The Iran nuclear deal announced July 14 is, so far, a cypher, perfectly amenable to different reads. Champions say it’s brilliant, or the best deal that could be had, or better than no deal. Naysayers say it’s a catastrophe. The New York Times described the deal as a ‘bet’ whose direction and payout would take years to confirm. Predictably, bunkered-up Syrian leader Hafez al Assad congratulated the signatories; and Israeli
In an OpEd for the Financial Times back in 2008, I suggested that it would be counterproductive for the West not to recognize Iran’s aspirations to regional leadership, or to counter the efforts of several Arab Gulf states to integrate Iran into the Gulf economic ecosystem. This was the beginning of Obama’s first term, and the President was courting a break with the U.S.' past aggressively anti-Iran stance. There were indications of breaks in Iran’s hardline wall. Iranians cooed ‘OO-baa-ma’ ("He is With Us", in Farsi).
Since then, for sure, a lot has happened. There was a failed Iranian uprising and bloody crackdown in 2010 on the peaceful Green Revolution (following the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which many Iranians considered rigged), the continuing free-fall of most of the Arab Revolution states, and more recently the opportunistic and macabre rise of the Islamic State (ISIS).
To be sure, massive U.S. blunders in Iraq, and delayed reactions in Syria and Libya, helped get us where we are today. But Iran continues to back the unconscionable Assad regime in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and is expanding its influence over neighboring Iraq. There no indication that Iran will collaborate in the fight against ISIS beyond what serves its own immediate interests -- and indeed, beyond a certain point, it may not. For years, Iran’s efforts to destabilize Yemen to the detriment of the Saudis, were denied or downplayed by the international media.
Some of the pro-deal camp suggests these are all defensive, not offensive moves, that the deal will provide Iran with time to evolve, naturally. How can we be sure? We can’t.
What the deal doesn’t seem to do explicitly is address regional power politics, or boundaries. Indeed, one of the most concerning aspects of the deal is that the architects, and other senior administration officials, appear to expect that Iran will not change its behavior anytime soon.
Presumably we care whether Iran has a nuclear weapon, because of the coercive value of nuclear power status, as well as the destabilizing effect of a regional nuclear arms race. But Iran doesn’t need a nuclear bomb to cause chaos now, and the deal does not prevent this. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was quick to say that deal or no, Iran would continue the same policies vs. the "arrogant" U.S., in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, etc. Nor is the deal calming Arab States’ calls for nukes of their own. Neither of those statements should be taken at full face value.
The deal provides potentially swift relief from sanctions. Is that good? For those without resources, and the Iranian regime itself, most certainly yes. For the West, and the region? Who knows. Iran is too big an economic prize to ignore, and an opening will inevitably bring many Western suitors, and lucrative deals. Those deals could make it even harder to enforce any future restrictions. The Iranian regime must feel confident that the situation is fundamentally different from that of Libya, and that they are not making the same mistakes as did Muammar Gaddafi, whose nuclear agreement ultimately turned out to be a Trojan Horse (the program was also nowhere near as advanced as Iran's).
So, is it better to leave Iran under sanctions, or take a big leap of faith? Is it wise to take any faith-infused measures in the current environment? Maybe. Hopefully the deal’s architects have thought a lot farther ahead than those of the Greek ‘no’.
