MICHAEL HAYDEN: Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran nuclear problem has no solution in sight
There’s a lot not to like here, and it will be pretty easy to shoot holes in the agreement. Congress should certainly be offered the chance. Codifying a deal of this magnitude on executive prerogative alone would be unconscionable.
Beyond the specifics, the administration’s macro views are also fair game for inquiry. Was the Iranian deal so important, intrinsically or as part of the president’s legacy, that he pulled punches in Syria against Teheran’s client Bashar Assad or in Ukraine against Vladimir Putin, an essential negotiating partner vis-a-vis Teheran.
And what of the talk of an overall American-Iranian rapprochement once the nuclear issue is behind us? The president himself has spoken of a better-behaving Iran as a “very successful regional power” and of an “equilibrium ” between Teheran and the Sunni states of the region. The New York Times’ David Brooks even suggests that the president’s big plan is that “Iran would re-emerge as America’s natural partner in the region.”
So there will be lots to talk about and to challenge and criticize. It won’t be hard to find weaknesses in the nuclear deal or in the worldview that nurtured it. I will certainly be among those citing such flaws. Watch this space, for example, for commentary on the need for an invasive inspection regime since American intelligence on its own cannot give adequate assurances that the Iranians are not cheating. With international inspectors still barred from checking on past weapons activity at Parchin, I will be skeptical.
I will be skeptical too that, after an agreement is reached, Iran won’t be the duplicitous, autocratic, terrorist-backing, Hezbollah-supporting, Hamas-funding, region-destabilizing, hegemony-seeking theocracy that it is today.
But people like me also need to be prepared to answer another question: If not this agreement, then what? “What if,” as a Jack Nicholson character once put it, “this is as good as it gets?”
Some smart friends of mine — former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Jim Stavridis, former Secretary of the Navy Sean O’Keefe and former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry — said as much in Politico last week, in support of an agreement.
If you reject this, then what are the options?
Some observers call for toughening and tightening sanctions to drive a better deal, but today’s sanctions regime has been successful largely because it has been so multilateral. I fear that, having come this far, having already made so many apparent concessions, an American rejection now would shatter consensus and leave economic pressure on Iran in shambles.
via NorthEast Calling http://ift.tt/1GdwZYm
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