President Barack Obama’s stated goal for
Phase 1 interim deal was that, during the six month interim
period, the Iranians could
not conduct work “ advancing their program” (link).
A
deal should have ensured, in other words, that six months from now
Iran would be farther away from a nuclear weapon than they are
today, all the while leaving the U.S. with enough to bargain.
There is heated debate over whether the substance
of the deal accomplished the President’s Phase 1 objectives.
The New York Times (NYT) evaluated that “the deal does not roll
back the vast majority of the advances Iran has made in the past
five years,” and that the sum of Iran’s concessions would slow
Iran’s breakout time by “only a month to a few months” according
to U.S. intelligence estimates (link).
Meanwhile, gesturing toward the debate over
the asymmetric structure of the deal, David Frum
contrasted what the NYT headlined as “modest” Iranian concessions
with how “Iran gets the money now” (link).
Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, was quoted this morning by Bloomberg assessing that
in exchange Iran will get financial relief ultimately worth $20
billion (link).
Meanwhile
there are fears that the U.S.’s weakening of the sanctions trigger
an irreversible downward spiral that shreds the entire sanctions
regime.
[A] The substance of the deal
– Iran’s interpretation of key clauses and concessions will
likely complicate efforts to secure a comprehensive deal,
deepening concerns that Tehran intends to pocket the interim
concessions and walk away. Patrick Clawson and Mehdi Khalaji,
respectively the director of research and a senior fellow at the
Washington Institute, had already raised alarms weeks ago that
“Khamenei has been laying the groundwork to walk away from any
deal by warning that the West is untrustworthy and will not
deliver on its promises — the same reasons he gave for walking
away from the earlier nuclear deals” (link).
· “Right” to enrich: Iran’s leaders and
media immediately boasted that the U.S. had caved on its
long-standing policy and acknowledged that Iran has a right
to enrich uranium. Iranian state media carrying statements by among others
both Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani (link
and link).
The
issue is a critical one, since a final agreement that allows Iran
to continue spinning centrifuges would leave the regime with the
ambiguity it needs to dash across the nuclear finish line,
and would in any case mean the U.S. had given up on enforcing the
half dozen U.S.-backed resolutions passed by the United Nations
Security Council (UNSC) calling on Tehran to suspend its nuclear
program. The U.S. and
Britain both flatly denied Iran’s interpretation of the interim
language with Secretary of State John Kerry saying as much and the
White House further denying it on a late-night background call (link
and link
and link).
But
the Daily Beast’s Eli Lake bluntly evaluated that Iran “finally
got the world’s great powers to sign a deal that lets Iran enrich
uranium” (link)
while the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl noted that the text of
the agreement had the West conceding that Tehran will “have an
enrichment capacity in a final settlement” (link
and link).
Specifically, the language of the deal describes a future
comprehensive solution as involving “a mutually defined
enrichment program with practical limits and transparency
measures to ensure the peaceful nature of the program.” The
consequences for future negotiations are enormous: it is
difficult to see how a comprehensive solution will move past the
differing interpretations. The U.S. will either have to get
Iran to change its position, which will be difficult because
Iranian leaders are trumpeting the recognition as a core victory,
or the U.S. will have to concede Iran’s position, abrogating
administration assurances and giving up on UNSC resolutions.
October 3 testimony provided by to the Senate by lead U.S.
negotiator Wendy Sherman, for example, included the explicit
statement that “the President has circumscribed what he means by
the Iranian people having access… access, not right, but access to
peaceful nuclear energy in the context of meeting its obligations”
(link).
· Uranium: The interim deal allows Iran to
continue enriching to 5% purity and continue
constructing centrifuges to replace damaged ones, in
exchange for which it will increase transparency and – regarding
its stock of 20% pure material –either dilute that material back
to 5% or convert it into oxide fuel. Analysts and U.S. allies have
been skeptical of such concessions in the past, because the
process of converting 20% enriched uranium to oxide can be
easily reversed, with the material reconverted to uranium
hexafluoride and enriched from there. The only way to put it
beyond use is to actually irradiate the stock, but Iran doesn’t
have the capacity to do that, even if the regime wanted to (link).
Instead
the stock will sit there waiting to be reconverted, a process that
even analysts supportive of the interim agreement have calculated
can be done in one or two weeks (link).
Danielle
Pletka, Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at
American Enterprise Institute, has assessed that inasmuch as
“every single step is reversible, every single step will have no
meaningful impact on Iran’s capacity to produce a nuclear weapon
within weeks or months” (link).
Experts
from the University of Virginia and he U. S.-based Institute for
Science and International Security (ISIS) recently warned that
Iran can sneak across the nuclear finish line using only its
existing capacity and its stockpile of 3.5% enriched uranium
(link
[PDF]) – they don’t even need their 20% enriched stockpile, and
the analysis is independent of the construction of new
centrifuges. Allowing the regime to continue constructing
centrifuges had been a critical question, since the new
centrifuges could have been installed at the end of the six month
period and used to quickly recreate whatever material
had been given up in the meantime. The new agreement specifies
that Iran’s centrifuge construction “will be dedicated to replace
damaged machines,” which the White House says will prevent the
regime from using the six months to stockpile centrifuges (link
and link).
