Tag: Nuclear weapons
Peace picks February 9-13
- A Visit to Tehran: former Congressman shares his outlook for U.S.-Iran Relations | Monday February 9 | 2:00 – 3:00 | Atlantic Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | As nuclear talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) enter what could be their final stage, former Rep. Jim Slattery will provide insights about the attitudes in Iran toward an agreement and the obstacles a deal may face both in Tehran and in the U.S. Congress. Slattery, who made his first visit to Iran in December, will also discuss his extensive experience promoting interfaith dialogue with Iran as part of an effort coordinated by the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Norway and the Catholic University of America. The event will also feature Bharath Gopalaswamy, Acting Director, South Asia Center, Atlantic Council and Jim Moody, Associate Director-Investments, Oppenheimer Company and will be moderated by Barbara Slavin, Senior Fellow, South Asia Center, Atlantic Council.
- Leaderless Revolutions and their Challengers with Srdja Popovic | Tuesday February 10 | 10-11:30 am | Rome building of SAIS | RSVP to itlong@sais.edu | Blueprint for Revolution is not only a spirited guide to changing the world but a breakthrough in the annals of advice for those who seek justice and democracy. It asks (and not heavy-handedly): “As long as you want to change the world, why not do it joyfully? It’s not just funny. It’s seriously funny. No joke.” – Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties and Occupy Nation
- Egyptian Women: Small Steps Ahead on a Very Long Journey | Tuesday February 10 | 12:00-1:00 | Woodrow Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Women were pivotal cogs in the wheel of Egypt’s political development over the past four years. Whether it was the popular uprisings against former President Hosni Mubarak or Islamic rule, or referenda or elections, women were called upon at times of the country’s greatest need and never failed to heed the call. Now that the country is gearing up for parliamentary elections, will women’s efforts finally be recognized with appropriate political representation and will their voices be heard? The Wilson Center invites to a discussion with Moushira Khattab, Chair of Women in Foreign Policy Group, Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs; former Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center; former Minister of Family and Population, Egypt; and former Egyptian Ambassador to South Africa and to the Czech and Slovak Republics.
- Making Sense of Yemen’s Power Crisis | Tuesday February 10 | 12:00 – 1:30 | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Houthi advances in Yemen’s capital city of Sana’a and the subsequent resignation of the president and his cabinet have thrown the country into chaos in recent weeks. In this new reality, will Yemen be able to find a balance of power, or will it descend into greater violence and instability? This event will explore the factors driving the Houthis, the current government, the former regime, the Islamist Islah party, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and address how these forces will shape Yemen’s domestic political map going forward. Carnegie invites to a discussion on Yemen’s political players and the outlook for the country’s future. The discussion features Nasser Arrabyee, a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a and founder and president of Yemen Alaan, a media production company, Nadwa Aldawsari, co-founder and executive director of the Sheba Center for International Development and Laura Kasinof, freelance journalist and author of ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Bullets: An Accidental War Correspondent in Yemen’. Carnegie’s Intissar Fakir will moderate.
- The State of Islamism: The New Generation | Wednesday February 11 | 9:30 – 11:00 | Woodrow Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Over the past year, Islamists have triggered tectonic shake-ups across the Middle East. Borders have been redefined. Tactics have turned bloodier. States are unraveling under the pressure. Moderate Islamists are being sidelined as militants alter the region more than any trend since modern states became independent. Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Egypt’s Sinai are flashpoints, but no country is exempt. The impact has rippled worldwide, evident in the Charlie Hebdo attack. The Woodrow Wilson Center, in cooperation with the U.S. Institute of Peace, is hosting a debate on the state of Islamism, with Robin Wright, USIP-Wilson Center Distinguished Scholar, Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, David Ottaway, Senior Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center and Les Campbell, Senior associate and regional director, Middle East and North Africa, National Democratic Institute. Opening remarks will be made by Jane Harman, Director, President, and CEO, Woodrow Wilson Center.
- Managing Conflict in a World Adrift | Wednesday February 11 | 14:30-17:00 | USIP |REGISTER TO ATTEND |The recent eruptions of violence in the Middle East, parts of Africa and Eastern Europe illustrate the high hurdles of conflict management amid rapidly shifting power dynamics. Rafe Sagarin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, will open the event with a keynote address on what we can learn from nature about the important role of institutions in adaptive approaches to conflict management. Pamela Aall, senior fellow at Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and senior advisor for conflict prevention and management at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), will lead a lively and thought-provoking conversation examining these forces and potential approaches with one of her co-editors and two contributing authors of the new book, Managing Conflict in a World Adrift co-published by USIP and CIGI. The volume is the fourth in a landmark series by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall.
