our population, with our geography, with our natural resources. We want to have serious interaction with

171 the rest of the world and with our region. We do not want to be excluded from the region in which we have been a major force for far, far longer than many countries have existed, both in this region and in your part of the world.

Is there potential for collaboration, coördination, discussion over the flashpoints with the United States?

This is a test for us to see whether the United States is ready to deal with realities, to set aside this language of coercion and force. I’ve been repeating this, and I don’t know why nobody is listening. The United States is a founding member of the United Nations. And I believe when they wrote in Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the Charter that the threat of the use of force is against international law … Now if a country, on a daily basis, says all options are on the table, meaning they are threatening to use force against sovereign states, this is the law of the jungle, not the law of the United Nations.

I think the United States would do itself a lot of good if it abandoned this language. I mean, the actual use of force by the United States has not paid any dividends, neither for U.S. policy nor for the American people. It has only cost you as taxpayers a lot of money. … It is extremely important to start recognizing that the Iranian people have two qualities: they resist pressure but they respond very positively to respect.

172 The New Yorker 15 Jul 2015

Obama on the Iran Deal: What’s Your Alternative?

By Amy Davidson There are two gambles, President Barack Obama said in his press conference on Wednesday, that he was neither making nor relying on with regard to his nuclear deal with Iran. The first was that the Iranian government was ever going to change—“Will we try to encourage them to take a more constructive path? Of course. But we’re not betting on it.” The other was that his political opponents would evaluate the agreement “on the facts, not on politics, not on posturing, not on the fact this is a deal I bring to Congress as opposed to a Republican President, not based on lobbying but based on what’s in the national interest.” That would be nice, “but we live in Washington,” and so, the President said, “I am not betting on the Republican Party rallying behind this agreement.”

The first point is one that he emphasized, as well, in his interview with Thomas Friedman, of the Times. This deal is not the fall of the mullahs, nor was it meant to be. It addressed a “very specific, narrow, but profound issue—the possibility of Iran getting a nuclear weapon.” And it made that possibility far less likely. Obama was not going to build his case on the idea that an Iran more open to the world might become less militant; maybe it would, but “this deal is not contingent on Iran changing its behavior.

It’s not contingent on Iran suddenly operating like a liberal democracy. It solves one particular problem, which is making sure they don’t have a bomb.” Iran might still sponsor terrorism and start wars, but “it’ll be a lot easier for us to check Iran’s nefarious activities if they don’t have the bomb.”

Can’t we do both? This is where Obama pushed hardest: on the question of what the alternative to the deal might be. “With this deal, we cut off every single one of Iran’s pathways to a nuclear program, a nuclear-weapons program. And Iran’s nuclear program will be under severe limits for many years. Without a deal, those pathways remain open.” Indeed, if talks broke down Iran could do what it wasn’t doing now—begin to openly, heedlessly, build a bomb. The criticism is that the Iranians will not only do it anyway, in ten years, when the restrictions start to expire, but will have an easier time, because the lifting of sanctions will have made them richer. Jeb Bush, the Republican contender, said that the deal “paves Iran’s path to a bomb.”

This brand of criticism, Obama said, was premised on the idea that, if the United States walked away, we’d be “able to keep sanctions in place with the same vigor and effectiveness as we have right now. And that, I can promise you, is not true.” Over the past few years, countries in Europe and Asia have agreed to support sanctions, in some cases at a cost to themselves, not because they wanted Iran permanently impoverished but because they didn’t want it to have a bomb. Obama tried to make it clear that, for much of the world, the nuclear threat was “the reason” for a sanctions regime, not just a rationale. (And, as the North Koreans have demonstrated, you don’t need to be all that rich to get a bomb.)

“With this deal, if Iran violates its commitments, there will be real consequences.

Nuclear-related sanctions that have helped to cripple the Iranian economy will snap back into place,” Obama said. “Without a deal, the international sanctions regime will unravel with little ability to re-impose them.”

173 Other Republican contenders have attacked Obama for giving Iran “legitimacy,” for not taking seriously enough Israel’s concerns about Iran’s long-term development (“This could be a death sentence for the state of Israel,” Lindsey Graham said), and for being naïve about the essential untrustworthiness of the Iranians. (“That means, presumably, that you can’t negotiate, and what you’re really saying is that you’ve got to apply military to guarantee that they don’t have a nuclear program,” Obama said, adding that he found the argument “not persuasive.”) The immediate option the Republicans have is a vote, within a sixty-day window, opposing the deal. Obama has said he would veto such action; to do so he would need enough votes to prevent a veto override in at least one house—for example, thirty-four of the forty-six Democratic senators.

Obama spoke for more than an hour. It could easily have gone longer, if not for the allusions to a helicopter that was waiting. The President was eager to put out the message that if people had questions he had answers—and, as the exegeses on the technical aspects of inspection regimes demonstrated, he pretty much did. Toward the end, with the reporters in the room seeming somewhat drained, Obama almost fished for challenges, taking out a piece of paper and saying, “O.K., I’m just going to look—I made some notes about many of the arguments, the other arguments that I’ve heard here.”

Someone shouted out a suggestion—it had to do with when the deal expired—“O.K. Yeah, that’s a good one,” Obama said, and jumped into it. Assume, he said, that it was ten years later, and some of the restrictions started to expire. And then, after fifteen, more of them did. There’d still be inspections, and, after all those years of investigation, the international community would have insight into Iran’s programs.

So even if everything the critics were saying was true—that, at the end of ten years or twelve years or fifteen years, Iran now is in a position to decide it wants a nuclear weapon, that they’re at a breakout point—they won’t be at a breakout point that is more dangerous than the breakout point they’re in right now. They won’t be at a breakout point that is shorter than the one that exists today.

And so why wouldn’t we at least make sure that for the next ten, fifteen years they are not getting a nuclear weapon and we can verify it?

April Ryan, of American Urban Radio Networks, provided a break from Iran, asking whether Obama might revoke Bill Cosby’s Medal of Freedom. The President, after saying that “there was no mechanism” for taking the medal back—no snapback sanctions, one might say—emphasized that the main issue was pretty clear: “If you give a woman, or a man, for that matter, without his or her knowledge a drug and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape. And I think this country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape.”

On Iran, again and again, Obama practically dared his critics to explain why they really didn’t like the deal—was it him, maybe?—given that, as he sees it, it achieves what they had said they wanted. There were moments when Obama’s calling-their-bluff cheer gave way to a tougher tone. One came when Major Garrett, of CBS News, asked about four American citizens in Iranian prisons (these include the reporter Jason Rezaian)—“Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content, with all the fanfare around this deal, to leave the conscience of this nation, the strength of this nation, unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?”

Obama replied, “I’ve got to give you credit, Major, for how you craft those questions,” and went on: The notion that I am content as I celebrate with American citizens languishing in Iranian jails, Major, that’s nonsense, and you should know better. I’ve met with

174 the families of some of those folks. Nobody’s content. And our diplomats and our teams are working diligently to try to get them out.

They had kept the negotiations separate, Obama said, to prevent the Iranians from using the prisoners to get concessions on the nuclear issue, and to make it easier for the Americans to walk away. Here, and elsewhere in the press conference, he circled back to his main questions: what are your alternatives, really? And are you rejecting mine in good faith?

“And if the alternative is that we should bring Iran to heel through military force, then those critics should say so,” Obama said. “And that will be an honest debate.”

175 The Nation 15 Jul 2015

Can Washington and Tehran Finally Escape Their Pathological Past?

Yes, but only if they begin behaving like responsible governments instead of causes.

By Juan Cole

Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History and director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Barack Obama came into office in 2009 having campaigned on a more realistic policy in the Middle East, including toward Iran, after George W. Bush’s crusades. Obama’s determination to reach out to Iran has finally borne fruit. Whereas some of his other Middle East policies met setbacks or suffered policy drift, in the Vienna agreement he and Secretary of State John Kerry achieved through diplomacy a reconfiguration of the Middle East as consequential as George W. Bush’s overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Obama did it through diplomacy rather than war, however, making his legacy a long-term and positive one for the region.

The agreement reached this week is a milestone in the campaign against nuclear proliferation. It attempts to close off possible technical pathways for Iran to create a nuclear weapon (something the ayatollahs have in any case steadfastly denied they wish to do). At the same time, it permits Iran the use of civilian nuclear energy for the purposes of electricity generation, a program important to the country so as to preserve its natural gas and petroleum for export and to build up its foreign currency reserves, rather than squandering these resources at home. Peaceful nuclear reactors are a guaranteed right to countries under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a right on which Iran has insisted.

Critics of the plan who discount the efficacy of inspections should remember that no country under formal International Atomic Energy Agency inspections has ever developed a nuclear weapon. Those skeptics who insisted that UN inspections of Iraq in the 1990s had failed were surprised in 2003 to discover that, in fact, they had completely closed down Saddam Hussein’s small and not very advanced nuclear labs, which he had authorized in an arms race with nuclear-armed Israel. The only alternative to a negotiated settlement of this sort, in any case, would have been a war on Iran that would have been costly and perhaps ruinous (the country is three times bigger and more than twice as populous as Iraq, and it is not as if the US economy has emerged unscathed from the latter misadventure).

President Obama first signaled his new approach to Iran in his Persian New Year’s (NowRuz) message in March of 2009. He called the country the Islamic Republic of Iran and declined to make a distinction between the Iranian people and their government. The Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was clearly intrigued by this initiative, but said (to translate into our idiom) the proof will be in the pudding.

The United States has a long history of aggressive intervention in Iran, mainly having to do with petroleum. It helped depose the Iranian government in 1941 and jointly occupied the country with Britain and Russia during World War II, during which it presided over a collapse of the economy and a horrible famine. It made a CIA coup in 1953 to crush a democratic movement seeking a better deal from the British on Iranian petroleum, and installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi as a pro-American dictator. In the 1960s, whenever the Shah’s oil prices seemed excessive to Washington, officials were sent out casually to threaten him with another coup unless he fell back in line.

Outraged at the Shah’s increasingly onerous, seedy police state, the Iranian people

176 made a revolution against it in 1979, blaming the United States for decades of repression, jailings, and torture of regime critics.

When Saddam Hussein’s Iraq launched a war of naked aggression on Iran in 1980, seeking to seize its southwestern oil fields, the United States gradually swung around to allying with Baghdad, the aggressor. In the mid–1980s, the Reagan administration deflected Iran’s attempt to bring Saddam Hussein up on charges before the UN Security Council of using chemical weapons like mustard gas at the front. When Israel launched a war of aggression on little Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the southern, largely Shiitepopulated region of that country, the United States was complaisant. Iran, in contrast, helped organize Lebanese Shiites for a long resistance to occupation. The United States castigated that resistance as “terrorism.” After 2003, powerful Washington officials such as Dick Cheney repeatedly threatened to attack Iran from occupied Iraq. From Tehran’s point-of-view, if you could think of a nasty thing that could be done to Iran and its people in the past seven decades, the United States has done it. Hence Khamenei’s caution about Obama’s suddenly outstretched hand.

All this is not to excuse Iran’s leadership for its own faults after the 1979 revolution. The taking of US hostages at the American Embassy in Tehran in November of that year will forever be a blot on the country’s rule-of-law. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini conceived of himself as leading a global Muslim struggle against the United States on the basis of theocracy and clerical rule. His allies blew up the US Embassy in Beirut. He declared the Muslim world’s monarchies illegitimate in Islamic law, saying that there was no place for kings in Islam, causing alarm from Rabat to Riyadh. He called on the Shiites of Iraq to rise up against their government, helping provoke Saddam’s military response. Going beyond agitating for rights for the stateless Palestinians, he set himself against Israel’s legitimacy (though the current Iranian government has a “no first strike” policy and has not threatened Israel with military invasion, contrary to what is frequently alleged).

Inside Iran, Khomeini dismantled the democratic institutions that revolutionaries tried to set up in 1979 and ultimately approved the killing of thousands of dissidents.

Revolutionary Iran was not a country but a cause, and its leaders did not care how much instability and destruction they caused to achieve their goals.

When Obama came into office in 2009, he inherited this troubled history of imperialism and radicalism, but judged that changing world conditions had made possible a new relationship with Iran. The Bush administration had simply refused to talk to regimes it did not like, such as Cuba or Iran, which Obama felt was foolish, and felt did not actually punish those regimes. Obama’s main obstacle to opening Iran was by then that government’s nuclear enrichment program, begun in the late 1990s. Contemporary enrichment technology using centrifuges is unfortunately always potentially dual-use. If the uranium is spun around with radioactive gas in the centrifuges a little bit, it is enriched to 3 to 5 percent, becoming suitable as fuel for nuclear reactors. If it is enriched to 19.5 percent, it can fuel medical reactors for creating isotopes to fight cancer. But if it is enriched to 95 percent, it can be used to make a bomb, assuming the government involved has other technical abilities and equipment.

Nuclear-armed states, i.e. Israel, the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China, North Korea, India, and Pakistan, see their weapons as defensive. They are determined that no more countries should join their select club, and the rise of centrifuge enrichment technology has therefore created security anxieties for them, since on the one hand it is difficult to deny countries centrifuges, but on the other, they could be misused if a government decided to go in that direction. The UN Security Council, suspicious of Iran’s motives, more or less unilaterally ordered it to give up enrichment and centrifuges entirely in the mid–2000s (despite the NPT’s guarantee of a right to this technology to countries that use it for peaceful purposes).

177 Since Tehran defied the UNSC, continuing to enrich but denying it was doing so for military purposes, the UNSC member states placed economic sanctions on Iran. Since about 2012, the United States has more or less imposed a financial blockade on Iran, interfering with its oil sales around the world and forbidding international banks to allow transactions with Tehran. The sanctions have hurt, though they did not destroy, Iran’s oil industry, reducing exports from 2.5 million barrels a day to 1.5 million (China paid no attention to US arm-twisting and continued to import Iranian oil; India had little choice but to do so as well). Some of the damage was offset by increased Iranian non-oil exports, since its currency softened because of the sanctions and the financial blockade.

The pain was sufficient, however, to convince hard-liners such as Khamenei to give President Hassan Rouhani (elected in 2013) and his foreign minister Javad Zarif permission to see if negotiations could end the sanctions without injuring Iranian sovereignty. Inside Iran, Khamenei had had his hands burned by the right-wing populists of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and was searching for a new coalition of centrists and pragmatic hard-liners. Obama finally had negotiating partners on the Iranian side he could work with and who could deliver, unlike the Ahmadinejad team his officials met with at Geneva in the fall of 2009, who were (literally) slapped down by the leader and the hard-liners when they were accused of giving away too much to the United States.

As an expert in Shiite Islam and Iran, I have long argued that Khamenei is sincere about not wanting a nuclear weapon. He has repeatedly given oral fatwas or legal rulings that stockpiling and using such weapons is contrary to Islamic law, which forbids such indiscriminate killing of noncombatants. For Westerners to hold that he nevertheless wants a nuke is a little like maintaining that the Vatican has a condom factory in its basement. Perhaps some generals in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps do want a bomb. The compromise the regime has settled upon, in my view, is nuclear latency or a breakout option. That is, they have developed all the infrastructure and technical knowledge and equipment that would be necessary to make a nuclear weapon, but stop there, much the way Japan has.

A breakout option has some of the same deterrent effect as possessing an actual bomb (an aggressive enemy can never know whether its intended victim might be close enough to a warhead to fight back with lethal force if pressed). But it does not attract the kind of isolation and world opprobrium that has been visited on North Korea since it openly went for a bomb. Precisely because a breakout option has deterrent effects, regional hegemons such as Israel and Saudi Arabia are alarmed by Iran’s new capability.

It is not because they think Iran will make a bomb (nuclear weapons have since 1946 had only a defensive capacity in any case, because of Mutual Assured Destruction among nuclear states). It is because they know the regime cannot any longer be attacked and overthrown, and that the long counterrevolution against Iran they have pursued is over.

The Obama administration and its colleagues, the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, determined that to deny Iran enrichment capabilities for energy purposes entirely was unrealistic. The question, then, was how to allow enrichment but forestall any attempt at militarization. The comprehensive inspection regime that has been agreed to at Vienna was their solution to this problem. It is an imperfect solution, but the best one available short of war and occupation.

Any diplomatic agreement is only as good as its implementation. Because it is complex and because it is hated by Tel Aviv, Riyadh, and most state capitals of the American South, the deal still faces some rough waters. Congress, persuaded by the Israel and Gulf Arab lobbies, could shoot it down. Hard-liners in Tehran could find some way to back out. But another outcome is possible, which might be called the Vietnamese solution. No more than the United States and Vietnam can Washington and Tehran expect abruptly to put behind them decades of disagreement (that is why critiques that

178 the deal did not go beyond resolving the nuclear conflict are silly). But the United States does have diplomatic relations with Vietnam, and as of this year the two now cooperate on policy goals in the Pacific Rim. That is because the United States has abandoned its anti-Communist crusade and Vietnam has given up the goal of fostering regional revolution.

Intransigent causes are deadly to world peace. As recently as the Bush administration in the United States and the Ahmadinejad government in Iran, both countries were still acting as though they were a cause. If the United States and Iran can begin behaving like responsible governments instead, they have a rare opportunity to transcend a particularly nasty history with one another. One piece of good news: Much of the animosity between the two countries was driven by competition for control of valuable hydrocarbons, which the world is likely to (and must) give up over the next two decades.

179 LobeLog/foreign policy 15 Jul 2015

What the Nuclear Deal Says about Iran’s Politics and Society

by Shireen T. Hunter Shireen T. Hunter is a Research Professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Her latest book is Iran Divided: Historic Roots of Iranian Debates on Identity, Culture, and Governance in the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

In the aftermath of the recent nuclear accord on Iran’s nuclear program, it is important to understand correctly the Islamic Republic’s motives for signing the deal with the United States (and the other P5+1 countries) and the factors that enabled the Iranian negotiators to reach an agreement. Without such an understanding, the United States will continue to make policy toward Iran on the basis of previous assumptions about the country. More critically, neither Washington nor the Middle East region will realize the potential benefits of the deal. Indeed, the deal might even unravel.

The first mistake to avoid is to attribute Iran’s willingness to reach a deal solely to the effects of sanctions. Clearly, sanctions have had considerable costs for Iran and have caused much pain and suffering to the Iranian people. Nevertheless, Iran could have continued to limp along for at least a few more years and hope that the sanctions regime would eventually unravel by itself. Or it could have embarked on a systematic policy of regional destabilization.

As much as regional countries hold Iran responsible for all their troubles, Iran has consistently followed a cautious policy in its neighborhood – to both the south and the north. Some hardline elements in Iran would have preferred a destabilization strategy even if it increased the risk of external military attack. In fact, some would have even welcomed a military attack because, in their view, it would have led to a complete unraveling of any semblance of regional order. This means that the US—or more precisely those who have always opposed any dealings with Iran— should not conclude that the same sort of pressure should now be brought to bear on Iran to extract other concessions. Such an approach would only play into the hands of those in Iran who want to prove that the US is not reliable.

The second mistake to avoid is to think that the negotiations were successful only because of the policies of the current Iranian government and president. No doubt President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, and the entire Iranian negotiating team, especially Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, deserve the gratitude of the Iranian people and the appreciation of their P5+1 partners.

But the deal would not have been possible if the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei had not steadfastly supported the negotiating team against attacks by hardliners, which he kept in check. The view of Khamenei as a pathological naysayer incapable of compromise should be abandoned. Once and for all, Washington should understand the

180 Iranian political leadership as a whole and stop dividing it into elected and non-elected elements, as the Clinton administration did. The US must learn to deal—if it so wishes— with Iran’s entire political system and not only those that it finds more palatable.

Meanwhile, the so-far-successful culmination of the protracted negotiations reflects changes within Iranian society and polity. The most important is the significant erosion of revolutionary fervor and the reassertion of a new type of Iranian nationalism that is neither excessively ethnocentric nor outwardly expansionist. It merely reflects a greater desire to put Iran’s interests ahead of unrealistic ambitions as well as to make political compromises to achieve this goal. The election of President Rouhani, in part, was the result of this new emerging Iranian nationalism.

The nuclear agreement also shows the maturing of Iran’s foreign policy culture as the outcome of a hard and almost brutal learning process that all revolutionary movements have undergone throughout history. This newfound maturity is not limited to politicians and bureaucrats but also applies to the people. The Iranian public is now more educated, better informed, and thus less willing to accept all that the authorities proclaim. In general, Iranian society is now more sophisticated as well as more aware of its own history, culture, and distinctiveness. Although official discourse still focuses on Islamic universalism, the people are no longer receptive to it.

In this respect, the behavior of Arab states and recently Turkey toward Iran has cured most Iranians of the illusions of Islamic unity. The emergence of groups like the Taliban and the Islamic State has shown Iranians that their traditional understanding of Islam is preferable to the Marxist-tinged revolutionary Islam of the Revolution’s early decades and differentiates them from other Muslims now heavily influenced by Saudi Wahhabism.

In the future, Iran is even more likely to pursue a pragmatic foreign policy based on the calculation of its own interests rather than the pursuit of an ideological chimera.

Perhaps most important, the trials and tribulations that Iran has undergone in the last 35 years, including punishing sanctions and an eight-year-long war with Iraq, have tended to strengthen rather than tear apart its national unity. Of course, there are differences within Iran and many disgruntled groups. But the country and its people have a clearer sense than before of themselves and the necessity of national compromise and cooperation. More important, they have been cured of the virus of revolution and prefer gradual but more lasting change. This is what is lacking in many other countries in the region.

Despite all these positive changes, not all will be smooth-sailing in Iran. Power struggles will continue, and some groups will ignore the national good in pursuit of selfish interests. But even they cannot turn back the clock. They simply no longer have a popular base, no matter what they claim. The only way they can be resurrected would be for American hardliners to undercut the results of the hard work done by the Obama administration.

181 In short, it is important for US post-deal policy toward Iran to be guided by its new conditions and not by the outdated visions that many groups in America still unfortunately promote. Indeed, the US has a lot more in common with the new Iran, beyond strategic issues, than with some of America’s so-called allies in the region.

182 LobeLog/foreign policy 15 Jul 2015

The Nuclear Deal and Expunging Iran’s Historical Ghosts

by Farideh Farhi

Farideh Farhi is an Independent Scholar and Affiliate Graduate Faculty at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. She has taught comparative politics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, University of Hawai'i, University of Tehran, and Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran. Her publications include States and UrbanBased Revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua (University of Illinois Press) and numerous articles and book chapters on compartative analyses of revolutions and Iranian politics. She has been a recipient of grants from the United States Institute of Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation and was most recently a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank and the International Crisis Group.

Yesterday’s historic agreement between Iran and the world powers over Iran’s nuclear program will be hailed (or trashed) for many reasons. Much will be debated—the deal’s impact on the future of the Middle East, the potential re-direction of US foreign policy in the region, Iran’s domestic’s equation of power in the wake of parliamentary and Council of Experts elections in February, the presidential election in the US, and the rule of international law—but, in all likelihood and ironically, without much reference to the content of the agreement itself.

Amid the cacophony regarding what’s next or what the nuclear agreement will or will not do, however, it is also important to reflect on the negotiations themselves and what they have already accomplished for Iran, a country besieged by the ghosts of many problemridden negotiations with the outside world in the past.

In the Iranian political discourse, hardliners (along with some diehard opponents of the Islamic Republic outside of Iran) have alternately relied on the analogy of 1828 Turkamanchai Treaty (because of which Iran lost most of the Caucasus to tsarist Russia), the 1919 agreement with Britain (deemed a capitulation), and the 1933 oil agreement with Britain (which extended Britain’s control over Iran’s oil).

As the negotiations dragged on, other analogies entered the discussion. Notwithstanding the 1953 CIA-supported coup that followed the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and the failure to negotiate a settlement, after the April Lausanne agreement, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has been compared to former Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, another Western-educated “true patriot” adept at using international law to challenge Western “arrogance.” A minority disagreed, depicting Zarif, along with his boss President Hassan Rouhani, as yet another traitor to the cause of resistance intent on pressuring Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to drink from the poison chalice in the same way some hardliners believe Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was convinced to do so in 1988 when he declared an end to the Iran-Iraq War. A recent issue of Andisheye Pouya, a monthly journal of history and political thought in Iran, hinted at yet another comparison: Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam, a crafty and pragmatic politician who convinced Stalin to leave Iran after World War II with a promise of oil concessions in northern Iran that he knew the Majles would reject.

183 With the exception of the last encounter, which is less discussed and not as evocative as the others, Iran’s historical memory of the last 150 years is about loss, being outmaneuvered by stronger and manipulative external foes, and ultimately humiliation.

In this plaintive context, negotiations have generally been viewed with suspicion and deemed an exercise by externally beholden or naïve negotiators in giving concessions to or colluding with outsiders. To be sure, politicians like Mossadeq who have stood up to outsiders—albeit at a high cost to their own power—have been revered in popular memory. But that reverence has merely confirmed the futility of negotiations and compromise in the hope of dignified results.

As such, Iran’s nuclear diplomatic team has already accomplished remarkable results.

Not only has it challenged the domestic stigma attached to negotiation head-on, it has done so in the most unlikely way through talks with all the great powers at the highest level. By managing to elevate the structure of the negotiation to an unprecedented multi-ministerial setting—of course with John Kerry’s help—it has also unabashedly given the Iranian public a lesson in the value and necessity of compromise while ignoring the charge that compromise is necessarily about collusion.

To understand my point, just listen to Zarif’s modestly phrased words in his announcement of a “good deal” that is not based on the maximalist positions of either side. On his Twitter feed, he called the agreement “not a ceiling but a solid foundation” to build on. No need for bombastic statements of Iran’s victory in order to cover a popularly perceived loss. Everyone won. And, through hard work by all, an unnecessary crisis was overcome. He spoke with the confidence of a person who knows that the way Iran’s nuclear team had conducted itself had already led to the domestic perception that a compromise was respectable and not at all like a sip from the poison chalice. Frankly, I happen to think that the public perception that the deal was not a poison chalice was the only real red line that the nuclear team could not afford to cross.

No doubt there will be naysayers inside Iran who will question what Iran has given up.

But perceptions at this point are as important as the content of the agreement, including whether Iran conceded more on certain issues than it should have.

This is not to say that the standing the nuclear team has brought Iran and the value of compromises made will not be tested by the ability of the government to translate foreign-policy achievements into domestic ones. Although nuclear talks have framed Iranian politics since Rouhani’s election, debates regarding the direction of Iran’s economy, distribution of the expanding economic pie in the “post-sanctions era,” and how the government can manage the political dynamics of the country in ways that better reflect the diverse aspirations and cultural choices of the people of Iran have been overshadowed but have not disappeared.

Nor have discussions gone away regarding how to reconcile the deep rifts that almost broke the country apart in 2009. Even in the celebrations of the nuclear deal last night, occasional chants of “the nuclear deal is over; it is Mir Hossein’s turn” or “tonight is the night of joy; Mussavi’s place is empty” were gentle reminders that the release of

184 presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mussavi and other political prisoners was also one of Rouhani’s campaign promises. After all, if the Rouhani government can successfully lead the Islamic Republic’s effort at reconciliation and compromise with hostile external powers, surely it can be expected to do the same domestically. I would go so far as to venture that the continued perception of the agreement as a “good deal” will depend on it.

In the past two years or so, Zarif has repeatedly said that he would not have been able to lead his negotiating team with confidence had the people of Iran not participated in the 2013 election in the numbers they did. Because of the high participation rates, the 2013 election was probably the likely source of unprecedented consensus among the Iranian elites in support of a nuclear compromise as well. The marginalized hardliners, after two years of exhorting the futility of talks, now have to figure out other ways to assert their political relevance. But it is precisely because of the political confidence gained in expunging ghosts generated by Iran’s lamentable encounters with world powers in the past that there are now expectations that the country has the wherewithal to address some of its internal ghosts.

185 Al-Monitor 15 Jul 2015

Zarif after deal: 'The world has changed' Ali Hashem

VIENNA — On the famous balcony in Palais Coburg, Al-Monitor spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif a few hours after he, along with EU special representative Federica Mogherini, had announced the historic deal concluding a 13-year standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. The interview was conducted a few minutes before Zarif boarded a plane for home.

Al-Monitor: It seems "balcony diplomacy" helped in achieving this deal.

Zarif: Well, balcony diplomacy wasn’t intended to be diplomacy itself. [It] was intended to provide me with … some fresh air, but it gave me the opportunity to interact with Iranian journalists as well as other journalists who were waiting downstairs for any news. I’m sorry that it was so harsh on the journalists because the negotiations were going on behind closed doors for so many days and so many long hours.

Al-Monitor: Was it really worth it, the 18 days of talks?

Zarif: It’s an important achievement for diplomacy over pressure and coercion. Thirtysome years of coercion against Iran produced nothing for the West, and now two years of diplomacy and respect produced an important deal. So I think this should send a message to those in the US and the West who believe that they can achieve everything through force and coercion that that’s not really the answer. The world has changed.

Diplomacy is now the answer — respect is the answer — and through respect, they’ve tested everything. Let them test respect for a while and see how it can produce results.

Al-Monitor: It’s said that Iran is the first country in the world to exit UNSC Chapter 7 [sanctions] without a war. To what extent is that true?

Zarif: Correct, it’s an important achievement. There are a lot of firsts here: Iran is the first country whose enrichment program is now recognized by the Security Council after the Security Council for eight years insisted that it should abandon it. These are important achievements for the Iranian people and also for the P5+1 [five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany], who were able to move away from an unrealistic, delusional position of the previous administrations and start a different process that resulted in a different outcome.

Al-Monitor: What’s the impact of this deal on the region, from your point of view?

Zarif: I believe that this deal will remove a smokescreen [behind] which Israel was standing and hiding its criminal activities against the people of Lebanon and the people of Palestine and also a smokescreen [behind which] some of our friends in the region, unfortunately, provided assistance to extremist groups and sectarian groups and tried to hide behind this phenomenon of Iranophobia that they were spreading in the region through the use of this episode. So now my call to our friends and brothers in the Persian Gulf, in the broader Arab world, is that Iran is ready to engage in good faith with

186 all of them based on mutual respect, good neighborliness and Islamic brotherhood. We have many common challenges to fight, and we have many common opportunities to benefit from, and this is [the] time to start working together, and this [is] my government's most important priority right now. To engage with neighbors, to expand relations with neighbors, to cooperate with neighbors against our most common challenges, and extremism and terrorism are the most important challenges to our region.

Al-Monitor: Why is Israel enraged by the deal?

Zarif: Unfortunately, they need crisis and wars to continue to hide their aggressions and their inhumane policies against the people of Lebanon, Palestine and the people of the region, so peace is an existential threat to them.

187

AlJazeera 15 Jul 2015

The 3 myths: how the Iran deal impacts the Middle East Baseless concerns on the nuclear deal boost an exaggerated fear of Iran.

Ibrahim Al-Marashi Ibrahim al-Marashi is an assistant professor at the Department of History, California State University, San Marcos. He is the co-author of "Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History."

The nuclear agreement signed in Vienna is a major breakthrough for the United StatesIran relations, and despite warnings, it will not result in further instability in the Middle East.

However, if you listen to political elites and media commentators, both in the US and the Middle East, you would believe the world is about to enter into an age of utter catastrophe - a catastrophe centred around Middle Eastern instability - prompted by Iran and its array of influential powers.

These myths are not grounded in any actual understanding of regional history or political dynamics, but rather are the products of fear tactics with the underlying intent of appealing to domestic constituencies - particularly those of the US and Israel.

Myth 1: the US has abandoned its regional allies for Iran In response to the deal, US Senator Lindsey Graham warned, "It's incredibly dangerous for our national security, and it's akin to declaring war on Sunni Arabs and Israel by the P5+1 [five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany] because it ensures their primary antagonist Iran will become a nuclear power and allows them to rearm conventionally."

The US and Iran have decreased decades-long bilateral tensions, but this deal is not in any way "akin to declaring war on Sunni Arabs and Israel".

Both Washington and Tehran have demonstrated that constructive and positive dialogue is possible.

The US and Iran, prior to this deal, proved that they could work as de-facto partners with mutual interests in combating the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL).

That being said, the US and Iran are still at odds over Syria, and Washington has provided Riyadh with intelligence, weapons, and ships to partake in a naval blockade in the campaign against the Houthis in Yemen.

188 Likewise, the US has in no way abandoned other Gulf states, and will continue to depend on them for stability in the energy market. Bahrain will remain America's base for its 5th Fleet, and pre-existing regional relationships will remain a high priority.

Myth 2: lifting sanctions on Iran will threaten Israel Echoing Graham's statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that "Iran will get hundreds of billions of dollars with which it will be able to fuel its terror machine".

By "terror machine", Netanyahu is referring to the Hezbollah and Hamas groups.

The lifting of sanctions on Iran will unlikely amplify any threat these two groups present to Israel. Hezbollah's threat to Israel is posed not by its rocket arsenal, but by an experienced group of fighters who can hold Lebanese territory if Israel attacks, as it did in 2006.

However, Hezbollah's manpower has been diminished as its military forces are now committed to the fighting in Syria and Iraq; conflicts unlikely to conclude in the near future. Hezbollah is unlikely to provoke a war with Israel with its forces overextended.

Lifting the sanctions can provide Hezbollah with more Iranian financial and military support, but it does not create a surge in Hezbollah's manpower or fighting effectiveness, which requires years of training and combat experience.

The Iran-Hamas relationship suffered greatly when Hamas leadership was expelled from Syria for its failure to support Damascus and Tehran's joint efforts in suppressing the Syrian rebels after 2011.

Sanctions were in place on Iran during Israel's first Gaza War in 2008, yet those sanctions did not damage the ability of Iran to support Hamas.

Even though Iran-Hamas relations were frayed over Syria, Israel still perceived Hamas as a threat, demonstrated by the third Israel-Gaza war in the summer of 2014, which ironically led to a rapprochement between Iran and Hamas a few months later.

Netanyahu's speech merely seeks to encourage the atmosphere of fear in his country which has garnered widespread political support for himself and his governing tactics.

It is estimated that Israel has a nuclear offensive capability amounting 100-200 nuclear warheads - an arsenal which would clearly deter any hypothetical scenario were Iran ever seek to pursue the use of a nuclear weapon against them. Simply put, Iran is overwhelmingly outgunned.

Israel's unstated objection to the deal is that it leaves an Iranian nuclear infrastructure intact, giving Iran the potential to challenge Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region in the future, a monopoly which Israel has officially refused to declare.

189 Myth 3: Iran's nuclear programme will set off a nuclear arms race and further destabilise the region Prior to the deal, the US Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner said: "It would be naive to suggest the Iranian regime will not continue to use its nuclear programme, and any economic relief, to further destabilise the region."

Destabilisation in countries like Yemen and Syria has resulted from the choices made by their political elites - not by Iran's intervention.

An influx of Iranian financial support to the government in Damascus or the Houthis in Yemen is unlikely to change the reality of the conflicts there.

Houthi rebels have been quite effective and have done remarkably well on their own without foreign aid. That being said, their lack of numbers drastically limit their ability to expand their circle of influence, regardless of outside help from a power such as Iran.

Furthermore, while Iran and Turkey support opposing proxies in the Syrian civil war, they both have to gain from the lifting of sanctions due to the politics of energy security.

Lifting of sanctions would allow Turkey to resume trade with its neighbour Iran, and facilitate Ankara's dependence on Iranian natural gas.

The reality of the region is clear: instability is rife, and this instability is likely to continue regardless of Iranian intervention.

Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media, wrote: "From all that we now know the agreement will set off a chain reaction of nuclear proliferation in the most unstable region of the world."

The notion of an Iranian nuclear programme creating a domino effect in the region has been echoed by policy makers and media commentators who are unfamiliar with the dynamics of proliferation in the Middle East.

The nuclear arms race in the region began in the 1970s. Both Iraq and Syria sought their nuclear programmes in direct reaction to Israel's development of nuclear capabilities.

It has been said that the Saudi Arabia and Turkey will be the next to hop on the nuclear bandwagon; however, neither country has the human capacity or scientific infrastructure to do so without extensive foreign support.

This support is extremely unlikely to be offered by an international system which is entirely committed to preventing further nuclear proliferation - particularly in the Middle East.

Final thoughts

190 With or without a deal, many in the region and abroad would have still been wary of Iran.

Any failure to sign the deal would have only prolonged a decades-long policy of confronting and isolating the Islamic Republic of Iran - a policy which has failed to curb instability in the region or the actions of the state, and has only created stronger animosity towards the West and established powers within the Middle East.

The bottom line here is simple, this deal offers the first real chance to see whether the US-Iranian engagement will in fact produce cooperative opportunities for stability throughout the Middle East.

Ultimately, progress has being made through this deal, and choosing hope over fear can only help.

191 Middle East Eye 15 Jul 2015

How a weaker Iran got the hegemon to lift sanctions Gareth Porter

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

Now that Iran nuclear deal is completed, the attention of western news media and political commentators is predictably focused overwhelmingly on the opposition to the agreement within the US Congress and from Israel and the Saudi-led Sunni Arab coalition.

That media lens misses the real significance of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which is that Iran succeeded in negotiating an agreement with the United States that upheld its national right to a nuclear programme despite the obvious vast disparity in power between the two states. That power disparity between the global hegemon and a militarily weak but politically influential regional “middle power” has shaped not just the negotiating strategies of the two sides during the negotiations but, more importantly, how they came about in the first place.

The news media have adopted the Obama administration’s view that negotiations were the result of Iran responding to international sanctions. The problem with that conventional view is not that Iran wasn’t eager to get the sanctions removed, but that it was motivated to do so long before the United States was willing to negotiate.

In fact, Iran had long viewed its nuclear programme not only in terms of energy and scientific advancement but also as a way of inducing the United States to negotiate an end to the extraordinary legal status in which Iran has been placed for so long. Even during the Bill Clinton administration Iranian strategists wanted to get the United States to move toward more normal relations, but Clinton was determined to be the most proIsraeli administration in US history, and instead imposed a complete trade embargo on Iran.

Clinton eventually offered a “dialogue” with Iran but made it clear that he had no intention of giving up the sanctions against Iran. The lesson that Iranian strategists, including then secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and now President Hassan Rouhani, learned from the Clinton years was that the United States would only negotiate the end of its sanctions against Iran if was convinced that the cost and risk of refusing to negotiate was too high.

It was during the second Clinton administration that Iranian strategists began to discuss the idea that Iran’s nuclear programme was its main hope for engaging the hegemonic power.

Iranian political scientist Jalil Roshandel, who worked on a research project for the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s think tank in 1997-1998, recalled in an interview with this writer that influential figures (including an adviser to veteran Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati) had told him during that period that they believed a uranium enrichment programme would provide leverage in negotiating a removal of the sanctions.

Iran tried to use what it assumed was US and European concern about its enrichment programme - which had not yet begun enriching uranium - to gain more leverage in negotiations with the British, French and German governments from November 2003 to spring 2005. But those negotiations were fruitless, mainly because the Bush

192 administration was interested in regime change in Iran and therefore disdained the idea of actual negotiations over its nuclear programme. The Bush administration ordered its European allies not to respond to a March 2005 Iranian proposal that offered to limit the Iranian programme to a minimum.

The problem was that the Bush administration still didn’t take the Iranian nuclear programme seriously, so the power disparity between Washington and Tehran was still too great.

And it wasn’t only the neoconservative-influenced Bush administration that believed it was so powerful that it need not reach a compromise with Iran. We now know that President Barack Obama relied on efforts to coerce Iran rather than negotiating with it during his first four years in office. He approved a plan for an unprecedented cyberattack on Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility in 2009 as the first move in a strategy of pressure on Iran aimed at forcing the Islamic republic to give up its enrichment programme.

For the Obama administration, intrusive financial sanctions were not originally conceived as a way to bring about a negotiated agreement with Iran. In fact Clinton publicly presented the “diplomatic path” with Iran as a way to “gain credibility and influence with a number of nations who would have to participate in order to make the sanctions regime as tight and crippling as we want it to be”. In other words, diplomacy was actually a gimmick to achieve the administration’s real goal of coercion.

In 2012, when Obama was offering talks on Iran’s nuclear programme for the first time, he was still committed to the same strategy of coercion. The effort to bring Iran to the negotiating table was accompanied by yet another US cyber-attack – this time on the Iranian oil and gas industry.

Only in 2013, during his second term, did Obama’s administration give up the aim of forcing Iran to end enrichment entirely and agree to actually negotiate with Iran on the nuclear issue. That decision came only after Iran had increased the number of centrifuges enriching uranium to more than 9,000, with another 9,000 centrifuges installed but never connected, accumulated a large stockpile of low enriched uranium, and – even more alarming to the United States - began enriching uranium to 20 percent.

So the main back story of the nuclear agreement is that it was Iranian counter-pressure on the United States through its nuclear programme that finally compelled the Obama administration to change its strategy of relying mainly on coercion and begin the negotiations that Iran had wanted for more than two decades.

The most important story of the agreement itself, moreover, is how the Obama administration, supported by its European allies, tried to maintain the sanctions for long as possible in the implementation process. But in the end US negotiators finally gave up that objective, even though, as Iranian diplomats told me in Vienna, they found the American “emotional attachment” to sanctions still manifesting itself in the last days of negotiations in the language of the UN Security Council resolution.

The basic inequality of power of the two main protagonists, which would normally have allowed the United States to prevail on the issue, had been reduced dramatically by two factors: the lifting of sanctions was so central to Iranian interests that its negotiators would undoubtedly have walked away from the talks if the United States had not relented, and the Obama administration had become committed to completing the negotiations simply by virtue of having made such an agreement its central foreign policy initiative.

The Iran nuclear agreement thus illustrates the elemental importance of the distribution

193 of power but also the possibility of a weaker state achieving its vital interests in negotiations with the hegemonic power against what might appear to be very long odds by exploiting their source of leverage to the maximum with patience, courage and careful calculation.

194 The Hill 15 Jul 2-15

Biden rallies Dem support for Iran deal

By Mike Lillis Vice President Biden stormed the Capitol Wednesday to pitch the Obama administration's Iranian nuclear deal to House Democrats, who appear to be lining up behind the agreement.

The support of the minority Democrats could prove vital. With Republicans vowing to disapprove of the Iran agreement, the fate of the deal could hinge on the number of Democrats willing to sustain a veto from President Obama.

Leaving the meeting, Biden expressed confidence that the historic accord will be preserved.

"I think we're going to be OK," Biden said, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) by his side.

Reached Monday night, the landmark deal aims to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons in exchange for the gradual removal of international trade sanctions. The pact culminates years of often-tense negotiations between Iran, the United States and five other world powers, including Russia and China.

GOP leaders have panned the agreement as a giveaway to the Iranians that will threaten the security of Israel and the West.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) warned the pact would lead to a new nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the majority whip, vowed to sink the deal within Congress's 60-day window to act.

Most Democrats have a decidedly different view, and among those participating in Wednesday's meeting with Biden, a large number said they're either supporting the agreement or are leaning that way.

"Let me tell you, it's pretty ballsy what they've done in view of the world situation at this particular time," said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.). "I think that it needs a good airing [and] we'll do it. … I'm leaning toward yes."

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) was more definitive, saying he's already decided to back the deal.

"Oh, yeah. Give peace a chance," Clyburn said.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) emphasized that many concerns remain — "there's a lot of questions that need to be resolved," he said — but added, "I'm inclined to support it."

The Democrats said Biden went deep into the weeds to address a long list of specific policy concerns, including questions about the spontaneity of Iranian nuclear inspections, the timeline for lifting sanctions and the details surrounding Iran's new freedoms to sell weapons abroad if it meets its nuclear promises.

195 "He was very thorough, answered questions that nobody even asked," said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). "Frankly, people were joking about it, but he went down to the minute details.

"This guy, I don't know, he must not have gone to bed last night."

Cleaver said he's ready to back the deal unless new details emerge that convince him otherwise.

Asked if that's the overwhelming sense of the caucus, Cleaver said: "That's what I think, yeah."

"They sent the right guy over," he added.

The support from House Democrats is hardly unanimous. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) is one vocal critic of the deal, saying it doesn't do enough to prevent Iran from building a weapon a decade from now.

"In 10 years — some would argue 12 — Iran will be able to have an industrial-sized facility," Sherman said. "The amount of enriched uranium needed to make a bomb is a tiny portion of what is generated in a peaceful, or an allegedly peaceful, plant that generates enough fuel to illuminate a city."

But even Sherman was quick to distinguish between the various possible iterations of an Iran vote on the floor, clarifying that while he would oppose a straight vote of approval for the deal — if one were to come up — he remains undecided on votes to disapprove the agreement or override a presidential veto.

"Those are three different votes," Sherman said.

Still, other Democrats remain on the fence. Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said they're still weighing their support.

"It's not just a matter of studying the document, it's really having a chance to talk to experts about how these provisions will be interpreted and applied as a practical matter," Schiff said.

He said a major concern among Democrats is a provision lifting the embargo on Iranian weapon sales abroad.

"I think it took many people by surprise," Schiff said, "and as a non-nuclear sanction we would have liked to have seen that maintained in force."

Lowey also voiced strong concerns, suggesting she wants clear assurances that Iran couldn't use the proceeds of expanded trade to fund terrorist groups.

"I know how hard Secretary [John] Kerry worked and I certainly respect his expertise and that of the vice president," she said. "However, I am concerned about the impact, especially about the ballistic missile sales and the armament sales and what Iran would do flush with money when the sanctions are lifted."

All sides of the Democratic debate praised the administration for taking near-immediate steps to address the concerns of lawmakers. Some suggested the White House has taken

196 a lesson from the recent trade debate, through which Democrats hammered the administration for what they deemed a lack of transparency.

"You make friends before you need them. I think the administration is doing it very wisely," said Pascrell, who's urging both Obama and Biden to meet with GOP lawmakers, too. "I disagreed with them on trade. On this, I think they're heading in the right direction."

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) suggested Biden's briefing was already paying dividends in terms of building Democratic support.

"The bottom line is [the briefing was] very reassuring," said Connolly, who's leaning towards supporting the deal. "You could see heads shaking, and you could see people who had some doubts experience some clarity and reassurance."

Nadler said Biden didn't mention the key role the minority Democrats could play in securing the deal in the face of GOP opposition, but he didn't have to.

"It's implicit that the fate of the deal lies with either the Senate or House Democrats, or both," Nadler said. "He didn't have to explain that."

Sherman said he expects the administration's outreach will continue throughout the 60day window, the goal being to maximize congressional backing to add momentum and legitimacy to the agreement.

"The administration's job is to inform Congress. I think they'll do their job, and I think even if they thought they had a veto-proof core that would vote their way, they'd like that core to be larger," Sherman said.

"I can't imagine that the White House would say, 'Well, we have enough votes, we don't care to get any more,'" he added. "You always want to win by a larger margin, make a stronger statement, popularize the deal with the American public and the American Congress."

197 Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) 15 Jul 2015

Iran, the United States, and Regional Diplomacy: After Vienna Mehran Kamrava

Mehran Kamrava is Professor and Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He is the author, most recently, of Qatar: Small State, Big Politics.

After marathon negotiations in Vienna that several times came to the verge of collapse, Iran and the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, the so-called P5+1, reached a landmark agreement on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program that all sides are hailing as “historic”. The agreement offers a roadmap for a series of confidence-building measures through which Iran rolls back aspects of its nuclear program in return for dismantling the punishing sanctions the country has endured for nearly a decade.

Despite the truly historic milestone reached in Vienna, the real consequences of the deal, and whether or not it will stick at all, will become apparent over the next several months.

These consequences for Iran, the United States, and for Persian Gulf states are especially critical.

For the Iranians, the Vienna accord represents a comprehensive political, diplomatic, and economic victory. The Iranian government was never really interested in the acquisition of nuclear weapons. But given the strategic threats the country has faced, especially since 2003, it has indeed been interested in the knowledge to construct a nuclear device in relatively short order. The administration of President Hassan Rouhani, in office since 2013, made a calculated decision to approach the issue differently from the way its predecessor, the Ahmadinejad administration, had done. Rouhani and his team decided that if Iran did not have anything to hide, then it should indeed engage in substantive negotiations with the P5+1 over the country’s nuclear program and to try to get the sanctions removed.

So far Rouhani and his team have succeeded in delivering on the president’s campaign promise to break Iran out of its international isolation. But in the process of reaching the historic deal with the P5+1, they spent considerable political capital in putting together a coalition made up of the country’s notoriously divided political factions.

Moving forward, if the accord that was reached in Vienna fails to have real and tangible results for middle class Iranians, and if Rouhani and his team fail to get the sanctions removed in a meaningful way, then they will lose much political capital and the hands of the hardliners will no doubt be strengthened. A lot will now depend on how the next few months will unfold and whether the P5+1, including especially the United States, can deliver on the promises of the agreement.

The post-agreement political calculus in the United States is far more fluid and unpredictable. The Republicans in the US Congress are bound to denounce the agreement.

It is, after all, election season in the US and the Republicans cannot afford not to criticize anything and everything that the Obama administration does. But it is unlikely that the Republicans would ultimately derail the agreement; overplaying their hand runs the real potential of blowback, especially since public opinion polls in the US show support for the agreement. Even if they initially reject the agreement, the Republicans do not seem to have the votes to override a threatened presidential veto.

198 Iran’s neighbors to the south, accustomed to capitalizing on US-Iranian tensions for nearly four decades now, are especially worried about the prospect of a rapprochement between the former arch enemies. Along with Israel, Saudi Arabia has especially been vocal in opposing the nuclear agreement and accusing Iran of destabilizing the region.

In relation to Saudi Arabia, President Rouhani’s televised speech to the Iranian people following the signing of the agreement was very telling. He ended his speech by addressing the security concerns of Iran’s neighbors, especially the states of the Persian Gulf. It is likely that in the coming months, with the nuclear agreement behind them, Rouhani and his team will concentrate on reducing tensions with Saudi Arabia. For a region in profound and ever-deepening chaos, a reduction of tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia can only be a welcome development.

Once the dust of the Vienna accord is settled and the hyperbole surrounding the magnitude of its significance subsides, historians will indeed see it as a landmark development for the Middle East and especially for Iran and its neighbors, as well as for the United States. But much hard work still lies ahead. One only hopes that the leaders and diplomats of Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as those from the United States, show the same level of courage and statesmanship in tackling regional problems in the Middle East that the world witnessed in Vienna.

199 Foreign Affairs 15 Jul 2015

Turn Down for What?

The Iran Deal and What Will Follow

By Robert Jervis The deal with Iran falls far short of what the United States and its European allies would like. They wanted Tehran to dismantle its nuclear program, agree to unimpeded inspections, and forgo ballistic missiles and support of Hezbollah and Hamas. But these are terms that can only be imposed on a country that has been militarily defeated. So the two pertinent questions are whether the P5+1 got the best deal possible and, more importantly, whether it is better than the likely results of walking away from the table.

It is extremely unlikely that the P5+1 got the best deal possible (as disconcerting as that may be for proponents of the deal, including me). Part of the reason is that, as the critics have alleged, U.S. President Barack Obama wanted the agreement very badly, which—although necessary to undertake the arduous negotiations—did reduce his leverage. A more important point is that it is extremely rare for one side, let alone both, to get everything that it could. In almost all cases, the two sides’ preferences do not meet at a single point, but instead have some overlap, which means that it would take extraordinary intelligence and luck for either side to be able to squeeze out the last drop from the other.

German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrive for a family picture after the last plenary session at the United Nations building in Vienna, Austria July 14, 2015.

Although the question of whether the West could have gotten a bit more in the bargain is interesting, much more important is the question of whether the deal was better than a breakdown of negotiations. It was, and by quite a wide margin.

Iran could still pursue a bomb. It could renounce or simply break the agreement, expel the inspectors, and use the declared facilities to produce highly enriched uranium. This has received the majority of attention in the media, but most experts believe it is the least likely route to a bomb because it invites an immediate attack. Alternatively, Tehran could also take a series of small steps, some cloaked in either secrecy or spurious justifications, toward building a bomb. But this would be difficult and risky given the surveillance that Iran has agreed to. Experts worry most about the third option: a secret program that would produce nuclear weapons before the West knew about it. This is a real worry, but the danger is more than counterbalanced by the greatly enhanced surveillance provided by the agreement. Granted, the inspections regime falls short of the “anywhere, anytime” option that the West wanted, but it is still much more intrusive than has been imposed on any country other than Iraq after the Gulf War. To be sure, there is no 100 percent guarantee that the inspectors will catch cheaters, but sneaking toward a bomb would not be a simple. It would involve a large number of steps, procedures, and facilities. The West would not have to detect all of them; one or two would be sufficient. Here, it is the Iranians who have to worry about certainty.

As in the Cold War, a crucial question is whether the West would respond adequately to violations, and whether the Iranians would anticipate that it would. Here, too, the proper comparison is to a situation without an agreement. It is indisputable that the United States is more likely to bomb Iran in response to worrisome Iranian activities if those activities are not only troubling in themselves but also violate an agreement.

200 Much attention has been given to the re-institution of economic sanctions as a deterrent to Iranian violations—the so-called “snap-back provisions.” The legalities are complicated, but both the defenders and critics of the agreement have downplayed, if not entirely missed, basic political truths. In reality, what would happen if Iran violates the agreement would be determined less by legal niceties than by the state of domestic and international politics at the time. If Iran had recently been hit by attacks from the Islamic State (also called ISIS) or Israel, for example, it would be much harder to build a coalition to re-impose sanctions. Likewise, sanctions that require unanimity would be hard to reinstate if there were high tensions between the West on the one hand and China and Russia on the other. The West’s will also could be sapped by domestic disruptions of various kinds. But the alternative of rejecting an agreement and maintaining the sanctions regime of the last few years faces these dangers as well.

Indeed, unless all parties in the P5+1 had agreed that it was Iran’s unreasonableness that put an agreement beyond reach, sanctions would have been extraordinarily difficult to maintain, let alone increase. In that case, the alternative to an agreement would seem to be either bombing, which Obama would not do (and even a critical successor would have to undertake over the objections of the military) or greater unilateral sanctions, and few observers believe that these would be sufficient to coerce Iran into the sort of agreement that the critics seek. The hope, then, would be that increased economic distress would lead to the regime’s collapse, although this discounts the mitigating effects of other countries relaxing their pressures. To be sure, in an unpredictable world, it is always possible that the regime will crumble, but it is hard to come up with a good theory or past case that would lead us to expect this outcome.

Unpredictability also surrounds one of the larger questions lurking in the background.

This is whether the economic boom that will accompany the lifting of sanctions will solidify support for the regime because it has succeeded in securing international recognition of Iran’s rights and reinvigorating the economy or whether the boom will corrode the regime’s strength by building an independent middle class that rejects theocracy. The hope, if not the expectation, for the latter processes is part of the reason why the bargain’s defenders worry less than the critics do about what will happen when the limits on enrichment expire. Critics are correct that if the latter outcome were certain, Iran’s leaders would not have signed the agreement. They can also point to the example of China, in which economic growth and a semi-free market has not produced support for political liberty. Defenders can respond that the two cases are quite different and that the foundations of the theocratic regime are already less than firm.

In any case, much will depend on the politics that will evolve as the agreement is implemented. There is a danger that the leaders of the West, and Obama in particular, will be so committed to the deal that they will overlook Iranian violations, although the fact that there will soon be a new president reduces this concern. Meanwhile, if relations between Iran and the West do begin to improve, it will mean more reassurances for Iran’s Sunni neighbors as well as for Israel. Although diplomats cannot say anything this rude, however, these countries do not have any better options than working with the United States. Managing them should not be as hard as keeping Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.

In the end, I can easily imagine a better deal, but in the world as it is, this one is quite good.

201 The Washington Post 15 Jul 2015

Obama says only alternative to a nuclear deal with Iran is war

By Greg Jaffe President Obama’s defense of the complex and painstakingly negotiated nuclear deal that his administration reached with Iran boiled down to a simple, if controversial, contention: The only real alternative to the deal was war.

Obama returned to that conclusion repeatedly Wednesday at a news conference that stretched for more than one hour.

“Without a deal,” he said in his opening statement, “we risk even more war in the Middle East.”

A few minutes later, in response to a reporter’s question, Obama dismissed concerns that the House and Senate might vote down the deal, forcing him to use his presidential veto. Wouldn’t a rejection of the deal by lawmakers make him question its wisdom?

“Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through force, through war,” Obama countered. “Those are — those are the options.”

What about those who argued that Obama should have employed more diplomatic, economic or military leverage to get a “better deal” from the intransigent Iranians?

“What does that mean?” Obama asked rhetorically. “If the alternative is that we should bring Iran to heel through military force, then those critics should say so. And that will be an honest debate.”

The president’s news conference in the White House’s East Room came a day after his negotiators concluded contentious marathon talks with Iran. The deal they reached to limit Iran’s nuclear enrichment program — more than six years in the making — was swiftly condemned by virtually every major Republican presidential candidate.

A spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said Wednesday that Obama, in defending the deal, had shown himself to be “hopelessly disconnected from reality.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing his country’s parliament a few hours before Obama spoke, left open the possibility of military action against Iran.

“We will reserve our right to defend ourselves against all of our enemies,” Netanyahu said. “We have strength, and it is great and mighty.”

The president responded with a defense of the nuclear agreement that was equal parts pugilistic and legalistic. Obama was briefed on the progress of the negotiations with Iran as often as twice a day and had amassed a detailed knowledge of the 109-page agreement and the additional 47 pages of annexes. He drew on that knowledge the way an experienced courtroom lawyer might rely on case-law expertise to answer criticisms that the deal didn’t last long enough; that it wouldn’t prevent the Iranians from covertly producing a nuclear weapon; that it still allowed the Iranians some nuclear enrichment capacity and therefore didn’t go far enough. He seemed eager to address every question.

“Have we exhausted [all the] Iran questions here?” Obama said at one point. “I am

202 really enjoying this Iran debate. . . . Go ahead. Go ahead.”

A few minutes later, Obama picked up a piece of paper from the lectern in front of him, eager to keep talking about the deal. “Okay,” he said. “I made some notes about many of the arguments — the other arguments that I’ve heard here.”

Obama’s defense of the deal wasn’t designed to win over dug-in critics, whom he dismissed as illogical and unrealistic. His audience was an American public worried about the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran but also exhausted by more than 14 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama has speculated in recent weeks that the nuclear deal could empower moderates in Iran who are eager for better relations with the rest of the world. “What I’d say to them is this offers a historic opportunity,” he told the New York Times in an interview Tuesday.

Such hopeful talk was largely absent Wednesday from Obama’s news conference, which focused on the dangers posed by Iran and the need to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon. “This has been a Democratic priority, this has been a Republican priority, this has been Prime Minister Netanyahu’s priority,” Obama said.

Obama hit on almost all the major criticisms of the deal during the news conference.

Republicans have criticized the deal for allowing Iran as many as 24 days before it grants inspectors access to military sites that could house covert programs. The delay could give Iran enough time to conceal illegal activity, critics said. Obama dismissed the charges as unrealistic and not grounded in science.

“This is not something you hide in a closet,” Obama said of the centrifuges and other sensitive equipment needed to make weapons-grade uranium. “This is not something you put on a dolly and kind of wheel off somewhere.”

Even if the Iranians had moved nuclear material from the site, Obama said, inspectors would find it. “Your high school physics will remind us that leaves a trace,” he said. “And so we’ll know, in fact, there was a violation of the agreement.”

Other critics have charged that the deal would pave Iran’s path to a bomb by lifting some of the most onerous restrictions on its nuclear energy program after 10 years.

“That’s a good one,” Obama said.

He countered that the inspections would still be in place 20 years from now. So, too, would Iran’s Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments. Iran would be about one year away from developing enough fuel for a nuclear bomb — a longer time frame than its current two to three months.

Yet another worry is that the lifting of tough economic sanctions on Iran would provide it with as much as $150 billion in revenue. Some of that money would be spent on infrastructure and the Iranian people. Some of it, critics say, would go to the likes of Hezbollah, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iraqi militias that not long ago were killing Americans.

Here Obama suggested that the deal was better than any alternative. If negotiations broke down, Obama said, the United States would maintain tough sanctions but many of its partners, eager to do business with Iran, would drop them.

“So maybe they don’t get $100 billion,” Obama said of the Iranians. “Maybe they get $60 billion or $70 billion instead. The price for that . . . is that now Iran is pursuing a

203 nuclear weapon” without any inspectors on the ground.

Obama seemed to be on less-certain ground when asked about his broader vision for the Middle East, which is going through a wrenching period of bloodshed, state collapse and militant attacks. He said that before he leaves office he wants to make sure that the United States is on track to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq. “We’re moving in the right direction there,” he said.

He talked about jump-starting a process to resolve Syria’s “open sore” of a civil war, but didn’t mention that the United States — despite months of work and millions of dollars — had managed to train only 60 moderate resistance fighters in that conflict.

He concluded by acknowledging that there were limits to his power.

“Ultimately, it’s not the job of the president of the United States to solve every problem in the Middle East,” Obama said. “The people in the Middle East are going to have to solve some of these problems themselves.”

204 The Guardian 15 Jul 2015

Sadegh Zibakalam: Anti-Americanism at a 'dead end' in Iran The country’s preeminent public intellectual says anti-Americanism has run its course in the Islamic republic. Hardliners will try to roll back any openings, but in the long run, the country will find itself in a better place politically, economically and socially, he tells Maysam Behravesh Maysam Behravesh for Tehran Bureau

Maysam Behravesh is a political analyst at Tehran Bureau and co-founder of the Center for Middle East Research (CMER) in London. He is completing a PhD in the department of political science at Lund University, Sweden

Sadegh Zibakalam is a professor of political science at the University of Tehran, and one of the most prominent public intellectuals and political analysts in the country. He is the author of a number of bestsellers in Persian, including How Did We Become What We Are, Hashemi without Polish, Tradition and Modernity, and An Introduction to the Islamic Revolution. In a telephone interview, he discusses how the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers will change the dynamics in the country - at least in the long run.

How will the nuclear agreement affect the relationship between political groups inside Iran?

To be precise, the nuclear agreement will benefit the reformists, moderates and centrists. Historically speaking, during the life of the Islamic republic in particular, whenever our relations with the west were hostile and tense, pressures on the opposition, critics, dissidents, journalists and intellectuals sharply increased. On the other hand, whenever relations with the west shifted a bit towards détente, the situation improved a bit for the critics of the state.

I think such a dynamic will take place on this occasion too. A strong indication is that as much as the reformists and centrists supported the nuclear negotiations, the hardliners were harshly opposed and critical of the performance of the negotiating team. This was a telling prelude to what I said.

But taking lessons from the same historical experience you mentioned, the hardline and conservative groups may respond radically to the opening, so the circumstances may not improve as soon as expected.

Yes, there is the likelihood of such a reaction. And it is indeed far from a small possibility. It is possible that at the beginning, that is the day after the deal, conservative and radical forces will take action to show that the situation will not change in favor of opponents, critics, liberals and intellectuals. They may scale up certain penalties and restrictions here and there, like shutting down a couple of newspapers, summoning a few authors and journalists to the judiciary, or similar measures. These are likely to happen in the short run. However, I believe in the long term the political atmosphere in Iran will gradually open up as a result of the rapprochement with the west, and the US in particular.

What do you make of warnings that the nuclear deal is aimed at empowering pro-west forces in Iran and bringing changes to the state’s power structure?

It is clear that the hardline “principlists” are floating these issues to give the impression that there is a relationship between the nuclear accord and American plots to overthrow

205 the regime. They are in fact trying to create such a psychological atmosphere. And I think these moves are driven by serious concerns about the deal, as hardliners know very well that it will not benefit them much in the long run. So these types of remarks, these “threats”, suggest a sense of worry and fear about the future.

If the nuclear deal causes the “flag of anti-Americanism (Amrikasetizi) to fall down” as you have famously put it, or according to you again, if it generates fundamental “cracks in the dome of anti-Americanism”, what will then happen to Iran’s foreign policy? Will the Islamic republic face an identity crisis in that domain?

Some may still beat the drums of anti-Americanism, but it will be difficult to persist with such policies and positions as intensely as before the deal. And this has a clear reason.

Gradually, many Iranians will be asking the simple question that if we were able to resolve through intensive and persistent negotiations our differences with Americans on such a wide range of issue on the nuclear controversy - Fordow, Natanz, Arak heavy water reactor, number of centrifuges, termination of sanctions - why shouldn’t we be able to reach agreements with them on other issues?

Like on Afghanistan, where we not only lack real differences, but also enjoy strategic convergence of interests. Neither one of us wants the Taliban to restore power in Kabul.

We don’t have differences in Iraq either, just common interests. Neither side wants Daesh - the Islamic State – to extend its dominance over Iraq. Neither side wants to see al-Qaeda and extremist groups dominate Iraq. Take prime minister Haidar al-Abadi’s government in Iraq, for instance. It is a moderate and relatively democratic one, which has invited Sunni groups to collaborate. His government enjoys a degree of national consent and consensus. Both Americans and Iranians support his administration.

Interestingly, I want to add that this shared interest also applies to Yemen. Neither one of us wants al-Qaeda to take over there. This is the case in Syria, too. Neither one of us wants al-Nusrah Front or Daesh (Isis) to take over Damascus. But I don’t want to talk in idealistic terms and rule out any sort of differences or divisions between us and the Americans. We do diverge over Israel. We do differ over the human rights issue, etc.

There definitely are differences, but they more or less exist between all countries in the world. Do the US and the UK agree fully on everything? Or the US and France, the US and China, the US and Russia, do they concur on everything? Definitely not. But this cannot be reason enough for them to be enemies. Such logic also applies to the relationship between Iranians and Americans.

Therefore, I reiterate this widely recognized statement in Iran that “the dome of antiAmericanism has cracked”. Of course, the principlists will try to push the antiAmericanism agenda with greater force to show their supporters that this is not the case [that anti-Americanism is alive and well]. This is not sustainable in the long run, however. In my opinion, the existential philosophy of anti-Americanism has been undermined a bit. It has been brought under question. It has reached a dead end.

Don’t you think this break in our foreign policy pattern may create some sort of identity crisis at the state level?

No, I don’t see it in terms of a “crisis”, because what we have is the product of a historical process that is gradually taking shape in Iran. Just note that when the revolution happened in 1979, anti-western and anti-American sentiments were much stronger in the society. But now after 36 years many revolutionary leftists and radicals who used to be anti-American at the time, are no longer so. Most of today’s reformists were deeply radical in the first decade after the revolution, as they stormed the US embassy in Tehran, and took many Americans hostage. Yet, they gradually realized that it is much more important to have a free press, hold free elections, abide by the rule of law, than to adopt anti-American stances and say “death to America”, “death to

206 England”, “death to the west” and “death to capitalism”. But not everybody changed as these early leftists did. Most principlists still adhere to anti-American and anti-western policies. But many in the country including students, writers, and journalists no longer believe in anti-Americanism.

How do you think the nuclear deal will affect Iran’s regional policy? Will it become more assertive and aggressive or moderate and restrained?

I am not sure about this to be frank, because ordinary people do not have a strong say in foreign policy making, particularly in places like Syria and Yemen. It is possible that once Iran feels powerful, it may adopt a more assertive position towards Saudi Arabia, but it is also possible that common sense prevails and the authorities extend an olive branch to the Saudis despite the fact our relations with the United States are entering a thaw. Tehran may invite Riyadh to engage in cooperation with the purpose of resolving the crisis in Yemen or in Iraq. In other words, though Iranians may now be feeling stronger than before, common sense may incline them to extend a hand of friendship to Saudi Arabia. They can make friendly gestures like declaring that Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, or president Hassan Rouhani or foreign minister Javad Zarif would like to pay a visit to King Salman.

Why do the Arab states in the region, not least Saudi Arabia, oppose Iran’s efforts to improve bilateral relations? After all the Rouhani administration has been going to great lengths to mend fences with Riyadh.

Like many others, the Saudis were waiting for the outcome of the nuclear negotiations.

That is, they wanted to see if Iran arrives at an agreement with the United States or not.

So in a sense, the Saudi disdain for Rouhani’s olive branch has partly been due to their uncertainty about the results of the nuclear talks. But now that the accord has been clinched, the Saudis may welcome those gestures and efforts to improve bilateral relations.

Another significant point is that relations depend on whether Iran will strike a triumphalist tone and approach Saudis from the position of superiority, or exhibit an amicable gesture and approach them from the position of friendship. Part of the Saudi refusal to embrace Rouhani’s olive branch goes back to their probable perception that Iran has perhaps been approaching them in a triumphalist manner, as a victor, implying that we brought you to your knees in Syria and kept Bashar al-Assad in power, or we managed to bring 90% of Yemen under the control of our proxies. Therefore, if Iran extends an olive branch from a position of superiority and supremacy, it is natural that it will be turned down. I think these friendly efforts can come to fruition only when we make it clear that we want to work in concert with them to resolve the situation in Yemen, that it is not about victory or triumph of one side over the other, that no side has been defeated, and that we just want to restore stability and security to Yemen with your assistance.

How do you think the state will use the financial resources released after the removal of sanctions?

I think part of these funds will be invested in the domestic economy and infrastructural projects. Part of it will cover our expenses in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. And finally, given that we have a state economy, part of it will be squandered here and there. In fact, it has always been the case that when we reap some huge fortune and revenues, it prompts corruption in its wake. We saw this even under the Shah before the 1979 revolution, particularly during the seventies when the price of oil quadrupled, as it did during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when oil prices exceeded $100 a barrel.

