JOHN BOLTON
President Obama has made an art form of
attacking his opponents rather than substantively defending his own policies,
most recently regarding the Vienna agreement on Iran's nuclear program.
Essentially, Obama argues that we must either accept his wretched deal or go to
war to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
As is typical, Obama posits the wrong
choice, apparently to distract from the unpleasant reality that the agreement
won't work. It will not prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. So the real
choice we are faced with is dealing with the consequences of military action or
the consequences of a nuclear Iran. Neither is palatable, but the latter is far
worse. If the real objective is stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons,
preemptive military action is now inescapable.
This rock-and-hard-place outcome has long been
foreseeable. Iran's dogged determination to become a nuclear-weapons state was
fiercer and stronger than the West's frail response. Assuming Iran scrupulously
complies with every provision agreed to in Vienna — an absurdly unlikely
scenario given the ayatollahs' objectives and history — its ambitions for
nuclear weapons will simply have been delayed eight to 10 years.
In all likelihood, the ayatollahs are
already at work violating the accords. After all, Iran has systematically
breached its voluntarily-assumed obligations under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty for more than 30 years. Now the president's deal will
allow Iran to keep the fruits of its violations. Yes, the deal includes
restrictions on uranium enrichment, but Tehran can retain its enrichment
program, with guaranteed international assistance in improving it. These
concessions are fatal mistakes.
Moreover, Iran's ballistic missile efforts
— its development of the means to deliver nuclear weapons all over the world —
will barely be touched. Nor does the deal in any way address Iran's clandestine
weaponization efforts, which it has denied and hidden from the International
Atomic Energy Agency with great skill.
Last week, the news that the administration
has not even seen the texts of two agreements between the energy agency and
Iran, both crucial to implementation of the Vienna accords, only raises further
doubts. President Obama must provide the texts of these “side deals” to
Congress before any serious consideration of the overall agreement is possible.
The
real choice we are faced with is dealing with the consequences of military
action [against Iran] or the consequences of a nuclear Iran.
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Some critics of Obama's plan advocate
scuttling the deal and increasing economic sanctions against Iran instead. They
are dreaming. Iran and the United States' negotiating partners have already
signed the accords and are straining at their leashes to implement them. There
will be no other “better deal.” Arguments about what Obama squandered or
surrendered along the way are therefore fruitless. As for sanctions, they were
already too weak to prevent Iran's progress toward the bomb, and they will not
be reset now. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, “These sanctions are going boys,
and they ain't coming back.”
Patrick Clawson, the director for research
at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, provided the most recent
thumbs-down assessment of sanctions: “Iran has muddled through the shock of the
sanctions imposed in 2012, and its structural [economic] problems are not
particularly severe compared to those of other countries.” He estimates Iran's
nuclear and terrorism-support programs to cost only about $10 billion annually.
No wonder administration officials have testified that sanctions (including
those imposed piecemeal before 2012) did not slow Iran's nuclear efforts.
Nor will the deal's “snapback” mechanism
(intended to coerce Iran back into compliance if it breaches its obligations)
change that reality. Tehran's belligerent response is expressly stated in the
agreement's text: “If sanctions are reinstated in whole or in part, Iran will
treat that as grounds to cease performing its commitments … in whole or in
part.” Tehran does risk losing some future economic benefits should sanctions
snap back, but by then it will have already cashed in the assets the deal
unfreezes and signed new lucrative trade and investment contracts.
Once those benefits begin flowing all
around, the pressure on world governments will only increase to ignore Iranian
violations, or to treat them as minor or inadvertent, certainly not warranting
the reimposition of major sanctions. The ayatollahs have dusted off Lenin's
barb that “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,”
and applied it to the age of nuclear proliferation.
If diplomacy and sanctions have failed to
stop Iran, diplomacy alone will fail worse. Like it or not, we now face this
unpleasant reality: Iran probably will violate the deal; it may not be detected
doing so and if detected, it will not be deterred by “snapback” sanctions. So
we return to the hard question: Are we prepared to do what will be necessary to
stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons?
Obama most certainly is not, which means
the spotlight today is on Israel.
If Israel strikes, there will be no general
Middle East war, despite fears to the contrary. We know this because no general
war broke out when Israel attacked Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor in 1981, or
when it attacked the North Korean-built Syrian reactor in 2007. Neither Saudi
Arabia nor other oil-producing monarchies wanted those regimes to have nuclear
weapons, and they certainly do not want Iran to have them today.
However, Iran may well retaliate. At that
point, Washington must be ready to immediately resupply Israel for losses
incurred by its armed forces in the initial attack, so that Israel will still
be able to effectively counter Tehran's proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, which
will be its vehicles for retaliation. The United States must also provide
muscular political support, explaining that Israel legitimately exercised its
inherent right of self-defense. Whatever Obama's view, public and congressional
support for Israel will be overwhelming.
American weakness has brought us to this
difficult moment. While we obsessed about its economic discomfort, Iran wore
its duress with pride. It was never an even match. We now have to rely on a
tiny ally to do the job for us. But unless we are ready to accept a nuclear
Iran (and, in relatively short order, several other nuclear Middle Eastern
states), get ready. The easy ways out disappeared long ago.
John Bolton, a former U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations, is a fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute
