Category Archives: Iran deal

Iran’s leaders fall into line behind nuclear accord

The New York Times reports: Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iranian hard-liners have been free to take to the streets and object to any form of compromise with the West, and particularly the United States.

But when a conspicuously small group of hard-liners did so on Tuesday morning in front of the Parliament building, holding up placards and shouting slogans against the nuclear framework agreed to last week in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Iranian Interior Ministry condemned the demonstration as illegal, because the protesters had failed to obtain a permit. There were also very few reporters.

It was perhaps the first time that conservatives — in this case mostly young people genuinely disappointed over the compromises Iran has made to reach a nuclear agreement — seemed disconnected from the power structure here.

Analysts say the message from the top is clear: Get with the program. Senior officials, important clerics, lawmakers and Revolutionary Guards commanders, who in the past have reflexively opposed any accommodation with the West, now go out of their way to laud Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his team of negotiators, as well as the government of President Hassan Rouhani.

On Tuesday, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the highest-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, joined the chorus. “The Iranian nation and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps thank these dear negotiators for their honest attempts and political jihad, and for their resistance on the defined red lines,” the semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted him as saying. [Continue reading…]

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GOP’s Israel support deepens as political contributions shift

The New York Times reports: As the proposed agreement over Iran’s nuclear program is debated in coming weeks, President Obama will make his case to a Congress controlled by Republicans who are more fervently pro-Israel than ever, partly a result of ideology, but also a product of a surge in donations and campaign spending on their behalf by a small group of wealthy donors.

One of the surprisingly high-profile critics is Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who burst to prominence with a letter signed by 46 Republican colleagues to leaders of Iran warning against a deal. Mr. Cotton, echoing criticism by Israeli leaders, swiftly denounced the framework reached on Thursday as “a list of dangerous U.S. concessions that will put Iran on the path to nuclear weapons” — words, his colleagues say, that expressed his deep concern about Iran’s threat to Israel’s security.

But it is also true that Mr. Cotton and other Republicans benefited from millions in campaign spending in 2014 by several pro-Israel Republican billionaires and other influential American donors who helped them topple Democratic opponents.

Republicans currently in the Senate raised more money during the 2014 election cycle in direct, federally regulated campaign contributions from individuals and political action committees deemed pro-Israel than their Democratic counterparts, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics and analyzed for The New York Times by a second nonprofit, MapLight. The Republican advantage was the first in more than a decade. [Continue reading…]

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Netanyahu’s phony claim that he wants ‘a better deal’ with Iran

Jessica T. Mathews writes: By definition, a negotiated agreement is imperfect. This one in particular entails risks, costs, extended vigilance, and a significant chance of future failure. Judging it begins and ends with clarity about what choices are truly before us. That has a simple answer: there are only two alternatives to a negotiated deal.

One is a return to the situation that prevailed for a decade before negotiations began and before an interim agreement was reached at the end of 2013. In the best case (in which Iran is seen to have been the cause of negotiating failure), punishing multilateral sanctions would continue. Iran’s leaders would respond as they have before, standing up to foreigners’ pressure by continuing their nuclear program—adding more advanced centrifuges, stockpiling enriched uranium, completing a reactor that produces plutonium, and taking Iran to the threshold of a nuclear weapon and perhaps beyond. There might continue to be some international inspectors on the ground, though with far less access than at present.

We know where this option leads, for it has been well tested. In 2003, the US rejected an Iranian proposal that would have capped its centrifuges at 3,000. By the time the current negotiations started a decade later, the standoff created by more sanctions and more centrifuges had resulted in costs of nearly $100 billion to Iran from sanctions and its production of 19,000 centrifuges. The lesson of sanctions — from Cuba to Russia and beyond — is that they can impose a cost on wrongdoing, but if the sanctioned country chooses to pay the price, sanctions cannot prevent it from continuing the sanctioned activities.

The second alternative is bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even supporters of this option do not believe that it would do more than delay Iran’s progress by more than two to four years. It would certainly unite all Iranians around the absolute necessity of having a nuclear deterrent. It would strengthen Iran’s hard-liners, radicalizing its politics and probably prolonging clerical rule. While the bombed facilities were being rebuilt, with more of them being put securely underground, there would be no inspectors or cameras. Outsiders would know far less than they do now about what is being built and where or how close Iran had come to producing a bomb. Soon another round of bombing would be necessary.

