“Negotiations . . . to
prevent an Iranian capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an
agreement that concedes this very capability. . . ”
It was
but a year and a half ago that Barack Obama endorsed the objective of abolition when he said that Iran’s heavily fortified Fordow nuclear
facility, its plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor and its advanced
centrifuges were all unnecessary for a civilian nuclear program. The logic was
clear: Since Iran was claiming to be pursuing an exclusively civilian program,
these would have to go.
Yet under the deal Obama is now trying to sell, not one of
these is to be dismantled. Indeed, Iran’s entire nuclear infrastructure is kept
intact, just frozen or repurposed for the length of the deal (about a decade).
Thus Fordow’s centrifuges will keep spinning. They will now be fed xenon, zinc and germanium instead of uranium. But that means they
remain ready at any time to revert from the world’s most heavily (indeed
comically) fortified medical isotope facility to a bomb-making factory.
And upon the expiration of the
deal, conceded Obama Monday on NPR, Iran’s breakout time
to a nuclear bomb will be “almost down to zero,” i.e., it will be able to
produce nuclear weapons at will and without delay.
And then
there’s cheating. Not to worry, says Obama. We have guarantees of compliance:
“unprecedented inspections” and “snapback” sanctions.
The inspection promises are a
farce. We haven’t even held the Iranians to their current obligation
to come clean with the International Atomic Energy Agency on their previous
nuclear activities. The IAEA charges Iranwith
stonewalling on 11 of 12 issues.
As veteran nuclear expert David Albright points out, that
makes future verification impossible — how can you determine what’s been illegally
changed or added if you have no baseline? Worse, there’s been no mention of the
only verification regime with real teeth — at-will, unannounced visits to any
facility, declared or undeclared. The joint European-Iranian statement spoke only of “enhanced access through
agreed procedures,” which doesn’t remotely suggest anywhere/anytime
inspections. And on Thursday, Iran’s supreme leader ruled out any “extraordinary supervision measures.”
The IAEA hasn’t been allowed
to see the Parchin weaponization facility in 10 years. And the massive Fordow
complex was disclosed not by the IAEA but by Iranian dissidents.
Yet even if violations are
found, what then? First, they have to be certified by the IAEA. Which then
reports to the United Nations, where Iran has the right to challenge the
charge. Which then has to be considered, argued and adjudicated. Which then
presumably goes to the Security Council where China, Russia and sundry
anti-Western countries will act as Iran’s lawyers. Which all would take months
— after which there is no guarantee that China and Russia will ratify the
finding anyway.
As for the “snapback”
sanctions — our last remaining bit of pressure — they are equally fantastic.
There’s no way sanctions will be re-imposed once they have been lifted. It took
a decade to weave China, Russia and the Europeans into the current sanctions
infrastructure. Once gone, it doesn’t snap back. None will pull their companies
out of a thriving, post-sanctions Iran. As Kissinger and Shultz point out, we
will be fought every step of the way, leaving the United States, not Iran,
isolated.
Obama imagines that this deal
will bring Iran in from the cold, tempering its territorial ambitions and
ideological radicalism. But this defies logic: With sanctions lifted, its
economy booming and tens of billions injected into its treasury, why would Iran
curb rather than expand its relentless drive for regional dominance?
An overriding objective of
these negotiations, as Obama has said, is to prevent the inevitable
proliferation — Egypt, Turkey, the Gulf states — that would occur if Iran went
nuclear. Yet the prospective agreement is so clearly a pathway to an Iranian
bomb that the Saudis are signaling that the
deal itself would impel
them to go nuclear.
You set out to prevent
proliferation and you trigger it. You set out to prevent an Iranian nuclear
capability and you legitimize it. You set out to constrain the world’s greatest
exporter of terror threatening every one of our allies in the Middle East and
you’re on the verge of making it the region’s economic and military hegemon.
What is the alternative, asks
the president? He’s repeatedly answered the question himself: No deal is better
than a bad deal.