- Conflict and Convergence: Toward Common Interests in the Troubled Middle East | Wednesday February 11 | 4:00-5:30 | Atlantic Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The Paris attacks earlier last month were the most recent in a spate of violence connected to the proliferation of extremist groups throughout the Middle East. When coupled with trends like rising sectarianism, the dark side of individual empowerment, the diffusion of power, and demographic shifts, the outlook for the region remains murky: ISIS and other terrorist groups are upending regional security; Iran is moving closer to having a nuclear weapons capability; Libya is disintegrating; and the “promise” of the Arab Spring has clearly been unfulfilled. While ISIS’s advances have led to the formation of an international coalition led by the United States to counter this virulent extremist group, some of the underlying causes of ISIS’s rise and growth – state failure, political illegitimacy, and economic underdevelopment – remain unaddressed. Too often, the West attends to the region in reaction to its ills, with a view to containing them. The Atlantic Council invites to a discussion on the major strategic issues at stake in the Middle East and a long-term assessment of the opportunities and challenges for 2015 and beyond. Panelist are Salam Fayyad, Former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, The Hon. Stephen J. Hadley, Former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and The Hon. Francis Ricciardone, Vice President and Director, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council.
- 2015 Sheikh Abdullah Saleh Kamel Symposium: An Energy Revolution? The Political Ecologies of Shale Oil in the Middle East, US and China | Wednesday February 11 – Friday February 13 | Georgetown University | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) is hosting its annual Sheikh Abdullah Saleh Kamel Symposium, this year looking at the impact of the shale oil revolution on the Middle East. The symposium will feature panels on environmental, social and political economy implications of shale oil as well as ramifications on foreign policy issues. It also features a wide range of scholars, including Osama Abi-Mershed, Director Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, Dr. Peter Gleick, President and Co-founder, Pacific Institute, Dr. Jeremy Boak, Director of the Center for Oil Shale Technology and Research at the Colorado School of Mines, Dr. Mark Giordano, Director of the Program in Science, Technology and International Affairs, Georgetown University, Dr. Mohamed Ramady, Visiting Associate Professor of Finance and Economics at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Dr. Eckart Woertz, Senior Research Fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs and Mr. Fawzi Aloulou, Energy Economist at the Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy.
- High Stakes: How This Year’s Climate Negotiations Will Impact National Security | Thursday February 12 | 9:00 – 10:30 | Woodrow Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | “The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it,” said President Obama in his recent State of the Union Address. But what does that mean for international climate negotiations? The Wilson Center invites to a discussion with Nick Mabey, chief executive of the environmental NGO E3G, who will present new analysis on the relationship between successful climate diplomacy and national security. Mabey will discuss how critical the next year is in climate diplomacy and how the UNFCCC and Montreal Protocol processes can help improve international risk management. As climate change negotiations accelerate leading up to this fall’s UN climate conference in Paris, it is essential that decision-makers in the executive and legislative branch understand these delicate connections and how their actions may have unintended security consequences.
- Nuclear Bargains Reviewed: Washington’s Cold War nuclear deals and what they mean for Iran | Friday February 13 | 1:00 – 2:30 | Woodrow Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Or Rabinowitz, author of ‘Bargaining on Nuclear Tests’, will discuss her research in the context of the looming dead-line for the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 on the future of Iran’s nuclear program. Bargaining on Nuclear Tests demonstrates that the 1969 bilateral American-Israeli deal on Israel’s nuclear ambiguity was not an exception; it served as the model for two following nuclear bargains with Pakistan and South Africa. Dr. Rabinowitz’s research demonstrates that Washington’s willingness to reach such nuclear bargains is influenced by superior geo-strategic considerations that override non-proliferation policies. The fate of the Pakistani and the South African deals should serve as a stark reminder to Israeli policymakers that understandings can expire when bilateral interests no longer converge.
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Iran’s generational divide
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
Yesterday’s talk at the Woodrown Wilson Center on Iranian domestic politics by Nicola Pedde, director of the Institute for Global Studies in Rome, provided much needed insight into the generational change in Iranian politics and its implications for Iran’s relations with the West. The shift from a political class deriving from Iran’s theocratic apparatus to a younger generation of political figures emerging from the institutions of the revolutionary structures themselves is radically changing Iran’s engagement with the West, which is at the same time becoming more open and more confrontational. In light of these changes, Pedde argued that our perceptions of Iranian politics need to be heavily revised. Particularly, the idea of the Islamic Republic as a monolithic entity must be dispelled, and engagement must be sought with all elements of the regime – including those emerging forces that are more skeptical of Western intentions. Unless the West adapts to and engages with the new Iran, the future of any Western-Iranian agreement will be at risk.
A full event write-up can be found on the Woodrow Wilson Center’s webpage.
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No loophole
Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who has worked at Princeton since 2009, is the moderate voice of the Iranian regime, which lacks an ambassador (other than at the UN), in the United States. He said yesterday, in an interview with Die Welt (Moussavian provided the English translation):
R&D on nuclear weapons is not prohibited by NPT. NPT prohibits building, storage and the use of nuclear weapons. For many years Germany is doing R&D on nuclear weapons under IAEA’s supervision. Because Berlin wants to know the consequences of possible use of nuclear bomb against Germany by other nuclear powers. It is legitimate as long as the nuclear powers maintain thousands of nuclear weapon.
