Diplomacy’s promise: the Iran nuclear deal

If wiser heads prevail, the world is about to take a major step
forward in controlling nuclear arms, and, perhaps, in reducing the tension in
the Middle East.

Congress is now reviewing the deal that the US, France,
Germany, Britain, the European Union, Russia, and China reached with Iran
earlier this month. The accord dramatically reduces Iran’s stock of low-enriched
uranium and centrifuges, puts strong limits on new enrichment, and guarantees
inspections of its nuclear facilities.

Critics have legitimate concerns about the deal, and it
would be naïve to think it will end the hatred many Iranians have for the US.
It won’t lessen Iran’s determination to strengthen its influence in the region.
And under the deal, the embargo on selling conventional arms and missiles to
Iran will end in five to eight years, adding more weapons to an increasingly
violent part of the world.

“Its most immediate effect,” a Washington
Post editorial noted, “will be to provide Tehran with up to $150 billion in
fresh assets from sanctions relief over the next year, funds that its leaders
will probably use to revive the domestic economy but also to finance wars and
terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria, the Gaza Strip, Yemen, and elsewhere.”

Israel and Saudi Arabia are furious about the agreement.
Republicans in Congress seem pretty much united in wanting to kill it. And
while the liberal group J Street is supporting the deal, some other
Jewish-American groups are lobbying hard against it. But if Congress stops the
deal, we’ll miss a rare opportunity, not only to lower the tension in the
Middle East but also to move the US toward a heavier reliance on diplomacy rather
than military action to solve disagreements.

And if Congress stops the deal, we’ll enter an even more
dangerous time. This isn’t a deal just between the US and Iran. Even if we
don’t approve it, the Europeans could go ahead with their part and end their
sanctions. In that case, Iran’s economy would get a boost. We would still have
no controls on Iran’s development of its nuclear program, and the guarantee of
strong inspections would be gone.

Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seibnotes
that the attempt to negotiate with Iran on its nuclear efforts began during
the George W. Bush administration. Seib recently
interviewed Bush’s undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, who was part of a
US-European team working on that effort. Burns’ assessment of the deal: It’s
the best option we have.

“If you look through this deal,” Burns told Seib, “these are substantial restrictions on Iran. The
probability of Iran getting a nuclear device in the next 10 years is extremely
low.”

If the US could get an agreement “where the Iranians
submitted to every demand we had, I would take that,” said Burns. “In a real
world, you have to make real-world decisions.”

In the past, of course, Israel and some US political leaders
have had their own idea of how to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons:
bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. But the result would be horrible. We wouldn’t
be bombing just one or two nuclear facilities. Iran, Fareed
Zakaria wrote in the Washington Post, “has a vast
nuclear industry, comprising many installations spread across the country.”
Some of them are close to cities. Civilian casualties would be high.

And besides the humanitarian cost, an attack by the US (or
by the US and Israel) would further ramp up anti-US sentiment in the region. It
would alienate not only Iranian moderates but also many of our allies. Iran and
its allies would certainly strike back. And once again, we would be trapped in
a costly war with a highly uncertain outcome.

Nor can we ignore our own history, which is at the root of
the current tension between the US and Iran. In 1953, our CIA and Great Britain
overthrew Iran’s elected government and put our own choice, Mohammad Reza Shah
Pahlavi, in power. He ruled Iran as a dictator, with our help, until he was
deposed in the 1979 revolution, and Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini took control of the country.

Iran, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Indonesia, Cuba, Vietnam: our relatively recent
history simply sparkles with our violent interference in the affairs of other
nations – not just meddling, but being actively involved in getting rid of
elected officials we haven’t liked. We’re dealing with the consequences, around
the world.

At the heart of the debate over the Iran deal, then, is the
US mindset: how we picture ourselves, how we view our role in the world: how we
think we best protect ourselves, aid our allies, and work for peace in the
world.

The day after a presidential news conference discussing the
deal, the Washington Post’s Dana
Milbank complained that Obama “was tough and strong, but in service of the
argument that American power is limited – that this is the best deal we could
get with our declining leverage.”

Obama’s argument supporting the deal, Milbank wrote, was
“sadly, a powerful case – for American weakness.”

Weakness?Only if
you believe that strength can come solely from military might. Diplomacy
isn’t a weakness. For years, we’ve assumed that the answer to everything is
military power – and that what is in our own best interest is therefore in the
best interest of the rest of the world. (Or we haven’t cared what was in the
best interest of the rest of the world.)

All those years, we’ve deluded ourselves about the meaning
of power and the responsibilities of international leadership. And all the
while, we’ve spent too much money on arms and too little on strengthening our
own people. And we’ve paid too little attention to the plight of the poor and
the oppressed in other parts of the world.

The Iran deal gives us a chance to change that. Members of
Congress need to hear from us, starting with a key Democrat in this debate, New
York Senator Chuck Schumer.

This article appears in Jul 29 – Aug 4, 2015.