Is there a third alternative, namely a tougher deal that requires no enrichment in Iran and the destruction of its nuclear infrastructure? Prime Minister Netanyahu promised in his appearance before Congress that the US can get such a deal by “call[ing] their bluff.” Simply walk away from the table and “they’ll be back, because they need the deal a lot more than you do.” If sanctions brought Iran to the table, this argument goes, more sanctions and more pressure will get us everything we want. It sounds reasonable, but it fails on closer inspection.

First, of course, the argument ignores the essence of negotiation — that neither side gets everything it wants. Also, although it is true that sanctions are imposing real pain on the Iranian economy, there are many in Iran’s power elite, especially in the Revolutionary Guard, who profit from the country’s isolation and would welcome continuing sanctions. Others oppose a deal for ideological reasons. The balance in Iranian politics that brought negotiators into serious talks for the first time was long in coming and remains precarious. If the US were to reverse course, abandoning negotiations in hopes of a winner-take-all outcome, Iran would follow suit.

Moreover, if other nations found America’s reasons for rejecting a deal unreasonable, support for multilateral sanctions would quickly erode. Soon we would be back to ineffective, unilateral sanctions.

The question, then, is whether proponents of this approach have diagnosed fundamental weaknesses in the deal that has been reached and genuinely believe that renewed negotiation could strengthen it, or whether they are counting on both sides walking away from the table and not returning. The fact that so many of them — emphatically including Netanyahu — trashed the deal before it existed and make demands they know to be nonnegotiable strongly suggests that the insistence that the US “negotiate a better deal” is phony. [Continue reading…]

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Iran’s grass-roots politics and the nuclear deal

Mohammad Ali Kadivar and Ali Honari write: The recently agreed-upon nuclear framework between Iran and the P5+1 world powers is a great example of how grass-roots participation at the level of domestic politics can interact with important changes at the level of international politics. The nuclear breakthrough could not have happened without important developments that led to the election of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani in June 2013. If this agreement turns in to a comprehensive deal by June 2015, it will have important ramifications for Iranian domestic politics.

Grass-roots activism was crucial for the results of the 2013 election in different ways. First, grass-roots pressures convinced reformist leaders to support a candidate in the election despite the disqualification of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was initially the first choice for the reformist camp. Second, grass-roots participants in the electoral campaigns of Rouhani and the other reformist candidate, Mohammad Reza Aref, pressured the two to make an alliance and stay in the election with a single candidate. Reformist backing was crucial for Rouhani’s electoral victory. According to polls before the election, Rouhani was a runner-up candidate until the day the reformist coalition headed by former president Mohammad Khatami endorsed him. After this endorsement, his support skyrocketed and continued until election day. Finally, the mass mobilization after the disputed election of 2009, later called the Green Movement, perhaps contributed to the rather clean voting process in 2013. The protest mobilization of 2009 signaled both the high costs of fraud as well as Iranian’s strong desire for a fair and free election. From this perspective, the rather healthy polling process in 2013 was a result of 2009’s large protest wave.

Rouhani’s victory had important effects on the conditions of civil society forces and democratic activists in Iran. True to promises in Rouhani’s electoral platform, the level of state repression, which had intensified since 2009, remarkably decreased after the election. After 2013, new newspapers with moderate or reformist orientation came into being. The policy of barring students from higher education because of their political activities ended due to diligent insistence from the new Ministry of Sciences. Accordingly, activists and politicians perceived that the level of repression had decreased and that they would therefore not be prosecuted for organizing private meetings. When reformist groups were able to have a public convention in January 2015 for the first time after six years, Khatami stated that under the new administration the context is more favorable for gatherings and activities of different groups and organizations. As such, there appears to be a greater frequency of public protest about issues such as violence against women, teachers’ salaries and air pollution. [Continue reading…]

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Israel should be given the consideration it deserves

Juan Cole writes: US television news isn’t very good and it has clearly gotten worse over the past 20 years. In the aftermath of the Kerry-Zarif initial framework deal on nuclear energy in Iran, it seems obvious that an interview with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif would be newsworthy. But to my knowledge none of the networks or major cable news shows had him on.

