Congress should give the interim deal with Iran a chance

After a decades-long standoff, Iran and the West (plus China and Russia) have signed an interim agreement to halt Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for modest sanctions relief. While some are calling it a historic breakthrough along the lines of Nixon’s visit to China, the U.S. media has been mostly skeptical. And in a rare display of bipartisanship, Congress is already looking for ways to derail the deal by passing legislation to impose new sanctions on Iran and tie the President’s hands for future negotiations. Despite the fact that President Obama has successfully passed tougher sanctions on Iran than any previous administration, the U.S. media in lockstep with Congress continue to thumb their noses at anything that resembles diplomacy when it comes to Iran. And while other U.S. allies in the region—primarily the Gulf States led by Saudi Arabia—have expressed their concerns over this deal, few Americans care about what the Saudis think. As representatives of the American people, what Congress really cares about is what Israel thinks.

That’s where things get dicey.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has wasted no time in calling the deal a “historic mistake.” Consistent with his hard-line views on Iran, Netanyahu believes that Iran has bamboozled the world, and has ramped up the rhetoric for a unilateral military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And because the Israeli Prime Minister gets to send his spokespeople to talk to the U.S. media, it would be very easy to conclude that the “Israeli perspective” is to prefer military action instead of diplomacy.

That conclusion is wrong.

The Israeli military establishment and intelligence community have long been at odds with Netanyahu on how to handle the stand off with Iran. Israeli intelligence has concluded that Iran has not yet made the decision on whether to build a bomb , and that a military strike on Iran would lead to further destabilization of the region, while (at best) delaying the nuclear program by a year or two. In essence: not only would a war with Iran tank the world economy and send oil prices skyrocketing. It wouldn’t even accomplish its objective. Israeli investors seem to agree with the military establishment. After news of the deal, the Israeli stock market went up, showing that Israeli investors see the deal as diminishing a risk of a military confrontation, rather than augmenting it.

Those opposed to the interim deal with Iran should consider what would have happened had there been no deal at all at the Geneva talks. According to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, in 2003 Iran approached the United States with an offer to talk about its nuclear program, but the Bush administrated believed that Iran, having been battered by sanctions, would either capitulate or collapse if Washington stayed the course. The result was that Iran had 164 centrifuges operating in 2003. Today it has 19,000 centrifuges. Given that the interim deal is the first time in a decade that Iran has halted any aspect of its nuclear program, it appears that talking has a better success rate than not talking.

Does this mean that the U.S. and its allies should trust Iran? No. It doesn’t. And given that both parties in Congress are actively trying to derail this deal by unilaterally imposing harsher sanctions, Iran has good reasons for not trusting us either. But that’s why the interim deal, though far from perfect, is at least the start of something good. It opens up Iran to unprecedented levels of inspections, forces them to neutralize uranium enrichments beyond what is needed for electricity, and puts them in a position to where if they decided to cheat or renege on their end of the deal, they would have to do so openly in the eyes of the world. Up until now, Iran could claim that U.S. style diplomacy is do-what-we-say-or-we’ll-strangle-you. At least now, if Iran balks, the U.S. and its allies can credibly say that they gave peace a chance.

Before Congress jumps the gun, it needs to take a deep breath… and let the diplomatic process continue.

Aaron Taylor is on the steering team of Evangelicals for Peace, a network of Evangelicals dedicated to the principles of just peacemaking. This article appeared on Sojourners.

America’s budget-busting foreign policy disconnect

By Aaron D. Taylor

A recent Gallup poll shows that 81% of Americans want the President to be focused on domestic issues, while 9% say they want him to focus on foreign policy issues. Not too surprising….Until you consider that the fastest growing domestic priority is the deficit (69%). The lopsided number between the importance of the deficit and the importance of foreign policy is the first clue that, for most Americans, there’s a disconnect between domestic policy and foreign policy.

Clue number two is a bit more alarming.

The same poll indicates that 54% favor a “strong” stance—read: military attack—against Iran versus 39% who say that it’s more important to avoid a military conflict with Iran. Put these facts together and a disturbing picture emerges: the less Americans care about foreign policy, the more willing they are to go to war, and the less they’re able to see that war=skyrocketing deficits.


The disconnect couldn’t come at a worse time.

While the West is trying to strangle Iran into submission with sanctions, Iran has responded with threats to close off the Straight of Hormuz, and if Iran were to carry out their threat in any way, it would trigger the Carter Doctrine , which demands a military response to any hostile party that seeks to impede the free flow of oil through the Persian Gulf.

This wouldn’t be so bad if we could actually talk to Iran, but ever since the revolution in 1979, the U.S. and Iran have had no official ways of communicating with each other. Despite the pro-war rhetoric by some in the media, the idea of talking to Iran is not a concoction invented by naïve, idealistic, peace-nik appeasers in the vein of Neville Chamberlain.

Admiral Mike Mullen has this to say:

We haven’t had a connection with Iran since 1979. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we had links to the Soviet Union. We are not talking to Iran, so we don’t understand each other. If something happens, it’s virtually assured that we won’t get it right — that there will be miscalculation which would be extremely dangerous in that part of the world (italics emphasis mine)

Another person that believes the U.S. should negotiate with Iran is Robert Baer , the ex-CIA agent who inspired George Clooney’s character in the movie Syriana. In his ground-breaking book, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower, Baer presents three options for how the U.S. could deal with Iran: contain Iran (which would take a half a million troops and would last anywhere between 30 and 100 years), provoke a Sunni-Shia war (the Mad Max Option), or settle with Iran. Of the third option, Baer writes:

The only real option for the United States—if we admit we’re not prepared to enter a hundred-year war, with a determined enemy, on the other side of the world—is the last one.

Baer also war warns that war with Iran would “drain the treasury” and turn us into a “third world economy.”

Whether Baer’s predictions are accurate or not, at the very least America should be skeptical about its ability to contain the consequences of another military confrontation. Few predicted that invading Iraq would cost us a trillion dollars and result in strengthening Iran—but it did.

The people that are pushing for a military confrontation with Iran are walking a fine line of contradiction. On the one hand they behave as if Iran is powerful enough to be the single greatest threat to the existence of humanity. On the other hand, they behave as if we can bomb them without consequences. If only 2012 wasn't an election year!

God help us if things get out of hand.