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Deal With the Devil
The short version of the interim deal just struck between the P5+1 countries and Iran is this: Iran gave away almost nothing, got a major financial payoff, and will retain its entire nuclear infrastructure. The US got a check mark on Obama’s legacy ledger, under the column Stuff I Did That Looks Reasonably Good If You’re Myopic Or Uninterested But In Fact Conceals a Seething Cauldron of Awful That Will Probably Not Affect Me Personally, Since I Will Be Out of Office When the Full Magnitude of This Failure Becomes Manifest.
The US also got a new entry in the ever-increasing list of Things John Kerry Has Accomplished, If That’s the Word, of Which He Is Unaccountably Proud.
Here’s a crib sheet on the details of the deal.
On the one side:
- Iran is not required to halt uranium enrichment.
- Iran remains in control of all its existing centrifuges.
- Iran is not required to dismantle its heavy water reactor in Arak.
- Sanctions against Iran have been eased significantly: $8.5-10 billion in Iranian assets will be released by the US, and sanctions will be lifted on the export of auto parts, gold and precious metals, and aircraft spare parts. Several banks will also be exempted from financial sanctions.
On the other side:
- Iran has to suspend 20% uranium enrichment for six months and neutralize its stockpile. Uranium enrichment in Iran will be limited to 5%.
- During that six-month period, Iran will not produce, install, or activate any new centrifuges, and “construction activities” in the Arak reactor will also be suspended.
- Iran has to allow the IAEA access to its nuclear facilities.
Omri Ceren of the Israel Project points out that President Obama’s goal for this six-month interim period was supposedly to prevent the Iranians from advancing their nuclear program. According to Orde Kittrie, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, this deal — which, if it were to have any teeth at all, would have had to “include stronger provisions relating to enrichment, Iran’s heavy water reactor at Arak, and Iran’s research into nuclear weapons design” — “falls far short of what the President set as the goal of this phase-one deal.” Iran will almost certainly be closer to a uranium bomb at the end of the six months, and according to Omri, they could be closer to a plutonium bomb.
In an extensively sourced email to press, Omri pointed out that the deal is assymetrical: the Iranian concessions are reversible while the American concessions are not:
Iranian concessions are reversible
– Iran reported won’t be forced to dismantle their centrifuges, such that at the end of six months they can just turn them back on. Even the conversion of 20% enriched uranium to oxide can be easily reconverted to uranium hexafluoride and enriched from there. The only way to put it beyond use is to actually irradiate the stock, but Iran doesn’t have the capacity to do that, even if the regime wanted to. Instead the stock will sit there waiting to be reconverted (link). Danielle Pletka, Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at American Enterprise Institute, has assed that “every single step is reversible, every single step will have no meaningful impact on Iran’s capacity to produce a nuclear weapon within weeks or months” (link).U.S. concessions are irreversible – Most straightforwardly, Iran will get to pocket the financial relief they get, using it to stabilize the Iranian economy, bolster its nuclear program, and fund its global terror network. The more significant danger, however, is that chipping away at the sanctions regime completely shatters it. FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz was briefed a few weeks ago by the White House specifically on the question of whether U.S. concessions would be reversible, and he nonetheless assessed that the broad contours of proposed deals “totally eviscerates the sanctions regime” (link). There are multiple scenarios for how limited sanctions relief causes a downward spiral that irreversibly and substantially erodes the regime. The most immediate fear is that major powers and corporations will engage in a feeding frenzy: no one wants to be left behind as Iran’s market opens up, and so everyone tries to get in first. Brookings Institute fellow Michael Doran yesterday pointed to evidence that such a downward spiral was already beginning, with Paris looking to reopen a trade-related attaché office in Tehran next year (link).
Some Iranian concessions are irrelevant to the Phase 1 deal – For example, Iran will reportedly consent to a more aggressive inspection regime during the interim period. More inspections, however, are irrelevant to the central question of whether, six months from now, Iran is closer or farther from a nuclear weapon. With limited exceptions – scenarios for a test run “ruse” at Arak – analysts’ concerns are focused on what Iran will be in a position to do six months from now, not that it will cheat during the interim phase.
As to local response: Israel is disgusted that the Americans caved so completely and abysmally, and are making noises about rethinking the American-Israeli relationship. (They can’t, really, but there’s a growing chorus that wishes they could.) The Iranian mullahs, meanwhile, haven’t felt this beautiful since 1979, and are crowing that their “right” to enrich uranium has now formally been recognized.
Published in General
Iran has also repeatedly said that it will not develop nuclear weapons. So when should we believe what Iran says and when should we not believe what it says….