Analysts
will welcome that concession as a win provided the interpretation
is confirmed.
[B] The structure of the deal
– the asymmetrical structure of the concessions – Iranian
concessions are reversible, P5+1 concessions are not – gives Iran
an incentive to walk away rather than continue negotiating. The
structure also means that the West can’t make progress in
future negotiations or extract more concessions: instead
Iran will be able to trade the same concessions over and over
again by threatening to backslide: they may ask for further
concessions lest they restart centrifuges, bring enrichment up to
20%, etc..
· U.S. concessions are irreversible – Most
straightforwardly, Iran will get to pocket the financial relief
they get, using it to stabilize the Iranian economy, bolster its
nuclear program, and fund its global terror network. The arguably
more significant danger, however, is that chipping away at the
sanctions regime completely shatters it: Iran would use
the short-term financial injection to bide its time, waiting for a
further deterioration of the sanctions regime. There are
multiple scenarios under which the limited sanctions relief
provided by the interim agreement would trigger a downward spiral
that irreversibly and substantially erodes the regime. The most
immediate fear is that major powers and corporations will engage
in a feeding frenzy: no one wants to be left behind as
Iran’s market opens up, and so everyone tries to get in first.
Pletka emphasized today how the deal erodes the broader
environment required for international sanctions to work,
assessing that “the reversal in momentum for sanctions and the
loss of the psychology of impenetrable sanctions is of
immeasurable value to Tehran” (link).
Brookings
Institute fellow Michael Doran earlier this week pointed to
evidence that such a downward spiral was already beginning, with
Paris looking to reopen a trade-related attaché office in Tehran
next year (link).
Dubowitz
was briefed a few weeks ago by the White House specifically on the
question of whether U.S. concessions would be reversible, and he
nonetheless assessed that the broad contours of proposed deals “totally
eviscerates the sanctions regime” (link).
· Iranian concessions are reversible – The
Obama administration and its allies are emphasizing that the
interim deal is largely designed to “freeze” rather than “reverse”
Iran’s nuclear program. The regime won’t be forced to dismantle
their centrifuges, such that at the end of six months they can
just turn them back on. It will be allowed to continue
constructing centrifuges to replace old ones, such that – at best
for the West – Iran will be allowed to pick up exactly where they
left off.
[C] Domestic consequences within Iran
– Putting aside what Iran will be able to do across its
borders, there are pitched concerns over the effects that a deal,
let alone nuclear weapons acquisition, would have on Iran’s human
rights policy – Significant human rights abuses have continued,
and in many cases have even deepened, since the recent election of
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Analysts fear that a broad deal
with Iran will legitimize the regime, even if it puts off Iranian
nuclear weapons acquisition by months or even years.
· Since the inauguration of President Hassan
Rouhani in August, the regime executed over 200 individuals (link).
Over 30 people were executed in a ten day span in late October and
early November (link).
In
late October, and in violation of international law, the regime
quickly executed 16 Baluchi prisoners in retaliation for their
alleged “support” of an attack by separate Baluchi insurgents on
an Iranian border station that left 14 border guards dead (link).
In
October, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center said that Iran
is on pace for over 500 state executions this year (link).
Also,
in October, the regime hanged a 37 father of two, for a second
time, after he survived his first hanging attempt. He was
sentenced to death for a drug charge (link).
While
President Rouhani was at the UNGA in September, Iran executed over
30 Iranians without due process (link).
Over
80 individuals were in the weeks immediately following the June
election of Rouhani (link).
· In mid-October, the Revolutionary Guard Iran
raided a party in the city of Kermanshah and arrested 75 people as
part of a network of ‘satanists and homosexuals.’ Twenty of the
individuals will be charged and face the death penalty if
convicted (link).
In
October 2012, Ali Larijani, the chairman of the Iranian
Parliament, said that homosexuality is “modern western Barbarism”
(link).
In
May 2012, the regime executed four individuals for sodomy (link).
· In mid-October Ahmad Khatami a senior member of
the Iranian Assembly of Experts, told the regime not to negotiate
on the nuclear issue because progress on that topic could lead the
international community to pressure Iran to recognize rights for
women (link).
Many
reports have been published, especially in Western outlets,
touting gender reform in Iran. Substantial legislative progress
has yet to be established.
· In October, four Iranian Christians were
sentenced to eighty lashes each for partaking of communion wine (link),
leading
Mervyn Thomas, CEO of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, to blast
Iran for “criminalizing the Christian sacrament of sharing in the
Lord’s Supper, and this constitute an unacceptable infringement on
the right to practice faith freely and peaceably” (link).
Between
June 2008 and 2010 “115 Christians were reportedly arrested on
charges of apostasy, illegal activities of evangelism,
anti-government propaganda, and activities against Islam, among
other charges,” and then in the second half of 2010 another 161
were rounded up (link).
No comments:
Post a Comment