Or you could have talked to the British, French, German, Russian or Chinese foreign ministers, all of whom were principals and all of whom would have had interesting insights.

Instead, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was given repeated access to millions of Americans to talk trash about the deal over the weekend and to make mostly false allegations about its contours. Israel is a small country of 8 million with a gross domestic product in the range of Portugal. Netanyahu isn’t a party to the deal.

As Bill Clinton famously once said: “Who the fuck does he think he is?”

The parties to this agreement (the P5+1 and Iran) collectively represent 30% of the world’s population. Israel — smaller than 96 other countries — makes up 0.11% of humanity.

Iran’s close neighbors make up 5.5%, including several states which regard the Islamic republic as their primary foe, and yet none of whom assert a right to have the instrumental role in shaping global affairs that Israel claims.

The world’s tolerance for Israel demanding a level of influence utterly disproportionate to its size, is wearing thin.

Those who never know when to stop asking for more, risk losing the advantages they already enjoy.

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Is Netanyahu responsible for Iran deal?

Akiva Eldar writes: If the joint Lausanne statement becomes a permanent agreement between the superpowers and Iran, we will have to take off our hats to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No one contributed more than he did to the removal, or at least the postponement, of the danger that power-hungry ayatollahs would have their fingers on a button of an atom bomb. Leaders have won the Nobel Prize for lesser achievements.

For years, Netanyahu forced the international community to put dealing with the Iranian nuclear program at the top of its agenda. If it weren’t for his threat (whether real or not) to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities, it’s not certain that the powers would have united to ensure that Iran would have to make do with nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. If it weren’t for Netanyahu’s success in recruiting members of Congress to the initiative to intensify the sanctions on Iran, it’s quite doubtful that Tehran would have entered open negotiations with “the Great Satan.” Like the idea that only a conservative leader like Richard Nixon could have paved the way to US dialogue with Communist China, it can be said that only a conservative Israeli leader like Netanyahu could have paved the one to US dialogue with Shiite Iran.

Nevertheless, not only does Netanyahu not claim an iota of credit for the important achievement reached April 2 in Lausanne, but even before all the details of the agreement were known, the prime minister rushed to gather his Cabinet to disclaim it. He sent his ministers to radio and television studios with instructions to portray the agreement as a capitulation to a regime that strives to destroy Israel. And thus, Netanyahu admits to the failure of his life’s mission to save Israel from a second Holocaust. [Continue reading…]

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Statements of support for the framework agreement with Iran

No War With Iran has compiled a collection of statements of support from, among others:

Arms Control Association
Atlantic Council
Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation
Center for a New American Security
International Crisis Group
Ploughshares Fund

The Arab American Institute (“AAI”), J Street, and the National Iranian American Council (“NIAC”) issued a joint statement welcoming the agreement.

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The Iran Project statement on the announcement of a framework for a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran

Statement released by the Iran Project, April 6, 2015:

We welcome the announcement that the U.S. government and other major world powers have reached a framework accord to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

This achievement is the result of the sustained effort of the Foreign Ministers of seven governments spanning nearly 18 months, to put in place a set of constraints and inspections that would limit Iran’s nuclear program to peaceful purposes.

While technical details are still to be fully resolved, important U.S. objectives have been achieved:

  • uranium enrichment only at the Natanz plant and no enrichment at the underground facility at Fordow;
  • prohibition of the Arak heavy water research reactor from producing weapons grade plutonium or reprocessing to recover plutonium from spent fuel;
  • a reduction and then a limit on Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium to 300 KG for 15 years; broad and sweeping inspections and other constraints;
  • a two-thirds reduction in installed centrifuges for ten years; a range of limitations and inspections that will be in force over a 10-25 year period and some permanent inspections of the program.

We recognize that full evaluation must await a final comprehensive agreement. Important, difficult, and ambiguous issues still remain. Their resolution will be key to the solidity of the final agreement and its support in this country. They include:

  • what means will be used to limit the stockpile of Iran’s enriched uranium to 300 Kg of LEU for 15 years;
  • how the existing UNSC resolutions sanctioning Iran will be replaced by a resolution or resolutions that creates an approved procurement channel and places restrictions on conventional arms and ballistic missiles;
  • what will be the set of measures that will address the IAEA’s concerns regarding the possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s program;
  • what scale of uranium enrichment will be possible for Iran after ten years;
  • what will be the relationship between the lifting of sanctions and Iran’s performance;
  • what is the system for evaluating the severity of violations of the agreement and how would they trigger the snap-back of sanctions.

