Evidence: Recently Added
Supporters of the deal point to the economic exigencies that com- pelled Tehran to agree to it, but Tehran was also motivated by the scientific imperatives of building nuclear weapons. For much of its existence, Iran's nuclear program was subject to sabotage and sanctions and relied on primitive centrifuges. As Hamid Baeidinejad, one of Iran's lead negotiators, has admitted, the Iranian scientific establishment appreciated that a reliable industrial-size nuclear program required advanced centrifuges, ones that operated as much as 20 times as fast as the primitive ones. And Iranian officials understood the need to shield their program from sabotage and possible military retribution. The prob- lem was that it would take approximately eight to ten years to introduce the new generation of centrifuges. So the challenge for Iran's diplomats was to legitimize the nuclear program while negotiating a research-and- development schedule that fulfilled the scientists' requirements.
The final agreement met these needs. The JCPOA allows Iran to develop advanced centrifuges and begin installing them in the eighth year of the agreement. Thus, not only did Iran get the sanctions removed and its nuclear program legitimized; it also obtained the timeline it needed for the mass production of advanced centrifuges. Indeed, in highlighting the achievements of his negotiators, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani emphasized "the development of new centrifuges-from concept to mass production." So fast and efficient are the new generation of centrifuges that Iran could easily build a small facility producing weapons-grade uranium that would evade detection. And once Iran is in possession of weapons-grade uranium, it will also have a fleet of reliable ballistic missiles at hand.
Many US politicans are skeptical of Iran’s fears of another war, claiming that the example of the Iran-Iraq War—which lasted from 1980 to 1988—is an excuse designed to mask Iran’s aggressive behavior. Yet from practically infancy, Iranians are taught the traumatic effects of this war. Oral histories about the Iran-Iraq War have been passed down to children from grandparents and parents; add rhetoric from the government, and ubiquitous memorials around Tehran and the rest of the country, and it’s not hard to understand why the fear of war is embedded in Iranian culture and consciousness. Iran does not want to be caught unprepared for another war and suffer the way it did in the 1980s. Publicizing Iran’s missile program not only assuages public fears but also has a deterrent effect on the country’s enemies.
The Shiite-Sunni clashes in the region seem to be getting graver every day. In particular, Iran’s reaction to the recent execution of Shiite cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia is a clear example of the existing cultural and religious tension, and its potential for rapid growth. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei referred to Saudi Arabia’s execution as “Daesh-like action” that will not be tolerated. Publicizing Iran’s capabilities and the country’s determination to continue ballistic missile production might be an Iranian attempt to dissuade other regional powers from exercising too much power in the region, particularly when Iranian interests and the existence of the Iranian regime are threatened.
The technical and political characteristics of Iran suggest that an attack can have a more transformative impact than in the Iraqi case. First, unlike Saddam's Iraq the Iranian regime has competing sources of power.
So far, these groups do not appear to have reached a consensus resulting in a decision to acquire nuclear weapons. An attack is likely to facilitate such a consensus.
Second, Iranian nuclear establishment has learned its lessons from Osiraq. The decentralized and concealed Iranian nuclear complex is more robust than the Iraqi infrastructure was in 1981. Nevertheless, an attack on Iran's nuclear fuel production and enrichment facilities in Isfahan and Natanz would require Iran to either re-build these facilities or develop an alternative (assuming they do not already have secret facilities offering these capabilities).
Advocates of the strike option suggest that the delay caused by an attack buys valuable time. This begs the question: time to do what? After an attack, three options remain: more strikes, containment or regime change. In the Iraqi case, between 1991 and 2003 air strikes were largely ineffectual, containment crumbled and regime change proved disastrous. Containment and further strikes are unlikely to dissuade a determined Iranian leadership from acquiring nuclear weapons. Regime change is no longer an option.
An attack may intensify the Iranian nuclear challenge and make it more difficult in the longer term. If Tehran cannot be persuaded to abstain from the Bomb, it is time to learn to live with the prospect of a nuclear Iran.
The destruction of the Osiraq reactor did not delay the development of a nuclear weapons option because it was never intended to be part of such an effort. The French-supplied facility was subject to rigorous safeguards and designed to ensure that Iraq would not be able to produce weapons-grade plutonium. An examination of the reactor by Harvard physicist Richard Wilson after the attack concluded that the facility was not suited for production of weapons-grade plutonium. As a result, the attack did not reduce the risk that Iraq would develop nuclear weapons. On the contrary, it brought about a far more determined and focused effort to acquire nuclear weapons.
