Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s revelation of a secret trove of Iranian nuclear-weapons research has set off a debate among experts about whether Iran violated its obligations under the 2015 nuclear deal.
But these arguments miss the point. It’ll take months if not years of analysis for Western intelligence agencies to determine what new information is in the cache and how Iran’s band of longtime nuclear researchers are currently spending their time.
The more immediate problem is that this is just the latest evidence that the narrative the deal was based upon was fundamentally flawed.
The Obama administration embraced the European perception of Iran that originated in failed European negotiations with Tehran in the early 2000s. In this fanciful world, the mullahs were determined to be a diminishing minority, slowly giving way to moderates who could be engaged.
The fact that Iran’s “moderates” had consistently played a useful role for the hardliners, overseeing covert nuclear-weapons work, terrorism, killing of more than 500 Americans since 2003 or kidnapping scores of Americans and constantly threatening Israel, was conveniently whitewashed.
The problem thus was not that the negotiations didn’t go on long enough or that a better deal could be had. The European/Obamian flaw was that there was a willingness to do any deal at all with hardened terrorists who repeatedly lied to their public and to the West, brutalized their own people and had the blood of Americans on their hands.
The Iran deal was thus based on multiple lies — Iranian lies to the West, the IAEA and US and European officials lying to themselves about the people they were negotiating with. Thus, any effort to truly “fix” a deal built on a web of lies was doomed from the start. If you reject the notion that Iran is on a modernization track, extending the deal in perpetuity doesn’t make us safer; it’s suicidal.
It’s time to start preparing for what happens after the United States exits the deal.
The media and many think-tank experts will be apoplectic. The Europeans will rail about yet another transatlantic divide. But in the end, none of that will matter.
What matters is whether President Trump is finally willing to learn from the mistakes of 15 years of transatlantic diplomacy with Iran. That will involve implementing a maximum pressure campaign modeled on his efforts on North Korea.
A US exit doesn’t necessarily mean the total death of the deal — the Europeans will attempt to stick with it, and so might Iran (or at least Tehran will play along as if it’s complying).
This means the world will not automatically revert to its pre-deal status quo. The United States security and diplomatic establishments will need to shoulder a certain amount of the burden. And given Iran’s expanding aggression throughout the Middle East, Washington can’t afford to pull out of the deal and sit on its hands.
Reluctant US bureaucrats at Treasury and State will need to be prodded by the White House to move quickly to ensure that any exit from the deal is not a “soft withdrawal,” or withdrawal in name only.
The Central Bank of Iran should be an early target, and existing US sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the intelligence arm of which reportedly was hiding the nuclear cache, should be expanded to target IRGC-affiliated companies across all sectors of the Iranian economy. As with North Korea, US partners and allies will need to decide whether they are serious about confronting Iran’s dangerous behavior or whether they want to continue to elevate profit over principle.
The administration also needs to implement a regional strategy to push back, militarily if necessary, against Iranian expansionism in the Mideast. Iran is a problem that can’t be outsourced to the Europeans or Middle Eastern proxies. That means increasing pressure on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria by cutting off their financial lifelines and preventing the Iranians from dragging Israel into a multifront war.
Most important will be a comprehensive US effort using financial and security aid; diplomacy with regional partners, especially Sunni allies; and the bully pulpit of Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to make clear that America’s problem with Iran rests not solely with its nuclear program but with its dictatorial terrorist leaders.
It’s time for all the lies to end.
Jamie Fly is a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US who worked on Iran issues in the George W. Bush administration.