Red Light for the Iran Nuclear Deal

Last month I posted a cautionary note on the Iran nuclear deal by adopting a wait and see attitude. (See http://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-yellow-light-for-iran-nuclear-deal.html) After further evaluation I have come to the conclusion that no deal is better than a bad deal and unfortunately the deal brought back from Austria is a bad a deal and even though the opponents do not have an alternative I believe the United States would be better served if the Congress turns it down in September.

Two new pieces of information have come to light since my last post. First there is a giant exception to the snap back sanctions should Iran violate the terms of the agreement. That exception is that all prior economic arrangements entered into by Iran would be grandfathered in. This means that all Iran has to do is to make long term agreements with western, Russian and Chinese companies and those agreements would remain intact no matter what Iran did. Thus there would be no immediacy to the snap back sanctions.

Second there is a host of side agreements with the IAEA, the deal's "enforcer", that make it difficult to understand just exactly what enforcement regime Iran will be under. For example what will be the notice provisions with respect to inspections, what exactly is the baseline, and whether or not military facilities would be on or off limits. President Obama is relying on a whole lot of trust, but not too much on verification. 

Thus with the enforcement regime shaky at best and with Iran receiving $150 billion in frozen assets to enhance its position in the region, the deal should be voted down. True Iran may ultimately change for the better, but in the meantime the regime is being run by a bunch of religious thugs who shout "death to America" six times a day in their daily prayers. 

A Yellow Light for the Iran Nuclear Deal

The proposed Iran nuclear deal is 159 pages long, loaded with technical issues pertaining to nuclear physics, the inspections regime and the enforcement provisions which if they work will delay Iran's progress towards a nuclear arsenal by at least decade. A noble goal. But, this is very complicated stuff, an arms control pact with the leading state sponsor of terrorism if you will, yet proponents and opponents are rushing to judgement without fully understanding the nature of the deal.

To me it makes sense to wait and to listen to what comes out in the upcoming hearings that in all likelihood will flush out the issues mentioned above. Nevertheless I do have some priors. Because President Obama wanted the deal more than the Grand Ayatollah it is logical to assume that the U.S. could have gotten a better deal. In selling the deal President Obama uses the example of Nixon going to China, but in that episode the U.S. was allowed to establish a base in western China to monitor Soviet missile tests. There is no equivalent here.  But that doesn't mean the current deal on the table is a bad deal. As we have often noted, you can't make the perfect the enemy of the good.

My concerns with deal have to do with the inspection regime where somehow "anytime anywhere inspections" have been scrubbed in favor of a 24 day managed process. We also don't know if the IAEA is capable of conducting a verifiable inspections regime in a hostile environment. And we don't know how the inspectors and the international community will deal with what appears to be small technical violations of the deal. For that matter we don't know whether or not there will be the will to reimpose a full set of sanctions in the face of obvious breaches.

And finally the opponents of the deal have to offer a realistic alternative should they vote down the agreement. Simply put the question is will we be better off with the deal or without it? Hopefully we will be able to answer that question by the end of the summer.