So, I believe part of it will be wasted in spite of all the regulations, supervisions and inspections in place.

207

Do you think the nuclear deal will have any real impact on the life of the ordinary people in Iran?

Definitely! Of course it will! The very fact that many in Iran were waiting for the deal and refraining from certain financial transactions – like selling their old cars and buying a new one, or purchasing a house, etc – before a deal, shows it exerts very palpable effects on people’s lives. In fact, it will infuse them with a sense of tranquility, hope and stability. It will create psychological stability in the society.

How do you predict the results of the February 2016 parliamentary elections in Iran?

The nuclear agreement, as mentioned, will benefit the Rouhani administration as well as the reformist groups as it will encourage greater electoral support among the people for moderate and centrist candidates.

How do you see the domestic and international situation in Iran in two decades?

Actually, this question should be answered by the Omniscient God! But let me conclude by saying that Iranian society is moving irreversibly towards stability, improvement of the economy, and the opening up of the political atmosphere. To my mind, these developments are taking place in an inevitable way. Iranian society is far more open and democratic today than it was 20 years ago, and its elections are far freer today than in the past. There are ups and downs for sure, but on the whole Iranian society is advancing and making progress.

208 McClatchy 15 Jul 2015

Obama launches campaign to sell Iran deal

BY ANITA KUMAR, WILLIAM DOUGLAS AND LESLEY CLARK McClatchy Washington Bureau WASHINGTON It took years for President Barack Obama to negotiate a historic nuclear deal with Iran. Now it’s time for him to sell the plan to foreign leaders, U.S. lawmakers and the American public.

Obama kicked off his aggressive campaign with a White House news conference Wednesday to sell the world the agreement he says would allow Iran to pursue a nuclear program but prevent it from producing a nuclear weapon.

His blunt message: The alternative is far worse.

“Without a deal, we risk even more war in the Middle East, and other countries in the region would feel compelled to pursue their own nuclear programs, threatening a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region in the world,” Obama said.

Under the deal announced Tuesday, Iran’s nuclear program would be reduced and closely monitored in exchange for economic sanctions against Iran being lifting.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fierce opponent of the deal, told his country’s parliament that it was not bound by the deal, saying Israel could still take military action against Iran’s nuclear program even if the deal proceeds.

“We will reserve our right to defend ourselves against all of our enemies,” he said. “We have strength, and it is great and mighty.”

Obama downplayed a series of concerns, including whether the sanctions could really be restored if Iran violated the deal, Iran’s ability to use procedural delays to stop inspectors and what Iran might do with its billions of dollars.

He said he would continue to gain Iran’s cooperation on other security issues, but he acknowledged the nation may not change all of its bad behavior, including funding terrorist groups in other countries such as Syria and Yemen.

Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, vice chair of the Republican conference in the Senate, doesn’t think Obama will get any Republican support in the chamber for the Iran deal and will have trouble convincing some Democrats to get on board. Blunt said he is lobbying his Democratic colleagues to reject what he sees as a flawed agreement.

“The real question will be how many Democrats will actually support it once they’ve seen it,” he said Wednesday in a call with Missouri reporters.

Obama has dispatched Vice President Joe Biden, Cabinet members and senior officials to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, journalists, foreign governments and nongovernmental groups.

He called senior lawmakers, including House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and the leaders of Britain, Germany, France, the European Union, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel to make his case.

He vigorously defended the deal in the lengthy news conference, which at times sounds like a lecture and later devolved into the president’s pulling out a piece of paper with Iran talking points so he could address things he was not asked about.

209

“My hope is that everyone in Congress also evaluates this agreement based on the facts, not on politics, not on posturing,” he said. “But we live in Washington, and politics do intrude.”

Biden held a closed-door briefing Wednesday for House Democrats that lasted about 90 minutes. When asked by reporters afterward whether he changed any skeptical minds, the vice president responded, “I think we’re going to be all right.”

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., said Biden didn’t express any personal qualms about the deal but said it might have one or two weaknesses. Pascrell said he’s “leaning towards a yes” but has not read the full agreement yet.

“I think it needs a good airing,” he said. “What are the collateral consequences of the deal, I’m very interested in that. . . . I’m interested in the arms that are able to come in and out of Iran. I’m also buoyed by the statement of the president with Biden standing alongside him that we are going to step up our efforts in defending Israel.”

Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., left the meeting still concerned about the deal’s “impact, especially about the ballistic missile sales and the armament sales and what Iran would do flush with money when the sanctions are lifted.”

After Congress formally receives the deal, a 60-day review period begins. But lawmakers go on a month-long recess, so any vote would likely wait until after they return on Sept.

8.

Obama must garner the backing of a majority of Democrats in the Republican-controlled Congress. Under legislation Congress passed this year, he could veto a vote of disapproval. It would take two-thirds votes from both the House of Representatives and the Senate to override the veto.

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he urged Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken in a call that the administration not seek action at the United Nations Security Council before Congress can review the deal in detail.

210 TIME Magazine 15-16 Jul 2015 Iran Forum

Madeleine Albright: The Iran Deal Must Go Through 'When the next president is elected, I hope that she will be in a position to make sure the deal is carried out' As President Obama said, “This deal is not built on trust. It’s built on verification.” There are a number of procedures in place to make sure Iran follows the terms of the agreement.

I welcome the discussion in Congress about the agreement. The American people need to understand this—the more they understand the agreement, the more they will understand its importance. The best thing would be to have this discussion, not to make instant judgments. There should never be any question about the United States’s dedication to Israel’s security.

When the next president is elected, I hope that she will be in a position to make sure the deal is carried out. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was the one who began the process, and she’s very familiar with the issue.

We haven’t had a relationship with Iran since 1979. This agreement offers the opportunity to look at other parts of a bilateral relationship. It’s a fascinating and complicated time in international policy. The nuclear agreement is one part of it, and a very important one. ++++++++++

Leon Panetta: Iran Deal Requires Vigilance Leon Panetta served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2009 to 2011, and as secretary of defense from 2011 to 2013.

The key to this deal, indeed the key to any arms control deal, is in the inspection and verification protocol. The most important question Congress will ask will be whether the inspectors can visit any site, talk to anybody, and review any document. Vigilance is the only thing that will ensure this deal is a success. ++++++++++

What Iranian Identity Means to an Outsider Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh was born in Brooklyn and raised in Pittsburgh. He is the author of the story collection, Brief Encounters With the Enemy, a finalist for the 2014 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fiction Prize, and the critically acclaimed memoir,When Skateboards Will Be Free, selected as one of the ten best books of the year by Dwight Garner of The New York Times.

The discombobulation of a deal to someone whose identity was caught between two countries What is a pariah supposed to suddenly make of compromise and reconciliation?

211 Until this week’s nuclear agreement, there’s hardly been any precedent for me. My primary emotion regarding Iran, at least since 1979, has been embarrassment—followed closely by shame.

If there was ever a sense of pride it was minimal and impossible to sustain, especially growing up in Pittsburgh where Iranians were few, and where there was no escaping the glaring reality of my name, which marked me as a permanent and identifiable foreigner—and also a spokesman for a country that I barely knew anything about.

The ideal spokesman and instiller of pride would have been my Iranian father, but he had left home when I was a baby (and later ran for president of Iran in 1980). My country was the United States, where I was born and raised by my Jewish-American mother, and where, for obvious reasons, I frequently felt like I didn’t belong.

One of the great lessons of my upbringing is that one does not have complete autonomy when forging their own identity. Instead, it is cobbled together by various elements, including the way one is seen by others—the final result for me was the identity of the outsider, which I eventually embraced. But of all the psychological problems with which an outsider must contend—loneliness, humiliation, rage, etc.—the greatest difficulty might very well be the invitation one morning to be welcomed as an insider.

Thus my discombobulation with the shocking development of an accord, with smiles all around. My familiar home of enmity appears to have been taken away—or at least restructured. All that remains now, of course, is a reckoning of the last 36 years. ++++++++++

Iran Could Become an Economic Superpower Robert W. Jordan

Robert W. Jordan is the former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and the author of the new book Desert Diplomat: Inside Saudi Arabia Following 9/11

The Iranian people may have unrealistic expectations of how soon they’ll see economic benefits, but when they come, it will be substantial My immediate reaction to the agreement was skepticism. We appear to have a deal that has a sunset provision after ten years, fifteen in another version, that relies upon inspections that do not appear to be anytime, anywhere, except at a tempo dictated to some degree by Iran. Furthermore, we have an enforcement mechanism that is sluggish and leads to delays and obfuscation, and we have a snap-back mechanism that is not likely to be very effective.

But there is no perfect deal.

The one we’ve struck has the advantages of eliminating most of the elements of a nuclear program by Iran for the next ten years assuming there is no cheating or hidden activity. It removes from the world’s agenda, for the moment at least, a serious threat — and potentially an existential threat — to Israel and other allies. The hopeful signal from the negotiators is that it could lead to a lessening of tensions with Iran over an extended period of time.

Most people have not focused on the economic competition that Iran will provide to Saudi Arabia and other countries once the sanctions are lifted. The Saudis would prefer a deal that diminishes Iran’s threat to the Saudi’s interests in the Middle East. They have a one-dimensional economy focused on oil. Because of the sanctions up to this point, Iran’s oil program has been curtailed. They have significant human resources, a well-

212 educated population, a real middle class, and burning ambition to emerge from the sanctions and take their place as a prime competitor in the region.

The deal gives Iran a chance to become an economic superpower, particularly when compared to lagging economies and human capital in other parts of the Middle East. The Iranian people may have unrealistic expectations of how soon they’ll see economic benefits, but when they come, it will be substantial.

For the U.S., there will be businesses that will be happy to do business with Iran. It will have a more positive impact on future oil companies than it does on high cost producers because the price of oil will likely be suppressed when Iran is able to dump more oil from its storage and production onto the market.

And, the alternatives to the deal are not attractive.

One is to simply walk away and continue sanctions, and hope the Iranians are brought to the table again with more flexibility. That seems unlikely to me. It’s definitely hard to hold the Europeans, the Russians and Chinese to the existing sanctions and if America walks away, there’s nothing to prevent the others from lessening the sanctions on their own.

The other alternative would be military intervention at some point, and there’s not much appetite for that. ++++++++++

Iran Will Cheat. Then What?

Dennis Ross The gap is small between where the deal will leave them in 10 years and weapons status The nuclear deal with Iran will certainly be debated intensely as Congress reviews the agreement over the next 60 days. It is a complex deal with many parts. For the administration, it has blocked the Iranian pathway to a bomb for at least the next fifteen years—and that claim has a great deal of merit given the limitations on the numbers of centrifuges, the far-reaching reduction of Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium, the removal and redesign of the core of the heavy water reactor at Arak, and Iran’s forswearing of reprocessing capabilities for this period of time.

In addition, President Obama is surely right when he declares that the deal is not about trust because there will be sweeping means to verify what is going on with the Iranian nuclear program. Indeed, the monitoring of the whole supply chain from the mining of uranium to the enriching of UF6 gas in centrifuges will make it difficult for Iran to divert materials into a covert program without us knowing about it. So there are some very important achievements in the agreement.

But there are also some important weaknesses that need to be addressed. Knowing Iran has cheated is one thing; ensuring that there is a price for every transgression—no matter how small–is another. The agreement provides for “snap back” sanctions, which essentially lifts the suspension of sanctions in the event of an Iranian violation. Clearly, the snap-back function is designed to deal with a major breach of an agreement, particularly because Iran explicitly states in the agreement that it will stop implementing its nuclear obligations if sanctions are re-imposed. So what happens if Iran cheats along the margins? For example, if they enrich uranium to 7% not the permitted 3.67%. The snap-back function makes little sense in this circumstance but the Joint Commission that

213 brings together all the negotiating parties could obviously address such an issue of noncompliance. In this case, however, Iran will likely to declare it made a mistake and say it will stop doing it.

Sound fine? Not really. Given Iran’s track record, it will likely cheat along the margins to test the means of verification and see how it might be able to change the baseline—and there needs to be a penalty for each such act of non-compliance and preferably not only by the US. I say this because deterrence is going to be even more important as a result of this deal.

Indeed, for me the greatest single problem with the agreement is that Iran is going to be left as a threshold nuclear state at the end of fifteen years. The agreement requires Iran to dismantle none of its enrichment infrastructure and starting in year 15, it can have as large a nuclear program as it wants. The gap between threshold and weapons status is small and will not take long to bridge.

As such, deterrence is what will matter. Iran must have no doubts that if we see it moving toward a weapon that would trigger the use of force. Declaring that is a must even now. Proving that every transgression will produce a price will demonstrate that we mean what we say.

If verification is necessary because the agreement is not built on trust, so, too, is building the credibility of our deterrence because Iran will be a threshold nuclear state— one that has deferred but not given up the option of being a nuclear weapon state. ++++++++++

Iran and the New Geopolitics Robert D. Kaplan The nuclear accord just announced demonstrates the limitations of American power in the Middle East The nuclear deal reached between the Obama Administration and Iran is a culmination of geopolitical shifts that began with the U. S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Following the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad — with U.S. forces to the west of Iran inside Iraq, and U.S. forces to the east of Iran inside Afghanistan — Iran demonstrated an interest in a strategic understanding with the United States. Had the Bush Administration engaged the Iranian mullahs at that point in time, it would have done so from a clear position of strength; not weakness. However, the Bush Administration was unwilling to engage Iran then. And in the years that followed, Iraq came apart, undermining the American position in the Middle East. This permitted Iranian influence to seep deeply into Iraq, a place that periodically throughout history had been part of greater Persia. Iran now enjoys a zone of influence, albeit not a contiguous one, stretching from the Mediterranean to the confines of Central Asia, a throwback to the Persian empires of antiquity and the early Middle Ages. In addition to its widespread support for radicalized proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi tribesmen in Yemen, Iran has constructed a nuclear program that practically constitutes a threshold bomb-making one. With all this in mind, the nuclear accord just announced demonstrates the limitations of American power in the Middle East.

The accord constitutes probably the best peaceful opportunity for preventing Iran from making a break-out towards nuclear weaponization at this point, but it also lifts sanctions on the Tehran regime while leaving the basics of its nuclear program intact.

With sanctions lifted, the clerical regime will have the economic wherewithal to channel more money to its client, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in order to save his regime.

214 The end of sanctions will also improve Iran’s domestic economy and help open it up to the world. Given the sophistication and essential westernization of large numbers of Iranians, the Obama Administration is hoping that before the accord’s restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program are lifted, the regime itself will have changed, or at least have been moderated.

Perhaps the biggest effect of the accord, though officials will not admit this (let alone talk about it), is that the accord creates a better context for U. S.-Iranian cooperation throughout the Middle East where their interests overlap: both Iran and the United States want to weaken the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq; they both want to weaken alQaeda in Yemen; they both want to keep the Islamic State out of Afghanistan; and they both want predictable maritime rules-of-engagement in the Persian Gulf. As for Syria, if there is any hope of removing Assad from power without even more chaos or the rise of a Sunni jihadist regime there ensuing, it lies with a diplomatic solution in which both Russia and Iran are engaged. Given that the Middle East will be afflicted by a low intensity war between Sunnis and Shiites for years to come, and with the United States already enjoying close historic ties with major Sunni nations, it is too much to expect that Washington will avoid engaging the region’s principal Shiite power as well. The nuclear accord, in that sense, is part of an historic geopolitical shift. ++++++++++

Michael Oren: Why Israel Won’t Be Celebrating the Iran Deal Michael B. Oren The present deal with Iran poses a threat not only to Israel, but to the U.S. and the world In Israel, one of the world’s rowdiest democracies, politicians rarely agree on anything.

Which is why their reaction to the nuclear arms deal with Iran is so unique. For the first time in living memory, virtually all Israelis – left, right, religious, secular, Arabs, Jews – are together calling the deal disastrous.

The reasons might not be clear to many readers of the agreement. According to preliminary reports, its 100 pages contain bewilderingly complex provisions for supposedly delaying Iran from making a bomb. There are international inspections of the Iranians’ nuclear facilities but none that would actually catch them off guard. There are limits to the number of centrifuges with which Iran can enrich uranium to weapons grade, but only for a decade during which not a single centrifuge will be dismantled. And Iran can continue to research and develop more advanced technologies capable of producing nuclear weapons even faster. Most mystifying still, the deal recognizes Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power without demanding that Iran cease promoting war throughout the Middle East and terror worldwide.

For Israelis, though, there is nothing mystifying about this picture. We see an Iranian regime that will deceive inspectors and, in the end, achieve military nuclear capabilities.

We see an Iranian nuclear program that, while perhaps temporarily curtailed, will remain capable of eventually producing hundreds of nuclear weapons.

This is a picture that we’ve all seen before. Back in 1994, American negotiators promised a “good deal” with North Korea. Its nuclear plants were supposed to be frozen and dismantled. International inspectors would “carefully monitor” North Korea’s compliance with the agreement and ensure the country’s return to the “community of nations.” The world, we were told, would be a safer place.

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It wasn’t. North Korea never forfeited its nuclear plants and the inspections proved useless. The community of nations is threatened by North Korean atomic bombs and the world is anything but safe. And yet, against all logic, a very similar deal has been signed with Iran.

And Iran is not North Korea. It’s far worse. Pyonyang’s dictators never plotted terrorist attacks across five continents and in thirty cities, including Washington, D.C. Tehran’s Ayatollahs did. North Korea is not actively undermining pro-Western governments in its region or planting agents in South America. Iran is. And North Korea – unlike Iran – did not kill many hundreds of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

So why, then, are only Israelis united in opposing this deal? The answer is that we have the most to lose, at least in the short run. We know that the deal allows Iran to break out and create nuclear bombs in as little as three months, too quickly for the world to react. We know that the Ayatollahs, who have secretly constructed fortified nuclear facilities that have no peaceful purpose and have violated all of their international commitments, will break this deal in steps too small to precipitate a powerful global response. And we know that the sanctions, once lifted, cannot be swiftly revived, and that hundreds of billions of dollars Iran will soon receive will not be spent on better roads and schools. That treasure will fund the shedding of blood – of Israelis but also of many others.

Israelis know that, while the world might weather its deception by North Korea, they cannot afford to be duped by Iran. But neither, in fact, can the United States. Just last week, Iran’s President attended a rally in Tehran where tens of thousands of protesters chanted “Death to America.” The deal will better enable them to carry out that attack – if not today, then against future generations. And Iran’s Supreme Leader has publicly pledged to do just that.

The planned celebrations in Tehran and Iranian declarations of victory contrast starkly with the gloom hanging today over almost all Israelis. We believe that with stronger sanctions and tougher demands, a better deal is still possible. But we also understand that the present deal poses grave dangers not only to us, but ultimately to America and the world.

216 LobeLog/foreign policy 16 Jul 2015

The Iran Deal Through Israeli Eyes

by Marsha B. Cohen Marsha B. Cohen is an analyst specializing in Israeli-Iranian relations and US foreign policy towards Iran and Israel. Her articles have been published by PBS/Frontline's Tehran Bureau. IPS, Alternet, Payvand and Global Dialogue. She earned her PhD in International Relations from Florida International University, and her BA in Political Philosophy from Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Hawkish Israeli politicians and analysts have done their best to thwart any agreement between Iran and the P5+1. Their mantra has been consistent: No deal is better than a bad deal, and there is no such thing as a good deal with Iran (certainly not one to which Iran would ever acquiesce).

The image of Iranian leaders, including President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, as smiling broadly, and Iranians cheering in the streets, is therefore regarded as bad news for Israel. That the agreement might in any way serve Iranian interests, with Iran deriving any benefit whatsoever from it, is proof of the perfidy of the P5+1. “A bad deal can only yield bad results,” according to Major Gen. Yaakov Amidror.

“Iran is likely to focus on promoting its regional interests, supposedly with U.S. backing.”

Declaring that the world is now a “much more dangerous place,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuhas condemned Tuesday’s agreement as a “stunning historic mistake.” He added that Israel is not bound by the international nuclear agreement with Iran and reserves the right to defend itself. No longer speaking of an “existential threat” posed by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb that could wipe the Jewish state off the map, Netanyahu argues that lifting the sanctions will make the Iranian regime “far richer” and give it more power and influence in the region.

Former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has also lambasted the deal. “History will remember the Iran deal just like the Munich Agreement (with Nazi Germany) and the agreement with North Korea,” Lieberman said. In the Sheldon Adelson-owned daily Israel Today, Boaz Bismuth, writing in the Sheldon Adelson-owned news daily Israel Today, called Tuesday “a day that will live in infamy,” comparing the signing of the Iran deal with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Personalizing Politics: Bibi vs. Barack For many Israeli commentators, the Iran deal is the outcome of the clash of personalities and two divergent worldviews. Not surprisingly, the Israeli far right places all of the blame on Obama, while the more centrist media faults both leaders. The rabid right accuses the American president (who they didn’t want to see elected in the first place) as violating decades of unspoken understandings because of his naiveté, insensitivity, and/or hostility. In Israel Today, Limor Samimian-Darash sniffs that the Munich

217 Agreement with Nazi Germany made more sense than the deal with Iran, since the major European countries had capitulated to an “economic powerhouse,” which Iran is not. “Obama is not capitulating; he is rescuing Iran for the sake of his own hidden agenda and personal interests.” (The notion that Obama came into office with a covert agenda of diplomatically resolving the standoff with Iran, and a “secret strategy” for achieving it, is one of the the latest conspiracy theory right-wing pundits in both Israel and the U.S. are pushing.)

But some members of the Israeli opposition fault Netanyahu for failing to prevent the deal from going through. One of the ways he has done this, according to at least some of his critics, was by his belligerent intervention into American politics and his machinations on behalf of Obama’s political foes. In response to these criticisms, Netanyahu denied that personal animus had anything to do with his failure to prevent the Iran deal from being signed.”The political claims being made that my personal relationship with President Obama had any bearings on the nuclear agreement are baseless,” Netanyahu said defensively. “Even before I entered my job as prime minister, there were intentions in the American administration to normalize relations with Iran. After that, the US launched secret negotiations with Iran that later became public,” he added. (Bibi’s claim conveniently overlooks the quiet negotiations and cooperation between the U.S. and Iran in Afghanistan after 9/11, and the near-deal between U.S. and Iran in 2003, successfully thwarted by many of the same people trying to sabotage the current one.)

Haaretz commentator Chemi Shalev foresees an impending apocalyptic political war between Netanyahu and Obama because of their differing perspectives with regard to Iran. “Benjamin Netanyahu views Iran as an incorrigible Great Satan hell-bent on regional hegemony and the destruction of Israel. President Barack Obama sees Tehran as a malevolent Little Satan, but one that can still be redeemed.”

The critics are not just talking about political war. Y-Net’s Ben-Yishai claims that, from Israel’s point of view, “the agreement puts the military option back on the table and increases its urgency. The Israeli government will now have to decide whether or not to attack Iran if and when the ayatollahs decide to make a break for a nuclear weapon.”

Efraim Inbar, of Bar Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, opined to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) that an Israeli military strike against Iran is now more likely than before the deal was signed. Since Iran is still capable of enriching uranium, which he equates with being able to produce a bomb, “It obligates us to a path of military attack.” Inbar complains that “The Americans don’t care about our interests.

There’s no choice. We can’t wait.” Inbar, who has been calling for Israeli military action against Iran for years, was a vocal proponent of forcibly removing Saddam Hussein from power back in 2002.

After the Sanctions, How Will Iran Spend Its Money?

Some Israeli opponents of the Iran deal have shifted their emphasis from the “existential threat” to Israel posed by the dropping of an “Iranian bomb” to hand-wringing over the danger posed by the normalization of trade relations between Iran and other countries.

218 The widespread presumption among Israelis is that Iranian leaders have no higher priority for frozen funds made available to them, or better use for the national wealth generated by a revitalized economy once the sanctions are lifted, than stirring up trouble for Israelis. Netanyahu claims that “Iran will receive hundreds of billions of dollars, with which it can fuel its terror machine, and pursue its aggression and terror in the region and the world.” Speaking to Al-Monitor‘s Ben Caspit, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon frets that Iran “will feel more confident because its diplomatic isolation has been lifted. Its economy will recover and grow stronger, with $150 billion being released immediately.

Add to this all the various economic interests, be they European, Russian, Chinese, Indian and even American, who will rush to Iran to invest in oil, gas, the automobile industry, electricity and electronics. They will all rush to do business there. What this means is that the regime will not only avoid changing its very nature, with its antiWestern and anti-Sunni ideology. It will actually work harder at promoting that ideology.

It will be more confident in itself and more daring. Unfortunately, there are those in the West who see the Iranian regime as part of the solution, and not as the crux of the problem.

Y-Net news analyst Ron Ben-Yishai argues: …(The) removal of the sanctions will bring Iran billions of dollars in revenue as early as 2016 – a sum big enough not only to stabilize its failing economy, keep the Revolutionary Guards at bay and perpetuate the Islamic regime (against the wishes of the West), but also to fund terror and press on with their aspirations for regional hegemony. This is a grave concern not only for Israel, but for Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, too.

Boaz Bismuth of Israel Today, also hyped the hysteria about Iran standing to benefit from its reintegration into the global economy: Obama admitted that Iran’s joining the family of nations will inject $150 billion into its coffers. And what exactly will it do with this money? Will it promote world peace; or continue exporting the revolution via terrorism and destabilizing the region, as it has been doing in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen?

Reading these tirades, it becomes obvious that any deal with Iran acceptable to Israel would keep current sanctions in place permanently (and make them even more “crippling), regardless of Iranian total compliance with Western demands.

Next stop: Congress Now that the deal has been signed, Israeli opponents of diplomacy with Iran have launched a massive and vigorous campaign targeting members of Congress. The effort represents the Iran agreement as a partisan political issue that pits Republican

219 supporters of the Israeli prime minister and his cohorts against Democratic allies of the American president, Barack Obama. Akiva Eldar, longtime Israeli diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz who now writes for Al-Monitor, expects that Netanyahu will enlist Republicans in his continuing battle against the deal with Iran, as as well as recruiting Jews to the GOP in the next U.S. presidential election: Assuming that “we will not accept” does not include a military attack on Iran or the elimination of nuclear scientists on its territory — after it signed an agreement with the six major powers — the only way to carry out such a mission is to line up a large majority in the US Congress to override a presidential veto. There’s no secret which of the two American parties the prime minister favors. In the last US presidential elections he made no attempt to hide his support for President Barack Obama’s rivals. And so far, there is no sign of him changing his position. Despite the attempts by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to toe the right-leaning line of the US Jewish community, it’s safe to assume that Netanyahu will bestow his favors on the Republican candidate.

But Chemi Shalev points out that the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, approved by Congress and signed by President Obama in May after months of bitter confrontation, will have no bearing on the legal standing of the nuclear accord: it only applies to Obama’s authority to lift U.S. sanctions, not those imposed or lifted by other countries. Even on the dubious assumption that enough Democrats will defect to the Republican side to form the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto, he explains, the rest of the world will not feel itself bound to the decisions of the American legislature. This could create a legal morass for countries that violate the sanctions and make them subject to punitive measure. Nonetheless, once the Security Council sanctions are revoked, the decision to take punitive measure would be up to the administration.

Amir Oren thinks that Netanyahu is fighting a losing battle trying to kill the agreement in Congress. But he doesn’t put it past Bibi to use the next 60 days, as Congress reviews the Iran deal, to try to “‘help” Iran run wild and go crazy—for example, by Israel’s killing some nuclear scientist or officer from the Revolutionary Guard during a visit to Syria or Lebanon. This would give Iran a “casus” that would allow Israel to “pull out the ‘belli.’”

Ironically, Israeli threats against Iran may provide a justification for one of the sticking points about which Israeli and pro-Israel rejectionists in the U.S. are complaining most loudly: that the nuclear agreement does not address Iran’s conventional military capabilities. An “ideal” agreement, from a hawkish Israeli point of view, would strip Iran of any capacity for self-defense, including conventional weapons, with which to defend itself from attack. Ben Yishai avers that “The powers conceded to Iran’s demand to alleviate the UN Security Council prohibition on buying and selling conventional weapons.”

Given Israeli threats of an attack, Iran might be able to sustain the argument that it needs such weapons.

220 16 Jul 2015

GCC Stays Onboard with Iran Deal

by Thomas W. Lippman Thomas W. Lippman is a Washington-based author and journalist who has written about Middle Eastern affairs and American foreign policy for more than three decades, specializing in Saudi Arabian affairs, U.S.- Saudi relations, and relations between the West and Islam. He is a former Middle East bureau chief of the Washington Post, and also served as that newspaper's oil and energy reporter. Throughout the 1990s, he covered foreign policy and national security for the Post, traveling frequently to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East. In 2003 he was the principal writer on the war in Iraq for Washingtonpost.com. Prior to his work in the Middle East, he covered the Vietnam war as the Washington Post's bureau chief in Saigon. Lippman has authored six books about the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. He is also an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, where he serves as the principal media contact on Saudi Arabia and U.S. – Saudi relations.

Sherlock Holmes once found a clue in a dog that did not bark. That is a useful way to look at the muted but generally supportive response of Saudi Arabia and the other Arab States of the Gulf to the multinational agreement designed to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. They may not be happy with it, but there have been no howls of outrage or cries of betrayal. Unlike Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries have decided to stay in the good graces of the only country that could actually protect them against Iran if the need arose.

Over the many months of negotiation that led to the announcement of the Iran pact on Tuesday, President Obama’s vociferous critics, listing the dire consequences they predicted would come from an agreement with Iran, included the likelihood that traditional U.S. allies in Gulf such as Saudi Arabia would break away from their security relationships with Washington and seek new partners. That outcome, the critics said, would undercut U.S. objectives in the region, such as defeating the Islamic State.

There seemed to be some substance to that criticism last month when Saudi Arabia’s youthful defense minister, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and other senior officials went to Moscow and signed weapons-purchase and other agreements with Russia.

GCC Backs Agreement In fact, however, it has been clear since May 14 that the GCC countries would swallow their antipathy to Iran, and whatever objections they may have had to the negotiations, and stay on board with Obama. That was the date on which leaders of all six GCC states, after meeting with the president at Camp David, issued a statement that “emphasized that a comprehensive, verifiable deal that fully addresses the regional and international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program is in the security interests of GCC member states as well as the United States and the international community.”

At the time, Obama had made clear that he was determined to reach an agreement with Iran if at all possible. Having little leverage over Washington, especially now that the United States is no longer dependent on Gulf countries for oil supplies, the GCC leaders had little choice but to accept the president’s assurances that a successful outcome to

221 the nuclear negotiations would not mean U.S. acceptance of Iran’s other policies in the region.

President Obama telephoned Saudi King Salman on Wednesday, the White House announced, to assure him that the Vienna agreement will verifiably prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon by cutting off all of the potential pathways to a bomb while ensuring the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program going forward. The President underscored that the United States is as committed as ever to working with our Gulf partners to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region and promote stability as well as resolutions to the region’s crises.

The White House statement did not say how the king responded, but the official Saudi Press Agency did. Using the king’s official title, the agency reported that “the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques confirmed that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia supports any arrangement that guarantees preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons and at the same time includes an inspection mechanism of all sites.”

That response was reflected later in the day in a statement posted by the Saudi embassy in Washington on its web site: Saudi Arabia has always been in favor of an agreement between Iran and the P 5+1 Group that would prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The agreement must include a specific, strict and sustainable inspection regime of all Iranian sites, including military sites, as well as a mechanism to swiftly re-impose effective sanctions in the event that Iran violates the agreement…Under the nuclear deal, Iran has to use its resources for domestic development and to improve the living conditions of its people rather than use it to incite turmoil in the region, which would only be met with harsh and determined responses from the countries of the region.

The unidentified “official source” to whom this statement was attributed “concluded by saying that since Iran is a neighboring country, the Kingdom is looking forward to build the best of relations in all fields on the principle of good neighborliness and noninterference in the affairs of others.”

That is not exactly strident opposition from the Saudis, or even diplomatically worded disappointment. At most it expresses reasonable and longstanding caution about what Iran might do with the substantial amount of cash it expects to receive once sanctions are eased, probably late this year.

In Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, several news outlets reported that the UAE president, Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, sent a message to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani congratulating him on the agreement. According to the Khaleej Times,

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Shaikh Khalifa expressed the hope that the agreement will contribute to regional security and stability. His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, sent similar cables to the Iranian president.

The UAE and Oman, another GCC member, have longstanding economic relationships with Iran and would stand to benefit from an expansion of Iran’s economy once international sanctions are lifted, as they will be if Iran complies with the terms of the multinational agreement.

Kerry Works Overtime Secretary of State John F. Kerry—who might have been expected to take a day off after his exhausting slog through the final week of the nuclear negotiations in Vienna— telephoned his counterparts in the GCC yesterday to deliver the same message that Obama gave to King Salman. He got the response he wanted from Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, secretary general of the GCC, a Bahraini. In a statement reported by the Saudi Press Agency, he said that “the GCC foreign ministers expressed their appreciation of the contact of John Kerry and expressed their hope that the agreement leads to remove concerns over Iran’s nuclear program in order to preserve security and stability in the region, and avert a nuclear arms race.”

Like the statement issued at Camp David in May, the responses of the GCC states to the nuclear pact were predictable because all of them are heavily dependent on the United States for weapons, military equipment, training, logistical assistance, and intelligence cooperation. None of them can afford an open break with Washington. Over the past seven decades, similar considerations have always prevailed over whatever distress the GCC states might be feeling over the events of the moment—going all the way back to 1948, when Saudi Arabia’s founding king, Abdul Aziz al-Saud, decided not to break relations with the United States or revoke an American consortium’s oil rights after President Harry S. Truman recognized the new state of Israel.

Last week, as the nuclear negotiations neared their final hours, Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the Saudi defense minister, was touring the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is patrolling the Gulf. He and all his GCC counterparts are well aware that no other navy is going to take on that responsibility, and no other country will match the U.S. in its troop deployments across the region, from Incirlik in Turkey to Djibouti to Diego Garcia. Over their endless cups of cardamom coffee in the wee hours they may well grumble about the Iran deal, but they are not going anywhere.

223

AlJazeera America 16 Jul 2015

Israel needs to be realistic about the Iran deal Netanyahu’s hysteria train left the platform at full speed soon after the announcement

by Meir Javedanfar Meir Javedanfar is an Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst. He teaches the contemporary Iranian politics course at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel.

The deal was sealed early morning Israel time on July 14. By mid day Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had called it among other things, a “stunning, historic mistake.” He has a habit of hyperbole. Lets not forget that he also called the November 2013 Geneva agreement with Iran a “historic mistake,” too.

We in Israel should only hope that Netanyahu’s hysteria does not hurt the legitimacy of our valid concerns regarding the agreement struck between Iran and world powers over its nuclear program. Chief among these are worries about inspections of non-declared nuclear sites, especially those at Iran’s military bases.

Although the deal allows constant access to declared nuclear sites, if illegal activities are suspected to be taking place at an undeclared site, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will first have to ask Iran to visit that site. Once that request has been made, then a set of procedures has to be followed which could take up to 24 days before an actual inspection takes place.

Dr. Ephraim Asculai, a senior research fellow at the Tel Aviv based Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), worries about not just the 24-day process but also what precedes it.

To initiate an inspection at such a site, one must first show evidence to Iran that illegal activities are taking place there, otherwise why should Iran even consider a request for an inspection visit?

“Presenting evidence could compromise intelligence sources, something which no country will want to do” says Asculai, who worked for Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) for over 40 years. “This is specially true if the evidence comes from Human Intelligence Sources or electronic intercepts from organizations such as the NSA [National Security Agency].”

As for the 24-day duration of such a process, Asculai, who also served in the IAEA for six years, says: “Within that time, Iran could remove nuclear activities which do not involve nuclear material, without leaving any traces.”

To be sure, there are positive features of the current deal that could make it very difficult — in fact economically catastrophic — for Iran to decide to secretly make a weapon.

First, 96 percent of Iran’s Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) stockpile will be reduced, part of which will be sold abroad “in return for natural uranium delivered to Iran” and the rest diluted at home. Enrichment is one path to a bomb and with only 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of LEU remaining in Iran, Tehran will not have enough to make a weapon. Even

224 if Iran does have a stockpile of undeclared LEU somewhere, if and when it decides to make a weapon, it will be easier to detect, even after the 24-day procedure required for inspection of non-declared military sites. Removal of residue from nuclear material such as uranium is very difficult; it can stay in soil and water samples for months, if not years.

The deal also blocks Iran’s path to a bomb via plutonium, since the Arak reactor will be removed and redesigned to produce less plutonium,if any.

In addition, the deal’s “snapback” mechanism would reimpose sanctions against Iran in 65 days, if it were to be found in breach of its commitments.

Last but not least, removal of some of the sanctions will also be conditional upon Iran answering questions about the Possible Military Dimension (PMD) of its nuclear program.

This refers to allegations that Iran had until 2003 a functional military nuclear program.

Iran has been playing coy with the IAEA over this matter for a number of years.

However until today, clarification over PMD has not been tied to sanctions. Now that they are, Iran is very likely to resolve this matter.

The leaders of Israel have every right to voice their concerns over the current deal. Even the opposition is concerned about it. But the deal’s restrictions on Iran mean that the breakout time needed to make a nuclear weapon has been pushed back to a year.

Without the deal it would be two to three months.

Israel should be just as concerned, if not more, with improving U.S. relations and modifying its expectations. There is so much mistrust of the Obama administration’s Iran policy and the latest Iran agreement that Netanyahu has publicly declared that “Israel is not bound by the agreement.” Israel’s ambassador Ron Dermer has been cut off from the White House — an unprecedented move in contemporary US-Israel relations. This impasse must change. Senior U.S. and Israeli government officials must meet at the earliest opportunity to resolve differences and to come up with a common strategy to address any potential future threats posed by Iran.

It was completely unrealistic for Netanyahu to demand that Iran give up its entire nuclear program. The opposition is also guilty of having unrealistic expectations, for instance, about Iran’s funding of Israel’s enemies. How could any deal aimed at stopping Iranian financial support to Hezbollah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad be verifiable? Also, when it comes to support for Hezbollah, Iran spends $200 million a year on the organization. Last year, Iran’s official budget was $294 billion. Help for Hezbollah was a mere .07 percent of the funds available to it. Even without the sanctions, Iran could still support Hezbollah.

Meanwhile the leaders of Iran must also think about their actions. It would be unfair and inaccurate to say all Israelis and Jewish diaspora members who oppose a deal with Iran do so because they want war. After the Holocaust, Jews are very sensitive towards anyone who uses eliminationist terms against them. Iranian regime’s constant calls for Israel to be wiped off the face of the map touches this very fear, and creates a strong reaction. Therefore even after a deal, even if Iran abides by all of its commitments, as long as the Iranian regime continues to call for the elimination of Israel, a majority of diaspora Jews and Israelis will distrust anything Tehran does, and will try to counter it in the halls of Congress.

225 pundicity 16 Jul 2015

Iran deal: The best worst option

by Judith Miller Arms control agreements are not usually struck between friendly nations. They are either signed by defeated or frightened states, or by enemies who view them as beneficial to their national security despite ongoing enmity.

South Africa gave up its secret nuclear weapons program only after its apartheid government was ousted.

Libya's Muammar Qaddafi renounced his nuclear bomb effort only after America's 2003 invasion of Iraq made him fear that Libya might be next.

The United States and the former Soviet Union negotiated nuclear arms treaties that substantially reduced the nuclear peril to both while still committed to each other's destruction.

President Obama acknowledged at a rare press conference Tuesday that the July 14th agreement would not transform Iran into a "liberal democracy."

It will not end Teheran's use and support of terrorism to advance its national interests.

It will not stop its sponsorship of Hezbollah, the Shiite proxy which runs much of Lebanon, or its aid to Hamas, the militant Sunni Palestinian group which controls Gaza.

It is unlikely to prompt Iran to abandon the Houthis who are tearing Yemen apart, or persuade Iran to relinquish its dominance of Baghdad or fight ISIS more vigorously in Syria. And no, it will not free the three American hostages whom it has imprisoned on bogus charges, or require the mullahs to disclose the fate of a fourth American who disappeared there.

Iran is likely to continue its quest for regional hegemony and its ruthless oppression of its people.

Finally, the accord will not require Iran to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure that could eventually produce a weapon if the Supreme Leader decides to do so, its most serious flaw. Obama did not admit this, but his initial goal was always unrealistic.

But if vigorously implemented, the agreement could substantially reduce the size and scope of Iran's nuclear efforts and retard its march to a nuclear bomb by at least 10-15 years in exchange for the lifting of sanctions and the restoration of over $140 billion in frozen assets and funds to the Iranian regime. As Secretary of State John Kerry has emphasized: "This is a nuclear deal."

Such a deal, Team Obama has argued, would make America and the world safer. And that would be something.

The last four U.S. presidents have tried and failed to persuade Iran to scale back its nuclear efforts. If successful -- a big if -- the agreement could expand Iran's "breakout" - the amount of time it needs to renege on its nonproliferation pledges and race to a bomb – from two-to-three months to about a year.

226 While the 159-page agreement is complex, technically tough to read, and may still contain unpleasant surprises, it reduces the number of spinning enrichment centrifuges by two-thirds and eliminates 98 percent of Iran's low-enriched uranium. It requires Iran to transform a plant that makes plutonium, another nuclear weapons fuel, into a benign research and production facility. It would provide 24/7 surveillance of Iran's declared nuclear facilities and a process by which inspectors could demand access to suspect sites.

Aaron David Miller, a frequent critic of Obama's foreign policy, called the deal the "leastworst of a series of bad options," a "narrowly focused business deal designed to defuse a short-term problem — Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions."

Yes, hopes that the Iranian regime may change in 5 or 8 or 10 or 15 years when some of its provisions expire are thrown in for good measure, but they are not really the point of this accord. Nor should critics demand that better behavior by Iran or closer ties with the West be its outcome. Arms control agreements are intended to buy time until a nation comes to its WMD senses – that is, either changes its behavior or changes its regime.

The accord has worrisome mysteries and troublesome provisions. Precisely how the international inspectors and Iran have decided to resolve outstanding questions about its nuclear program's "previous military dimensions" has not been disclosed. And critics have blasted the phased lifting of the embargo on the sale of ballistic missiles and other conventional arms, a concession Teheran demanded late in the haggling in Vienna. Just last week Gen. Martin Dempsey, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposed such a move.

But White House officials have been touting provisions at the heart of this and other arms control pacts: namely, the IAEA's ability to verify that Iran has finally stopped cheating and whether sanctions can be re-imposed or "snapped back" on the regime should the inspectors conclude that Teheran is still up to its tired old tricks.

While the agreement does not give IAEA inspectors immediate "anywhere, anytime" access to undeclared or military sites, it does create a process that is likely to assure such access in under 24 days. A special eight-member commission -- the European Union, U.S., UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran — would review IAEA requests for access.

It would take only a "consensus," or 5 of the 8 members, to demand access. So Iran, Russia and China could not vote to keep inspectors out.

If Iran is determined to be cheating, sanctions on Iran would automatically "snapback" unless the United Nations Security Council specifically approves a new resolution (which Washington could veto) to keep the suspension in place. Even Max Boot, a harsh critic of Iran and of much of Obama's foreign policy, calls this "snapback" provision the agreement's "most pleasant surprise."

Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst and Persian Gulf expert at the Brookings Institute is also impressed by the verification and "snapback " mechanisms. While several provisions of the agreement were weaker than he would have liked and expected, he said, both key parts of the agreement were "what we wanted, not what the Iranians wanted." On balance, he said, the deal imposes some "meaningful constraints that will make it hard for Iran to cheat, as well as some meaningful disincentives for Iran not to cheat."

227 And then there's this: Alternatives to this agreement are likely to be worse, Obama has repeatedly argued. Support for sanctions is weakening. U.S. allies who initially endorsed such economic pressure may resist continuing to apply what initially brought Iran to the table. Walking away from this deal would leave the U.S., not Iran isolated.

Finally, force has not been ruled out as a tested method of stopping Iran should it cheat or break out. While Obama has clearly rejected a military option, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear on Tuesday that for Israel, it remains not only alive, but, he implied, preferable to what he assailed as Obama's historically bad agreement.

Hopefully, Teheran was listening. For if history is any guide, only an agreement whose violation is backed by the threat of force is likely to command Iran's full attention.

228 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Office of the Spokesperson ------------------------For Immediate Release REMARKS July 16, 2015

Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman Before the Daily Press Briefing July 16, 2015 Press Briefing Room Washington, D.C. MR KIRBY: Good afternoon, everybody. As you all know, we have a special guest at our briefing today, Under Secretary Wendy Sherman. Before I introduce her, I want to note that Under Secretary Sherman just came from a briefing with Secretary Kerry for the diplomatic corps. We had over 200 D.C.-based ambassadors, deputy chiefs of mission, and other diplomats to join us for this briefing today, one of the highest attendance levels we’ve ever had for such a briefing. It lasted about an hour and was focused, obviously, on the Iran deal.

The international community came together to bring Iran to the negotiating table, so we want to make sure to keep all of our international partners informed as we move towards the implementation phase of the agreement. Under Secretary Sherman has been a key player throughout the nuclear talks with the EU, the P5+1, and Iran over the past 18 months, and there are few people in the U.S. Government, frankly the world, that have a better grasp of all the various technical nuclear sanctions-related and political issues that came together to get this deal.

So we’re lucky to have her with us today to talk through the outlines of the deal and to take your questions. She’ll be with us for about 20 minutes. We’ll try to get to as many questions as we can. I will be moderating and calling on you as we work through that. After that, after the under secretary leaves, I’ll stay behind and finish up the daily briefing as we normally would.

With that, ma’am, I’ll turn it over to you.

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Good to see you all. For some of you, I’ve missed you. It’s been two days away from Vienna. I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. No more Coburg turkey schnitzel, Wiener schnitzel, chicken schnitzel, every kind of schnitzel you can imagine. They were very generous to us, but I am very glad to be home.

Though some of you spent 19 days in Vienna with us, I myself got to spend 27 days in Vienna, but our team of really extraordinary folks – experts, diplomats, scientists – who were part of the American negotiating team, many of them were there for well over a month. It’s a group of the smartest, most committed, hardworking public servants I’ve ever seen. That we didn’t kill each other living so closely with each other and stayed focused on the task at hand is really a comment on their professionalism and their understanding of the gravity of the task that we were undertaking.

They have spent the last 18 months and many, many months before that as well traveling the globe for these talks, to places like Baghdad, Almaty, Muscat, Moscow, Geneva, Vienna. They’ve missed birthdays, anniversaries, lived out of suitcases for weeks on end, given Woolite a new life. But more importantly, they spent every waking

229 moment of the last several years poring over every single detail in what eventually became the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. There is not a more impressive group of people or a better group of people I can imagine having taken this long journey with, and I hope that some of you will find out who they are and write about them, because they really are the unsung heroes of this undertaking. They just put their heads down and go about doing the work that brought us here.

We know there’s already been much heated debate about the agreement we just concluded with Iran. As the President of the United States said yesterday, this debate should be robust. This is consequential what we have done. This issue is too important to do otherwise. But as we have in these debates, it is crucial that they are grounded in facts. That’s why I’m happy to be speaking with you today and to take your questions about exactly what is in this agreement.

Put simply, we have always said that no deal is better than a bad deal and that we had to get a good deal and the right deal, and we believe that this is a very good deal. It fulfills the framework for a comprehensive deal that was reached in Lausanne and goes beyond that framework in several areas. It cuts off all of Iran’s pathways to fissile material for a nuclear weapon; it ensures the vigorous inspections and transparency necessary to verify that Iran cannot pursue a nuclear weapon; it ensures that sanctions will snap back into place if Iran violates the deal; and it is a long-term deal, including elements that are permanent.

Going forward, we’re going to continue to have robust conversations with United States Congress and our partners in Israel and the Gulf. Just today, Secretary Kerry had a lengthy conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu about this agreement. And I spoke by secure phone yesterday with Israeli National Security Advisor Yossi Cohen and Minister Yuval Steinitz. I’m sure you all saw that Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir was here meeting with the Secretary today as well. And finally, as John just mentioned, I came from a briefing that Secretary Kerry and I just did with the full diplomatic corps here in Washington. We had to hold it on the eighth floor in the Ben Franklin Room because it was the only place large enough to accommodate everybody who wanted to come.

This is an issue that was created by the world. It was created by the United Nations Security Council resolutions. It was solved by the world in the P5+1 and the European Union facilitating, and now will be endorsed in a UN Security Council resolution that was introduced by Ambassador Power yesterday and joined by the P5 and, we hope, by every member of the Security Council for passage – we hope early next week. The world has worked hard to resolve this peacefully, and as we come to the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, it is fitting that, in fact, multilateral diplomacy can be shown to work.

So let me stop there and take your questions, and I’ll bet you have one or two.

QUESTION: Welcome home.

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Thank you.

QUESTION: Among the problems on the Hill for this deal potentially, Congressman McCaul today called on the Administration to not pursue the UN resolution until Congress has had its say some 60 days or approximately 60 days from now. Are you willing to hold off at the UN on the resolution that encompasses this agreement until Congress has had its vote? What would be the impact if you were to?

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Well, the way that the UN Security Council resolution is structured, there is an interim period of 60 to 90 days that I think will accommodate the congressional review. And it would have been a little difficult when all of the members

230 of the P5+1 wanted to go to the United Nations to get an endorsement of this since it is a product of the United Nations process, for us to say, “Well, excuse me, the world, you should wait for the United States Congress.”

So what we worked out is a process that allows this time and space for the congressional review before it takes effect. And there may be other legislatures who also want to look at this. So it anticipates that there is a period of review, while at the same time allowing the international community to speak.

QUESTION: And could I follow to just ask you to give us a little bit of the tick-tock – which has been reported, but if you could describe it being there – of the final decisions that were being made on the UN resolution? What was in it, what was not in it, the midnight call to the President, just how that evolved – in particular, regarding some of the sanctions on particular individuals such as General Soleimani being involved or not involved.

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Well, let me take that first. The Ghasem Soleimani who comes off in the first phase once, in fact, we get to it, was head of a uranium mine company. It is not Qasem Soleimani of the IRGC. QUESTION: But the IRGC Qasem Soleimani is involved at the latter end of the -UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: He is on – he is on the UN designations list at Phase 2, which is some years away. He would, in fact, if everybody complied, come off the UN’s designation list, but he remains on the U.S. list and he remains on the U.S. list because of our counterterrorism sanctions, not just because of our nuclear-related sanctions. So from a U.S. perspective, Qasem Soleimani, the IRGC commander, will remain a designated individual. The UN list some years from now – indeed he is on that designated list, and the UN designations at some point in the future will go away.

But the Ghasem Soleimani that comes off in Phase 1 is not that Qasem Soleimani, and as I’m told by the Iranians, is a very common name in Iran.

QUESTION: But just to follow, is it a good thing for the General Soleimani to be taken off at any point given the allegations?

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Well, as I said, the United States has sanctions that designate him for his acts of state sponsorship of terrorism as we believe it to be. And so he remain – will remain a designated individual. And the UN process is a separate one and is, in this situation, focused on nuclear-related activities.

MR KIRBY: (Inaudible.)

QUESTION: I wanted to ask about -UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: And I didn’t finish the rest of Andrea’s question, but I’ll come back to it.

QUESTION: Okay.

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Go ahead.

QUESTION: I wanted to ask about the arms embargo issue -UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: See, we’ll come right back to it.

QUESTION: -- because it seems to have come in – under a lot of criticism. What was

231 the reason for the United States agreeing to that given it’s not really – some would say it’s not really a nuclear issue? And what was the point of putting a time frame on that?

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: So when 1929 was done, the arms embargo – so it’s called; it’s not a true embargo – but the arms restrictions sanctions and the missile restrictions, but particularly the arms, were really a consequence of Iran’s behavior on the nuclear file and was meant as a further consequence to what it had done. But if you read 1929 carefully, it basically says that once Iran enters into a negotiated solution to show that its program is exclusively peaceful, one could read 1929 to mean that those sanctions should then come off.

However, we are all very concerned about Iran’s activities in the region and around the world in terms of the import and export of arms. We are very concerned about the potential transfer of missile technology that might be designed for having the capability of being a delivery system for nuclear weapons. And even though Iran, China, Russia thought that these sanctions, these restrictions, should come off immediately, the rest of the P5+1 did not think they should come off immediately.

And so at the end of the day, we were able to negotiate that these restrictions would stay in place even though one could read 1929 to read that they should have technically come off. We kept them on. We kept them on under Article 41 of Chapter 7 of the UN Security Council resolutions, and we kept them on for some years – the arms for five and missiles for eight.

Now, there are many other resolutions at the UN that cover Hizballah, that cover Syria, that cover Yemen, that impose continuing restrictions on Iran. We have our own unilateral sanctions that continue to impose restrictions because of their activities around the world that are connected to terrorism or human rights or other missile-related activity. So we think we actually negotiated a very tough consequence in this situation, given that not all of our partners were together. We also knew, because the partners were not together on this issue, that it would be an issue that would happen at the end and would not be resolved until the end, and that’s what happened.

QUESTION: Can I maybe just follow up? I mean, given those concerns you mentioned, obviously, in the region, when Secretary Kerry goes to talk to the GCC next month, what sort of assurances is he going to be able to offer them? What sort of practical support for their security?

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Well, I think you all are well aware of the agenda of Camp David that was held some weeks ago that covered not only this agreement, but also how we can work together to deal with acts of terrorism in the region, to the instability in the region, to try to end the conflicts that are ongoing in the region. And there were a number of steps that came out of Camp David that were announced to all of you.

The meeting at the beginning of August will be a follow-up to that.

There is a commitment, as the President said yesterday, as Secretary Kerry has said, as was mentioned in his meeting with Foreign Minister al-Jubeir today, that we are going to work as we always have in strong coalition to try to resolve the issues that are taking place in the Middle East; to resolve the ongoing conflict and state sponsorship of terrorism. These have not gone away. But the President, as he explained yesterday, made a very strategic decision that it was critical to take the threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon off the table so that we could focus all of our time, attention, resources, and coalition building to deal with the other issues in the region.

If Iran had a nuclear weapon, then its ability to have a deterrent, its ability to project

232 power into the region would be more profound than anything we are facing today. Now, hopefully, that is off the table.

We have a comprehensive, long-term, verifiable agreement that ensures that Iran’s program will be exclusively peaceful. They will not obtain a nuclear weapon, and now we can focus our resources, our relationships on solving the other problems in the region. We always have; now it’ll be easier to do so.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) much for taking the time to do this.

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Sure.

QUESTION: I want to clarify Andrea’s first question about what the UN is doing. It’s my understanding that that affects only UN sanctions and has no bearing on the independent U.S. sanctions having to do – okay.

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Sure. Correct. Correct. The UN doesn’t tell any sovereign state what that sovereign state can do in terms of under its own laws, so the U.S. sanctions are U.S. sanctions and the UN sanctions are UN sanctions.

MR KIRBY: Yes, please.

QUESTION: The President said yesterday, essentially, that the American hostages did not come up because it would give the Iranians leverage on the nuclear issue and possibly lead to more concessions on the U.S. part. Who made that decision, and when was that made? Were the hostages – did they ever come up in the talks directly, or was it only a sideline issue?

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Well, the Americans – we probably legally would not call them hostages. Detainees.

QUESTION: Sorry. Americans detained in Iran.

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Americans detained in Iran. And of course, Robert Levinson, who’s been missing for some years, that we think the Iranians have some knowledge of. A decision was made a very long time ago that trying to get our Americans home should be a separate matter. And as I think most of you know, every time I see the Iranians, every time that Secretary Kerry sees the Iranians on the margins of the talks, we have a separate, independent conversation about the detained Americans. We also use our Swiss protecting power to help to look after the welfare of the Americans until we can get them home.

As the President said and said with all the force that I certainly would say, our focus of attention has always been, will continue to be, to do everything we possibly can to bring those Americans home. We have all talked to every family more than once. We are in constant touch with the families. They have a general sense of what we do in each of these conversations to try to move this forward and to bring them home. And for me personally, until they come home I don’t believe the job is finished.

QUESTION: One more question. What happens to the snapback policy on year 11? Does that expire after 10 years? And then how would you go about – is it basically starting over? If you had to put sanctions back in place, would you be starting from square one?

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: The P5 members have made a political decision and conveyed to the secretary-general of the United Nations that at the end of the termination of the 10-year UNSCR that they will introduce an additional resolution to put

233 in place the same mechanism for an additional five years.

MR KIRBY: Said.

QUESTION: Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you for doing this. Today Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in Israel said that, quote, “Israel wants a permanent state of standoff.” Now, I don’t believe that’s in the interest of the region.” Do you agree with that assessment?

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Well, I don’t know what the quote was specifically and in what context. So read it to me again?

QUESTION: He said that – he was standing next to the Israeli prime minister and he said what Israel wanted, instead of negotiations in essence, is a permanent state of standoff, negotiating forever. Do you agree that’s the Israeli position?

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Well, I don’t know the context in which the foreign secretary said that. Let me talk about what we as Americans believe.

I completely understand and I spoke on the record to Israeli press today – that’s one of the many things I’ve done today – and said that I certainly respect the prime minister’s right as the head of his government to define what he believes is necessary for Israel’s security.

At the same time, the United States and the President of the United States fundamentally believes that we will not do anything that would undermine Israel’s security. President Obama has provided support for Israel beyond what any president has ever done, and we will continue to not only provide the support we currently do but to enhance that support to ensure Israel’s security. It is something we feel is a solemn obligation to this really extraordinary democracy in the Middle East.

So we do hope that all Israelis read this agreement, that we have this debate based on facts, because the facts matter here. And we believe that the agreement we have reached will ensure the security not only for the United States and the world, but will also secure Israel’s security.

MR KIRBY: We have time for just one more.

QUESTION: Thank you. In the Iran nuclear talks, what’s the impact on North Korean nuclear negotiations with these? Secondly, do you think the United States is still SixParty Talk is necessary for the nuclear talks with North Korea?

UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Well, you know as well as I do that every one of these situations sui generis; every one has its own characteristics and its own history. And so I think trying to make comparisons isn’t terribly valuable.

The one thing I will say, and I would say to the North Koreans, is that this agreement demonstrates that one can come out of isolation, one can come out from under sanctions, one can become part of the world community or have the potential to become part of the world community and end isolation, and do so in a peaceful way. And I would hope that as this agreement goes forward and it is shown that all parties will comply, that Iran will keep its commitments and that sanctions lifting will then take place, that it perhaps might give North Korea second thoughts about the very dangerous path that it is currently pursuing.

QUESTION: But the Six-Party Talks, you need to – still need it for the region?

234 UNDER SECRETARY SHERMAN: Yes, I still think that the work that we are doing with partners in the region to try to move forward in a united front is critical. And I do think that the Iran agreement, the Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – lawyers don’t like us to call it an agreement – is demonstration that multilateral diplomacy can work, and United Nations actions have meaning if done in the right way and pursued in the right way and used as leverage in the right way. And now we have to implement this complicated, but I think really strong and durable agreement.

Thank you.

MR KIRBY: Thank you, ma’am. Thanks, everybody.

235 AlJazeera America 16 Jul 2015

Iranian-Americans welcome nuclear deal, despite opposition to regime Anaylsis: Many Iranian expats, even those who fled repression, hope nuclear deal will improve relations with Tehran

by Ali Gharib Iranian-Americans are the largest cohort of expatriate Iranians in the world, numbering as many as 1 million, and the nuclear deal with Iran holds special resonance for them.

Most are pleased, even though many left Iran because of repression imposed by the Islamic Republic. According to a survey released this June by the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, a group that supported the talks, two-thirds of Iranian Americans were in favor of an agreement, and 6 in 10 of the respondents believe that political and civil rights will improve with a deal.

“This marks the end of an era in which your heritage is viewed as the number-one enemy in the society and in your new country,” says Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, another pro-diplomacy group. “It doesn't mean that the U.S. and Iran are going to become friends or anything like that, but the idea of Iran as an intractable enemy has ended.”

For some Iranian-Americans, who define their attitude to the homeland in terms of opposition to the regime, a new era of rapprochement is alarming. Marc Benhuri, a dentist and conservative commentator who refers to the Iranian government as “the Islamic Terrorist Occupier of Iran,” says the administration of President Barack Obama was “not thinking clearly” when it opened negotiations. Benhuri was close to the Shah of Iran, who was overthrown in 1979, although he says he now supports democracy, not monarchy. Benhuri says Iran remains determined to build a nuclear weapon, and the only way to prevent it from doing so would be to apply continued economic pressure until the regime falls. "They were going bankrupt," he says.

Many prominent Iranian-American analysts say the divide between those who oppose and support the negotiations is, at least in part, generational. “I think the ground has shifted a bit over time,” says Vali Nasr, the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former Obama administration official. IranianAmericans who were born after the revolution and others who maintain connections with friends and relatives in Iran, sympathize with Iranian society and don't see the talks “merely through the prism of whether this is recognition and legitimacy for the regime or not,” Nasr says. “They don't support the Islamic Republic but support engagement with Iran as a country.”

Many older Iranian-Americans, however, have overcome their anger to support negotiations. At least five of my mother’s family members, for example, were imprisoned after the revolution, in some cases for years, and faced the threat of execution before they were eventually released. Others fled into exile. And yet most of my mother’s large extended family have supported the talks, and none of them were in favor of air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Iranian government, however, has in recent years shown intense hostility toward some expatriates. Haleh Esfandiari, who recently retired as the head of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars was visiting her elderly

236 mother in Iran in 2007 when she was arrested on charges of espionage. Esfandiari spent nearly four months in solitary confinement at the notorious Evin Prison, which two years later took in a flood of peaceful demonstrators from Iran’s Green opposition movement.

Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Iranian-American bureau chief in Tehran, has been imprisoned in Evin for nearly a year on espionage charges.

“There is not much love lost between me and the regime after what they did to me, but I'm an objective person,” Esfandiari said. “Every time Iran has been engaged, Iran has behaved. Every time Iran has been ostracized, insulted, marginalized, they go to extremes.”

As Esfandiari’s husband, Shaul Bakhash, a historian at George Mason University, puts it, “You need not be a friend of the regime to favor a nuclear agreement or engagement with the regime.”

Iran’s harsh treatment of expatriates may not be eased by the nuclear deal. “Iranian intelligence [organizations] are very afraid of Iranian-Americans becoming an interlocutor for Iranians and the outside world on social and political issues,” says Hadi Ghaemi, the head of the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, which recently released a video about expatriates who faced harassment upon their return. “They don't want to see that, and the nuclear accord may not change that in the short term.”

Still, many Iranian-Americans hope a deal will help advance political reform and, perhaps, help end 30 years of enmity between the U.S. and Iran. “Somebody asked me a couple of days ago, ‘Where are you from?’ And I said, ‘Iran.’ And they said, ‘That country?’” Esfandiari said. “I just think slowly, slowly, if that country will move to the background and be looked at as a normal country, that will make a big difference.”

237 The Wall Street Journal 16 Jul 2015

Obama’s False Iran Choice There was a better alternative to his deal. He never pursued it.

The debate is raging over President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, and Mr. Obama held a rare press conference Wednesday to say that “99% of the world community” agrees with him. Then why bother with a press conference? Mr. Obama made other claims we’ll address in coming days, but for today it’s worth rebutting his assertion that “none” of his critics “have presented to me or the American people a better alternative.”

Specifically, Mr. Obama resorted to his familiar default of the false political choice.

“There really are only two alternatives here. Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through force, through war. Those are—those are the options,” Mr. Obama said. He added that no better deal was or is possible than the one he has negotiated.

Mr. Obama knows there has always been an alternative to his diplomacy of concessions because many critics have suggested it. It’s called coercive diplomacy, and it might have worked to get a better deal if Mr. Obama had tried it.

Take the sanctions regime, which finally started to get tough in December 2011. By 2013 Iran had an official inflation rate of some 35%, its currency was falling, and its dollar reserves were estimated to be down to $20 billion. Mr. Obama had resisted those sanctions, only to take credit for them when Congress insisted and they began to show results in Tehran.

Yet Mr. Obama still resisted calls to put maximum pressure on Iran. He gave waivers to countries like Japan to import Iranian oil. He was reluctant to impose sanctions on global financial institutions that did business with Iran (especially Chinese banks that offered Tehran access to foreign currency). The U.S. could have gone much further to blacklist parts of Iran’s economy run by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. A bipartisan majority in Congress was prepared to impose more sanctions this year, but Mr. Obama refused as he rushed for a second-term deal.

Mr. Obama now argues that the sanctions could not have been maintained, and that they are sure to collapse if Congress scuttles his deal. But there was no sign sanctions were collapsing as long as the U.S. continued to keep the pressure on. And to the extent support did weaken, one reason was the momentum of Mr. Obama’s negotiations. The more the U.S. gave the impression that it desperately wanted a deal, the more other countries and businesses began to maneuver for post-sanctions opportunities.

This is the opposite of coercive diplomacy, which shows determination so an adversary under pressure concludes that it must make more concessions. This is the diplomacy Ronald Reagan practiced with the Soviets, refusing to budge on missile defenses at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit despite pressure from 99% of the world to do so. The Soviets were soon back at the negotiating table.

Mr. Obama could also have pressured Iran on other fronts, the way Reagan did the Soviets by arming enemies of its proxies. The U.S. could have armed the Free Syrian Army to defeat Iran’s allied Assad regime in Damascus, and it could have helped Israel enforce U.N. Resolution 1701 that imposes an arms embargo on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

On Wednesday Mr. Obama conceded that Iran supplies Hezbollah and Assad, while implying he could do nothing about it. The truth is that he chose to do nothing because

238 he didn’t want to offend Iran and jeopardize his nuclear talks. Instead he should have increased the pressure across the board to assist the negotiations and get a better deal.

As for Mr. Obama’s false choice of war and diplomacy, the truth is that war becomes less likely when diplomacy is accompanied by the credible threat of war. The President removed that credible threat from Iran by insisting war was the only (bad) alternative to his diplomacy, as well as by threatening force against Syria only to erase his own “red line.” In May Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei boasted that the U.S. military “can’t do a damn thing” against Iran. He understood his negotiating partner all too well.

Mr. Obama is now presenting his deeply flawed deal to Congress and the public as a fait accompli that must be embraced or war will result. Congress shouldn’t be any more impressed by his false ultimatums than the Iranians were by his weak diplomacy.

239 New York Magazine 16 Jul 2015

Iran-Deal Opponents Don’t Know What It Does, Don’t Care

By Jonathan Chait The best argument for the agreement with Iran is that there is no realistically better alternative. The United States has only managed to hold together international support for sanctions based on the promise that they’d be used to leverage a deal with Iran.

Without a deal, the sanctions would disintegrate, leaving war as the only option.

Right-wing critics deny this. In his speech to Congress, Benjamin Netanyahu insisted the alternative to the deal was not war but “a better deal.” Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial calls Obama’s argument a “false political choice”: “There really are only two alternatives here. Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through force, through war. Those are—those are the options,” Mr. Obama said. He added that no better deal was or is possible than the one he has negotiated.

Mr. Obama knows there has always been an alternative to his diplomacy of concessions because many critics have suggested it. It’s called coercive diplomacy, and it might have worked to get a better deal if Mr. Obama had tried it."

But if you go back a few years to the start of the administration’s efforts to organize sanctions against Iran, the Journal was advocating war and denying there was any alternative. A 2011 Journal editorial argued, “The serious choice now before the Administration is between military strikes and more of the same. As the IAEA report makes painfully clear, more of the same means a nuclear Iran, possibly within a year.”

Now the exact trade-off the Journal insisted was the “serious choice” — in an editorial that never even considered the possibility of sanctions at all — it now insists is a “false political choice.”

The right’s current belief that the international sanctions regime can be maintained more or less indefinitely is puzzling. After all, it’s usually liberals who are most optimistic about the prospects for international cooperation, and conservatives who are most pessimistic.

When the issue is climate change, the conservative line is completely fatalistic — there’s no point in even trying to herd the world’s cats into a unified plan of action.

The benefits of free-riding are too great. Indeed, not long ago conservatives did argue this. In 2011, the Journal dourly predicted, “We doubt that sanctions will stop Iran's nuclear program, but without enforcement the effort is hopeless.” In 2010, it dismissed “inevitably useless negotiations with Tehran.” Now conservatives seem to have convinced themselves that not only the cheese-eating surrender-monkeysof Western Europe, but even such noxious regimes as Russia and China, will support sanctions against Iran enthusiastically, and that negotiations can yield even stronger concessions than the ones Iran gave up.

The Journal editorial page has no real theory as to why the rest of the world is so eager and willing to maintain sanctions against Iran. However, it’s extremely confident that, once lifted, those countries will fight tooth and nail to prevent the sanctions from ever returning. Yesterday’s Journaleditorial scoffs at the notion that Iran could face any consequences for cheating on the deal: "Mr. Obama’s answer here is that he or his successor can reimpose sanctions, but that will be a tough sell once sanctions relief kicks in over 12 to 16 months and a pro-Iran commercial lobby resurfaces in Europe, China and Russia. A committee of the eight signatories would have to vote to restore sanctions. “Snap-back” is a mirage."

