22 Jul 2015
Ari Shavit, Haaretz: The Iran deal: From thriller to horror story
In the Vienna agreement, the United States, European Union, Britain, France, Russia and China recognize again and again Iran’s right to develop advanced centrifuges. These centrifuges’ enrichment capacity could be 5-10 times bigger than the capacity of the old ones, which Iran is now foregoing.
This means that the international community is not only enabling, but actually ensuring the establishment of a new Iranian nuclear program, which will be immeasurably more powerful and dangerous than its predecessor. In fact the Iranians are giving up an outdated, anachronistic deployment in order to build an innovative legitimate one, with the world’s permission and authority.
21 Jul 2015
Rafael Barak, The Star: Iran nuke deal is a missed opportunity — and worse
The deal won’t stop Iran from attaining a nuclear bomb, but it will lend the country unearned international legitimacy.
Over the years, the international community constructed a robust system of sanctions, squeezing the Iranian economy and bringing the Iranian regime to the negotiating table. The aim was to dismantle Iran’s military nuclear program.
Just as this objective was finally within reach, the negotiators changed their approach. They handed the Iranian regime a dream deal that will quickly end the sanctions, the one form of leverage, while leaving most of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in place.
Iran is playing a direct role in the instability raging across the Middle East — propping up the embattled Assad regime in Syria, building up Hezbollah’s arsenal of over 100,000 missiles aimed at Israel, supporting the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and playing dangerous games in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Those who live under this shadow, not just Israel but many Arab countries, stand united against this bad deal that gives international legitimacy and transforms Iran — the region’s main source of instability — from the problem to being a wishful part of the solution.
20 Jul 2015
Chaim Schacham, Miami Herald: Iran nuclear pact: Tale of the scorpion and the frog
Few residents of the Middle East are unfamiliar with the story of the scorpion and the frog. This parable comes to mind when Israelis assess the nuclear deal just reached with Iran.
While Israel truly appreciates the global efforts made to confront the Iranian threat, and has encouraged them, it now has no choice but to raise its voice in warning. The recent agreement has fallen far short of its goals. Tragically, the savage Iranian scorpion has skillfully convinced the logic-loving Western frog that it’s safe to carry him on its back. It is Israel’s hope that its global allies in the search for peace and stability in the Middle East will urgently realize and address the shortcomings in the Iran nuclear deal before it stings us all.
Yehuda Yaakov, Boston Globe: Iran’s Rouhani gets his way on nuclear weapons
The agreement reached between the P5+1 and Iran makes far-reaching concessions in all areas meant to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capability. It does not adequately limit Iran’s research and development capabilities. It does not exclude to a sufficient degree Iran’s weaponization activity. It does not ensure a tight enough monitoring and verification mechanism.
17 Jul 2015
Ariel Levite, Haaretz: The good, the bad and the ugly nuclear agreement
The accord with Iran has both heartening and disturbing elements, but the biggest surprise in it is the size of the American wager.
One must admit that the nuclear deal finally thrashed out in Vienna between Iran and the powers earlier this week is fundamentally different from the package we were led to expect by all the parties’ public statements, as well as their interim agreements.
It is even utterly different from the parameters for the agreement, which were laid out both in the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) (the interim agreement made in Geneva on November 2013) and in the Parameters for the deal (concluded in Lausanne, March 2015). The outcome is an agreement that is simultaneously good, bad and ugly.
Eric Edelman and Ray Takeyh, Washington Post: On Iran, Congress should just say no
A careful examination of the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
reveals that it concedes an enrichment capacity that is too large; sunset clauses that are too short; a verification regime that is too leaky; and enforcement mechanisms that are too suspect. No agreement is perfect, but at times the scale of imperfection is so great that the judicious course is to reject the deal and renegotiate a more stringent one. The (previously) prudent parameters were overtaken by a cavalcade of concessions that began in 2013. The JCPOA stands as one of the most technologically permissive arms-control agreements in history.
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16 Jul 2015
Adam Taylor, Washington Post: Saudi Prince Bandar: The U.S. nuclear pact with North Korea failed. The Iran deal is worse.
Writing about the failed deal with North Korea, which was agreed in 1994 and collapsed in 2003, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States between 1981 and 2005, says, "it turned out that the strategic foreign policy analysis was wrong and there was a major intelligence failure." He added that if Clinton had known the full picture, "I am absolutely confident he would not have made that decision."
The Saudi royal then contrasts this with the present situation with Iran, "where the strategic foreign policy analysis, the national intelligence information, and America’s allies in the region's intelligence all predict not only the same outcome of the North Korean nuclear deal but worse – with the billions of dollars that Iran will have access to." Read more
15 Jul 2015
Dennis Ross, Washington Institute. Iran will cheat. Then what?
Knowing Iran has cheated is one thing; ensuring that there is a price for every transgression -- no matter how small -- is another. The agreement provides for "snap back" sanctions, which essentially lifts the suspension of sanctions in the event of an Iranian violation. Clearly, the snap-back function is designed to deal with a major breach of the deal, particularly because Iran explicitly states in the agreement that it will stop implementing its nuclear obligations if sanctions are re-imposed. So what happens if Iran cheats along the margins? For example, if they enrich uranium to 7%, not the permitted 3.67%? The snap-back function makes little sense in this circumstance, but the Joint Commission that brings together all the negotiating parties could obviously address such an issue of non-compliance. In this case, however, Iran will likely declare it made a mistake and say it will stop doing it.
