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It’s the next six months that really count

If you are interested in today’s news about the six-month nuclear deal with Iran, read no further.  You’d do better to go to the New York Times for Michael Gordon’s piece on the important details and David Sanger’s on the broader issues of significance and impact on international relations.

My interest is in the prospects beyond six months.  Is this

1. a step in the right direction towards a broader agreement that ends Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions, or
2. is it a relatively insignificant pause in a decades-long march that will necessarily end, even if Israel or the US intervenes militarily, in a nuclear-armed Iran?

I don’t think we know the answer to that question.  What we need to think about is how to make sure the answer is 1. and not 2.  What will Tehran more likely to stop and even roll back its nuclear progress?  What would push Tehran in the wrong direction?

Sanctions

There is little doubt that sanctions have brought Iran to the negotiating table, and the propect of lifting them will be a major factor in Tehran’s thinking about whether to continue to pursue a potential nuclear weapons capability.  So should we tighten them further, or not?

I depart from the Administration and more dovish colleagues on this question.  If this is a six-month agreement, I think there is virtue in Congress making it clear what happens after the six months are up if the negotiations fail to produce a more permanent agreement.  Passing sanctions now, with a six-month trigger that the President can renew once or twice if he certifies real progress is being made, makes negotiating sense.

The trouble of course is that the Iranians will see this as pointing a gun at them while they sit at the negotiating table (there was a poster plastered all over Tehran recently with just that picture).  The majlis will likely respond with some six-month trigger of its own.  I don’t see that as a terrible thing.  There is something to be gained by being clear with each other about the consequences of a negotiating failure in the next stage.

There is also something to be gained from clarity about what happens if there is a permanent agreement.  The Congress may not like it, but it will need to act to lift sanctions and enable Iran to return from the penalty box we have put it in.

Security

The international community’s failure to respond effectively to India, Pakistan and North Korea as they each went nuclear has given Tehran good reason to believe that we won’t do much if they follow in that path.  Even bombing won’t do much more than postpone what it at the same time make inevitable.  For understandable and good reasons, we have no record of attacking a regime that succeeds in making nuclear weapons.

So somehow the non-nuclear path has to be made to look at least as secure for Tehran’s rulers as the nuclear path.  That’s distasteful, but necessary.  President Obama has already gone a long way in this direction by eschewing in his General Assembly speech last fall any intention of pursuing regime change in Iran.  If Iran wants more than that, it will need to end the tense relationship with the U.S. it has cultivated and enjoyed for more than 30 years.   And we will need to do likewise, reducing the threat of military action.

Rapprochement

That’s what diplomats mean when they talk about rapprochement.  No one snuggles with someone they don’t trust.  We don’t trust Iran.  They don’t trust us.  That makes snuggling dangerous.

Building trust is something that requires a far broader effort than what has been going on between us in Geneva in the last month or so.  The Iranians understand that.  Witness their Foriegn Minister’s unsuccessful Youtube video.  We do the same stuff:  our virtual embassy has been up and running for years, with little detectable effect on the Iranian leadership.

Trust requires personal contact.  Apart from President Rouhani’s fall visit and the Geneva meetings, there is precious little other than the nuclear negotiations themselves.  The various Track 2 dialogues (those are unofficial meetings to discuss substantial isses) have been useful, but their reach into Iranian and American society is limited.  We need far broader exchanges to build trust:  between universities, thinktanks, parliaments, research centers.  That is going to take a long time, as it did with the Soviet Union and with China.

Verification

In the meanwhile, we need verification.  Even if we decide in favor of rapprochement, we will want to be morally certain that Iran is not violating a permanent nuclear agreement behind our backs.  There is good reason to believe that they conducted some nuclear weapons research and development in the past.  They have not owned up to that or allowed verification at key sites.  This makes trust harder than it would be otherwise, and verification all the more necessary.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been good at verification in the past, and Iran has reached agreement with it on important issues.  The IAEA will be the centerpiece of any verification effort.  But neither the Americans nor the Israelis will be satisfied with only the IAEA.  They will maintain their own national means for verification, but Israel (which has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty) will refuse the IAEA access to its own nuclear facilities.  NPT parties and non-parties are not equal.  Verification will be lop-sided, and therefore difficult to arrange with Tehran, which is highly sensitive to any sign of “disrespect.”

Bottom line

The next six months are more important to resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue than the last six.  Getting a permanent nuclear agreement will require progress on sanctions, security, overall rapprochement, and verification that will not be easy.