The framework will be examined and interpreted differently in the United States and Iran over the next three months. These negotiations have been among the most complex diplomatic efforts in recent history. Nevertheless, we believe the framework represents important progress toward our goal of blocking an Iranian nuclear weapon. Continue reading →

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The Obama Doctrine and Iran

Tom Friedman writes: President Obama invited me to the Oval Office Saturday afternoon to lay out exactly how he was trying to balance these risks and opportunities in the framework accord reached with Iran last week in Switzerland. What struck me most was what I’d call an “Obama doctrine” embedded in the president’s remarks. It emerged when I asked if there was a common denominator to his decisions to break free from longstanding United States policies isolating Burma, Cuba and now Iran. Obama said his view was that “engagement,” combined with meeting core strategic needs, could serve American interests vis-à-vis these three countries far better than endless sanctions and isolation. He added that America, with its overwhelming power, needs to have the self-confidence to take some calculated risks to open important new possibilities — like trying to forge a diplomatic deal with Iran that, while permitting it to keep some of its nuclear infrastructure, forestalls its ability to build a nuclear bomb for at least a decade, if not longer.

“We are powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk. And that’s the thing … people don’t seem to understand,” the president said. “You take a country like Cuba. For us to test the possibility that engagement leads to a better outcome for the Cuban people, there aren’t that many risks for us. It’s a tiny little country. It’s not one that threatens our core security interests, and so [there’s no reason not] to test the proposition. And if it turns out that it doesn’t lead to better outcomes, we can adjust our policies. The same is true with respect to Iran, a larger country, a dangerous country, one that has engaged in activities that resulted in the death of U.S. citizens, but the truth of the matter is: Iran’s defense budget is $30 billion. Our defense budget is closer to $600 billion. Iran understands that they cannot fight us. … You asked about an Obama doctrine. The doctrine is: We will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities.”

The notion that Iran is undeterrable — “it’s simply not the case,” he added. “And so for us to say, ‘Let’s try’ — understanding that we’re preserving all our options, that we’re not naïve — but if in fact we can resolve these issues diplomatically, we are more likely to be safe, more likely to be secure, in a better position to protect our allies, and who knows? Iran may change. If it doesn’t, our deterrence capabilities, our military superiority stays in place. … We’re not relinquishing our capacity to defend ourselves or our allies. In that situation, why wouldn’t we test it?”

Obviously, Israel is in a different situation, he added. “Now, what you might hear from Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, which I respect, is the notion, ‘Look, Israel is more vulnerable. We don’t have the luxury of testing these propositions the way you do,’ and I completely understand that. And further, I completely understand Israel’s belief that given the tragic history of the Jewish people, they can’t be dependent solely on us for their own security. But what I would say to them is that not only am I absolutely committed to making sure that they maintain their qualitative military edge, and that they can deter any potential future attacks, but what I’m willing to do is to make the kinds of commitments that would give everybody in the neighborhood, including Iran, a clarity that if Israel were to be attacked by any state, that we would stand by them. And that, I think, should be … sufficient to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see whether or not we can at least take the nuclear issue off the table.”

He added: “What I would say to the Israeli people is … that there is no formula, there is no option, to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon that will be more effective than the diplomatic initiative and framework that we put forward — and that’s demonstrable.” [Continue reading…]

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If hardliners kill the Iran nuclear program deal, it will be in Washington, not Tehran

Ariane Tabatabai writes: The scenes in Tehran in the hours following the announcement of the nuclear deal were a testament to how important Iranians felt it was to their lives. In different cities, people took to the streets on Thursday, honking horns, waving flags, cheering. It had been a long time coming. In the months leading up to the deadline, whenever I visited or called friends and family in Iran, the first questions I heard were typically, “What’s going on in the talks? Will we get a deal?” A day after the agreement was made public in Lausanne, when Friday prayers were held across Iran, prayer leaders welcomed a “success” for the Islamic Republic, and upon his arrival at the airport, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s return to the country was celebrated as if he’d led Iran to the next World Cup.

