IRAN’S NUKE PAUSE — BAD NEWS?

So Iran has appar­ently stopped enrich­ing ura­nium for the moment, press­ing pause on its nuclear pro­gram. Great news, right?
Actually, it could hardly be worse, argues Michael Levi, the Brookings Institution’s res­i­dent atomic author­ity. Iran’s time-​​out is the prod­uct of a deal between Tehran and three European coun­tries. The mul­lahs made sim­i­lar com­mit­ments last year — and didn’t keep them. And even if Tehran decides to stick to its agree­ments this time around, this new bar­gain has “dealt Iran a stronger hand,” Levi contends.

Supporters insist that the new lan­guage is more spe­cific and pro­vides fewer loop­holes than the last deal. But in exchange for a mere tight­en­ing of loop­holes, the EU-​​3 has offered Iran a pretty indul­gent deal. Most impor­tantly, the Europeans have again promised to keep Tehran away from the Security Council, a com­mit­ment with irre­versible con­se­quences — after all, while the Europeans can change their minds and head to the Security Council when­ever they please, they can­not turn back the clock. Every day Iran oper­ates under less­ened pres­sure is a day it might move closer to pro­duc­ing a bomb. (Only an overly opti­mistic or nave observer can con­fi­dently believe Iran con­tin­ues no nuclear efforts in secret.) Moreover, the past two years have shown that the fur­ther into his­tory Iran’s most egre­gious actions recede, the less will­ing other coun­tries become to pun­ish Tehran for them. So by delay­ing a Security Council con­fronta­tion, the EU-​​3 has, for now, dealt Iran a stronger hand.
The Europeans didn’t stop there, how­ever. They promised to bring Iran into WTO-​​entry nego­ti­a­tions; they also promised the pos­si­bil­ity of nuclear, tech­no­log­i­cal, and eco­nomic coop­er­a­tion. Finally, they deliv­ered an impor­tant intan­gi­ble to Iran–the deal, which never men­tions the country’s vio­la­tions, will pro­vide Tehran with use­ful ammu­ni­tion for its pro­pa­ganda machine domes­ti­cally, in the Middle East, and around the world. As a guest on Iranian and Arabic tele­vi­sion pro­grams, I’ve expe­ri­enced first-​​hand the impor­tance of this fac­tor: Iranian offi­cials seize on any sen­ti­ment or phrase from an out­side power that can be read as exon­er­at­ing its nuclear pro­gram and use it to drown out rea­soned oppo­si­tion. Now, faced with claims that the out­side world, includ­ing Europe, believes Iran vio­lated last October’s agreement–a plain truth–Iran will repeat­edly pro­duce the EU-​​3 deal as evi­dence to the con­trary. That, in turn, will bol­ster domes­tic sup­port for the regime and its actions while cre­at­ing regional sym­pa­thy for Iran’s claims of mis­treat­ment at the hands of the West.
It isn’t just the EU-​​3 that is to blame here. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which for the most part has done a solid job in inves­ti­gat­ing Iran, put itself in an inap­pro­pri­ate polit­i­cal posi­tion as part of the EU-​​3 nego­ti­a­tions. Scheduled to deliver a crit­i­cal report on Iran’s activ­i­ties last week, the agency delayed its release pend­ing the out­come of the EU-​​3 nego­ti­a­tions. In doing so, it clearly sug­gested that Iran could influ­ence the report–which is pre­sum­ably a fac­tual account­ing of Iran’s activities–by agree­ing to the right deal. Imagine a crim­i­nal psy­chi­a­trist delay­ing her assess­ment of a defen­dant pend­ing the out­come of plea bar­gain nego­ti­a­tions, and you’ve got an idea of how irre­spon­si­ble this is. 

November 22nd, 2004 | Nukes | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.