Khamenei haggles over the price of
American surrender.
By BRET STEPHENS
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—better known as
the Iran nuclear deal—was officially adopted Sunday, Oct. 18. That’s nine days
ago. It’s already a dead letter.
Not that
you would have noticed by reading the news or tuning in to State Department or
White House briefings. It’s too embarrassing to an administration that has
invested all of its diplomatic capital in the deal. Also, too inconvenient to
the commodity investors, second-tier banks, European multinationals and
everyone else who wants a piece of the Iranian market and couldn’t care less
whether Tehran honors its nuclear bargain.
Yet here
we are. Iran is testing the agreement, reinterpreting it, tearing it up line by
line. For the U.S.—or at least our next president—the lesson should be clear: When
you sign a garbage agreement, you get a garbage outcome.
Earlier this month Iran test-fired a new-generation
ballistic missile, called Emad, with an estimated 1,000-mile range and a
1,600-pound payload. Its only practical military use is to deliver a nuclear
warhead. The test was a bald violation of the Security Council’s Resolution
2231, adopted unanimously in July, in which “Iran is called upon not to
undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of
delivering nuclear weapons” for at least eight years.
Then
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei weighed in on the nuclear deal by way of a public
letter to President Hassan Rouhani. “The behavior and words of the U.S.
government in the nuclear issue and its prolonged and boring negotiations,” he
wrote, “showed that [the nuclear issue] was also another link in their chain of
hostile enmity with the Islamic Republic.”
The
Supreme Leader’s comments on the nuclear deal have been billed by some
reporters as a cautious endorsement of the agreement. Not exactly. They are a
unilateral renegotiation of the entire deal, stipulating that the U.S. and
everyone else must accept his rewrite—or else.
The best
analysis of Mr. Khamenei’s demands comes from Yigal Carmon and Ayelet Savyon of
the Middle East Media Research Institute. Demand One: The U.S. and Europe must
completely lift, rather than temporarily suspend, their economic sanctions,
putting an end to any possibility that penalties could “snap back” in the event
of Iran’s noncompliance. Demand Two: Sanctions against Iran for its support of
terrorism and its human-rights abuses must also go, never mind the Obama
administration’s insistence that it will continue to punish Iran for its
behavior.
Next Mr.
Khamenei changes the timetable for Iran to ship out its enriched uranium and
modify its plutonium reactor in Arak until the International Atomic Energy
Agency gives Iran a pass on all “past and future issues (including the
so-called Possible Military Dimensions or PMD of Iran’s nuclear program).” So
much for the U.N. nuclear watchdog even pretending to monitor Iran’s compliance
with the deal. He also reiterates his call for a huge R&D effort so that
Iran will have at least 190,000 centrifuges when the nuclear deal expires.
“The set
of conditions laid out by Khamenei,” Mr. Carmon and Ms. Savyon note in their
analysis, “creates a situation in which not only does the Iranian side refrain
from approving the JCPOA, but, with nearly every point, creates a separate
obstacle, such that executing the agreement is not possible.”
That’s
right, though it doesn’t mean Mr. Khamenei intends to stop negotiating.
Instead, like in some diplomatic version of Lord Beaverbrook’s indecent
proposal—“Madam, we have established what you are; now we’re just haggling over
the price”—Mr. Khamenei has discovered what the administration is. Now he wants to pocket the concessions he has
already gained and wheedle for a bit more.
Little
wonder that Iran has upped the contempt factor since the agreement was signed.
A day after the missile test, Iran convicted Washington Post reporter Jason
Rezaian. On Monday came reports that Iran may have arrested an Iranian-American
businessman in Tehran. Expect similarly brutish insults in the months ahead,
all to underline how little Mr. Khamenei thinks of the American president and
his outstretched hand.
As for the
administration, it would be nice to imagine that it is starting to sense the
Ayatollah’s disdain. But it isn’t. The missile test was met by a wan effort to
take “appropriate action” at the U.N., whatever that might be. Mr. Khamenei’s
letter has been met with almost complete silence, as if ignoring it will make
it go away.
Perhaps
none of this matters. For all the promises and warnings about the Iran deal, it
is nothing more than surrender dressed up as diplomacy. The correlation of
forces in the Middle East has shifted in the past year, and Mr. Obama will not
lift a finger to restore the balance. Mr. Khamenei knows this, and he is not
about to give the U.S. a dignified surrender. Then maybe Mr. Obama knows it,
too. He doesn’t seem to mind the ignominy.
Write bstephens@wsj.com.