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So the Journal’s fear is that Iran can cheat, and Europe, Russia, or China would block a vote to reimpose sanctions. Except the agreement is specifically designed to deny them the ability to block the reimposition of sanctions. If the United States (or any country on the eight-member panel) charges Iran with noncompliance, sanctions will automatically go into effect unless the Security Council votes to delay them. The Council on Foreign Relations explains: Negotiators devised a unique mechanism to guard against the possibility that Russia or China, who have shielded Iran from punitive Security Council actions in the past, might block the restoration of sanctions in the event of Iranian noncompliance with a Council veto. The agreement calls for an eight-member panel made up of the five permanent members of the Security Council, Germany, the European Union, and Iran that is empowered to investigate Iranian noncompliance. The committee could restore U.N. sanctions within 65 days by a majority vote. In such instances, even if China and Russia objected, they could not block the restoration of sanctions.

The Journal’s insistence that “snap-back is a mirage” seems to be based on its incorrect belief that “a committee of the eight signatories would have to vote to restore sanctions.” This is probably the single most important feature of the agreement, and the Journal editorial page is unaware of its existence. The Journal, a prestigious voice of the conservative intelligentsia, in this sense perfectly represents conservative thought on the Iran issue. It is driven by reflexive belligerence and partisanship, unburdened by logical consistency or any grounding in relevant fact.

241 The Christian Science Monitor 16 Jul 2015

Iran nuclear deal: Does Rouhani's 'win' open door to social changes?

Iran's centrist president should get a political 'bounce' after delivering on his campaign pledge of ending sanctions, but he faces a long, uphill battle on noneconomic issues.

By Scott Peterson TEHRAN, IRAN — President Hassan Rouhani has delivered on a key campaign promise, to reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear program that would bring sanctions relief and open Iran to the world.

Now a key question on the minds of Mr. Rouhani’s supporters is whether he will be empowered by that success to fulfill other promises to expand personal freedoms as well.

Those desires were quickly evident on the streets of Tehran in the hours after the deal was reached Tuesday in Vienna with the P5+1 powers. Among the thousands of Iranians who celebrated the deal were groups that chanted for lifting the years-long house arrest of opposition Green movement leaders – yet another Rouhani promise.

Since the centrist Rouhani was elected two years ago, his hard-line political foes have proven to be powerful and determined. Even as he made progress at the nuclear talks – with unprecedented support for that task from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – it was not clear how far the leader would back other aspects of Rouhani’s agenda, if at all.

While Rouhani is expected to receive a political bounce from the nuclear deal, he will still have a tough fight on his hands as he pushes the rest of his domestic agenda forward.

The first sign of approval from Ayatollah Khamenei for the landmark deal came just hours after it was announced in Vienna: He thanked Rouhani and his cabinet, and invited them to join him to break the daily Ramadan fast at sundown.

The second sign of approval was more qualified: In a letter to Rouhani Wednesday, Iran’s highest authority called the deal a “milestone,” offered his “intimate [deep] gratitude,” and said he would “pray for divine blessings” for Iran’s negotiators.

“However,” Khamenei said, with more than a hint of caution, the 159-page text “needs careful scrutiny and must be directed into the defined legal process.”

“In case of approval,” he said, Iran should be wary of violations, because “some” of the six world powers – the US among them – “are not trustworthy at all.”

Khamenei's support critical The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – as the nuclear deal is officially called – would never have made it through three years of talks without Khamenei’s express consent already. And his support has been unprecedented, if not always so clear, for the negotiating team led by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Upon his return to Tehran Wednesday, Mr. Zarif stated that “all” of Iran’s red lines had been respected, and both he and Rouhani have praised the “guidance” from Khamenei.

“A page has turned in the history of Iran,” Rouhani said.

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The mutual praise is a clear sign of the importance of the leader’s blessing. What is less clear is how much support he will give to Rouhani fulfilling other promises such as expanding personal freedoms – from clothing restrictions to social media access – and the fate of the opposition leaders.

Rouhani is often attacked from two sides: From hardliners who claim his outreach to the US and West is “caving in” and undermining Iran’s 1979 revolution; and from reformists and more moderate conservatives who voted for his promises of economic and social change, but have been deeply disappointed.

“We should wait and see what kind of reforms Mr. Rouhani has in mind, but most definitely [they] will be within the framework of the Islamic Revolution…. If it is something besides this, for sure it will not succeed,” says Gholam-Ali Haddadadel, a former parliament speaker and conservative candidate in the 2013 election, who advises the supreme leader.

The deal will be politicized “The nuclear negotiations belong not only to the reformists, it belongs to all the nation,” says Mr. Haddadadel in an interview. “And if someone thinks that with the nuclear deal the nation will be divided into two parts – the followers of Mr. Rouhani and others, and they will start a fight – such thinking is wrong.”

Even if Rouhani supporters can do well in parliamentary elections early next year – pushing out 40 or so of the lawmakers who have blocked his agenda – far-reaching social reforms will remain an uphill battle.

Rival factions will “try to exploit the agreement for political purposes,” now that consensus over getting a nuclear deal is no longer necessary, says Ali Vaez, the senior Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group.

“The accord is likely to give Rouhani a boost … to move forward with other priorities, particularly socio-political reform,” says Mr. Vaez. “Yet the prospect of a triumphant Rouhani could exacerbate the conservatives’ fears of losing too much political ground and provoke them to thwart” his plans.

Deep political and social divisions have defined Iranian politics for decades, including reactions to the nuclear talks. When the real negotiating progress began in the fall of 2013, hard-line voices – and even banners across Tehran – depicted Mr. Zarif as a naïve traitor too close to the Americans.

Broad support in media Khamenei’s increasing support for Iran’s negotiators has kept those critics in check. And Rouhani will have leverage because public opinion is on his side, says one Iranian analyst who asked not to be named.

“But his opponents, the hard-liners, will not give up. After three decades, conservatives are very adept at obstructing government,” he says, noting how they have done so in one way or another to every Iranian president for 25 years.

Even as the reformist Shargh newspaper made “Victory without war” its front page message, the hard-line Kayhan warned: “Don’t expect a miracle.”

“Mr. Rouhani, you slowed inflation and you made holes in the wall of sanctions,” wrote Kayhan. “But in this new [post-deal] season, replying to the hopes of this nation, your days and nights will turn dark.”

243

Such negativity was rare, as Iranian media mostly described the deal and Zarif’s efforts in glowing terms, and with hope for positive, even transformative change.

“Mr. Rouhani should attribute all the results of the deal to the leader. By this strategy, he makes the radicals calm” and can “strengthen moderate discourse,” says Amir Mohebian, a conservative analyst and editor close to Iran’s political elite. He says the president has just 5 or 6 months “to manage the expectations of the people.”

Rising demands Rouhani has vowed to fulfill all his promises and called on his rivals not to undermine the hopes of Iranians.

“On the good side, the nation will feel the win, [but] the demands of the people will rise hugely,” says Hamidreza Taraghi, a conservative politician who first introduced Rouhani to Khamenei more than 40 years ago. “They will say on unemployment and inflation, you don’t have the nuclear issue anymore, so you should solve these very quickly.”

He doesn’t predict quick results there, or on the president’s agenda of expanding personal freedoms and social change.

“Some of these promises, Mr. Rouhani does not even have the authority; these are just election slogans which have expired,” says Mr. Taraghi, adding that the leader, judiciary, and security organs often have final say.

“If Mr. Rouhani can only solve economic issues like inflation, unemployment, and the downturn, he can throw his hat high in the air,” he says.

244 The Los Angeles Times 16 Jul 2015

Iran unlikely to spend most of its post-sanctions funds on militants, CIA says

By Brian Bennett A secret U.S. intelligence assessment predicts that Iran’s government will pump most of an expected $100-billion windfall from the lifting of international sanctions into the country's flagging economy and won't significantly boost funding for militant groups it supports in the Middle East.

Intelligence analysts concluded that even if Tehran increased support for Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen or President Bashar Assad’s embattled government in Syria, the extra cash is unlikely to tip the balance of power in the world’s most volatile region, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence document.

The controversial CIA report, on which key members of Congress have been briefed, provides ammunition to both sides in the battle brewing on Capitol Hill over what White House aides call President Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, a sweeping multinational agreement that aims to block Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons for at least a decade in exchange for the easing of sanctions that have hobbled its economy.

Under the deal sealed Tuesday in Vienna, once Iran completes a series of strict requirements, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations will suspend the most damaging sanctions against Iran's financial and energy sectors, and Tehran will be given access to about $100 billion from oil revenue frozen in overseas accounts. That could occur early next year.

The United States will rescind most of its banking sanctions, allowing Iranian banks to reconnect to the global financial system, and will lift restrictions on various Iranian industries, as well as trade in gold and other precious metals. Nearly 750 companies, individuals, aircraft and ships will be removed from U.S. blacklists.

Sanctions related to Iran’s human rights abuses and support for groups linked to terrorism will stay in place. A U.N. arms embargo will lift in five years, and restrictions

245

on the transfer of ballistic missile technology will remain for eight years, although the White House said the U.S. and its Persian Gulf allies would step up efforts to block Iranian military shipments or other support to its proxies.

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter will visit Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to follow up on Obama’s pledge at a Camp David summit to supply more weapons and intelligence cooperation to Arab allies anxious about the deal. Secretary of State John F. Kerry plans to brief Persian Gulf leaders in Qatar on Aug. 3.

“It is certainly the case that Iran could decide to apply additional revenue to the activities that are concerning the region,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor, told the Saudi-owned news channel Al Arabiya on Thursday.

“What we need is a better capacity to interdict weapons shipments, have a maritime capability, to have cyber defenses, to deal with these asymmetric threats from Iran,” he said.

Iran funnels tens of millions of dollars to Hezbollah each year, according to U.S. estimates. Tehran gives far more, an estimated $6 billion a year, in cash, oil and other aid to Assad’s government in Syria, which is engulfed in civil war.

“Syria is really where Iran is spending significant amounts,” Mark Dubowitz, an expert on sanctions policy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute, said in a telephone interview.

Republican lawmakers briefed on the CIA report have seized on the danger that Iran could increase support for terrorist groups and expand its military role in Yemen, Syria and other regional hot spots, describing it as a fatal flaw in the Vienna agreement.

“I don’t know what information the Obama administration possesses that indicates this deal will actually prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon or will cause the mullahs to reduce their support for worldwide terrorism, but it sure isn’t the same intelligence we’re seeing in the Intelligence Committee,” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

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The Obama administration is banking, in part, on President Hassan Rouhani and other moderates in Iran’s leadership steering most of the anticipated money into domestic infrastructure and other investments to quell growing public frustration over unemployment, the high inflation rate and a shortage of imported goods.

Rouhani was elected in 2013 on a promise to improve Iran’s economy, and U.S. intelligence analysts say his advisors determined early on that Iran’s moribund finances could not recover under sanctions. The analysts believe the sanctions are what kept the Iranians at the negotiating table over the last 20 months.

For his part, Obama acknowledged Wednesday that some of the money could be siphoned off to fund militant activity in the Middle East.

“Do we think that with the sanctions coming down that Iran will have some additional resources for its military and for some of the activities in the region that are a threat to us and a threat to our allies? I think that is a likelihood that they’ve got some additional resources. Do I think it’s a game-changer for them? No,” Obama said during a White House news conference the day after the deal was reached.

“The notion that they're just immediately going to turn over $100 billion to the IRGC or the Quds Force, I think, runs contrary to all the intelligence that we’ve seen and the commitments that the Iranian government has made,” Obama said, referring to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its special forces units abroad.

Obama said it was a “mistake” to say his administration believes that Iran will spend the money only on “day-care centers and roads and paying down debt.” But he said preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon is far more important than releasing “incremental additional money” that Iran could use “to try to destabilize the region or send to their proxies.”

Iran has about $100 billion frozen in oil escrow accounts in banks in several countries that buy Iranian petroleum products, including China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. U.S. analysts say $50 billion more is frozen in other overseas accounts that could become available later as sanctions ease.

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Iran will be able to withdraw the first $100 billion when it has met the initial terms of the nuclear deal, including removing two-thirds of its centrifuges, reducing its enriched uranium stockpile by 98%, disabling its plutonium facility and allowing International U.N. inspectors broad access for monitoring of operations.

Appearing on CNN, national security advisor Susan Rice said the goal of the U.S. and five other world powers in the negotiations with Iran was solely to stop Tehran from amassing enough nuclear fuel to build a bomb that could be used against the United States or its allies, and was “never” meant to stop Iran from funding terrorism or address other concerns about Iran's activities in the region.

“We think for the most part they're going to need to spend it on the Iranian people and their economy, which has tanked,” Rice said. “It is possible, and in fact we should expect, that some portion of that money would go to the Iranian military and could potentially be used for the kind of bad behavior we have seen in the region up until now.”

Congress has 60 days to review the accord and an option to approve or reject it.

Opposition is widespread among Republicans, who control both houses, but it's far from clear whether they can secure enough votes to override a promised White House veto.

Divining how foreign leaders will act is a challenging job for intelligence analysts and comes with many pitfalls, Michael Allen, a former director for counter-proliferation strategy on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, said in a telephone interview.

“Traditionally the hardest analytical intelligence questions are leadership intentions,” said Allen, who has not seen the CIA assessment on the deal. “I’m not sure we are in a position to assess that the Iranians would spend the vast majority of their windfall on the economy versus supporting malign activities in the region.”

248 The Washington Post 16 Jul 2015

Saudi Prince Bandar: The U.S. nuclear pact with North Korea failed. The Iran deal is worse.

By Adam Taylor Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States between 1981 and 2005, has written a damning column in which he compares the Iran nuclear deal to the failed nuclear deal with North Korea -- and concludes it will have even worse consequences.

Writing for the London-based Arabic news Web site Elaph, Badar suggests that President Obama is knowingly making a bad deal, while President Bill Clinton had made a deal with North Korea with the best intentions and the best information he had. The new deal will "wreak havoc" in the Middle East, which is already destabilized due to Iranian actions, Bandar writes.

Writing about the failed deal with North Korea, which was agreed in 1994 and collapsed in 2003, Bandar says, "it turned out that the strategic foreign policy analysis was wrong and there was a major intelligence failure." He added that if Clinton had known the full picture, "I am absolutely confident he would not have made that decision."

The Saudi royal then contrasts this with the present situation with Iran, "where the strategic foreign policy analysis, the national intelligence information, and America’s allies in the region's intelligence all predict not only the same outcome of the North Korean nuclear deal but worse – with the billions of dollars that Iran will have access to."

Bandar says Obama is smart enough to understand this but that he is ideologically willing to accept collateral damage because he believes he is right.

The United States and North Korea signed the Agreed Framework in 1994, after North Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Under the agreement, North Korea committed to freezing its nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid, causing significant controversy in the United States. The next U.S. administration, led by President George W. Bush, took a much more aggressive stance on the agreement, and in 2002 it confronted North Korea with accusations that it had been attempting a clandestine uranium-enrichment program.

In response, North Korea restarted its nuclear program, and the country withdrew from the NPT in 2003. Subsequent attempts to reach an agreement over nuclear weapons have failed. North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and is currently believed to possess around 10 to 16 nuclear weapons (exact estimates vary). Experts say it is working to improve upon the size and sophistication of its nuclear arsenal.

Bandar is far from the first to contrast the situation in 1994 and now: The failure of the talks with North Korea has been a specter hanging over the talks with Iran.

However, there's disagreement over how to interpret any lessons taught by the failure of the North Korean deal: As The Post's Glenn Kessler has written, the Agreed Framework may have failed, but it did stall North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Analysts have pointed out that the two situations have many differences. The Carnegie Endowment's George Perkovich, for example, has argued that Iran has stronger incentives to stick to a deal than North Korea ever did.

249 Bandar is a major voice in Saudi foreign affairs. He was the longest-serving Saudi ambassador to Washington and headed the Saudi intelligence services between 2012 and 2014. His conclusion will carry weight in some circles: "People in my region now are relying on God’s will, and consolidating their local capabilities and analysis with everybody else except our oldest and most powerful ally," he writes.

The Saudi prince says the new Iran deal and other developments in the region have led him to conclude that a phrase first used by Henry Kissinger – “America’s enemies should fear America, but America’s friends should fear America more" – is correct.

250 Al-Monitor 16 Jul 2015

Is IAEA capable of monitoring Iran nuclear program?

Barbara Slavin A key question in the aftermath of a new nuclear agreement with Iran is whether the international community has the wherewithal to monitor and verify Iran’s compliance.

Officials in the Barack Obama administration and nonproliferation experts claim that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), bolstered by new technology and the intelligence resources of major powers, can provide the necessary assurances that Iran is abiding by restrictions on its nuclear capabilities and not trying to divert its declared program or build a covert facility to develop weapons.

“It’s not your grandfather’s IAEA,” said Thomas Shea, a veteran former official at the UN nuclear watchdog agency, to an audience at the Atlantic Council July 15. An expert for a quarter century in the IAEA’s Department of Safeguards, which monitors declared nuclear programs, Shea said that the agency had overhauled its practices in light of its failure to find nuclear weapons progress in Iraq and North Korea more than two decades ago and now has access to “100 different verification systems” that can detect even the smallest anomalies.

Where once the agency used rubber seals to prevent tampering with sensitive equipment and old movie cameras with film canisters that had to be manually changed every three months, the IAEA now uses “digital equipment with fiber optic connections that can be reviewed automatically and large-scale digital storage that is solid state,” said Shea. The agency is currently exploring live-streaming video. “It’s not what it was. You can’t diddle with it and expect you can defeat this equipment.”

The IAEA also has access to better commercial satellite imagery than the US government did 20 years ago, along with its own laboratory for environmental sampling and forensic analysis that can detect a pictogram — a million millionth of a gram of material — to identify possible radiation, Shea said. The lab is augmented by a “network of affiliated national laboratories,” Shea wrote in a forthcoming paper made available to Al-Monitor.

In addition, foreign intelligence agencies and Iranian dissidents remain sources of possible information about clandestine activities, he said.

Jon Wolfsthal, senior director for nonproliferation and arms control at the White House National Security Council, echoed Shea’s assessment. “We recognize that this [monitoring and verification] is a critical component [of the deal] and have high confidence that the verification provisions of this deal will work because we are committed to them and because of the agency’s capabilities,” he told the Washington audience.

Asked whether Iran could profit from a potential 24-day period to adjudicate disputes over access to suspect sites, Wolfsthal said he doubted Iran could build an underground enrichment or reprocessing facility and get rid of all the evidence in 24 days. Uranium has a “half life of four billion years,” he observed.

President Obama, at a July 15 news conference that dealt largely with the Iran deal, said, “This is not something you hide in a closet … If there is nuclear material at that site, … that leaves a trace and so we’ll know there’s been a violation of the agreement.”

Wolfsthal also discussed the thorny issue of Iran’s suspected past nuclear activities with a military dimension. Under a new agreement with the IAEA concluded just before the July 14 announcement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Wolfsthal

251 said, Iran must satisfy the IAEA’s concerns about such activities by October so that the agency can present a report to its 35-member board of governors Dec. 15.

This information will give the agency a better understanding of the research Iran is said to have conducted from the late 1990s through 2003. Without clearing up this file, said Wolfsthal, Iran would get no sanctions relief, and the entire deal would be scrapped.

Another issue raised by critics concerns Iran's ability to install more advanced centrifuges in the latter years of the JCPOA and rush to a bomb after some of its provisions expire in 10 years. Wolfsthal said that — beyond Iran’s pledge never to develop nuclear weapons, which it made as a member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and reaffirmed in the JCPOA — Tehran is also obliged to provide the IAEA with its plans for future research and development of advanced centrifuges, the machines that spin at high speeds to enrich uranium.

“This R&D plan must be consistent with their energy needs,” he said, and avoid sudden, sharp spikes in new centrifuges. The objective, he stated, is “a soft R&D landing … The agreement does not provide for an exponential increase in enrichment capacity.”

Wolfsthal and Shea agreed that to implement the deal, the IAEA would need more resources to expand its Iran team, which currently consists of about 50 personnel. Shea suggested that the United States might contribute an additional $50 million, which Wolfsthal called “a bargain” compared to the cost of military action against Iran’s program.

“The US and its P5 [permanent members of the UN Security Council] partners will be working with other member states to insure that they have the technology, the resources and the people needed to do this job,” Wolfsthal said.

Jim Walsh, a nuclear expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, remarked, “This is not our first rodeo.” Lessons learned from Iraq, North Korea and Libya, among other countries, provide a better chance of detecting any suspect activity in Iran, he said. Walsh, who called Iran the “most watched country in the world,” also commented that it would be “odd” to negotiate an agreement permitting such intrusive inspections and then decide to violate its terms.

252 LobeLog/foreign policy 16 Jul 2015

Iran Deal: Obama Channels Nixon?

by John Feffer

John Feffer is the the editor of LobeLog and the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is also the author, most recently, of Crusade 2.0. He is a former Open Society fellow, PanTech fellow, and Scoville fellow, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, and many other publications.

One of the greatest moments of U.S. diplomacy in the 20th century was Nixon’s opening to China. It was a surprise, a breathtaking opportunity, and a true game-changer.

It was also one of the strangest political matches of all time. A president who had established his political bona fides as an anti-Communist crusader shocked everyone by establishing relations with a Communist state led by one of the world’s most ruthless politicians (in a century densely populated by such tyrants). China in the early 1970s was still in the thrall of the Cultural Revolution, and the increasingly senescent Mao Zedong was a most unlikely partner for Nixon’s diplomatic effort.

But Nixon’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, displayed an often-appalling pragmatism. He didn’t care if Mao was chin deep in the blood of his own victims (tens of millions from the Great Leap Forward through the Cultural Revolution). The secretary of state wanted to use China as a chess piece to maneuver the Soviet Union into a corner.

Playing Moscow and Beijing off one another was Kissinger’s gambit to control the board and ultimately checkmate his Communist opponents.

Throughout its history, the United States has frequently made alliances of convenience in order to achieve larger goals. During World War II, it partnered with Stalin against Hitler. In Chile, it collaborated with Pinochet against Allende. And from FDR on, it allied with the House of Saud against the prospect of prohibitive oil prices. Communism, military dictatorship, theocracy: the United States cooperated with these very different systems in order to pursue its own ends.

The recent nuclear agreement with Iran, the culmination of months of laborious negotiation, could represent this century’s equivalent of Nixon’s détente with China. Of course, Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani are by no means the odd bedfellows that Mao and Nixon represented. They are both centrists disposed to compromise. The deal they’ve pushed for has been the culmination of visible negotiations not the kind of secret back-channel conversations that Kissinger favored.

And perhaps most importantly, the Iran deal rather narrowly focuses on nuclear nonproliferation.

But the accord with Iran has the potential to be a game-changer that alters the geopolitical chessboard. For that to happen, however, deal supporters still have to overcome domestic opposition (particularly in the United States). Then the more visionary leaders in Iran, the United States, and Europe have to use the agreement as

253 the foundation stone of an entirely new set of relationships that can alter the political landscape of the Middle East and beyond.

The Noisy Ideologues Iranian politics is well stocked with noisy ideologues who advocate for perpetual war against the West. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself recently talked about the importance of continuing to struggle against the “arrogance” of the United States, deal or no deal. However, given that Khamenei must have supported the negotiations and the deal – he is the Supreme Leader, after all – his rhetoric was more likely a sop thrown to the hardliners.

Meanwhile, the more concerted opposition to rapprochement is in the United States where a much noisier clique of well-funded pundits and politicians inveigh against the inherent evil of Iran. They will not tolerate anything that resembles what Republican hardliners routinely label “appeasement.” As Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) put it, ““Iran is an anti-American, terrorism-sponsoring outlaw regime.”

Opposition to the negotiations with Iran has generally fallen into two categories. The much smaller group consists of those who, like physicist David Albright, are reluctant to call themselves critics and genuinely worry whether the agreement will work (will the inspection protocols be sufficient, will the “break-out time” be meaningfully expanded, and so on).

The much larger group of opponents simply doesn’t want to negotiate with Iran at all.

They are categorically opposed to the country’s system (much as the anti-Communist critics of Nixon’s détente with China were categorically opposed to the Chinese system).

For this second group, there can be no better agreement until and unless Iran capitulates entirely, which could happen only if an entirely different set of leaders took over in Tehran (monarchists, for instance, or the quasi-terrorists of MEK). But there is little chance of this happening in Iran just as there was no likelihood that a group of closet democrats could have seized power in Beijing in the 1970s.

Of course there are factions in Iran today just as there were factions within the Chinese Communist Party in Mao’s later years. But these different political groupings were not (in China) and are not (in Iran) interested in revolutionary system change. No viable political force in Iran, for instance, challenges the sovereign right of the country to pursue a civilian nuclear program or, for that matter, the position of the ayatollahs as supreme rulers. Big surprise: how many legitimate political forces in the United States advocate for the abrogation of the constitution, the abolition of capitalism, or the unilateral dissolution of the entire nuclear arsenal?

The dream of “regime change” and the dream of a “perfect agreement” are really the same dreams, and they are both illusory. American politicians need a refresher course on the meaning of diplomacy (hint: it involves compromise) and on world systems (key

254 takeaway: there are a variety of different types of states and the world is not converging on the American political model). It’s only compared to the infantile know-nothingism of Tom Cotton, the Republican presidential hopefuls, and their deep-pocketed supporters that the Machiavellian cunning Kissinger displayed with China begins to look like something approximating wisdom.

The Quiet Pragmatists In place of the Soviet Communism of the 1970s, the United States faces a resurgent Sunni radicalism in the Middle East. This radicalism ranges from the relatively benign Salafism of Qatar and the considerably less benign Salafism of Saudi Arabia to the more anti-Western manifestations of the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State.

Obama can be just as ruthlessly pragmatic as Kissinger (just look at Washington’s policy toward Egypt and the al-Sisi regime). His overall chess strategy, however, is to reduce the influence of Sunni radicalism. Much as Beijing was a rival version of Communism, Iran offers a rival version of Islam. Put simply, the United States needs Iran’s help to checkmate the Islamic State and its ilk. China was ushered back into the international community as part of the campaign to isolate the Soviet Union. So, too, will opening the door for Iran strengthen the hands of a Shia counterforce.

Critics of Iran worry about a resurgence of Shia radicalism under the auspices of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah, and the Badr Brigades in Iraq. But as Iran acquires more of a stake in the international community, the likelihood of its continuing to play a destabilizing role in the region will diminish. One signal that this process has already begun is the restraining role Tehran tried to play in discouraging the Houthis from seizing power in Yemen.

Another scenario is more probable. The states of the region, regardless of their confessional leanings, will team up against non-state actors, including the Islamic State, its pretensions to sovereignty notwithstanding. If you believe that Iran working together with both Israel and Saudi Arabia sounds highly improbable, think again.

The U.S. opening to China initially enraged Japan and South Korea because they didn’t know about the secret talks. The event has gone down in history as the “Nixon shock” in Japan (coupled with the later announcement that the United States was going off the gold standard). In South Korea, strongman Park Chung Hee groused that “The United States has long been trying to reach a rapprochement with Red China, but China has not changed.”

But after they overcame their anger at being excluded from the talks, Japan and South Korea saw the enormous benefits that came from political and economic ties to China.

Normalization of relations between Beijing and both Tokyo and Seoul eventually helped to make Northeast Asia an economic powerhouse in the world.

255 Israel and the Gulf monarchies, like South Korea and Japan, have been aghast at Washington’s high-stakes diplomacy. But they too could eventually see the advantages of the new regional order – but only if a parallel process of pragmatic evolution takes place in all the countries concerned. Iran has been moving in that direction since the election of Hassan Rouhani. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains the chief obstacle to a sane politics in Israel, but he may well prove the biggest loser, politically, if the Iran deal succeeds. The Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia chief among them, must also embark on a long-delayed process of political liberalization that will provide more voice for domestic Shia oppositions.

For the Middle East to prosper, it must somehow transcend the current sectarian conflicts. It must overcome the Sunni-Shia split much as East Asia managed to overcome the Communist-capitalist divide (with China, though not yet with North Korea). This is not to say that the Sunnis will lie down with the Shia like the lion and the lamb. But they have to work out a functional modus operandi that translates confessional discord into a more benign political and economic competition.

With the Iran deal, we have stepped away from the precipice of war. But it’s only a few steps. And plenty of voices in Congress continue recklessly to urge “full steam ahead.”

To put the precipice truly behind us, we have to push the Iran deal through Congress.

And then the hard work really begins of turning a narrow nuclear agreement into the game-changer that the Middle East so desperately needs.

If it could happen at the hands of Nixon and Mao over 40 years ago, surely it can happen again with more sensible leaders in charge of the process.

256 AP 16 Jul 2015

Obama vigorously challenges critics of landmark Iran deal WASHINGTON (AP) — Vigorously challenging his critics, President Barack Obama launched an aggressive and detailed defense of a landmark Iranian nuclear accord Wednesday, rejecting the idea that it leaves Tehran on the brink of a bomb and arguing the only alternative to the diplomatic deal is war.

"Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it's resolved through force, through war," Obama said during a lengthy White House news conference. "Those are the options."

The president spoke one day after Iran, the U.S. and five other world powers finalized a historic, yearslong agreement to curb Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief. Opposition to the deal has been fierce, both in Washington and Israel. Sunni Arab rivals of Shiite Iran also express concerns.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps the fiercest critic of Obama's overtures to Iran, showed no sign he could be persuaded to even tolerate the agreement. In remarks to Israel's parliament, Netanyahu said he was not bound by the terms of the deal and could still take military action against Iran.

"We will reserve our right to defend ourselves against all of our enemies," said Netanyahu, who sees Iran's suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon as a threat to Israel's existence.

In Congress, resistance comes not only from Republicans, but also Obama's own Democratic Party. Vice President Joe Biden spent the morning on Capitol Hill meeting privately with House Democrats, and planned to return Thursday to make a similar pitch to Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The president said he welcomed a "robust" debate with Congress, but showed little patience for what he cast as politically motivated opposition. Lawmakers can't block the nuclear deal, but they can try to undermine it by insisting U.S. sanctions stay in place.

In Tehran, Iranians took to the streets to celebrate the accord, and even Iran's hardliners offered only mild criticism — a far cry from the outspoken opposition that the White House had feared.

The nuclear accord has become a centerpiece of Obama's foreign policy, a high-stakes gamble that diplomatic engagement with a longtime American foe could resolve one of the world's most pressing security challenges. The importance of the deal to Obama

257 was evident Wednesday, both in his detailed knowledge of its technical provisions and his insistence that no critique go unanswered.

An hour into the East Room news conference, Obama asked if reporters had other questions about Iran — a highly unusual inquiry from a president who is rarely so freewheeling in his exchanges with the press. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, saying he had "made notes" about the main criticisms of the deal and wanted to ensure each had been addressed.

The accord requires Iran to dismantle key elements of its nuclear program, lower its uranium enrichment levels, and give up thousands of centrifuges. International inspectors will have access to Iran's declared nuclear facilities, but must request visits to Iran's military sites, access that isn't guaranteed. If Iran abides by the parameters, it will receive billions of dollars in relief from crippling international sanctions that have badly damaged the country's economy.

The deal does nothing to address Iran's broader support for terrorism in the Middle East or its detention of several American citizens, though some U.S. officials hold out hope it could eventually lead Tehran to reassess its role in the world.

Obama, however, outlined a narrower ambition, saying the deal should be judged solely on whether it stops Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. As to whether the agreement might change Iran's other behavior, he said, "We're not betting on it."

The president also sharply rebuffed a suggestion that he was content to let American detainees languish in Iran while he celebrated a deal. "That's nonsense," he said, adding that Iran would have taken advantage of any U.S. effort to link the nuclear accord to the release of U.S. citizens.

Showing a command of technical nuclear issues, Obama spent much of the news conference trying to knock down criticisms of the deal point by point.

To those who argue sanctions relief will leave Iran flush with cash to fund terrorism, Obama said Tehran is already backing Hezbollah and other groups on the cheap. He noted that the Iranian government is under pressure from citizens to use any influx of international funds to improve the country's struggling economy.

Obama insisted sanctions on Iran could be "snapped back" in place if Iran cheats on the deal, even if Russia and China object. He defended the 24-day window Iran would have before international inspectors gain access to suspicious sites, saying nuclear material "leaves a trace" and suggesting the U.S. has other means of monitoring facilities. And he shrugged off concerns that a United Nations arms embargo on Iran could be lifted in five years, saying the U.S. and its partners have others ways of preventing Iran from sending weapons to militant groups.

Taken together, Obama said, the deal marks a rare opportunity to cut off Iran's pathways to a bomb and bolster the safety of the U.S. and the rest of the world.

258 "If we don't choose wisely, I believe future generations will judge us harshly for letting this moment slip away," he said.

259 The New York Times 16 Jul 201

Former U.S. Diplomats Praise Iran Deal

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS More than 100 former American ambassadors wrote to President Obama on Thursday praising the nuclear deal reached with Iran this week as a “landmark agreement” that could be effective in halting Tehran’s development of a nuclear weapon, and urging Congress to support it.

“If properly implemented, this comprehensive and rigorously negotiated agreement can be an effective instrument in arresting Iran’s nuclear program and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons in the volatile and vitally important region of the Middle East,” said the letter, whose signers include diplomats named by presidents of both parties.

They wrote that they recognized the deal “is not a perfect or risk-free settlement of this problem.”

“However,” they added, “we believe that without it, the risks to the security of the United States and our friends and allies would be far greater.”

The accord, they continued, “deserves congressional support and the opportunity to show it can work.”

As the deal continued to be both hailed and condemned in capitals around the world, the White House announced on Thursday evening that Mr. Obama would meet with the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, on Friday, in the first high-level encounter between the president and a major Arab ally since the accord was announced in Vienna on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have, along with Israel, expressed either unease or outright opposition to the deal.

Mr. Obama’s meeting is part of an intense sales job that he and the rest of his administration plan to undertake in the coming days to try to persuade both skeptical allies and congressional lawmakers that the accord is sound and will help ease tensions in the Middle East.

Signers of the letter, spearheaded by the Iran Project, a New York-based organization that is dedicated to “a peaceful resolution to the nuclear standoff,” include prominent retired diplomats appointed by Mr. Obama and his Republican and Democratic predecessors.

Richard Boucher, who served as the spokesman for secretaries of state of both parties and the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, signed the letter, as did Ryan Crocker, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon first named by President George Bush and later by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Mr. Obama.

R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state who led the Iran diplomatic effort for the younger Mr. Bush, is a signer, as is Teresita C. Schaffer, a former ambassador to Sri Lanka first named by the elder Mr. Bush who also served under Mr. Clinton.

Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel and Egypt who served under Mr. Clinton and the younger Mr. Bush, also signed the letter, as did four other onetime

260 American ambassadors to Israel: James B. Cunningham, William C. Harrop, Thomas R. Pickering and Edward S. Walker Jr.

261 LodeLog/foreign policy 16 Jul 2015

100-Plus Former U.S. Ambassadors Applaud Iran Deal

by Jim Lobe

As the controversy over the Iran deal heats up—and it’s going to get a lot hotter, especially come September—more than 100 former U.S. ambassadors have signed on to a letter drafted by The Iran Project applauding what they characterized as a “landmark agreement” and urging its support by Congress. Signatories included former Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, Daniel Kurtzer (ambassador to Israel and Egypt), one-time neoconservative heartthrob Ryan Crocker (ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria), Frank Wisner (former ambassador to India, Egypt, the Philippines, and Zambia and under secretary of defense for international security affairs), and Thomas Pickering (former under secretary of state for political affairs and ambassador to Israel, Russia, India, and the United Nations). The letter was released on the same day that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also spoke out in favor of the deal.

Here is the letter and the list of signatories: Dear Mr. President: The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran stands as a landmark agreement in deterring the proliferation of nuclear weapons. If properly implemented, this comprehensive and rigorously negotiated agreement can be an effective instrument in arresting Iran’s nuclear program and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons in the volatile and vitally important region of the Middle East. Without your determination and the admirable work of Secretary of State Kerry and his team, this agreement would never have been reached.

As former American diplomats, we have devoted much of our lives to ensuring that the President had available the best possible diplomatic approaches to dealing with challenges to our nation’s security, even while recognizing that a strong military is essential to help the President and the Congress to carry out their duties to protect the nation and its people. Effective diplomacy backed by credible defense will be critically important now, during the period of inspection and verification of Iran’s compliance with the agreement.

The JCPOA touches on some of America’s most important national objectives: non proliferation and the security of our friends in the Middle East particularly Israel.

Ensuring the cooperation and implementation of this agreement by a hostile nation will require constant, dedicated U.S. leadership and unflagging attention.

We recognize that the JCPOA is not a perfect or risk-free settlement of this problem.

However, we believe without it, the risks to the security of the United States and our friends and allies would be far greater. We are satisfied that the JCPOA will put in place a set of constraints and inspections that can assure that Iran’s nuclear program during the terms of the agreement will remain only for peaceful purposes and that no part of Iran is exempt from inspection. As with any negotiated settlement, the most durable and

262 effective agreement is one that all sides will commit to and benefit from over the long term.

We support close Congressional involvement in the oversight, monitoring and enforcement of this agreement. Congress must be a full partner in its implementation and must evaluate carefully the value and feasibility of any alternative that would claim better to protect U.S. security and more effectively to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. In particular, Congress must give careful attention to evaluating whether alternatives would be more or less likely to narrow the options for resolving this issue without the use of force.

In our judgment the JCPOA deserves Congressional support and the opportunity to show it can work. We firmly believe that the most effective way to protect U.S. national security, and that of our allies and friends is to ensure that tough-minded diplomacy has a chance to succeed before considering other more costly and risky alternatives.

With respect, Amb. (ret.) Diego C. Asencio, Ambassador to Colombia and Brazil Amb. (ret.) Adrian Basora, Ambassador to Czechoslovakia J. Brian Atwood, Administrator of USAID and Under Secretary of State for Management Amb. (ret.) William M. Bellamy, Ambassador to Kenya Amb. (ret.) John R. Beyrle, Ambassador to Russia and Bulgaria Amb. (ret.) James Keough Bishop, Ambassador to Niger, Liberia and Somalia Amb. (ret.) Barbara K. Bodine, Ambassador to Yemen Amb. (ret.) Avis Bohlen, Assistant Secretary for Arms Control Amb. (ret.) Eric J. Boswell, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Amb. (ret.) Stephen Bosworth, Ambassador to the Republic of Korea Amb. (ret.) Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Amb. (ret.) Kenneth C. Brill, Ambassador to the IAEA, UN and founder of the U.S. National Counterproliferation Center Amb (ret.) Kenneth L. Brown, Ambassador to Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, and Ghana Amb. (ret.) A. Peter Burleigh, Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Amb. (ret.) Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Ambassador to Greece and NATO Amb. (ret.) James F. Collins, Ambassador to the Russian Federation and Ambassador at Large for the New Independent States Amb. (ret.) Edwin G. Corr, Ambassador to Peru, Bolivia and El Salvador Amb. (ret.) William Courtney, Commissioner, Bilateral Consultative Commission to implement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty Amb. (ret.) Ryan Crocker, Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon Amb. (ret.) James B. Cunningham, Ambassador to Israel, Afghanistan and the United Nations Amb. (ret.) Walter L. Cutler, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Tunisia Amb. (ret.) Ruth A. Davis, Ambassador to the Republic of Benin and Director General of the Foreign Service Amb. (ret.) John Gunther Dean, Ambassador to India Amb. (ret.) Shaun Donnelly, Ambassador to Sri Lanka Amb. (ret.) Harriet L. Elam-Thomas, Ambassador to Senegal Amb. (ret.) Theodore L. Eliot Jr., Ambassador to Afghanistan Amb. (ret.) Nancy Ely-Raphel, Ambassador to Slovenia Amb. (ret.) Chas W. Freeman, Jr., Assistant Secretary of Defense and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Amb. (ret.) Robert Gallucci, Ambassador at Large Amb. (ret.) Robert S. Gelbard, President’s Special Representative for the Balkans David C. Gompert, former Acting Director of National Intelligence Amb. (ret.) James E. Goodby, Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Security and Dismantlement, and Ambassador to Finland Amb. (ret.) Marc Grossman, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Ambassador to Turkey Amb. (ret.) Brandon Grove, Director Foreign Service Institute Amb. (ret.)William Harrop, Ambassador to Israel, Guinea, Kenya, and Seychelles Amb. (ret.) Ulric Haynes, Jr. Ambassador to Algeria Amb. (ret.) Donald Hays, Ambassador to the United Nations Amb. (ret.) Heather M. Hodges, Ambassador to Ecuador and Moldova Amb. (ret.) Karl Hofmann, Ambassador to Togo Amb. (ret.) Thomas C. Hubbard, Ambassador to the Republic of Korea

263 Amb. (ret.) Vicki Huddleston, Ambassador to Mali and Madagascar Thomas L. Hughes, former Assistant Secetary of State for Intelligence and Research Amb. (ret.) Dennis Jett, Ambassador to Mozambique and Peru Amb. (ret.) Beth Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Amb. (ret.) James R. Jones, Ambassador to Mexico and formerly Member of Congress and White House Chief of Staff Amb. (ret.) Theodore Kattouf, Ambassador to Syria and United Arab Emirates Amb. (ret.) Richard D. Kauzlarich, Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina Amb. (ret.) Kenton W. Keith, Ambassador to Qatar Amb. (ret.) Roger Kirk, Ambassador to Romania and Somalia Amb. (ret.) John C. Kornblum, Ambassador to Germany and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Amb. (ret.) Eleni Kounalakis, Ambassador to Hungary Amb. (ret.) Daniel Kurtzer, Ambassador to Israel and Egypt Amb. (ret.) Bruce Laingen, Chargé d’Affaires in Tehran (1979) Frank E. Loy, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Amb. (ret.) William Luers, Ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Venezuela Amb. (ret.) Princeton N. Lyman, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Amb. (ret.) John F. Maisto, Ambassador to Organization of American States, Venezuela, Nicaragua Amb. (ret.) Jack Matlock, Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Special Assistant to the President for National Security Amb. (ret.) Donald F. McHenry, United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations Amb. (ret.) Thomas E. McNamara, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, Ambassador to Colombia, and at Large for Counterterrorism Amb. (ret.) William B. Milam, Ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh Amb. (ret.) Tom Miller, Ambassador to Greece and Bosnia-Herzegovina Amb. (ret.) George E. Moose, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador to Benin, Senegal Amb. (ret.) Cameron Munter, Ambassador to Pakistan and Serbia Amb. (ret.) Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Amb. (ret.) Ronald E. Neumann, Ambassador to Afghanistan, Algeria, and Bahrain Amb. (ret.) Thomas M. T. Niles, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada and Ambassador to Greece Phyllis E. Oakley, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Intelligence and Research Amb. (ret.) W. Robert Pearson, Ambassador to Turkey Amb. (ret.) Robert H. Pelletreau, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affair Amb. (ret.) Pete Peterson, Ambassador to Vietnam Amb. (ret.) Thomas Pickering, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Ambassador to Israel, Russia, India, United Nations, El Salvador, Nigeria and Jordan Amb. (ret.) Joan M. Plaisted, Ambassador to the Republic of the Marshall Islands and Kitibati Amb. (ret.) Nicholas Platt, Ambassador to Pakistan, Philippines, and Zambia Amb. (ret.) Anthony Quainton, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic security or Director General of the Foreign Service Amb. (ret.) Robin L. Raphel, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Amb. (ret.) Charles A. Ray, Ambassador to Zimbabwe and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs Amb (ret.) Arlene Render, Ambassador to The Gambia, Zambia and Cote d’Ivoire Amb. (ret.) Julissa Reynoso, Ambassador to Uruguay Amb. (ret.) Francis J. Ricciardone, Ambassador to Egypt, Turkey, the Philippines, and Palau Amb. (ret.) Rozanne L. Ridgway, Assistant Secretary for Europe and Canada and Counselor of the Department Amb. (ret.) Peter F. Romero, Assistant Secretary of State Amb. (ret.) Theodore Sedgwick, Ambassador to Slovakia Amb. (ret.) J. Stapleton Roy, Ambassador to China and Indonesia Amb. (ret.) William A. Rugh, Ambassador to Yemen and the United Arab Emirates Amb. (ret.) Janet A Sanderson, Ambassador to Algeria and Haiti Amb. (ret.) Teresita C. Schaffer, Ambassador to Sri Lanka Amb. (ret.) Howard B. Schaffer, Ambassador to Bangladesh Amb. (ret.) Raymond G. H. Seitz, Ambassador to the United Kingdom Amb. (ret.) John Shattuck, Ambassador to the Czech Republic Amb. (ret.) Ronald I. Spiers, Ambassador to Pakistan, Turkey and Assistant Secretary for Politico-Military Affairs Amb. (ret.) William Lacy Swing, Ambassador to South Africa, Nigeria, Haiti, Congo-DRC, Liberia, and Republic of Congo Amb. (ret.) Patrick Nickolas Theros, Ambassador to the State of Qatar Arturo A. Valenzuela, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Amb. (ret.) William J. Vanden Heuvel, Deputy Permanent United States Representative to the United Nations Amb. (ret.) Nicholas A. Veliotes, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Amb. (ret.) Richard N. Viets, Ambassador to Jordan Amb. (ret.) Edward S. Walker, Jr., Ambassador to Israel, Egypt and United Arab Emirates Amb. (ret.) Alexander F. Watson, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Ambassador to Peru

264 Amb. (ret.) Melissa Wells, Ambassador to Estonia, DRC-Congo, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau Amb. (ret.) Philip C. Wilcox Junior, Ambassador at Large for Counter Terrorism Molly K. Williamson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Defense, and Commerce Amb. (ret.) Frank Wisner, Ambassador to India, Egypt, the Philippines and Zambia, and Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs Amb. (ret.) John Wolf, Assistant Secretary for Nonproliferation Amb. (ret.) Kenneth Yalowitz, Ambassador to Belarus and Georgia

265 Foreign Policy 16 Jul 2015

Iran Ain’t Gonna Sneak Out Under This Deal Under the terms agreed to in Vienna, the country is going to be crawling with inspectors. No one’s covertly building a nuke under this regime.

BY JAMES M. ACTON out a decade ago, I started my nuclear policy career at a small British NGOthat focuses on verification. My career choice turned out to be a mixed blessing for my social life.

Saying that I worked on nuclear weapons was a great icebreaker at parties, but the ensuing conversations would go downhill rapidly after I mentioned the “V” word. For reasons inexplicable to me back then, my fellow partygoers just weren’t that interested in finding out how to determine whether states are abiding by their nuclear treaty commitments.

Over the next few months, I expect to have many conversations with officials, analysts, journalists about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — better known as the JCPOA or the Iran deal. These conversations will be quite different from those at London parties 10 years ago; today, all my interlocutors will profess a deep and profound belief in the importance of verification. But, when I start to dig into the details of how the International Atomic Energy Agency will assess Iranian compliance, I’ll see that glazed look again …

Nonetheless, where verification is concerned, the details do matter, and we really should be debating the finer points of the Iran deal’s verification provisions. (See: Annex I, Sections L, M, N, O, P, Q, and R — yes, it’s that detailed.) In assessing whether these arrangements are “good enough,” the best place to start is with the following question: If Iran decided to cheat, how would it go about doing so?

Iran’s leadership would have three options, and in deciding between them, it would presumably choose the pathway that maximized its chances of success.

First, Iran could overtly renounce all its nonproliferation commitments, chuck out international inspectors, and build the bomb loudly and proudly. The Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty contains a clause that allows states to withdraw under “extraordinary” circumstances, and even though the JCPOA doesn’t have any such provision, there can be no certainty that Iran won’t abrogate it anyway. No verification system can prevent this scenario, but what almost certainly can deter it is the threat of American weaponry hitting Iran before Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can say, “Death to.”

The second, more likely scenario would be for Iran to use its declared nuclear materials and facilities for bomb-building: the much-discussed “breakout scenario.” Many of the Iran deal’s limits are intended to make breakout much more time-consuming than it would currently be — and that’s a good thing. Ultimately, however, breakout still isn’t all that likely. Declared facilities are subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring. As a result, Iran understands it would almost certainly be caught quickly if it attempted breakout.

Iran’s third option would be to build a secret parallel nuclear program dedicated to military purposes — sneak-out. Detecting small clandestine enrichment plants is difficult, and Tehran might view sneak-out as its most attractive option. Indeed, Iran has tried to

266 sneak out before. Repeatedly. It failed to declare three out of the four facilities in which it has enriched uranium (the Kalaye Electric Company, theFordow Fuel Enrichment Plant near Qom, and the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz) in accordance with IAEA rules.

“Anytime, anywhere” access is often advocated as the solution to detecting secret facilities — in fact, U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, an MIT physicist and one of the U.S. negotiators, said back in April that the United States expected it. The Iran deal doesn’t provide for it, however, as critics, including Sen. Tom Cotton, have noted (rather gleefully, at that).

So, what access provisions does the deal contain?

It does allow the IAEA to go anywhere — including military sites — if there is evidence of undeclared facilities hosting nuclear activities. But, if Iran declined to grant access, a complicated dispute-resolution negotiation process would ensue under which Iran would have to negotiate first with the IAEA and then with the Joint Commission created to oversee implementation of the deal. This process could take up to 24 days. (On day 25, if Iran still refused access, it would be in noncompliance with the agreement, and sanctions could be reintroduced.)

Fortunately for the JCPOA, the refrain of an “anytime, anywhere” access may make for a great sound bite, but its utility is overstated by Cotton and other critics of the agreement. An access delay — even one of 24 days — wouldn’t make any material difference to the IAEA’s ability to detect undeclared nuclear activities.

When IAEA inspectors search for undeclared nuclear activities, they look for tiny traces of nuclear material on surfaces. Fortunately for them, nuclear material lingers. And, modern detection technology is so amazingly effective that minuscule traces of nuclear material can be detected years after nuclear activities took place. Countries have tried to sanitize facilities completely to remove every last trace of nuclear material. Iran did so at the Kalaye Electric Company after its secret nuclear program was revealed in 2002. Syria tried the same thing in 2007 after Israel bombed its plutonium-production reactor at alKibar. In both cases, the IAEA still managed to detect nuclear material. Those findings were critical to persuading the organization’s governing body to make a formal finding of noncompliance against both Iran and Syria.

Perhaps Iran has learned from its past mistakes and could do a better job of cleaning up nuclear material in the future and keeping its program secret. But, what’s clear is that perfect cleanup — if it were possible — would take many months. After just 24 days, the IAEA would have little difficulty detecting the residue from undeclared nuclear activities.

So, here’s the bottom line: The Iran deal doesn’t provide for anytime, anywhere access, but it does facilitate timely access anywhere — and that’s what needed for effective verification.

But wait, as they say on QVC, there’s more!

Not only is anytime, anywhere access not necessary, but it’s also not sufficient. In other words, its inclusion might have placated (a few) critics, but it would not be enough, by itself, for effective verification. After all, it would be physically impossible for the IAEA to inspect every building where Iran could conceivably be hiding clandestine nuclear activities.

267 What the IAEA actually needs is some preliminary evidence about where a secret nuclear facility might be lurking. The much-discussed but little-understoodAdditional Protocol was developed precisely for that purpose, and the JCPOA obliges Iran to accept it, first voluntarily and subsequently on a legally binding basis. But, the JCPOA goes beyond the Additional Protocol in two innovative and important ways.

First, IAEA monitoring will be extended to declared yellowcake (the precursor material to the feedstock for enrichment) and to declared centrifuge components. This measure will deter Iran from diverting this material and equipment to a secret program. Iran could, of course, try to acquire yellowcake or centrifuge components secretly instead — but doing so would create more opportunities for detection.

Second, the deal also creates a “Procurement Working Group” to oversee the import of all equipment and material that either is used or could be used for nuclear purposes. The intelligence communities of the United States and its friends spend considerable resources monitoring Iranian imports. If they discover that Iran has obtained any items that should have been declared but weren’t, they will have acquired clear evidence of secret nuclear activities in Iran. They could hand this evidence to the IAEA, which could conduct inspections to investigate further.

All in all, therefore, the JCPOA provides for some impressive verification provisions to guard against sneak-out. That said, no one should be under any illusions. Detecting small, undeclared centrifuge plants is difficult, and there is no guarantee of success. But, perfection is not the right metric against which to assess a nonproliferation agreement.

The real question is whether sneak-out is more likely with a deal or without one. And here the answer is clear: Sneak-out would be much more likely without a deal, because the IAEA’s powers to detect clandestine facilities would be much more limited.

I realize, of course, that all this talk of timely access, yellowcake monitoring, and procurement working groups isn’t exactly headline-grabbing (though, fortunately, since I’m now happily married, I have ceased trying to use them in chat-up lines). But, ultimately, it’s complex technical considerations that determine whether the JCPOA’s verification regime will prove effective. And, in the final analysis, the JCPOA does significantly enhance the ability of the IAEA to guard against sneak-out, the most likely pathway for Iran to acquire the Bomb. That’s not the only metric for assessing the deal — but it is a bloody important one.

268 The New York Times 16 Jul 2015

WikiLeaks Shows a Saudi Obsession With Iran

By BEN HUBBARD and MAYY EL SHEIKH BEIRUT, Lebanon — For decades, Saudi Arabia has poured billions of its oil dollars into sympathetic Islamic organizations around the world, quietly practicing checkbook diplomacy to advance its agenda.

But a trove of thousands of Saudi documents recently released by WikiLeaks reveals in surprising detail how the government’s goal in recent years was not just to spread its strict version of Sunni Islam — though that was a priority — but also to undermine its primary adversary: Shiite Iran.

The documents from Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry illustrate a near obsession with Iran, with diplomats in Africa, Asia and Europe monitoring Iranian activities in minute detail and top government agencies plotting moves to limit the spread of Shiite Islam.

The scope of this global oil-funded operation helps explain the kingdom’s alarm at the deal reached on Tuesday between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program.

Saudi leaders worry that relief from sanctions will give Iran more money to strengthen its militant proxies. But the documents reveal a depth of competition that is far more comprehensive, with deep roots in the religious ideologies that underpin the two nations.

The documents indicate an extensive apparatus inside the Saudi government dedicated to missionary activity that brings in officials from the Foreign, Interior and Islamic Affairs Ministries, the intelligence service and the office of the king.

Recent initiatives have included putting foreign preachers on the Saudi payroll, building mosques, schools and study centers, and undermining foreign officials and news media deemed threatening to the kingdom’s agenda.

At times, the king got involved, ordering an Iranian television station off the air or granting $1 million to an Islamic association in India.

“We are talking about thousands and thousands of activist organizations and preachers who are in the Saudi sphere of influence because they are directly or indirectly funded by them,” said Usama Hasan, a senior researcher in Islamic studies at the Quilliam Foundation in London. “It has been a huge factor, and the Saudi influence is undeniable.”

While the documents do not show any Saudi support for militant activity, critics argue that the kingdom’s campaign against Shiites — and its promotion of a strict form of Islam — have eroded pluralism in the Muslim world and added to the tensions fueling conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.

The Saudi government has made no secret of its international religious mission, nor of its enmity toward Iran. But it has found the leaks deeply embarrassing and has told its citizens that spreading them is a crime.

It said last month that the documents were related to an electronic attack in March on the Foreign Ministry that was claimed by the Yemeni Cyber Army, a little-known group believed to be backed by Iran. WikiLeaks mentioned the attack when it released the documents.

269 While Saudi Arabia says some documents were fabricated, many contain correct names and phone numbers, and a number of individuals and associations named in them verified their contents when reached by reporters from The New York Times.

The trove mostly covers the period from 2010 to early 2015. It documents religious outreach coordinated by the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, an interministerial body that King Salman dissolved in a government overhaul after his ascension this year.

The Foreign Ministry relayed funding requests to officials in Riyadh, the Interior Ministry and the intelligence agency sometimes vetted potential recipients, the Saudi-supported Muslim World League helped coordinate strategy, and Saudi diplomats across the globe oversaw projects. Together, these officials identified sympathetic Muslim leaders and associations abroad, distributed funds and religious literature produced in Saudi Arabia, trained preachers and gave them salaries to work in their own countries.

One example of this is Sheikh Suhaib Hasan, an Indian Islamic scholar who was educated in Saudi Arabia and worked for the kingdom for four decades in Kenya and in Britain, where he helped found the Islamic Sharia Council, according to a cable from the Saudi Embassy in London whose contents were verified by his son, Mr. Hasan of the Quilliam Foundation.

Clear in many of the diplomatic messages are Saudi fears of Iranian influence and of the spread of Shiite Islam.

The Saudi Embassy in Tehran sent daily reports on local news coverage of Saudi Arabia.

One cable suggested the kingdom improve its image by starting a Persian-language television station and sending pro-Saudi preachers to tour Iran.

Other cables detailed worries that Iran sought to turn Tajikistan into “a center to export its religious revolution and to spread its ideology in the region’s countries.” The Saudi ambassador in Tajikistan suggested that Tajik officials could restrict Iranian support “if other sources of financial support become available, especially from the kingdom.”Photo The fear of Shiite influence extended to countries where Muslims are small minorities, like China, where a Saudi delegation was charged with “suggesting practical programs that can be carried out to confront Shiite expansion in China.” And documents from the Philippines, where only 5 percent of the population is Muslim, included suggested steps to “restrict the Iranian presence.”

In 2012, Saudi ambassadors from across Africa were told to file reports on Iranian activities in their countries. The Saudi ambassador to Uganda soon filed a detailed report on “Shiite expansion” in the mostly Christian country.

A cable from the predominantly Muslim nation of Mali warned that Iran was appealing to the local Muslims, who knew little of “the truth of the extremist, racist Shiite ideology that goes against all other Islamic schools.”

Many of those seeking funds referred to the Saudi-Iranian rivalry in their appeals, the cables showed.

One proposal from the Afghan Foundation in Afghanistan said that it needed funding because such projects “do not receive support from any entities, while others, especially Shiites, get a lot of aid from several places, including Iran.”

Reached in Kabul, the Afghan capital, one of the center’s founders, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, acknowledged that the group had appealed for Saudi funding but said that it had received none.

270

The kingdom has at times interfered directly with Iran’s outreach.

From 2010 to 2013, it tried to force an Iranian Arabic-language satellite television station, Al Alam, off the air. These efforts included issuing royal decrees aimed at stopping the broadcast, pressuring the Riyadh-based satellite provider Arabsat to drop the channel, and using “technical means” to weaken the channel’s signal so it did not reach Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, where Shiites complain of discrimination by their Sunni monarchs.

A Beirut-based manager of Al Alam acknowledged that the channel had faced Saudi pressure since 2010, which had succeeded in getting two Arab satellite providers to drop the channel.

“We are broadcasting normally” via European satellites, the manager said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private company matters. “The only disruption we have is when we broadcast a show about Bahrain.”

Some of the cables reported on seemingly mundane events.

The Saudi Embassy in Sri Lanka reported a meeting between the Iranian ambassador and a group of religious scholars, noting that it began at 7:30 p.m.Elsewhere, the kingdom intervened against foreign officials it perceived as threats.

After the president of the International Islamic University of Islamabad in Pakistan, Mumtaz Ahmad, invited the Iranian ambassador to a cultural week on campus, the Saudi Embassy called Mr. Ahmad to express “its surprise,” according to one cable, suggesting that he invite the wife of the Saudi ambassador instead.

Mr. Ahmad refused to disinvite the Iranian ambassador, so Saudi diplomats suggested having Suliman Aba al-Khail, a Saudi academic with a position in the university’s administration, convene a board meeting and “choose a president for the university who is consistent with our orientation,” the cable said.

A faculty member at the university said that Mr. Ahmad, a political science professor with a doctorate from the University of Chicago, had clashed with conservative faculty members for trying to reduce Saudi influence on campus.

After Mr. Ahmad resigned as president in 2012, the Saudi ambassador worked with the president of Pakistan at the time, Asif Ali Zardari, to have a Saudi citizen named as university president, according to the faculty member.

“In the end they won,” said the faculty member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger his employer.

Saudi Arabia has long invested in training foreign preachers, providing scholarships to international Muslim students to study Shariah at Saudi universities. The documents show that the kingdom gives some of them government salaries to work in their home countries. The cables named 14 new preachers to be employed in Guinea and said contracts had been signed with 12 others in Tajikistan.

Another cable said the Foreign Ministry was studying a request from an Islamic association near the Iranian border in Afghanistan to pay local preachers to spread Sunni Islam.

Some of the costliest projects were in India, which Saudi Arabia sees as a sectarian battleground.

271

Cables indicated that $266,000 had been granted to an Islamic association to open a nursing college; $133,000 had been used for an Islamic conference; and another grant went to a vocational training center for girls.

King Abdullah, who died in January, signed off on a $1 million gift to the Khaja Education Society, and a smaller amount went to a medical college run by Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen.

A member of the first group, Janab Moazam, confirmed that it had been granted the money and said that half had already been delivered. An official from the second group, Abdullah Koya Madani, confirmed that the group had received Saudi funding.

Even humanitarian relief is sometimes sectarian. In 2011, the Saudi foreign minister requested aid for flood victims in Thailand, noting that “it will have a positive impact on Muslims in Thailand and will restrict the Iranian government in expanding its Shiite influence.”

Elsewhere, Saudi Arabia sees its religious work as a way to improve its reputation. The Saudi ambassador to Hungary requested $54,000 per year for an Islamic association as well as for authorization to found a cultural center. One cable said such aid would undermine extremism and “play a positive role in portraying the beautiful and moderate image of the kingdom.”

272 The Atlantic 16 Jul 2015

Was the Iran Deal Worth It? Obama has secured an admirable agreement, but at tremendous cost.

Shadi Hamid I’ve long wanted to support a deal with Iran. Now that an agreement has been struck, I do. But I do so with major reservations. I can’t help feeling that the United States has paid a tremendous cost for what can only be described as a narrow—if understandable— focus on the minutia of Iran’s nuclear program, including extremely technical questions about, for example, centrifuges. I’ve found it hard to relate to this sort of discussion, because I’ve never quite seen Iran’s nuclear capability as the issue. Iran’s nuclear program mattered of course, but it mattered more because of the kind of regional actor Iran happened to be (if Iran was a U.S. ally and a democracy, we’d be having a different conversation). America’s Gulf allies, for all their faults, recognized this. What worried them most was Iran’s destabilizing role in the region. And while they exaggerated Iran’s meddling, while conveniently eliding their own, they were right to view Iran as a fundamentally negative force in places like Syria and Lebanon.

The Obama administration repeatedly underscored that the negotiations weren’t about Iran’s other activities in the region: They were about the nuclear program. This, I gathered, was intended to reassure, but its effect was the opposite. Sure, any Iran deal depended on “dissociating” the nuclear issue from everything else, but the problem was that everything else mattered a whole lot, and perhaps just as much. To the extent that a successful deal—and keeping the Europeans on board—depended on “siloing” issues, the drawbacks of a deal were built into the process. These starting assumptions did not start with Barack Obama, but with George W. Bush, a fact all too often ignored.

Administrations can, of course, “walk and chew gum at the same time,” but that neglects the interrelated nature of Middle East conflicts. The boutique case-by-case approach to the region that Obama has championed sounds smart and nuanced in theory—a welcome respite from Bush’s self-consciously grandiose frameworks—but if the Arab Spring underscored anything, it’s that politics are rarely only local. In nearly every major crisis and conflict—whether in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, or Bahrain—external actors with regional ambitions have played an outsized, even decisive role.

It’s difficult to believe in the durability of Egyptian authoritarianism without understanding how Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates view the Muslim Brotherhood as a transnational and not just a local threat. In Iraq, Iran seems like a potential (or actual) partner in the war on ISIS, until you realize that Iran is the determined patron of the Syrian regime, whose brutality has fueled ISIS’s rise to prominence. Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s “Iraq-first” strategy against ISIS seems reasonable, until you realize that America’s opponents treat Iraq and Syria as a combined theater, and that the fact that the United States doesn’t puts it at a profound disadvantage. In short, the belief that the U.S. government can “silo” the Iranian nuclear issue, or even Iran, suggests a detachment from the region’s realities as they’re actually lived.

It is fairly easy to actually walk and chew gum at the same time. Doing one doesn’t affect the other, which makes it an inapt metaphor for policymaking. The Obama administration’s decision to focus on Iran’s nuclear program and, to a lesser extent, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict meant that U.S. officials could, and would, do less of other things, and do them less well. Political capital and bandwidth are finite resources.

Policymaking is about deciding what to prioritize, particularly when the president and a

273 small coterie of close advisors are pulled in a seemingly endless number of competing directions.

When it comes to allies—especially ones that become nervous rather quickly and act rashly when nervous—you can afford to alienate them, but only up to a point. So you pick your battles. Obama administration officials wanted the Saudis to limit their public criticism of the Iran talks and go along with them, however grudgingly. These officials knew this was asking a lot, which made it difficult to make other big asks on, say, putting pressure on the Sisi regime in Egypt to be even just a tiny bit less repressive. It is perhaps in Yemen where the most damage has been done. (And this isn’t just about the country’s civil war. Beginning in 2011, the United States outsourced its Yemen policy to Saudi Arabia, which didn’t work so well. To correct this, the U.S. outsourced its Yemen policy to Saudi Arabia.)

It’s no secret that America’s Gulf allies feel the U.S. hasn’t done nearly enough to counter Iran’s ambitions in the region. (The fact that Obama seems to hold out hope that a deal could help rehabilitate Iran both regionally and internationally doesn’t help matters.) Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries opted to launch a destructive intervention in Yemen, at tremendous human cost, in part because of fears of U.S. disengagement and nervousness over U.S. policy toward Iran. As Ken Pollack recently testified to Congress: “In private, [Gulf Cooperation Council] officials make no bones in saying that they felt compelled to [intervene in Yemen] because the United States was embracing Iran rather than deterring or defeating it.” U.S. officials, despite having major qualms about the intervention, had little interest in picking a fight with Saudi Arabia over Yemen, when they were already expending their political capital to reassure the Saudis about the Iran negotiations.

Then there’s Syria. It was clear from the start of that country’s uprising that Obama did, in fact, have a clear objective: minimizing U.S. involvement as much as possible. But there are other places, such as Iraq, where the Obama administration was pulled back despite (or, more likely, because of) its best efforts. The administration’s unwillingness to rethink its Syria strategy in any serious way was reinforced by the momentum of the Iran negotiations. Why potentially provoke a major international incident when progress was being made on Iran’s nuclear program? Why even take the chance with so much at stake? “Linkage,” moreover, was built into the policy process. As the journalist Josh Rogin noted, “All Syria proposals at State must go through the office of the undersecretary for political affairs, Wendy Sherman, who is also the administration’s lead negotiator over a nuclear deal with Iran.”

On the specifics of the deal, I tend to think, like many, that the U.S. made too many concessions without getting enough in return. According to The New York Times, in the final days of talks, a television anchor on a hardline Iranian channelsaid, “The fact is, Obama needs this deal much more than we do.” She went on: “The American president needs a victory, and only a deal with Iran can give him that. They have retreated on several issues and compromised on their own red lines.” Whether or not this perception is fair, it’s a perception nonetheless, and perceptions drive behavior.

Others have noted that Iran, due to its deteriorating economy, needed a dealmore than the United States did. This is almost certainly true. But while Iran may have needed it more, the U.S. wanted it more—or, at the very least, seemed like it did. Some of this, to be fair, was outside America’s control. Well before the talks concluded, a perception had already solidified throughout the region based on six years of observing the Obama administration’s handling of various crises, most notably its backing down from stated “red lines” in Syria. Allies, such as Egypt, and enemies, such as Syria, have grown confident that the United States will blink first in a staring contest, in part because the

274 U.S. usually does. The administration has had a tendency to misuse and/or underestimate its leveragein some of its most important bilateral relationships.

There was a related asymmetry during the negotiations. As Pollack writes, “I don’t think that Iran values a nuclear deal as much as it does its positions in these various countries.” With the United States, it was the reverse: The Obama administration cared less about Iran’s positions in various countries and more about its nuclear program. This, too, was built into the talks.

Some are troubled that most people had strong opinions about the deal before reading the actual text of the agreement. One certainly hopes that legislators will eventually read at least some of it. But the specifics of the deal aren’t, ultimately, as important as the broader issues and implications, and those aren’t anywhere to be found in the text.

Here, I tend to agree with my colleague Jeremy Shapiro whoargued in April that that the devil wasn’t in the details. The details “really don’t matter.” He goes on: “At heart, this is a fight over what to do about Iran’s challenge to U.S. leadership in the Middle East and the threat that Iranian geopolitical ambitions pose to U.S. allies.”

In other words, your position on the Iran deal is likely to depend on how you view the Middle East and America’s role in it more broadly. If you see the Syrian civil war as a, or even the, core regional conflict, then you’re probably worried about the $100 billion in potential sanctions relief for Iran. Even if we assume that Iran chooses butter over guns (as U.S. officials hope) and uses, say, only 3 percent of that total, it will have $3 billion more to prop up the Syrian regime and other regional allies and proxies. Your interpretation of the agreement also depends on your starting assumptions about the nature of the Iranian regime. Are Iranian leaders “rational,” and do you think it matters whether “moderates,” such as President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, are empowered over their “hardline” counterparts?

One other factor has pushed me to be more supportive of the Iran deal than I expected to be. It’s striking how little discussion there has been about whatIranians think and want. As small-d democrats, Americans should always at least take into account public opinion in other countries. Presumably, Iranians know their country better than American politicians do. According to opinion polls, a majority of Iranians favor a deal.