Why, then, did Iraq still fail to acquire nuclear weapons? The nuclear weapons program failed as a result of sub-optimal technological choices and poor management. These slip-ups had nothing to do with the Israeli strike. Instead they reflected a non-meritocratic bureaucratic culture, office politics, and bad judgement.
First, the culture of fear in Saddam's Iraq produced inefficient management and led scientists to fear admitting failure. Thus, unproductive projects continued longer than they should have. Second, by opting for inefficient and outdated technologies the isotope separation project failed spectacularly and caused years of delay. Had the Iraqis opted for more efficient technologies from the outset and not been constrained by the regime's excessive security concerns they would have made much greater progress during the first five years of the program.
Here is what else the military option would get us. It would be a great gift to the terrorist group Islamic State, as we would be attacking its archenemy in the ongoing Sunni-Shiite struggles.
It would strengthen the hard-liners in Iran for the next generation, confirming what they have been saying for decades about the Great Satan and cutting the ground out from under younger and moderate voices who have been arguing for trading Iran’s illegal nuclear program for ending the sanctions and opening Iran up to the world again.
It would effectively declare war on Iran as an unprovoked military strike, which would then lead to Iranian retaliation through cyber and terrorist strikes on Americans and American territory. U.S. responses to those strikes could well drag us back into open war in the Middle East.
It would provide yet another recruiting video for terrorist groups throughout the Middle East and beyond, with pictures of U.S. jets bombing a Muslim nation to stop a program that nation’s government had just agreed to stop peacefully through diplomacy. The image of Cowboy America, guns blazing, would once again become an image of Outlaw America, walking away from a deal that we negotiated at the head of international coalition of nations because we preferred to shoot it out instead.
It would end any possibility of ever again assembling a global coalition of countries against Iran, as even many of our allies and other countries opposed to Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon would nevertheless oppose our use of force without international authorization.
But, the sanctions relief provided by the United States does not equate with unilateral sanctions disarmament. The United States retains a number of sanctions authorities that will continue to damage Iran’s ability to engage in terrorism financing, as well as to exact consequences for violations of Iranian human rights and other destabilizing activities. This includes the all-too-important tool of secondary sanctions through the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act or CISADA. With this tool, the United States will still be able to pressure banks and companies against doing business with the IRGC, Qods Force, Qassem Solemani, and Iran’s military and missile forces. The EU and UN decisions to remove some of these entities from their own sanctions list is therefore important to Iran mainly as a symbolic step; practically, these entities and individuals will find their international business activities stymied due to the centrality of the United States in global finance until they correct their own behavior in the eyes of the United States.
Moreover, the United States will retain its ability to impose sanctions on entities and individuals trading with Iran in conventional arms and ballistic missiles, even after UN restrictions in this regard lapse in 5 and 8 years respectively. The UN’s provisions were important in terms of setting international approval and backstopping for U.S. unilateral efforts. But, they were conditioned, even as early as 2006 and 2007, on Iran’s failure to fulfill its nuclear obligations. Even the earliest UNSC resolutions laid out a package in which these sanctions would be terminated when Iran satisfied the P5+1 and IAEA on the nuclear issue. Further, it is the consequence of U.S. sanctions on these targets that can best deter bad behavior. Similarly, international export controls governing transfers of these types will remain fully in force.
It is certainly true that Iran will continue to support terrorism and activities that we oppose throughout the region. No level of sanctions could stop them from doing so. This is a government that has, after all, funded and armed radical elements since the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, through the Iran-Iraq War, and after the intensification of crippling sanctions in 2010. Tehran continued to invest in the Assad regime, despite the immediate loss of over a quarter of its 2012 oil revenues from sanctions imposed in December 2011, and $60 billion in potential revenues from that point forward. Likewise, Iran has assisted Shiite militants in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and is now supporting the Houthis in Yemen, despite major economic crisis at home. Clearly, money is no consideration for the Iranians when it comes to support for terrorism.
