After the Labor Day weekend, both the House and Senate will begin debating a resolution of disapproval of the nuclear agreement between Iran and China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the United States and the European Union. Later they will vote on the deal. Millions of dollars are being spent by various lobbying groups to defeat it. Much less is being spent by supporters. (It is important to remember that this is not an agreement just between the US and Iran --- the US had many partners in this negotiation.)
To make myself better informed, I have just been reading some articles about it. On THE ATLANTIC web page, James Fallows makes the case in favor while Leon Wieseltier dissents.
[See “The Real Test of the Iran Deal” by James Fallows: July 28, 2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/the-iran-debate-moves-on/399713/
For Wieseltier’s dissent see “The Iran Deal and the Rut of History” July 27, 2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/iran-deal-history/399644/. I have also checked out two other pieces recently. One by Alan Dershowitz entitled “The Case Against the Iran Deal,” Newsweek August 8, 2015 http://www.newsweek.com/dershowitz-case-against-iran-deal-360911 which is a very sophisticated effort to confuse the reader. He argues that rejecting the deal may do more harm than good but then spends a lot of space explaining why accepting the deal may ALSO do more harm than good. A very surprising article is one by Patrick J. Buchanan. I think this article indicates that he dislikes Israel and Israeli policy more than he dislikes Iran. However, despite his bad motives, almost everything he says is convincing: See “The Iran Deal is not the End of the World” http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/pat-buchanan-iran-nuclear-deal/2015/07/14/id/657055/]
I strongly support the deal and none of my reading has changed that position. Let me explain why I support it. Rejecting it will leave Iran no other choice but to attempt to develop nuclear weapons. They know about the hostility of the United States and Israel and that in fact, Israel came very close a few years ago to sending aircraft to attempt to destroy their weaponizing infrastructure. (For that see the following http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/28/the-molten-three-israels-aborted-strike-on-iran/)
Once Iran begins to move to weaponized its facilities, there will almost certainly be an Israeli military response. Once Israel launches attacks on Iran, a long drawn out war between the two of them will follow. That war will be conducted in the air and via international terrorist attacks. That’s the best scenario if the deal collapses. A worse result would be a full scale war between the US and Iran.
Accepting the deal buys lots of time and keeps the coalition that forced Iran to negotiate together. This last point is extremely important. If Congress disapproves the deal, the coalition that imposed severe sanctions on Iran will fall apart. During the period that the deal is in effect, the internal changes at work within Iran (the continued unpopularity of the clerical regime, the hunger of the younger generation for opportunities and positive interaction with the rest of the world) will be accelerated. It is not an accident that the most reactionary and retrograde sections of the Iranian polity opposed the deal as strongly as does the Republican Party here at home. They know that without confrontation with the rest of the world, their grip on power will continue to loosen.
So what are the best arguments that can be made against the deal? It appears that one of Mr. Wieseltier’s main points is that the deal does not guarantee that Iran will never possess nuclear weapons. The problem with that reasoning is that NO DEAL can guarantee that. Even a military commitment to destroy Iran’s capacity to create and stockpile nuclear weapons will not guarantee a non-nuclear Iran. All they have to do is dig deeper. Nothing short of us obliterating the entire country with nuclear weapons would stop a determined government from bringing that project to a successful conclusion. Mr. Wieseltier argues that there is nothing wrong with the status quo – punishing sanctions to weaken the regime plus promise of military intervention if they move to develop nuclear weapons. However, our allies will not permit the status quo to continue – sanctions will crumble almost immediately if Congress rejects the deal.
Another argument – one that is echoed in advertising taken out by AIPAC and other lobbying groups – is that the deal does nothing to change Iran’s behavior as a supporter of terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, nor does it force Iran to release political prisoners, some of them Americans. The problem is, the same argument could have been raised against every agreement made between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. (This is one of the key arguments in the Buchanan piece.) Arms control agreements and other compromises between enemies do not change the nature of either regime. Instead, they change some behavior in ways that are beneficial enough to both parties to give them reasons to reach the agreements and then to abide by them. What is valuable about the current deal with Iran is that the International Atomic Energy Agency charged with enforcing the agreement will have unprecedented access to Iran’s facilities. That is why most arms control experts, both US and international (including Israelis) have supported the deal.
The arguments against this deal are poor ones. Congress MUST support the deal. The peace of the world may depends on it.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author (with Howard Sherman) of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
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