Many of us saw the pictures of ordinary Iranians celebrating the framework agreement in April. This time around, the regime has been more careful, closing off public spaces, with hardliners warning of the dangers of Iran deal-induced “happiness.” Importantly, as Nader Hashemi notes, “some of the most vociferous defenders of a nuclear deal with the West are Iranian civil society and human rights activists.” It makes little sense for Americans to say that an Iran deal will make progress on human rights in the Islamic Republic less likely, when Iran’s own human-rights activists seem to think the opposite.

In a 2014 survey of 22 leading human-rights activists, support for ongoing negotiations was “unanimous,” while over half believed that a deal would lead to a significant improvement in human rights in Iran. Of course, they could be wrong, but it’s unwise to bet on that.

The link between a deal and the empowerment of Iranian reformers, as intuitive as it might seem, is far from guaranteed. As many have noted, conservatives may be just as likely to gain from a deal for any number of reasons. What seems inescapable, however, is that the failure of negotiations would have been a major—perhaps even decisive—loss for Iran’s reformist trend. President Rouhani, who buoyed expectations with his comefrom-behind election victory two years ago, and pledged to expand personal freedoms while broadening space for civil society, has been losing popularity and goodwill. The economy can sputter along as it has been, but without sanctions relief Rouhani’s hands are tied. His raison d’etre, then, depends on a successful deal. A failed deal would likely bring more of the same: conservatives in control and dominating the country’s politics.

275 Now, at least, the possibility of a different direction exists, even if many obstacles to substantive reforms remain.

Taking these various, and very different, factors into account, the deal is, on balance, “good,” but only if we read the agreement in a vacuum. I don’t think an Iran nuclear deal deserved the near-obsessive focus it received from this administration. Too much was subsumed and compromised due to the desire for a deal, an administration priority that took precedence over nearly everything else. Now that a deal has been concluded, U.S. officials may have more room to maneuver. The implementation of the deal will still require constant attention from the Obama administration, to say nothing of the domestic political fight that is still to come. But perhaps, at some point, the U.S. government will be able to act and think beyond Iran’s nuclear program and refocus attention on the broader issues and conflicts in which Iran plays a major role. The United States will now come under pressure to “compensate” (or overcompensate, depending on your perspective) for the nuclear accord. It will need to reassure skeptical Gulf allies that it will do more to counter Iran’s regional designs. I agree with Ken Pollack that the best place to do this is probably in Syria. As he writes, “In the aftermath of an Iranian nuclear deal, finally executing the Administration’s proclaimed strategy for Syria, may be the best and only way to regain control over the dangerous confrontation escalating between Iran and America’s Arab allies.”

Now that Obama’s legacy, however controversial, is secure (both on domestic and foreign policy), he can afford to do the very things he wasn’t willing to do when Iran negotiations were his overwhelming focus. That doesn’t mean he will do them, but that’s where, I hope, the debate over a post-Iran deal Middle East can now turn.

276 TIME Magazine 16 Jul 2015

Why the Iran Deal Is a Risk Worth Taking Joe Klein I first went to Iran in December 2001. It was pretty strange: a well-educated, middleclass police state. Many women dressed in black chadors in those days. They would not look at, talk to or shake the hand of a stranger. Things were changing, though. I met with a group of young women in a coffeehouse, college students who wore their headscarves back, so their hair could show–a defiant political statement. They were totally hip to American youth culture; their parents all had satellite dishes. At the end, I acknowledged that we couldn’t shake hands, but … “No, we want to shake hands,” said one of the women. And we did. It was very moving.

I went back in 2009, for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rigged re-election, and was chased through the streets by the religious police, the Basij, who were riding on motorbikes and swinging truncheons. I saw pro-democracy mullahs getting their heads cracked open by these thugs. But my strongest memory was, once again, of women–this time, older and more religious women on the south (poorer) side of town. Most of them were still in full chador, but their behavior had changed drastically. They were talking to me, enthusiastically, as they came out of a polling station, dragging their silent husbands along. They were not just shaking my hand, but grabbing my arm to make a point, cracking jokes–the Iranians have a lovely ironic sensibility–guffawing. When the police came over to investigate what I was doing there, the women shooed them away. This was, clearly, an evolving and utterly compelling place.

I tell these stories–and there are many more–because in all the frantic argument bound to come over the Iran nuclear deal, there is a tendency to focus on the hard guys–the Supreme Leader, the Revolutionary Guards, the Hizballah terrorists supported by Iran– and it’s easy to overlook the significant role played by the proud, sophisticated and proAmerican Iranian people’s intense desire to rejoin the world. It was their vote that brought the Hassan Rouhani–Mohammad Javad Zarif negotiating team into (limited) power.

Much of the opposition to this deal will come from Benjamin Netanyahu and his neoconservative friends. But Bibi is an unreliable narrator. He tells gullible American visitors, privately, that as soon as the Supreme Leader gets the bomb, he’s going to launch on Israel. “That’s what he tells all the Americans,” a leader of the Israeli intelligence community told me, laughing at the brazen idiocy of it–the idea that the regime would invite the reciprocal incineration of Tehran. But in May, I heard Senator Lindsey Graham use the same line at the Iowa Republican state dinner. I approached him later, and Graham admitted that what he was really worried about was Iran slipping

277 nuclear technology to terrorist groups like Hizballah. That is a real worry–and it would be nice if the coming conversation took place in the realm of real worries.

There are risks to this deal, obviously. If the Iranians haven’t negotiated in good faith, it won’t be hard for them to cheat. Then again, if the Iranians are found to be cheating egregiously, it won’t be hard for the U.S. to do what the Israelis and neoconservatives have wanted us to do all along–obliterate their nuclear facilities.

But those are worst-case scenarios. And while it’s important to be vigilant, it is also important to be realistic. The reality is that the CIA believes that any plans Iran had to build a nuclear weapon were abandoned in 2003, when the regime saw the U.S. overrun Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction and was afraid Iran might be next. The CIA also believes that the Iranian hierarchy is tough but rational, and certainly not suicidal. Iran has behaved in a brutally stupid manner toward its former ally Israel, but it also has real enemies. The growing war between Sunnis and Shi’ites will define the region for the foreseeable future–and Iran has, at this perilous moment, chosen to forgo the most effective deterrent against its Sunni foes, including its unstable Pakistani neighbors, who have a nuclear arsenal and a history of radical coups.

In the coming months, we’ll undoubtedly be hearing a lot more about the risks of this deal than about the potential rewards. That’s both human nature and political-season demagoguery. A sudden alliance with Iran seems unlikely, but we do have common interests, and the U.S. will be stronger strategically because of this deal, no longer at the mercy of Sunni “allies,” who funded al-Qaeda, armed the Taliban and provided safe harbor for Osama bin Laden.

Yes, the Iran deal is risky. But we have been taking all sorts of bellicose risks since Sept.

11, 2001. Almost all of our military ventures have failed. So many lives have been lost.

It’s time, finally, to take a risk for peace.

278 The New York Times 16 Jul 2015

The Door to Iran Opens Roger Cohen Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel calls it a “historic mistake” that permits Iran “a sure path to nuclear weapons.” A minister in his government, unable to resist outrageous hyperbole, calls it “one of the darkest days in world history.” Jeb Bush, doing the tired Chamberlain-Obama number, dismisses it as “appeasement.”

So what do the critics, from Republican presidential hopefuls to the Israeli government, seek in place of the deal with Iran that verifiably blocks Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon for at least the next 10 to 15 years? Presumably, they want what would have happened if negotiations had collapsed. That would be renewed war talk as an unconstrained Iran installs sophisticated centrifuges, its stockpile of enriched uranium grows, Russia and China abandon the sanctions regime, moderates in Iran like Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are sidelined, and a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic draws closer.

To favor such peril, when a constructive alternative exists that engages one of the most highly educated societies in the Middle East, amounts to foolishness dressed up as machismo.

The Iran nuclear deal is not perfect, nor was it ever intended to address the long list of American-Iranian grievances, which will persist. It must be judged on what it set out to do — stop Iran going nuclear — not on whether Iran has a likeable regime (it does not) or does bad things (it does). President Obama did not set out to change Iran but he has created a framework that, over a decade, might.

If implemented, the agreement constitutes the most remarkable American diplomatic achievement since the Dayton Accords put an end to the Bosnian war two decades ago.

It increases the distance between Iran and a bomb as it reduces the distance between Iran and the world. It makes the Middle East less dangerous by forestalling proliferation.

In a cacophonous age of short-termism, it offers a lesson of stubborn leadership in pursuit of a long-term goal.

For many years, before Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry embarked on their diplomacy, Iran had been increasing its operating centrifuges and the size and enrichment level of its uranium stockpile. Now, the number of centrifuges is to be slashed by two-thirds to 5,060; the stockpile is to be all but eliminated; enrichment levels are capped at 3.7 percent, a long way from bomb grade; the potential route to weapons-grade plutonium at Arak is disabled; international inspection is redoubled and, in Obama’s words, will extend “where necessary,” “when necessary.” In return, Iran gets the phased elimination of most sanctions, the end to its pariah status, and a windfall that will alleviate its economic crisis.

And this is “one of the darkest days in world history”? No, it is a moment for guarded hope.

Iran, at 36 years from its theocratic revolution, is a repressive but pragmatic power under an aging leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose conduct in the talks saw his antiAmerican instincts counterbalanced by understanding of a reform imperative. Iran is finely poised between a tough old guard forged in revolution and its aspirational, Westward-looking youth. A decade is a long time in societies in transition. It is far better to have deep American-Iranian differences — over Hezbollah, over Syria, over regional

279 Shiite irredentism, over Iran’s vile anti-Israel outbursts — addressed through dialogue rather than have Iran do its worst as pariah.

This accord has the merit of condemning the United States and Tehran to a relationship — however hostile — over the next 15 years. The Middle East, several of its states irremediably fractured, needs a new security framework. This will take years. But to imagine it could ever be fashioned without Iran’s involvement is fantasy. Meanwhile, the West and Iran have a common enemy: the medieval slaughterers of Islamic State.

Whether concerted action will result from a shared objective is unclear, but the possibility is there.

Many possibilities have been opened by this accord. They include the doomsayers’ vision of a dissembling, newly solvent Iran at work to subversive, anti-American ends. Strict verification is imperative. But Congress should think twice before the feel-good, reckless adoption of a resolution condemning a deal that advances American interests. Obama would veto it, and almost certainly has the votes to resist an override, but this would be a regrettable way for the nation to assume such a ground-shifting agreement. The president is right to invoke the bold accords of past presidents — both Republicans — with hostile regimes in Beijing and Moscow. Neither was risk-free. Both proved transformative — not only of bilateral relations but the entire world.

Israel, too, should ask the hard questions rather than dismiss a deal that puts Iran much further from a bomb, empowers Iranian reformists, locks in American-Iranian dialogue and will be leveraged by Netanyahu to secure more advanced American weapons systems. The darkest days in history for the Jewish people were of an altogether different order. They should never be trivialized.

280 The New Yorker 16 Jul 2015

Twenty-Five Years After Another Gulf War

BY JEFFREY FRANK When Jeb Bush, not long ago, kept mangling his answers after being asked whether, knowing what we know now, he would do what his brother George did when he launched the ruinous Second Gulf War, in March, 2003, he eventually said that he would not, but also that he didn’t want to “get back into hypotheticals.”

Hypothetical questions can be useful, though, and the answers often depend not only upon what you’re asked but when you’re asked. For instance, knowing what we know now, should Jeb’s father, the first President Bush, have launchedhis Gulf War, in 1991?

Operation Desert Storm succeeded in its limited goal—to drive the Iraqis out of neighboring Kuwait, which they had invaded, on August 2, 1990—a quarter century ago.

But it also embroiled the United States and participating allies in a conflict that might someday be seen as the start of a baffling, destructive regional war that still continues— and that might have been avoided with better communication. You do not have to agree with Senator Rand Paul’s assertion that Republican hawks “created” the Islamic State to see a link between American interventions in the Middle East and the chaos that followed. For that matter, you do not have to agree that the culpable hawks belong only to the Republican Party.

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler revisited the run-up to the First Gulf War a few years ago, and followed a trail of mixed signals that could be traced, in reverse sequence, from April C. Glaspie, the United States Ambassador to Iraq, to James A. Baker III, the Secretary of State, to George H. W. Bush. Glaspie, a career Foreign Service officer, was in Baghdad when Iraqi forces entered Kuwait. A week earlier, when it looked as if an incursion was imminent, she spent two hours with Saddam Hussein, at the Presidential Palace, where she urged restraint but never quite said that the United States would use military force to stop him. Before the fighting began, the Iraqi government released what they claimed was a transcript of their conversation, and which Glaspie has always maintained was doctored: Glaspie: I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south.

Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threats against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship—not confrontation—regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait’s borders?

Hussein: As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. When we meet and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.

According to the Iraqi account of the conversation, when Glaspie asked, “What solutions would be acceptable?” Saddam talked about the suicidal 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, during which an estimated half-million people died, and insisted that Iraq, its economy wrecked by the war, had legitimate territorial claims on Kuwait and its oil. When Saddam asked, “What is the United States’ opinion on this?,” Glaspie replied, “We have no opinion on

281 your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”

In 1991, in conversations with members of Senate and House foreign-affairs committees, Glaspie said that what she’d actually told Hussein was to “keep your hands off this country,” and that the Iraqi transcript included only “one part of my sentence.

The other part of my sentence was, ‘but we insist that you settle your disputes with Kuwait nonviolently.’ And he told me he would do so.” But Representative Lee Hamilton asked a key question: “Did you ever tell Saddam Hussein, ‘Mr. President, if you go across that line into Kuwait, we’re going to fight’?” Glaspie replied, “No, I did not.” Still, the suggestion that the United States may have even unintentionally green-lighted Saddam’s war became an embarrassment for Glaspie, and pretty much ended any chance for another diplomatic posting. (She retired from the Foreign Service a few years later.) Kessler’s story in the Post was prompted by a rare interview that Glaspie gave, in 2008, to Randa Takieddine of the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat. In it, she maintained that parts of the transcript of her meeting with Saddam were “invented by Tarek Aziz,” Iraq’s former Minister of Information, who died this past June.

As Kessler noted, though, a cable sent by Glaspie to the State Department after seeing Saddam suggested that she’d been more conciliatory than she recalled. Her dispatch, declassified after efforts by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (and later published by Wikileaks), described Saddam’s manner as “cordial, reasonable, and even warm,” and said she had told Saddam that President Bush had “instructed her to broaden and deepen our relations with Iraq.” Saddam, she wrote, knew that America could use “planes and rockets and hurt Iraq deeply,” and had asked that the United States “not force Iraq to the point of humiliation”; his “emphasis that he wants peaceful settlement is surely sincere (Iraqis are sick of war), but the terms sound difficult to achieve.”

In the 2008 interview, Glaspie sounded eager to put it all behind her. “It is over,” she said. “Nobody wants to take the blame. I am quite happy to take the blame. Perhaps I was not able to make Saddam believe that we would do what we said we would do, but in all honesty, I don’t think anybody in the world could have persuaded him.” Actually, no one ought to blame Glaspie for what followed. Transcripts and cables tell part of the story, but far from all of it. The roles played by Secretary of State Baker and the President were of considerably more consequence than that of their Ambassador, though neither Baker nor Bush suffered the scrutiny and scorn that was directed toward Glaspie.

(When she was asked if “all this blame from Baker and Washington” was unfair, she replied that “President Bush was superb…. He was extremely thoughtful, extremely knowledgeable, extremely worried as he should have been.” The lack of a similar comment about Baker seems notable.)

Glaspie didn’t ask if, knowing what we know now, the nation’s leaders should have given more thought to the idea that the task in the father-and-son Gulf Wars was greater than a massive military operation against a third-rate power. She said as much when she told Al-Hayat that “There has to be from the West [a] really deeper understanding than I have seen of the profundity of the animosities in Iraq.” She added, “Past is past; either we learn from it or we don’t.”

The nuclear deal between Iran and Western powers, for all the questions it’s bound to face, might be viewed in that light: that something was learned from America’s quarter century in the Middle East and that, as President Obama said, it’s “an opportunity to move in a new direction.” Perhaps, a quarter century from now, someone will ask whether another long, corrosive Mideast war was avoided by all the bickering, posturing, and, in the end, essential faith among the negotiators in Vienna that diplomacy is something other than the exchange of empty phrases. With luck, the answer will be that it was.

282 LobeLog/foreign policy 17 Jul 2015

Iran’s Sunni Neighbors Seem Unconcerned About Nuclear Program

by Jim Lobe For all the talk about Iranian imperialism and the Sunni-Shia divide throughout the Middle East, the predominantly Sunni Muslim publics of at least some of Iran’s neighbors don’t seem too concerned about Tehran’s nuclear program.

That is the inescapable conclusion of the most recently released component of the Pew Research Center’s giant Global Attitudes Project poll, which asked their 45,000-plus respondents in 40 different countries to choose which, among seven regional and global challenges, they were “very concerned” about. The challenges included global climate change, global economic stability, the Islamic State (ISIS or IS), Iran’s nuclear program, cyber attacks, tensions with Russia, and territorial disputes with China. The survey was carried out this spring.

Of all 40 countries covered by the survey, Israel was the only one where more respondents (53%) said they were “very concerned” about Iran’s nuclear program than any other issue, although nearly as many (44%) of the Israeli respondents named IS. But Iran didn’t rank nearly as high in the predominantly Sunni Muslim countries in Iran’s neighborhood—Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories.

(Granted, the poll didn’t cover any of the Gulf states, notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE where anti-Iranian and anti-Shia sentiment is reportedly most pervasive.)

In Turkey—which, according to the Israel lobby and other foes of the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, will be forced into an arms or nuclear race with Tehran as a result of the agreement—a mere 22% of respondents said they were “very concerned” about Iran’s nuclear program. Respondents there cited climate change (35%), economic instability and IS (33% each) as greater concerns. In Jordan, whose King Abdullah was the first to warn about a menacing Iran-led “Shia crescent” back in 2004, the results were even more striking. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (62%) said they were “very concerned” about IS. Another 39% cited economic instability (39%) and climate change (36%) as the most worrisome issues. Iran’s nuclear program ranked fourth at 29%.

Significantly, IS also topped the list of concerns in Lebanon (84%) and Palestine (54%) where more respondents also cited both climate change and the global economy than Iran’s nuclear program. As for Pakistan, a nuclear power that, after all, shares a long border with Iran, only nine percent of respondents chose Tehran’s nuclear program as something they were “very concerned” about, the lowest percentage for any country except China (8%). Climate change (25%), territorial disputes with China (18%), IS, and cyber attacks (14% each) all evoked more concern there.

283 As for European countries—the ones that the Bush administration wanted to protect from Iran’s purported nuclear ambitions by building anti-missile systems along their peripheries—very strong majorities, ranging from 66% (UK) to 77% (Spain), chose IS as one issue they were “very concerned” about. Although British respondents cited Iran’s nuclear program as their second biggest worry (41%), the Germans rated it third (39%), the Italians (44%) and Spanish (52%) fourth, and the French (43%) fifth. In most of the last four cases, climate change and the economy came in ahead of Iran.

In the U.S., Iran (62%) came in second place behind IS (68%). This gap may widen over the next few days due both to the successful conclusion of the P5+1 negotiations— although the tidal wave of anti-deal propaganda has hardly begun to build, let alone crest—and IS’s efforts to take credit for Thursday’s murders of four Marines in Chattanooga.

As you will note from the table below (copied and pasted from the Pew report), a higher percentage of U.S. respondents said they were “very concerned” about Iran than those in all other countries, including Israel. The same goes for cyber attacks (59%).

As you might expect, the most common concern among Polish and Ukrainian respondents was tensions with Russia. Similarly, territorial disputes with China figured high among most other Asian nations, although only in Vietnam did the most people (60%) say they were “very concerned.” Fifty-two percent and 56% percent in Japan and the Philippines, respectively, cited territorial disputes with China as issues about which they were “very concerned.” But in neither case was China the most prevalent concern.

Nearly three out of four (72%) Filipino respondents cited climate change, and the same percentage of Japanese respondents cited IS (no doubt due in major part to the videotaped beheadings of two Japanese citizens in late January).

Overall, publics in 19 of 40 nations cited climate change as their biggest worry, including respondents in seven of nine sub-Saharan African countries and all six of the Latin American countries surveyed by Pew. Climate change was also the most commonly voiced concern in India and China, in addition to Turkey, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

Here’s Pew’s table:

ISIS

Iran’s nuclear program

Cyberattacks

Tensions with Russia

Territorial disputes with China

51%

68%

62%

59%

43%

30%

45%

32%

58%

43%

39%

35%

19%

48%

49%

71%

43%

47%

41%

16%

Country

Global climate change

Global economic instability

U.S.

42%

Canada France

284

ISIS

Iran’s nuclear program

Cyberattacks

Tensions with Russia

Territorial disputes with China

26%

70%

39%

39%

40%

17%

45%

48%

69%

44%

25%

27%

17%

Poland

14%

26%

29%

26%

22%

44%

11%

Spain

59%

63%

77%

52%

35%

39%

20%

U.K.

38%

32%

66%

41%

34%

41%

16%

Russia

22%

43%

18%

15%

14%

*

8%

Ukraine

20%

35%

9%

11%

4%

62%

4%

Turkey

35%

33%

33%

22%

22%

19%

14%

Jordan

36%

39%

62%

29%

26%

18%

16%

Lebanon

44%

39%

84%

30%

17%

18%

16%

Palest. ter.

33%

32%

54%

17%

24%

12%

10%

Israel

14%

28%

44%

53%

18%

6%

3%

Australia

37%

32%

69%

38%

37%

31%

17%

China

19%

16%

9%

8%

12%

9%

*

India

73%

49%

41%

28%

45%

30%

38%

Indonesia

42%

41%

65%

29%

22%

15%

11%

Japan

42%

30%

72%

39%

39%

32%

52%

Malaysia

37%

37%

21%

11%

20%

9%

12%

Pakistan

25%

6%

14%

9%

14%

7%

18%

Philippines

72%

52%

49%

47%

49%

38%

56%

South Korea

40%

31%

75%

41%

55%

24%

31%

Vietnam

58%

37%

30%

22%

32%

19%

60%

Country

Global climate change

Global economic instability

Germany

34%

Italy

285

ISIS

Iran’s nuclear program

Cyberattacks

Tensions with Russia

Territorial disputes with China

49%

34%

31%

28%

22%

18%

75%

60%

46%

49%

47%

33%

28%

Chile

62%

39%

31%

31%

22%

15%

15%

Mexico

54%

46%

23%

28%

30%

16%

14%

Peru

75%

58%

35%

42%

35%

26%

27%

Venezuela

60%

60%

28%

35%

38%

22%

24%

Burkina Faso

79%

50%

41%

28%

25%

17%

15%

Ethiopia

59%

50%

38%

23%

28%

20%

20%

Ghana

71%

67%

46%

34%

42%

30%

29%

Kenya

58%

44%

35%

29%

35%

19%

20%

Nigeria

65%

48%

36%

24%

29%

25%

24%

Senegal

51%

59%

35%

33%

37%

20%

16%

South Africa

47%

33%

26%

25%

28%

18%

22%

Tanzania

49%

56%

51%

37%

46%

30%

26%

Uganda

74%

62%

39%

33%

30%

24%

23%

Country

Global climate change

Global economic instability

Argentina

57%

Brazil

286 The Wall Street Journal 17 Jul 2015

The U.S. Is Still Iran’s Great Satan Even with the Iran nuclear deal, the anti-Americanism of the Islamic regime runs deep

By Farnaz Fassihi

Three days before Iran and world powers announced a nuclear deal, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with university students at his official residence. A video of the event on Mr. Khamenei’s website shows male students sitting cross-legged at the center of the floor and female students, covered from head to toe in black cloth, on the side.

One student asked Mr. Khamenei what would become of Iran’s stance against

estekbar—the Persian word for arrogance—after the deal was signed?

“Do you think our battle with

estekbar will ever rest? This is an essence of the

revolution. It’s one of our principal tasks,” replied Mr. Khamenei, who promptly clarified that by “arrogance,” he meant “America.” Changing course, he told the students, would be sacrilegious.

As the historic nuclear deal is discussed in the weeks ahead, the debate will return repeatedly to a crucial underlying question: Is there any real prospect for Iran and the U.S. to move toward cooperation and diplomatic relations?

Inside and outside Iran, observers are predicting that trade will naturally lead to the reopening of embassies in Tehran and Washington. “The nuclear deal is the beginning of the end for ‘Death to America’ ” wrote Sadegh Zibakalam, a political analyst based in Tehran, on his Facebook page this week.

But such predictions are premature. They overlook how central the hatred of the U.S. has been to the Islamic Republic’s identity and ideology. Anti-Americanism allows Iran to claim leadership among all Muslims, even Sunnis, and it is the core of its policies in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

287

“Anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric is the only way that a Shiite regime can claim any legitimacy and hope to coalesce Shiites and less radical Sunnis,” said Abbas Milani, a historian and director of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University.

There are reformist factions in Iran that genuinely support a shift of policy toward the U.S. and have called for putting an end to the practice of burning the American flag and calling for the demise of the U.S. at public gatherings.

The majority of the Iranian public—60% of the 75 million population is under 35—is out of sync with its government views of the U.S., as evident in the nationwide celebration in the wake of the nuclear deal. But these popular currents have very little traction, and Mr. Khamenei has the last word in all state matters and foreign policy.

The roots of Iranian animosity toward the U.S. predate the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

In the early 1950s, the country’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, fought Britain and its oil company, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, for control over Iran’s oil assets. He succeeded in nationalizing the oil industry and called for independence from foreign powers.

Britain asked for the Eisenhower administration’s help to oust Mosaddegh, and in 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence orchestrated a coup.

Mosaddegh was toppled, and Shah Mohamad Reza Pahlavi was reinstated on the throne.

He ruled for 26 years—a staunch ally of the West but as a despised dictator at home.

For Iran’s Islamists, communists and secular pro-democracy groups, the coup against Mosaddegh laid the foundation for resentment and discontent. As early as 1963, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, the founding father of the Islamic revolution, was branding the shah a “slave to Americans.”

The 1979 revolution caught the world by surprise. Iran had been an ally of the U.S., a friend of Israel, a secular nation seemingly devoted to Western ideals. At a state dinner in Tehran in December 1977, President Jimmy Carter toasted his host country as “an island of stability.”

288

When Mr. Khomeini returned to Iran from exile in 1979, the first order of the day was consolidating power and eliminating revolutionary rivals from non-Islamic factions. The cleric also institutionalized anti-Americanism, coining the term “Great Satan” to refer to the U.S. Anti-Americanism was also on the rise in the Arab world in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israel war, and Mr. Khomeini capitalized on these sentiments. By offering a counternarrative, Iran aimed to export its revolution and widen its influence in the Muslim world.

“Then and now, Iran wants to be the No. 1 power in the region, and it does so by positioning itself as the No. 1 challenger of the U.S.,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes normalizing ties between Iran and the U.S. Diplomatic ties between Iran and U.S. were severed when revolutionary students climbed the walls of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and took American diplomats and staff hostage for 444 days. The embassy is now a museum labeled “den of spies,” its walls painted with graffiti that depicts the Statue of Liberty as a skeleton and the American flag as a machine gun.

The recent history of relations between Iran and the U.S. is filled with points of contentions and missed opportunities. Iran blamed the U.S. for supporting Saddam Hussein during Iran and Iraq’s bloody eight-year war in the 1980s. And Iran holds the U.S. responsible for creating instability in the Middle East by invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

The U.S. counts Iran’s continued support of Shiite militia groups as a destabilizing factor in the region and a source of the widening sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites.

Many Iranian politicians cite President George W. Bush’s 2002 State of Union address as a turning point. In the wake of the attacks of 9/11, Mr. Bush labeled Iran as part of a global “axis of evil,” along with Iraq and North Korea. At the time, Iran had just shared intelligence on the Taliban with the U.S. as it was preparing to attack Afghanistan. The speech was viewed as a deep insult.

289

The election of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a radical hard-liner, further complicated hopes of rapprochement. Mr. Ahmadinejad used every opportunity to provoke tensions, from denying the Holocaust and calling for the eradication of Israel to suggesting that the U.S. had staged the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Some Iran observers argue that the secret to the Islamic Republic’s survival has been its flexibility. “At the end of the day, Iran has always shown it is pragmatic and will put regime survival above any other interest,” said Roozbeh Mirebrahimi, a New York-based analyst and historian of Iran.

But if the regime is to maintain its legitimacy and self-understanding, that pragmatism can only extend so far. Iran can sign a deal with the world, and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif can smile and shake the hand of the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. But at the first Friday prayer sermons across the nation after the deal was announced, the chant of “Death to America” was still loud and clear.

290 The New York Times 17 Jul 2015 First Draft

Pro-Israel Aipac Creates Group to Lobby Against the Iran Deal

By Julie Hirchfeld Davis The pro-Israel group Aipac has formed a tax-exempt lobbying group to oppose the nuclear deal reached this week with Iran.

Aipac, an acronym for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has been a vocal critic of President Obama’s policies toward Israel and his negotiations with Iran. The new group, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, was formed with the sole mission of educating the public “about the dangers of the proposed Iran deal,” said Patrick Dorton, a spokesman.

“This will be a sizable and significant national campaign on the flaws in the Iran deal,” Mr. Dorton said.

A person who had been briefed on the plan said the group planned to spend upward of $20 million on the effort. Another person familiar with the campaign said advertising was planned in 30 to 40 states. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal details of the campaign.

The new group is starting up as Mr. Obama and the White House are mounting a major push to sell the accord on Capitol Hill, where members of Congress will have 60 days to review it and hold an up-or-down vote once it is submitted. Most Republicans have declared their opposition and some Democrats have voiced skepticism, raising the possibility that Congress could vote to reject the deal and that Mr. Obama might not have enough votes to sustain a veto of a disapproval resolution.

While Mr. Dorton said the lobbying effort would target members of both parties, Democrats would be a focal point.

“Democrats should be especially concerned, because the deal increases the chances of war, will spur a nuclear arms race and rewards an Iran with a horrific human rights record,” Mr. Dorton said.

The group’s advisory committee includes several former Democratic members of Congress, including former Senators Evan Bayh of Indiana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, and former Representative Shelley Berkley of Nevada, according to its website.

It is also tapping several prominent Democratic operatives, including the pollster Mark S. Mellman, the media consultant Mark Putnam, and the digital firm Trilogy Interactive, said a person familiar with the campaign, who would detail its key players only on the condition of anonymity.

291 The National Interest 17 Jul 2015

The Post-Iran Deal Mystery: What Will Khamenei Do? We need to keep an eye on Khamenei. He can’t simultaneously be in favor of backing Rouhani’s call for moderation and stick to the old ways of the Islamic Republic.

Alex Vatanka Alex Vatanka is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington Institute.

It makes plenty of sense to do so. Khamenei does not need to deliver on Netanyahu’s explicit demand for an “unambiguous Iranian recognition of Israel’s right to exist.” All he needs to do is to stop the public fixation on the question of Israel. That is, after all, exactly what the vast majority of the fifty-seven Muslim-majority states do today. Doing so will help Iran return to the regional and international mainstream.

To paraphrase Henry Kissinger, Iran needs to decide if it is a cause or a nation-state. If it is the latter, any honest reassessment of the last thirty-six years of Iranian ideological obsession with Israel will show it has been long on costs and very short on tangible gains that lift the lives of ordinary Iranians. As the taboo of dealing with America has been broken, more and more voices in Tehran might just decide to push back on the Islamic Republic dogma on Israel as well. As prominent Iranian academic Sadeq Ziba-Kalam has repeatedly stressed in public debates in Tehran, “It is time for Iran to stop the obsession with Israel.”

After twelve years of back and forth, a nuclear deal has now been reached. The international consensus around it is pretty impressive. The key is to keep it sustainable and to do that it requires for Iran and the United States to look for ways to build on this agreement. President Rouhani speaks of Iran’s return to the international mainstream and his foreign minister Javad Zarif has already suggested that further cooperation on regional issues is in the cards. The U.S. Secretary of State has also hinted at it.

As we move forward, Ayatollah Khamenei occupies an uncomfortable place. During his twenty-six-year tenure as supreme leader, he has helped cultivate a pathological antiAmericanism in the political culture of the Islamic Republic that will now be increasingly untenable in this post-deal environment.

And yet as last week’s Quds Day demonstrations illustrated, not all the pieces are in place in Tehran for a bigger breakthrough in U.S.-Iranian relations. Eyes need to be kept on Khamenei. He can’t have it both ways: be simultaneously in favor of backing Rouhani’s call for moderation and stick to some of the most self-defeating and bad old ways of the Islamic Republic. Something’s gotta give.

292 LobeLog/foreign policy 17 Jul 2015

Sorry, Folks, Nuclear Weapons Are Passé

by Peter Jenkins

Peter Jenkins was a British career diplomat for 33 years, following studies at the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He served in Vienna (twice), Washington, Paris, Brasilia and Geneva. He specialized in global economic and security issues. His last assignment (2001-06) was that of UK Ambassador to the IAEA and UN (Vienna). Since 2006 he has represented the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, advised the Director of IIASA and set up a partnership, ADRgAmbassadors, with former diplomatic colleagues, to offer the corporate sector dispute resolution and solutions to crossborder problems. He was an associate fellow of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy from 2010 to 2012.

He writes and speaks on nuclear and trade policy issues.

Two lines of attack on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, finalized on Bastille Day this week, are that constraints on Iran expanding its uranium enrichment capacity will lapse after 10 years and that, in the meantime, Iranian cheating will be inevitable and hard to detect.

It is true that from 2025 Iran will be free to start deploying large numbers of highly efficient centrifuges. And, in theory, a significant quantity of these centrifuges could produce enough weapon-grade enriched uranium for several bombs in a matter of months.

It does not follow logically, however, that producing weapons is the intention of those who have insisted on having this freedom (which is also a right under international law).

Nor does it follow that those in power in Tehran 10 years from now will decide to abuse such freedom.

It has been a recurrent theme of US national intelligence estimates (NIEs) that Iranian nuclear decision-makers are “rational actors.” They are not the “mad mullahs” of Benjamin Netanyahu’s nightmares. They are not bloodthirsty psychopaths. They are not suicidal depressives. They are not ruthless empire-builders.

What is the probability that 10 years from now Iran’s decision-makers will decide that Iran needs nuclear weapons (NWs)? The authors of the NIEs have pointed the way to an answer by reminding us repeatedly that cost/benefit calculations will determine Iran’s nuclear decision-making.

No Nukes Is a No-brainer Producing, or trying to produce NWs—in contravention of the legally binding Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and of solemn assurances given, often, to the international community (see, for example, paragraph III of the Preamble of to the Plan of Action)—would cost Iran’s decision-makers a lot: 

Iran would be excluded from the community of nations for many years. This is not a fate that would hold any attraction for the leaders of the Islamic Republic.

As President Hassan Rouhani’s speeches at the last two UN General Assemblies have shown, Iranian leaders want their country respected by its peers. They

293 want Iran to enjoy the influence and “soft power” that come from being respected. They do not want Iran to be cast out, reviled, isolated; 

The economic and financial consequences would almost certainly prove deeply destabilizing. They would have far greater impact on Iranian living standards than the current sanctions have had. The Islamic Republic would be exposed to the risk of revolution.



The risk of a military confrontation that could endanger the decision-makers’ lives, and the lives of their families, could not be excluded.

And the benefits? Nugatory. The only value of nuclear weapons is to deter the use of NWs by others. Rational actors cannot inject NWs into a conventional confrontation without risking annihilation. It is, or at least has become in recent decades, a myth that possessing NWs confers prestige and influence. As awareness of the humanitarian consequences of NW use has spread, most of mankind has condemned, not admired, possessor states.

So the probability of Iran seeking to acquire NWs 10 years from now is low.

It can become lower if the P5+1 follow through on their promises of nuclear cooperation and bring Iran’s nuclear program in from the cold. Cooperation will create opportunities to influence Iranian nuclear thinking, including on enrichment. It will also create legitimate long-term confidence-building options, such as multilateral involvement in Iran’s enrichment program, possibly as part of a global move toward multilateral enrichment facilities.

The probability can be lower still if the United States throws its weight behind the push for a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East—one of the last regions to be without such a zone. That will mean abandoning the pretense that American officials do not know whether Israel possesses NWs and embarking on the arduous task of persuading Israeli politicians that NWs are a liability, not an asset. It will also mean keeping a watchful eye on Saudi Arabia and ensuring that the Kingdom respects its obligations as an NPT nonnuclear-weapon state.

US politicians are inclined to like mechanical fixes. Their instinct is to deny other states the physical capacity to do things that the US does but does not want other states to do.

It is time that these politicians understood that some foreign policy problems are not susceptible to mechanical fixes, not least because other states are sovereign and have rights under international law. Instead, the US must learn to rely for its security, as other states do, on intangibles: on deterring, on creating disincentives, and on developing relationships that increase the cost that others incur if they ignore the wishes of the world’s greatest power.

The Cheating Fallacy Much of the argument above is relevant to the allegation that Iran will be looking for opportunities to “non-perform” its Plan of Action obligations. Iranian decision-makers are

294 not just rational actors. They are, by and large, very smart human beings. Those who want to spread panic by pretending that Iran will ignore its commitments should be asked why they think any smart human being would see utility in undermining an agreement that is fully compatible with what Iran proposed to the UK, France and Germany 10 years ago, and that a great majority of Iranians has now acclaimed with jubilation..

It is not as though these smart Iranians can imagine that cheating will go undetected.

The verification provisions of the Plan of Action are unprecedented. The US negotiators have covered every conceivable angle. Never before has a theoretical temptation to cheat on a nuclear agreement been so effectively deterred.

Of course some Americans believe that the first thing an Iranian asks himself in the morning is: “who can I cheat today?” Presumably Wendy Sherman now regrets her earlier claim that Iranians have deception in their DNA. But her lapse revealed an unfortunate strain in US thinking about Iranians, which many Iranian Americans have condemned. Such racial stereotyping is unworthy of an American nation that prides itself—somewhat sickeningly for the rest of us—on its virtue, on being a beacon for mankind, or whatever.

Is the underlying problem that some Americans believe that NWs are the must-have accessory for any state? If so, other Americans, while there is still time—while the fate of the Vienna Plan of Action hangs in the congressional balance—must help them to understand the error of that judgment.

Since 1945 acquiring NWs has ceased to pose enormous technical problems. Yet only nine states, less than 5% of the total, have chosen to become nuclear-armed. Sorry, folks, but nowadays nukes are an accessory that only old fogies prize.

295 LobeLog/foreign policy 17 Jul 2015

Here’s How Iranian Hardliners Have Reacted to the Nuclear Deal

by Lobelog’s Tehran correspondent The nuclear deal reached between Iran and the P5+1 on Tuesday has elicited a wave of reactions from key figures within Iran’s establishment.

On Tuesday night, mere hours after the agreement was announced, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hosted President Hassan Rouhani and members of his cabinet for a traditional Ramadan breaking-of-the-fast meal at his private residence.

Khamenei reportedly said only a few veiled words about the deal during this meeting. A statement about the dinner on Khamenei’s official website read: “The leader of the revolution, in reaction to comments the President made about the result of the nuclear negotiations, expressed his appreciation for the hard work and diligent efforts of the negotiators.”

At the meeting Ayatollah Khamenei also quoted Malek Ashtar, one of the trusted commanders of the venerated Shia saint, Imam Ali, as saying: “Possessing a strong spiritual and mental foundation is critical in order to solve challenges.

In his comments praising Iran’s nuclear negotiators, Khamenei also used the very significant wordmojahedat. This term, meaning to struggle for the sake of God, hearkens back to the early years of Islam and has very positive connotations in Islamic societies.

Coupled with his quote from Malek Ashtar, Khamenei’s comments can be viewed as a tacit endorsement of the nuclear agreement.

Parliamentary Support Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament, has in very explicit terms welcomed the deal. On Wednesday, Larijani said in an address to members of parliament that the agreement will lead to the isolation of Israel. “The wrath of officials from the Zionist regime to this agreement indicates that this deal will isolate them,” Larijani proclaimed. He further stated that this agreement “creates space for the Islamic Republic to cooperate with regional and Islamic countries,” a significant statement given Iran’s effective cold war with its neighbors in the Persian Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia.

The most important portion of Larijani’s comments was aimed at preventing hardline factions within the parliament from undermining the deal. “We should review the legal and technical aspects of the agreement in a deliberate manner based on expert opinion and not pay attention to what people say based on their political intentions or to the inaccuracies spread by some news outlets.”

296 The Iranian parliament has the right to review the agreement but does not have the power to revoke it. On June 22, the parliament passed a bill that obligated the Rouhani administration to not go past any “redlines” in the final agreement. These redlines where outlined in a speech delivered by Ayatollah Khamenei before the final round of nuclear negotiation began in late June, which emphasized that military sites cannot be inspected and that the removal of the sanctions regime against Iran should not be gradual. Based on the “factsheet” that has been published, the final agreement apparently violates these redlines.

Mahdi Koochakzadeh and Hamid Rasaie, two members of the hardline “Steadfast Front” faction of the Iranian parliament, who in the past two years have been the most vociferous critics of the nuclear negotiations in the parliament, have not taken official positions on the deal yet.

However, Koochakzadeh implicitly criticized Iran’s nuclear negotiators by posting a picture on his Instagram page of former Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh kissing the hand of the Shah’s second wife, and asked his followers to think of a caption for the photo. Since many reformist papers have compared Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to Mossadegh, it seems Koochakzedeh is trying to disparage Zarif with this picture. Rasaie posted a cartoon suggesting that Rouhani was “crying wolf” and that the people would not be “deceived” by him anymore.

Elias Naderan, another conservative member of parliament, has strongly criticized what he says is the small role given to the parliament to decide on the nuclear deal. “Who says the parliament is the top decision maker?” he asked. “The American side uses their congressional resolution in the talks, why are we not using our parliament to the extent we can?”

On the other hand, on Wednesday, 203 members of Iran’s parliament echoed Ayatollah Khamenei by signing a statement praising the efforts of Iran’s negotiating team.

An Iranian journalist who has followed the Iranian parliament’s activities with respect to the nuclear negotiations over the past two years tells LobeLog: “The parliament in Iran has little power to affect high-level decisions. Even if all the members of parliament were against this deal, they would not be able to do anything about it given Ayatollah Khamenei’s support of it.”

The journalist believes that most of the bickering about the nuclear deal is being made with an eye to the 2016 parliamentary elections. “The critics of the deal will accuses the Rouhani administration of trying to get closer to the West, and of abandoning Iran’s independence and the ideals of the revolution, in order to create a polarized atmosphere and win the votes of the traditional supporters of the government,” he continued. “I predict that after an agreement these critics will maintain their attacks on Rouhani’s foreign policy in the parliament. But ultimately their opposition to the deal will not affect Iran’s commitment to the deal, so there should not be any worry in this regard.”

297 Response from the Military and Hardliners Iran’s military officials have refrained from making any official announcements about the nuclear deal. This is in contrast to what happened after the Lausanne framework agreement was reached in April, when the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jaffari, and the head of Iran’s armed forces, Hassan Firouzabadi, immediately issued statements congratulating the people and the Supreme Leader.

One reason for this may be the sharp reaction of Ayatollah Khamenei to the congratulatory remarks given by Jaffari and the Firouzabadi after the Lausanne agreement, which Khamenei indirectly referred to as “meaningless.” Perhaps these military officials are waiting until Khamenei declares his official position on the nuclear deal so they can ensure their statements are firmly in line with Khamenei’s this time around.

With regards to the conservative papers that have up until now been strongly opposed to the nuclear negotiations, the most prominent among them, Kayhan, featured as its headline on Wednesday a story stating that Rouhani and Obama had given different interpretations of the text of the agreement. The story accused Rouhani of trying to change the meaning of what is in the actual agreement.

However, compared to Kayhan’s previous attacks on the Rouhani administration, which went as far as accusing Iran’s negotiators of committing “treason,” Wednesday’s story had a much gentler tone. This indicates either two things: that Kayhan’s editor, Hossein Shariatmadari, has changed his position and is now supporting a nuclear agreement, or that he has come to realize his efforts to oppose it are futile.

Vatan-e Imrooz, another hardline newspaper that has been opposed to the negotiations, offered no criticism about the deal and even called it “balanced.” An editorial in the paper read: “What has occurred is a give-and-take. There have been important concessions made but we also have gotten important concessions.”

The reactions from Iran this week likely indicate that the power structure in Iran is not opposed to the nuclear agreement and that there will not be any issues for Iran to implement its part of the deal in the coming months. Iran’s Supreme Leader, senior military officials, and important parliamentarians have all signaled their support for the deal, and the hardline opponents of the deal are helpless to defeat it.

298 LobeLog/foreign policy 17 Jul 2015

Pro-Israel Think Tank Head Denies Possibility of War

by Ali Gharib

Ali Gharib is a New York-based journalist on U.S. foreign policy with a focus on the Middle East and Central Asia. His work has appeared at Inter Press Service, where he was the Deputy Washington Bureau Chief; the Buffalo Beast; Huffington Post; Mondoweiss; Right Web; and Alternet. He holds a Master's degree in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. A proud Iranian-American and fluent Farsi speaker, Ali was born in California and raised in D.C.

Those opposing the Iran deal often lead off their objections with a caveat: they don’t think the alternative to the nuclear accord signed this week in Vienna is war. I happen to think it probably is. I put it this way: the alternative(s) to this deal puts us back on the path to confrontation. But, that said, I understand why opponents of the deal want to make like they’re not warmongering.

I was nonetheless taken aback by a column in Politico by Robert Satloff, the WINEP head. Satloff started off his piece by writing that he hasn’t made up his mind about the nuclear deal. After that, his column seems aimed wholly at bolstering the aforementioned caveat: that congressional rejection of the deal need not lead to war.

But Satloff goes even farther. Check out this conclusion, with my emphasis: In my view, the only war that may ensue from a Congressional vote of disapproval is a war of words between our legislative and executive branches, eventually adjudicated by the Supreme Court. In other words, the worst-case scenario will be business as usual in Washington.

Talk about overstating your case! I sincerely hope Satloff doesn’t believe what he’s writing here, because if he does he ought to have his analyst card taken away, not to mention his position atop a D.C. think tank.

If critics and opponents of a deal want to argue that war is not an inevitability of Congress rejecting the nuke deal, they should go ahead and make that case. But I don’t know how anyone who was awake during the period from 2010 to 2012 thinks that the “worst-case scenario” of forsaking the deal in hand today would be bickering in Washington.

Satloff might be right that congressional rejection of a deal won’t lead to Iran ramping up their nuclear program. Maybe, as Satloff says, the Iranians will simply understand that Obama has his hands tied (I doubt it). “Does [Iran] chuck its enormous diplomatic achievements in Vienna for a mad dash toward a bomb?” says Satloff. “Highly unlikely.”

Agreed, that’s highly unlikely, because they’ve not undertaken a “mad dash toward a bomb” at all. But over the last decade they have significantly advanced their nuclear program! Personally, I think that if Congress scuttles a deal, Iran will most likely go back to its pre-November 2013 modus operandi: systematically increasing its nuclear capabilities. (Satloff, incidentally, argued against the 2013 interim deal by distorting it,

299 until he came around to it just before the final accord was singed.) If my likely scenario plays out, what’s to stop the likelihood of war from ticking up again?

Not only does Satloff not answer this question, he renders it entirely moot. It’s not, for Satloff, that war isn’t likely, it’s that war isn’t even possible! That’s the only way one can interpret his remark that the “worst-case scenario” will be a “war of words between our legislative and executive branches.” Good lord, how does this pass as serious analysis?

300 The Atlantic 17 Jul 2015

Is There a Viable Alternative to the Iran Deal?

Three Atlantic writers debate the merits of the nuclear agreement.

PETER BEINART, DAVID FRUM, AND JEFFREY GOLDBERG How to make sense of the nuclear deal with Iran? Is it a necessary compromise that’s preferable to the alternatives and potentially beneficial for the Middle East? A feeble and indefensible sop to Iranian leaders bent on further destabilizing the region? A practically satisfying but morally troubling gamble, born of bad options? The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart, David Frum, and Jeffrey Goldberg debate the new agreement—and the swift and fierce reaction to it. *** Peter Beinart: David and Jeff, the thing that strikes me most about the reaction to the Iran deal is that proponents and opponents are judging it by radically different standards.

Opponents keep saying that this deal isn’t as good as the Obama administration promised it would be and that it violates previous U.S. red lines. That’s true. It allows Iran to keep some enriched uranium. It also doesn’t include anytime, anywhere, rightaway inspections, which I think the Obama administration was foolish to promise (a kind of parallel to when they said no one would lose coverage as a result of Obamacare).

Proponents, like myself, compare it to the alternatives: which are doing nothing, war, or trying to increase sanctions in hopes of getting a better deal down the line. What frustrates me is how rarely I see opponents explaining in any detail how any of these alternatives would be preferable. A few years ago, one saw more hawks arguing for a military strike. (I detailed some of the folks who did last year.) But one rarely hears anyone these days arguing that a military strike makes sense. Some say that a “credible threat of force” would make Iran concede more. But Israel and America have been threatening force for a decade now. Why would more saber-rattling work now? Besides, to have your threat of force be credible, don’t you have to be willing to follow through— which requires explaining why military action would be effective in retarding the nuclear program and wouldn’t make the current regional conflict far worse? More often, deal opponents talk about increasing sanctions, which would supposedly force Iran into concessions. But I rarely hear them explain how that will work given the internal politics of Iran. Seems more likely to me that scuttling this deal, and passing more sanctions, would devastate [Iranian President] Rouhani and [Iranian Foreign Minister] Zarif politically. Rouhani was elected to improve the economy; torpedoing the deal would make him a failure. That would empower those hardline opponents who never wanted any deal. Beyond that, what basis is there to believe European and Asian countries, which have strong economic interests in Iran, will maintain sanctions indefinitely? The lesson of Iraq in the 1990s is that sanctions erode over time. British and German diplomats have warned that if the U.S. destroys the deal, sanctions could unravel. So why should we believe economic pressure will go up and lead to more Iranian concessions? Seems at least as likely to me that economic pressure will go down.

301 If the most important thing is the potential for political change in Iran, and the people who would make that change want this deal, doesn’t that carry weight?

I also don’t feel that opponents of the deal—who waxed moralistic about Obama’s failure to be vocal enough in supporting the Green Revolution—have grappled much publicly with what appears to be the overwhelming support of Iranian dissidents for this deal. If we believe that ultimately the most important thing is the potential for political change in Iran, and the people who would make that change want this deal, doesn’t that carry real weight? (I’m not saying this deal will bring political change anytime soon. Obviously, nobody knows if it will.) Call me cynical, but seems to me that hawks like using the Iranian dissidents when it helps them argue for a cold-war posture. But the minute it doesn’t, they pretend those dissidents don’t exist.

David Frum: What did the Western world get from the nuclear deal just concluded with Iran?

According to deal proponents—and assuming Iran does not cheat—a delay of about eight months in Iran’s nuclear-breakout time, for a period of 10 years.

What did the Western world give?

1) It has rescued Iran from the extreme economic crisis into which it was pushed by the sanctions imposed in January 2012—sanctions opposed at the time by the Obama administration, lest anyone has forgotten.

2) It has relaxed the arms embargo on Iran. Iran will be able to buy conventional arms soon, ballistic-missile components later.

3) It has exempted Iranian groups and individuals from terrorist designations, freeing them to travel and do business around the world.

4) It has promised to protect the Iranian nuclear program from sabotage by outside parties—meaning, pretty obviously, Israel.

5) It has ended the regime’s isolation, conceding to the Iranian theocracy the legitimacy that the Iranian revolution has forfeited since 1979 by its consistent and repeated violations of the most elementary international norms—including, by the way, its current detention of four America hostages.

That seems one-sided. Deal proponents insist: With all its imperfections, this is the very best deal obtainable. The only practical alternative is war.

Is that true?

The United States did not negotiate the way people negotiate to get the best deal obtainable. It signaled from the start of the talks that it regarded the military option (supposedly always “on the table”) as in fact unthinkable. It collared Congress to prevent imposition of new sanctions when the Iranians acted balky. It was a mistake too to send the secretary of state to head the delegation, especially a secretary of state who had been a presidential nominee: Secretary Kerry was too big to be allowed to fail. His Iranian counterpart, by contrast, could easily be disavowed by a regime whose supreme authority always maintained a wide distance from the talks.

302 The Western world has conceded to Iranian theocrats the legitimacy that the Iranian revolution has forfeited since 1979.

Nor is the administration enacting its agreement as if it felt confident of its merits. The administration invented an approval process that marginalizes Congress. The agreement becomes binding so long as just one-third of the members of either House support it. For an administration that has complained so much about the anti-democratic filibuster, that’s quite a bold departure from the normal constitutional rule.

The administration brought home a weak deal, having negotiated in a way that put a better deal out of reach. Now it challenges critics: Accept this weak agreement or fight a war. But it’s the deal’s authors who created a false and dangerous choice. As we think about what comes next, keep in mind how we arrived where we are.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Let me say at the outset that I agree with Peter.

Also, I agree with David.

Within the political and moral framework the Obama administration and its allies created for themselves, this deal has many positive features. As an arms-control initiative, it seems as if the Vienna agreement could keep Iran from reaching the nuclear threshold for many years (20 years is President Obama’s provisional measure of success, at least when I asked him in May). This deal could also prevent an eventual military confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, or Israel and Iran. I put great stock—sorry, David—in the argument that opponents of this deal should be forced to come up with a better alternative. I haven’t come up with anything. I do think, in the absence of a deal, we would be looking at an Iran soon at the threshold, or at a military operation to delay the moment when Iran could cross the threshold. (Delay, not defeat, because three things would happen in the event of an American military strike: Sanctions would crumble; Russia would become Iran’s partner; and the ayatollahs would have their predicate to justify a rush to the bomb. Only more bombing could stop them, and then, of course, we would be talking about a never-ending regional war.)

We’ve signaled to Iran’s leaders that they have a right—a previously unknown right in the vast catalogue of rights accorded to sovereign states—to enrich uranium.

All that said, this agreement is morally troubling, and it may also lead to precisely the thing that arms-control agreements are meant to prevent: broad instability. It is morally unsatisfying because innocent people of the Middle East will most likely suffer its consequences. Certainly, an enriched Iran—sponsor of the world’s most bloodthirsty regime, in Syria, and sponsor, as well, of the world’s most potent anti-Semitic terrorist group—will be able to help its proxies in ways it couldn’t before. This is one of the principal reasons the Israeli opposition leader, Isaac Herzog, is joining his archrival, Benjamin Netanyahu, in raising the alarmabout the deal, and it is the principal reason the people of Syria feel abandoned by the West. This agreement may also cause further instability across the region, not only because an empowered Hezbollah might decide that it is time for another rocket war with Israel, but because it might encourage the Iranian regime’s worst hegemonic, anti-Sunni impulses.

As an arms-control measure, this agreement has good qualities. I’m not discounting David’s specific critiques, not at all, but this agreement does represent the first successful attempt to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions. This deal, however, represents a huge gamble. If the unspoken, but widely understood, theory of Obama’s case turns out to be incorrect—that the Vienna accord will stimulate a virtuous cycle, one which sees Iran’s moderate, mercantilist, pro-American tendencies encouraged, and ultimately triumphant—then we’ve just empowered a group of theocratic fascists to feel as if there

303 is an even bigger role for them to play in the Middle East, and we’ve laid out a pathway for this regime to eventually reach the nuclear threshold. We’ve certainly signaled to Iran’s leaders that they have a right—a previously unknown right in the vast catalogue of rights accorded to sovereign states—to enrich uranium, which is quite a thing to signal to a country designated by the United States as a committed and energetic sponsor of terror.

Beinart: Jeff, obviously, I agree with you on the nuclear part. On the regional part, I kept waiting to read the acronym “ISIS.” I agree that more money to Hezbollah and Hamas is bad. I think that’s the strongest objection to this deal, although somewhat mitigated by the fact that sanctions would likely have eroded anyway.

But we can’t talk about Iran’s position in the region without acknowledging that today, the group most likely to commit another 9/11 on U.S. soil is ISIS. And Iran wants very badly to destroy ISIS, which is, after all, a genocidally anti-Shia group near their border.

There are problems with Iran’s fight against ISIS, of course. It alienates the Iraqi Sunnis who we need to turn against the jihadis in their midst. But on the ground, Iran is the most potent force fighting ISIS—and if it has more money to do so, that’s not all bad.

What’s more, if this deal makes it possible for the U.S. and Iran to coordinate their fight against ISIS more effectively, that’s good for American national security. And morally, if we can liberate the people who’ve been living under ISIS hell for the last year, that’s good too.ISIS is the greatest threat and Iran, like Stalin during World War II or China during the Cold War, is a highly problematic partner against it.

To my mind, one of the biggest problems with much contemporary Beltway foreignpolicy discourse is the refusal to prioritize, to accept that foreign policy sometimes requires working with the lesser evil, which is still really evil. From a national-security and moral perspective, ISIS is the greatest threat and Iran, like Stalin during World War II or China during the Cold War, is a highly problematic partner against it. But in terms of ability to project power, it’s the best partner we’ve got.

I also think that the history of the 20th century shows that cold wars produce regional wars that are brutal for the people whose countries become battlegrounds. Syria is a proxy war, partly between the Sunni powers and Iran, and partly between the U.S. and Iran and Russia. If there’s ever going to be a deal to end that nightmare, Iran is going to have been at the table, along with the U.S. If Iran doesn’t feel the U.S. is going to attack it, it becomes easier to imagine that Tehran could accept a deal where [Syrian President] Assad goes. I’m not saying this is going to happen anytime soon, but when the Cold War ended, proxy wars ended across the globe. And if the cold war between the U.S. and Iran thaws, it makes it easier to craft a solution in Syria. It also makes it somewhat easier to imagine a political solution in Afghanistan, a country where Iran has significant influence.

I’m not claiming this deal will produce wonders regionally. But I think it’s at least as likely to produce more stability as more instability, especially given, as you rightly note, that the alternative, sooner or later, is quite likely a U.S.-Iranian war.

Frum: There’s a curious two-step on display in defense of the deal.

Step One Critic: “This deal leaves four Americans in Iranian detention … delivers tens of billions of dollars to Iran for aggression and terrorism … and generally empowers Iran to make mischief in the region and around the world.”

304 Defender: “This deal is not intended to solve all our problems with Iran. We accept that Iran is dangerous and hostile. The agreement is narrowly focused on solving one problem: the Iranian nuclear bomb. That’s our top priority.”

Step Two Critic: “OK, but as an arms-control measure … this deal is very weak. Iran will retain a big nuclear-weapons capacity. It will continue to spin centrifuges. The inspection regime is weak. Reimposing sanctions if Iran cheats will be difficult.”

Defender: “Don’t be so narrowly focused on the deal’s technicalities! What we have here is a once-in-a-generation chance to reshape the Middle East, to recruit Iran as a security partner. This is a Nixon-goes-to-China strategic realignment!” *** The deal is being sold, in other words, as both a breath mint and a floor wax.

Unsurprisingly, it succeeds at neither.

Remember Don Rumsfeld’s famous “Rules”? One of them was, “If you don’t know how to solve a problem, make it bigger.” I think Peter may be executing that rule right now. As the costs of the deal have risen—as its benefits have dwindled—the hopes attached to it by its advocates have inflated. If they can’t sell the deal on its arms-control merits, then they’ll promote it as the dawn of a new strategic rapprochement between the United States and Iran.

The deal is being sold as both a breath mint and a floor wax. It succeeds at neither.

ISIS? ISIS should represent a much nearer and more immediate threat to Iran than for the United States. Iran should be making concessions to the U.S. for help against ISIS, not the other way around. If that’s not happening, it may be because the relationship between ISIS and Iran—and Iran’s Syrian client—is as much symbiotic as antagonistic.

Peter, I agree with you about the importance of priorities. A nuclear weapons-capable Iran is a priority-one threat to U.S. and Western interests in the Gulf area. That’s the thing we need to stop. It is the thing President Obama promised to stop. This agreement does not stop that outcome. At best, it delays the outcome for a decade, at the price of immediately enhancing Iran’s power in every other dimension. At worst, it offers Iran a Magna Carta for nuclear cheating on the way to an early nuclear-weapons breakout.

Goldberg: Let me respond to David’s cleverly rendered two-step, in particular his characterization of this deal as a weak arms-control measure. I am with him on other matters: I agree that ISIS poses a greater threat to Iran than it does to the U.S., and I would hope that the U.S. would communicate this notion to the Iranians. And, as I’ve said before, I agree with David—presumably, the “critic” in the two-step—that the release of funds to Iran is going to spark more aggression and terrorism (though, to be fair, Iran has used its limited terrorism dollars fairly effectively over the past couple of decades).

But on the matter at hand, the putative weakness of the current deal, well, I’m not so sure. No arms-control agreement is perfect—no arms-control agreement with the Soviet Union was perfect—but if this deal is properly implemented, it should keep Iran from reaching the nuclear threshold for at least 10, if not 20 years. I’m aware of the flaws, and I hope they get fixed. The lifting of the international arms embargo is a particularly unpleasant aspect of this deal. But I’m not going to judge this deal against a platonic

305 ideal of deals; I’m judging it against the alternative. And the alternative is no deal at all because, let’s not kid ourselves here, neither Iran nor our negotiating partners in the P5+1 is going to agree to start over again should Congress reject this deal in September. What will happen, should Congress reject the deal, is that international sanctions will crumble and Iran will be free to pursue a nuclear weapon, and it would start this pursuit only two or three months away from the nuclear threshold. My main concern, throughout this long process, is that a formula be found that keeps nuclear weapons out of the hands of the mullahs without having to engage them in perpetual warfare—which, by the way, would not serve to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the mullahs. War against Iran over its nuclear program would not guarantee that Iran is kept forever away from a bomb; it would pretty much guarantee that Iran unleashes its terrorist armies against American targets, however.

Iran was once pro-U.S. and pro-Israel, and it will be again. In the meantime, I’d rather have weapons inspectors crawling all over the regime’s nuclear facilities.

David writes that “this agreement does not stop” Iran from becoming a nuclear-capable state. “At best,” he says, “it delays the outcome for a decade, at the price of immediately enhancing Iran’s power in every other dimension."

Please, someone, show me an agreement that would prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons-capable state forever. Show me another path and I’d be happy to see the United States go down it, because I don’t want to see Iran become a regional superpower, and I don’t want the Assad regime, or Hezbollah, to become rich out of this deal. I wish I could believe, as some people do, that the Iranian regime will soon move toward moderation and responsibility. I’d be overjoyed to see it happen, and one day it will happen—Iran was once pro-U.S., and pro-Israel, and it will be again. I just don’t know when. In the meantime, I’d rather have weapons inspectors crawling all over the regime’s nuclear facilities, and in its uranium mines and mills, than not have them there.

I’d rather have a deal in place that stands a good chance of keeping a country that seeks the annihilation of Israel from gaining control of a weapon it could use to bring about that annihilation.

Beinart: Not to pile on David, but your proverbial agreement “defender” doesn’t correspond to anyone I know of. Certainly not President Obama. The defenders of this deal don’t concede that it’s weak on nuclear controls and then move on to its supposed regional benefits. Whether or not we think there are regional benefits (I’m somewhat more optimistic than Jeff), we generally plant our flag on the claim that it’s better at curbing Iran’s nuclear program than any plausible alternative. And from what I’ve seen, it’s the regime critics who move on to the regional dangers without ever answering that challenge. They never present a plausible scenario—either economic or military—that leads to a better deal. The critics just vaguely suggest that if Obama had been more steadfast and less conciliatory, we could have bent Iran—and the other world powers—to our will and made Tehran capitulate entirely.

You, like Jeff and I, have been writing about foreign policy since 9/11. My core question is: What has happened in the last decade and a half that gives you reason to think the U.S. has the power to do that? It seems to me the lessons of our era cut sharply the other way: From Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to North Korea to Russia, we’ve been reminded again and again that we cannot successfully impose our will on other countries through economic and military pressure. We’ve paid a terrible, terrible price for that delusion. I wonder what you’ve seen that leads you to a different conclusion.

Frum: I think we’ve just seen a perfect execution of the two-step. Having veered into the importance of recruiting Iran to stop ISIS, we’re now back in the territory of claiming there could be no better deal. But on its merits … it’s a weak deal. The delay in Iran’s

306 nuclearization is short, temporary, and readily reversed by cheating. The infusion of financial and military strength to Iran is immediate and permanent.

U.S. negotiators feared the use of U.S. force more than the Iranians feared it, and were bedazzled by mirages of U.S.-Iranian regional cooperation.

As to Peter’s final question: Could we have done better with a tougher-minded negotiating team? I think so, but maybe I’m wrong. What is certain is that we had a negotiating team who wanted a deal more than the Iranians, even though the Iranians needed it … who feared the use of U.S. force more than the Iranians feared it … who were bedazzled by mirages of U.S.-Iranian regional cooperation … and who balked at any additional measure of economic pressure during the negotiations. Maybe we couldn’t have gotten more—or paid less—if the administration had been stronger and less naive.

What we know for sure is what we got from a team that was weak and in thrall to illusions. To make a success of this unsatisfactory result, the West will need to put a very different kind of team in charge of implementation and enforcement.

Goldberg: I think Peter and David both raise interesting points in this last round. Peter’s question to David is particularly apt: What has happened over the past 14 years to suggest that the United States possesses the power to make the Iranians capitulate entirely? Like many Americans, and many Israelis, and many Arabs—and many Iranians—I would like to see this regime collapse on itself. One day it will. I don’t think, however, that we have the power to force this perfidious regime to capitulate. As I’ve argued before, I don’t even think that air strikes could force a total capitulation; quite the opposite: Nothing motivates a proud people—even a proud people intensely dissatisfied with the men who rule them—to do the thing you don’t want them to do quite like an extended bombing run.

I’m trying to be practical in my approach to this issue, and David raises important issues going forward about the quality and intensity of implementation and enforcement. I want to believe that the West, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, are ready for the task ahead; I’m not so sure about this, however. This should be a focus of the Obama administration’s efforts. Another focus should be a ramped-up program of conventional containment: The U.S. should do more than it’s been doing to check Iranian adventurism across the region. A strict enforcement regime, combined with an enthusiastic antiHezbollah, anti-Assad, anti-IRGC campaign—these could combine to make a success of what David believes to be an unsatisfactory result.

307 LobeLog/foreign policy 17 Jul 2015

Iran Deal: Avoiding the Fate of Sisyphus

by Charles Naas

Charles Naas was Deputy Ambassador and Charge d'Affairs in Tehran during the initial stages of Iran's revolution. Preceding that he was Director of Iranian Affairs and served also in Pakistan, India, Turkey, Afghanistan, as the ME advisor at the US's UN delegation, and retired from The Policy Planning Staff.

The P5+1 negotiating team and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, much like Sisyphus in Greek mythology, have pushed the burden of mutual understanding on Iran’s nuclear program to the hilltop. Now they see if they can avoid Sisyphus’ fate and keep the agreement from slipping back into failure. Those of us who can only watch the process should realize that the various restraints on Iran are not the core of the issues that will now occupy the administration and Congress.

Let’s be realistic in our examination of the various texts that constitute the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. There is the proliferation side and, equally important, the impact on both domestic and regional politics. Although Israel and the Arab states may have deeply held fears about a nuclear Iran, their main concern is that from now on the United States and European countries will be able to freely exchange views with Iran, a Shia nation of 80 million people that has been pretty much frozen out of the political dynamics in an area where it has vital national interests. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of the Arab monarchies—who have had little or no competition in past years in trumpeting their needs and views—will now have to compete as well with the views of Iran and nonSunni organizations.

The political calculus has been potentially seriously altered. President Obama probably had this objective alongside the proliferation concerns when he sent Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns to Oman three years ago to probe with senior Iranian diplomats whether it would be in our interests to open a longer-term dialogue with a country with which we have not had diplomatic relations since 1979. That effort was the real beginning of the intrusive and widespread campaign in the US and particularly in Congress to cripple the talks with Iran.

Probably a majority of members of our two illustrious bodies has been opposed to the agreement and will continue to do so and vote against the nuclear agreement. But members should note that this is not a US-Iran bilateral understanding and that five other countries, as well the European Union, have signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. To vote against the plan and possibly to overcome the president’s veto would have very significant ramifications within those countries and in the Middle East.

Of course, many of the members have no great special interest in the issue and have admittedly not read the text of the agreement. Rather, their primary aim is to be the happy beneficiaries of large sums of money for the upcoming elections from casino and

308 oil and gas magnates. You can safely wager that none of the 15-20 Republican presidential candidates will vote in favor of accepting the plan. It takes a strong man to vote the national interest over election money, and we have few of them.

This is not to say that there has been no legitimate long-term proliferation fear of Iran building a nuclear device that, if married to its missile delivery system, could reach much of the Middle East and parts of southern Europe. A few nuclear bombs exploded in Israel would likely end that state’s existence. Such an attack, Iran’s leaders know, would be national suicide and madness. Israel could launch at least 200 nuclear devices by sea, air, and land to obliterate every major city in Iran.

There have been warnings coming from Israel and US critics of the nuclear deal that Iran will eventually receive over $100 billion of its money frozen by sanctions that it will use to flood the region for various nefarious purposes. This manufactured warning is risible in light of Arab wealth and their expenditures of many billions on purchases of modern arms and in support of Sunni extremist organizations including al Qaida and, reportedly, the Islamic State. Iran will certainly use some of this money for foreign interests. But its domestic economic needs are huge.