With the technical issues on the table in Lausanne now virtually all addressed, many eyes are turning toward Washington and Tehran to see what will happen next. As the parties draft a final deal ahead of the June 30 deadline, the key challenges won’t be in the international arena, but in the domestic politics of both capitals. There are, to be sure, a number of skeptics in Iran, some of them in positions of power: Hossein Shariatmadari, the managing editor of the influential hardline newspaper Kayhan, for instance, said Iran had “given up a horse with a saddle for a broken harness.” Esmail Kowsari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, claimed that the Iranian negotiating team “has only killed time” in the past year, and that “the nation and country’s time has been wasted.”

But despite these protests, it is Washington, not Tehran, where domestic politics are most likely to become a stumbling point. The three months between the announcement of the agreement and when the final deal will be made public are a crucial phase that could make or break its success. Interim deals have been brought home to skeptical audiences before. But this time — at least in Tehran — a combination of factors, from the savvy salesmanship of the negotiating team to the implicit backing of some of the country’s most important stakeholders seem primed to ensure, if not smooth sailing, then at least enough buy-in keep the accord viable. [Continue reading…]

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Russia hails Iran nuclear deal, but is a mixed blessing for Moscow

The Wall Street Journal reports: Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee for Russia’s upper house of parliament, wrote online that the deal was a “win-win” agreement that “proves international mechanisms are working.”

“This is very positive news that gives us hope not just on the Iranian issue, but on many others, including in the Middle East and in Europe (Ukraine),” he wrote.

Fainter praise from other politicians, however, underscored the diplomatic difficulties ahead for Russia, which may find its hand weakened as Iran and the West grow closer.

Alexei Pushkov, chairman for the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s lower house, suggested the achievement was overshadowed by the “significant dangers” posed by U.S. Republican lawmakers who have promised to reject the deal.

“It is the aggressive irresponsibility of the American Congress and its members, which is evident both in its attitude toward Russia and in its attitude toward Iran,” he said. “To what degree can we trust the American executive branch if part of Congress believes that it is possible to disavow an agreement with an American signature on it?”

Iran is one of Russia’s few remaining allies in the Middle East, along with the Shiite minority regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has few friends among the predominantly Sunni nations in the region.

Under heavy pressure from the West, Russia was forced to scrap an $800 million contract to deliver the S-300 missile system to Iran in 2007. The military official told Interfax that a new contract could possibly include the S-300 system, as well as a range of other equipment. [Continue reading…]

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How a whiteboard served as intermediary between talks and text

The New York Times reports: Both sides made significant compromises. For the United States, that meant accepting that Iran would retain its nuclear infrastructure in some shrunken form. For Iran, it meant severe limits on its production facilities and submitting to what Mr. Obama has called the most intrusive inspections regime in history.

It is still far too early to tell if the compromises will survive the next and final negotiating round, or review in Washington and Tehran. The timing of sanctions relief remains unresolved, for example, and already the two sides are describing it in different terms.

But the events of the last two years, and particularly the past week, offer some fascinating insights into what happens when two countries that have barely spoken with each other for 35 years — and have a long and troubled history of mistrust, sabotage, lies and violence — all but move into the same hotel room to try to figure out how they are going to get along.

It is fairly certain there will be a lot more wrangling in the next three months as the negotiators seek to wrap up a final, comprehensive treaty. That is because the negotiators left the Beau Rivage Hotel with astoundingly high bills — suites run more than $1,500 a night — but not an agreed-upon document detailing Iran’s commitments and those of the United States and its negotiating partners.

Wherever Wendy Sherman, the lead American negotiator, traveled in the ornate hotel here, she was trailed by a whiteboard, where the Iranians and the Americans marked down their understandings, sometimes in both English and Persian.

The board served a major diplomatic purpose, letting both sides consider proposals without putting anything on paper. That allowed the Iranians to talk without sending a document back to Tehran for review, where hard-liners could chip away at it, according to several American officials interviewed for this article, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

“It was a brilliantly low-tech solution,” one White House official said. (It also had its drawbacks. One American wrote on it with a regular marker, then had to scrub hard to wipe out some classified numbers.) [Continue reading…]

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For better U.S.-Iran relations, the Iranian people are the key

Trita Parsi writes: American neoconservatives, Israeli hawks, and Arab dictators alike are haunted by the same nightmare: After a nuclear deal, the US and Iran will gravitate toward an unspoken alliance, after which the US will betray its security commitments to historical allies in the Middle East.

