The Long Train of Likely Consequences

For good or ill, Monday's UN Security Council vote rendered the debate over whether this is a good deal or a bad deal a matter of strictly historical interest. The deal has now been done and the US Congress's vote is merely symbolic. The UN vote means that the international sanctions are going to be lifted irrespective of what Congress wants or doesn't want. Not even an over-ride of an Obama veto would make a real difference. The horse is about to leave the barn and there is no stopping it.

So what will the deal accomplish? We don't know and cannot know. Ten to fifteen years without nuclear weapons seems like a fair bet as to the initial outcome. And then what? In part this will depend upon whether the nature of the Iranian regime changes in the interim and if it decides to give up its nuclear ambitions.

The most likely scenario is that they are just one turn of the screw away from a nuclear weapon in year 11 or year 16, and the world, or more specifically the US and/or Israel, will have to figure out what to do about this.

Perhaps, like Israel, Iran will choose a policy of nuclear ambiguity, which is a way of securing all the fruits of having nukes without incurring the downside consequences of going public about having them. And perhaps Iran and Israel can achieve a modus vivendi under such circumstances.

If only this was the whole story, but alas it is not. Even leaving aside the question of Iranian cheating and the 24 day gap regarding "snap" inspections, the deal gives the Iranians the right to retain and further develop its nuclear enrichment capability, which is why Obama himself observed that by year 10 or 15 the Iranians will be a legitimate nuclear (weapons) threshold state.

The question, however, is what will this mean to the neighborhood. What will the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Turks do? Will they sit idle and hope that Iran does not decide to pursue nuclear weapons even while the pending deal permits them to continue to develop their nuclear program? I think not. Indeed I think that it is a fairly good bet that these states will either seek to advance their own nuclear weapons r&d programs or to buy such weapons from Pakistan and to do so during the next ten years during which the Iranian program is still largely mothballed. (After all the Saudis apparently bankrolled the Pakistani program, and presumably did not do so from purely altruistic motivations.)

But the ultimate irony is that the unintended but rather predictable consequence of the deal between the p5+1 and Iran is likely to be a proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region -- ironically first among the Sunni regimes, and then, as a "consequence" by the Iranians as well who will decide to "reverse" their opposition to nuclear weapons as unIslamic in order to defend the Shiites, not against Israel, but against the Sunnis!

Moreover, all of these regimes know that the only reason Kaddafi was toppled by NATO is because he did not have nuclear weapons. It is not lost on any of them that Kaddafi would still be in power if he had acquired a nuclear weapon and a delivery system for it. And thus I am sure that, at the end of the day, the Iranian revolutionary regime looks at such a weapon not as a weapon to be used against its neighbors but as the best form of long term life insurance for the regime itself.

In fact, the only chance of securing a nuclear weapons free Middle East would be a multi-party agreement to forgo nuclear weapons among all the potential nuclear weapons states of the region to respect one another's borders and sovereignty. But of course Israel is not about to accept such a deal, while Iran, for one, is also unlikely to be willing to stake its future on such an agreement.

Only if Iran had been forced to dismantle its entire nuclear program, and to accept stringent restrictions in perpetuity on its development of dual-use nuclear technologies was there a good chance of avoiding the outcome of a broadly nuclearized Middle East.

Finally, it should be noted that comparisons with the Cold War, in which mutually assured destruction actually served to keep the peace, are misplaced when it comes to nukes in an unstable region that is populated by illegitimate and antidemocratic regimes, that is rife with sectarian and ethnic civil wars, and in which millennialist sects who might actually be willing to employ these doomsday devices proliferate like flowers in the desert after a spring rain.

In a word, welcome to the new world. Hope I am wrong but the wheel is now in spin.

Today's Vote by the UN Security Council

I have not decided definitively on the merits of the Iran Deal but am inclined to support it despite its manifest shortcomings. This being said, I am flabbergasted that Team Obama permitted the deal to be submitted to, and voted upon by, the UN Security Council before the US Congress has had a chance to express its opinion of the deal. How dare the White House permit this vote to take place and order UN Ambassador Samantha Power to vote in favor of this resolution before Congress votes on the deal. This is to present the Congress with a fait accompli and to permit the UN's sanctions against Iran to lapse irrespective of the eventual judgment of the Congress. Not only does this put pressure on Congress to vote for the deal, but it also guts the sanctions regime against Iran without regard for the workings of the democratic process in the US. Should the Congress now decide against the deal, the US vote in the Security Council today would have already ended the international sanctions against Iran. Sure, the US Congress could vote against the deal and decide to continue US economic sanctions against Iran, but this would have relatively little effect on Iran if the rest of the world has already begun trading again with Iran without any restriction.

To have proceeded in this way is wrongheaded on the part of the administration, and should be seen as such irrespective of whether one favors or opposes the deal. It is imperious and politically far more highhanded than Boehner's decision to invite Bibi to speak to the Congress last spring. Democratic and Republican members of Congress should be disturbed by this executive trampling upon the democratic branch of the federal government, and should indeed treat this as worthy of censure. Not that I expect they will do so.

Finally, on a positive note, there is one good thing to report about the UN Security Council vote. It does specify a plausible mechanism for "snapping back" the sanctions if there is a dispute between Iran and the p5+1. An unresolved inspection issue will automatically trigger snapback unless there is a Security Council vote to stop the snapback of sanctions from taking place.

But the larger point is that the Obama Administration should not have permitted this vote before Congress has its say on the deal. Indeed it should be clear to all that this is a sad day for the American political system.

15 Years is No Small Thing. Accept the Iran Deal and Then Watch Iran Very Closely.

The Iran deal will not be defeated by Congress. The President has enough votes to block an over-ride of his veto, should it prove necessary, and I do not think it will prove necessary.

The devil is in the details to be sure. But on first blush I think the deal is better than the absence thereof. The US is not about to bomb Iran, and Israel probably isn't willing to do so either, certainly not on its own.

Could Iran become a nuclear weapons state in 15 years? Yes, but probably not before then, and steps can be taken in the interim to interdict them, even by military means if intelligence shows they are preparing to break out.

Also, the real sweetener is the 5 year restriction on the import/export of conventional weapons and the 8 year restriction on the importing of missiles or missile technology.

Also re snap-back of sanctions, the fact that a majority of the 8 member states with supervisory status over the deal can decide on snapping back of the sanctions, means that Iran, Russia and China cannot act in concert to protect Iran from the sanctions snapping back if Iran seems to be violating the letter or the spirit of the deal.

Finally, an agreement isn't a suicide pact, and so if it turns out that there is real evidence that Iran is cheating or violating the terms or the spirit of the agreement, then the US and its allies, or the US and Israel, or Israel alone, will act, by one means or another, to bring Iran into line or under heel.

Nobody is going to trust in the eyes of the IAEA alone, and the US and the Israelis will certainly be using their own national technical means to keep a very close eye on what is really happening.

And just maybe the Iranians will come to change their tune and will accept that the downside of aiming to become a nuclear power is greater than the upside. I am not sanguine about this, and do expect that in 15 years or so, we will see the Iranians trying to get the nukes that they rightfully believe to be the ultimate guarantor of the longevity of their regime.

But if the Iranians move in this direction, there will be evidence of this effort, and steps to counteract Iran's effort can and will be taken. Or that is my not entirely unreasonable hope.