the
weekly Standard
It's been two weeks since
a majority of Congress sought to register its disapproval of the Iran deal but
fell short of the votes necessary to break a filibuster or override a presidential
veto, and most politicians and commentators have moved on.
It’s understandable to want a mental break after a long
and hard-fought struggle. But the world hasn’t taken a break. The consequences
of the deal are already reverberating.
On Monday, September 21, Iran
self-inspected a key suspect nuclear weapons site without international
inspectors present. “This deal is not built on trust,” President Obama had told
us. “It is built on verification.” But apparently we trust Iran to carry out
that verification. That same day, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu
held a two-and-a-half-hour emergency meeting with Russian president Vladimir
Putin (followed by a meeting of Russian and Israeli military chiefs) to discuss
Russia’s military presence in Syria.
The front page of the Wall Street Journal on September 22 captured the new Middle
East, with a picture of Netanyahu meeting Putin at the top, and below it the
headline “Russia, Iran Team Up in Syria.” Putin is depicted as the central
player with whom sworn enemies Iran and Israel have to deal. And where is the
United States? At best, watching from behind. At worst, making life more
difficult for our friends and allies. We’ve become like William Macy in the
2003 movie The
Cooler, whose very presence and proximity turns people’s luck bad.
Such is the strategic reality that has emerged from the
Iran deal. It has put an exclamation point on a collapse of American leadership
that had been building during the entire Obama administration (and the last
part of the Bush administration, too). It signaled a decisive reversal of
decades of American dominance of the Middle East. Following our feckless
blunders in withdrawing from Iraq, drawing but not enforcing a red line in
Syria, and declaring quasi-war but doing very little against the Islamic State,
the Iran deal was the straw that broke the camel’s back of American credibility
in the region. It blessed the emergence, 15 years hence, of a
nuclear-weapons-capable and ballistic-missile-armed Iran, enriched and
empowered a vehemently anti-American and anti-Israeli, terrorist-supporting
regime, and spurred nuclear proliferation in the region.
What is to be done? We can
mitigate some of the deal’s costs in the near term, walk away from it as soon
as possible, and act to prevent rather than enable or try to contain a
nuclear-armed Iran. These must be fundamental elements of any successful U.S.
national security policy.
How does one begin?
First, don’t obsess about
sanctions. Recognize that eagerness to do something can get in the way of doing what is needed.
Sanctions can be an important tool of foreign policy, but they are a limited
tool. Lawmakers concerned about the threat of Iran’s nuclear program naturally
gravitated toward sanctions as one of the few areas where the legislative
branch can lead and set foreign policy. But this also gave many members of
Congress an easy but ultimately ineffective out. Sanctions did not succeed in
pressuring the regime in Tehran to cease its nuclear program. Even as they damaged
Iran’s economy, the regime continued installing new centrifuges. Obama was
right when he said, “Sanctions alone are not going to force Iran to completely
dismantle all vestiges of its nuclear infrastructure.” Sanctions are only one
supporting element of a new policy against Iran.
Second, stick to what works.
The sanctions fixation obscured a strategy that actually has an empirical
record of reining in illicit nuclear programs: a credible military threat.
Tehran suspended parts of its nuclear program in 2003-04, when the mullahs
worried they’d be next after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein. The Iraq
war also led Muammar Qaddafi to destroy his nuclear program. More recently, in
September 2012, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew a red line at
Iran acquiring a bomb’s worth—about 155 kilograms—of 20 percent enriched
uranium. At the time, Iran was already dangerously close to this threshold; but
it never crossed it. Hearing and, more important, believing Netanyahu’s
implicit threat, Iran chose to keep its stockpile from exceeding Israel’s red
line.
Third, the next president—especially if he or she wisely
walks away from the deal—must use this credible military option not only to
prevent Iran from going nuclear but also to confront Iran more broadly in the
region. We can never be safe, nor can we ever regain international credibility,
if Iran develops nuclear bombs or runs free as a dominant regional power.
Attaining the capability to prevent these things will require freeing the U.S.
military from the shackles of sequestration and boosting its capacity in the
Middle East and beyond.
We have compared this period
to the late 1930s, when the West, tired of war, failed to confront the
strategic challenge of Nazi Germany. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin fiddled as
Europe began to burn. But even in Baldwin’s last year in office British
military spending increased significantly, and it rose further under Neville
Chamberlain, a total of 83 percent between 1936 and 1939. At least Chamberlain
recognized that Britain had to rearm, even while he pursued appeasement.
Obama, however, is slashing defense budgets. After five
years of sequestration, the United States is on course to have the smallest
Army since 1940 and the smallest Navy since 1930. As a group of retired
high-ranking military leaders put it in a report commissioned by the Jewish
Institute for Natioal Security Affairs: “Should the worst happen—should Iran
threaten the security of our allies, should it decide, after 15 years, to
sprint for a nuclear weapons capability—the U.S. armed forces will rise to challenge,
but they will do so with less manpower, fewer capabilities, more antiquated
platforms and a lower level of readiness than they have now or have had in a
very long time.” It is amazing—and appalling—that the United States will not
have an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf as the Iran deal goes into effect.
The United States must also continue efforts to develop weapons to defend
against Iranian aggression—particularly missile defense systems—as well as, if
necessary, to degrade and destroy their nuclear infrastructure, whether through
cyberattack or the 30,000-pound, bunker-busting, Fordow-penetrating Massive
Ordinance Penetrator (MOP).
Fourth, boost the military
capability of Israel and of our Arab allies, while ensuring Israel retains its
qualitative military edge. The United States can help Israel acquire the tools
to be more self-reliant both in its offensive and defensive capabilities.
Congress has a big role to play here. Congress, with Obama’s support, has
supplied Israel with financial aid for its Iron Dome system, which worked well
in the war with Hamas in Gaza last year, but which will not suffice in the face
of Hezbollah’s tens of thousands of rockets and missiles. The United States can
significantly augment Israel’s missile defense capabilities, as well as work
with it to improve its anti-mortar capabilities. American offensive help to
Israel can begin with offering Israel MOPs and the spare B-52s that can deliver
them. B-52s could also help Israel in a war with Hezbollah, which would surely
be part of any conflict it has with Iran. Serious thought must be given to how
else best to boost Israel’s defensive and offensive capabilities, and to do so
in a manner dramatic enough to signal Iran, as well as others, that we will
stand by Israel.
Britain required a new leader,
Winston Churchill, in 1940 to finally address the Nazi cancer. The United
States needs a new leader as well, a Republican with a firm understanding of
America’s role in the world and the steel to pursue our interests properly and
relentlessly. Still, re-armament helped provide the tools when Britain regained
its will. When we have an American leader willing to restore America’s place in
the world and actually prevent a nuclear Iran, that president too must have the
tools—as must the Israelis—to do the job.