No such thing will happen. The US and Iran have many common interests in the region, and while there is a desire for increased collaboration, neither side is ready for an alliance, unspoken or otherwise.

The Iranians prefer to maintain their role as the world’s chief critics of US policy. Open alliance with Washington would be to Tehran’s disadvantage, the regime believes. On the US side, antipathy toward Iran runs deep within the federal government and legislative bodies, and political resistance to anything resembling formal partnership with a clerical regime in Tehran would be overwhelming.

But Iran is more than just a government. At some point, Washington needs to look past the Islamic Republic’s current political system, and toward its vibrant society. Indeed, beyond the politics of the two governments, all the ingredients for strong cooperation are present. [Continue reading…]

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This is a framework that can be defended in Tehran

Farideh Farhi writes: What a day it was and on sizdeh bedar no less, the thirteenth and last day of the Nowruz holidays! It is without a doubt the most joyous of the country’s new year celebrations, when almost all Iranian families go outside their homes presumably to reconnect with nature (in reality, thanks to their cosmopolitan consumerism, they do a lot of damage to it). Most Iranians I know, even in the diaspora, try to go for an outing and make a wish for the coming year.

So, whether planned or not, for the “government of hope and prudence,” the name used to distinguish Rouhani’s government from the Islamic Republic’s previous administrations, it was an especially auspicious day to announce an agreed framework. After eight grueling days, which, unlike in the United States, was covered in detail and monitored intently inside Iran, a framework was produced that I think can be defended and sold inside Iran.

No doubt, as in the United States, naysayers abound. The editor of the hard-line Kayhan daily, the grumpy Hossein Shariatmadari — who, like New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, has an annoying fondness for cute and thoroughly slighting one-liners — has already announced that Iran gave away “an all saddled-up horse in exchange for a torn bridle.” The two differing fact sheets—with the US one emphasizing limitation and the Iranian one emphasizing sanctions relief—will give opponents enough ammunition to continue their mutually reinforcing barrage of criticism.

But by acknowledging Iran’s significant compromises in concrete terms (e.g., reduction of the number of working centrifuges in spite of previously stated red lines) and yet maintaining and even potentially expanding Iran’s peaceful nuclear program in other areas, the framework opens the way for a final agreement that a good part of the Iranian population will support as decent and respectable. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s leadership and the new framework agreement with Iran

Robert E. Hunter writes: Well, Obama did it. Or, rather, President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, the other members of the P5+1 (the UN Security Council members, Germany, plus the EU) — and let us not neglect Iran — have done it. This is not a bad several months’ work. But now for the denizens of Washington and Washington-watchers everywhere, plus every possible party in the Middle East, the “fun” really begins.

For people who care about Obama’s core objective, to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, the framework agreement concluded in Lausanne has to be seen as a good deal, a very good deal indeed. Yes, hard negotiations still lie ahead, to meet the June 30 deadline to reduce the framework to some form of formal agreement — with the form itself likely to be debated thoroughly — in part to meet legitimate concerns in the US Congress over its constitutional role in critical foreign policy and security matters.

But despite the work that must be done in the next three months, those who care about Obama’s core objective can already exhale with a “whew” of historic proportions. That is also true for people who believe in the value of talking with enemies as well as friends. As put by the late Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, “You make peace with your enemies — not the Queen of Holland.” During the Cold War, arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union had benefits far beyond the technicalities of agreements reached. Because of the very fact of negotiations, it became possible to talk about broader issues and to move, however slowly, first to détente and then to the end of the Cold War. That can now become possible between the United States and Iran, far beyond the results in Lausanne on the so-called “nuclear file.” [Continue reading…]

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A better deal than Israelis expected

Ron Ben-Yishai writes: If the inspection of the agreement’s key points is carried out as presented to the public on Thursday evening, Iran will face an enormous challenge if it were to attempt cheating the agreement.