The months of negotiations in Lausanne, Vienna, Almaty, Istanbul, and so on have resulted in an agreement that closes all paths to a nuclear weapon for an initial 10 years.

Of course there be misunderstandings and renewed bargaining during the life of the Joint Plan. Whether it’s a question of achieving consensus on the meaning of different clauses in the different languages or honest differences in interpretation of the technical annexes, the agreement is a potential snake pit of friction.

But the Joint Plan is a remarkable success. Let’s take pride in that and use it to try to work with others to ease regional tensions and lessen the loss of life. We have a few common interests with Iran in the region as well as some divergent concerns. Will the NSC and the administration be wise enough to use the positive change in the political calculus? Can our elected bodies also be helpful? Stay tuned.

309 The New York Times 18 Jul 2015

Ayatollah Khamenei, Backing Iran Negotiators, Endorses Nuclear Deal

By THOMAS ERDBRINK TEHRAN — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader ofIran, voiced support on Saturday for his country’s nuclear deal with world powers while emphasizing that it did not signal an end to Iran’s hostility toward the United States and its allies, especially Israel.

“Their actions in the region are 180 degrees different from ours,” he said.

Speaking after a special prayer marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Mr. Khamenei portrayed the nuclear agreement as a victory for Iran, not least because it does not require the country to completely stop enriching uranium, as some in the West had wanted. The speech appeared to remove a main obstacle to formal approval of the agreement in Iran.

“After 12 years of struggling with the Islamic republic, the result is that they have to bear the turning of thousands of centrifuges in the country,” Mr. Khamenei said, referring to the United States and its five negotiating partners.

Though analysts said his positive portrayal of the agreement would probably quiet hardline critics in Iran, it also seemed likely to become fodder for critics in the United States, complicating President Obama’s efforts to sell the deal to Congress and the American people.

“I think we all understand the caliber of people we are dealing with, and it adds to the bipartisan skepticism regarding the agreement,” Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Saturday.

The agreement, which in its final form runs to 159 pages, was reached on Tuesday after 20 months of negotiations between Iran and a group of six nations led by the United States. It is intended to significantly limit Tehran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons for more than a decade in return for lifting international sanctions.

Mr. Obama has made the agreement a benchmark of his presidency. It is opposed by Republicans and by Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of the United States’ most significant allies in the region. They have denounced it as a diplomatic mistake that will strengthen the economic and military power of a nation that threatens its neighbors, engages in and supports hostage-taking and terrorism, and is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama has insisted that the agreement is “not built on trust — it is built on verification.” Mr. Khamenei portrayed it as an acceptance by the West of Iran’s commitment to go ahead with a nuclear program, which its leaders have insisted is solely for peaceful purposes.

Like most of his remarks, the speech attempted a delicate balance between appeasing anti-Western hard-liners and those longing for change in Iran, with rhetoric that could be interpreted favorably on either side.

The speech stopped short of a flat-out endorsement of the agreement. But Mr. Khamenei did not include any specific criticism of the deal or its terms, and analysts said that

310 would probably speed its acceptance by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and Parliament.

At the same time, Mr. Khamenei made clear that a single agreement did not mean Iran’s overall relationship with the United States would change, and he promised to continue Iran’s support for allies in the region, including President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the Lebanese-based Hezbollah movement. He praised Iran’s annual anti-Israel rally, known as Quds Day. Under the nuclear agreement, Iran must give up large parts of its nuclear program, including two-thirds of its uranium-enrichment centrifuges, and it must accept intrusive inspections, even of military sites. Iran’s leaders say that what matters is Western acceptance that Iran will continue to have a nuclear program, and that when the agreement ends in 2025 Iran will be able to enrich uranium and plutonium without limits.

A draft resolution canceling sanctions against Iran and formalizing the steps that Iran is expected to take is to be presented at the United Nations Security Council on Monday.

The five permanent members of the Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran along with Germany.

Several leading members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have urged President Obama not to submit the agreement to the Security Council until Congress has first voted its approval or disapproval.

Critics say that by restoring Iran’s potential access to around $100 billion in frozen funds around the world, the agreement will free the country to finance an expanded campaign of aggression in the Middle East. Iranian hard-liners have complained that it will reduce the nuclear program to just a symbol, not an industrial effort. Many hard-liners also fear that it will end Iran’s enmity toward America.

Mr. Khamenei nodded to the complaints, accusing the West of trying to “remove all of the nuts and bolts of Iran’s nuclear industry.” And he made clear that any notions that relations with the United States would now thaw and that the two countries could cooperate on other matters were “dreams” that will not become a reality.

“We do not negotiate with the U.S. about different global and regional issues,” Mr. Khamenei said. “We do not negotiate about bilateral issues. Sometimes, in some exceptional cases, like the nuclear case, and due to the expediency, we may negotiate.”

He also seized on remarks by Mr. Obama at a news conference on Thursday, when the president acknowledged that the United States had made mistakes in its Iran policies in the past, including organizing a coup in 1953 and supporting President Saddam Hussein of Iraq in his war with Iran between 1980 and 1988.

“He mentioned two or three points, but did not confess to tens of others,” Mr. Khamenei said.

“I am telling you,” the ayatollah said, referring to the United States, “you are making a mistake now — in different parts of this region, but especially about the Iranian nation.”

He did not offer specifics. “Wake up,” he said. “Stop making mistakes. Understand the reality.”

Analysts said Mr. Khamenei’s remarks would probably quiet critics in Iran.

“He has stopped insisting on red lines and other restrictions; he also avoided any details of the agreement,” said Nader Karimi Joni, an Iranian journalist who favors the nuclear

311 deal. “He supports the deal, and agrees with its contents.”

Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst who is close to the government, said the speech “cooled down hard-liners, who had been preparing to openly oppose the deal.”

Mr. Khamenei stressed that Iran would go on backing its friends in the region, come what may. “We will always support the oppressed Palestinian nation, Yemen, Syrian government and people, Iraq, and oppressed Bahraini people, and also the honest fighters of Lebanon andPalestine,” he said.

American support for Israel will remain a roadblock to relations, he signaled. Noting that Washington regards Hezbollah, Iran’s ally in Lebanon, as a terrorist organization, Mr. Khamenei asked how “Americans can support the child-killing Zionist government, and call Hezbollah terrorist? How can one interact, negotiate, or come to an agreement with such a policy?”

Worshipers began chanting and pumping their fists when he said the slogans “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” would continue to be heard in the streets of Iran.

312 Al Arabiya 17 Jul 2015

Iran’s nuclear deal: Four-bundle effects and concerns Dr. Majid Rafizadeh

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, an Iranian-American political scientist and scholar at Harvard University, is president of the International American Council and serves on the board of Harvard International Review, Harvard International Relations Council, at Harvard University. He is also a member of the Gulf project at Columbia University. Rafizadeh served as a senior fellow at Nonviolence International Organization based in Washington DC. He has been a recipient of several scholarships and fellowship including from Oxford University, Annenberg University, University of California Santa Barbara, and Fulbright Teaching program.

He served as ambassador for the National Iranian-American Council based in Washington DC, conducted research at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and taught at University of California Santa Barbara through Fulbright Teaching Scholarship.

It is crucial not to raise our expectations when it comes to the recent nuclear agreement reached between the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus Germany) and the Islamic Republic. To have a full and realistic view of the deal, it is imperative not to conflate our analysis with hope.

The Iran-P5+1 nuclear deal has four crucial categories and dimensions that should be examined separately. Nevertheless, these four brackets do interact with each other, sometimes countering and contradicting each other, and inevitably creating some unintended consequences and excesses. But Iran’s policy (whether domestic or foreign) will be shaped by the interactions among these four circles.

First bracket: The nuclear deal and Iran’s domestic policies The first critical question to address is whether the nuclear deal can usher in a new era of freedom, social justice, and a better life for Iranian people themselves.

Iran’s regional policy poses no threat whatsoever on the hold-on-power of the Iranian ruling establishment and particularly the rule of Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei Majid Rafizadeh Although many Iranians were joyful and celebrated in the streets, some soon had doubts and fundamental questions to ask.” We hope that the deal can improve our living standards and provide jobs for the youth. But I am not very optimistic that we are going to see financial benefits. Corruption is high. Most of the money will go to the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] and the military possibly. We will not be able to fully participate in the political process, do or wear whatever we like” Nastaran, an Iranian PhD student living in Tehran, said to me.

We are not likely to see any improvement in matters such as social justice, personal freedom, or political prisoners. In fact, in order to re-establish and reassert their monopoly of power and coercion, Iran’s hardliners (the Basij, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the intelligence -etela’at - etc) will attempt to ratchet up their methods and means of controlling the society. What the hardliners and ruling establishment fear the most is political (or economic) liberalization, which might lead to a soft cultural revolution and empowerment of the secular or oppositional groups. What they fear most is the cultural soft power of the West, mainly the United States, infiltrating Iranian society. Iranian leaders are cognizant of the fact that economic liberalization accompanied with political liberalization can endanger their hold on power.

In other words, a more closed off Iran ensures the current leadership of their rule and control over the population.

It is important to remember that when President Khatami, the reformist, ruled as Iran’s

313 president for eight years, the hold-on-power, application of coercion and hard power was increased by the hardliners.

Second bracket: The nuclear deal and regional ramifications Will Iran alter its fundamental regional policies?

It is not realistic to argue that the nuclear deal is going to completely change the Middle East and Iran’s regional behavior.

The Islamic Republic rules and implements its foreign policy based on two categories: national interest and revolutionary principles. Iran’s national and economic interest justified the nuclear deal. Iran’s crippled economy was endangering the hold-on-power of the ruling establishment- which is why they tried hard to secure the nuclear deal.

Yet, Iran’s regional policy poses no threat whatsoever on the hold-on-power of the Iranian ruling establishment and particularly the rule of Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei. In other words, there is no incentive for the supreme leader to change his opposition towards the United States, other regional powers, his support for Bashar alAssad, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iraqi ruling Shiite coalition, and so on.

In fact, in order to keep his legitimacy and maintain his hard-line social base, the supreme leader and the senior cadre of IRGC need to hold onto their over 35-years of revolutionary principles. Otherwise, they will subvert the underlying characteristics and foundation of the Islamic Republic. They simply cannot take the risk of changing the 35years of institutionalized revolutionary ideologies. It is totally inimical to the geopolitical, parochial, and economic interest of the Office of the Supreme Leader and the IRGC. Finally, if Iran commits to the deal, it will receive approximately$100 billion in frozen assets as soon as the month of January. Some of Iran’s political figures will likely be removed from the U.N. blacklist if sanctions are removed. In a few years, the Islamic Republic will be capable of exporting and importing ballistic missiles and conventional weapons legally. The arms embargo can be lifted in five years. Iran will be cable of reintegrating into the international financial system, and export more oil. It might take Iran several months to reach this level according to U.S. authorities, or in “a matter of weeks” according to an Iranian official. All of this indicates that there is significant concern that Iran will be emboldened to increase its support for its allies and proxies in the Arab world and export its revolutionary ideology more forcefully. This will likely fuel the regional tensions and potentially turn the current turmoil into conflagration.

On the other hand, economically speaking, trade deals between Iran and some regional powers, primarily the UAE and Oman will likely increase.

Third bracket: Nuclear deal, United Nations, NPT, and the complexities Although the deal will be signed soon, and although it has been described as a good deal by the relevant parties, there exist several crucial ambiguities and unanswered questions about the IAEA’s role and the military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program. Some of the U.N. authorizations and timing to lift economic and financial sanctions clashes with the timing that IAEA has to obtain a full picture of Iran’s nuclear program. The IAEA’s role in the deal is not clear-cut as well. There is only a briefexplanations of how the IAEA can implements its verification regarding one of the most crucial military sites heavily suspected to be linked to Tehran’s nuclear program- Parchin.

There exist several dilemmas in the full 159-page text of the agreement, and the statements issued by the American and Iranian officials. Some have simply been playing with words and applying strategic and tactical statements to defend their

314 position. According to President Obama, “this deal is not built on trust. It is built on verification. Inspectors will have 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear facilities.” Nevertheless, the access for U.N. and International Atomic Energy Agency, and IAEA inspectors does not appear to be 24/7. It appears that the U.N. and IAEA inspectors’ access is not a guarantee. There is a whole bureaucratic process to get access or be denied one. The timing of and lifting of sanctions can come before the IAEA has full detail of Iran’s nuclear program and its military facet. The Islamic Republic has over 10 nuclear or uranium enrichment sites (including in Shiraz, Bushehr, Ardakan, Tehran, Saghand, Esfahan, and Karaj).

In addition, it is not clear whether Iran will legally endorse the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The deal indicates that the Islamic Republic will accept the Additional Protocol “provisionally”. This can take a considerable amount of time, since there is not any fixed timetable mentioned in the deal. This can occur after the sanctions are supposed to be removed. In addition, the limit on research and development is only eight years, not 15.

The most crucial parts of the deal still remain to be implemented. The current deal is an understanding, agreement and accord. A deal is a deal when all terms of the agreement are fully implemented and sanctions are lifted. It remains to be seen whether both sides will have the same interpretation of the deal. Will both sides face differences and come into tension when they begin implementing the deal in detail (such as U.N. inspectors visiting Iran’s nuclear sites)? Secondly, it remains to be seen whether Iran will completely adhere to the technical nuances of the deal. But, what is clear is that as long President Obama is in power, it is less likely to witness any dispute between Tehran and Washington. In other words, by the time President Obama leaves office, most of the economic sanctions will have been lifted, according to the timetable of the deal, and the Islamic Republic will have achieved its goals.

Finally, will Iran stick to the deal? When the economic sanctions are lifted, there is no incentive for the Iranian ruling establishment to continue committing themselves to the agreement. The major purpose of the deal for Iranian leaders was getting sanctions removed.

Why should they continue the deal?

Fourth bracket: Iran-U.S. and Iran-EU relationships Iran’s positions towards the United States and European countries have been slightly different from the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. While Iran’s revolutionary ideology is based on opposing America, Tehran has had slightly more amicable ties and diplomatic relationships with European countries, economically and geopolitically speaking.

After the deal, the economic and political ties will likely improve between the Iranian governments and EU countries. Considering Iran-U.S. ties, the significant issue is that Iranian and American diplomats have established a direct line of connection and communication (thanks to the nuclear negotiations) after over 30 years of hostility.

From President Obama’s perspective, the absolute and real winner of the deal is himself.

Whether the deal succeeds or fails in the future, whether Iran complies with the terms and sanctions are lifted, President Obama will argue that he has achieved his lifetime Middle Eastern and foreign policy legacy. As time passes, the public will view the deal as the President’s foreign policy legacy as well. The problem is whether the deal can resolve the issue or increase tensions between the West and Iran in the future- what will be remembered is that President Obama scored a victory and reached a landmark nuclear

315 deal with Iran after more than decade of stand off. President Obama is, and will be, triumphant even if the deal collapses in the future.

Finally, when it comes to regional challenges, while the U.S. will continue to cooperate with Iranian leaders, tactically speaking, American leaders can at least speak directly with Iranian leaders for any strategic tension. This will alleviate the increased hostility between Tehran and Washington and might lead to both tactical and partial strategic cooperation.

The interactions between the aforementioned four categories define Iran’s policy after the deal.

316 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 17 Jul 2015

(Israel)

No country has more at stake in the nuclear deal with Iran than Israel.

For the United States and Western allies it is a major foreign policy issue; for Israel it is potentially one of national existence. So no one in Israel takes it lightly.

Premier Netanyahu has come out strongly against the agreement, arguing that it is a bad deal which threatens international security and Israel’s future. In his statements he has repeatedly made reference to 1938, evoking the specter of Munich and the Holocaust.

For many in Israel the Holocaust remains the defining moment of modern Jewish history, a cataclysmic prism through which the world is judged. Netanyahu can certainly be accused of overdoing it; Israel is today a regional power. But he is not entirely wrong.

Iran's regime is a radical, rabidly anti-Semitic one that has repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction and has devoted considerable resources to that end.

Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, already has a mind- boggling 130,000 to 150,000 rockets aimed at Israel, according to Haaretz reporter Amos Harel, who bases his numbers on Israeli estimates.

Netanyahu has taken a particularly outspoken position on the Iranian nuclear program, but his views represent a broad agreement among Israeli leaders on the danger it poses.

In fact, the national debate is a narrow, but critical one. Many agree with Netanyahu that a nuclear Iran is simply an existential threat to Israel, in the narrowest sense of the word. The logical conclusion from this approach is that Israel must do everything in its power to prevent the emergence of the threat.

Others believe that a nuclear Iran poses a dire threat to Israel, but probably not an existential one, in that the likelihood of Iran ever actually using a bomb is low, and that the real threat lies in the influence nukes would provide it in future conflicts. The logical conclusion from this approach is that Israel should do everything it can within reason to prevent Iran from going nuclear, but not everything possible. In risking a rift with the United States, the question is whether Netanyahu is now doing what is within reason, or possible.

In essence, Netanyahu’s criticism is based on a few primary points that are hard to dispute. First, he argues that the agreement should not have been limited to 10-15 years, but should have been permanent. Second, that the agreement leaves Iran with its nuclear infrastructure essentially intact, instead of dismantling it, and that it will remain a de-facto nuclear state, able to rapidly achieve a nuclear weapon when it expires. Third, that the agreement does not restrict Iran’s destructive role in the region, including support for terrorism and organizations such as Hezbollah, and in fact, by opening the financial spigots to Iran, will further enable it in these areas. Finally, that the devil is in the details of an agreement that is over 100 pages long, and that the Iranians are past masters at utilizing every loophole and ambiguous wording to their benefit to continue development of their nuclear program. This will be particularly important for the verification regime.

The US administration counters that this is the best deal that could actually be reached, not the best one possible, and that the alternative, no agreement at all, was worse. A dismantlement of Iran’s infrastructure and permanent agreement were not attainable, but a 10-15 year postponement of its programs is a major achievement. Moreover, US officials argue, the agreement was never designed to restrict Iran’s other misdeeds, just address the overwhelmingly important nuclear issue, an approach with which Israel was fully in accord in the past. No one doubts that Iran will try to take advantage of every

317 loophole, this argument asserts, but the verification measures are robust.

Netanyahu’s intention to take the fight to Congress and to challenge a president’s biggest foreign policy initiative on his home turf would be sheer lunacy on any other topic and is misguided on this one. Only the belief that Iran truly presents an existential belief to Israel, and that this deal paves the way for that threat to materialize, can justify taking on the leader of the nation to whom Israel is so deeply beholden, and upon whom its survival depends today.

Israel has never successfully challenged an important presidential initiative in Congress and is highly unlikely to do so now. In the end, it comes down to who is better positioned to sway a small number of wavering Democrats. I am betting on the president. It is time for the prime minister to accept that this is the deal and to do what he should have done from the beginning: engage with the administration on the means of minimizing the threat to Israel and maximizing Israel’s contribution to the agreement’s successful implementation. Israel has intelligence capabilities and experience that can be invaluable in the years to come.

318 ecfr.eu European Council on Foreign Relations 17 Jul 2015

Explainer: The Iran nuclear deal The main components of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed on 14 July between Iran and the E3+3 (that is, France, Germany, the UK, China, the US and Russia) is summarised below. An overwhelming number of non-proliferation experts and scientists have assessed that the terms of the JCPOA provide the most reasonable and durable means to ensure Iran does not produce a nuclear weapon before detection.

The JCPOA increases the so-called “breakout” time – that is, the amount of time that it would take Iran to produce enough weapons grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon, from the currently estimated 2-3 months threshold to at least 12 months. The steps Iran would need to take to extend this breakout time is noted in the table below as “nuclear related” commitments. In return, the EU, US and the UN will provide Iran with economic relief through measures noted in the table below as “sanctions” commitments.

Timeline Summary IMPLEMENTATION COMPONENTS PLAN Date on which JCPOA announced.

Finalisation Day

E3+3 will “promptly” send JCPOA submitted to JCPOA to UN Security UN Security Council Council (UNSC) for review and adoption “without delay”.



Adoption Day





DATE/EXPECTED 14 July 2015

20 July 2015

90 days (or earlier if agreed by E3+3 and Iran) after endorsement of JCPOA by the UNSC. From this date, participants start making preparations for implementing commitments.

EU to adopt regulation Expected Mid- October terminating nuclear-related 2015 sanctions with effect from Implementation Day. US President to issue sanctions waivers to take effect on Implementation Day. Iran to prepare nuclear related commitments and notify IAEA that it will apply Additional

319

IMPLEMENTATION COMPONENTS PLAN

DATE/EXPECTED

Protocol provisionally with effect from Implementation Day.



Congress Review Period







Implementation Date

Transition Day

Members of US Congress have 60 days starting on 20 July 2015 to review the JCPOA. Congress may pass a bill of disapproval on the terms of the deal.

Under such circumstances, President Barack Obama pledged to use his veto.

There will be a window of 12 days for Obama to issue his veto although this is likely to happen more swiftly.

Once a veto is issued, there will be 10 days to override this veto.

Simultaneously with IAEA report verifying implementation by Iran of the nuclear-related measures, UN sanctions terminate, EU sanctions terminate (in some cases only suspended), US “ceases” application of nuclear related sanctions.

Initial vote for disapproval bill by 17 September 2015.

Obama's presidential veto must be issued by 29 September 2015.

Congress vote to override veto by 9 October 2015.

Not tied to any date but expected to occur within 4-6 months from Adoption Date. Roughly in the first half of 2016.

8 years after Adoption Day or the date when IAEA submits a report that all nuclear material in Iran remains in peaceful activities (whichever Expected mid-October is earlier). EU terminates 2023 remaining sanctions. US terminates or modifies remaining sanctions. Iran ratifies Additional Protocol.

320

IMPLEMENTATION COMPONENTS PLAN

DATE/EXPECTED

10 years from Adoption Day, the UNSC resolution UN Security Council endorsing JCPOA terminates resolution – provided no UN sanctions Termination Day have been re-imposed. UNSC “would no longer be seized of the Iran nuclear issue”.

Expected mid-October 2025

Commitments Summary COMMITMENTS

COMPONENTS

UN Security Council Resolution endorsing the JCPOA

US Congress will be faced with a UNSC Resolution endorsing JCPOA before casting votes on the deal (although not yet in force).

TIMEFRAME Expected to vote on 20 July 2015.

Comes into force within 90 day.

NUCLEAR RELATED - TO BE CARRIED OUT BY IRAN 

 IRAN-IAEA ROADMAP ON PMD



(Possible Military Dimension)







Enrichment only at  Natanz - preventing “uranium path to  weaponisation” 

Pursuant to Roadmap agreed between Iran and IAEA on 20 July 2015 (confidential document).

Iran will provide IAEA explanation on  outstanding issues.

There will be technical and political  meetings.

Arrangements in place regarding the issue of Parchin (there has been previous access to this military site).  All steps in Roadmap must be fulfilled before Implementation Date.

Iran submits written answers by 15 Aug 2015 IAEA has one month review IAEA resolves remaining PMD issues/questions by 15 Oct 2015 IAEA presents report on PMD by 15 Dec 2015

For 10 years: centrifuges reduced to 5,060 IR-1. Excess centrifuges stored under IAEA monitoring.

For 15 years: level of uranium enrichment capped at 3.67%.

For 15 years: Natanz is Iran’s only enrichment facility.

Between years 11-15: Iran can replaced IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz with more advanced ones.

Implementation date

321

COMMITMENTS

COMPONENTS 

Enriched Uranium Stockpile – preventing “uranium path to  weaponisation” 



Fordow –“uranium  path to weaponisation”  



Research & Development

 





Arak Heavy Water Reactor– preventing “plutonium path to  weaponisation”  

TIMEFRAME

For 15 years: stockpile kept under 300 kg up to 3.67% enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF6) or the equivalent in other chemical forms (this is a 98% reduction from existing stockpiles).

Implementation date Excess sold based on international prices.

Uranium oxide enriched 5-20% fabricated into fuel for Tehran Research Reactor.

Converted to research facility.

No more enrichment or R&D at this facility.

1,044 IR-1 centrifuges in six cascades will remain here.

Implementation date

For 10 years: R&D with uranium will only include IR-4, IR-5, IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges.

After 8 years: Iran starts manufacturing agreed numbers of IRImplementation 6 and IR-8 centrifuges without rotors. date After 10 years: begin phasing IR-1 centrifuges.

Manufacture advanced centrifuge machines only for the purposes specified with E3+3.

Iran will redesign and rebuild reactor into lower power research reactor with E3+3 partnership.

Iran would take out the original core of the reactor – this will become unusable.

Permanent: Iran will not produce weapons grade plutonium.

For 15 years: no heavy water reactors in Iran.

Permanent: Iran ships out all spent fuel from Arak reactor.

Implementation date Before Implementation date, Iran and E3+3 agree on joint venture

322

COMMITMENTS

COMPONENTS 





Transparency preventing “covert  path to weaponisation” 









Access 



By 15 October 2015: Iran fully implements PMD roadmap agreed with IAEA. Permanently: Additional Protocol measures - Iran will provisionally apply this and eventually its parliament will ratify it.

Permanently: full implementation of modified Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements to its Safeguards Agreement.

These give IAEA enhanced inspection abilities to access nuclear facilities and suspicious sites anywhere in the country under managed access.

For 20-25 years: IAEA has access to Iran’s supply chain for its nuclear prorgamme and has continuous surveillance of centrifuge manufacturing and storage facilities.

Procurement channel created for Iran’s purchase of nuclear related equipment and material.

TIMEFRAME

Implementation date.

PMD measures by 15 October 2015

Requests for access will be made in good faith by IAEA. Not aimed at interfering with Iranian military/national security activities.

IAEA provides Iran reasons for concerns regarding undeclared nuclear materials or activities and request access to those locations.

Iran may propose to the IAEA Implementation alternative means of resolving the date IAEA’s concerns.

If cannot agree within 14 days of original IAEA request, the Joint Commission will adjudicate and if needed decision made by majority vote.

Consultation with, and voting by Joint Commission must happen within 7 days.

323

COMMITMENTS

COMPONENTS 

TIMEFRAME

Iran would implement decision within 3 days (total of 24 days after original IAEA request).

SANCTIONS - TO BE CARRIED OUT BY E3+3 

UN

 

 



USA









UNSC resolution endorsing JCPOA will outline termination of all previous resolutions targeting Iran’s nuclear programme - 1696 (2006), 1737 Implementation date (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008), 1835 (2008), 1929 (2010) and 2224 (2015).

Subject to snap-back.

Cease the application of economic sanctions against Iran’s oil and banking sector allowing Iranian banks and companies to reconnect with international systems.

Will remove designation of certain entities and individuals.

Allows for license non-U.S. persons that are owned or controlled by a U.S. person to engage in activities with Iran permitted under JCPOA. Allows for the sale of commercial passenger aircraft to Iran.

Implementation Allows for license for importing date Iranian-origin carpets and foodstuffs into US. US takes appropriate measures to address laws at state or local level preventing full implementation of JCPOA – US will actively encourage officials to adhere to JCPOA policy.

US refrains from policy intended to adversely affect normalisation of economic relations with Iran.

8 years after Adoption date – if IAEA concludes that all nuclear activity in Iran remains peaceful, US will seek

324

COMMITMENTS

COMPONENTS

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EU  

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

Arms embargo 

TIMEFRAME

legislative action to terminate/modify nuclear related sanctions.

US sanctions on Iran targeting human rights, terrorism and missile activities remain.

Terminate all provisions of the EU Regulation related to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Includes: financial and banking transactions; transactions in Iranian Rial; provision of U.S. banknotes to Iranian government; access to SWIFT; insurance services; efforts to reduce Iran’s crude oil and petrochemical product sales; investment; transactions with Iran's energy and shipping sector; trade in gold and other precious metals; trade with Iran’s automotive Implementation sector. date Removes individuals and entities designated under sanctions.

EU refrains from re-introducing sanctions terminated under JCPOA (Iran views any re-introduction as grounds to cease performing its commitments).

Refrain from policy intended to adversely affect normalisation of economic relations with Iran.

For 8 years after Implementation date: EU’s arms embargo and restrictions on transfer of ballistic missiles remain.

After 5 years: UN sanctions on conventional weapons that were linked to Iran’s nuclear activities Implementation terminate. date After 8 years: UN sanctions on Iran’s missile programme that were linked to Iran’s nuclear activities terminate.

325

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COMPONENTS

TIMEFRAME

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US and international sanctions on Iran’s conventional weapons and missile capabilities remain.



Under easing of US and EU sanctions, Iran will be allowed access to roughly Implementation $100 billion revenues frozen abroad in date a special escrow.

Not a signing bonus.

Release of frozen revenues 

DISPUTE RESOLUTION & SNAP-BACK 



Joint Commission

  

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Dispute resolution  and snap-back



Comprised of representatives of Iran and the E3+3, with the EU High Representative.

Coordination led by EU High Representative.

Meet on quarterly basis or at request Established from Finalisation date of any JCPOA participant.

Decision and work subject to UN rules of confidentiality.

Amongst other things, in charge of dispute resolution and establishing procurement channel.

15 days for review by: Joint Commission assesses dispute.Time for review can be extended by mutual consent.

If unresolved, 15 days for review by: Ministers of Foreign Affairs. Any participant could refer the issue to the Ministers. Time for review can be extended by mutual consent.

Established from If unresolved, 15 days for review by: Finalisation date Advisory Board (three members, one each appointed by the participants in the dispute and a third independent member). Will provide non-binding decision.

Joint Commission has 5 days to review decision of Advisory Board. If no resolution and complaining party sees action as “significant non-

326

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TIMEFRAME

performance” - unresolved issue can be treated as grounds to cease performing commitments in whole or part. Complaining party will notify UNSC. UNSC will then votes on a resolution as to continuing lifting of sanctions. If resolution not adopted by 30 days, old UNSC resolution sanctions snap-back.

China and Russia cannot veto. Iran will cease to perform its obligations if sanctions snap back.

Sanctions snap-back not applicable with retroactive effect to contracts signed between any party and Iran.

You can also read more on the nuclear deal from our former visiting fellow, Aniseh Bassiri by clicking here: https://www.aspeninstitute.it/aspenia-online/article/provisions-nuclear-deal-historic-agreementbetween-iran-and-p51 (below)

327 Aspenia online 16 Jul 2015

The provisions of the nuclear deal: a historic agreement between Iran and the P5+1 Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi - Global Issues On July 14, after 12 years of difficult negotiations between the international community and Iran over the country’s nuclear program and as a result of the unprecedented commitment demonstrated by the two sides over the past 20 months, an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue has been reached.

Since April 2, when the parties announced a framework agreement in Lausanne, the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) and Iran had been working on drafting the final text of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA): this is a complex and detailed document of about 150 pages (comprising a main text and five technical annexes), outlining the obligations of both sides for the next 10 years. In line with the key parameters of the framework agreement and building on the Joint Plan of Action, which the P5+1 and Iran signed in Geneva in November 2013, the JCPOA ensures the peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program and its positive contribution “to regional and international peace and security”.

The agreement is intended to block all possible pathways through which Iran could acquire fissile material necessary for building a bomb, while extending the so-called breakout time (the time it would take for Iran to produce enough fissile material to build one bomb) from the current 2-3 months to at least one year for the next decade. Iran’s installed centrifuges, currently amounting to nearly 20,000, (of which 9,000 are operational), will be reduced by two-thirds. For the next 10 years, the enrichment capacity of Natanz, with its 5,060 first-generation centrifuges (IR-1), will remain unchanged. For the next 15 years, at Fordow, which will be converted into a civilian nuclear, physics and technology center, 1,044 centrifuges will continue to be operational, but only for research scopes and without enriching uranium.

During a 15-year period, Iran will maintain its uranium stockpiles under 300kg, a fraction of the amount required to produce one single bomb, removing 98% of its current stockpile of enriched uranium. Furthermore, Iran will no longer produce highly enriched uranium, capping its levels to 3.67%, significantly below the level needed to create a nuclear weapon.

In order to guarantee that it will no longer produce any weapon-grade plutonium, Iran also agreed to redesign and modify its Arak heavy water reactor in cooperation with the US and other international partners, while shipping out all the spent fuel rods of the reactor out of the country.

Finally, the JCPOA includes a number of confidence-building measures and provisions increasing the level of monitoring and transparency of Iran’s nuclear activities, with the aim of ensuring that the country will not secretly pursue the weaponization of its nuclear program. Through the implementation of the Additional Protocol, the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be able to always have eyes on the ground, accessing the country’s nuclear facilities where and when necessary, to control that no fissile material will be covertly diverted to build a bomb. Through the JCPOA, by October Iran will also implement the Roadmap for Clarification of Past and Present

328 Outstanding issues (also known as PMD) agreed with the IAEA, a fundamental step to clarify the nature of Iran’s past nuclear activities.

A series of balanced and reciprocal concessions will be granted to Iran in exchange for the country’s commitment to curb its nuclear program. First of all, Iran will achieve its long-sought goal of having its right to enrich exclusively for civilian purposes recognized.

Furthermore, Iran will be able to continue its research and development activities by testing higher generation centrifuges (from IR-4 to IR-8), more capable than the current generation IR-1 currently operational, “in a manner that does not accumulate enriched uranium”. In 10 years, these centrifuges could then become operational in Iran.

As Iran implements its key obligations (the conversion of the Arak facility, the shipping of the stockpiles out of the country and the reduction of the number centrifuges in particular) and pending verification by the IAEA by December, all UN and unilateral sanctions imposed against the country as a result of its nuclear activities will be lifted in a phased way. If Iran violates its end of obligations, sanctions will however “snap” back into place, creating a real incentive for Tehran to follow through.

A Joint Commission consisting of the P5+1 and Iran will be established to verify that all the provisions of the JCPOA will be effectively implemented by the parties involved and will be in charge of handling the dispute resolution mechanism.

The announcement of the JCPOA constitutes only the first step, dubbed Finalization Day, toward the implementation of the agreement. The next step will require the P5+1 to submit a draft Resolution to the UN Security Council endorsing the agreement, and 90 days after, at Adoption Day, the commitments of both sides will come into effect. Implementation Day will occur when the IAEA will verify Iran’s compliance with its end of obligations and will entail the termination of EU and US nuclear-related sanctions. Transition Day, eight years after Adoption Day, will be linked to the conclusions of the IAEA that the nuclear material in Iran remains for peaceful activities only, after which Iran will ratify the Additional Protocol. The last stage of the implementation of the agreement will be marked by Termination Day, when the UN Security Council Resolution endorsing the JCPOA will be terminated, ten years after Adoption Day. Albeit a historic day, July 14 therefore constitutes only the beginning of a long journey which, if successful, will ultimately result in the closure of the Iranian nuclear dossier and the normalization of the international community’s relations with Tehran.

URL di origine: https://www.aspeninstitute.it/aspenia-online/article/provisions-nuclear-deal-historic-agreementbetween-iran-and-p51 Links: [1] https://www.aspeninstitute.it/aspenia-online/contributors/aniseh-bassiri-tabrizi [2] https://www.aspeninstitute.it/aspenia-online/image/irannucleardealjuly2015 Links - other articles by this author: https://www.aspeninstitute.it/aspenia-online/article/provisions-nuclear-deal-historic-agreement-between-iran-and-p51 https://www.aspeninstitute.it/aspenia-online/article/perch%C3%A9-l%E2%80%99accordo-quadro-sul-nucleareiraniano-piace-all%E2%80%99europa https://www.aspeninstitute.it/aspenia-online/article/washington-and-iranian-nuclear-issue-domestic-battle-us

329 Information Clearing House 17 Jul 2015

The GOP’s Iran Dilemma

By Patrick J. Buchanan From first reactions, it appears that Hill Republicans will be near unanimous in voting a resolution of rejection of the Iran nuclear deal.

They will then vote to override President Obama's veto of their resolution. And if the GOP fails there, Gov. Scott Walker says his first act as president would be to kill the deal.

But before the party commits to abrogating the Iran deal in 2017, the GOP should consider whether it would be committing suicide in 2016.

For even if Congress votes to deny Obama authority to lift U.S. sanctions on Iran, the U.S. will vote to lift sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. And Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, all parties to the deal, will also lift sanctions.

A Congressional vote to kill the Iran deal would thus leave the U.S. isolated, its government humiliated, unable to comply with the pledges its own secretary of state negotiated. Would Americans cheer the GOP for leaving the United States with egg all over its face?

And if Congress refuses to honor the agreement, but Iran complies with all its terms, who among our friends and allies would stand with an obdurate America then?

Israel would applaud, the Saudis perhaps, but who else?

And as foreign companies raced to Iran, and U.S. companies were told to stay out, what would GOP presidential candidates tell the business community?

Would the party campaign in 2016 on a pledge to get tough and impose new sanctions?

"Coercive diplomacy," The Wall Street Journal calls it.

If so, what more would they demand that Iran do? And what would they threaten Iran with, if she replied: We signed a deal. We will honor it. But we will make no new concessions under U.S. threat.

Would we bomb Iran? Would we go to war? Not only would Americans divide on any such action, the world would unite — against us.

And would a Republican president really bomb an Iran that was scrupulously honoring the terms of the John Kerry deal? What would we bomb? All the known Iran nuclear facilities will be crawling with U.N. inspectors.

"Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons is resolved diplomatically through negotiation or it's resolved through force," said the president, "Those are the options."

Is that not pretty much where we are at, even if the GOP does not like it?

Republicans seem to be unable to grasp the changes that have taken place in this century.

330 With the Arab Spring, the fall of half a dozen regimes, the rise of al-Qaida and ISIS, civil wars in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, we have a new Middle East.

Our principal enemies are now al-Qaida and ISIS. And while both have been aided by our old allies, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, both are being resisted by Iran.

But, we are reminded, Iran's regime is founded upon ideological hatred of America. But, so, too, were Mao's China and Stalin's USSR. Yet Nixon forged a detente with Mao and FDR partnered with Stalin. And Ronald Reagan negotiated a strategic arms deal with the "evil empire" of his time.

Bibi Netanyahu and AIPAC, the Saudis and Gulf Arabs, will demand that Congress kill the Iran deal that Lindsey Graham says is a "death sentence for the State of Israel." But one trusts that, this time, the GOP will add a dose of salt to what the hysterics are bellowing.

After all, it was Bibi's rants — Iran is hellbent on getting a bomb, is only months away, and military action is needed now to smash the whirling centrifuges — that teed up the talks for Tehran.

All Iran had to do was prove it had no bomb program, which was not difficult, as U.S. intelligence had repeatedly said Iran had no bomb program.

Then the Iranians proved it. They agreed to cut their centrifuges by two-thirds, to eliminate 98 percent of their uranium, to halt production of 20 percent uranium at Fordow, to convert the heavy-water reactor at Arak that produces plutonium to a light water reactor that produces one kilogram a year, and to let cameras in and give U.N. inspectors the run of their nuclear facilities.

And how is Israel, with hundreds of atom bombs, mortally imperiled by a deal that leaves Iran with not a single ounce of bomb-grade uranium?

What does Iran get? What Iran always wanted. Not a bomb which would make Iran a pariah like North Korea and could bring down upon her the same firestorm America delivered to Iraq, but a path to become again the hegemon of the Persian Gulf.

Remarkable. Iran agrees not to build a bomb it had already decided not to build, and we agree to lift all sanctions. And they pulled it off.

What is one or two atom bombs you can't use, without committing national suicide, compared to $100 billion in freed assets and a welcome mat back to the community of nations.

331 The New York Times 18 Jul 2015

Ayatollah Khamenei, Backing Iran Negotiators, Endorses Nuclear Deal

By THOMAS ERDBRINK TEHRAN — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, voiced support on Saturday for his country’s nuclear deal with world powers while emphasizing that it did not signal an end to Iran’s hostility toward the United States and its allies, especially Israel.

“Their actions in the region are 180 degrees different from ours,” he said.

Speaking after a special prayer marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Mr. Khamenei portrayed the nuclear agreement as a victory for Iran, not least because it does not require the country to completely stop enriching uranium, as some in the West had wanted. The speech appeared to remove a main obstacle to formal approval of the agreement in Iran.

“After 12 years of struggling with the Islamic republic, the result is that they have to bear the turning of thousands of centrifuges in the country,” Mr. Khamenei said, referring to the United States and its five negotiating partners.Continue reading the main storyThough analysts said his positive portrayal of the agreement would probably quiet hard-line critics in Iran, it also seemed likely to become fodder for critics in the United States, complicating President Obama’s efforts to sell the deal to Congress and the American people.

“I think we all understand the caliber of people we are dealing with, and it adds to the bipartisan skepticism regarding the agreement,” Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Saturday.

The agreement, which in its final form runs to 159 pages, was reached on Tuesday after 20 months of negotiations between Iran and a group of six nations led by the United States. It is intended to significantly limit Tehran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons for more than a decade in return for lifting international sanctions.

Mr. Obama has made the agreement a benchmark of his presidency. It is opposed by Republicans and by Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of the United States’ most significant allies in the region. They have denounced it as a diplomatic mistake that will strengthen the economic and military power of a nation that threatens its neighbors, engages in and supports hostage-taking and terrorism, and is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama has insisted that the agreement is “not built on trust — it is built on verification.” Mr. Khamenei portrayed it as an acceptance by the West of Iran’s commitment to go ahead with a nuclear program, which its leaders have insisted is solely for peaceful purposes.

Like most of his remarks, the speech attempted a delicate balance between appeasing anti-Western hard-liners and those longing for change in Iran, with rhetoric that could be interpreted favorably on either side.

The speech stopped short of a flat-out endorsement of the agreement. But Mr. Khamenei did not include any specific criticism of the deal or its terms, and analysts said that would probably speed its acceptance by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and

332 Parliament.

At the same time, Mr. Khamenei made clear that a single agreement did not mean Iran’s overall relationship with the United States would change, and he promised to continue Iran’s support for allies in the region, including President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the Lebanese-based Hezbollah movement. He praised Iran’s annual anti-Israel rally, known as Quds Day. Under the nuclear agreement, Iran must give up large parts of its nuclear program, including two-thirds of its uranium-enrichment centrifuges, and it must accept intrusive inspections, even of military sites. Iran’s leaders say that what matters is Western acceptance that Iran will continue to have a nuclear program, and that when the agreement ends in 2025 Iran will be able to enrich uranium and plutonium without limits.

A draft resolution canceling sanctions against Iran and formalizing the steps that Iran is expected to take is to be presented at the United Nations Security Council on Monday.

The five permanent members of the Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran along with Germany.

Several leading members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have urged President Obama not to submit the agreement to the Security Council until Congress has first voted its approval or disapproval.

Critics say that by restoring Iran’s potential access to around $100 billion in frozen funds around the world, the agreement will free the country to finance an expanded campaign of aggression in the Middle East. Iranian hard-liners have complained that it will reduce the nuclear program to just a symbol, not an industrial effort. Many hard-liners also fear that it will end Iran’s enmity toward America.

Mr. Khamenei nodded to the complaints, accusing the West of trying to “remove all of the nuts and bolts of Iran’s nuclear industry.” And he made clear that any notions that relations with the United States would now thaw and that the two countries could cooperate on other matters were “dreams” that will not become a reality.

“We do not negotiate with the U.S. about different global and regional issues,” Mr. Khamenei said. “We do not negotiate about bilateral issues. Sometimes, in some exceptional cases, like the nuclear case, and due to the expediency, we may negotiate.”

He also seized on remarks by Mr. Obama at a news conference on Thursday, when the president acknowledged that the United States had made mistakes in its Iran policies in the past, including organizing a coup in 1953 and supporting President Saddam Hussein of Iraq in his war with Iran between 1980 and 1988.

“He mentioned two or three points, but did not confess to tens of others,” Mr. Khamenei said.

“I am telling you,” the ayatollah said, referring to the United States, “you are making a mistake now — in different parts of this region, but especially about the Iranian nation.”

He did not offer specifics. “Wake up,” he said. “Stop making mistakes. Understand the reality.”

Analysts said Mr. Khamenei’s remarks would probably quiet critics in Iran.

“He has stopped insisting on red lines and other restrictions; he also avoided any details of the agreement,” said Nader Karimi Joni, an Iranian journalist who favors the nuclear deal. “He supports the deal, and agrees with its contents.”

333

Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst who is close to the government, said the speech “cooled down hard-liners, who had been preparing to openly oppose the deal.”

Mr. Khamenei stressed that Iran would go on backing its friends in the region, come what may. “We will always support the oppressed Palestinian nation, Yemen, Syrian government and people, Iraq, and oppressed Bahraini people, and also the honest fighters of Lebanon and Palestine,” he said.

American support for Israel will remain a roadblock to relations, he signaled. Noting that Washington regards Hezbollah, Iran’s ally in Lebanon, as a terrorist organization, Mr. Khamenei asked how “Americans can support the child-killing Zionist government, and call Hezbollah terrorist? How can one interact, negotiate, or come to an agreement with such a policy?”

Worshipers began chanting and pumping their fists when he said the slogans “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” would continue to be heard in the streets of Iran.

334 The New York Times 18 Jul 2015 SundayReview | EDITORIAL

The Morning After the Iran Deal

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD If the historic nuclear accord with Iran gets through Congress and is not derailed by hard-liners in Iran, then what?

Apart from preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb, the agreement is already altering the region’s political dynamics, creating severe tension between the United States and its allies in the Middle East. And yet it may create space to deal more effectively with broader issues like the wars in Syria and Yemen.

Managing these shifts will take at least as much attention and creativity as President Obama and his partners have invested in the nuclear agreement.

In theory, Iran’s decision to submit to strict limits on its nuclear activities provides a chance for cooperation on other issues. By lifting crippling international economic sanctions in return for the nuclear restraints, the deal could strengthen the hand of the moderates in Iran. But if the economic benefits don’t flow quickly enough, hopes for an end to economic hardship could be dashed, discrediting the moderates and boosting the hard-liners.

In the negotiations, Mr. Obama was right to keep the focus on restraining the nuclear program. Now that the deal is done, Mr. Obama plans to encourage Iran, which has an abysmal human rights record and is exerting influence through proxies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere, to take a more constructive path, though there are no guarantees that Iran will be less disruptive in the future. On issues of human rights, terrorism and ballistic missiles, sanctions under United States law will remain in place indefinitely to keep pressure on Iran. The administration needs to be vigilant about exercising that leverage.

Still, with the breakthrough on the nuclear program, it would be a mistake not to test Tehran’s professed interest in working on other issues. On Friday, Iran announced that Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif would soon visit unspecified countries in the Gulf region to pursue a “new opportunity for regional and international cooperation.”

Secretary of State John Kerry is in talks with the Russians, Saudis, Iranians and others about a political solution to end the war in Syria.

The Iranians and the Americans are already working cooperatively in Iraq, without explicit coordination, in the fight against the Islamic State. Other potential areas for cooperation could include ensuring free passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, shoring up the new Afghan government and halting the trafficking of opium, which bankrolls the Taliban.

Another challenge for Mr. Obama is repairing ties with America’s allies in the region, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia, a Sunni nation. Both oppose the nuclear deal, and both have issued alarming denunciations of the United States. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has described his country as having more in common with the Sunni Arab states on the issue of Iran, a Shiite nation, than with America. On Thursday, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who until 2005 was the Saudi ambassador to Washington, said the deal will “wreak havoc” in the Middle East, and he accused Mr. Obama of knowingly making a bad agreement.

335 While Iran supports Shiite allies and other militants in the region, the threat it poses to Sunni Arabs and Israel militarily, especially if the deal deprives it of a nuclear weapon, is exaggerated. The Sunni countries together spend about $130 billion a year on defense while Iran’s military budget is about $15 billion. Israel, the region’s most capable military power, spends about $16 billion plus $3 billion from America, and has a nuclear weapon.

Even before the nuclear deal was completed, Mr. Obama began reaching out to allies to reassure them of America’s continued commitment to their security. Last week, he made phone calls to King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Netanyahu and others, promising more cooperation on intelligence, cybersecurity and missile defense, and even new arms sales to defend against Iran if it becomes more confrontational.

But throwing more weapons into a tumultuous region will not fix it. The Iran nuclear accord, if carried out faithfully by both sides, will reduce one threat that has destabilized the region. But the larger questions of human rights, competent governance, sectarian conflict and ossified authoritarian control will remain central obstacles to development and peace in the Middle East — and solutions to those problems will not depend on Iran alone.

336 The National 18 Jul 2015

(UAE)

Obama stakes his legacy on the nuclear accord Hussein Ibish A huge political battle is looming in Washington over the nuclear agreement with Iran. In the short run, Barack Obama will win the fight with his opponents in Congress. But in the long run, the fate of the deal, his legacy, and perhaps the future of American foreign policy, will be decided by forces operating beyond his control.

Anyone critiquing the agreement seemingly has an abundance of riches. It can be attacked as insufficient on inspections, rolling back Iran’s nuclear development, excessive sanctions relief (especially eventually lifting the UN arms embargo), and not accounting for what happens after its restrictions expire. But none of that is sufficient.

Mr Obama could veto any Congressional action – and a supermajority is almost certainly not available to the opposition. True, having to use a veto to protect his signature foreign policy initiative, would be embarrassing. But there is little doubt he will prevail.

Mr Obama has made an agreement on behalf of the US. For Congress to repudiate presidential judgment on a matter of this magnitude cuts deeply against the grain of American political sensibilities. Under such circumstances, presidents almost always get their way – and so will he.

The contours of the argument go something like this: This agreement blocks Iran’s pathway to obtaining a nuclear device.

No it doesn’t. It’s full of loopholes. Iran can and probably will cheat. And, even if they don’t, it doesn’t roll back their nuclear programme enough.

What’s your alternative?

Not war. The real alternative is a better deal.

You can’t get a better deal. The only alternative is war.

Yes we could. Or at least we could have maintained the status quo, which is better than the agreement.

We can’t maintain the status quo because the most important international sanctions are fairly recent and will certainly disintegrate over the next couple of years if we don’t have an agreement, and we do not have the power or influence to maintain them.

At least we should try. The US has a lot of influence and we could continue to isolate and pressure Iran.

But none of that would do anything to stop their drive towards getting a nuclear bomb.

And, anyway, we can’t maintain the most important sanctions. You’re basically warmongers – and totally unrealistic.

This is a capitulation to an extremist regime. There’s nothing more unrealistic than that.

And what happens in 15 years? What’s to stop Iran from getting a bomb then?

That’s a good one. If they try, we’ll deal with it then. 15 years is a long time.

337 But they haven’t changed since 1979.

Well we will have the same options then as we do now. They will still be a year away from a bomb.

No, much closer then.

We will know everything they do and still have all our options.

If that’s a reductive caricature of the basic argument, it’s not by much. The administration’s case relies on the idea that there aren’t any reasonable alternatives to this agreement. The critique centres on the idea that no agreement would be better than this agreement.

Because so much depends on imponderables – what will happen during implementation, how will it will affect Iran’s regional conduct, what will Iran’s domestic politics and foreign policy look like in a few years time, and will the international community stick together if Iran cheats on the accord – that it’s really not possible for either side to prevail on the merits. It’s a gigantic gamble and the question is whether it is one worth making or not.

Divisions in Washington over the agreement arise from, and focus sharp attention on, an irreconcilable disagreement that has arisen in recent years about the very basis of US foreign policy. Supporters of the agreement insist that recognising the limitations of American power is essential to avoiding further foreign policy disasters driven by overreaching, such as the invasion of Iraq. Its critics hold that these limits are being exaggerated by a risk-averse and essentially timid approach that manages to be both reckless and naive.

The Iran agreement perfectly illustrates how Mr Obama is pioneering a new “right-sized” foreign policy that seeks to reconcile goals with resources, and regards imperial hubris as the definitive error. And it may prove to be its ultimate test.

Mr Obama has been a lucky politician all his life, rising step-by-step to the White House with blinding speed as opponents dropped out, self-destructed or simply couldn’t cut it.

Like Abraham Lincoln, his claim to national leadership wasn’t based on any record of accomplishment but rather on his speeches, which cast him as the right man at the right time.

But never has he trusted more to fortune’s favour. Given the gamble that Mr Obama has made, his international legacy, and maybe even his legacy as president overall, is largely, if not entirely, in the hands of an unreconstructed extremist regime in Tehran.

And so, perhaps, is the future of his downsized American foreign policy.

338

LawFare 18 Jul 2015

The New UNSCR on Iran: Does it Bind the United States (and future Presidents)?

By John Bellinger Lynch and John Hudson have an article in Foreign Policy provocatively entitled “Obama Turns to U.N. to Outmaneuver Congress” in which they suggest that the new U.N. Security Council Resolution likely to be adopted next week will tie the hands of future Presidents and that the United States would violate the Resolution if Congress votes down the Iran nuclear deal. That is not my reading of the draft UNSCR that has been leaked to the press. Although some provisions of the draft UNSCR would be legally binding on the U.S. (and all U.N. Member States) under the U.N. Charter, these are provisions that effectively continue the existing arms and missile technology embargoes on Iran. If the draft UNSCR is adopted, the United States would not be legally required to lift U.S. sanctions on Iran. If Congress prevents President Obama from lifting U.S. sanctions, the United States would certainly act inconsistently with the Administration’s political commitments under the JCPOA, but the U.S. would not violate the new UNSCR. The draft resolution (dated July 14) includes a 7-page resolution and a separate 7-page “Statement” by the P-5 members and the EU, which is incorporated by reference in Annex B. (The full JCPOA would be attached as Annex A.) The draft resolution itself consists of 14 non-binding preambular paragraphs (PPs) and 30 operative paragraphs (OPs), of which 12 are legally binding “decisions” of the Security Council. Nine of these 12 decisions pointedly state that the Council is acting under Article 41 of the Charter, which governs measures the Security Council may take, other than the use of armed force, to maintain international peace and security. The last preambular paragraph specifically “underscor[es]” that “Member States are obligated under Article 25 of the United Nations Charter to accept and carry out the Security Council’s decisions.”

The draft resolution appears to have been carefully crafted by Administration lawyers to avoid imposing binding legal obligations on the United States before Congress considers the JCPOA, or with which the United States might be unable to comply if Congress disapproves the JCPOA. (When I was NSC Legal Adviser, I was, together with then UN Ambassador John Negroponte, one of the principal negotiators of UNSCR 1441 (2002), which imposed a final arms inspection regime on Iraq. UNSCRs adopted under Chapter VII are very difficult to negotiate with Russia and China, and even more so after the Iraq and Libya conflicts.) Although the leaked draft is dated July 14, and complex UNSCRs often go through multiple drafts as they are considered by the full Security Council, the fact that the P-5 have apparently agreed on this draft may suggest that the draft will not change substantially when it is considered by the Security Council next week.

OP2 “Calls upon all Members [sic] States… to take such actions as may be appropriate to support implementation of the JCPOA, including by taking actions commensurate with the implementation plan set out in the JCPOA…and by refraining from actions that undermine implementation of commitments under the JCPOA.” This OP (which does not use the verb “decides” and is not adopted under Article 41) has the effect of urging the US to carry out its commitments in the JCPOA, including the lifting of sanctions, but it does not require the US to do so as a matter of international law.

339

In contrast, in OP7(a), the Security Council “Decides, acting under Article 41” that the six prior UNSCRs relating to Iran’s nuclear program shall be terminated when the Security Council receives a report from the IAEA that Iran has fulfilled its relevant nuclear obligations set forth in the JCPOA. OP7(b) provides further that “All States” must comply with the provisions in the Statement of the P5+EU governing transfers of arms or missile technology to Iran. The provisions of OP7 are binding on all Member States, including the United States. As my fellow Lawfare colleague Matt Weybrecht has explained, these provisions ostensibly permit Member States to sell or transfer arms or missile technology to Iran, but only with Security Council approval (for periods of five years and eight years, respectively). Because the United States (and probably France and the United Kingdom) will not permit sales of arms or missile technology to Iran, the Security Council will not be able to approve any such sales for the specified time periods.

Thus, while it is true that this provision of the draft UNSCR would legally bind the United States, it only prevents the United States (and future Presidents) from taking actions they would not take anyway. (In theory, if the USG dramatically reversed course and wanted to sell arms to Iran, any of the other P-5 members could prevent the US from doing so. But this scenario is unlikely to happen.)

If Congress passes legislation prohibiting President Obama from lifting statutory sanctions on Iran (by voting to disapprove the JCPOA and then overriding a Presidential veto of its resolution of disapproval), the U.S. would act inconsistently with the hortatory (“Calls upon”) language of OP2 and the U.S. political commitments in the JCPOA, but it would not violate the new UNSCR, as it is presently drafted. If the United States does not waive statutory sanctions, Iran would then be forced with the choice whether to proceed with its JCPOA nuclear commitments anyway (and thus benefit from the lift of U.N. and EU sanctions, and potentially from the return of frozen Iranian assets).

Alternatively, Iran could refuse to comply with its nuclear commitments, in which case previous U.N. sanctions could be re-imposed (assuming that the Obama Administration did not vote to continue the termination).

340 Foreign Policy 15 Jul 2015

Obama Turns to U.N. to Outmaneuver Congress Washington is working on a new Security Council resolution making the nuclear deal legally binding on the next president.

BY COLUM LYNCH, JOHN HUDSON Last March, 47 Republicans led by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas wrote a letter warning Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that a future U.S. president could legally revoke any nuclear deal that had been negotiated by Barack Obama’s administration with the stroke of a pen. They clearly didn’t realize that the White House has a way of making that much harder to do.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, on Monday circulated a legally binding draft to the 15-member U.N. Security Council that, if adopted, would give the body’s backing to the landmark nuclear pact trading billions of dollars in sanctions relief for greater international scrutiny of Iran’s nuclear energy program. It also instructs states to refrain from taking any actions that would undermine the agreement. The 14page draft resolution, obtained by Foreign Policy, is likely to be put to a vote by early next week.

The decision to take the deal to the Security Council before the U.S. Congress has concluded its own deliberations on the agreement places lawmakers in the uncomfortable position of potentially acting contrary to a resolution that is binding on the administration by voting down the deal. The strategy has infuriated some Republican lawmakers, who see the administration making an end run around Congress.

During a Tuesday phone call to Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) pressed him to put off a Security Council vote. “I urged that the Obama administration not seek action at the U.N. Security Council on the agreement before Congress can review it in detail during the legislatively mandated congressional review period,” Royce said in a statement.

Congress is currently weighing whether to accept or reject the deal brokered by the United States, Iran, and five world powers. Under the terms of a U.S. law passed this year, lawmakers can prevent the president from lifting congressional sanctions on Iran, which would blow up the landmark nuclear deal.

However, if a resolution is approved by the Security Council early next week, any president, Democrat or Republican, would be legally required to comply with many of its key provisions.

“If Congress were to veto the deal, Congress — the United States of America — would be in noncompliance with this agreement and contrary to all of the other countries in the world. I don’t think that’s going to happen,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters Tuesday.

Kerry suggested that the nuclear accord will likely win growing acceptance in Washington if Iran fully implements its obligations and is able to demonstrate “that they’re not able or ready to make a bomb.”

“I am convinced that whoever is our next president will see the wisdom of this agreement and they will leave it in place,” he added.

341 At issue is the exact power of the new resolution. A U.S. official said the administration believes that the U.N. resolution “would not impose legal obligations” for the United States, Iran, or other negotiating parties to fully implement the landmark nuclear pact.

The question is highly sensitive for the White House because Kerry assured Congress last March that the big-power nuclear pact with Iran would not be “legally binding” on the United States.

Some international legal experts say that the administration is correct to say that the U.N. resolution doesn’t make adhering to the entire nuclear pact obligatory for all parties. At the same time, they said the resolution would require all signatories to the deal — including United States and Iran — to comply with key provisions like the lifting of the U.N. arms embargo and ballistic missile ban in five and eight years, respectively.

“In essence, this allows the Obama administration to say that the Iran agreement in full is not binding on the U.S.,” said Kal Raustiala, a professor of international law at UCLA. “But at the same time some of the critical provisions will be binding if this resolution passes as a matter of international law, binding on the U.S. and binding on every other state in the system.”

The United States maintains that it is necessary to reinforce the nuclear pact with a binding U.N. Security Council resolution to ensure that sanctions continue to be imposed on Iran until it persuades the world that its nuclear program is peaceful. The U.S. official specifically noted that the measure will be crafted to prevent the export of all arms to Iran and to freeze the assets and prevent the travel of certain individuals.

Still, U.S. officials and some outside experts argue that there are enough safeguards written into the nuclear pact that any U.S. president would have the ability to re-impose sanctions on Iran if it violates the terms of the accord. The resolution, as well as the underlying nuclear deal, provide “lots of opportunities for the United States to block the termination of the sanctions” and “doesn’t bind any future president,” said Steven Ratner, a professor of international law at the University of Michigan law school .

U.S. officials say the resolution would also not require the U.S. Congress to lift its own sanctions on Iran. “Congress still ultimately controls the status and application of the legislative-based sanctions at issue in the [nuclear pact],” the official said. “If Iran abides by the [nuclear pact] Congress will eventually have to act again to lift these sanctions.”

On Capitol Hill, there are currently two schools of thought about the wisdom of taking a resolution to the U.N. Security Council prior to a vote in Congress.

For some Republicans, the move is a dangerous subjugation of U.S. sovereignty and an insult to Congress’s oversight role.

“Given that huge bipartisan majorities in both houses voted for legislation to prevent the president from implementing the agreement before congressional review, I think members from both sides of the aisle will see this tactic as an end run on Congress,” said Jamil Jaffer, a Republican and former chief counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

342 Others, even those skeptical of a deal, prefer that the U.N. take action first so that Congress can better understand the accord it’s approving or rejecting.

“It actually makes sense that we would go second because then we’ll know what we’re voting on,” said a congressional aide who focuses on the Iran nuclear portfolio. “If we went first, we’d be in the uncomfortable position of approving something that could change depending on what’s agreed on at the U.N.” Indeed, the United States and its negotiating partners have not included some of the most controversial provisions — for instance, a decision to lift an embargo on conventional weaponry in five years and ease restrictions on the development and import of ballistic missile technology in eight years — in the nuclear accord that will be reviewed by Congress. Instead, those provisions are embedded in the new U.N. Security Council resolution, which congressional critics of the deal will have no power to block.

The new draft resolution provides weaker restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program than those contained in previous resolutions, which banned Iran from undertaking “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.” The draft under consideration would only “call upon” Iran not to engage in such activities. It also includes no explicit prohibition on Iran’s development or import of conventional missile technology. That means Iran can continue to advance its conventional ballistic missile program without violating the terms set by the U.N. Security Council.

But acquiring foreign supplies for its missile program will still be constrained by the deal.

A U.S. administration official familiar with the deliberations noted that the draft requires that any company trying to supply Iran with missile-related technology seek approval from a committee composed of representatives from key powers, including the United States. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington would use its position to “veto” the import of any sensitive missile technology into Iran. “The practical effect” of the new resolution is to preserve the same prohibitions contained in existing resolutions, said the official. “It prohibits effectively any transfer of missile technology, conventional or nuclear.”

According to an individual familiar with the talks, the compromise on the arms embargo and ballistic missile sanctions came at the eleventh hour of negotiations in Vienna. Iran, backed by Russia, insisted that a final deal lift all restrictions on conventional arms and ballistic missiles immediately. Seeking to break the impasse, Kerry “did some maneuvering between the Iranians and Russians and got it to a five-eight compromise,” meaning the conventional-arms embargo would be in effect for another five years and restrictions on ballistic missile technology would extend for eight years rather than lift immediately. “This was a Kerry special,” said the individual.

Prior to the conclusion of the nuclear talks, Republicans such as New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte grilled Obama administration officials about the dangers of lifting sanctions on Iran that deter it from obtaining conventional weapons or ballistic missiles.

Responding to a question from Ayotte last week, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “under no circumstances should we relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking.”

343 When Dempsey’s remarks were raised during a press conference with Obama on Wednesday, the president pushed back, saying, “We are not taking the pressure off Iran with respect to arms and with respect to ballistic missiles.”

Instead, the president asserted, the new resolution would keep those restrictions in place while leaving Washington with a “host of other multilateral and unilateral authorities that allow us to take action where we see Iran engaged in those activities, whether it’s six years from now or 10 years from now,” he said.

344 The New York Times 19 Jul 2015

U.N. Vote on Iran Nuclear Deal Irks Congress

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and DAVID E. SANGER WASHINGTON — During the closed-door talks in Vienna on limiting Iran’s nuclear program, Secretary of State John Kerry argued that the United Nations Security Council should not vote on lifting sanctions on Iran until Congress had a chance to review the deal.

But he ran into a wall of opposition from Iran, Russia and even the United States’ closest European allies, who argued successfully that Security Council action should come first, according to Western officials.

On Sunday, as the Obama administration submitted the Iran nuclear agreement to Congress for what promises to be a raucous 60-day debate, Mr. Kerry and President Obama began grappling with the fallout of that decision, which has complicated their efforts to secure much needed support within their own party.

At least two senior Democrats have joined the Republican leadership in complaining that the Security Council action, expected Monday morning, would pre-empt the congressional debate. Their concern is that it would signal the international community’s intention to dismantle the sanctions — if Iran meets the nuclear terms of the accord — before American lawmakers have had time to vote on it.

Asked if she thought Democratic lawmakers would support the deal, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “the jury is out.”

Mr. Kerry expressed little sympathy on Sunday for congressional demands that the Security Council delay its vote, insisting that lawmakers will still have ample opportunity to carry out their review.

A provision inserted into the agreement at the behest of American negotiators, he said, stipulates that the deal will not take effect until 90 days after the Security Council formally endorses the accord — giving Congress time for action.

Mr. Kerry, a former senator from Massachusetts, scolded some of his erstwhile colleagues. “It’s presumptuous of some people to suspect that France, Russia, China, Germany, Britain ought to do what the Congress tells them to do,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“They have a right to have a vote” at the United Nations, Mr. Kerry added, referring to his negotiating partners, who include the four other permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany. “But we prevailed on them to delay the implementation of that vote out of respect for our Congress, so we wouldn’t be jamming them.”

The congressional review, which formally begins on Monday, will focus on an array of contentious issues, including the duration of the agreement, the strength of inspection provisions and the procedures for reimposing sanctions if the Iranians violate the agreement. Critics have also complained that the lifting of sanctions and the eventual end of an arms embargo will empower Iran to act against American interests around the world.

In response, the White House has stepped up its campaign to argue that a congressional

345 rebuff would bring about the very outcome lawmakers want to avoid: the collapse of sanctions and an Iran on the threshold of having a nuclear weapon.

“If Congress says ‘no’ to this deal, then there will be no restraints on Iran,” Mr. Kerry told “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “There will be no sanctions left. Our friends in this effort will desert us.”

So far that argument has failed to impress Republicans, who have long pressed for tough sanctions and have viewed the idea of the Security Council voting first as an affront to the United States’ role as the ultimate check on Iran.

But some Democrats have also voiced concern that the administration may be trying to box them in by agreeing to swiftly proceed with a Council vote that will reduce the international pressure on Tehran.

Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, the panel’s ranking Democrat, sent a joint letter to Mr. Obama last week urging him to postpone the Council vote until after Congress has voted on the accord.

Some legal experts, including those who have worked for Republican administrations, say congressional fears that Security Council action would tie the hands of the United States are misplaced.

The adoption of a new Security Council resolution that lays out the terms for lifting United Nations sanctions, and which is already circulating in draft form, would not legally require the United States to lift its sanctions on Iran, said John B. Bellinger III, who served as the legal adviser for the State Department and the National Security Council during the administration of George W. Bush.

“The draft resolution appears to have been carefully crafted by administration lawyers to avoid imposing binding legal obligations on the United States before Congress considers the JCPOA,” he wrote on the Lawfare blog, using the abbreviation for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the Iran agreement is formally known.

The Obama administration had hoped to sidestep this highly charged political debate by persuading its negotiating partners in Vienna to let Congress vote first. But the Iranians wanted to ensure a Security Council vote as soon as possible to get the international community behind a road map for sanctions relief.

The Russians also wanted speedy action at the United Nations, if only to underscore the authority of the Council and their own influence. For some of the Europeans, Council action was seen as a way to reinforce the multilateral character of the negotiations.

When the congressional review period doubled to 60 days after a July 9 deadline was missed, Mr. Kerry’s hopes of persuading the United States’ negotiating partners to delay going to the United Nations dimmed further.

The compromise American diplomats engineered — stipulating that the “adoption date” of the agreement would come 90 days after the Security Council endorsement — was intended as a way to provide time for Congress to complete its review while accepting the allies’ argument that the adoption of the Council resolution should be a significant step and not an afterthought.

Even after an endorsement, United Nations sanctions would not be lifted until the Iranians take the required steps under the deal.

As strenuously as administration officials have pressed their case, many in Congress do

346 not yet appear to be persuaded. On Friday, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, a senior Democrat in the House, joined House Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, in urging that the United Nations vote be delayed. “I believe that waiting to go to the United Nations until such time as Congress has acted would be consistent with the intent and substance of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act,� said Mr. Hoyer, the House minority whip, referring to the legislation Mr. Obama reluctantly signed in May that will give Congress 60 days this summer to debate the Iran agreement.

347 The Washington Post 19 Jul 2015

No alternative to Iran nuclear deal, Kerry says on Sunday talk shows

By Carol Morello Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, in a round of interviews that aired Sunday, defended the deal they negotiated with Iran, saying that it leaves the Middle East safer and that there is no viable alternative.

