A Possible New Iran Deal?

The nightmarish pictures coming out of Ukraine this week, and particularly the ones relating to the massacre of civilians in Bucha, have—entirely reasonably—occupied our attention almost fully. But while the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been unfolding literally before our very eyes, negotiations with Iran have been ongoing in an attempt to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the so-called “Iran Deal” from which our nation withdrew in 2018. In theory, our nation’s withdrawal did not cancel the deal itself. But Iran’s own announcement in May 2019 that it was going to suspend compliance with the terms of the accord unless it received protection from U.S. sanctions, while technically not cancelling the deal either, practically speaking signaled its end as a practical arrangement in effect between the signatory nations. We were, therefore, left with nothing at all.

At the time, I wrote, preached, and spoke about the deal on many different occasions, expressing—among other sentiments—myself intense ambivalence about the notion of relying on the Iranians to comply with any agreement at all and saying, in effect, that the decision of the Obama administration to negotiate the deal not as a treaty between nations, but rather as the kind of non-binding political commitment that would specifically not require the approval of the Congress to go into effect, was—to say the very least—disingenuous and troubling. Nor was I able to understand how President Obama could sell this deal as the fulfillment of his promise to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power when the agreement as signed was merely going to delay what its signatories seemed to accept as ultimately inevitable. I was personally present at Temple Sinai when Senator Gillibrand gave her word to the assembled that the Obama administration would never agree that Iran be allowed to acquire a nuclear arsenal; to say that I felt disappointed and angered when I read the details of the accord with that promise still ringing in my ears would be to say the very least. To those who said at the time that something was better than nothing, I would regularly reply that I wasn’t at all sure that that was the case…and particularly if the sense that we got “something” allowed us to look away from the ever-increasing likelihood that, sooner or later, Iran—the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism—would have nuclear weapons. Nor did I find John Kerry’s repeatedly repeated assertion that the deal had nothing to do with trust—and specifically with trusting the Iranians (click here)—especially convincing. (To revisit some of my writing regarding Iran over the last few years, click here, here, here, here, and here.)

So that was then. And now the Biden administration is trying to revive the agreement by renegotiating its main codicils. Kerry has been replaced by U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley. And since last fall, negotiations have been ongoing between the original signatories to the accord (Iran, Russia, China, the U.K., Germany, and sort-of the United States, together with the European Union) at the Palais Coburg Hotel in Vienna. (The “sort-of” in the previous sentence references the fact that the Iranians refuse to negotiate directly with the United States, so the results of each day’s deliberations are delivered to the U.S. delegation, whose response is then relayed to the Iranians the next day.) I keep reading in the press that a deal could be imminent, but the specifics have yet to be released to the public. It is, therefore, impossible to say whether this is something to support or not to support.

The short version is easy: the Iranians want the sanctions levied against them to be lifted and the rest of everybody at least theoretically wants to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. So that sounds simple enough. But, as always, the devil is in the details. And some of those details are very worrisome, and particularly those that involve the specific benefits Russia is seeking to wring from the deal for itself.

Like all Americans, I look on from afar and ask myself where this can possibly go. Lifting sanctions will bring billions of dollars into Iran—which prospect was supposed to be a carrot so enticing that the Iranians would willingly abandon their nuclear ambitions to come into that much cash. The Iranian economy is in ruins, its exports severely limited, its currency becoming less valuable by the day. The Iranians should  be prepared to do almost anything to fix the mess they’re in. But the key word in the previous sentence is “almost”—and the Iranians have, as far as I know, never indicated that they would consider abandoning all of their nuclear ambitions entirely.

So where we are is…nowhere at all. The Obama Administration decided that delaying the entry of the Iranians into the nuclear club was the best we could hope for. And, we kept hearing back then, who knew—maybe there would be some sort of regime change that would re-install a government in Iran that wouldn’t have hostility to the West and particularly to our nation and to Israel as its guiding foreign-policy principles! Of course, there’s always that possibility. But I don’t only look at the Vienna talks with my American eyeglasses on—I look at them through my Jewish lenses as well.

If there’s one thing Jewish history has taught us unequivocally, it’s that it’s isn’t ever  a good idea to assume that our enemies are kidding around when they talk about annihilating the Jewish people. I’m sure there were Jews in medieval Spain who imagined that Torquemada didn’t really mean it when he spoke about cleansing Spain of its Jewish population. And I know for certain that there were many Jews in Germany who dismissed Hitler’s anti-Semitic speeches as the caterwauling of a maniac until it became suddenly all too clear that he was serious about his plans for the Jews of Germany and, eventually, of Europe.

I could give a lot more examples, but the bottom line is that I take it very seriously when rabid anti-Semites like the Iranian leadership—and not solely its clerical leadership—speak openly and enthusiastically about wiping the map clean of Israel, of murdering its Jewish citizenry, of destroying the Jewish state using either conventional or unconventional weapons. And so should everybody! These are not, after all, people who disagree with Israel about this or that issue—the leaders of this nation struggling to become a nuclear power have no hesitation about talking openly about their genocidal plans directed mostly—but only mostly—at the Jews of Israel. And history has taught me to take that very seriously indeed.

Adding irony to mix is the detail that behind all this negotiating is the understanding Iran will not become a nuclear power because Israel will not allow that to happen. Over and over, Israel has demonstrated its ability to reach deep into Iran in ways that sound, even to me, more like reject episodes of Fauda than actual news stories. And yet, despite the happy optimism that characterized the Obama administration’s approach and continues to characterize the Biden administration’s with respect to Iran, the willingness of the Israelis to do whatever it is going to take to prevent a very bad thing from happening is surely the foundation upon which the Vienna talks shakily rest.

It was not at all encouraging to hear Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), the chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, say the other day that he has not been made privy to any of the important details of whatever putative agreement might yet come out of Vienna.

Senator Menendez was one of four Democratic senators who voted against the Iran Deal back in 2015. (The others were Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), and our own Chuck Schumer.) He is a tried and true friend of Israel. And what he has to say is always worth considering, so let’s listen in. “If,” he said just the other day, “Iran is going to roll back its nuclear program, if it’s finally going to come clean on its efforts to achieve nuclear weapons and give access to the International Atomic Energy Agency to sites that they’ve been asking and demanding for and haven’t gotten to, if Iran is going to constrain its missile program…those [would be] good things. If [on the other hand] all you’re going to get is a limited period of time before [Iran becomes a nuclear power], that certainly doesn’t deal with all the other challenges of a nuclear weapon and certainly of Iran’s malign activity. If it somehow gives Iran relief and if Russia somehow [ends up benefitting] from [a new Iran deal], that would obviously [also] be a problem.”

A big problem! And now that Russia has embarked on a program of intense ethnic cleansing in Ukraine, the thought that a new Iran deal could conceivably exempt Russia from sanctions levied against Iran and allow them to build two nuclear plants in Iran for a price tag of about 2 billion dollars is not something we should swallow easily. Mitt Romney, also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said it clearly and in as forthright a manner as necessary: “Any deal that puts more money in Iran’s hands, that allows Russia to [reap huge financial rewards] makes no sense.”

I couldn’t agree more.