By extending nuclear talks with Iran for seven more months, the major powers avoided total collapse but also raised the stakes, "ensuring that failure, if that is what eventually happens, will be all the more cataclysmic," according to the Guardian. My take, however, is that a bad deal with the Iranian regime is likely to destabilize the Middle East.
How could a bad deal destabilize the region?
It might look something like this: Iran pockets, without reciprocity, the backing away by the major powers from U.N. Security Council Resolutions (UNSC) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from demands for full disclosure of "possible military dimensions" (PMD) of Iran's nuclear program. Consequently, regional actors follow the lead of Riyadh and Jerusalem — getting the bomb (as Sen. Kirk outlined) and bombing Iran, respectively.
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), on Nov. 18 Iran's Fars news agency — which is affiliated with the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — revealed U.S. demands from Tehran in the talks. Although Iran is to permit snap inspections at every Iranian facility, including military ones now off limits to inspectors, there is no explicit mention of PMD.
The MEMRI report is troubling. But a Reuters article from Saturday is even more so: It reports that the major powers "will likely stop short of demanding full disclosure of any secret weapon work by Tehran to avoid killing an historic deal." PMD is a baseline for verification. Inspectors require a yardstick to compare with the current Iranian nuclear program. PMD is the gold standard for the IAEA to operate in Iran.
This issue has been raised regularly throughout the talks.
Although the front story is important, consider the backstory: war for Washington between realists and conservatives over a moral and strategic case for keeping faith with friends.
Realists deal with states as they are and pay less attention to how they treat people. Conservatives are more likely to take into account the odious nature of a regime like Iran, its abysmal human rights record, and strategic value of keeping faith with its people. President Barack Obama is a realist who ignores how Tehran treats people and discounts being faithful, if Washington closes an arms control accord with Tehran.
President Ronald Reagan was a conservative who condemned the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," succeeded in reducing oppression of Soviet people, and negotiated arms control with Moscow. Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev concluded the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces accord in 1987 and established the foundation for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which concluded in 1991 during Bush 41. Reagan and his successor made strides inpersuading Moscow to accept the Helsinki Final Act, which allowed for human rights to flourish in the Eastern bloc, break away from Moscow, and demise of the Soviet Union.
Obama properly uses "pure evil" to condemn beheading of an American citizen by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS); he does not censure the Iranian regime, which engages in public hangings of political dissidents and encourages Baghdad to oppress the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI)—Iranian dissidents in Camp Liberty, Iraq.
Given Obama's realism, he ignores the plight of friends left behind in Iraq after the withdrawal of U.S. military forces. Even with reintroduction of military advisors embedded in Iraqi and Kurdish units to degrade and destroy ISIS, there is little attention to friends we left in Iraq, vulnerable to persecution. But Obama is not alone leaving friends behind. A Republican realist, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, abandoned Vietnamese who helped U.S. troops during the war until it was too late in 1975.
On Tuesday, September 11, 2012, Prof. Raymond Tanter gave a speech at the Center for Performing Arts, Herzliya, Israel.
World Summit on Counter-Terrorism: Terrorism's Global Impact ICT's 12th Annual International Conference.
How to counter Iran's bold cheating on its nuclear commitments? Publicize and act on revelations of mendacity alleged by the Iranian opposition group with a track record of valid revelations — the National of Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and its office in Washington, NCRIUS.
The narrative of talks between the major powers and Iran focuses on whether Iran will agree to curb uranium enrichment by cutting down on centrifuges in exchange for sanctions relief. But the backstory — Tehran's serial cheating — should be the front narrative.
Is President Barack Obama hoping for a deal so much that he ignores Iran's prior record of defiance of its obligations to be transparent? Our president's desperate October letter to an unresponsive and uncooperative Supreme Leader of Iran signals weakness in face of defiance and cheating is of little consequence.
But it is difficult for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify whether Iran is cheating: IAEA inspectors are not allowed to gain access to a major facility indicating marrying fuel to a delivery system — Parchin — on the grounds it is a military site for conventional weapons research and off-limits to the IAEA.
In support of the international community, NCRIUS released details of Iran's illicit nuclear weapons activities at a press conference on Nov. 7, 2014.