The Iranian Deal: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Peter Huessy
Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-iranian-deal-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly#ixzz3gnbzplIX Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
The selling point of the Iran deal comes down to two things: (1) Iran will take more time to build a nuclear weapon in the future than it would do with no deal; and (2) Iran will have to openly break the terms of the deal to produce enough nuclear bomb fuel to build nuclear weapons.
Let’s start with their nuclear reactor at Arak. It is true that if Iran complies with the restrictions on the Arak reactor it will not be able to produce plutonium that can be easily reprocessed into nuclear fuel. That’s the good.
The Iranian deal also delays the ability of Tehran to build a nuclear weapon to a year, at best. But only under certain dubious assumptions. That’s the partially good. But if Iran uses all their stored and monitored centrifuges during a breakout sprint to a bomb the time to do so would be three months, exactly what it is today. That’s real bad.
So the reduction in operating centrifuges required by the deal doesn’t delay things at all if Iran cheats and breaks out because they can hook up the stored centrifuges in a matter of weeks. But it does reduce the Iranian operational enrichment capability now, but these centrifuges can be taken out of storage and hooked up again later. That’s the bad.
In an agreement that will take many months to implement, the current economic sanctions will be lifted-unfortunately– as soon as the UN’s IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Administration, says all of Iran’s nuclear activities are peaceful. It is unclear how long that will take because the pathways to compliance are not explicit. That is both good (for Iran) and bad (for everybody else).
The “good” is that IAEA will declare Iran’s activities peaceful-if it is true. But Iran will therefore claim any future attempt to sanction it over its nuclear program would be “unfair” and “contrary to international law”. But the “bad” may be two-fold: we will not know what Iran has previously undertaken in the nuclear business because Iran does not have to come completely clean. Here the process of determining exactly what Iran was doing in the twelve areas identified by IAEA as areas where militarily related nuclear work was being done remain unclear.
And worse, the sanction on conventional weapons and missiles also go away once IAEA says what Iran is doing in the nuclear area is peaceful. Iran reaps the windfall of few restrictions on those activities. Including upwards of $150 billion in escrowed oil revenue as a “signing bonus” which most observers believe will be used for supporting more terrorism and military capability. That’s bad. Even ugly because the good housekeeping seal of approval by IAEA may rest entirely on the false assumption that Iran has come clean.
Deal supporters say the IAEA can inspect anytime and anywhere. No they cannot. Notice has to be given and Iran can refuse cooperation and play their clever “rope a dope” game which delays, obscures, confuses and excuses Iranian bad practice.
Iran gets at least a 24 day notice. Then access will not necessarily be granted as it would be subject to further discussion and negotiations particularly whether to begin the 75 days to implement snap-back sanctions, and even then we still would not be certain of any inspections eventually taking place without sites being sanitized. As one Senator said recently, you can hide a lot of warhead work.
That is certainly bad, might be considered ugly.
Now it is true, if Iran and the nations that concluded the deal disagree about whether a significant violation has occurred, notice can be filed to the United Nations Security Council which can then vote (vetoes are not allowed) to re-impose sanctions that previously were in place. This is meant to ensure Iranian compliance with the deal. Sound’s good
But it’s not. It’s bad.
Why? Well, Iran can take the simple finding by the United Nations Security Council of a violation and as the deal says terminate its compliance with any and all provisions of the agreed joint framework. The exact language is: “Iran has stated that if sanctions are reinstated in whole or in part, Iran will treat that as grounds to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).” In short, if sanctions are put back in place, Iran will cease complying with the deal. And it is unclear that this Iranian warning would only apply if Iran was completely in compliance with the JCPOA and sanctions were reintroduced for other than nuclear issues or were issued because resolution of issues remained impossible. Seems to me such an Iranian declaration would be a major dis-incentive to enforce the deal by employing snap back sanctions.
Now even worse all deals with Iran concluded prior to the re-imposition of the “snap-back” provisions and after the deal being in effect are exempt from being sanctioned. Thus, make your deals “early and often” as Chicago Mayor Daley said about voting. Once in, you are safe. Most don’t know that because the magicians selling this “deal” don’t always tell you “the rest of the story”. Remember, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
And that is not just bad, it’s ugly.
Finally, the deal says the President of the United States will implement or put back into place old sanctions solely if the United Nations Security Council agrees to do so. This includes sanctions Congress originally passed into law. And the re-imposed sanctions have to be identical with the original sanctions. That is what has been referred to as the “snap back” provision. Sounds good, right?
But where in the Constitution does it say the United Nations has authority over our US Congress and can assume the authority given to Congress by our Constitution to make and pass laws? If the US sanctions have to be removed through an act of Congress, (as opposed to those subject solely to executive orders of the Administration), they have to be put back by an act of Congress. The UN cannot order Congress to do so. In fact there appears to be a conflict between sanction relief under the nuclear provisions of the deal that the UN Security Council has granted and Patriot Act requirements on the United States, especially with respect to nation state support for terrorism.
So is the deal in that respect unconstitutional?
If so, that is ugly.
That’s a combined 11 bad and ugly. And only 3 good or partly good.
But don’t we have to have a new agreement with Iran? Even one which is mostly bad?
No we do not. Here deal supporters have miscalculated.
The current framework remains the 1969 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which Iran has signed. As have nearly 190 other countries including the US and the P5+1. Our job should be to make the NPT work. Not unravel it. And include the additional protocol-again which Iran has pledged to observe.
Now it is true under the NPT structure Iran has been cheating for a decade or more– to be within 3 months of being able to have enough nuclear fuel for a nuclear weapon. But the problem is enforcement.
Under this deal, Iran gets closer over time to being able to produce significant amounts of nuclear material and to be able to breakout and build sufficient amounts for a small nuclear arsenal. But this deal, even if Iran does not cheat, allows Iran to also be within 3 months of producing enough nuclear material for one nuclear device. So we made concessions to give Iran the same capability under the new deal they had achieved by cheating under the terms of the NPT to which they had pledged to uphold.
That’s ugly, very ugly.
But there is more. The new deal also calls on the UN Security Council to declare Iran’s nuclear work all peaceful, a kind of Nuclear Good Housekeeping Award. But Iran even under the new deal will still be a threshold nuclear weapons power. The difference?
Now the world will call it legal. And that really is ugly.
Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland , a defense and national security consulting firm.
Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-iranian-deal-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly#ixzz3gnbtFJWl
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