But, if the framework presented becomes the final agreement, including its technical addendum, even Israel could learn to live with it. As President Obama said, the current deal prevents Iran from developing enough fissile material for an explosive device or a nuclear bomb – for at least 10 years. If Tehran chooses to violate the deal, it will take them more than a year to gather enough enriched material for a single nuclear device.

We could not have achieved a better outcome even if Israel, the United States, and other countries had carried out military strikes on the nuclear sites in Iran. Even if the attack had been successful, the delay caused to the Iranian nuclear weapon program would have been shorter than 10 years.

Thus, it appears, it was a good deal. [Continue reading…]

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Iran nuclear framework agreement: Not a bad deal

Barak Ravid writes: Thursday night’s dramatic declaration of a framework nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers surprised almost everyone outside of the locked negotiating rooms at the hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, including the doubtful, cynical journalists waiting outside those rooms over the past eight days for the results. Also surprised, though they’ll never admit it, were many officials, including Israelis, who have vehemently attacked the emerging deal in recent months.

In contrast to the messages conveyed in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Congress, the Israeli government’s public position over the last two years and the Pavlovian response that came out of Jerusalem on Thursday night, the framework agreement is not a bad deal at all. In-depth examination of the details shows that the deal includes many positive aspects that preserve Israeli security interests and answer some of Jerusalem’s concerns.

Iran perhaps scored some victories in terms of the narrative. Its rights, as it sees them, were respected by the world powers, and Iran can declare that its nuclear facilities won’t be closed, that uranium enrichment will continue, and that the humiliating sanctions will be lifted. But the world powers made significant achievements of their own on the real practical issues.

The framework agreement levels many restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program for generations to come. The Israeli government’s claims that in a decade, Iran’s nuclear program will be normalized in the eyes of the world, and that the Islamic Republic could then do as it wishes, have turned out to be baseless.

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It’s up to Netanyahu whether Israel continues with its hair-tearing gevalt-screaming hysterics

Chemi Shalev writes: The [Iran nuclear] deal took many observers, including journalists following the talks in Lausanne, by surprise. After repeated extensions of the March 31 deadline and leaks about producing only a sort of general and nonbinding proclamation, the “parameters” were more detailed and extensive than expected and seemed to justify more efforts to achieve a detailed accord. Critics are likely to point to gaps and holes and concessions in the agreement, as they should, but initial reactions seemed to indicate that the Administration’s achievements could not be dismissed and might suffice to persuade Congress to hold off final judgement until the June 30 deadline.

Obama probably has no illusions about persuading Republicans in Congress to support him: his immediate targets are “hawkish” Democrats who will make or break a veto-proof majority on any new Iran-related legislation. Cognizant, perhaps, of their anxiety with the harshness of his statements on Israel after the recent March 17 elections, Obama reaffirmed his “unshakeable commitment to Israel’s defense.” After hemming and hawing about a post-elections congratulations call to Netanyahu, Obama now volunteered to brief the Israeli prime minister, albeit after updating various other world leaders.

It’s still reasonable to believe that part of Obama’s stand-offish attitude towards Netanyahu was tactical and meant precisely for this minute: to push Netanyahu into a corner and to depict his expected objections to an Iran deal as one more element in his overall anti-Obama and pro-Republican stance. But after he talks to the president and issues his expected condemnation of the deal, Netanyahu would do well to do his own “reassessment” on the efficacy of his own strategy and tactics until now.

Some of the questions Netanyahu might ask himself: Did his anti-Obama intifada increase or decrease the chances of blocking the “dangerous deal” in Congress? Did it help or hinder his ability to influence the administration’s positions in the negotiations? Were his achievements worth the damage done to the U.S.-Israeli relations? Will continuing with the same attitude increase or decrease his leverage? Will he now devote the three months until June 30 to efforts to derail the talks or will he try to influence what seems to many people, especially after Lausanne, to be a done deal?

After the Purim/Haman analogies, many Israelis and Jews around the world will find it easy to couch what seems to be an Iranian-American rapprochement in apocalyptic redemption terms of the Passover Hagaddah: “In every generation they stand up against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, Blessed Be He, redeems us from their hands.” But it’s Netanyahu’s response that will mostly determine whether Israel reacts with cool rationality to the new challenges it faces, or descends into the hair-tearing gevalt-screaming hysterics which have characterized its response until now.

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