Iran has repeatedly said it will destroy Israel. Lying about its weapons program is entirely consistent with this goal. Why do you think they must always tell the truth or must always lie? And this leaves aside the foolishness of not taking seriously another’s statement that he will kill you.
[W]hy should we not believe that Iran acts in its own self interest rather than always mindlessly against Israel?
Why do you keep insisting that Iran’s moving to destroy Israel is against Iran’s own interest?
I also note that you’ve declined to answer any of my prior questions….
Eric Hines
One more thing: Threatening Israel with a nuclear bomb would, I think, be pushing Israel (and the US) to extremis. And Iran knows that too.
And yet they have done that. Repeatedly. Or do you think Iran is merely threatening to count coup?
Eric Hines
#88 Eric Hines
Zafar is simply asking an endless array of questions — questions whose answers he well knows are a quick googling away — to diddle with us.
He thinks it makes us look as though we haven’t paused to ask ourselves fundamental and obvious questions: whether about the balance and openness of our own frames of reference; or about the veracity of our information sources; or about the logical coherence of the arguments we advance; or about the moral substantiability of policy directions we advocate for; or you name it.
In business problem-solving situations, there’s a lot to be said in favor of the simple “5 Why’s” approach to root-cause analysis and the like. Zafar takes that approach and, abusing it in the context of discussion threads such as this (and this particular thread is hardly the first), gives it the proverbial bad name.
He is certainly entitled to his opinions — but he doesn’t appear to be satisfied with voicing them as an invitation to us all to examine facts not in dispute and the varying interpretations we attach to them. Rather, he uses questions as a way to *obscure* facts.
#83 Zafar
As Will Rogers once put it: “We are all ignorant, just on different subjects.”
Your elaborate — dare I say triumphant? — copy/pasting in your #83 comment simply betrays your ignorance.
Anyone who is familiar with the JPost/Jerusalem Post knows that it has turned decidedly leftward — to the dismay of many — since David Horovitz left its helm in 2009. So for the JPost to fire Larry Derfner says a great deal about how far beyond even “acceptable” left-wing bounds he went and has remained.
And do you know why Derfner’s blog post, for which he was handed his walking papers from the JPost, caused such a furor?
Any guesses? I’m sure you can google something once in a while, eh?
Let me give you a hint:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_attack
Not to be outdone by the otioseness of John Kerry’s threatening Israel with a plague of frogs, boils and intifada 3 through 27, William Hague has taken it upon himself to “discourage….Israel from taking any steps that would undermine this agreement and we will make that very clear to all concerned.” This is simply rudeness and arrogance at a hitherto unrealized level.
What does he think Netanyahu’s reply should be other than something equally rude which I can’t possibly write here?
#72 Zafar
More disingenuousness from you, in the service of nothing genuinely good — what a pitiable way to expend your life and time.
If a Jew in Iran receives regime permission to travel abroad, his/her immediate family and/or nearest relations are not. The Jew is obliged to return due to the “or else” factor — one that need not be enshrined in law.
That’s a hostage-based policy.
#72 Zafar
Re your disingenuous allusion to/confirmation of which Ari Shavit I cite, you provide a link to a 972mag article.
972mag lists Larry Derfner on its roster.
This Larry Derfner:
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/The-firing-of-Larry-Derfner
Got it.
Why do you keep insisting that Iran’s moving to destroy Israel is against Iran’s own interest?
Because it would result in the destruction of Iran as a country. And the inevitable overthrow of the regime.
Countries and regimes sometimes do act irrationally and against their own best interests, but I’m curious why you think the Islamic Republic is among them – based on its past behaviour. What is its record when it comes to rational or irrational foreign policy?
To be honest its elite looks pretty rational to me – rational and self interested. Why do you think it’s irrational?
Where have they threatened Israel with a nuclear bomb?
And yet they have done that. Repeatedly. Or do you think Iran is merely threatening to count coup?
Source? Quote?
I’m sorry, your citations re Jewish Iranian’s hostagedom were not convincing illustrations of deep seated social and institutional anti-semitism in Iran (not even the interview you cited twice).
Your elaborate — dare I say triumphant? — copy/pasting in your #83 comment simply betrays your ignorance.
I just quoted the article that you cited. Is it my fault you may not have read it?
I think Derfner makes sense – sense that outraged people after the murders in Itamar, but sense nonetheless.
Tragedies don’t relieve one of the need to think, in fact the opposite.
Fair. Let me rephrase: they don’t support the allegation that Iran is keeping its Jews hostage.