“The real fear of that region should be that you don’t have the deal,” Kerry said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The agreement finalized last week in Vienna has come under heavy criticism from Republicans in Congress, which could vote to reject it. On Sunday, the administration officially presented the agreement to lawmakers, who will have 60 days to review it.

Kerry said that if opponents in Congress get enough votes to override a presidential veto, the consequences will be dire, warning that Iran would resume enriching uranium to levels prohibited under the deal. “If Congress says no to this deal, then there will be no restraints on Iran, there will be no sanctions left,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

He added that the five nations that negotiated alongside the United States would blame Washington for the deal’s failure and lift their sanctions on Iran. “Our friends in this effort will desert us,” Kerry said. “We will be viewed as having killed the opportunity to stop them from having weapons. [Iran] will begin to enrich again, and the greater likelihood is what the president said the other day — you will have a war.”

Kerry’s remarks were recorded Friday as part of five interviews he and Moniz did in tandem for the Sunday talk shows. The interviews were part of an aggressive campaign by the Obama administration to defend the deal announced last week, in which Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions being lifted.

In another move to reassure wary skeptics, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter left this weekend on a Middle East tour that includes stops in Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Israelis across the political spectrum consider the Iran agreement a threat because of Tehran’s support for proxy groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been one of the deal’s fiercest critics, characterizing it as a mistake of historic proportions. Largely Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran are regional rivals, and Saudi leaders have expressed concern that when sanctions are lifted, Iran will use a windfall of cash to spread its influence by backing proxies, including Houthi rebels in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has led a bombing campaign. Jordan, another stop on Carter’s tour, also has concerns about the agreement’s regional implications.

In the Sunday interviews, Kerry dismissed criticism over the United Nations getting a vote on the agreement before Congress has a chance to weigh in. A U.N. resolution endorsing the deal is expected to be introduced this week, though it will have no practical effect for several months, until Iran takes several steps enshrined in the agreement.

“They have a right to do that, honestly,” Kerry said on ABC’s “This Week” regarding the U.N. vote. “It’s presumptuous of some people to suspect that France, Russia, China, Germany and Britain ought to do what the Congress tells them to do.”

348

Kerry and Moniz defended the decision not to seek spontaneous inspections of undeclared sites where inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency suspect covert nuclear activity is being conducted. Moniz was asked on several shows about comments he made earlier this year insisting on “anytime, anywhere” access to sites in Iran after an Iranian general said in April that inspections of military sites would be offlimits.

In response, Moniz differentiated between the round-the-clock access IAEA inspectors would have to Iran’s known nuclear sites and the “managed access” to sites that Iran does not declare but where inspectors may suspect nuclear-related activity, which could be on military facilities. Managed access refers to a 24-day process in which inspections would be negotiated case by case — first through discussions between the IAEA and the Iranians, and then, if they can’t decide, by a joint commission. It falls short of spontaneous inspections, but experts say the only place where something close to “anytime, anywhere” occurred was in Iraq when it was occupied and the IAEA was looking for weapons of mass destruction.

“In the IAEA world, it is very important to distinguish [between] declared and undeclared sites,” Moniz said on “Face the Nation.” “Declared, we have 24-hour access. Undeclared, we have this process — anywhere, I might add.”

But in other interviews, Moniz said, he had used “anywhere, anytime” to describe managed access. “I said access anywhere, anytime in the sense of a well-defined procedure and well-defined time window to resolve it,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Kerry noted that no country has “anywhere, anytime” inspections.

“We never, ever had a discussion about ‘anywhere, anytime,’ ” Kerry said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s called ‘managed access’ . . . and the intelligence community has made clear to us, as they did before we signed on to this deal, that we would be able to know what they are doing during that intervening period of time.”

In every appearance, Kerry was asked why the agreement leaves an embargo on conventional arms in place for five years and a ban on ballistic missiles for eight years.

Neither involves nuclear weapons, but they were part of U.N. sanctions resolutions designed to nudge Iran to the bargaining table, Kerry said.

In a reference to Russia and China, along with Iran, Kerry noted that three of the parties argued there be no arms embargo at all.

“The United Nations resolution, which brought about the sanctions in the first place, said that if Iran will suspend its enrichment and come to negotiations, all the sanctions will be lifted,” he said on “This Week.” “Now they’ve done more than just come to negotiations; they’ve actually negotiated a deal. And three of the seven nations thought they shouldn’t, therefore, be held to any kind of restraint. We prevailed and insisted, no, they have to be.”

Kerry said that the United States and Iran will remain adversaries and that Washington will work to counter Iran’s support for militant groups and the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“The simple reality is that if you’re going to push back against Iran,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “it is better to push back against an Iran that doesn’t have a nuclear weapon rather than one that does.”

On “Face the Nation,” Kerry compared negotiating with Iran to historic breakthroughs in

349 talks with other hostile nations.

“The same way that Ronald Reagan negotiated with the Soviet Union, and the same way that Richard Nixon negotiated with what we then called Red China, we have now negotiated with somebody who took our embassy over, took hostages, killed Americans, many of the things you hear people say, supported terrorism,” he said. “But what we need to recognize is that an Iran that we want to stop the behavior of with a nuclear weapon is a very different Iran than an Iran without a nuclear weapon.”

Kerry also said the administration is still working to secure the release of three Americans imprisoned in Iran, including Jason Rezaian, a reporter for The Washington Post imprisoned for almost a year and accused of spying. Kerry said negotiators asked for their freedom on the sidelines of every meeting held with the Iranians.

In an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Martin Baron, executive editor of The Post, said editors were also trying to reach out to Iran through sources outside the State Department.

“We’ve tried every channel we can think of,” he said. “Through other governments, other individuals, the administration, you name it.”

Baron noted that President Obama said recently that the U.S. government is working diligently for the release of Rezaian and the other Americans.

“We hope it’s the case, we believe it’s the case, and we want them to work harder,” he said.

Critics of the agreement also appeared on the Sunday talk shows.

Among them was Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who in March wrote an open letter to Iran’s clerical leaders, signed by 46 other Republican senators, warning that a future Congress or Republican president could revoke or alter an agreement. Appearing on “Meet the Press,” he predicted that Congress will ultimately reject the agreement.

“In the end, I don’t think it’s a good thing to give such an outlaw regime nuclear weapons capability,” he said, adding, “I think the alternative is for Congress to reject this deal and demand a better deal. To send our negotiators back to the table, with both tougher sanctions and military force, and get a better deal for the American people.”

Netanyahu also appeared on several talk shows, criticizing the agreement and saying it made Israel less safe.

“I think that what they have got now is a path that gets rid of all these sanctions and allows them, if they keep the deal, within a few years, they are able to break out to a situation where they can get to nuclear arsenal with virtually zero breakout time,” he said. “So, Iran is actually on path to a much bigger nuclear arsenal. And, secondly, they’re getting a lot of money. Their economy was really stifled. Now they’re going to get all that windfall.”

Kerry, meanwhile, fresh from his successful negotiation with Iran, was asked whether there was any chance he would run for president again.

“None,” he said on CNN, adding quickly: “Zero. Absolutely none whatsoever. I have a great job. We have a lot of work to do in the next year and a half, and I’m looking forward to it.”

350 Foreign Affairs 19 Jul 2015

Europe's Edge

By Engaging With Iran, Europe Can Assert Its Power

By Ellie Geranmayeh With the announcement of the Iran deal, it is clear that a new era of Western engagement with Iran has begun. And, from the Islamic State (also called ISIS) in Syria and Iraq to instability in Yemen, cooperation has never been more important. But it would be difficult for diplomats in Washington and Tehran to jump right in. On the U.S. side, much of the country’s political class remains suspicious of Iranian intentions and mindful of the two countries’ long history of bad blood. The same is true on the Iranian side. European diplomats, however, are well placed to explore engagement with Iran— and they should, both as a way to promote stability in the region and to assert Europe’s status as an independent power.

In remarks about last week’s nuclear deal, Federica Mogherini, the EU High Representative, was explicit that it could “open the way to a new chapter in international relations.” In fact, the basic plot points for this chapter were drafted long ago. Europe and the Islamic Republic have faced real tensions in their relations. But unlike the United States, EU member countries, with the exception of the United Kingdom, never froze diplomatic ties with Iran. In fact, it was Javier Solana, who was then the EU high representative, together with representatives from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (known as the E3), who kicked off the diplomatic channels with Iran on the nuclear issue that concluded in the Vienna deal.

The Europeans were able to take such an active role in nuclear negotiations because of their history of engagement with Iran. The high point was known as the Comprehensive Dialogue, which followed Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s election in 1997 and his unprecedented outreach to the West. The European Union mandated a broad dialogue with Iran on global issues, including terrorism, nuclear weapons, Afghanistan, the Middle East Peace Process, human rights, trade, and energy. Deeper and more frequent interactions with Tehran led to breakthroughs on thorny issues, such as Iran’s support for Hezbollah.

This period of cooperation hit roadblocks—the nuclear standoff and outlandish statements against Israel by former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad severely deteriorated European–Iranian ties. But the election of Hassan Rouhani as president in August 2013, and Rouhani's progressive tone since, helped start to improve things.

Since the interim nuclear deal was signed in November 2013, there have been at least 17 foreign ministerial trips to Iran and, reportedly, 103 European trade delegations.

These visits have been exploratory in nature, but they have aimed at setting the stage for deeper political and economic engagement with Iran, preconditioned on a final nuclear deal.

There is another reason for Europe to lead the charge in searching for new openings with Iran: it is closer to the Middle East, and is more vulnerable to conflicts on its doorstep, from refugee inflows, to internal radicalization, to Islamophobic backlash. Iran has had a role in perpetuating conflicts in the region and undercutting Western interests and security. For precisely this reason, Europeans have understood that any lasting solution to the regional crises will have to involve Tehran. Europeans also largely accept that it would be simplistic to think that the Islamic Republic has always acted against the West’s interests. It has proven useful in stabilizing Afghanistan. It has helped ensure Baghdad’s survival by leading the ground offensive against ISIS. It made use of its links to Hezbollah to prevent the collapse of Lebanon’s political structure by supporting a

351 power-sharing arrangement with the Saudi-backed March 14 Alliance movement.

Even U.S. officials, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have quietly acknowledged that his administration’s regional objectives may be better served by engaging with rather than containing Iran, particularly in building a counter-ISIS strategy in Iraq. But with the P5+1 framework now largely shuttered, it is not obvious how U.S. officials could do so.

Europe could be part of the solution. A recent report by the European Council on Foreign Relations calls for Europe to begin a regional engagement process and devise a formula for “high-level and high-intensity” outreach with both Iran and Saudi Arabia. The paper recommends that the EU High Representative and the E3 should use the nuclear deal to start this process, with France and the United Kingdom drawing on their close relations to Saudi Arabia, and Germany deploying its relative edge with Iran to push for deescalation in the region. The E3 surely recognize the need to prioritize regional outreach, and it is unlikely that any country alone will want take on this ambitious role alone. The E3 are likely to capitalize on the political momentum that has followed the nuclear deal to start such efforts under a collective European umbrella and in a way that maximizes their influence on regional stakeholders. It is likely to be years before the world sees any significant rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia; in fact, the two countries’ relations will probably deteriorate in the short term. Realistically, it won’t be until they reach their thresholds for confrontation that they look to Europe to help them navigate their way out of violent regional rivalries. At that point, Tehran and Riyadh could be persuaded to chart a more constructive course for the region, especially if doing so were part of a European-mediated dialogue. For now, Europe can establish the necessary links between counterparts in Saudi Arabia and Iran, particularly those who would be involved in an eventual settlement. For now, the EU high representative and the E3 foreign ministers should encourage and push both sides to reduce tensions so as to prevent violence. Given Iran’s relative position of strength after the nuclear deal, Europe would like to see Tehran making a more meaningful outreach to Riyadh—particularly on deescalation in Syria. And so the Europeans should link discussions on economic development in the region to the need for stability, which will be required for energy cooperation and trade.

This European outreach should be closely coordinated with the United States. In the short to medium term, and in the time remaining on Obama’s tenure, the United States will be constrained in its ability to engage with Iran—and most attempts to do so will happen behind closed doors. But if Washington and Tehran can start to build a positive record by successfully implementing the nuclear deal, the United States can gradually play a more explicit role by joining existing platforms of engagement with Iran on regional issues, such as those established by the Europeans or the United Nations.

In dealing with other recent foreign policy challenges, particularly the conflict in Ukraine and heightened tension with Russia, the European Union’s efforts have been diluted due to disunity among member states. The Iran file presents a chance for the Europeans to once again play an active role in strengthening global order through the diplomatic leadership they exercised by starting the nuclear talks. Just like the nuclear issue, addressing regional conflicts with Iran will be challenging. Europe should use the diplomatic momentum created by the nuclear deal to test the possibility of cooperation with Iran on contentious regional issues. The process might be slow or seemingly impossible at first. But Europe has the political space, the need, and the blueprint to start pushing forward on this path.

352 AP 20 Jul 2015

UN ENDORSES IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL WITH 6 WORLD POWERS

BY EDITH M. LEDERER, ASSOCIATED PRESS UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. Security Council on Monday unanimously endorsed the landmark deal to rein in Iran's nuclear program and authorized measures leading to the end of U.N. sanctions, but also approved a provision that would automatically reinstate the harsh measures if Tehran reneges on its promises.

European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels immediately followed suit, endorsing the agreement between Iran and six major powers and taking the first step to lift EU sanctions.

President Barack Obama told reporters he hopes the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress, where there is strong opposition to the deal, will pay attention to the "broad international consensus," stressing that the deal is "by far our strongest approach to ensuring that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon."

But House Speaker John Boehner accused Obama of "ignoring the concerns of the American people" by allowing "such a consequential vote" to go ahead in the U.N. just 24 hours after submitting the agreement to Congress, which has 60 days to consider it.

"This is a bad start for a bad deal," he said.

While sharp differences remain between the United States and Iran, ambassadors from both countries called the agreement an important achievement for diplomacy.

Under the agreement, Iran's nuclear program will be curbed for a decade in exchange for potentially hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of relief from international sanctions.

Many key penalties on the Iranian economy, such as those related to the energy and financial sectors, could be lifted by the end of the year.

Iran insists its nuclear program is purely peaceful, aimed at producing nuclear energy and medical isotopes, but the United States and its Western allies believe Tehran's real goal is to build atomic weapons. Iran's U.N. Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo reiterated that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has declared nuclear weapons "Haram," which means forbidden by the Muslim faith in Arabic.

Khoshroo said Iran promises to be "resolute in fulfilling its obligations" and expects all other parties to the agreement to meet their commitments. This is the only way diplomacy can "prevail over conflict and war in a world that is replete with violence, suffering and oppression," he said.

353 The Iranian ambassador said the agreement "provides a solid foundation for further and more effective diplomatic interaction." And he expressed hope that the agreement heralds "a new chapter" in the country's relations with the Security Council and the six powers that negotiated the deal - the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the deal gives Iran "an opportunity to prove to the world that it intends to pursue a nuclear program solely for peaceful purposes."

"If Iran seizes that opportunity ... then it will find the international community and the United States willing to provide a path out of isolation and toward greater engagement," she said.

But Power said the nuclear deal doesn't change the United States' "profound concern about human rights violations committed by the Iranian government or about the instability Iran fuels beyond its nuclear program, from its support for terrorist proxies to repeated threats against Israel to its other destabilizing activities in the region."

She urged Iran to release three "unjustly imprisoned" Americans and to determine the whereabouts of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who vanished in Iran in 2007.

Khoshroo departed from his prepared speech to react to what he called "baseless accusations" from Power.

He accused the United States of "feckless and reckless acts" by invading Iraq and Afghanistan. These invasions "created favorable ground for the growth of terrorism and extremism" and are at the root of many challenges facing the unstable region, he said Obama has stressed that all of Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon are cut off for the duration of the agreement and Iran is obliged to remove two-thirds of its installed centrifuges and get rid of 98 percent of its stockpile of uranium.

But Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the Security Council "has confirmed the inalienable right of Iran to develop its peaceful nuclear program, including to enrich uranium" under supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The resolution specifies that seven previous resolutions related to U.N. sanctions will be terminated when Iran has completed a series of major steps to curb its nuclear program and the IAEA has concluded that "all nuclear material in Iran remains in peaceful activities."

All provisions of the U.N. resolution will terminate in 10 years, including the "snap back" provision that would make it easier to reimpose sanctions.

But last week the six major powers and the European Union informed U.N. SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon that they have agreed to extend the snap back mechanism for an additional five years. They asked Ban to send their letter to the Security Council.

354 CNN 20 Jul 2015

Nuclear deal could transform Iran

By Nader Hashemi Nader Hashemi is the director for the Center for Middle East Studies at Josef Korbel School at the University of Denver. The views expressed are the writer's own.

(CNN)Is the Iran nuclear accord a groundbreaking agreement or a historic mistake? As the world's attention shifts from Vienna to Washington, where Congress is set to debate this very question, it's worth taking a step back to get a better understanding of what's really going on. That is especially true for the deal's skeptics, because if they looked at what has transpired from Iran's point of view, it would be clear to them that this nuclear agreement marks a colossal defeat -- for Tehran.

Why? For a start, the deal is a repudiation of the nuclear strategy of Iran's Supreme Leader, embodied in his "resistance" approach to international relations. Indeed, whatever gloss official statements from President Hassan Rouhani try to put on the deal, Iran has effectively capitulated to the demands of the West.

Over the past 15 years, the Islamic Republic had invested heavily in its nuclear program, establishing an extensive multibillion-dollar infrastructure, the exact cost of which has never been made public. As a result, Iran was subjected to unprecedented sanctions and economic hardship -- a price the regime was seemingly willing to pay to retain the option of pursuing a nuclear weapon.

But this agreement, with its provisions for rolling back key parts of Iran's nuclear program and subjecting it to unprecedented international inspection, now makes this option much more difficult. In fact, it cuts off Iran's pathway to a bomb and effectively paralyzes Tehran's nuclear ambitions for at least the next decade, while also sending Iran down a path of further concessions in exchange for gradual sanctions relief.

That Iran was forced to accept terms it had steadfastly rejected in the past suggests that Iran's nuclear strategy has hit a brick wall. Mohammad Ali Jaafari, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, admitted in 2013 that with the deal as it stood then, Iran had "given the maximum and received the minimum." Other hard-liners weighed in suggesting that Iran "gave away the crown jewel for a lollipop."

While the validity of this interpretation of the agreement cannot be publicly debated in Iran because of political censorship, there is obvious frustration among Iranian members of the public that they have had to wait so long for some sort of deal. As Iranians began to digest the news of the 2013 plan, The New York Times Tehran bureau chief said one man had commented: 'I am now 30 years-old. When Ahmadinejad came to power I was 22. Why were those eight years of my life wasted? Why am I still without a job? Why do I hold a university degree but don't have a future in this country?"

Such views underscore another reason criticism of the deal is misplaced: The agreement is good for the Iranian people.

The easing of sanctions will benefit the Iranian middle class and civil society, which comprises the core support base for Iran's pro-democracy movement. Under the existing sanctions regime, it was average Iranians, not the ruling clerical elite, who were most adversely affected. Indeed, according to a report by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, sanctions have led to a "severe deterioration in the ability of the Iranian people to pursue their economic and social rights."

355 Essentially, a basic struggle for survival had taken precedence over political organizing and pro-democracy activism. Now, freed from the economic devastation of sanctions, pro-democracy activists will find they are actually the biggest beneficiaries of a nuclear deal.

Keeping Iran's pro-democracy movement in mind is critical as the West looks to deescalate tensions with Iran, because while a nuclear agreement is a vital first step, it won't by itself resolve the challenge that Iran poses to stability in the Middle East. The reality is that the Iranian regime will only truly change its behavior after a democratic transition, where more accountable Iranian leaders will assume power and play a more constructive role among the community of nations.

This is where the United States can play a role, albeit an indirect one. As we have learned from other democratic revolutions, there is no exact formula to predict when a dictatorial regime may crumble, but in the medium term, the prospects for change look good in Iran. What has been missing in Iran, though, is an international context conducive to a democratic transition. To date, the existing sanction regime and foreign military threats have actually strengthened the clerics and the Revolutionary Guards. A shift in U.S. policy toward Iran could change that.

What should such a policy shift involve? For a start, it would now elevate the question of democracy and human rights, and place it at the center of any future engagement with Tehran. Yes, the clerics will protest and point to Western double standards, but the Iranian regime is most vulnerable in the eyes of its own youthful population where it faces a sustained challenge to its legitimacy.

Ultimately, as the U.S. Congress and the American people get ready to debate the nuclear deal, a more nuanced perspective is needed. And that means realizing that this nuclear deal represents a historic defeat for Iranian foreign policy -- and that it potentially opens the door for the revival of Iran's pro-democracy movement.

356 LobeLog/foreign policy 20 Jul 2015

Bipartisan Group of 60 Senior National Security Leaders Endorse Iran Deal

by Jim Lobe Coming on the heels of its release of a letter signed by more than 100 former U.S. ambassadors endorsing the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA) between the P5+1 and Iran, the New York-based Iran Project has just released a statement this morning urging support for the accord signed by a bipartisan group of 60 former officials and lawmakers with extensive national-security experience.

Although there is some overlap among the signatories of the two documents, the latest includes former cabinet secretaries, such as William Perry and Madeleine Albright, who served as Bill Clinton’s secretaries of defense and state, respectively; and former senators from both parties, including Democratic Majority Leaders Tom Daschle and George Mitchell and Kansas Republican Nancy Landon Kassebaum. Also signing were three former national security advisers, including Brent Scowcroft, who served under Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush; Zbigniew Brzezinski, who worked under Jimmy Carter; and Sandy Berger, who served under Clinton. Other notables include the former head of Special Operations Command, Adm. Eric Olson; former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill; and two of Ronald Reagan’s top Middle East aides, Nicholas Veliotes and Richard Murphy.

“We congratulate President Obama and all the negotiators for a landmark agreement unprecedented in its importance for preventing the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran,” the statement reads. “No agreement between multiple parties can be a perfect agreement without risks. We believe without this agreement, the risks to the security of the U.S. and its friends would be far greater. We have also not heard any viable alternatives from those who impose the implementation of the JCPOA.” “…The consequences of rejection are grave: the unraveling of international sanctions; U.S. responsibility for the collapse of the agreement; and the possible development of an Iranian nuclear weapon under significantly reduced or no inspections. A rejection of the agreement could leave the U.S. with the only alternative of having to use military force unilaterally in the future,” according to the statement, which you can find below.

There’s one irony worth pointing out—the endorsement of the deal by former Sens.

Mitchell, Daschle, and Kassebaum, who, of course, was married to the late former Republican Majority Leader, Howard Baker, until his death last year. Along with Robert Dole, Mitchell, Daschle, and Baker co-founded the Bipartisan Policy Center whose national security and foreign policy division since 2008 has been headed by neoconservatives opposed to virtually any deal that didn’t require the total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. The group has even co-sponsored events with the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies whose stances have

357 mirrored those of Israel’s Likud party and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Why Mitchell and Daschle, in particular, have not explicitly distanced themselves from BPC’s positions on Iran or pressed the group’s board to more fully reflect the views of most Democrats on the subject remains a mystery. But now that they, along with Kassebaum, have taken sides on the issue—making their support for the deal truly “bipartisan”— perhaps the organization they founded might sit up and take notice.

In any event, here’s the letter and the list of signers: July 20, 2015 We applaud the announcement that a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been reached with Iran to limit its nuclear program. We congratulate President Obama and all the negotiators for a landmark agreement unprecedented in its importance for preventing the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran.

Though primarily a nonproliferation agreement, the JCPOA has significant implications for some of America’s most important national objectives: regional stability in the Middle East, Israel’s security, dealing with an untrustworthy and hostile nation, and U.S. leadership on major global challenges.

This JCPOA will put in place a set of constraints and monitoring measures that will help to assure that Iran’s nuclear program will be for peaceful purposes only. Major U.S. objectives have been achieved: uranium enrichment limited to 3.67% and only at the Natanz plant; the Arak reactor will be re-designed to minimize the amount of plutonium produced and Iran is barred from separating plutonium and all spent fuel will be removed from Iran; a 98% reduction in Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium for 15 years; unprecedented surveillance of nuclear activities and control of nuclear related imports; a two-thirds reduction in the installed centrifuges for ten years; constraints on research and development of advanced centrifuges. The agreement will set up a highly effective multilayered program to monitor and inspect every aspect of Iran’s nuclear supply chain and fuel cycle, including continuous monitoring at some sites for 20-25 years, and permit inspections on short notice. We have followed carefully the negotiations as they have progressed and conclude that the JCPOA represents the achievement of greater security for us and our partners in the region.

We acknowledge that the JCPOA does not achieve all of the goals its current detractors have set for it. But it does meet all of the key objectives. Most importantly, should Iran violate the agreement and move toward building nuclear weapons, it will be discovered early and in sufficient time for strong countermeasures to be taken to stop Iran. No agreement between multiple parties can be a perfect agreement without risks. We believe without this agreement, the risks to the security of the U.S. and its friends would be far greater. We have also not heard any viable alternatives from those who oppose the implementation of the JCPOA.

358 We, the undersigned, have devoted our careers to the peace and security of the United States in both Republican and Democratic Administrations. U.S. presidents and Congresses over the past 20 years have joined in a bipartisan policy of sanctioning and isolating Iran to prevent a nuclear weapon. There was bipartisan understanding that when the Iranians indicated a readiness to talk the U.S. would lead the negotiations to test Iran’s seriousness. Indeed the Corker-Cardin legislation, which was approved this past spring by an overwhelming bipartisan vote in both the House and Senate was signed into law by the President, defines the review process that the Congress will use over the coming months. Members of both political parties can deservedly take credit for bringing us to this moment.

We welcome the discussion that will unfold over the merits of this agreement. We urge members of Congress to be closely involved in the oversight, monitoring and enforcement of this agreement. As Congress was so diligent and constructive in pressing forward the highly effective sanctions regime that helped get Iran to the table, it must now play a key role in the implementation of the agreement which they helped bring about. Congressional approval will eventually be required to lift sanctions under the agreement. Arrangements now need to be made to assure that Congress is a full partner in its implementation.

Those who advocate rejection of the JCPOA should evaluate whether there is a feasible alternative for better protecting U.S. security and more effectively preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The consequences of rejection are grave: the unraveling of international sanctions; U.S. responsibility for the collapse of the agreement; and the possible development of an Iranian nuclear weapon under significantly reduced or no inspections. A rejection of the agreement could leave the U.S. with the only alternative of having to use military force unilaterally in the future.

We call on the Administration to place the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in a strategic context: assuring our partners in the region that the United States remains fully committed to their defense and to countering any destabilizing Iranian actions in the region. We also call on the Administration, with the express support of the Congress, to make clear that it will remain the firm policy of the United States, during the agreement’s initial 10 to 15 years as well as after key restrictions expire, to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon by all available means.

We will join in a bipartisan effort to formulate a balanced and objective assessment and implementation of this agreement. We are committed to building an effective strategy for its full implementation. This effort will be critical in view of the agreement’s significance for the protection of the security of the U.S. and its friends and for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Amb. (ret.) Morton Abramowitz, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research and Ambassador to Thailand and Turkey Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State Samuel Berger, U.S. National Security Advisor

359 Zbigniew Brzezinski, U.S. National Security Advisor Amb. (ret.) Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Ambassador to Greece BGen. (ret.) Stephen A. Cheney, U.S. Marine Corps Joseph Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund Amb. (ret.) Chester A Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Amb. (ret.) Ryan Crocker, Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon Tom Daschle, U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader Suzanne DiMaggio, Director of the 21st Century Diplomacy Project at New America Amb. (ret.) James Dobbins, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Robert Einhorn, Assistant Secretary for Nonproliferation and Secretary of State’s Special Advisor for Nonproliferation and Arms Control Amb. (ret.) Stuart E. Eizenstat, Deputy Treasury Secretary and Department of State’s Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Michele Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Leslie Gelb, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs and Director of Policy Planning and Arms Control at the Department of Defense Morton H. Halperin, Director of Policy Planning, Department of State Lee H. Hamilton, U.S. House of Representatives and Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Amb. (ret.) William C. Harrop, Ambassador to Israel and Inspector General of the State Department Gary Hart, U.S. Senator and Special Envoy to Northern Ireland Stephen B. Heintz, President, Rockefeller Brothers Fund Ambassador to Iraq, Korea, Poland, and Macedonia Amb. (ret.) Carla A. Hills, U.S. Trade Representative James Hoge, former Editor, Foreign Affairs Magazine J. Bennett Johnston, U.S. Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum, U.S. Senator LTG (ret.) Frank Kearney, U.S. Army Carl Levin, U.S. Senator and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services Amb. (ret.) Winston Lord, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, Ambassador to China and Director of State Department Policy Planning Amb. (ret.) William H. Luers, Ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Venezuela Jessica T. Mathews, Director of the Office of Global Issues of the National Security Council George J. Mitchell, U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader Amb. (ret.) William G. Miller, Ambassador to Ukraine Amb. (ret.) Richard W. Murphy, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Vali Nasr, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and Dean of Johns Hopkins University SAIS

360 Richard Nephew, Director for Iran, National Security Council and Deputy Coordinator for Sanctions Policy at the Department of State Joseph Nye, Assistant Secretary of Defense and Chairman National Intelligence Council Paul O’Neill, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Admiral (ret.) Eric Olson, U.S. Navy and Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command William Perry, U.S. Secretary of Defense Amb. (ret.) Thomas Pickering, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and Ambassador to Israel, Russia, India, United Nations, El Salvador, Nigeria, and Jordan Paul R. Pillar, National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia Amb. (ret.) Nicholas Platt, Ambassador to Pakistan, Philippines, and Zambia Joe R. Reeder, Deputy Secretary of the Army and Chairman of the Panama Canal Commission Donald W. Riegle, U.S. Senator William Reinsch, Under Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration and President National Foreign Trade Council Amb. (ret.) J. Stapleton Roy, Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research and Ambassador to China, Indonesia, and Singapore Barnett R. Rubin, Senior Adviser to the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Karim Sadjadpour, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Gen. (ret.) Brent Scowcroft, U.S. National Security Advisor RADM (ret.) Joe Sestak, U.S. Navy, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Requirements and Programs Gary Sick, National Security Council Member for Iran and the Persian Gulf Jim Slattery, U.S. House of Representatives Anne-Marie Slaughter, Director of Policy Planning, the Department of State Mark Udall, U.S. Senator Amb. (ret.) Nicholas A. Veliotes, Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East and South Asia and Ambassador to Egypt and Jordan Amb. (ret.) Edward S. Walker, Jr., Ambassador to Israel, Egypt, and United Arab Emirates James Walsh, Research Associate at MIT’s Security Studies Program Col. (ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson, U.S. Army, Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State Timothy E. Wirth, U.S. Senator Amb. (ret.) Frank Wisner, Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs and Ambassador to India, Egypt, the Philippines and Zambia

* The signers of this statement were either former senior officials of the U.S. government or prominent national security leaders who have not held senior government positions. The positions listed after the names of the former government officials are senior posts held while in office. The positions listed after the names of those who were not from the government are listed with their current position.

361 LobeLog/foreign policy 20 Jul 2015

Iran’s Economy after the Nuclear Deal

by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani

Djavad Salehi-Isfahani conducts research on the economics of the Middle East and is currently a professor of economics at Virginia Tech. He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and is also serving as the Dubai Initiative fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. This fall he is the Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar at the Belfer Center of Harvard Kennedy School. He has served on the Board of Trustees of the Economic Research Forum (2001-2006), a network of Middle East economists based in Cairo.

The critics of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed last week between the Western powers and Iran cite the potential benefits of the agreement for Iran as the main reason why it is bad for the US and its allies in the Middle East. They’re wrong, however, that the extra economic resources flowing to Iran as a result of lifting sanctions will empower it to expand its influence, destabilize the region, and to undermine Western interests.

There are at least two problems with these arguments.

First, the critics exaggerate the numbers. Last week, Israel’s ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer,warned that, “in a few months, this deal would give Iran $150 billion,” which is “like $8 trillion flowing into the United States treasury.” His boss put the number at “$100 billion to $300 billion.”

Part of this windfall is supposed to come from Iran’s assets that have been blocked abroad. No one really knows the exact size of these reserves. In congressional testimony last January, David Cohen of the US Treasury put the size of the blocked funds at $100 billion. He used the same number intestimony in December 2013. This week several Iranian officials, including the governor of the Central Bank and the economy minister, floated a much smaller number—$29 billion.

Then there is the new money from increased oil sales. Iran should be able to increase its exports by an additional half a million barrels per day (mbd) to about 2 mbd, which would mean $5 billion in additional export revenues. Putting the two numbers together, my best guess for the new inflow of money for the remainder of the current Iranian year that ends on March 20, 2016, is less than $40 billion.

This is not a small amount. To put this in perspective, consider that last year Iran exported about $90 billion and imported $70 billion. So, the windfall is likely to raise foreign exchange revenues by anywhere from one-third to 50 percent. This is a sizeable increase, but it’s a far cry from the $150 billion quoted by Ambassador Dermer.

Beyond this year, as the stock of blocked funds diminishes, the importance of this source of new revenue will decline, and attention will shift to oil exports. The best estimates for increased oil exports for 2017 is one mbd, which at current prices would add about $20 billion to export revenues. If prices decline as Iranian oil enters the market, this estimate would be lower.

362 With good management of the economy and economic reforms, these streams of revenues will allow the economy to grow at 5-7% per year. Over the next few years, growth at the upper end of this range is barely enough to absorb the 3-4 million unemployed, most of whom are first-time job seekers.

Iran may well decide to spend some of its increased resources on its military. At present Iran has a very low share of defense expenditures to GDP, one-fourth that of Saudi Arabia and one-third of Israel. But the competition for using most of the funds on development will be fierce.

Following the tightening of sanctions in 2012, the Ahmadinejad government slashed the development budget by two-thirds (in real terms). During its last two years in office, development expenditures averaged a measly $5 billion per year. Reversing this policy was the first domestic priority of the Rouhani administration when it took office in August 2013. Despite the continuation of the sanctions and lower oil prices, in 2014/2015 it managed to increase the development budget to $12.5 billion, still far below the level that can make a difference given the high rate of unemployment, the long list of incomplete projects, and the estimated $50 billion it owes private contractors who do the actual work on government projects.

Rouhani’s mandate was first and foremost improvement in the economy. Solving the nuclear standoff with the West was always the necessary step to reach that goal. He will be facing voters again in elections for the parliament and the Assembly of Experts in February 2016, and in his own re-election in June 2017. Unless he is able to turn his diplomatic victory in Vienna into improved economic conditions at home, he is likely to lose one or both of these elections, and his astounding achievement in foreign policy would amount to nil.

During his election campaign, he famously promised to “let the wheels of the economy spin as do the centrifuges.” He has returned to this theme many times, for example in a major speech to an economics conference last January. “For years,” Rouhani said, “the economy has subsidized foreign and domestic politics, now is the time for politics to subsidize the economy.” Spending the fruits of the nuclear deal to improve the domestic economy is the case in point.

Rouhani has accumulated considerable political capital as a result of the JCPOA. He has no better place to spend it than on making sure that the bulk of the new funds go to fulfill his promise of economic recovery. This would not only help elect a parliament he can work in February 2016 but also assure him a second term.

363 Reuters 20 Jul 2015

Congress Formally Receives Iran Nuclear Agreement The 60-day clock to review the deal starts Monday.

TEHRAN/WASHINGTON, July 19 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's administration sent a nuclear agreement with Tehran to Congress on Sunday and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged U.S. lawmakers to reject a deal he said would only feed an "Iranian terror machine."

In a first concrete sign of European determination to quickly rebuild economic and political ties with Iran after a 12-year standoff, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel arrived in Tehran with an economic delegation. Other European powers were expected to follow.

Obama has promised to exercise his veto if Congress rejects the deal, which curbs Iran's nuclear program while allowing an easing of economic sanctions.

Overriding it would require a two-thirds majority of both the House of Representatives and Senate, so the administration is working to win over enough of Obama's fellow Democrats to offset strong Republican opposition.

In an unusual move, Obama took three Democratic congressman golfing with him: Joe Courtney of Connecticut, Ed Perlmutter of Colorado and John Yarmuth of Kentucky. The president more often taps aides and friends for weekend golfing.

"I think the right thing to do is merely not to go ahead with this deal," Netanyahu said on CBS's "Face the Nation" as he continued a string of U.S. media interviews denouncing the deal reached on Tuesday between Iran and six major powers.

"There are many things to be done to stop Iran's aggression and this deal is not one of them," he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, arriving in Israel on the first visit by a U.S. cabinet official since the agreement, told reporters on his aircraft: "I'm not going to change anybody's mind in Israel. That's not the purpose of my trip.

"Friends can disagree but we have decades of rock-solid cooperation with Israel."

Carter is also touring Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which both eye the prospect of increasing Iranian influence in the region with some suspicion.

IRANIAN RECOGNITION OF ISRAEL

364

Tehran denies Western and Israeli accusations it has been using a research program as cover for ambitions to develop atomic weapons. President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday he expected the deal would lead to closer relations with Tehran's neighbors in the Gulf region, while Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran remained at odds with the West.

It was on Khamenei's words that Netanyahu seized, speaking to his cabinet on Sunday.

"The Iranians are not even trying to hide the fact they will take advantage of the hundreds of billions they will receive via the agreement to arm their terror machine," he said. "And they say explicitly they will continue their struggle against the United States and its allies, Israel of course above all."

Germany's Gabriel, due to meet President Hassan Rouhani and several ministers, told German newspaper Bild he would use his three-day trip to suggest Germany could serve as a mediator between Iran and arch-enemy Israel. He said he would insist the Iranian government recognize Israel's right to exist.

"Really stable, good relationships with Germany will only be able to develop if this is accepted in Iranian politics. I will keep making that clear during my trip to Iran," Gabriel said in comments due to be published on Monday.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said world powers could now press Tehran on other issues such as its involvement in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

"We shouldn't be na誰ve or starry eyed in any way about the regime that we're dealing with," he said in an interview with NBC News.

Opponents of the deal argue it does not provide enough supervision of Iran's nuclear program.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who led the U.S. delegation to the talks with Iran, was asked on "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" why the deal did not provide for inspections anywhere anytime.

"The fact is, that in arms control, there is no country anywhere on this planet that has 'anywhere, anytime'," he said. "There is no such standard. There is no such standard within arms control inspections."

365 Vox 20 Jul 2015

The Iran deal, explained in clear language by a nuclear expert Max Fisher The first person I called when negotiators in Vienna released the final text of the Iran nuclear deal was Aaron Stein, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Royal United Services Institute. Stein is a prolific writer and commenter on nuclear issues, and particularly on Iran's nuclear program. (He is also doctoral fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council.) And he is a die-hard wonk — someone who cares first and foremost about understanding the issues, rather than about picking a side.

Stein walked me through how the Iran nuclear deal works, what it does, and his assessment of it. That assessment was very positive, he told me: The deal "exceeds in all areas." Under this agreement, if Iran tries to build a bomb, "the likelihood of getting caught is near 100 percent." As a result, "it makes the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon in the next 25 years extremely remote."

What follows is a transcription of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Max Fisher: It's worth remembering that what this deal is really supposed to be about is preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. So can you just talk me through, if Iran wanted to get a bomb, how they would do that? And how good is this deal at stopping them from that?

Aaron Stein: They would do Fordow 2.0. [Fordow was previously a site of secret Iranian nuclear development.]

They would siphon off uranium from an undeclared mine, which we can get to in a second why that's not really possible [under the deal].

Then they would build centrifuges without us knowing, because a centrifuge facility is tiny. You don't really pick them up; we've never really been able to find them when they are up.

We can get around that [centrifuge problem] if we know where every centrifuge is made, if we know where the machines that make them are sitting. And in this deal, those factories are also subject to monitoring. And that's really where the deal exceeds in all areas. It's a 25-year sunset on this, so this will take us into 2040. So it's not the next president's issue.

Max Fisher: You've looked over the Iran deal, you've been following these negotiations and the Iran nuclear issue for a long time. Is this a good deal?

Aaron Stein: It exceeds or is directly in line with everything in the US fact sheet that was put out [in April]. I thought the US fact sheet was a great deal, and I think this is a good deal.

When I say that, I mean that it's a very good nonproliferation deal. If you want it to focus on the problems with Iran running around in Iraq or Syria, this deal is not for you.

366 If you are focused on the nuclear issue specifically, it's a very good deal.

It makes the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon in the next 25 years extremely remote. It would require a Herculean effort of subterfuge and clandestine activity.

It's important that it puts inspections in place. Inspections are not always designed to catch you red-handed but rather to elicit a response about what it is that you are up to.

The threshold for pain is so high that you don't want to break the rules, and I think this puts that in place while also making it extremely difficult to cheat.

Max Fisher: The last time we talked, in April when the framework came out, you really emphasized inspections as something that was crucial for this. You seemed to have a very positive take on how it looked in the framework. Is that still how you feel, looking at the final deal?

Aaron Stein: Yes. One thing that was not in the framework deal that's fleshed out now is the thing with flow forming machines.

Flow forming machines are how you make centrifuges. If you have one stashed away out in the middle of the desert in a facility, we would have no idea. In the agreement, they have to account for all of their flow forming machines, give us a list of where they are, and then put them under monitoring. The counter to that is they just won't tell us, they won't declare everything. That's to be expected, so don't trust that.

Then the fall back on that is that you monitor the uranium as it comes out of the ground until it goes in [the Iranian nuclear facility at] Natanz and then when it comes out of Natanz. If all of a sudden a barrel of uranium at a conversion facility doesn't show up, we'd know. They have an accounting of what comes out of the ground; they have an accounting of what has been refined at the processing plant. They have an accounting of what's been converted, then they have an accounting of what shows up at Natanz, and then they have an accounting of what comes out the back end.

So if Iran has a little centrifuge facility stuck out in the middle of nowhere, they need uranium for it. But if all of sudden uranium numbers don't match up, inspectors are going to start asking what happened to that uranium. And Iran only has two mines. It does not have rich uranium deposits, despite its claims to the contrary. We should know — we helped develop those fields in the 1970s. It's not high-quality uranium and there's not a lot of it, so we should be able to watch it.

Max Fisher: What else has changed that's significant between the framework and the final deal?

Aaron Stein: We have a lot more clarity about conversion. [Iran is only allowed to keep a very small stockpile of low-enriched uranium on hand, so will have to convert any excess to a different form.] Iran is not very good at a lot of what it does because it's using antiquated, 50-year-old technology reverse-engineered from Chinese designs.

One of the proposals was always that the Russians, the Europeans, or we would help them with some of these things because it was in our best interest.

It looks like, on conversion, they will get some help on this so that they can take some of the LEU that they produce in Natanz, turn it into fuel plates, and then put it into fuel that they can then burn themselves.

Now this is the leap of faith: if this becomes the basis for what will become Iran's future nuclear program, that you have a very small enrichment program, operating in

367 perpetuity, that can basically just be a fig leaf allowing Iran to say it's kept its enrichment program. Even though it's completely minuscule in size, very well-monitored, and nothing really to call home about.

Max Fisher: Let me ask you about sanctions and how they come off. I know this was a big question mark after the framework deal: the timing of it, mechanisms for removing the sanctions, and then of course mechanisms for reintroducing them. How does this look in the final deal?

Aaron Stein: Make no mistake about it, this is a pathway for them basically to have all the major sanctions against them, related to the nuclear issue, removed. Frankly, I don't see anything particularly wrong with that; sanctions are a coercive tool to force a policy change. The policy change we wanted was to place limits on Iran's enrichment program in perpetuity. We got that, and so I don't see that being a big problem.

I was always skeptical of "snapback" [the provision that any sanctions would snap back into place if Iran is caught cheating] because of the likelihood that China or Russia would veto any such move to go back. It looks like they were able to get around that. But once these sanctions start to come off, I think it will be very difficult to then put them back on, even if the snapback is relatively strong on paper.

Max Fisher: How long does it take for sanctions to come off, then?

Aaron Stein: Adoption, it says here, will occur 90 days after the endorsement by the UN Security Council. Once the UN Security Council endorses it, we have 90 days in which they have to meet all their obligations, and then these sanctions will start to come off.

My understanding is that they begin to be removed immediately, particularly the EU sanctions and the UN Security Council sanctions. Those will be replaced with this new UN Security Council resolution.

This is all contingent on the IAEA track being resolved, which it looks like it will. That was a concession, by the way, to the Iranians. They're using Iranian language in the framing of the IAEA, calling it a road map. It creates a pathway for them to wiggle out from underneath the PMD issues, which if we're going to solve this you have to get over the PMD issue.

Max Fisher: Right, PMD — "possible military dimensions," the idea that Iran has to reveal any past work it's done on military elements of a nuclear program. In other words, to disclose any past work specifically on getting a bomb. I know that was a big issue in the negotiations, and it looks like it's going to be a big political issue now. How important is that?

Aaron Stein: A lot of it has focused on Parchin. [Iran had conducted some past nuclear work at its military facility at Parchin.] Parchin is a red herring; I have no idea why the IAEA is so hung up on Parchin. They won't find anything there — it's completely stripped of anything of value.

The real concerns about Iran's PMD were weapons-specific tests. I'm talking about the development of a shock implosion system to generate a nuclear explosion and the conducting of weapons-specific mathematical and computer modulate tests.

Max Fisher: So the issue for the nuclear deal is that, in order for the deal to go forward, Iran has to satisfy the IAEA that they have sufficiently disclosed information about past weapons research?

Aaron Stein: Yes. They'll find some creative language to get around this, there's no

368 doubt in my mind. There are very few people who seriously believe that Iran wasn't up to no good between 1985 and 2003. The intention of this agreement is to take the weapons option off the table for the next 25 years, and the agreement does that.

In the past, the way the IAEA resolved this is by using language that didn't call Iran a liar flat-out, but rather said that Iran's explanation is not inconsistent with how this may have happened, something along those lines. The agency will basically cast out on Iran's explanations without saying so, or say so in a very diplomatic language.

Max Fisher: It's looking like a big fight in Washington over the deal, and something that critics have been expressing concern about for a while, is this provision limiting inspectors to "managed access" or certain military sites.

Aaron Stein: That was a red herring from the beginning.

The only inspection protocol where you're going to have writ large access to every military site would be the Iraq-style inspections that we got after the 1991 Gulf War. What country is going to give you access to their military sites that are not affiliated with the nuclear issue?

This was all about Parchin. Will they get access to that little shack out in the boonies of this large base to go look at what used to be a detonation chamber that doesn't exist anymore? The detonation chamber is not there, the ground around it has been razed, they're not going to find anything at Parchin.

This came down to a pissing contest about whether or not we could go walk into Parchin, which is irrelevant. In the deal they're going to give managed access to Parchin, and you know what? We're going to lose on this because they're not going to find anything at Parchin. All of this will come down to nothing.

I think what will happen is the IAEA will submit a detailed questionnaire and Iran will respond, and then the agency will review those responses and then draw a conclusion from them.

Max Fisher: You think it's likely that the IAEA will sign off by the deadline?

Aaron Stein: I think so, yes. The IAEA was involved in this [deal], particularly with these final stages. This will not hold up the implementation of the deal.

Max Fisher: Are there fights ahead that could hold it up?

Aaron Stein: There are always fights over implementation. That's why the dispute resolution mechanism is put in there. In the coming days we'll see craziness from both sides about how the other side is violating the agreement — that's to be ignored. The Russians to this day say that we didn't implement START [the 1991 nuclear treaty] because we put this specific shroud over the top of our warheads when they come to go snooping around them.

Max Fisher: One of the big questions of the last few months was how they would deal with the issue of, should Iran get caught cheating, how you bring back sanctions. And it looks like they had a pretty solution with this "snapback" process that would trigger in the UN Security Council. Let's say that works, but Iran just shrugs off the sanctions and continues with its cheating. What then? At what point do you do something past sanctions, whether it's military action or something else?

Aaron Stein: If sanctions are implemented, then, absent changes, the military force issue would come back. I think the US hand is actually strengthened in this, to be honest

369 with you. A full accounting of where everything is [gleaned from invasive inspections and monitoring] is a wonderful targeting mechanism for the Pentagon. If we know where all of their stuff is, you can make far more accurate, detailed maps about where to put a cruise missile.

Iran knows what it's doing going into this. They know the consequences if they screw up here, and the provisions are very tight, the inspection regime is very robust. The likelihood of getting caught is near 100 percent.

The consequences are far more than just having your sites bombed. It's that they will have reneged on the agreement that basically the whole world supports, except for the Republicans and the Israelis and the Saudis.

Update: This interview initially quoted Stein recounting an incident in which the world had discovered elements of North Korea's nuclear program when it had sent a letter contaminated with uranium particles. Stein emailed me after publication to caution, "I've been told that the DPRK letter story is unreliable, the [highly enriched uranium] traced from a swipe the North Koreans allowed the US to do in an inspection."

370 Reuters 20 Jul 2015

Iran hardliners lash out as U.N. endorses nuclear deal

BY BOZORGHMEHR SHARAFEDIN Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guards denounced a U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing last week's nuclear deal, saying it crossed "red lines" set by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Monday endorsing the deal, which relieves Iran of sanctions and ensures it retains a nuclear fuel cycle, but keeps in place an arms embargo and a ban on ballistic missile technology for several more years.

The agreement, a major initiative for both U.S. President Barack Obama and Iran's pragmatic President Hassan Rouhani, faces opposition from hardliners in both countries.

In addition to the United States, it was signed by the four other U.N. Security Council veto-wielding permanent members, as well as Germany.

In the United States, Obama has said he would veto an attempt to scupper the deal by the Republican-led U.S. Congress.

In Iran, Khamenei, who wields final authority above that of the elected leader Rouhani, has so far withheld a clear verdict.

By asserting that the deal goes beyond limits which Khamenei himself set, hardliners may be trying to push him to reject it. The deal is still under review and must be endorsed by Iran's National Security Council and later by Khamenei.

"Some parts of the (resolution) draft have clearly crossed the Islamic republic's red lines, especially in Iran's military capabilities," top Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammed Ali Jafari was quoted as saying shortly before the resolution was passed in New York.

"We will never accept it," he was quoted as saying by the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.

371

Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of Kayhan, a newspaper closely associated with Khamenei, wrote that accepting the new resolution would be tantamount to accepting previous Security Council resolutions, which Iran considers illegal.

"Even by simply looking at the deal you can see some vital red lines of the Islamic Republic have not been preserved," he wrote.

Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee in parliament, said the nuclear negotiations had veered too far into the military sphere.

"The negotiating team was not supposed to negotiate on Iran's ballistic missile technology," he was quoted as saying by Fars News Agency.

"UNPRECEDENTED ACHIEVEMENT" Rouhani has defended the deal staunchly in Iran. His senior nuclear negotiator, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, dismissed critics' concerns and said the U.N. Security Council resolution was an "unprecedented achievement in Iran’s history". "....The new UNSC resolution would only ban missiles designed to carry a nuclear warhead, (and) Iran does not have a nuclear missile program," Araghchi told state broadcaster IRIB in a live interview.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued minutes after the U.N. Security Council passed its resolution that it still rejects any sanctions as "baseless, unjust and illegal".

“So no part of (the nuclear deal) should be interpreted directly or indirectly as Iran’s surrender to or acceptance of the sanctions and restrictions imposed by the UNSC, the U.S., the E.U. or member countries.”

While avoiding a clearcut verdict in public, Khamenei said in a sermon at prayers on Saturday that he would not let the deal be "abused" or endanger "Iran's security and defense capabilities".

He asked the nation to stay united while the agreement is being examined by officials to ensure national interests were preserved.

372

Iranian supporters of the deal say Khamenei was briefed on the negotiations and it could not have gone through without his green light. But opponents say the Supreme Leader's decision to subject the text to scrutiny means he has not yet agreed to it.

"It's impossible that our Supreme Leader agrees with a deal that has crossed the red lines. The leader would have not asked the text of the deal to be examined carefully if he had already endorsed it," Shariatmadari said.

The head of Iran's nuclear organization Ali Akbar Salehi and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the two main negotiators in Vienna, will attend a closed-door session of parliament on Tuesday to brief lawmakers on the deal.

373 CSIS Center for Strategic and International Studies 20 Jul 2015

The Iran Nuclear Agreement and Conventional Arms Transfers in the Gulf

By Anthony H. Cordesman ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN HOLDS THE ARLEIGH A. BURKE CHAIR IN STRATEGY AT THE CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (CSIS) IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Much of the criticism of the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran has focused on the fact that it would allow conventional arms transfers to Iran in five years if Iran fully complies with all other aspects of the agreement. In practice, this does not obligate any country to sell arms to Iran, nor does it affect U.S. and European constraints on arms sales.

It could, however, lead to significant arms sales on the part of Russia and China, and potentially other states. Iran badly needs to modernize its aging air force, surface-to-air missile defenses, and many other elements of its weapons systems – as well as acquire the technology for a wide range of new sensors, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and other improvement in its war fighting capabilities.

It is important, however, to keep such risks in perspective. Iran is already able to exploit a large network of purchasing offices and cover organizations to buy critical technology, parts, and other military equipment. It takes time to absorb arms transfers even when they come, and Iran faces a massive backlog of obsolescence, worn systems, patchwork improvements, and awkward efforts at systems integration.

In the real world, Iran is anything but the hegemon of the region – as a new CSIS study of the Gulf military balance shows. This study is entitled The Arab-U.S. Strategic Partnership and the Changing Security Balance in the Gulf .

Chapters II and III of this study compare the size of Iranian and Arab Gulf military expenditures and arms transfers. The following chapters analyze the limits to Iran’s conventional forces and the growing strength of Gulf Arab forces. Chapter XII analyzes the scope of the U.S. strategic partnership with the individual Gulf states and the Gulf Arab states as a whole.

The report shows that the Arab Gulf states already have a massive lead over Iran in virtually every aspect of conventional arms, except total military manpower. It also shows that the U.S. strategic partnership has delivered some of the most modern weapons in the world to the Arab Gulf states, and that equally massive new transfers are underway. (See pages 543-597).

It also draws on U.S. government estimates, and work by the IISS, SIPRI, and IHS Jane’s to provide a broad picture of just how far the Arab Gulf state lead Iran in military spending and arms transfers: 

In broad terms, the Arab Gulf states in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have spent at least six times as much on conventional military forces since 1997, and the Arab Gulf lead has steadily widened. Estimates for 2014 are uncertain, but the GCC states seem to have spent some $114 billion on defense to roughly $16 billion for Iran.

374 

Saudi Arabia alone spent about 5.5 times more than Iran on its military and the United Arab Emirates spent almost twice as much as Iran during this period. And, as a whole, the GCC combined spent just over 9 times more than Iran on its military.



The U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimates that Iran received $3.4 billion in new arms deliveries during 2004-2007 and $800 million in 2008-2011, and generally did not have access to advanced modern arms. The Arab Gulf states received $22.6 billion in new arms deliveries during 2004-2007 and $15.9 billion in 2008-2011.



If one looks at the totals for 2004-2011, Iran received $4.2 billion in arms transfers and the Arab Gulf states received $38.5 billion – over nine times more, and they had access to some of the most advanced arms available.



The U.S. Congressional Research Service also estimates that Iran spent $2.1 billion on new arms orders during 2004-2007 and $300 million in 2008-2011, and again generally did not have access to purchases of advanced modern arms. The Arab Gulf states spent $30.5 billion on new arms orders during 2004-2007 and $75.6 billion in 2008-2011.



If one looks at the totals for $2004-2011, Iran placed $2.4 billion in new arms orders and the Arab Gulf states spent $106.1 billion, and again, the Arab lead grew strikingly during 2008-2011. The Arab total is well over 40 times that of Iran.

These figures ignore the upgrading of U.S. forces in the Gulf region, and massive U.S. investment in space-based and other sensors, as well as the U.S. monopoly on key systems like stealth fighters. They scarcely mean that future arms transfer to Iran will not be important but they do show that the Arab Gulf states can easily afford to keep a decisive lead and technological edge over Iran.

They also show the sheer scale of the U.S. strategic commitment to the Gulf states, and that the U.S. has no intention of turning to Iran at the expense of the Arab states. The U.S. delivered $7.3 billion worth of the $22.6 billion in arms delivered to the Arab Gulf states during 2004-2007, and $9.4 billion worth of the $15.9 billion in arms delivered to the GCC states during 2008-2011.

The U.S. role is even more important in the new arms orders that will shape the Gulf military balance in the future. The U.S. sold $7.9 billion worth of the $30.5 billion in new arms orders by the Arab states during 2004-2007, and $64.5 billion worth of the $75.6 billion in arms delivered to the GCC states during 2008-2011. An updated CRS analysis of U.S. arms transfers to Saudi Arabia alone during October 2010 to October 2014 totals $90.435 billion.

375 The National Interest 20 Jul 2015

UN Vote Doesn't Usurp Congress on Iran "If this sequence is appropriate for making war, it should also be appropriate for avoiding war."

Michael Krepon, Melanie Campbell Michael Krepon is Co-founder of the Stimson Center. Melanie Campbell is an intern at the Stimson Center.

The United Nations Security Council votes on Monday [July 17] on the Iranian nuclear limitation agreement. The timing of this resolution—well before the Congress votes up or down in mid-September— has been met with a wave of indignation on Capitol Hill.

Some Democrats have joined Republicans in expressing their displeasure, charging an “end run” of the Congress, disregard for its oversight role, and a violation of U.S. sovereignty. Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) of the Foreign Relations Committee called the move “highly problematic” and “an affront to the American people.” Ranking Minority Member Ben Cardin (D-MD) told reporters that “I think it is somewhat presumptuous to take it to the UN for a vote before the Congressional review is over."

In actuality, the Obama administration is following in the footsteps of the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations. Both went to the United Nations seeking support for military action against Saddam Hussein before going to the U.S. Congress. If this sequence is appropriate for making war, it should also be appropriate for avoiding war.

A supportive vote on the Iran deal on Monday is a foregone conclusion. The five vetowielding, permanent members of the UN Security Council were all parties to the Iran negotiations, and all support the results. Later this fall, it’s likely that there will be a vote in the UN General Assembly on this deal, which will also be approved overwhelmingly.

Indeed, there may be only one negative vote, cast by the state of Israel.

These UN votes do not prejudge or violate in any way the Congress’s role in considering the merits and weaknesses of the Iran agreement. Implementation of this deal will only follow the process of Congressional review negotiated between Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Corker and Ranking Minority Member Cardin with the White House.

If the Congress votes, after due deliberation, to oppose the terms of this agreement, President Barack Obama has promised to veto a resolution of disapproval. Congress will then have the opportunity to override this veto. Failing this, implementation will begin, as laid out in the complex terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed upon by the United States, Iran, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia and China.

There are strong precedents for going to the United Nations before going to the Congress. Following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, President George H.W. Bush deployed troops to Saudi Arabia to clarify that Saddam’s actions would not stand. By November of that year, the Bush administration went to the U.N. Security Council to sanction military action against Iraq. On November 29, 1990, Security Council Resolution 678 was passed, which authorized the use of “all necessary means” to evict Iraq from Kuwait. Only then did President Bush ask for the Congress’s support for military action. His request was made on January 8, 1991—a full month after

376 the U.N. resolution was passed. Congress granted authorization on January 14. The United States commenced military action two days later.

President George W. Bush followed the same sequencing prior to the 2003 Iraq war. His administration first went to the UN in September, 2002 to seek authorization for the use of force against Iraq. The U.N. passed Security Council Resolution 1441, which gave Iraq one final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations before it would face “serious consequences.” This UN Security Council resolution was passed a full month before Congress authorized the Iraq War Resolution on October 16, 2002.

The Obama administration’s sequencing is no different from those of the George H.W. Bush administration and the George W. Bush administration. What’s different is that this UN resolution seeks to prevent a state in the Middle East from acquiring nuclear weapons by peaceful means.

377 LobeLog/foreign policy 20 Jul 2015

Iranian Vets Also Push for Nuclear Deal

by Narges Bajoghli Narges Bajoghli is an advanced anthropology PhD candidate at New York University, where her research focuses on pro-regime cultural producers in Iran. Her research has been awarded national grants by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, The Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the American Institute of Iranian Studies. She is also the director of a documentary about survivors of chemical warfare in Iran, The Skin That Burns, which has screened internationally. She has published articles on Iran in The Guardian, Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP),The Huffington Post, and IranWire. She has also appeared as a guest commentator on Iranian politics on DemocracyNow!, NPR, BBC WorldService, BBC Persian, and HuffPost Live.

“When I was 22, I went to war…I went to war, and it became clear to me that I never wanted to go to war again,” Secretary John Kerry reportedly said, choking up, at a closed-door session with all of the foreign ministers present at the Vienna International Center, once a deal was struck. Kerry’s experiences in war are the apparent reason the secretary of state pursued the Iran nuclear talks with such determination. Kerry was referring to his experiences as a soldier in the Vietnam War, the last American war fought almost exclusively in close combat, with a large number of fatalities and grave physical and psychological injuries to many of the American soldiers who served, not to mention Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

Secretary Kerry’s desire to prevent war after having experienced its horrors firsthand has a parallel on the Iranian side as well. Anti-war sentiment also played a significant role in the Iranian decision to seek out diplomacy, and it is a story rarely told.

A significant number of Iranian veterans of the Iran-Iraq War played a substantial role in putting consistent pressure on Iranian politicians to seek a peaceful way to resolve the country’s problems with the West. “War is horrible. War is the most horrible thing in the world,” Ahmad, a veteran and leading peace activist in Iran said to me in 2011, while I was filming a documentary in the country on the effects of the Iran-Iraq War on veterans. The specter of war loomed large at that point, and when I asked him if he’d allow his sons to fight if there were an attack on Iran, he said: “I hope there isn’t an attack. But I never want them to go through what I went through. That’s why we have to stop a war before it even starts.”

Much like the Vietnam War, the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) was a bloody and prolonged conflict that claimed the lives of endless young soldiers and maimed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. Today, Iran is home to 100,000 survivors of chemical weapons, the largest number in the world. Iraq indiscriminately dropped chemical bombs over Iran starting as early as 1981. In addition to veterans who suffer from collapsing lungs, blinded eyes, and melted skin from those chemical bombs, tens of thousands of veterans have been confined to wheelchairs since the war, legs blown off by bombs, limbs mangled by land mines, and spines crushed under tons of concrete.

378 A group of veterans devoted to peace started a NGO called the Society for Chemical Weapons Victims Support. Devoted to raising awareness about survivors of chemical warfare, the group has focused on victims who were not receiving the attention and care they needed. Slowly, this group began to organize in the early 2000s to offer a different voice from the one that the Islamic Republic often ascribed to them about the glories of war and martyrdom for their country. This group of peace-seeking veterans had a different message: war is one of the most terrifying experiences a person can go through—it should not be glorified and it should never be courted. Slowly, this group began to make contact with peace organizations around the world and began sending delegations to international peace conferences to learn how to create a culture of peace in a country still reeling from the consequences of the longest conventional war of the 20th century.

Under Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, himself a veteran of the war, this group of peace activists received the building permits and funding to create Iran’s first-ever Peace Museum, which opened it’s doors to the public in 2011, and has won prestigious national and international awards for its work. It is now one of the most visited museums in the country. The Tehran Peace Museum is a stark reminder of the destruction of war. Its walls are covered with the horrors of armed conflicts around the world and the grave suffering that soldiers and civilians have endured for political means.

“I don’t regret fighting in the 1980s and losing my legs. We were under attack, after all, and I had to defend my country,” Mohammad, one of the leaders of the museum, said to me from his wheelchair. “But I gave my legs and we went through hell with the hopes that no other generation in Iran would have to experience war.” With his mangled hands, also destroyed from the bomb that landed near him, he flips through photos he’s scanned to his iPhone, showing me all the injured soldiers he met in his days recuperating in the hospital.

For the hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers who fought in the Iran-Iraq War, even if they did not get injured directly, they know a fellow soldier from their battalion that did. Every veteran of that war was affected by the death of a close friend, trauma from trench warfare, and knowledge of their fellow soldiers living with oxygen masks due to chemical weapons exposure. That includes the numerous veterans from the war that now sit in high offices in the political echelons of the Islamic Republic. The horrors of war are never far off: they simply have to look to friends from their battalions who fared far worse than they did.

Ali, who served six of the eight years at the front and came away with minor injuries, is currently a captain in the naval forces of the Revolutionary Guard. Discussing the possibility of a new war in Iran in 2012, he said to me: “Those who champion war think it’s like sitting behind their television screens as they play video games. There is nothing glorious about war. Our population suffered enough in the 1980s. It doesn’t need to suffer again.”

379 Once the peace veterans began to organize and receive international attention for their work, they had a powerful platform from which to address their former brothers in battle who now held political offices in the Islamic Republic. Both formally and informally, these veterans-turned-peace activists lobbied those in political positions to keep peace in Iran and reminded them of the horrors they all went through as young men.

Key in the political make-up of the Islamic Republic is the fact that the newest generation of politicians in the country have experienced war first-hand. Not all are peace-advocates, but the peace activists in Iran who are veterans, most of whom are hospitalized many months a year due to exposure to chemical weapons, or who have had their legs blown off, command a great deal of respect from all veterans in the country. They can pressure the government without risking of the kind of blowback other activists face. And they used their position to lobby for a peaceful resolution to Iran’s isolation due to the nuclear program.

In hundreds of interviews with veterans in Iran from all political stripes, I heard the constant refrain that “war is horrible.” Even for those who hold hardline views against the west, none of them wanted their children to experience what they had. Given Secretary Kerry’s remarks, in the end, it seems to be the men on both the American and Iranian sides who experienced bloody wars firsthand, that wanted to most avoid a new conflict.

380 msnbc 20 Jul 2015

Q&A with Hans Blix: Iran deal is ‘remarkably far-reaching’

By Benjamin Landy Hans Blix is a Swedish diplomat and the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the international organization tasked with monitoring and inspecting Iran’s nuclear facilities as part of the July 14, 2015, nuclear deal signed by Iran and six world powers. From 2000 to 2003, he led the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission that searched Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

On July 20, 2015, Blix spoke with msnbc by phone from Uppsala, Sweden, to discuss the nuclear accord with Iran. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

MSNBC: What is your general impression of the Iran nuclear deal now that you’ve read the text? Do you think it’s a good deal, a bad deal, the best of a few bad options?

BLIX: I think it is a remarkably far-reaching and detailed agreement. And I think it has a potential for stabilizing and improving the situation in the region as it gradually gets implemented.

I’ve seen how some people have said or alleged that Iran got everything – I simply don’t understand that attitude. From the beginning, Iran accepted that they would reduce the number of centrifuges to about five or six thousand; they will commit themselves to have no reprocessing, that is, no plutonium production; they commit themselves to rearrange the research reactor that they are building in Arak so that they it will be less prone or less convenient for plutonium production; they limit the stores and stocks they have of enriched uranium; and they agree not to reach to any higher level than 3.67% [enrichment].

There are lots of other commitments that they make. What are the commitments on the other side? The commitments are to drop punishment. I do not see that as very onerous.

However, having said that, I also think the commitments that Iran makes are not very costly to them in terms of economics. The program for enrichment was too big to be economic; whether they made it bigger out of spite or defiance or whether some of them at the time thought of it as an option of using it for a military weapon, I do not exclude [the possibility].

But in any case it raised a suspicion in the world about a possible intention to create a weapons option. And they are now scaling down the program to restore the confidence that they are only working for peaceful purposes. That’s how I see it.

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MSNBC: You mentioned a number of different commitments Iran has made as part of this deal. As the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), from 1981 to 1997, do you think the agency is up to the task of actually enforcing compliance on those different points?

BLIX: The agency’s capacity for inspection has increased considerably since 1991, when we discovered that Iraq had cheated. That was the time we began the so-called “93 plus 2” program, which ended with the adoption of the famousAdditional Protocol during the last year I was there as Inspector General. That protocol gives the agency far greater rights then they had originally in Iraq – far greater rights go to places and demanding declarations of the inspected states and using new techniques, like environmental sampling, which are extremely valuable in many nuclear activities such as enrichment and repossessing, which leave environmental footprints.

So the agency capacity has increased, as has its intelligence capabilities. I had started that already in 1991, asking member states to give the agency intelligence, because the agency can use satellites, yes, but the the IAEA has no spies, no organizations for that purpose, and member countries have intelligence. And so if they find something they could tip the agency and tell them this is something suspect, and the agency has the rights to go and inspect.

However, properly exercising this new, stronger capacity also requires that no member states infiltrate or hijack the inspecting organization. Only a couple weeks ago, Scott Ritter, one of the star inspectors for UNSCOM (the United Nations Special Commission) in the 1990s, wrote an article in the London Review of Books, in which he described in detail how the UNSCOM inspections – and even IAEA inspections – were actually sort of remote control and arranged by the CIA and other organizations. And if inspection is to work well in the future, I think it will require that Iran also has the confidence that [the agency] is an independent force and not simply an arm of intelligence agencies.

MSNBC: One result of that dynamic is that the nuclear deal contains a compromise wherein monitors can request access to any of Iran’s nuclear sites, but Tehran can delay those inspections for up to 24 days. You mentioned that the IAEA’s technology has improved dramatically, and the Obama administration has argued that nuclear activity is still detectable after many weeks. Still, critics have seized on that 24-day window, saying it’s more than enough time for Iran to hide evidence. Are you worried?