Sound fine? Not really. Given Iran's track record, it will likely cheat along the margins to test the means of verification and see how it might be able to change the baseline. Read more
14 Jul 2015
Amos Yadlin, The Times: Nuclear-hungry Iran is pulling the wool over our eyes
The first and most optimistic is that Iran somehow transforms itself into a less malign state and constructively engages with the family of nations. Unfortunately, this is highly unlikely.
The second scenario is that Iran might decide in a few years to “ramp up” and renege on its commitments, as North Korea did in 2003. This scenario is unlikely but Israel and the international community must maintain a credible military option at all times to stop Iran producing a nuclear weapon.
The third and likeliest option is the most dangerous. Here, Iran will play it safe, keeping to the letter if not the spirit of the agreement, while waiting for any restrictions on it to expire in a decade.
Ron Dermer, Washington Post: Israeli ambassador: The four major problems with the Iran deal
There are four major problems with this deal. First, it leaves Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure. The second problem with this deal is that the restrictions being placed on Iran’s nuclear program are only temporary, with the most important restrictions expiring in 10 years. Iran won’t have to sneak into or break into the nuclear club. Under this deal, it could simply decide to walk in.
That leads to the third problem with the deal. Because states throughout our region know that the deal paves Iran’s path to the bomb, a number of them will race to get nuclear weapons of their own.
Finally, the deal transfers to the Iranian regime’s coffers $150 billion that is now frozen in foreign bank accounts. Iran has a $300 billion to $400 billion economy. A $150 billion cash bonanza for the regime is the equivalent of $8 trillion flowing into the U.S. treasury.
Those funds are unlikely to be spent on new cancer research centers in Tehran or on funding a GI bill for returning members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Instead, tens of billions are likely to flow to the Shiite militias in Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Palestinian terror groups in Gaza and other Iranian terror proxies in the region.
Robert Satloff, The Washington Institute: What's Really Wrong with the Iran Nuclear Deal
Originally, diplomacy with Iran was supposed to be based on a straight trade-off: America (and its partners) would end nuclear-related sanctions while Iran would end its domestic nuclear program. Then, the United States conceded to Iran the right to have its own nuclear reactors but not to develop indigenous capacity to enrich nuclear fuel, which doubles as the core element of nuclear weapons. Then, the United States conceded to Iran the right to enrich but under strict limitations. Then, the United States conceded to Iran that the strict limitations on enrichment would expire at a certain point in the future.
The result was that a deal originally conceived as trading sanctions relief for Iran's nuclear program evolved, over time, into a deal trading sanctions relief for time-limited restrictions on Iran's ambitious nuclear plans, enforced through a vigorous monitoring, verification and consequences regime. A close reading of the text suggests that there are potentially significant gaps even in the vigor of the new regime defined by the agreement. Read more
Aron Lund, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: What does the Iran Deal mean for Syria?
In Syria, where the Iranian government serves as a main prop for President Bashar al-Assad’s embattled government,
the opposition is predictably unhappy with the news. But the president himself is jubilant—and he swiftly fired off a congratulatory telegram to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he lauded the “
historic achievement.” Russia and China are now both angling to get into the Iranian arms market, which is sure to swell once oil money starts flooding back into government coffers in Tehran.
While Khamenei’s top priority is of course to improve Iran’s own defenses, recent years have proved that Iran sees its own security as inextricably tied to the network of regional allies and proxies it has cultivated in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon over the past decades. These allies include Assad and several
Syrian pro-government militias, but also the Lebanese Shia faction
Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia militias that fight in both
Iraq and
Syria. Having spent billions in support of its regional allies even as its economy suffered from crushing international sanctions, Iran isn’t likely to hold back now. A stronger Iran is a stronger Assad.
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While the nuclear issue and Iran's support of terrorism are ostensibly distinct, they are in fact implicitly linked. On the one hand, U.S. officials have made clear that the deal is focused squarely on nuclear issues and is not part of a grand bargain to modify destabilizing Iranian behavior in the Middle East. But at the core of the nuclear negotiations is major sanctions relief for Tehran, which will provide it with sufficient resources to dramatically expand its destabilizing role in the region.
With sanctions relief tied to the fulfillment of its major obligations in the agreement, Iran would -- within as little as six to 12 months -- have access to what are now frozen bank accounts that total anywhere from $100 billion to $150 billion in sanctioned oil revenues. This does not even count economic gains accrued to Iran through reintegration into the global financial system or future oil revenue.
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10 Jul 2015
Dore Gold, The Telegraph: Trusting Iran to stop terrorism is like inviting an arsonist to join the fire brigade
Iran remains one of the world's most prolific sponsors of terrorism. Winston Churchill has been attributed with the saying that he refused to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire. To take his distinction a step further, depending on Iran to fight terrorism is like making an arsonist part of the fire brigade. There is no basis for believing this will possibly work. Iran must unequivocally abandon its backing of international terrorism if it ever wants to rejoin the world community.