You’ve moved the goal posts again. Danny Alexander provided the sources, as you requested, in order to demonstrate Iran’s hostage-based policy (see your form of request at #82). To say that those sources don’t provide “convincing illustrations of deep seated social and institutional anti-semitism in Iran” is a red herring, since the sources were produced only to demonstrate Iran’s propensity for Jewish hostage-taking.
More freedom of movement would be good for all Iranians.
There’s no evidence that the regime limits this more for Jewish Iranians than it does for the rest.
Unless you would say that all Iranians are hostages to the regime (arguable)?
It’s about guarding themselves from regime change, a la Iraq.
They have noticed the difference in how the rest of the world dealt with Libya and deals with North Korea, and have drawn some conclusions.
But North Korea has the bomb, and so, most likely, would have Libya, save for the exertions of GWBush. Not much grounds for hope from those examples.
RE: [Zafar: “Iran has also repeatedly said that it will not develop nuclear weapons. So when should we believe what Iran says and when should we not believe what it says – and most of all, why should we not believe that Iran acts in its own self interest rather than always mindlessly against Israel?”]
They have noticed the difference in how the rest of the world dealt with Libya and deals with North Korea, and have drawn some conclusions.
You’ve moved the goal posts again. Danny Alexander provided the sources, as you requested, in order to demonstrate Iran’s hostage-based policy (see your form of request at #82). To say that those sources don’t provide “convincing illustrations of deep seated social and institutional anti-semitism in Iran” is a red herring, since the sources were produced only to demonstrate Iran’s propensity for Jewish hostage-taking.
More freedom of movement would be good for all Iranians.
There’s no evidence that the regime limits this more for Jewish Iranians than it does for the rest.
Unless you would say that allIranians are hostages to the regime (arguable)? ·12 hours ago
Understood. I think they do support the allegation but there’s nothing I can add.
Becauseit would result in the destruction of Iran as a country. And the inevitable overthrow of the regime.
On what basis do you find this irrational–in their minds? Because it doesn’t comport with your requirement of what must be rational?
Absolutely. Self-destruction is not rational. This is an unpleasant regime for many reasons, but it has always acted in ways to preserve itself.
Here. What else do you think Iran’s current stockpile of 20% uranium or for?
That’s certainly unpleasant, but they’ve also always differentiated between Jews and Zionists. Their position is that just like opposing Apartheid didn’t make one anti-white…
(In related weird news: http://tinyurl.com/mwxtko5 )
Perhaps you’ll be good enough to quote me, and then walk me through your logic in getting from my words to your question.
Why else would they want to destroy all the Jews? I can’t think of any other reason. What do you think?
Contd.
They feel insecure about regime change because the US has done it before in Iran in 1953.
Now this seems just cynical. You’re carefully eliding Iran’s existence as a sovereign state results from our having prevented the USSR from occupying the whole of Iran and having driven them out altogether before any regime change. (It’s interesting that you seem to think regime change is, of necessity, bad.)
It is bad when it replaces an elected (and for that time secular) regime with an unelected King.
And the point is the US has done this Iran in the past. The Iranians are not grateful, they’re fearful.
I’m not saying they are consistent – nobody really is. But what makes you think they’re lying about the nukes and telling the truth about (stretching) ‘destroying Zionists’? You’re cherry picking.
I actually think they’re lying about both, fwiw.
Part I:
Becauseit would result in the destruction of Iran as a country. And the inevitable overthrow of the regime.
On what basis do you find this irrational–in their minds? Because it doesn’t comport with your requirement of what must be rational?
Absolutely. Self-destruction is not rational. This is an unpleasant regime for many reasons, but it has always acted in ways to preserve itself.
Perhaps you’ll be good enough to quote me, and then walk me through your logic in getting from my words to your question.
Why else would they want to destroy all the Jews? I can’t think of any other reason. What do you think?
Contd. ·30 minutes ago
Re the first:
Re the first: Ah. Leaving aside the strawman of “self-destruction,” the arrogance of “my logic” is the only rationality. This is how a nation is destroyed. Or two nations. I’m unwilling to bet the existence of a nation on this sort of arrogance.
Eric Hines
Part II:
Re the second:
Since you decline either to supply the quote or your logic, it’s clear you have no understanding of this.
As for the Iranian lies about their nuclear weapons program, the only purpose for 20% uranium is to purify it to weapons grade. There is no use for this in a reactor. There is no use for a plutonium reactor at all, except for the production of weapons-grade fissionables–this sort of reactor’s products cannot be used in an energy-producing reactor.
Since you’ve shown yourself unable to form a coherent argument on the matter, there’s no point in continuing this.
Eric Hines