BLIX: Well, I don’t think that you ever can have 100% certainty that nothing is hidden.

We had that same problem in Iraq, where we had unlimited inspection rights. Even so, if

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you ask inspectors to prove a negative, I don’t think anyone can do that. And we never did that – neither did the IAEA in the 1990s, nor did we in 2002, 2003.

But that doesn’t mean that inspection is a useless tool. On the contrary, the more techniques they have and the more intrusive it is, the more likely it is that when they do not see anything or find anything, it is because there is nothing. But to say or assert there is nothing, I think it is intellectually very difficult. Even if you occupy Iraq or Iran, you cannot be certain. You cannot prove the negative.

MSNBC: Is that the main lesson you took away from your time as the chief inspector looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002?

BLIX: Yea, we still have items unaccounted for at that time. In Iraq we knew what they’d had with some certainty. And there were lots of items that we were looking for.

And they were unaccounted for. But I often said to the Security Council, “unaccounted for” does not necessarily means that it exists. It may or it may not.

But we had unlimited rights there. I remember they would joke about going to Saddam’s bathroom. People would say, you can’t possibly demand to go in Saddam’s bathroom, and my response would be, there are no sanctuaries. And there weren’t any sanctuaries.

We went to his palaces a couple of times and the only thing we found was some orange marmalade.

MSNBC: What do you think of the criticism of the “snap back” mechanism in the Iran deal, wherein economic sanctions could be re-imposed if Iran doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain? How realistic is it that we can roll back the clock once Iran’s assets are unfrozen and countries begin to reengage with Iran commercially?

BLIX: I’ve only read accounts of this, and I’ve been surprised by how far it went. There is a mechanism under which the P5+1 [the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom; plus Germany] will seek to agree [about whether Iran has violated the terms of the deal], and if there’s no agreement, then all sanctions will be resumed. I thought that’s rather an astounding thing, because it means that the veto is removed in the last resort.

Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector Hans Blix as he delivers his speech to the UN Security Council on March 7, 2003 at the United Nations in N.Y. Photo by Stan Honda/AFP/Getty

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However, that is such a big thing if it were to happen that I think it would deter from any frivolous use. Of course there are many people who would like to spoil this agreement and they would put up with allegations and – as we learned in the case of Iraq – there is as much disinformation as there is information in this area. And one has to guard oneself against harassment or attempts to plant documents or information that is simply not true.

I mean the most flagrant case we had in the case in Iraq was the document that Mr. Bush referred to in Congress, which was the alleged agreement between Iraq and Niger for the import of uranium, or “yellow cake.” And then it turned out that after the IAEA had been given a copy of it that this was a fake. So one has to be very cautious.

MSNBC: You’ve seen firsthand how the process was misled in Iraq, as you just mentioned. But what about the possibility that inspections are derailed in Iran not by a U.S. push for war, but rather by signatories that don’t share our interests? President Obama has said himself he was surprised that Putin put aside other considerations to support these negotiations. Are you worried that Russia or China will use their influence to undermine the U.S. position with Iran in the future?

BLIX: Well, it’s very hard to predict the evolution of foreign affairs. Obama talks about the year 13 and the year 14 – it’s a very long time frame. I mean, commitments are laid down for long periods ahead. But the world changes. Do we know where China will stand 50 years from now? They will have a lot more power than they do at the present time.

So I’m less sure about the long term than the the legal commitments in the agreement, but it’s an area in which the situation changes much in the world.

It may be, if you read it as foreign policy, that the U.S. would hope that better relations with Iran would be more useful in a new world balance between the U.S. and the West on the one hand and China on the other. Who knows? Or it may be that China hopes Iran will sort of drift toward the Asian group, the Shanghai group.

MSNBC: That geostrategic rebalancing you’re describing, with Obama nudging the region toward a more multipolar order, is perhaps one of the reasons foreign policy analysts seem more wary of détente with Iran than arms control experts, who appear largely supportive of the outlines of this deal. How do you factor those political externalities into a deal like this, which will almost certainly expand Iran’s regional influence? Do you take into account the interest of allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, or is that something you can’t consider when the ultimate goal is nuclear nonproliferation?

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BLIX: Well, there’s one aspect of this that I find potentially very hopeful, and that is that the P5, despite enormous tensions between themselves, have succeeded in isolating this case from the other tensions and reaching an agreement. Because this is the way that the U.N. Security Council was meant to act.

In 1945, the P5 were the victors of the Second World War, and they decided that they would prohibit states from using the threat of force against the territorial integrity and politically independence of other states – this is Article 2 paragraph 4 of the U.N. charter. But they were not content with that, so they also set up a mechanism that would oppose this rule, provided that the P5 would agree to veto power.

Now, they were not agreeing during the Cold War, hardly ever. It was only in 1990, 1991, when Saddam attacked Kuwait that they came together. At that time, Bush the elder said that this was the new international order – meaning that the U.N. charter functioned. Well, that was the unipolar world in which it functioned for a while. And I think that many in the U.S. felt they liked that arrangement. But the world changed, and this is going away. With China rising, Asia rising, we are not staying in that unipolar world.

The Syrian chemical weapons affair, I think, was the first encouraging example that the P5 would be able to work together in a multipolar world. There the U.S. was prepared to, and Obama was nearly pushed to act as the self-appointed world police and bomb Assad’s chemical installations, maybe a few other things, to punish him, which was just saying to Assad, “now you go back to your fighting, but keep it clean boys, don’t use chemical weapons.” It was a rather absurd line. But it also meant acting as a selfappointed world policeman.

And then some people came upon the idea that although the U.S. and Russia weren’t part of the chemical weapons convention, there could be an arrangement under which there would be no chemical weapons. And they succeeded in negotiating a solution under which Assad and Syria adhered to the convention and set up marvelously a U.N. mechanism to eliminate the weapons. This was an agreement with the P5. So after Bush the elder in 1991, you now had a second occasion – in a much more difficult time – in which the P5 acted together. And here, with the Iranian agreement we have a third.

This has given some hope, limited cases to be sure, in which the P5 have an interest in common that others should not have weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, it is quite an achievement and cause for optimism in other cases. Take North Korea – that

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would probably be more difficult, but [the P5] have a common interest there, and so this is a feature of the Iran agreement that I find very hopeful.

The alternative mind you, as Obama says, the alternative really is toward war. That is to say, the U.S. or the Israelis or both bomb what they can bomb in terms of nuclear installations – certainly a violation of the U.N. charter. It would be a breach of the obligations of Article 2 paragraph 4 – they would not have an authorization from the Security Council, and the Russians and Chinese would not go along with it. So again, it would be acting as a self-appointed world policeman. And I think the reaction in the U.N. – the U.S. Congress may not care about it – but the reaction in the U.N. would be overwhelming.

I don’t even think they would have a majority on the Security Counsel for it and I think in the General Assembly, there would be a very strong majority against such a unilateral act. So I think Obama has very good reasons for shying away from war. It may be that he is more influenced by the fact that the U.S. public does not like to send boots on the ground, fine. That may be it. But from an international standpoint, I think that this reticence and unwillingness shown by Obama both in the case of Syria and in this case is desirable and welcome.

386 Al-Monitor 20 Jul 2015

How Turkey really feels about the Iran deal

By Cengiz Candar

“Far from the scene in Vienna where photos were taken to commemorate this historical moment, it might be necessary to remember that the nuclear deal between Iran and the West is a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the atrocities which were, and still are, endured by the Iraqi people and on the corpses of the Syrian people. This deal was signed with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Syrians who were killed to pave the way for this agreement. This deal comes after almost 100 years since the SykesPicot agreement. It was concluded on the ruins of the Arab world, which has descended into chaos and darkness at a time when regional and international players are content to watch Arab blood wasted as they seek only their interests!”

These blunt sentiments reflect the overall Sunni Arab mood about the long-awaited nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers. A sense of Western — i.e., US — betrayal has overwhelmed the Sunni Arabs. Yet, the remarks above are not from a Sunni Arab but amazingly from the celebrated Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, one of the most veteran political figures on the Middle East stage since the 1970s. Therefore, some in the region — including myself — consider his statements as a barometer to gauge the political trends.

In this sense, particularly his depiction of the nuclear deal in reference to Sykes-Picot, it is the notorious historic agreement that Islamists of all colors and pan-Arabists from the Islamic State (IS) to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu wish to undo.

For Jumblatt, the nuclear deal between Iran and the West is akin to Sykes-Picot of 100 years ago that intended to carve the Ottoman-Arab lands with the decision of two Western colonial powers, the United Kingdom and France. The deal now reached between the West led by the United States and non-Arab Iran might have a similar effect on the Middle Eastern chessboard.

The Saudis, Iran’s main rival in the Gulf and in the regional sectarian divide, is outspokenly and understandably outraged about the deal. But what about Iran’s historical and most formidable rival in the region, Turkey?

In official statements, Turkish leaders carefully select their words when assessing the Iran deal. If Turkish statements are not well scrutinized, one can easily conclude that Turkey is quite happy that such a deal was reached.

Turkey had felt the negative effects of the sanctions on Iran while having an ambitious aim of reaching a trade volume of $30 billion with its eastern neighbor. At the moment, as one of the main buyers of Iranian oil and natural gas, Turkey’s trade volume with Iran amounts to $10 billion.

387 Yet, with the lifting of the sanctions — although Turkey will be one of the benefactors economically — it is hard to say that politically Turkey would be delighted seeing Iran emerging as a regional power and an international actor.

The first Turkish official reaction to the nuclear deal reached in Vienna on July 14 came from Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. He said, “Iran should be constructive, attaching importance to political dialogue. … Particularly, it [Iran] should reconsider its role in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.”

The spirit of his words obviously reflected the uneasiness of Turkey from the potential of Iran re-emerging as an international political actor that may overshadow its ambitious western neighbor.

"Constructive” and “attaching importance to political dialogue” can easily be interpreted as “talk to us, talk to Turkey, so we could feel as important ourselves.” As for the second part of his reaction, Cavusoglu means, “Turkey and Iran are pitted against each other from the Gulf to the Mediterranean, in Mesopotamia and the Levant. An Iran strengthened by the West will further undermine Turkey’s regional standing.”

What if Iran does not care for such veiled “warnings” by Turkish officials? Semih Idiz, a fellow Al-Monitor columnist, was correct in his assessment when he wrote: “Tehran, which conducted crucial negotiations with the 'world powers' and reached satisfactory results, cannot be thought of taking such inculcations seriously, coming from a Turkey that has grown weaker and lost any significant influence in the region.”

While a dramatic diplomatic coup has taken place involving Iran — which is Turkey’s “eastern flank” — another drama unfolded in its “western flank” when Greece capitulated to the European Union, which Turkey is a candidate member to and has seemingly insurmountable problems ultimately integrating with.

Following a referendum July 5, when 61% of the Greek people voted "no” on the bailout package, the Greek government is obliged to accept the demands of its Eurozone partners, which go even further than those they put up for referendum.

The endgame of the EU-Greece saga that lasted more than six months is simple and clear: Greece capitulated to the Germany-centered European Union.

Saving the Eurozone with keeping Greece in it may still have certain unwarranted consequences that may have bearings on Turkey. Joost Lagendijk, a seasoned European politician and an expert on Turkey-EU relations, observed in his Today’s Zaman column: “For the moment, Greece and the Euro are saved. But the dream of an economically and politically unified Europe has been severely, maybe even fatally, damaged. That is bad news also for Turkey.”

He had a gloomy forecast on the EU’s future: “Many Europeans are not only worried about the negative effects on Greece in the foreseeable future. They also fear all the arm-twisting and blackmailing will have disastrous long-term consequences for the EU as a whole. The Greek crisis has, again, exposed the weak sides of the Eurozone architecture. It is a monetary union that, because of a lack of political will, has not been turned into a full political union with common institutions that could balance the

388 concentration of power in Berlin, could democratically control the European Central Bank and would act in time to prevent potential problems in member states.”

Lagendijk, who was a Dutch Green Left Party member at the height of Turkey-EU relations during the first decade of the 2000s, and the co-chairman of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, was instrumental and influential within the EU for starting the negotiations in 2004-2005 for Turkey’s full membership. In a recent conversation with Al-Monitor, he gave a very perceptive analysis.

Lagendijk thinks Greece’s saga in the EU is far from over and it may end up with Greece leaving the Eurozone. Such an end may suggest the emergence of a “two-speed Europe.” This is a concept that has been circulating for some time. Paradoxically, a “twospeed Europe” may accelerate Turkish entry into the EU, because it would mean that there would be an EU of Eurozone and an EU of non-Eurozone. The latter, which includes the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden and the Balkan countries, could expand with Turkey.

Lagendijk told Al-Monitor that this is starkly different from the “privileged partnership” scheme that some years ago Germany wanted for Turkey, and had drawn the rage of Turkey that had seen it as a ploy to leave the country outside of the EU by depriving it of not taking part in the decision-making mechanism.

He said it is different because a “privileged partnership” has been proposed solely for Turkey, but in an eventual “two-speed Europe,” consisting of a Eurozone and a nonEurozone that includes Turkey, Ankara will be a part of the whole and of a particular European group.

The security dimension of Turkey being part of Europe is provided by NATO; the economic-commercial dimension by the Customs Union and the politicaladministrative dimension can be met in a “two-speed Europe.”

Are Turks contemplating such European horizons?

No. Nowadays, they are too introverted, despite the dramatically historical developments taking place on their eastern and western flanks. It has been 40 days following the elections and the country still does not have a new government. The country's sole focus is domestic politics right now.

Turkey is like an inward-looking figure within an Iran-Greece geopolitical parenthesis.

389 Americans for Peace 20 Jul 2015

The Iran nuclear deal and its aftermath This week, Alpher sums up the Iran nuclear deal, discussing additional pros and cons for Israel; the most important criterion for Israel in addressing the Iran nuclear agreement; what should be on the agenda for Israeli-American talks regarding security assurances; and given the discussed rationales for Israel to line up behind the Iran deal, what still concerns him about the deal and its aftermath.

Q. Last Monday, you offered criteria for assessing the Iran nuclear deal that was published a day later. Do you have any second thoughts regarding the pros and cons for Israel?

A. Last week I suggested that “at the strategic level our criteria for judging it must be based on an assessment as to which ‘take’ on Iran the agreement ends up verifying: Iran as a factor in regional stability or Iran as an aggressive, terrorist-supporting regional hegemon.” Obviously, the jury is still out regarding such a judgment, and probably will be for years to come. But now the deal is done, and it is almost certain that Congress will not overturn it or that, even if it does, the deal will proceed under Chinese, European and Russian guidance. Accordingly Israel must, for its own strategic good, muster a new set of shorter-term criteria for addressing the Iran nuclear agreement.

Q. What’s the most important criterion?

A. Like it or not, this is a done deal. This is now the only game in town. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s gathering campaign to persuade a two-thirds majority of Congress to scuttle it is wrong-minded and counterproductive for a number of reasons.

First, it was Netanyahu himself who spearheaded the international campaign for sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. The result is, at a minimum, at least 10 years and probably 15 without having to worry about an Iranian nuclear threat. This is a huge strategic achievement. True, the Iranian nuclear program has not been closed down completely and forever. Nevertheless, by opposing this agreement Netanyahu comes out looking like someone who simply can’t take yes for an answer, as if all along he was deceiving the international community. Note in this context the recent comment by UK Foreign Minister Philip Hammond: "Israel doesn't want any deal with Iran," but rather "a permanent state of stand-off.” True or not, this impression in itself is bad for Israel’s international standing.

Second, the odds of scuttling the deal by congressional veto are so poor as to not warrant the effort. Having failed in one controversial congressional appearance to prevent the deal, Netanyahu is about to compound the damage. The result is more unnecessary bad blood between the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration.

Third, Israel’s legitimate concern that the deal will blind Washington to Iran’s ongoing violent drive for regional hegemony, reliance on terrorism and threats to destroy Israel was answered eloquently by President Obama in his next-day interview with Tom Friedman: “we are going to have to systematically guard against that and work with our

390 allies--the gulf countries, Israel--to stop the work that they are doing outside of the nuclear program. But the central premise here is that if they got a nuclear weapon, that would be different, and on that score, we have achieved our objective.”

Does Netanyahu fear that the administration won’t follow through on this commitment?

Is he, like many in the Middle East, afraid that the hundreds of billions of dollars that will now pour into Iran’s coffers will fuel these Iranian ambitions? These are legitimate concerns. As I write, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is in Israel to discuss precisely such contingencies. Of course it would be preferable to ensure that the Iranian expansion and terror machine did not benefit from this deal. But the deal is a fact that no amount of denial in Jerusalem will change. Hence this is hardly a reason to reject it on its specific merits. Quite the contrary, as a junior strategic partner of the United States, Israel’s best bet now is to accept the deal and enter into in-depth discussions with the US and perhaps the European members of the P5 + 1 (the international coalition that negotiated with Iran) regarding iron-clad assurances as to ways to oppose, together, both Iran’s short-term regional goals and even its long-term, post nuclear freeze designs.

Yet as long as Netanyahu is campaigning against the agreement, he can hardly enter into such talks in good faith. And once he has failed to scuttle the deal, his negotiating position vis-a-vis the administration regarding strategic assurances will be much weaker.

He really should now simply declare victory and demand to discuss the spoils.

Q. What should be on the agenda for Israeli-American talks regarding such security assurances?

A. The agenda could focus on the specific weapons systems Israel might need in ten years or more to deal with a nuclear Iran, e.g., long-range stealth bombers, bunkerbusting bombs and enhanced intelligence capabilities. And it could focus on security understandings and commitments between the two sides regarding not only Iran but the fragmenting Sunni Middle East. Another option would be to recruit US support and involvement in enhancing Israel’s strategic relations with Arab states that harbor similar concerns about Iran. Note, incidentally, that the latter--particularly Saudi Arabia and the GCC, the countries most directly threatened by Iran--have criticized the Iran deal but have also, unlike Netanyahu, hastened to acquiesce in it and openly seek closer collaboration with the US. In Israel’s case, the Obama administration has made it clear that it is willing. Obviously, a congressional majority is willing. This could be a rare moment of strategic advantage for Netanyahu in his relations with Washington. The only potential obstacle, beyond Netanyahu’s incredible misreading of the situation and of his options, could be the Palestinian issue. Interestingly, this may be one of the reasons why Netanyahu has apparently placed a freeze on new settlement construction (the other reasons being a desire to head off European sanctions, a confidence-building measure with the Palestinians, and a possible attempt to coax the Zionist Union opposition into the coalition). On the other hand, if Netanyahu ever wanted to request a two-year grace period from the administration regarding negotiations over a two-state solution, now would presumably be the time. As Alex Fishman concluded in Yediot Aharonot last Friday, referring to the Iran nuclear deal and Obama’s offer to upgrade Israel’s security capabilities, “The Americans understand they have complicated our lives, which is why they are prepared to compensate us”.

391 Q. Given this set of rationales for Israel to line up behind the Iran deal, what personally still concerns you about the deal and its aftermath?

First, leveraging the Iran deal to enhance US-Israel strategic cooperation requires an urgent move by Netanyahu to restore trust and confidence. He could start not only by backing off from challenging the deal in Congress, but by replacing Israel’s ambassador in Washington. Of course, replacing his reactionary right-wing government with a centrist coalition would also be a big help and might conceivably be an option somewhere in the fall after the deal has survived the challenge by Congress.

Right now, on the other hand, Netanyahu actually may persuade opposition leader Isaac Herzog to campaign for him in Washington against the deal. That would be bad for USIsrael relations and bad for Israeli politics.

Second, the infusion of money into the Iranian treasury, taken together with Washington’s eagerness to compensate both Israel and the moderate Sunni Arab states with weaponry, virtually guarantee a frantic new Middle East arms race. No matter how you look at it, that is bad for regional stability.

Third, while Obama has admirably testified to his ongoing suspicions regarding Iran’s regional behavior, the circumstantial evidence seems to be piling up that the US could end up favoring Iran as a strategic partner in the Middle East and even the Central Asian region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran, after all, is stable with ancient roots, with a huge territory and large and well-educated population, while the US no longer needs Gulf oil, Saudi Arabia exports extremism and the rest of the Middle East has been reduced to what Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt calls “the ruins of the Arab world”.

We hear this narrative increasingly from American strategists and columnists. US forces are already tacitly cooperating with Iran’s Quds force in Iraq and Syria. Hisham Melhem of al-Arabiya, a keen observer of the Middle East, writes that “From the beginning of his presidency, President Obama looked at Iran, and saw the old Persia beckoning.” On the heels of the agreement, Obama called for a “practical conversation” between Iran and the Arab states--an appeal that fits right into the Iranian agenda wherein talks with the Arabs are the “most important priority” (FM Zarif), particularly to deal with Sunni terrorism. The mullahs in Tehran can be persuaded to choose “a different path”. The problem is that this dynamic ignores the Iranian reality: Shiite terrorism, extremism, and a hegemonic drive, spearheaded precisely by the Quds force, right up to Israel’s doorstep on its northern border and to Jordan’s doorstep and Lebanon’s doorstep.

This points to danger number four. With Iran now feeling triumphant and relatively unfettered regarding its Middle East objectives, the theater to watch is southern Lebanon and southern Syria, where Iran and its proxies might spark an incident to test Israel’s resolve. Or someone else might spark the incident to send a signal regarding the danger posed by Iran in its temporary post-nuclear phase.

Finally, I’m concerned about Washington’s decision-making acumen in the Middle East.

Let’s leave the Iran nuclear deal aside, since it’s a done deal and the jury will be out for years. The US has in recent years shown poor judgment in the region repeatedly: backing off from its chemical weapons red line in Syria, supporting intervention in Libya, withdrawing from Iraq, returning to Iraq with too few forces to make a difference against ISIS, renewing two-state solution negotiations between Israel and the PLO based on non-credible premises, and tacitly collaborating with Iran in Iraq and Syria.

392 Q. To sum up?

A. To sum up, the Iran nuclear deal makes the Middle East a safer place in one extremely important dimension and for a reasonable period of time. If Netanyahu were wise, he would exploit the deal to Israel’s strategic advantage. Meanwhile, in the short term security is liable to deteriorate in other regional dimensions.

393 Iran Review 20 Jul 2015

Iran's Statement on UNSC Resolution 2231 In an address to the UNSC session minutes after the resolution was passed, Iran's Ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo hailed the "fundamental shift in the consideration of Iran's peaceful nuclear program".

The following is the full text of Dr. Khoshroo's statement: Resolution 2231 that the Council just adopted represents a significant development and marks a fundamental shift in the consideration of Iran's peaceful nuclear program by the Council in the past 10 years. The JCPOA is the result of a series of extensive and collective efforts that sought, for close to two years, to give diplomacy a chance and end the resort to pressure, coercion and threat. This fundamentally different approach, which was a departure from the path travelled during the preceding years, helped all of us opt for the best possible way out, put an end to an unnecessary crisis and accomplish major achievements for all the parties involved and the whole international community.

The resolution that was adopted and the JCPOA that was endorsed today provide also for the termination of the Security Council resolutions that unjustifiably placed sanctions on Iran for its efforts to exercise its rights. They were grounded on nothing but baseless and pure speculation and hearsay. Nobody has ever presented any proof indicating that Iran’s program has been anything but peaceful. The IAEA that put Iran's facilities under a record inspection has consistently reported that Iran has dutifully stood by every single commitment. For example, in terms of inspection frequency, only Japan has been subject to greater scrutiny than Iran, while Japan has much more extensive nuclear facilities. Last year, Iran even surpassed Japan in the number of inspections.

Therefore, the involvement of the Security Council was not caused by a suspicious nuclear weapon program, but driven by the stated objective in SCR 1696 to compel Iran to suspend its lawful enrichment program. That demand was not only unnecessary and uncalled for, but in fact ran counter to the unanimous conclusions of the 2000 and 2010 NPT Review Conferences which stipulate that the choices of member-states with regard to their fuel cycle activities must be respected. It also neglected the repeated demands of the majority of the international community represented in NAM. The sanctions imposed against Iran in SCR 1737 through 1929 were all punishments for the refusal of the Iranian people to accept that demand. In engaging with E3/EU+3, the Iranian people have had the foresight to move forward, without losing sight of the past. Therefore, while we hope that the Security Council will open a new chapter in its relations with Iran, we cannot accept or forget its previous treatment of Iran, starting from its inaction in the face of Saddam’s aggression and the use of chemical weapons to its more recent treatment of the Iranian peaceful nuclear program.

The solution that we arrived at is undoubtedly in the interest of strengthening the regime of nuclear non-proliferation in its entirety, as it includes and recognizes the right of Iran to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, including uranium enrichment activities and R&D on its soil. Rights and obligations of States parties to the NPT, as under any other international regime, can only go hand in hand. Obligations would be honoured and these regimes, including the NPT, sustained only if rights could also be achievable.

No threats of sanction or war could help sustain the NPT in the long run if big powers fail to honour all its three pillars, including total nuclear disarmament and the right of all to use nuclear energy, and non-parties are rewarded for their intransigence.

Looking to the future, my Government hopes that the JCPOA and resolution 2231 herald a new chapter in the relationship between Iran with the Council and the JCPOA

394 participants. Iran is both in a position and willing to comply fully with its commitment under the JCPOA; because it is already committed to the Fatwa of its Supreme leader, who has declared all weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, to be Haram, which its defence doctrine also so requires. We hope that our partners as well as the Council do the same with regards to their commitments under the same documents.

The desire expressed by the Council to build a new relationship with Iran, its encouraging all Member States to cooperate with Iran in the framework of the JCPOA in the field of peaceful use of nuclear energy and related projects as well as its emphasis that the JCPOA is conducive to promoting and facilitating the development of normal economic and trade contacts and cooperation with Iran are positive signs and all encouraging.

Mr. President, While this deal focused on the nuclear issue, Iran expects it to have a wider positive implication for our region and the whole international community, including the following: First, the deal, which was sealed on the basis of mutual respect and understanding, is an important achievement for diplomacy over pressure and coercion that could produce nothing with regard to Iran in the past 37 years. It reinforces faith in diplomacy as the most rational way to resolve differences in our interconnected world, and shows that diplomacy can work and prevail over war and tension. It is, therefore, a clear message to those who still believe that they can achieve everything through force and coercion.

Second, the JCPOA has the potential to help trigger a major development in this region towards more cooperation and coordination aimed at addressing the real issues at hand.

Thus, we earnestly hope that it helps turn the page in our region, enabling countries to close their ranks and fight resolutely against violent extremism, and to move towards more cooperation to address the grave threats that our region and the world face. While all countries in our region have a very high stake in defeating terrorism, violent extremism and sectarianism, the JCPOA participants are also facing similar challenges to their security from these phenomena. With the dust settled over the nuclear issue, we are now free to focus on real issues and benefit from the better environment conducive to a wider cooperation among all actors.

Third, in the wake of this major development in the region, we renew our call to our neighbors and friends in the Persian Gulf and in the wider region that Iran is ready to engage in good faith with all of them based on mutual respect, good neighborliness and brotherhood. We have many common challenges in our region to address, and many common opportunities to benefit from. This is the time to start working together against our most common and important challenges, which include above all violent extremism.

Fourth, the Israeli regime, following its general policy to stoke tension in the region, has done whatever in its power to sabotage and defeat any effort towards resolving the standoff over Iran’s nuclear energy program. In so doing, it proves once more that it doesn’t see peace in our region in its interest and considers peace as an existential threat to itself. The Iranophobia that they try to spread in the region and beyond is also to serve this nefarious purpose. Thus, we alert our friends and neighbors not to fall into their trap. In this context, it is also not surprising that the Israeli regime is the only obstacle in the way of establishing a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East that my country initiated more than forty years ago and has ever since promoted. We believe that nuclear warheads stockpiled by the Israeli regime constitute a grave threat to peace and security in our unstable region, and the Security Council should live up to its primary responsibility under the UN Charter and take necessary action to neutralize this threat.

Mr. President

395 To conclude, let me recall that Iran, as a nation with a rich culture and civilization, has withstood enormous millennial storms while being steadfast in preserving its independence and identity. These have not been acquired through oppressing others or reneging on commitments. The steadfastness that our delegation showed during the negotiations stemmed from the fact that we only accept commitments that we can abide by. As Iran is resolute in fulfilling its obligations, we expect that our counterparts remain also faithful to theirs. Only through honouring commitments, displaying good faith and adopting the right approach can diplomacy prevail over conflict and war in a world that is replete with violence, suffering and oppression. In this context, the JCPOA provides a solid foundation for further and more effective diplomatic interaction.

Before concluding, let me also inform you, Mr. President, that my delegation, upon the instruction from my government, is forwarding the statement of the Islamic Republic of Iran following the action taken today by the Security Council, to be circulated as a document of the Security Council.

Thank you Mr. President.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has released its official position and reaction on the finalization in the UN Security Council of JCPOA on Monday.

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful The Statement of the Islamic Republic of Iran Following the Adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 Endorsing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) 1. The Islamic Republic of Iran considers science and technology, including peaceful nuclear technology, as the common heritage of mankind. At the same time, on the basis of solid ideological, strategic and international principles, Iran categorically rejects weapons of mass destruction and particularly nuclear weapons as obsolete and inhuman, and detrimental to international peace and security. Inspired by the sublime Islamic teachings, and based on the views and practice of the late founder of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini, and the historic Fatwa of the leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khamenei, who has declared all weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, to be Haram (strictly forbidden) in Islamic jurisprudence, the Islamic Republic of Iran declares that it has always been the policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran to prohibit the acquisition, production, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons.

2. The Islamic Republic of Iran underlines the imperative of total elimination of nuclear weapons, as a requirement of international security and an obligation under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).The Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to engage actively in all international diplomatic and legal efforts to save humanity from the menace of nuclear weapons and their proliferation, including through the establishment of Nuclear Weapons Free Zones, particularly in the Middle East.

3. The Islamic Republic of Iran firmly insists that States parties to the NPT shall not be prevented from enjoying their inalienable rights under the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of NPT. 4. The finalization of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on 14 July 2015 signifies a momentous step by the Islamic Republic of Iran and E3/EU+3 to resolve, through negotiations and based on mutual respect, an unnecessary crisis, which had been manufactured by baseless allegations about Iranian peaceful nuclear program, followed by unjustified politically-motivated measures against the people of Iran.

396 5. The JCPOA is premised on reciprocal commitments by Iran and E3/EU+3, ensuring the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program, on the one hand, and the termination of all provisions of Security Council resolutions 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008), 1835 (2008), 1929 (2010) and 2224 (2015) and comprehensive lifting of all United Nations Security Council sanctions, and all nuclear-related sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union and its member-states, on the other. The Islamic Republic of Iran is committed to implement its voluntary undertakings in good faith contingent upon same good faith implementation of all undertakings, including those involving the removal of sanctions and restrictive measures, by E3/EU+3 under the JCPOA. 6. Removal of nuclear-related sanctions and restrictive measures by European Union and the United States would mean that transactions and activities referred to under the JCPOA could be carried out with Iran and its entities anywhere in the world without fear of retributions from extraterritorial harassment, and all persons would be able to freely choose to engage in commercial and financial transactions with Iran. It is clearly spelled out in the JCPOA that both EU and the U.S. will refrain from re-introducing or re-imposing the sanctions and restrictive measures lifted under the JCPOA. It is understood that reintroduction or reimposition, including through extension, of the sanctions and restrictive measures will constitute significant non-performance which would relieve Iran from its commitments in part or in whole. Removal of sanctions further necessitates taking appropriate domestic legal and administrative measures, including legislative and regulatory measures to effectuate the removal of sanctions. The JCPOA requires an effective end to all discriminatory compliance measures and procedures as well as public statements inconsistent with the intent of the agreement. Iran underlines the agreement by JCPOA participants that immediately after the adoption of the Security Council resolution endorsing the JCPOA, the EU, its Member States and the United States will begin consultation with Iran regarding relevant guidelines and publicly accessible statements on the details of sanctions or restrictive measures to be lifted under the JCPOA. 7. The Islamic Republic of Iran will pursue its peaceful nuclear program, including its enrichment and enrichment R&D, consistent with its own plan as agreed in the JCPOA, and will work closely with its counterparts to ensure that the agreement will endure the test of time and achieve all its objectives. This commitment is based on assurances by E3/EU+3 that they will cooperate in this peaceful program consistent with their commitments under the JCPOA. It is understood and agreed that, through steps agreed with the IAEA, all past and present issues of concern will be considered and concluded by the IAEA Board of Governors before the end of 2015. IAEA has consistently concluded heretofore that Iran’s declared activities are exclusively peaceful. Application of the Additional Protocol henceforth is intended to pave the way for a broader conclusion that no undeclared activity is evidenced in Iran either. To this end, The Islamic Republic of Iran will cooperate with IAEA, in accordance with the terms of the Additional Protocol as applied to all signatories. IAEA should, at the same time, exercise vigilance to ensure full protection of all confidential information. The Islamic Republic of Iran has always fulfilled its international non-proliferation obligations scrupulously and will meticulously declare all its relevant activities under the Additional Protocol. In this context, since no nuclear activity is or will ever be carried out in any military facility, the Islamic Republic of Iran is confident that such facilities will not be the subject of inspection requests.

8. The Joint Commission established under the JCPOA should be enabled to address and resolve disputes in an impartial, effective, efficient and expeditious manner.

Its primary role is to address complaints by Iran and ensure that effects of

397 sanctions lifting stipulated in the JCPOA will be fully realized. The Islamic Republic of Iran may reconsider its commitments under the JCPOA, if the effects of the termination of the UNSC sanction, or EU or US nuclear related sanctions or restrictive measures are impaired by continued application or the imposition of new sanctions with a nature and scope identical or similar to those that were in place prior to the Implementation Date, irrespective of whether such new sanctions are introduced on nuclear related or other grounds, unless the issues are remedied within a reasonably short time.

9. Reciprocal measures, envisaged in the dispute Settlement mechanism of JCPOA, to redress significant non-performance are considered as the last resort, if significant non-performance persists and is not remedied within the arrangements provided for in JCPOA. The Islamic Republic of Iran considers such measures as highly unlikely, as the objective is to ensure compliance rather than provide an excuse for arbitrary reversibility or means for pressure or manipulation. Iran is committed to fully implement its voluntary commitments in good faith. In order to ensure continued compliance by all JCPOA participants, the Islamic Republic of Iran underlines that in case the mechanism is applied against Iran or its entities and sanctions, particularly Security Council measures, are restored, the Islamic Republic of Iran will treat this as grounds to cease performing its commitments under the JCPOA, and to reconsider its cooperation with the IAEA. 10. The Islamic Republic of Iran underlines the common understanding and clearlystated agreement of all JCPOA participants that affirms that the provisions of the Security Council Resolution 2231, endorsing the JCPOA, do not constitute provisions of the JCPOA, and can in no way impact performance of the JCPOA. 11. The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to actively contribute to promotion of peace and stability in the region in the face of increasing threat of terrorism and violent extremism. Iran will continue its leading role in fighting this menace and stands ready to cooperate fully with its neighbors and the international community in dealing with this common global threat.

Moreover, the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue to take necessary measures to strengthen its defense capabilities in order to protect its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity against any aggression and to counter the menace of terrorism in the region. In this context, Iranian military capabilities, including ballistic missiles, are exclusively for legitimate defense. They have not been designed for WMD capability, and are thus outside the purview or competence of the Security Council resolution and its annexes.

12. The Islamic Republic of Iran expects to see meaningful realization of the fundamental shift in the Security Council’s approach envisaged in the preamble of SCR 2231. The Council has an abysmal track record in dealing with Iran, starting with its acquiescing silence in the face of a war of aggression by Saddam Hussain against Iran in 1980, its refusal from 1984 to 1988 to condemn, let alone act against, massive, systematic and wide-spread use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and civilians by Saddam Hussain, and the continued material and intelligence support for Saddam Hussain’s chemical warfare by several of its members. Even after Saddam invaded Kuwait, the Security Council not only obdurately refused to rectify its malice against the people of Iran, but went even further and imposed ostensibly WMD-driven sanctions against these victims of chemical warfare and Councils acquiescing silence. Instead of at least noting the fact that Iran had not even retaliated against Saddam Hussain’s use of chemical weapons, the Council rushed to act on politically-charged baseless allegations against Iran, and unjustifiably imposed a wide range of sanctions against the Iranian people as retribution for their resistance to coercive pressures to abandon their peaceful nuclear program. It is important to remember that these sanctions,

398 which should not have been imposed in the first place, are the subject of removal under the JCPOA and UNSCR 2231.

13. Therefore, the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to insist that all sanctions and restrictive measures introduced and applied against the people of Iran, including those applied under the pretext of its nuclear program, have been baseless, unjust and unlawful. Hence, nothing in the JCPOA shall be construed to imply, directly or indirectly, an admission of or acquiescence by the Islamic Republic of Iran in the legitimacy, validity or enforceability of the sanctions and restrictive measures adopted against Iran by the UNSC, the EU or its Member States, the United States or any other State, nor shall it be construed as a waiver or a limitation on the exercise of any related right the Islamic Republic of Iran is entitled to under relevant national legislations, international instruments or legal principles.

14. The Islamic Republic of Iran is confident that the good-faith implementation of the JCPOA by all its participants will help restore the confidence of Iranian people who have been unduly subjected to illegal pressure and coercion under the pretext of this manufactured crisis, and will open new possibilities for cooperation in dealing with real global challenges and actual threats to regional security. Our region has long been mired in undue tension while extremists and terrorists continue to gain and maintain grounds. It is high time to redirect attention and focus on these imminent threats and seek and pursue effective means to defeat this common menace.

399 The New Yorker 20 Jul 2015

The Deal

by Steve Coll In the late nineteen-eighties, in Switzerland, Iranian officials met with collaborators of A. Q. Khan, the scientist who fathered Pakistan’s nuclear-bomb program. The parties may also have met in Dubai, where Khan maintained a secret office above a children’s store called Mummy & Me. In 1987, the Iranians received a one-page document that included the offer of a disassembled centrifuge, along with diagrams of the machine. They reportedly ended up paying as much as ten million dollars for information and materials that helped Iran advance its nuclear program during the nineteen-nineties. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a scientist sometimes described as the closest thing to an Iranian Robert Oppenheimer, oversaw the Orchid Office, working secretly on detonators and on the challenge of fitting something like a nuke on a missile. In 2003, the agency confronted Iran with evidence that it maintained a clandestine nuclear program. Tehran denied any wrongdoing and parried inspectors, then built a centrifuge facility under a mountain near Qom, whose existence was revealed by the United States, Britain, and France in 2009.

This record of deception is one reason that the nuclear accord that Secretary of State John Kerry brought back to President Obama last week runs to a hundred and fifty-nine pages of text and annexes. Paragraph after paragraph seeks to close loophole after loophole. “Every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off, and the inspection and transparency regime necessary to verify that objective will be put in place,” the President said last week. If Iran tries to build a bomb before 2025, he insisted, inspections and surveillance will provide the world with at least a year’s advance warning.

The deal’s fine print does include remarkable Iranian concessions, such as the sale or the downblending of almost all Iran’s enriched uranium, and the disabling of a heavy-water reactor at Arak, which could be used to make plutonium. Yet the deal has weaknesses, too. Its protocols for surprise inspections of military facilities could allow Iran to delay the arrival of investigators for more than three weeks, ample time to hide contraband equipment. And although Iran must now provide the I.A.E.A. with answers about its secret atomic history, the accord does not spell out how forthcoming it must be.

Inevitably, some uncertainty about Iran’s past weapons experiments—and, therefore, its present bomb-making capacity—will remain.

Congress has until mid-September to act on the deal. It seems unlikely that legislators will scuttle it; Republicans appear implacably opposed to Obama’s diplomacy, yet they may not have the votes to override the veto that he has promised. But, to see the deal through, the President will have to persuade wary Democrats to back him. They face lobbying by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies. Netanyahu continues to intervene in American politics on the Iran matter, despite his slim odds of success and the damage he continues to cause to the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Yet he is a canny campaigner. Speaking on National Public Radio, he homed in on the accord’s surprise-inspection regime as “woefully inadequate” and “completely porous.”

In fact, the accord is tighter and more prescriptive than many I.A.E.A.-enforced agreements, including the one with North Korea that broke down a decade ago. Obama’s best argument, however, is not the fine print but the fact that the deal is better than any

400 other realistic course of action. Certainly it is better than preëmptive war. A more nuanced question that Congress will now debate is whether Obama could have done better by maintaining economic sanctions longer and negotiating for tougher terms. That is an illusory choice, the President argued last week, because, “without a deal, the international sanctions regime will unravel.” If he is right about that, the accord is more attractive still. The coalition that negotiated the deal now on the table—the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union—represents an extraordinary front of unity against nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. Holding that rare alliance together will make it easier to challenge Iran later if the ayatollahs do cheat or go for a bomb after the termination of the agreement.

The most persuasive argument against the deal is that relieving economic sanctions would replenish Iran’s treasury without any requirement that it stop sponsoring terrorism, as the State Department reports that it continues to do. Shiite Iran and insecure Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia are locked in intensifying sectarian conflicts from Yemen and Iraq to Syria. Iran arms Hezbollah and Hamas in their dead-end miniwars of rocket terror against Israel. An expansionist Iran with new resources and legitimacy might make the Middle East’s present deterioration even worse. Obama has not always acknowledged this risk, but, in an interview with Thomas Friedman in theTimes last week, he said, “People’s concerns here are legitimate. Hezbollah has tens of thousands of missiles that are pointed toward Israel.” Smaller Sunni states, too, he said, have “legitimate concerns” about Iran’s “dangerous” behavior, and he added that he would further strengthen the defenses of Israel and support Sunni allies.

But nuclear-arms control in the Middle East is inseparable from the region’s suffering and its conventional conflicts. This has been the case since the beginning of Iran’s program; the revolutionary regime first turned to A. Q. Khan’s salesmen in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s grotesque use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. In Syria, aid workers have reported that the Bashar al-Assad regime, an Iranian ally, has again used crude chlorine-gas bombs against civilians and insurgents. In Yemen, Saudi bombers are killing and maiming innocents indiscriminately. In Iraq and Syria, ISIS has enslaved women from religious minorities. No nuclear-control contract crafted in European luxury hotels is likely to survive for a decade amid spreading sectarian violence of that character.

The Obama Administration has yet to address the mass suffering in the region with anything like the energy and the risk-taking that it displayed in its breakthrough diplomacy with Iran. The deal is imperfect but good enough, and it offers a tentative promise of a less dangerous Middle East. It cannot by itself deliver that.

401 The New Yorker 20 Jul 2015

Tehran’s Promise The revolution’s midlife crisis and the nuclear deal.

By Robin Wright As the diplomacy on Iran’s nuclear program entered a final phase, in Europe, I visited the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini, the ideologue of Iran’s 1979 revolution, in Tehran. One of the grandest mausoleums in the world—its shimmering dome is visible for miles—was under expansion. The Imam’s bare receiving room, in his home, was preserved after he died, in 1989, in tribute to his modesty, but renovations at his tomb featured vaulted ceilings, lined with intricate mosaics, that soared stories high, and epic arches adorned with tiles in many shades of blue. In death, Khomeini’s body is in surroundings grander than the palaces of Persian kings. Editorials compared the opulence to Hollywood sets and condemned the costs at a time of poverty among the living.

The shrine has a metro stop. The faithful still visit. But numbers are down, and so is the fervor that mobilized millions during the revolution. In a space that holds thousands, I saw some two hundred pilgrims and a group of Dutch tourists.

Meisam Shahbani, a twenty-seven-year-old factory worker, tries to visit the tomb once a year, with his wife. “For each country, one person is important,” he said. “Maybe for the United States it was the first President. Khomeini was our leader.” Shahbani also likes the pop music of Enrique Iglesias and Christopher Nolan’s films, including “Batman Begins.” He favored a nuclear deal with the United States, too, especially if jobs are created by the lifting of sanctions. “Anything that will improve the situation in Iran,” he said.

The next day, Iran commemorated the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey and Ascension to Heaven on a mythical steed. I spent the evening with two Iranian professors, Nasser Hadian and Bahram Taheri, old friends who had taught at Columbia and the University of Michigan, respectively. We went to an open-air restaurant, then strolled through Water and Fire Park, one of hundreds of landscaped spaces in Tehran.

The center fountain is surrounded by towers that shoot off balls of fire. Opened in 2009, the park has playgrounds, terraced gardens, a planetarium, an outdoor arena, and a man-made lake, with swans. At midnight, thousands were still picnicking. Little kids on pastel bikes were weaving through the crowd. Western pop music echoed from the concrete hills of a roller park. We stopped to watch skateboarders and rollerbladers vying, at dangerous speeds, on steep half-pipe curves. A cell-phone company was hosting a show of comedians and other celebrities in the arena; it was packed. Camera crews were taping it for television.

I remarked on how much Iran had changed since the revolution, when I was nervous driving after dark, because cars were stopped at nighttime checkpoints to verify that the women inside were related to the men. Neighborhoodkomitehs raided homes suspected of partying and prowled streets to confront women who wore lipstick or exposed their ankles.

“You just have to go to this park to understand the state of mind among Iranians today,” Hadian, a political scientist now at the University of Tehran, said. “The revolution is in a midlife crisis. What is a midlife crisis? When you think idealism and youthfulness are

402 gone. The revolution doesn’t want to accept that it has grown older, that it won’t achieve everything it wanted to achieve. Or that it has to adapt to survive.”

We reached the end of the park just as fireworks celebrating the Prophet’s heavenly journey went off over Tehran. People scrambled to get selfies against the flashing night sky.

In “The Anatomy of Revolution” (1938), the Harvard historian Crane Brinton likened revolution to fever. The first stage is raging delirium, as ruthless radicals eliminate the ancien régime and purge their moderate collaborators. In the second, societies begin a long, fitful convalescence, often under dictatorial rule, as the “mad religious energy” subsides. The final stage is recovery and a return to normalcy, which may even include remnants of the past, as “the religious lust for perfection” dies out, “save among a tiny minority.”

Iran’s revolutionaries are aging. Most are in their late fifties, sixties, or seventies. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, turned seventy-six this month. More than sixty per cent of Iran’s eighty million people are under the age of thirty-five. A baby-boom generation, born after the revolution, doesn’t share all of its priorities.

“It’s a tsunami,” Said Rahmani, the C.E.O. of Sarava, Iran’s first venture-capital fund, told me. “This generation is worldly. They’re educated. They work. They have spending power. They’re not dependent on anyone. They have a different range of thinking.”

These days, the energy—and the locus for charting Iran’s future—is less in heady debates about an ideal Islamic state than in a practical scramble to exploit twenty-firstcentury technology to change society. More than a third of the population uses the Internet. Giant billboards for a new smart-phone model were plastered across Tehran this summer: “NEXT IS NOW.” One afternoon, I drove to a huge warehouse on Tehran’s outskirts to see Saeed and Hamid Mohammadi, thirty-six-year-old identical twins. They are groundbreakers in the first generation of startups in Iran. In 2007, they created Digikala, the Amazon of Iran.

It accounts for more than eighty per cent of online retail, according to Hamid. The Economist reported its value last year at a hundred and fifty million dollars.

The twins took me on a tour of the warehouse. A red motorcycle—the company’s iconic delivery vehicle—decorated the lobby. Aisle after aisle had shelves stacked with computers, refrigerators, books and DVDs, home appliances, perfumes, electric toothbrushes, guitars. Digikala sells Steinway pianos. An Iranian-American in California had just ordered a Mother’s Day present for delivery in Tehran, Hamid said.

For centuries, the bazaar was the heart of Iran’s economy, and one of the three traditional arms of power, with the clerics and the military. In 1979, the Shah was forced to abandon the Peacock Throne after the bazaaris and the clergy turned on him. The bazaar is still a big player, but Digikala and other startups have created a new space in society; the twins are proudest of the flow of information in customer reviews. Ecommerce increasingly defines market prices, too.

“Five years ago, the profit margin for consumer electronic goods sold in Iran was nine or ten per cent,” Hamid said. “Because of e-commerce, the traditional market now can’t sell for more than three or four per cent. We forced the market down—and made a fortune in the process.”

403 The Internet is also “one of the central battlegrounds between hard-liners anxious to control all expression and access in Iran and the majority of the population,” according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Many Iranians use virtual private networks to circumvent censorship of millions of Web sites and social media—and so do many of the theocrats. The Supreme Leader and the President have taken to using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram to propagate their messages, in Farsi and in English.

The rivalry for Iran’s future has played out over WhatsApp, Viber, and Tango. All three are used heavily to make free calls, send messages, and post photos or videos. They’re also ways to share the deliciously naughty political humor that Iranians love, without getting caught by the Committee to Determine Instances of Criminal Content. The committee, which is part of the Ministry of Justice, can prosecute people for an array of vague offenses, including “disturbing the public.” It was sanctioned by the United States in 2013 for barring freedom of expression. Last year, the regime proposed “smart filtering,” instead of blocking sites altogether. But it may already be too late to totally monitor the Internet in Iran.

“Iran is going through the kind of I.T. boom that the United States went through in the nineteen-nineties,” Rahmani said. Some companies have floundered, others have flourished. Aparat is the Iranian YouTube. Hamijoo, the equivalent of Indiegogo, is a crowd-funding site that raises money for film projects and the arts in Iran. Nazanin Daneshvar launched a Groupon clone in 2011, when she was twenty-six. Called Takhfifan—from takhfif, or “discount,” in Farsi—it works with more than ten thousand merchants and has more than a million subscribers. “No one could believe this could exist in Iran,” Daneshvar told me. “When I’m questioned, I say, ‘Do you think we’re riding camels?’ Obviously, don’t judge Iran just by what the clerics say at Friday prayers.”

Mohammad-Reza Khatami and Zahra Eshraghi are one of Tehran’s power couples.

Khatami, who has salt-and-pepper hair and a short beard, led the Islamic Iran Participation Front, a leading reformist political party; he was the deputy speaker of parliament from 2000 to 2004. His older brother, Mohammad Khatami, was President of Iran from 1997 until 2005. Eshraghi is the granddaughter of Ayatollah Khomeini and a women’s-rights activist. A striking woman, she was dressed in a leather skirt and spike heels when I visited their apartment, in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains.

“Everything is better!” Khatami told me, over melon smoothies and cake. “Nobody thought that the situation might have changed this much after the very bad times we had for those eight years.” He was referring to the tumultuous two terms of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who succeeded his brother.

Yet the revolutionary deep state remains ubiquitous. It continues to devour its own élites. Former President Khatami can’t appear at public events. He is not allowed to travel, and the Iranian media are not allowed to quote him. Former Prime Minister MirHossein Mousavi, who led Iran during the eight-year war with Iraq, and the former speaker of parliament Mehdi Karroubi, a cleric, have been under house arrest since 2011. Both ran for President in 2009, losing to Ahmadinejad. They were labelled “seditionists” for alleging election fraud. Two of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani’s children have been jailed. His daughter, a former member of parliament who served on Iran’s Olympic Committee, was convicted, in 2012, of “spreading propaganda against the regime.” His son, a businessman, was sentenced in June to ten years for security offenses and corruption.

404 No administration has been immune. Two of Ahmadinejad’s vice-presidents were charged this year with crimes, one with embezzlement and money laundering.

“Famous politicians are under siege,” Khatami said. “All of us in the Islamic Iran Participation Front have files open in the judiciary. There are no charges—yet. But the file is open. And every week we go to the judiciary for questioning and to be asked different things. It’s to pressure us.”

The “principlists”—revolutionary purists elected to public office, or serving invisibly in the judiciary and the intelligence services—can be even more ruthless with ordinary Iranians. Last month, the U.S. State Department, in its annual Human Rights Report, cited Iran for, among other things, politically motivated repression; disappearances; “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” punishments; arbitrary arrests; impunity for security forces; denial of fair public trials, which resulted in executions without due process; and the lack of an independent judiciary. Three Iranian-Americans, including Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post correspondent, are now detained in Tehran. A former F.B.I. agent disappeared after a trip to an Iranian island in 2007.

This fall, an election season kicks off. The poll—for parliament and the Assembly of Experts—is due in February. It could alter the internal balance of power. Hard-liners have had a tight hold on all three branches of government since President Khatami’s reform era ended, in 2005. Hassan Rouhani’s election to the Presidency, in 2013, began to swing politics back to the center. Now a second branch is up for grabs. In a May poll, half the Iranians surveyed said that they preferred candidates who support Rouhani.

Only a quarter favored his critics. “If there’s a nuclear deal, twenty to twenty-five per cent of people’s votes will go to candidates who favor the Rouhani government,” Hamid Reza Taraghi, of the hard-line Islamic Coalition Party, told me.

The election for the Assembly of Experts, a council of eighty-six theologians, is equally important. The assembly selects (and, in theory, can oust) the Supreme Leader, and is widely expected to pick Khamenei’s successor, shaping the next political era—and its limits.

“The original generation of revolutionaries will disappear in the next ten years,” Saeed Laylaz, an economist and a former adviser to President Khatami, said. Laylaz, who was imprisoned for a year after the 2009 election, added, “The new assembly will reflect the new generation.”

All of Khomeini’s grandchildren—there are fifteen—back reformers, Eshraghi said. Half a dozen of the great-grandchildren were educated in the West. Some of the grandchildren have considered running for parliament or the assembly. Eshraghi, who is the most outspoken, registered to run for parliament in 2004. But the Guardian Council, a supervisory body of theologians and jurists, disqualified Eshraghi and her husband, then an incumbent, along with more than two thousand other reformist candidates. In 2010, Khatami’s Islamic Iran Participation Front was banned altogether. A loose coalition of reformers, moderates, and centrists hopes to flood the field with candidates, so that even if they are disqualified in large numbers many of them can still compete.

“The famous names will not appear in the next election—especially the ones hard-liners accuse of trying to change the regime,” Khatami told me. He, too, has been banned from leaving the country. He found out last September, when he showed up at Tehran’s airport, named after his wife’s grandfather, for a flight to Istanbul. A nephrologist by training, he was scheduled to deliver a paper on kidney transplants. “My passport was taken, without any previous notice,” he told me. “This is ordinary in Iran.”

405 One evening, I went to Tehran’s Honar (Art) Hall to see a performance of “Huckleberry Finn.” The lobby was filled with boisterous kids playing tag, eating popcorn, and buying toys at a concession stand. The girls were in bright dresses and shorts. Hijab, or modest Islamic garb, is not required until puberty. A poster, in Farsi and English, featured Huck in a straw hat and suspenders.

Backstage, the lead actor was in a chair getting freckles. “It’s not the whole story from Mark Twain,” Ehsan Majidi, the play’s director, told me. The Iranians wanted their own version—or thought they could do better than Twain. A local playwright had added plot twists and new characters.

After decades of living in a pariah nation, Iranians seem to crave normalcy—but on their own terms. Figuring out their relationship with the outside world is a big part of the transition. They have tried repeatedly and failed.

America, particularly, haunts Iran. One of the world’s first great powers—the Persian Empire spanned three continents—it is both infatuated with and infuriated by the current superpower. Khomeini preached the dangers ofgharbzadegi, which translates as “Westoxication” or “West-struckness,” in music, theatre, movies, art, and society. “Iran has been hurt more by Westernized intellectuals than by any other group of men,” he said.

The hostile rhetoric hasn’t changed. At Friday prayers, as on previous visits, I heard thousands chanting “Death to America.” This year, twenty times.

But America has crept back in, shaping everything from Iran’s self-perception to its cultural appetites and fast-food cravings. Last year, I attended a musical at Tehran’s Opera House which included hits by Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan, and pictures flashing in the background of Ray Charles, Simon and Garfunkel, and Neil Diamond. This year, I went to one of the more than a dozen franchises of Pizza Hot, which ripped off Pizza Hut’s trademark logo, brown boxes, and slogans, in English: “Share a Slice of Hope.” I also stopped at Mash Donald’s, a burger joint adorned by a faux Ronald McDonald; the staff’s uniforms and caps bore the golden arches. (Mash is short for Mashhadi—someone who is from the holy city of Mashhad or has made the pilgrimage there.)

After the revolution, the Shah’s art collection—which included works by Lichtenstein, Pollock, Warhol, de Kooning, Cassatt, and Calder—was considered sacrilegious and packed away. Many of them are being shown again, at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This spring, Tehran displayed paintings by Sargent, Rothko, Hopper, and other Americans on billboards promoting art: “A gallery as big as a city.”

Mojtaba Mousavi, then the manager of urban art for Tehran’s municipal council, told me, “The selection of works was totally artistic.” Mousavi and I met in the elegant building where Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin stayed during the 1943 Tehran conference, when they plotted strategy against Germany and Japan.

Iran pines for that place of pride in the world again. Before the nuclear deal was announced, its standing had never been lower. A Pew Research Center poll reported in June that the view of the Islamic Republic was “mostly negative worldwide,” and that there had been a “precipitous” decline in its popularity even in the Muslim world.

406 Iran’s public clearly wants reëntry. A recent poll found that fifty-seven per cent favored a nuclear deal. Only fifteen per cent opposed one. Three-quarters also supported more talks between Tehran and Washington, more educational and cultural exchanges with the United States, and much more trade. “ ‘Death to America’? This is politics and not related to people’s thinking,” Elnaz Mobahat, the owner of Manhattan Grill, one of Tehran’s chic new restaurants, told me.

The place is adorned with American kitsch. One wall features photographs of sports stars, including Tiger Woods. “There are fourteen million people in greater Tehran, and maybe one hundred thousand attend Friday prayers,” she said. “Most people say we should talk to the Americans and solve our differences. We can both benefit. There are many investment opportunities in the oil and food industries.” She pointed to the ketchup bottles on every table. “Look, we use Heinz!”

The Iran deal, announced on July 14th, capped a dozen years of secret overtures, false starts, clandestine meetings, and unpublished correspondence between Washington and Tehran. Despite an eventual rapport between U.S. and Iranian envoys, the talks nearly collapsed at least five times in the final nine months. There were many quarrelsome latenight sessions.

“The Americans are much better carpet merchants than any Iranian could dream of!” the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told me, during a troubled period in the final weeks.

The Iranians, a senior State Department official at the negotiations said, “are quite good at trying to get you to pay for what you got—twice.”

Years earlier, Secretary of State John Kerry and Zarif had both played pivotal roles in getting the process started, through back channels: in 2003, as Iran’s U.N. Ambassador, Zarif orchestrated a secret overture, nicknamed “the grand bargain.” It went nowhere, but the initiative marked him in Washington as a potential interlocutor. In late 2011, Kerry, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made an unannounced trip to explore an offer by the Sultan of Oman to host covert diplomacy. That led to five secret rounds of lower-level U.S.-Iran talks, in Muscat, in 2013.

The most serious diplomacy since Washington severed relations with Tehran, in 1980, began shortly after Kerry and Zarif were appointed as their nations’ top diplomats. Their first meeting, in September, 2013, was supposed to be a handshake and an exchange of pleasantries in a United Nations hallway. The idea was to “get out without causing any incidents and build from there,” a Kerry aide recounted. But, at the last minute, Kerry decided to pull Zarif into an empty office, near the Security Council chamber, for a substantive conversation.

“Kerry’s whole approach to diplomacy writ large is premised on the belief that personal relationships matter, because they enable you to get things done, even in very difficult situations,” the aide said. “It was Kerry’s belief that this was going to be a relationship that would really matter.” Zarif was willing. The two men talked, alone, for almost thirty minutes.

It got much harder over time. The world’s five other major powers—Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia—were technically equal players. But the United States

407 increasingly took the lead in one-on-one meetings with the Iranians. More than a year after that first encounter, the chasm on core issues was still deep, despite an interim Joint Plan of Action, a confidence-building step that curtailed Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for modest sanctions relief. It did not address long-term limits or rewards.

As the original deadline for a final deal loomed, last November, Kerry and Zarif met in Oman. The senior State Department official described the meeting as “extremely contentious.”

Kerry’s aide said, “Both sides left thinking that we had just spent a lot of hours and a lot of time under very tense conditions and in very tense conversations that made little progress.” A deal looked doubtful. A few days later, the six powers agreed to extend the deadline until June 30th.

In February and again in March, Kerry was on the verge of backing away from the conversations entirely, U.S. officials told me. On February 21st, as Kerry was scheduled to fly from London to Geneva, Wendy Sherman, the Under-Secretary of State and chief nuclear negotiator, called him to say, “We are nowhere.” Iran was backtracking. “I really don’t think you can come under these circumstances,” she said. Kerry instructed her to tell the Iranians that he would skip Geneva and fly home. The next morning, Iran was more forthcoming, and Kerry subsequently flew to Switzerland.

On March 27th, in Lausanne, tempers flared three nights before the deadline of a socalled Framework to define what each side would accept in a final deal. At the last minute, negotiating with the Americans, Iran took an important matter off the table. The five other major powers were supposed to show up within a day, but there was so much left unresolved that Kerry decided he might have to abort. He arranged to go to Zarif’s suite. At 10 P.M., they met alone. Kerry’s style is to coax rather than threaten. But this time, two U.S. officials told me, Kerry was blunt. He told Zarif that unless there was progress the sessions were “basically done.” The next day, the issue was back on the table. Six days later, the major powers and Iran announced the outlines of a potential agreement.

“There were moments when you just had to push through,” Kerry’s aide said. The most confrontational exchange took place on May 30th. The talks were “brutal, just brutal,” the State Department official recalled. According to Kerry’s aide, “It was a lot of the two sides banging their heads against each other.” At one point, Zarif got up, walked around the room, and announced, “I have to leave.” He then sat on a chair against a wall and put his head in his hands.

Kerry, known for being unflappable, lost it, too. Toward the end of six difficult hours, he slammed his hand down on the conference table so hard that his pen flew across the table and hit one of the Iranians. “It stunned everyone, because it was so out of character,” the State Department official said.

Both sides left Geneva feeling deeply pessimistic. The next day, Kerry vented his frustration by taking a vigorous ride from Geneva into France on his racing bike, which he often brings on trips. As he was starting up the challenging Col de la Colombière, he rode into a curb and flew off the bike. His right femur was badly broken, and he had to be medevaced to Boston for surgery. After the news broke, one of the first e-mails he received was from Zarif, wishing him well.

408 The final deadline was supposed to be June 30th. The negotiating teams worked throughout June to get the talks back on track. Kerry and Zarif returned to Vienna for the final round on June 28th, two days before the deadline. They missed it. The major powers had to extend it three times. Ministers from other countries flew in and out of Vienna as the U.S. and Iranian teams debated their differences.

The diplomacy was supposed to be transactional. But at moments it was transformational, for two countries at odds about so much else. For twenty months, the Americans and the Iranians ate separately, often in small, adjacent dining areas. “At a certain point, it just started to feel strange that they had never actually shared a meal together,” Kerry’s aide said. Zarif invited Kerry and his team to lunch on July 4th in the Iranians’ dining room, where he had ordered Persian food.

“It was ten times better than the food we ate on our side of the house,” the aide told me. “It was a moment where it was clear—we knew it, sort of, without remarking on it— that these relationships had really developed over time.” Kerry and Zarif commiserated about pressures at home. Kerry mentioned members of Congress who were complaining that local political ads already opposed any deal with Iran. Zarif told Kerry about an Iranian newspaper warning that he shouldn’t come home if he compromised too much with the Americans.

The chasm was still deep. “Even when we can be, you know, just conversational with each other, there can come a moment in the middle of that—I would say them, more— when we revert back to form,” the State Department official said. “It can all of a sudden come out of the blue, when I think they can realize they’ve gotten too familiar.”

The next meltdown was on July 5th. The Iranians regularly griped about the indignity of international sanctions tarnishing a historic civilization and causing unnecessary suffering. During one long-winded tirade by Zarif, Kerry cut him off: “You know, you’re not the only nation with pride.” Tensions increased that afternoon. When Kerry and Zarif started shouting at each other, a Kerry staffer slipped in to say that they could be heard down the corridors of the Palais Coburg.

The next night, with another deadline imminent, Kerry offered Zarif a package deal, to get beyond the interminable issue-by-issue squabbles. In a meeting with the major powers, Iran accused them of pulling back from agreed terms. At one point, Zarif shouted, “Never threaten an Iranian!” (When news of the flap spread, #neverthreatenaniranian quickly became a popular Twitter hashtag.)

“Or a Russian!” Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said, in an attempt to break the tension. Subsequent reporting implied that Russia sided with Iran, a long-standing ally. In fact, the Americans claimed, Lavrov regularly played a constructive role in calming the emotional Zarif.

The U.S. and Iran remained so far apart that Kerry told Zarif and the other foreign ministers that he was prepared to leave the next day. He would be available by phone if Zarif wanted to negotiate seriously. “A lot of us felt, at that point, like we were in real trouble,” Kerry’s aide said. The next day, Zarif brought a point-by-point response to the proposal.

409 “It’s such a complex set of relationships,” the State Department official said. “We know each other. All of the mistrust that has been there for these decades remains. It’s not gone. It’s incredibly present all the time. But it fights against the fact that we’ve spent two years getting to know each other.”

Over the next week, negotiations sometimes drifted, as the parties nibbled away at differences. The terms to limit Iran’s nuclear program were wrapped up first. The most sensitive issues often had a link to Iran’s military, especially the powerful Revolutionary Guards. The final differences were sorted out in a meeting, shortly before midnight, on July 13th, with Kerry, Zarif, and Federica Mogherini, of the European Union. “They basically kicked everybody out who wasn’t a minister and figured out the end,” Kerry’s aide said.

The next morning, Iran and the six major powers met to formally confirm the terms. The final statement read, “With courage, political will, mutual respect, and leadership, we delivered on what the world was hoping for: a shared commitment to peace and to join hands in order to make our world safer.”

Afterward, each minister made remarks about the collaboration. Kerry, who spoke last, recalled going off to war as a young man, the traumatic experience of Vietnam, and his commitment, when he returned, to end that war. The diplomacy with Iran, he told his peers, was one time that he could prevent the horrors of war.

At the end of Kerry’s comments, his eyes welled up, his aide said. Others teared up, too, including the Iranians. Then everyone applauded.

Zarif went off to make a brief announcement with Mogherini, while Kerry watched, on an iPad, President Obama’s remarks from the White House about the potentially historic deal. When Zarif finished, he walked backstage and patted Kerry on the shoulder. They shook hands, the aide recounted. “And that’s how he said goodbye.”

As the negotiations played out, I toured the old U.S. Embassy in Tehran. A boxy red brick building, it resembles a mid-twentieth-century American public school. American diplomats nicknamed it Henderson High, for Loy Henderson, the Ambassador who lived there in the early fifties. Henderson helped orchestrate Operation Ajax, the 1953 C.I.A. coup that ousted the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalized the oil industry, dominated by Western interests. The C.I.A. and British intelligence then restored the Shah, who had fled the country, to the throne. Mossadegh was imprisoned; his foreign minister was executed.

A quarter-century later, students seized the American compound when the United States took in the ailing former Shah for medical treatment. Two ringleaders told me they believed that Washington was plotting, again, to restore the monarchy. It was supposed to be a brief protest—three to five days. Then Ayatollah Khomeini endorsed the takeover on national radio. Fifty-two American citizens were held captive for fourteen months, effectively ending the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. I stood at the foot of the plane that flew the hostages to freedom, in Algiers, in 1981.

The embassy building is now a museum. The rooms used for spycraft are particularly well preserved: cryptology and encoding machines, passport-forgery equipment, secret passageways, and shredders all look as if they were still in use and diplomats had just

410 gone for a coffee break. Three mannequins with bad wigs are seated around a table in the insulated “glassy room,” once used for secret conversations.

The embassy sits in a compound supervised by the Organization of Student Basij. The Basij, a paramilitary arm of the Revolutionary Guards, helps enforce revolutionary order, often ruthlessly. Other buildings in the compound are used as offices, including one for the group’s news service. Next to the chancery the Basij has erected a cupola of aqua tiles above five black stone markers, which bear the names of hostage-takers who later died in the war with Iraq.

Under the new agreement, the U.N. nuclear watchdog will monitor Iran’s facilities. But the United States will be the main enforcer in the event of cheating, breaching, smuggling, or double-dealing. The options range from “snapback” sanctions to war. The question is how much the painful past will affect the future of a deal. Decades of verification lie ahead.

I asked my guide, a thirty-eight-year-old docent named Mohammad Reza Shoghi, about the diplomacy with the United States. He replied, “President Obama and his wife gave us greetings at Nowruz”—the Persian New Year—“but then he said all options, including military force, were still on the table. Which did he mean? Which should we trust?”

Celebrations erupted across Tehran after the announcement of the nuclear deal, including one at the Water and Fire Park. The deal, if it gets past Congress and Iran’s parliament, would be the most significant nonproliferation agreement in decades.

Diplomacy failed to prevent the four most recent members of the nuclear club—Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea—from producing a bomb. None are members of the NonProliferation Treaty. (Iran is.) Islamabad is now estimated, by Ploughshares Fund, to have a hundred and twenty nuclear bombs; New Delhi a hundred and ten; Jerusalem eighty; Pyongyang around ten. Nine countries, altogether, have almost sixteen thousand nuclear weapons—most of them made by the major powers at the Iran talks.

The number of bombs worldwide has actually declined since the peak of proliferation, in the eighties, thanks to other agreements. So the Iran deal is important for global trends, too. The Obama Administration is calculating that it could help to check a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

The White House claims that, with a deal, future Presidents will be better off even when the various provisions expire. “The breakout time”—the time required for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon—“in 2025 and for some years after will be longer than it is today,” a senior Administration official told me. “By then, we’ll know a lot more about what Iran is doing. The U.S. will be in a better position, owing to the scrutiny and visibility of Iran’s program. And inspections are set up forever.” Plus, he added, “our military capabilities will be much enhanced in ten or fifteen years if Iran goes for the bomb.”