Since the international community intensified sanctions against Iran in 2010, Iran has only grown more desperate. For example, the country’s oil sector now needs anywhere from $50 to $100 billion in investment to improve production, a point that Iranian officials, including Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, have emphasized repeatedly over the past two years. External investment was cut off by sanctions, and Iran has not had the spare capital to maintain, much less improve, its facilities. Nor has it enjoyed access to new technologies that could enhance oil field productivity.
Oil is, of course, only one part of Iran’s economy, which includes struggling industries like automobile and domestic manufacturing. To avoid an over-dependence on global oil markets, Iran has also made it state policy to build a diversified export economy. Given the prevailing low global oil prices, Iran is likely to continue trying to strengthen other sectors to maximize its growth potential and limit its vulnerability to an uncertain market.
Lest observers assume that Iran would have turned its entire economy into a terrorism-financing machine if only it had the money, consider the fact that the most intensive sanctions on the country are only 3 years old. Before January 2012, oil sales were bringing in nearly $88 billion a year, money that Tehran largely spent as any government would: on domestic priorities — not solely to back anti Western interests. If the LA Times is to believed, this is a conclusion that CIA has itself reached.
As with the effort to wean its economy off oil, Iran has also sought to reduce costly subsidies on everything from food, to housing, to energy, in order to improve the economy’s efficiency, reduce waste, and spur competitiveness. But sanctions targeting Iranian oil revenues hampered that effort, as the country lacked the hard currency — and political will — to forge ahead with subsidy reform, at least until Rouhani’s election. It is now struggling to complete this project, one that sanctions relief would undoubtedly boost by providing Iran with fresh revenue and reducing its citizens’ dependence on government handouts. This is particularly important for Rouhani, who will be looking to shore up domestic support in the run-up to parliamentary elections in February 2016 and to win reelection in 2017.
In this context, several observers have suggested that it might be necessary to undertake strategic economic pressure against Iran as we have done to deal with the nuclear program. I think that this is probably unnecessary and potentially a mistake. First, we already have applied strategic economic pressure on Iran and did not meaningfully change its regional approach. Though the sanctions we applied on Iran from 2010-2013 were nuclear in focus, Iran felt no distinction. Nor did it respond by making accommodations on the terrorism front, as it did on the nuclear program. I believe this is because both the causes to which Iran is dedicated in the region are too dear to it to abridge and the financial requirements for the support of terrorism are relatively meager. To get the kind of economic pressure that would be required to get Iran to discontinue its financial support for terrorism – rather than reduce it, as probably did take place – we would have to establish the same kind of sanctions regime against Iraq in the 1990s, reducing Iran to a starvation diet. It is highly doubtful that our most important sanctions partners would support us in such an endeavor and the risk of sanctions leakage would be significant. But, even if they did, for how long would we prepared to keep such a regime in place? For, if we relaxed the pressure at some point, it is doubtful that Iran would abandon future support for terrorism. Ultimately, in my view, such a path leads us to requiring regime change, with all the complications that this would bring.
The second main concern posited is that Iran will fan the flames of regional nuclear proliferation, leading to nuclear weapons programs throughout the Arab world as a counter to Iran’s now entrenched nuclear program.
I strongly disagree that this is the likely result of this deal. Moreover, I believe we have adequate tools to prevent such an outcome.
First, this argument presupposes that countries have been waiting for a negotiated outcome to enshrine Iran’s enrichment program into international law to launch their own nuclear programs. But, this argument implicitly suggests that while a deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear program might motivate others to launch a breakout, Iran’s relatively unconstrained last ten years did not. If there is a logic to Arab nuclear weapons efforts, then it is that they cannot count on anyone else to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear arms and must counterbalance Iran themselves. If this were truly their view, then why only start now? We should be seeing signs of nuclear weapons breakout around the region.
Instead, we see either nuclear programs being undertaken with an explicit, if bounded, unilateral renunciation of uranium enrichment (as in the UAE) or with far less direction and interest than would be expected (as in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, principally). There have been periodic statements of interest in nuclear energy by other countries in the region and even some efforts to establish the legal and scientific infrastructure that could facilitate a larger program. But, the most advanced Arab nuclear program is in the UAE and, as noted, it is being built on the back of a non-enrichment pledge that no one in the UAE has suggested they will renounce. If a nuclear arms race has been launched, it may be the most modest one in history.