By Charles Krauthammer February 26 at 8:06 PM
A sunset
clause?
The news from the nuclear talks with
Iran was already troubling. Iran was being granted the “right to enrich.” It
would be allowed to retain and spin thousands of centrifuges. It could continue
construction of the Arak plutonium reactor.
Yet so thoroughly was Iran stonewalling International Atomic Energy Agency
inspectors that just last Thursday the IAEA reportedits
concern “about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed . . .development of a nuclear payload for a
missile.”
Bad enough. Then it got worse: News leaked Mondayof
the elements of a “sunset clause.” President Obama had accepted the Iranian
demand that any restrictions on its program be time-limited. After which, the
mullahs can crank up their nuclear program at will and produce as much enriched
uranium as they want.
Sanctions lifted. Restrictions gone.
Nuclear development legitimized. Iran would reenter the international
community, as Obama suggested in an interview in December, as “a
very successful regional power.” A few years — probably around 10 — of good
behavior and Iran would be home free.
The agreement thus would provide a
predictable path to an Iranian bomb. Indeed, a flourishing path, with trade
resumed, oil pumping and foreign investment pouring into a restored economy.
Meanwhile, Iran’s intercontinental
ballistic missile program is subject to no restrictions at all. It’s not even
part of these negotiations.
Why is Iran building them? You don’t
build ICBMs in order to deliver sticks of dynamite. Their only purpose is to
carry nuclear warheads. Nor does Iran need an ICBM to hit Riyadh or Tel Aviv.
Intercontinental missiles are for reaching, well, other continents. North
America, for example.
Such an agreement also means the end of nonproliferation.
When a rogue state defies the world, continues illegal enrichment and then gets
the world to bless an eventual unrestricted industrial-level enrichment
program, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is dead. And regional
hyperproliferation becomes inevitable as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others
seek shelter in going nuclear themselves.
Wasn’t Obama’s great international cause a nuclear-free
world? Within months of his swearing-in, he went to Prague to so declare. He then led a 50-party Nuclear Security
Summit, one of whose proclaimed achievements was having Canada give
up some enriched uranium.
Having disarmed the Canadian threat, Obama turned to Iran. The deal now on offer to the ayatollah would confer legitimacy on the nuclearization of the most rogue of rogue regimes: radically anti-American, deeply jihadist,purveyor of terrorism from Argentina to Bulgaria, puppeteer of a Syrian regime that specializes in dropping barrel bombs on civilians. In fact, the Iranian regime just this week, at the apex of these nuclear talks, staged a spectacular attack on a replica U.S. carrier near the Strait of Hormuz.
Well, say the administration apologists, what’s your
alternative? Do you want war?
It’s Obama’s usual, subtle false-choice maneuver: It’s
either appeasement or war.
It’s not. True, there are no good choices, but Obama’s
prospective deal is the worst possible. Not only does Iran get a clear path to
the bomb but it gets sanctions lifted, all pressure removed and international
legitimacy.
There is a third choice. If you are not
stopping Iran’s program, don’t give away the store. Keep the pressure, keep the
sanctions. Indeed, increase them. After all, previous sanctions brought Iran to
its knees and to the negotiating table in the first place. And that was before
the collapse of oil prices, which would now vastly magnify the economic effect
of heightened sanctions.
Congress is proposing precisely
that. Combined with cheap oil, it could so destabilize the Iranian
economy as to threaten the clerical regime.
That’s the opening. Then offer to renew negotiations for sanctions relief but
from a very different starting point — no enrichment. Or, if you like, with a
few token centrifuges for face-saving purposes.
And no sunset.
That’s the carrot. As for the stick,
make it quietly known that the United States will not stand in the way of any
threatened nation that takes things into its own hands. We leave the regional
threat to the regional powers, say, Israeli bombers overflying Saudi Arabia.
Consider where we began: six U.N. Security Council
resolutions demanding
an end to Iranian enrichment. Consider what we are now offering: an interim arrangement
ending with a sunset clause that allows the mullahs a robust,
industrial-strength, internationally sanctioned nuclear program.
Such a deal makes the Cuba normalization
look good and the Ukrainian cease-fires positively brilliant. We are on the cusp
of an epic capitulation. History will not be kind.