Over time, however, the deal may be vulnerable to distractions, regional sideshows, and failure—as a result of issues that have nothing to do with the bomb. A major hurdle throughout the diplomacy was disentangling the nuclear dispute from other flashpoints.

The United States and the Islamic Republic have divergent political tenets, world views, and alliances. Those differences will linger.

411 The deal is inextricably enmeshed in Middle East tensions. The State Department’s annual terrorism survey, released last month, chronicled Tehran’s increased aid to Iraq’s militias, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza, along with “subtle efforts at growing influence elsewhere, including in Africa, Asia, and, to a lesser extent, Latin America.” Tehran provided a billion dollars in credit to Damascus this month to ease the economic strains of war, on top of more than three billion in credit in 2013. Israel has repeatedly vowed to take unilateral military action if its interests are threatened.

The deal is also embroiled in disputes between Islam’s Sunni majority and its Shiite minority. The Middle East is riven by sectarian wars—most notably in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen—that threaten to reconfigure its map. Each of those wars pits allies of Saudi Arabia, the Sunni guardian of Islam’s holiest sites, against Iran, the world’s largest Shiite power. In the final weeks of diplomacy, the foreign minister of an Arab country told me, earnestly, that he believed Iran was intent on taking over Mecca.

Iran has the biggest military in the Gulf (twelfth worldwide), vast petroleum resources, and a consumer-goods-hungry population larger than its seven Gulf neighbors combined.

Arab sheikhdoms are nervous that a deal will begin realigning U.S. interests with those of their Persian rival. Iran had been a pillar of U.S. policy until the revolution and the hostage crisis. After the rupture, Washington intensified its ties with Saudi Arabia, a desert sheikhdom that rose to prominence after the 1973 oil-price wars, and with Egypt after it concluded the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Arabs fear that those alliances are at stake. The Persians could make a comeback. The deal could shift the geostrategic balance of power in the Middle East.

American negotiators were keenly aware of the pitfalls. Throughout the diplomacy, the Defense Department continued contingency planning. It tracked Iranian ships attempting to send aid to Houthi rebels in Yemen. It announced new aid to rebel militias fighting in Syria. It also amassed bunker-buster bombs, the deadliest device in the U.S. arsenal short of an atomic weapon. The bomb’s formal name is Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, in Pentagonese. It can weigh up to fifteen tons; it has never been used in combat. The concept originated during the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan’s impenetrable caves. MOPs can penetrate underground tunnels, bunkers, and plants, such as the Fordo enrichment facility, under a mountain near the Iranian holy city of Qom. “We will always have military options,” General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during the final days of diplomacy. “And a massive ordnance penetrator is one of them.” A new bomb to take out a future Iranian bomb.

“Everyone who believes that overnight this relationship is going to change is naïve as hell,” the senior State Department official told me. “It’s not. It’s just too deep— particularly among Iranian government officials, many of whom were part of the revolution. So there may be a generational shift that has to take place everywhere. It’s going to take time. It’s going to take a lot of time.”

412 The National Interest 21 Jul 2015

Seven Realities That Made an Iran Deal Almost Inevitable America's negotiators deserve some empathy—they had to accept some inconvenient truths about the Middle East.

Authors: Shai Feldman, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard University Kennedy School, Ariel Levite Much of the immediate commentary on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed between the P5+1 and Iran on July 14 focused on the deal’s details as well as its many shortcomings. Most of these reactions, both favoring and opposing the agreement, focused on elements of the nuclear package itself.

A number of commentaries did discuss some “big picture” aspects of the deal: primarily, the extent to which President Obama was “gambling” on its transformative potential— namely the possibility that it will eventually lead Iran to reorient its regional policies in a manner that would make them better aligned with U.S. interests in the Middle East. A different frequently mentioned “big picture” issue pertains to the likelihood that Iran would use the billions of dollars released to its disposal for the purpose of reining even greater havoc in the region.

Missing so far, however, is an assessment of the extent to which a nuclear deal with Iran had become possible, perhaps even inevitable for the United States—once Iran has come around to seriously look for one—due to larger forces at bay. Specifically overlooked is the extent to which the deal and its present timing reflect U.S. appreciation of some important global and Middle East realities of the first decade and a half of the twentyfirst century. These realities motivated the United States to seek and ultimately accept a deal that it has been clearly unwilling to even consider over the past decade.

Ascertaining these “inconvenient truths” is useful; as much as they explain certain aspects of the Iran nuclear deal they provide even more important insights about the broader parameters and current trajectories of Middle East and international politics.

The most important of these realities is that the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the complete dismantlement of its armed forces have left Iran as the uncontested regional power in the Persian Gulf, eliminating in the process the traditional buffer between the Gulf and Levant. Iran has thus emerged by will as well as by default with a remarkable capacity to project power throughout the region, largely unopposed. With no one left to systematically check its capacity for creating mischief in the region (except for occasional and ad hoc efforts by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States), the belief that sanctions alone could have not only brought Tehran to the negotiations table but also to capitulate and accept the dismantlement of its nuclear project is unfounded.

The second reality is that President Obama’s election in 2008 on a platform of taking America’s boots off the ground of Iraq and Afghanistan and of favoring diplomatic engagement with Iran already reflected U.S. war fatigue. By 2015 the United States has been heavily involved in the region, militarily and otherwise, for almost fifteen years, at a cost of tens of thousands of U.S. casualties and at least two trillion dollars in direct and indirect costs.

The implication of this is that it was highly unrealistic to expect, absent a mad Iranian dash to the bomb, that the United States would use force, or could even credibly threaten as much to back its negotiations positions, given the odds, low as they may have been, that even very limited but unprovoked Israeli or United States use of force could have evolved into an open-ended military commitment. Hence, repeated assertions

413 that “all the options are on the table,” while remaining an indispensible communication tool to which the United States (and Israel) seem to be wedded, had become an ever less likely option to be exercised or taken seriously, either by Iran nor by America’s regional allies, other than under the most extreme circumstances.

The third reality comprised the broader context of the second: a growing skepticism about the utility of force in the twenty-first century. This skepticism was bred not only by a stream of U.S. failures to achieve political goals through military means in Iraq and Afghanistan (and by Israel in both Lebanon and Gaza) but also by a growing appreciation that such use of force often results in unintended consequences. Indeed, as in the case of Iraq, such consequences could prove even more ominous than the challenges that led to the use of force in the first place. Interestingly, President Obama is not the only relevant leader who shares such skepticism. Measured not by his rhetoric but by his behavior in all military confrontations during his terms as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently grown no less skeptical about the use of force and sensitive to its potential downsides, causing him to be historically among the most cautious of Israeli leaders. The result is that both Obama and Netanyahu found it very difficult to project a credible military threat that could have produced effective leverage in the negotiations with Iran.

The fourth reality is the global energy revolution and the corresponding dramatic increase in America’s (and separately, Israeli) energy independence. In turn, this reality means that for the first time since the end of the Second World War the United States has become far less vulnerable to negative developments in the Middle East. This has made it even more difficult for the United States to contemplate and project a willingness to launch even a limited military operation given the nontrivial odds that any military strike could escalate to another major engagement.

Fifth, in addition to the aforementioned limitations on U.S. leverage, the JCPOA comprised a middle ground between two narratives based on the lingering traumas of past realities: First, a U.S. narrative that views Iran's Islamic regime as having established a track record of both ruthlessly targeting Americans (in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and later in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon) and acting deceitfully, consistently failing to abide by past commitments. These reinforced America’s determination to insist that the nuclear deal with Iran would include highly intrusive international monitoring and verification measures. And second, an Iranian narrative dating back to the CIA’s removal of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 that the United States has a propensity to behave in an underhanded manner and seek regime change in Iran whenever an unfriendly leader ascends to power. This narrative reinforced Iran’s deeply rooted proclivity to resist verification and monitoring measures that could expose its regime's secrets. It is also for this reason that Iran sought a deal that binds the United States to the agreement while falling far short of fully normalizing the bilateral relationship.

Sixth, Al-Qaeda’s horrific September 11 attacks (carried out by extremists, many of whom were Saudi born) meant that the anti-American Muslim fanaticism of the Shi’a variety to which the West has been treated since the 1979 Iranian revolution (typified by Iran’s sponsorship of Hezbollah’s deadly attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut) was now matched by no less menacing Sunni extremism. This reality later became even more so by the horrors of the “shock and awe” strategy adopted and repeatedly implemented by ISIS and to a lesser extent by other Sunni forces in Lebanon and Syria.

Indeed, the rise of ISIS has already transformed U.S.-Iranian relations, as the two discovered that while most of their interests remain conflicting, some of their interests overlap thus rendering their relations as no longer purely “zero-sum.”

Finally, the increasingly complex regional realities in the aftermath on the so-called Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS means that in important parts of the Middle East—including

414 Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen (and even in the Sinai peninsula)—where chaos runs supreme, it is no longer possible for the United States to neatly distinguish between friends and foes or, for that matter, to find any unequivocally “good guys” among the warring parties to support. It also means that in addition to the secular-religious, Shi’aSunni, republic-monarchy and other divides, a new dichotomy is engulfing the Middle East: that between sophisticated chess players who engage in complex signaling maneuvers like Iran and its allies, and others like ISIS skillfully exercising brute force.

Under these circumstances, beggars cannot be choosers, and the United States finds itself having to seek accommodation with rational and sophisticated (if occasionally assertive, forceful, and even prickly) parties who understand not only the utility of force but also its limitations against even more brutal adversaries. Indeed, it is noteworthy that during its thirty-six-year history the Islamic Republic never gambled its survival as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein did three times: in 1980-88, in 1990-91, and in 2003.

Importantly, in yet another virulent attack on the United States and Israel on July 18, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei refrained from committing his country to battle the two. Instead, he “outsourced” this mission to God, expressing hope that the Almighty would do so.

The implication of these new global and regional realities is that notwithstanding valid criticism of the various imperfections of the agreement reached by the P5+1 and Iran, America’s negotiators deserve some empathy. Since international agreements usually reflect important realities, it would have been irresponsible not to explore a diplomatic resolution of the Iran nuclear crisis given the unprecedented challenges presented by the complex regional environment described here. Once the effort was undertaken in earnest, it was inevitable that serious concessions would be made, much as their precise nature could have been better managed.

415 AFP 21 Jul 2015

'Fleeced, bamboozled' Kerry defends Iran deal

By Robert MacPherson Washington (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry faced blistering accusations Thursday that he had been "fleeced" and "bamboozled" by Tehran, as he defended the Iran nuclear deal publicly for the first time on Capitol Hill.

Kerry appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to defend the hardfought agreement, which he called a "good deal for the world" that deserves the approval of a skeptical Congress.

"The truth is that the Vienna plan will provide a stronger, more comprehensive, more lasting means of limiting Iran's nuclear program than any alternative that has been spoken of," he said of the deal struck last week in the Austrian capital.

Once in place, it would put Iran under "intense scrutiny forever" and keep the world united in ensuring that its nuclear activities "remain wholly peaceful," he added.

"We believe this is a good deal for the world, a good deal for America, a good deal for our allies and friends in the region -- and we think it does deserve your support."

But Kerry, peering wearily over a pair of wire-rim glasses, encountered a tsunami of skepticism from Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during a marathon four-and-a-half-hour hearing.

"I believe you've been fleeced," said committee chairman Bob Corker, arguing that the Vienna deal would give Iran "a perfectly aligned pathway" towards becoming a nuclear power in due time.

"With all due respect, you guys have been bamboozled and the American people are going to pay for that," echoed fellow Republican senator James Risch.

- 'Naive people' "Anybody who believes this is a good deal really joins the ranks of the most naive people on the face of the Earth," Risch said.

Kerry was testifying publicly on Capitol Hill for the first time since the UN Security Council on Monday unanimously endorsed the Iran agreement, paving the way to the lifting of punishing economic sanctions.

The deal was reached after tough negotiations between Iran and the Security Council's five permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany.

But it faces stiff resistance, notably among Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives, which have 60 days to review it.

Congress can pass a motion of disapproval, but President Barack Obama can then veto that. An override of the veto would require two-thirds approval in both the House and Senate.

Kerry was welcomed to the committee chamber by about a half-dozen Code Pink anti-

416 nuclear activists sporting bright pink "Peace with Iran" T-shirts.

"Awesome job!" one of them shouted.

But Kerry was visibly irked several times by the aggressive line of questioning from Republican senators, a day after he held closed-door briefings to explain the deal to them.

Every member of the Foreign Relations Committee was present Thursday, including its two Republican presidential hopefuls -- Rand Paul and Marco Rubio.

"This deal is your deal with Iran," said Rubio, arguing that it does nothing to address human rights violations in the Islamic republic.

- 'No obligation' "The next president is under no legal or moral obligation to live up to it... The deal can go away when President Obama leaves office," he added.

Paul questioned Iranian compliance, saying Tehran is shadowed by "a history of untrustworthiness."

Other senators' concerns ranged from Israeli security to the lifting of the Iranian arms embargo and why the Obama administration put the deal before the United Nations without consulting Congress first.

Predictably, Democratic senators leaned in favor of the agreement, but made it clear that they expected Iran to live up to its letter and spirit.

"If you don't live up to this agreement, I guarantee you, the consequences will not be pretty," Senator Barbara Boxer said.

Kerry replied with a blunt "yes" when fellow Democrat Tim Kaine asked whether approval of the deal would make it easier for the United States to rally international support for military action against Iran, should Tehran fail to keep its promises.

Public opinion polls have suggested that of the 79 percent of Americans surveyed who heard about the Vienna deal, 48 percent disapprove.

On Wednesday, several thousand protesters poured into New York's Times Square to denounce the Iran nuclear deal as a threat to Israel and global security, and demanded that Congress reject it.

417 LobeLog/foreign policy 21 Jul 2015

Will Obama’s Legacy Start or Stop with the Nuclear Deal?

by Henry Johnson Henry Johnson is a writer and analyst of Middle East affairs with a focus on Iranian foreign policy and politics. He is also senior political analyst for DRST Consulting.

Much to the chagrin of those who oppose Obama’s nuclear deal, there is no telling where the informal bonds created by hours of unrelenting talks will end up taking the US and Iran. The departure of Javad Zarif and John Kerry from Vienna will surely not mark their final farewell as counterparts. On at least a few occasions, both sides discussed matters outside the nuclear file. Time will tell whether these discussions will crystallize into something more durable. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter hinted at this possibility in April when, with regard to a suspicious convoy of Iranian ships heading toward Yemen, he said, “We are in touch with them through diplomatic channels.” The Iranian ships eventually turned around.

The US and Iran should no doubt seize upon the simulacrum of goodwill generated by this agreement and establish fixed bureaucratic channels. Such coordination would reduce the margin of error for miscalculation between adversaries; it could integrate parallel efforts and pool resources between tactical allies.

This possibility surely unsettles the deal’s opponents more than any of the quite defensible provisions in the agreement. Critics of the deal want to persuade enough members of Congress to reject what they term an unacceptable deal. But is this really what they are after? The 150 House Democrats who signed a letter in support of the joint framework, which the final deal improves upon, have all but forestalled the deal’s critics from unraveling it. This core of support will sustain President Obama’s veto in the event of a vote of disapproval following the 60-day review period that starts Monday. For up to eight years, the deal’s implementation will not depend on congressional approval.

If Congress cannot override the president’s veto, the executive will simply waive all sanctions penalties, causing their temporary cessation in the absence of legislative action.

Countering Popular Misconceptions In light of this likely scenario, the accusations common in the media that sanctions relief will fund Iran’s terrorist activities may aim more truly at tarnishing Iran’s image and disrupting further diplomatic progress. Veterans of the US State Department and Central Intelligence Agency beg to differ with these sneering accounts of the nuclear deal and of Iran’s behavior. At an event hosted by the Middle East Policy Council last week, Nabeel Khoury, a former US envoy in the Middle East, and Paul Pillar, a former chief analyst at the CIA, applauded Obama’s achievement.

418 Khoury in particular urged the Obama administration to use the nuclear agreement as an occasion to resuscitate US-Iran diplomatic relations. “We should develop a better diplomatic working relationship with Iran rather than now using threatening words like ‘we will confront them and we need to up the military budget.’” Khoury agreed with the deal’s skeptics that contingencies should be planned for confrontation but questioned the rationale of putting this issue at the forefront of public discussions. “The DOD is perfectly capable of doing that on the quiet. What we need to be stressing is, ‘hey this is a good start, let’s build on it and let’s be able to sit down and seriously discuss all of the issues.’”

Although President Obama may share Khoury’s dream of turning the page in the history book of US-Iran relations, domestic political constraints make this temporarily impossible. President Obama has prudently shied away from challenging the conventional wisdom that Iran is run by crazed “mullahs” happily giving carte blanche to terrorist groups. Burdening his pro-deal campaign with an overt effort to open up diplomatic relations would erode the necessary support of centrist and pro-Israel Democrats. The president must focus on persuading his allies in Congress to judge the deal on its merits alone. A change in tone about Iran’s regional behavior could incite his party to break ranks, even as his rebuttals of anti-deal arguments lead to contradictions.

Obama emphasizes that he will do everything in his power to confront Iran’s bad behavior yet also denies that sanctions relief will, in the words of opponents, “strengthen this radical and repressive regime and supercharge its support for Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorism, regional mischief-making.”

Popular opinions toward Iran, most of which seem frozen in time since the 1979 hostage crisis, will take years to thaw. “We’re unlikely to see a restoration of full diplomatic relations between the US and Iran for years,” Paul Pillar said. “There will continue to be domestic political resistance both in Iran and in the US against going too far too fast with regard to this relationship.” Diplomats can nonetheless work around this rigidity by setting up backchannels. If they ended a decade-long standoff without formal bilateral relations, they could certainly tackle other problems under the same conditions.

The Problem of Syria Khoury argued that a push for more diplomacy between the US and Iran could deliver a solution to the war in Syria. Instilled with a measure of trust in Secretary Kerry’s negotiating team, the Rouhani administration could be open to such talks. The notion that Assad can rebound or win contested Sunni-majority territory is a fleeting one, and Iran’s strategy reflects a growing cynicism about his staying power. Iran has mostly pursued the security of Damascus and the Alawite coast, while Hezbollah has concentrated on securing areas near the Syria-Lebanon border. If the united front of rebels in the north maintains its momentum, Iran may seek less costly options to preserving its interests in Syria than by brute military force.

In a phone call organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour speculated that John Kerry will want to explore this possibility:

419 “Now that [Kerry] has this strong working relationship with Javad Zarif, I would imagine he may make a push on Syria. And it will be a push, which in contrast to previous attempts, includes Iran with a seat at the table.” The path to peace in Syria is still fraught with unknowns and improbability. Sadjadpour was not sure whether the Iranians would double down on Assad and Hezbollah in the hopes of shoring up his power again.

He wondered if “Syria is a black hole for them and it’s time to think seriously about a diplomatic settlement, which would at least preserve some of their interest.” Regardless of Iran’s openness, some Gulf sponsors of the rebels may privately reject and conspire to spoil US-led negotiations.

The promising possibilities raised by the nuclear deal should not overshadow the ongoing strategic opposition between the US and Iran. In Iraq, where tactical cooperation could grow as a result of the deal, the two sides remain at loggerheads. Despite the many goals shared by the two—including the destruction of the Islamic State (ISIS or IS), the territorial integrity of Iraq, and a responsible, democratic central government—Iranian hardliners refuse to give credit to the US and accuse it of creating IS in the first place.

Clearly, Iran is intent on outmaneuvering the US. Engagement on security issues will, instead of channeling their mutual interests into alliances, delineate zones of influence between the two. Diplomatic progress can nonetheless ensure that they target shared enemies and not each other. In fact, one of Obama’s most startling declarations, to degrade and destroy IS, may depend on it. If the president can accomplish that in addition to the nuclear deal, he will have carved himself a presidential legacy as one of the most ingenious White House strategists yet.

420 LobeLog/foreign policy 21 Jul 2015

Anti-Iran Deal Groups Backed by $145 Million

by Eli Clifton

Eli Clifton reports on money in politics and US foreign policy. Eli previously reported for the American Independent New Network, ThinkProgress, and Inter Press Service.

A high-profile list of U.S. non-proliferation, nuclear policy, Iran, and national security experts welcomed last week’s announcement of a deal between the P5+1 and Iran to curb Tehran’s nuclear program. Opponents of the deal, meanwhile, will make a last-ditch effort to derail the agreement reached in Vienna. They will use the 60-day congressional review period to pressure members of Congress, many of whom owe their seats to casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, to vote to reject the deal.

The groups leading this charge may be coming from a point of disadvantage. After all, it’s a tall task to convince Congress to sabotage an agreement negotiated by the U.S., as well as its closest European and NATO allies. But the budgets behind these groups will no doubt amplify their voices, giving them an outsized influence during the next two months.

Taken together, eight of the most vocal groups opposing the Iran deal enjoyed a combined 2013 budget (the last year for which records are publicly available) in excess of $145 million. That’s hardly insignificant number, especially compared to other foreignpolicy lobby groups..

Here’s a breakdown of those groups, their 2013 budgets, and their anti-deal statements, issued either by the organizations themselves or their leadership: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 2013 budget: $64,367,763 Anti-deal statement: “Congress should reject this agreement, and urge the administration to work with our allies to maintain economic pressure on Iran while offering to negotiate a better deal that will truly close off all Iranian paths to a nuclear weapon.”

Anti-Defamation League 2013 budget: $58,137,559 Anti-deal statement: “We are deeply disappointed by the terms of the final deal with Iran announced today which seem to fall far short of the President’s objective of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state.”

The Israel Project

421 Annual budget: $7,165,162 Anti-deal statement: “Today’s announcement of this nuclear agreement with Iran is a realization of the deepest fears and the most dire predictions of skeptics who have, for two years, been warning against exactly this outcome—a bad deal that both enriches this tyrannical regime and fails to strip Iran of nuclear weapons capability.”

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies 2013 budget: $7,108,010 Anti-deal statement: “Ayatollah Khomeini would be proud of his successors, committed revolutionaries and skilled diplomats who, through guile and determination, have outnegotiated the envoys of the ‘Great Satan,’ thereby preparing the ground for the many battles—not just diplomatic—yet to come.”

Zionist Organization of America 2013 budget: $3,909,965 Anti-deal statement: “This agreement will provide nuclear weapons and hundreds of billions of dollars to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Hitler of the Mideast, and to Iran, the Nazi Germany of the Middle East.”

Republican Jewish Coalition 2013 budget: $3,062,340 Anti-deal statement: “This deal meets zero of the criteria for a good deal—it is not enforceable, verifiable, or in America’s national security interest. Unless Congress stops it, the world will be less safe as the United States will remove sanctions on Iran, and in return, Iran will still pursue nuclear weapons. The Republican Jewish Coalition calls on all members of Congress to reject this deal.”

United Against Nuclear Iran 2013 budget: $1,223,566 Anti-deal statement: “Anytime you give $150 billion, minimum, and then all the revenue that’s generated by the influx of business as sanctions are relieved, it will embolden a regime that’s already emboldened in the region and it doesn’t take that much money to fund Hezbollah, Hamas and I think we’d be naïve to think that none of that money will benefit their hegemonic ambitions.”

Emergency Committee for Israel

422 2013 budget: $708,385 Anti-deal statement: “Brilliant Obama diplomacy: In exchange for billions of dollars & removal of sanctions, Iran has agreed not to dismantle its nuclear program.”

These organizations, only a short list of the groups opposing the Iran deal, had a combined 2013 budget of $145,682,750. And that doesn’t even begin to take into account the tens of millions of dollars being spent through various dark-money groups to run television commercials and newspaper advertisements. AIPAC, for instance, says it will spend an additional $20 million through a newly formed advocacy group, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran. And the Emergency Committee for Israel last year routed nearly $1 million to support Tom Cotton’s Senate campaign, more than the ECI c4’s entire budget in 2013.

With Netanyahu threatening to “kill himself” to prevent a deal, and his wealthiest U.S. backer, Sheldon Adelson, apparently willing to provide critical campaign cash to Republican members of Congress and presidential hopefuls, neither Netanyahu nor the GOP will likely back down in the next 60 days. The White House is headed toward a battle with an extremely well endowed set of opponents.

423 Reuters 21 Jul 2015

Netanyahu steered U.S. toward war with Iran – the result is a deal he

By Shibley Tehami Much of the criticism of the Iran nuclear deal has focused on the fact that it is entirely limited to the nuclear issue, which leaves Iran a free hand — and new resources — to continue policies that have angered regional and international players. There is no denying that if Iran plays its hands well and uses the next decade to build its economic and political potential, its regional influence is likely to expand, as is its capacity to do the sort of things that have angered Israel and Gulf Arab states.

The deal’s biggest critic may be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called it “a historic mistake.” The irony is that the urgency with which the Obama administration pursued a nuclear deal was itself a product of Israeli actions. For Netanyahu, the deal was a good example of “be careful what you wish for.”

A little reminder is helpful here. To his credit, President Barack Obama succeeded early in his first term to get international support for sanctioning Iran — one critical reason for Iran’s willingness to take the negotiations more seriously. There have been deliberate and sustained efforts to continue pressuring Iran on multiple levels, including its behavior outside the nuclear issue.

Netanyahu preferred U.S military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, over Israeli ones, from the outset. His calculus was that the key fear that could drive the U.S. debate to support military strikes on Iran was the timeline of Iran’s nuclear program — not Tehran’s support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Netanyahu exaggerated the imminent nuclear threat as much as possible. Remember how many times, over the years, he cited Iran as being only six months away from a bomb? He gave the impression that Israel was prepared to take matters into its own hands by striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, even without U.S. backing. Initially, however, most analysts, including U.S. officials, believed he was simply bluffing.

There were many reasons why the United States didn’t take Netanyahu’s early threats seriously. For one, Israel’s capacity for sustained long-distance military operations remained limited. More important, even substantial U.S. strikes were seen to have the capacity only to delay Iran’s nuclear program — not stop it.

Israel would then have also had to worry about Iranian and Hezbollah retaliation, as well as eventually dealing with a nuclear Iran. The focus on Iran was also seen as partly

424

intended to shift attention from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where Netanyahu faced much international pressure.

But something happened in the lead-up to the 2012 U.S. presidential elections. The Israeli pressure on the Obama administration to take action substantially increased.

At first, it was hard to know if this was merely a political play. It was no secret that Netanyahu preferred the Republican nominee for president, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. His pressure on Obama was seen to be playing into the Republicans’ hands. But there was far more to the story than politics.

The Israelis took steps in 2012 that portrayed as credible their threat to attack Iran – and inevitably drawing the United States into the fight. We don’t know much about the specifics, but reports revealed hints that the Obama administration was growing increasingly alarmed by Israel’s actions. The Netanyahu government was spending billions of dollars on a military buildup, as well as consolidating military cooperation with Azerbaijan near Iran’s northern borders.

Not until a year later were there whispered suggestions — including one from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert — that Netanyahu had spent billions to make his threats look more credible to Washington rather than for serious military preparation.

What is clear is that the Israeli moves were taken seriously by the Obama administration, which shifted its assessment in 2012 as more high-level U.S. officials began to take the Israeli threat to attack as credible.

Even aside from the coming presidential elections in November, the prospect was seen as disastrous for Obama. He was not going to allow himself to be dragged into another messy war in the Middle East with no end in sight. Only the Iran issue had the potential to do so, even after his re-election. And Obama also understood that the war would have been even worse for Israel.

How would war have been good for Israel? The Jewish state would have been, for the first time, at war with a Persian civilization (since all Iranians would likely have unified against the enemy) that would inevitably develop nuclear weapons anyway. It would have seemed that the United States was deliberately dragged into war on behalf of Israel — undermining the Israeli-U.S. relationship. How in the world is that good for Israel?

So a nuclear deal that would avoid war — and make it less likely to result in an Iranian bomb than war — became the Obama administration’s priority. It went into full diplomatic gear and worked on multiple tracks. The administration did everything it could to make it happen before Obama left office.

425

Which also meant the focus of the deal had to ignore nonnuclear issues because that would have opened a Pandora’s Box by making an early agreement almost impossible.

Besides, this was not merely a U.S.-Iranian negotiation but one that involved five other countries, not to mention messy American and Iranian domestic politics.

Sure, there were other incentives along the way. The rise of Islamic State, for example, created common interests. Iran had leverage for involvement in troubled areas where U.S. influence was limited: Syria and Iraq. Some may also have seen strategic leverage to be gained with two longtime U.S. allies that can be hard to influence: Israel and Saudi Arabia.

But these were benefits that came after the fact. What truly focused U.S. priorities was that Israel made it clear to the White House in 2011-12 that Washington could otherwise be dragged into a war it could not control. One that would likely have devastating effects on both the United States and Israel. Thus started Obama’s urgent search for a nuclear deal.

In clinching the deal with Iran, Obama has, above all, succeeded in averting a disastrous war that would not have prevented Tehran from acquiring nukes. And it was Netanyahu who made sure Obama thought war was on the horizon.

426 LobeLog/foreign policy 21 Jul 2015

Former Israeli National-Security Officials Like Iran Deal

by Jim Lobe Lest anyone believe that Israel, particularly its national-security establishment, is united behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to the week-old Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between the P5+1 and Iran, Americans for Peace Now has set up a very helpful website featuring some quite authoritative voices of dissent.

I note this now not only because, as you all know, a number of major Jewish organizations, led by theAmerican Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have launched an all-out campaign that will not doubt cost tens of millions of dollars over the next couple of months to persuade enough members of Congress to reject the deal to overcome a promised Obama veto. Rather than reflect a little on the arguments made by the critics from Israel’s national-security establishment regarding how beneficial the JCPOA could prove to be, they have reflexively rallied behind the Israeli prime minister whose predictions regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq, among many, many other things, turned out to be so catastrophic.

In a new analysis published Tuesday on the Daily Beast website, Jonathan Alter quotes the former head of Shin Beth, Ami Ayalon, as telling him: [W]hen it comes to Iran’s nuclear capability, this [deal] is the best option.

When negotiations began, Iran was two months away from acquiring enough material for a [nuclear] bomb. Now it will be 12 months,” Ayalon says, and the difference is significant to anyone with a background in intelligence. “Israelis are failing to distinguish between reducing Iran’s nuclear capability and Iran being the biggest devil in the Middle East. …It’s very easy to play with fears in a fearful society.

At the same time, the Ynet website translated an op-ed by Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, published earlier this week in Hebrew. He argues: Iran made concessions in a series of critical matters – it loathed the actual detailed discussion of its nuclear plans, and it has been hit with serious restrictions for the next 10 to 15 years. In the Middle East, a decade is eternity. Iran was also forced to agree to an invasive and unique supervision regime like no other in the world. The agreement even allows inspections at sites which supreme leader Ali Khamenei announced that he would not let inspectors into. In addition, the agreement sets a – complex but clear –

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process giving a forum with a clear Western majority the possibility of restoring the sanctions even without Russia and China’s consent. And this is only a partial list of the concessions. …[B]efore we storm Capitol Hill, led by the Israeli ambassador to Washington, it’s important to hold a profound debate in Israel on whether no agreement is preferable to an agreement which includes components that are crucial for Israel’s security. There will be no other agreement and no other negotiations. What is better, a signed agreement or no agreement?

When such past custodians of Israel’s security speak out so strongly against the prime minister, one might think that major U.S. Jewish organizations might pause and ponder a little before plunging into a campaign that will almost certainly do damage to their influence and relationship with the Obama administration, not to mention with the more enduring Democratic Party, which still holds the loyalty of a strong majority of the Jewish community in this country. But that is not what AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League have done. When Bibi said, “Jump,” they jumped.

In any event, those who want to hear dissenting voices in the Israeli national security establishment may want to bookmark APN’s webpage.

428 LobeLog/foreign policy 22 Jul 2015

Nuclear Deal: How Iran Could Enhance Regional Stability

by Emile Nakhleh

Emile Nakhleh is an expert on Middle Eastern society and politics and on political Islam. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico. He previously served in the Central Intelligence Agency from 1993-2006, first as scholar in residence and chief of the Regional Analysis Unit in the Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis and subsequently as director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program. Until 1993 Nakhleh taught at Mount St. Mary's University, where he was the John L. Morrison Professor of International Studies. Nakhleh's publications include, among others, A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America's Relations with the Muslim World (2009), Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society (1976 and 2011), and The Gulf Cooperation Council: Policies, Problems, and Prospects (1986). Nakhleh holds a PhD from American University, an MA from Georgetown University, and a BA from Saint John's University, Minnesota.

Much has been written about the Iran nuclear deal and the threats that a post-sanctions Iran could pose for the region. This fear is primarily driven by Saudi Arabia’s pathological obsession that a resurgent Iran would eclipse Saudi Arabia and other members of the primarily Sunni sheikdoms of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

If Iran adheres to the conditions of the agreement without cheating or engaging in prohibited underground enrichment activities, if it is given tangible relief from the sanctions, and if Western countries reopen their embassies in Tehran, Iran could become a positive force for stability in the region, not a stoker of chaos and war, as Saudi Arabia and Israel have been claiming.

Israel, Saudi Arabia, and its Sunni allies should also embrace a possible détente between Iran and the West because as their long-held obsession with Iran abates, they would have more resources to spend on other national security and domestic needs. Their push during the negotiations for an Iran with zero enrichment and permanent international isolation under a crippling sanctions regime was unrealistic and of course unsuccessful.

Neither the Obama administration, which believed in the efficacy of diplomacy to avert war, nor the Rouhani government and its domestic supporters, wanted a permanently marginalized Iran. The administration accepted the assessment of its Department of Energy nuclear scientists that, despite the sanctions, Iran’s enrichment activity— qualitatively and quantitatively—expanded significantly, and the number of its centrifuges increased considerably. The sanctions, in other words, did not restrain Iran’s nuclear program.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, on the other hand, was committed to an agreement because of the belief that ending the sanctions could usher in a period of economic growth, increased international investments, and perhaps a decrease in unemployment.

Iranian youth, digitally wired but unemployed, aspire to connect with their Western counterparts. They certainly abhor the radical Sunni ideologies of the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) and other militant and terrorist groups. Obama and Rouhani seem to view the agreement as an omen of better future relations. Even Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei has not objected to the nuclear deal despite his recent rhetorical animus against the United States.

429 Potential Cooperation The expected US-Iranian détente is not unprecedented. A similar relationship prevailed among Iran, the United States, and Saudi Arabia during the Shah’s reign before 1979 when the Islamic Republic was established. Even under the Ayatollahs’ rule, but especially since 9/11, the United States and Iran cooperated in the fight against terrorism and al-Qaeda. The two countries also forged a working relationship for a unified Iraq and more recently against IS in Iraq and Syria.

Iran could fully display its new sense of confidence and national pride in its indigenous scientific brainpower through regional and international cooperation and diplomatic engagement, vibrant economic activity, regional stability, containment of terrorism, and the peaceful management of sectarianism-based conflicts with its neighbors. This type of engagement would accrue benefits for Iran and its neighboring states and would also serve the national interests of the United States and other Western countries. Iran must know that an environment of peaceful engagement with the West and with states in the region can only occur through a full adherence to the nuclear deal without equivocation.

As the agreement goes into effect and the sanctions are gradually lifted, Iran could emerge as a willing partner in the search for regional stability in several specific conflicts, including Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, and other issues.

Ending the War in Yemen The Saudi war should not have happened and should be stopped. The Houthi rebellion resulted from the flawed post-Arab spring agreement that Saudi Arabia and the United States worked out following the collapse of the Saleh regime. Deposed President Ali Abdullah Saleh was allowed to return as part of the agreement that elevated his deputy Abd Rabbu Mansur al-Hadi to the presidency.

Saleh reneged on his promise not to get involved in politics, but once he returned to Yemen, he started conspiring with the Houthis, his relatives, and other remnants of the old regime against the Hadi government. Yemen became a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia to the detriment of the country.

Envisioned rapprochement between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States could chart a path out of Yemen’s misery. Part of the Yemen deal would be to dismantle the pro-Saleh powerful elements of the old regime and deprive them of political influence and resources. Saleh would be “invited” to Saudi Arabia for an “extended” stay. A coalition government of pro-Hadi Sunnis and Houthis would be formed, which Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States would endorse and financially support. The immediate twin mission of the new government would be to create economic opportunity and fight both IS and al-Qaeda.

Syria and Iraq

430 Iran’s continued support of Bashar al-Assad is no longer worth the cost. As Iran reintegrates in the international community and begins to seek investments from Western countries, and as the Assad regime loses more and more territory, Iran’s stark choice would be whether to support a losing and precarious regime—and face the real prospect of a dismembered Syria—or support Assad ouster. Iran must be aware that high-ranking Syrian military officers have already begun to quietly flee to Lebanon and even Turkey.

Although Iran and Saudi Arabia have been on the opposite sides of the Syrian divide, they both support a unified Syria, which Assad can no longer hold together. Iran is positioned to play a critical role in ending the Assad regime and at the same time reducing Hezbollah’s military support for Assad. On this point, Iran could urge Hezbollah to speed up the process of electing a president for Lebanon. The country’s parliament has been unable to elect a president for over a year. As an influential political party in the Lebanese body politic, Hezbollah could move the parliament to elect a president and then call for general elections. Otherwise, IS could easily play the Lebanese political stalemate to its advantage.

Iran and Saudi Arabia see the IS threat from the same perspective. IS opposes both the autocratic Sunni Saudi monarchy and Shia Iran. Iran’s leadership could soon begin to view Assad as a low hanging fruit. An Iranian-Saudi agreement on Syria, which would be bolstered by Turkey and Jordan, could call for placing a United Nations peacekeeping force for a specified time in Syria to effect a reasonably less chaotic transition period after Assad. The self-proclaimed “Caliphate” in al-Raqqa and other parts of Syria would pose the greatest danger to a post-Assad Syria, which the regional states, including Iran, will have to jointly combat.

Meanwhile, Iran cannot possibly ignore the systemic exclusion and disgruntlement of Iraqi Sunnis and the reasons underpinning their support of IS. While joining Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Turkey in fighting IS in Iraq, Iran could be a positive partner in Iraq.

Because of its influence in Baghdad and its continuing military support of the Shia militias, Iran could play a pivotal role in “persuading” the Iraqi government under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to make his government more inclusive and to open up employment opportunities for Sunnis in the defense forces, industry, and senior-level government positions. Iran should encourage al-Abadi to reach out to Sunni tribes in the Anbar province and tangibly incentivize them to combat IS in western Iraq. Iran’s support for the restructuring of Iraq’s political system cannot be overestimated.

A New Gulf?

Continued civil strife in Bahrain, caused by the minority Sunni government’s mistreatment of the Shia majority, does not serve the interests of either Saudi Arabia or Iran. Two potential dangers are facing the Al Khalifa ruling family: growing IS influence and presence among some segments of the Sunni population, and potential radicalization of some younger elements within the Shia community.

431 The regime continues to incarcerate community leaders from the Sunni and Shia communities who speak out against its abhorrent human rights record. The vicious crackdown has resulted in the arrest and conviction of Sheikh Ali Salman, head of alWefaq Shia political party and a pro-dialogue activist, and Ibrahim Sharif, head of the Sunni Wa’ad group, who also has been critical of the bloody repression.

As it views the strategic horizon of the Gulf following the nuclear agreement, the new Saudi government, led by the Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef and his deputy, Muhammad bin Salman, under the direction of King Salman, must surely realize that continued violence in Bahrain is a threat to Al Khalifa and to the region. Here again, Iran and Saudi Arabia could find common ground on the basis of fairness, equity, and equal opportunity. As the Shia community has done in the past, if it’s brought into the political process with access to economic and employment opportunity, it would be willing to operate under the Al Khalifa umbrella.

If the International Atomic Energy Agency and American nuclear scientists are satisfied with Iran’s behavior and the nuclear deal does not unravel, Western companies would soon flood the Iranian market, which would be welcome music to bazaaris’ ears. Many Americans and Westerners would learn to appreciate Iran’s rich cultural heritage and history. More American students would flock to study Farsi or Persian, an Indo-European language written in Arabic script. The Arab world and Israel would do well to move in that direction.

432 The National Interest 22 Jul 2015

5 Reasons AIPAC Is Dead Wrong about the Iran Deal Daryl Kimball

Daryl G. Kimball is the Executive Director of the Arms Control Association.

Congress now has less than 60 days to review the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by the P5+1 and Iran. Over the next few weeks, the members and their staff will need to sift through the 159 page agreement, hear testimony from administration officials, intelligence and nonproliferation experts – as well as a barrage of talking points and misrepresentations from skeptics and opponents—before casting a momentous vote on a resolution of approval or disapproval of the agreement.

The fundamental choice is whether to support this agreement—which will verifiably block all of Iran’s potential pathways to nuclear weapons for the next generation, or more—or follow the advice of pressure groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which argues that the agreement falls short of expectations and should therefore be rejected in the hope of a better deal down the line.

On July 15, the President of AIPAC, Robert A. Cohen, announced that his organization is opposing the agreement “because it does not achieve the minimum requirements necessary for an acceptable deal.”

Not only is AIPAC’s post-July 14 assessment of the Iran deal selective and flawed, but its demand that“Congress should reject this agreement, and urge the administration to work with our allies to maintain economic pressure on Iran while offering to negotiate a better deal ....” is reckless and irresponsible.

A comparison of AIPAC’s June 2015 paper “5 Requirements for a Good Deal,”which outlines about 22 distinct goals in 5 areas, shows that the final agreement clearly meets AIPAC’s criteria in at least 19 of these 22 requirements. AIPAC now says the final agreement does not meet its requirements in these three areas, but its critique in these areas is based on technically dubious assumptions about what is necessary for an effective deal.

The following is a summary assessment of how the JCPOA stacks up against AIPAC’s list of “5 Requirements.”

1. The Agreement Allows for Robust Inspections and an Effective Verification System In a July 15 press release opposing the final agreement, AIPAC claims that it fails to provide “anytime, anywhere” IAEA access. That is true only if AIPAC expected Iran to submit to random inspection of any site without reason or notice—something that is not necessary to effectively verify Iranian compliance with the agreement. If the United States had demanded such terms, it would have been rejected by Iran as an attempt to use the nuclear deal as a pretext for unconstrained spying, killing the prospects for an agreement.

The agreement will put in place a stringent and intrusive verification regime that gives the IAEA the tools necessary to monitor compliance with the final agreement and detect covert nuclear activity.

The deal sets up a layered monitoring regime, with continuous or very frequent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to, and monitoring of, Iran’s declared nuclear facilities, including its centrifuge sites at Natanz and Fordow.

433 Iran will also be required to implement and ratify even more robust IAEA inspections under the terms of its additional protocol to its comprehensive safeguards agreement, giving international inspectors timely access to any Iranian facility of proliferation concern, including military sites.

To guard against attempts by Iran to delay access for more than 24 days to a site of concern, the agreement stipulates that any one of the P5+1 has the option of immediately re-imposing earlier UN Security Council sanctions on Iran. Furthermore, the IAEA’s sophisticated environmental sampling technologies would detect any nuclear material after 24 days even if Iran attempted to cleanse the site or remove equipment and material, and any effort to do so would be easily detected by satellite intelligence.

The agreement will also require Iran to adopt the modified code 3.1 safeguards that require early notification to the IAEA of design changes or new nuclear projects in Iran.

These provisions will last indefinitely to help detect and deter future nuclear weapons related efforts.

The agreement will go beyond the additional protocol by allowing continuous IAEA monitoring of Iran’s uranium mines and mills for 25 years, and centrifuge production, assembly, as well as storage facilities, for 20 years. This continuous surveillance on the entire nuclear supply chain will make it extremely unlikely that Iran could divert materials or components for a secret nuclear weapons program without detection.

2. Iran Deal Requires Cooperation with IAEA on PMD Investigation Before UNSC Sanctions Relief UN sanctions will only be suspended if and when Iran fully explains and answers questions regarding its past activities with possible military dimensions (PMD), and the IAEA verifies that it has completed other major nuclear nonproliferation and transparency steps. Under the final nuclear deal, Iran has agreed to provide the information and access the IAEA needs to complete its investigation by October 15th. If Iran meets that deadline, the IAEA aims to deliver its assessment of that information by December 15. Until Iran cooperates with the IAEA on this matter, the UN Security Council sanctions and other sanctions will remain in place.

With the cooperation from Iran on the PMD issues that is required by the JCPOA, the IAEA will have more information with which to inform its monitoring and verification strategies in the future.

Nevertheless, in its July 15 press statement, AIPAC erroneously claims the JCPOA “does not clearly condition sanctions relief on full Iranian cooperation in satisfying IAEA concerns over the possible military dimensions of Tehran’s program.”

If AIPAC was expecting the P5+1 to hold out until Iran “come[s] clean” and admitted that it sought nuclear weapons in the past, there would be no deal. And even if such an admission could be extracted from Iran leaders, it would not erase the knowledge Iran may have gained from weapons related experiments.

What is more critical is putting in place the limits and monitoring measures necessary to guard against an Iranian nuclear weapons effort in the future—which the JCPOA accomplishes.

3. Iran Must Meet Nonproliferation Commitments Before UNSC Sanctions Relief The JCPOA meets all of AIPAC’s June 2015 “requirements” concerning sanctions relief, including conditional relief from sanctions, no “signing” bonus (i.e. early release of frozen Iranian financial assets), established consequences for noncompliance, and a clear and tough dispute resolution mechanism, which favors the United States and its European partners).

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Contrary to AIPAC’s June 15 press statement, sanctions will not be lifted as soon as the agreement is adopted. Rather, sanctions relief from the European Union, the United States, and the UN Security Council will not occur until the IAEA verifies that Iran has taken all of the key nonproliferation and transparency steps, which will be at least several months after the “adoption” day for the agreement.

A key highlight of the agreement is that it allows for U.S. and European economic and financial sanctions and earlier UN Security Council sanctions to be re-imposed quickly if Iran fails to live up to its end of the deal. The dispute resolution mechanism in the JCPOA stipulates that if a disagreement over implementation arises and cannot be resolved in 35 days and any one of the P5+1 believes Iran in in noncompliance, previous UN Security Council resolutions can be snapped back. The JCPOA will maintain the snapback provision for 10 years, and the P5+1 have agreed to re-impose sanctions in the event of a major Iranian violation for at least an additional five years.

The agreement also sets up a mechanism to ensure that Iran can only obtain nuclearrelated materials and technologies through an approved procurement channel that will be carefully monitored and enforced to prevent Iran from secretly obtaining these items for a clandestine weapons program.

In his letter outlining the reasons for AIPAC’s opposition to the P5+1 and Iran nuclear deal, AIPAC’s Robert Cohen also complains that the JCPOA releases Iran from restrictions on ballistic missile development in eight years, and a heavy arms embargo (put in place by the UN Security Council to provide leverage on the nuclear issue) in five years. Given the fact that these restrictions were put in place to push Iran to negotiate a verifiable, long-term nuclear deal, it is a significant accomplishment that the United States succeeded in extending these restrictions for so long.

It is also important to consider that the United States has other tools available to curtain Iran’s access to heavy weapons and components for ballistic missiles, and that Iran’s ballistic missiles are far less of a strategic threat without a nuclear payload. Only through the implementation of the JCPOA can the P5+1 block Iran’s pathway to arming ballistic missile with nuclear warheads.

4. Iran’s Pathways to Nuclear Weapons Are Blocked for More Than A Generation The JCPOA requires very substantial reconfiguration of Iran’s nuclear program so that it cannot amass enough bomb-grade uranium in any less than 12 months for a period of 13 years.

The JCPOA accomplishes this vital objective by reducing the number of installed centrifuges from nearly 20,000 to 6,000 IR-1 machines, of which only 5,060 would be allowed to enrich uranium and to no more than 3.67 percent fissile U-235.

The JCPOA also repurposes the underground Fordow site to a medical isotope production facility where no uranium can be present for a period of 15 years.

During the same time period, Iran must also limit its low-enriched uranium stockpile to no more than 300 kg, and accept tough limits on its advanced centrifuge research and development. Given other reporting requirements and monitoring of Iran’s centrifuge program, Tehran will not have the ability to ramp up its enrichment capacity quickly especially if it exceeds its requirements for fueling its electricity-producing reactors.

These measureswould not, as AIPAC cautioned in its June paper, “grant Iran virtually instant breakout time after 12 or 13 years.”

The JCPOA also requires the destruction of the core of Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor and modifications to ensure it cannot produce enough plutonium for a weapons program.

The agreement commits Iran not to reprocess spent fuel to extract plutonium.

435 Robust IAEA safeguards and inspections under the terms of the additional protocol will last indefinitely to detect and deter noncompliance at known or undisclosed sites in the decades ahead.

Iran, as a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, will continue to be legally-bound not to pursue nuclear weapons. Any future Iranian move toward developing a nuclear weapon beyond the life of the JPOA will prompt a swift response.

Considering these overlapping, long-term, verifiable restrictions, the JCPOA creates longterm limits on Iran’s nuclear capabilities that will effectively allow the international community to block its path to nuclear weapons for more than a generation.

5. Agreement Would Remove, Render Inoperable Some 13,000 Centrifuges; Dismantle Arak Reactor AIPAC argues that Iran must not be “allowed” to become a nuclear threshold state. The fact is that since 2007, the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Iran has developed a range of technologies, including uranium enrichment, nuclear warhead mechanics, and delivery systems, that would give it the option to launch a nuclear weapons development effort in a relatively short time frame “if it so chooses.”

The JCPOA walks Iran back from the threshold of nuclear weapons by dismantling, reconfiguring and handcuffing Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, “so that it has no path to a nuclear weapon,” and cannot “breakout” and amass enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb in less than 12 months, which is another of AIPAC’s June 2015 “Requirements for a Good Deal.”

In June, AIPAC made the common sense suggestion that “a good deal must not accept easily reversible steps” for actions including the disposition of Iran’s excess centrifuges.

However, contrary to AIPAC’s July 15 claim about the final agreement, it does not allow Iran to “disconnect” excess centrifuges in “an easily reversible manner.” In fact, all of the pipework that connects the excess centrifuges and allows them to actually enrich uranium will be dismantled and removed and stored in at a separate facility under IAEA seal. These machines may only be used to replace operating centrifuges that break during normal operations. As a result, it would probably take Iran more than two years to restore the 13,000 centrifuges that will have been removed—and any such effort would be detected within days.

In its July 15 statement opposing the deal, AIPAC is wrong again in claiming that the JCPOA “requires no dismantlement” of any Iranian facility. In fact, the JCPOA requires the destruction of the core of its Arak heavy water reactor and modifications to ensure it cannot produce enough plutonium for a weapons program.

Other Issues There is another objection to the nuclear deal that AIPAC is now raising that was not in its “Five Requirements for a Good Deal” document from June.

AIPAC’s July 15 statement also claims that the JCPOA “threatens the future of the nuclear non-proliferation regime” and will set off a nuclear arms race in the region.

In reality, the P5+1 and Iran nuclear deal will strengthen the nonproliferation regime, and head off a regional nuclear arms race. The JCPOA demonstrates the strength of the nonproliferation regime. It shows that attempts to violate the treaty will be detected and that there are consequences for noncompliance.

In addition to the severe economic constraints Iran has faced from the sanctions regime, Iran's limited nuclear program will be subject to restrictions and monitoring beyond the

436 requirements of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. A limited, highly monitored Iranian nuclear program poses far less of a threat to the region than an unconstrained program.

Without the JPOA, Saudi Arabia would be more likely to hedge its nuclear bets.

The United States, and other nuclear supplier states, can and will continue to employ other measures to discourage the proliferation of uranium enrichment technology to the volatile Middle East.

Alternative to This Strong Iran Nuclear Deal Is No Deal and a World of Trouble What is most irresponsible of AIPAC is its recommendation that Congress reject the JCPOA and “urge the administration to work with our allies to maintain economic pressure on Iran while offering to negotiate a better deal.”

That is a dangerous fantasy. The alternative to the effective P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran that has been negotiated is no deal. AIPAC’s course of action would condemn the United States, our friends in Israel, and the entire region to a dangerous future.

If the United States Congress rejects this deal, and blocks its implementation: · The United States would undercut its European allies and other UNSC members, · The necessary international support for Iran-related sanctions would melt away, · Iran would be able to rapidly and significantly expand its capacity to produce weapons-grade material, · The United States would lose out on securing enhanced inspections needed to detect a clandestine weapons effort, and · The risk of a nuclear-armed Iran and the risk of a war over Iran’s program would increase.

On balance, P5+1 and Iran nuclear deal is a strong, effectively verifiable, long-term agreement and AIPAC’s critique of it and its alternative recommendations, are deeply flawed.

437 LobeLog/foreign policy 22 Jul 2015

Can Washington Meet Iran’s Deepest Challenge—to US Hegemony in the Middle East?

by Graham E. Fuller Graham E. Fuller is a former senior CIA official, author of numerous books on the Muslim World; his latest book is “Breaking Faith: A novel of espionage and an American’s crisis of conscience in Pakistan.”

Comments abound on Obama’s achievement in reaching an agreement with Iran on nuclear issues. For a predictable minority it’s not an achievement at all but a terrible setback. Most criticism focuses on the challenge of possible Iranian cheating. That misses the big picture: is Washington itself able to deal with an ascendant Iran—much like the challenge of an ascendant China?

In economic and military terms Iran can’t of course hold a candle to China. But its regional role does pose a significant challenge to those who resist the specter of popular political change.

The major challenge that Iran poses is not of course really nuclear at all—we’ve dealt in the past with far “crazier” nuclear totalitarian powers such as Stalin’s Russia, Kim Jong Il’s North Korea or Mao’s China. Some—not all—elements of the Israeli security establishment may perceive the nuclear threat as serious, primarily because Israel cherishes its position as sole nuclear power in the region. A potentially nuclear Iran down the road also limits US and Israeli ability to act militarily in the region with impunity.

But even that is not Iran’s real challenge; that lies in its revolutionary stance and consistent outspoken opposition to US (and Israeli) dominance of power in the Middle East. That kind of stance historically quickly earned one the label of “rogue state” in Washington parlance—a state that resists the US-dominated strategic order. Egypt’s Nasser won the title in a serious fashion in the 60s. So did Qadhafi, who was finally terminally punished, not just for his rhetoric, but also his unconscionable retaliation against the US by the barbaric bombing of US flight over Lockerbee Scotland in 1988.

Saddam Hussein, one of the uglier dictators the region has seen in quite some decades, also challenged the US—and lost. The Asads, father and son, have been on the US target list for marginalization or overthrow for decades although the goal was never attained.

Iran, however, is probably the most important state since Nasser’s Egypt to have adopted this outspoken and dedicated stance of challenge to American ability to act with impunity in the Middle East. The Iranian seizure of US hostages in 1979 injected an additional strong emotional element into American reactions to Iran. (Most Americans have forgotten that the US and UK had jointly overthrown Iran’s first democratically elected Prime Minister in 1953, from which democracy in Iran has still not fully recovered.)

438 Now, some three decades after the Iranian Revolution, Washington has finally acknowledged the extreme problems that its own long-term inability to deal with “rogue” Iran has posed to US policies over the years—affecting Afghanistan, Pakistan, pipe-line routing, al-Qa’ida, Iraq, Central Asia, the Gulf, Syria, where a degree of common interests in fact exists.

Washington finally felt compelled to search for some kind of minimal normalization with Tehran. The nuclear issue was the ostensible driver. Far more important however, is acknowledgment of the need to deal with the second most important strategic state in the Middle East –Turkey being number one. Ihave written earlier why Turkey and Iran represent the two most significant states in the Middle East today: their identities rest firmly on long tradition, large populations, large and complex multi-faceted economies (not just energy) and professional skills; their governance is democratic (Turkey) or partially democratic (Iran, where elections and process really matter.) Both countries have long traditions of independent power and exert major soft power—Iran’s soft power will grow in this sphere with its films, music, Sufi poetry, tourism, etc.

More important, Iran has achieved a measure of popularity even in the Arab world at the popular level—although not at the governing level, which does feel threatened.) Iran’s forthright resistance to the American order is widely admired—even if not everybody likes Persians. Iran has always spoken of its revolution not as Shi’ite but as an Islamic revolution—above sectarianism. Its populist rhetoric and longtime support for Sunni Palestinians among other groups clearly upsets autocratic Arab states, especially those who fear populist change, and those with oppressed and suppressed Shi’a populations— as in Bahrain where they represent a majority, and in Saudi Arabia.

Now Washington has taken the unprecedented step of potentially serious rapprochement with Tehran (yes, there are still significant obstacles to be overcome). But this is the nub: this represents is a new US willingness to accept a power (or powers) in the region that does not sign on to the US strategic framework for the region. Such a position bluntly challenged decades of US doctrine about its determination to establish global “full-spectrum dominance.” The US is finally recognizing, after severe setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran and other failing policies that traditional US hegemony in the Middle East is no longer in the cards. Furthermore, that effort to impose it comes at extremely high cost in blood, treasure, respect and credibility.

This is the signal achievement of President Obama in acknowledging this reality, at least tacitly. (Some would say it represents his signal failure and a US capitulation. But can anyone want another decade and a half of what the US—and the region—has been through?)

It has not been simply Iranian long-term resistance that has stymied Washington. The source of the problems and the nature of the enemy in the region does not lend itself to high tech power, shock and awe. Other states have also emerged with ideas of their own (Turkey most prominently among them—who will never be a “faithful American ally”

439 again.) Russian and Chinese power in the region, and the growth of the BRICS model suggests outlines of a new international order.

The question is: 1) how capably will Washington learn to manage the transition and deeper implications inherent in this new opening to Iran—recognizing that dealing with prickly and often unresponsive powers in fact does represent the face of the future? And 2) the agenda for future regional change—with all its inevitable chaos—lies more with the Turkeys and Irans of the world than with sclerotic and reactionary Gulf ruling orders.

This is particularly so when we consider the destructive approach of Saudi Arabia in promoting sectarianism and core fundamentalist/takfiri interpretations of Islam. Of course these Gulf states are economically important and are understandably nervous with this shift of paradigm. They have now been left more on their own to manage internal pressures; certainly they are not subject to serious outside military attack.

Thus a new recognition of the character of the future of the region has dawned in Washington. It is long overdue, but President Obama has taken the first bold, critically important step. For that he deserves much credit—for his insight into the deeper nature of political change to come in the region which Washington cannot control and against which it cannot afford to be arrayed.

440 Foreign Policy 12 Apr 2015

Deal Or No Deal? Actually, That’s Not The Right Question.

BY STEPHEN M. WALT The recent framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear program has triggered an explosion of analysis, commentary, spin, criticism, hyperbole, and advocacy about the details of the emerging deal. I don’t know about you, but my inbox and Twitter feed have been inundated with a seemingly endless parade of discussions about centrifuges, levels of enrichment, additional protocols, permissible R&D (both past and future), and a host of other arcana, as if the only thing that mattered was the terms of the deal itself. Expect to see more of the same between now and June, as the negotiators work to flesh out the framework, bridge the remaining gaps, and eliminate any significant ambiguities.

But guess what? In the end, the terms of the deal itself aren’t all that important. As former State Department official Jeremy Shapiro (now at the Brookings Institution) writes in an insightful commentary, the details of the nuclear deal aren’t all that important. Rather, what matters is what the deal portends for Iran’s future relations with the rest of the world. In his words: [T]he details [of the deal] don’t matter because the Iranian nuclear program is not really what opponents and proponents of the recent deal are arguing about. Sure, the nuclear program focuses the mind and it engages the public with a clarity that only nuclear weapons possess. But it is more a symbol of the fight over Iran policy than the core of the issue. At heart, this is a fight over what to do about Iran’s challenge to U.S. leadership in the Middle East and the threat that Iranian geopolitical ambitions pose to U.S. allies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Shapiro is right. For starters, the terms of the deal may not matter because Iran may never decide to try to weaponize and cross the nuclear threshold, no matter what the negotiators eventually agree upon. Iran has had some sort of nuclear research program since the 1970s -- that’s 40-plus years, folks -- and it still hasn’t made a serious sprint for an actual bomb. Israel did, Pakistan and India did, South Africa did (and then gave up its arsenal), and so did North Korea. Iran could almost certainly have weaponized by now if it really, really wanted to. But it hasn’t.

Iran may have refrained in part because Supreme Leaders Khomeini and Khamenei have declared nuclear weapons to be contrary to Islam. But it has significant strategic reasons not to go forward as well. If Iran were to build a weapon, there is some chance that other states in its neighborhood would follow suit. As discussed below, Iran has more latent power potential than any other state in its region, and it might prefer a regional environment in which nuclear weapons did not constrain its ability to throw its weight around. As long as Tehran doesn’t have to worry about U.S.-backed regime change, its strategic position might be better off without the bomb. If top leaders in Iran see things this way, then they won’t weaponize no matter what the final agreement does or does not permit them to do.

Furthermore, from Iran’s perspective, not possessing nuclear weapons removes any danger that it would get blamed for giving a bomb to another states or to terrorist groups. Right now, if some terrorist group stole a bomb and used it, no one would blame Iran because we know Iran does not have an actual nuclear device. But if Iran were to weaponize, it would have to worry about being blamed should terrorists get a bomb, even if it had nothing whatsoever to do with it. That fear might sound far-fetched, but remember that the Bush administration responded to 9/11 by invading Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein wasn’t involved and was in fact deeply hostile to al Qaeda. In

441 the frantic aftermath of an actual nuclear detonation, Tehran could not be confident that other states would exercise careful judgment in responding. Given that concern, it might be better to stay on this side of the nuclear weapons threshold, no matter what the precise terms of a final agreement turn out to be.

Another reason the details don’t matter is that Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon would not be that significant an event. I know this idea is hard to accept given all the hype that has surrounded its nuclear program, but that is the lesson history teaches.

Soviet detonation of an atomic bomb didn’t cause the Cold War (it was well underway already), and it didn’t enable the USSR to intimidate NATO, dominate Eurasia, or “bury capitalism.” Indeed, all those powerful nuclear weapons and ICBMs didn’t stop the USSR from collapsing. China’s nuclear test in 1964 didn’t suddenly turn it into a great power (it took Deng Xiaoping’s reforms and 30 years of rapid economic growth to do that). None of the other nuclear weapons states saw their international status change demonstrably after they demonstrated the narrow technical capacity to explode a fission weapon (which is at this point just mid-20th century technology). The same is likely to be true for Iran: Testing a bomb would generate lots of headlines and articles and provoke other states to shore up defenses and deterrent commitments -- for a while. But after a few months, the world would get distracted by something else and we’d realize that an Iranian bomb was not a game-changer after all.

To be sure, having a few survivable weapons could help Tehran deter outside powers from attacking it directly or attempting forceful regime change. But that’s about all it would do. Having tens of thousands of nuclear weapons didn’t permit the mighty Soviet Union to blackmail its neighbors and having a handful of atomic bombs wouldn’t give Tehran a lot of usable leverage either. (You may have noticed that America’s vast nuclear arsenal didn’t enable George W. Bush or Barack Obama to order other countries around, which merely underscores the limited political utility of these weapons.) An Iranian bomb might cause a few other states to think about getting nuclear weapons of their own (though even that reaction is hardly certain), but it wouldn’t suddenly transform Iran into a global power or create a reliable shield under which it could conduct large-scale conventional aggression. Nor could Iran use its weapons against the United States, Israel, or any of its other neighbors, because Iran’s leaders would almost certainly face a far more devastating retaliatory strikes. And whatever Iran’s leaders might be, they are not suicidal.

So if the terms of the nuclear deal are not that important, what’s all the fuss about? As Shapiro suggests, the real issue is what this deal portends about Iran’s future relations with the outside world. That’s what really worries countries like Saudi Arabia or Israel, and maybe a few other states too.

To be specific, the question is whether the nuclear deal will gradually let Iran out of the “penalty box” that it has been in since the Iranian Revolution, and especially since the imposition of tougher U.N. sanctions. Getting out of the penalty box would allow the Iranian economy to recover, pave the way for the restoration of diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran, and gradually allow the two states to deal with each other on a more normal and businesslike basis.

Why is this question so important, and why does it make current U.S. allies nervous?

The root of this problem is Iran’s long-term power potential. Iran’s population is roughly 78 million people, compared with 38 million in Saudi Arabia, 33 million in Iraq, or a little more than 7 million in Israel. Its GNP is roughly $500 billion, which is less than Saudi Arabia’s ($750 billion) but larger than either Iraq's ($195 billion) or Israel's ($292 billion). And Iran’s economic potential has been stifled by past mismanagement and corruption, but also by increasingly strict economic sanctions.

Were Iran to leave the penalty box, rejoin the international community, open itself to

442 trade and investment, and encourage its scientists, students, and business community to re-engage with the outside world, it would in all likelihood become the most powerful single state in the greater Middle East. That is the prospect that worries countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel, not the possibility that Iran might one day have a few nuclear weapons. But notice how this scenario also assumes that Iran becomes wealthier, better educated, more interdependent, and stronger, while retaining the very same foreignpolicy principles that have been in place since 1979. This could happen, but it’s hardly likely.

Should the prospect of a stronger and more engaged Iran worry Washington too? Some, but not that much. Remember that America’s core strategic goal in the Middle East is preserving a rough balance of power, so that no single hostile power controls all the energy resources there. This interest is diminishing as the United States become more energy independent, but Middle East oil and gas still matters to the larger world economy and U.S. interests will still be somewhat engaged. This strategic interest does not require the United States to control or dominate the region (which we’ve proven we cannot do at acceptable cost); it just requires us to work with others to ensure that nobody else dominates it either. Fortunately, this latter task is relatively easy; indeed, the Middle East has never been more divided than it is right now.

A stronger Iran could in theory jeopardize the broader regional balance, though it has a long way to go before it could do that in any serious way. And if it were to try, the United States would find lots of willing allies eager for U.S. help to contain that problem.

In short, the United States can deal with a more powerful Iran by employing the same balance-of-power approach that it used in the Middle East from 1945 to 1990. The United States had important interests there, but it didn’t keep large military forces in the region on a permanent basis and didn’t fight any wars there. And when it created the Rapid Deployment Force after the fall of the Shah, it kept those forces over the horizon and out of the region, and intervened only when the balance of power broke down (as it did when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990). For most of this period, the United States relied on various local allies and shifted its position as threats evolved. It didn’t work perfectly, but it worked much better than Clinton’s policy of “dual containment” or George W. Bush’s ill-fated effort at “regional transformation.”

Preserving the regional balance would be easier today than it was back then, because the United States does not have to worry about a rival superpower like the Soviet Union and we are not as dependent on Middle East oil and gas. And bear in mind that even a vastly stronger Iran would have trouble projecting power throughout the predominantly Sunni Arab world. If the mighty United States could not control Iraq’s internal politics after toppling Saddam Hussein, it is hard to see how Iran could dominate a vast geographic area that is mostly Arab (not Persian) and mostly Sunni (not Shiite). It could in theory cause some trouble by supporting various proxies, but such clients are often unreliable tools and “causing trouble” is not the same as exercising political control.

Furthermore, letting Iran out of the penalty box and building a businesslike relationship with Tehran would give the United States more influence over Iran’s decision making than it has at present (admittedly, it would be hard to have less). Equally important, America’s other Middle East allies in the region would be less likely to take U.S. backing for granted and would have to think harder about keeping Washington happy, if they understood that Washington was also talking to Tehran on a regular basis. Because the United States is thousands of miles away, it has the luxury of letting regional powers compete to win our favor and support. Opening the door to a more constructive relationship with Iran might irritate states that have become accustomed to monopolizing America’s Middle East agenda, but that is precisely why smart U.S. strategists should welcome it. Having lots of options increases U.S. leverage, and leverage is exactly what we want.

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Make no mistake, the scenario I am sketching here is not a panacea. We have some compatible interests with Iran (such as pacifying Afghanistan and defeating the Islamic State), but also some significant disagreements. There is also a long legacy of historical suspicion and resentment that will take time to overcome. Playing balance-of-power politics effectively also requires a degree of understanding and diplomatic finesse that has usually been lacking in U.S. diplomacy, and especially in this part of the world.

But let’s not forget something else: For all our disagreements, Iran has a more open and participatory political system than most of our other friends in the Middle East. It does some pretty objectionable things (like backing Assad), but so do U.S. allies like Egypt, Israel, or Saudi Arabia. (And if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve done some pretty objectionable things ourselves). More than 50 percent of Iran’s population was born after the 1980 revolution, and many younger Iranians are eager to engage with the West.

Americans should have enough confidence in our own ideals and values to believe that an opening to Iran will gradually pull them toward us, and not the other way around.

One more thing: It’s not like the United States can keep Iran in the penalty box forever.

It took a lot of diplomacy to pull the P5+1 together behind the current sanctions regime, and that coalition isn’t going to hold if the United States ends up torpedoing the nuclear deal. Just as the United States eventually had to recognize the Soviet Union and Maoist China as legitimate powers -- however much we disliked their ideology and opposed long-term aims -- it will eventually have to acknowledge Iran as an important player in the region and engage it diplomatically. As Shapiro emphasizes, managing Iran’s future role is the real challenge, and the proposed agreement to cap and constrain its nuclear program is just one part of that effort. And probably not the most important element.