To me, this is one of the most interesting remarks in a lengthy presentation that helpfully and clearly outlines main parameters of a possible nuclear agreement with Iran: limiting Iran’s enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to meeting its practical requirements (and thereby making the time it would take to achieve a nuclear weapons capability at least a year) in exchange for lifting of sanctions, starting with European oil and financial sanctions.
Whereas those parameters may be mostly agreed, as Moussavian suggests, the parties seem far apart on the question of nuclear weapons research and development, if Moussavian’s remarks represent accurately what people in Tehran are thinking.* Germany certainly does conduct research on the impact of ionizing radiation, a subject on which its scholars have been leaders since the discovery of X-rays in 1896 (I should know: I wrote my doctoral thesis at Princeton on the early history of protection against ionizing radiation). That is quite different from conducting research on how to initiate a nuclear detonation, which is what the Americans think Iran was up to at Parchin before 2003.
While a great deal more attention has been paid to the number of centrifuges and the quantity of enriched uranium Iran will retain under a possible nuclear agreement, the issue of clandestine nuclear weapons research is really far more important. I don’t know of a single case of nuclear proliferation due to materials and facilities monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Moussavian is correct in believing that an agreement that limits enrichment and reprocessing and enables the agency to keep tabs on all of Iran’s declared facilities should be adequate to provide at least a year of warning if there is any attempt at diverting material to a nuclear weapons program.
But that is not sufficient, especially if Iran is now claiming a right to conduct nuclear weapons research. I know of no such right in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Nor to my knowledge has the IAEA ever agreed to monitor the nuclear (e.g. initiators) or non-nuclear (e.g. high explosive) research needed to develop nuclear weapons. Such research would be inconsistent with the purposes of the treaty. The IAEA’s interest in Parchin is not in order to monitor the activity but to understand Iran’s intentions. I won’t claim non-nuclear states have never done experiments of the sort Iran is accused of conducting at Parchin, but Iran is not just any non-nuclear state. It can expect no US relief from sanctions if it insists that conducting nuclear weapons research is legitimate. I doubt even the Europeans will fall for that one.
That comes from someone who would very much like to see an agreement within the parameters Moussavian suggests reached by the June deadline. But ending nuclear weapons research in Iran permanently and verifiably has to be part of the deal. Anything less leaves a giant loophole.
*PS: on this point, Moussavian writes: “Iran neither had research on nuclear weapons nor has such agenda. As a scholar, I stated my personal interpretation from NPT which I believe it is correct. It has nothing to do with Iran’s position.”
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Ramifications
The United States is to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. Stronger than expected economic and job growth. American companies repatriating. Russia cancels natural gas pipeline. Pro-Russian separatist push in Ukraine stalls. Iran declares its commitment to reaching a nuclear agreement. Baghdad reaches oil export and revenue agreement with Erbil
Today’s headlines may seem disconnected, but there are two common threads: oil and money, which themselves are tightly wound together.
Little explanation is needed. The Cuban regime is on its last economic legs. It needs an opening to the US to survive. Its massive subsidies from Venezuela are coming to an end, because Caracas is one of the countries most forcefully hit by the decline in oil prices. The economic upturn in the US, and return of US companies from abroad, is at least partly due to more cash in consumers’ pockets, due to lower prices at the pump, and readier availability of energy resources. Russia’s South Stream pipeline fell victim to the combination of sanctions and lower natural gas prices. Russian support for the separatists in eastern Ukraine is falling short in part because the Russian economy is in an oil-price-induced nose dive, along with the ruble. Iran needs a nuclear agreement more than it did a few months ago in order to get sanctions relief that will help it deal with lower oil prices. Both Erbil and Baghdad needed an agreement, not only because of the ISIS threat but also because of lower oil prices, which pinch their finances as much as ISIS’s.
It would be nice to hear some other good news: reduced Russian and Iranian support for Syria’s President Assad, a pickup in China’s economy, and an end to recession in Europe are all within the realm of the possible. May this icy account of an official Iranian visit to Assad is a harbinger.
There is of course a price to pay for the benefits of lower energy prices. US oil and gas production, which had been climbing rapidly at $100/barrel, will slow down at $50/barrel. Oil company stocks are down. The stock market is jittery. Kim Jong Un, his economic woes relieved, is emboldened and less vulnerable.
The balance for America’s foreign policy is however positive. It is also likely to be long-lasting. American oil and gas production may stop climbing so fast, or even fall, laying the foundation for another price rise in the future. But the new technologies that enable exploitation of “tight” oil and gas are viable at anything above $80/barrel, and likely at prices a bit lower. Nor is the US the only country in which these technologies can be used. China, the UK, Poland and many others also have “tight” oil and gas. Once they start producing it, $80/barrel or so will become a ceiling for oil prices, a level that will require serious fiscal discipline in many oil-producing countries, both friend and foe. Russia, Venezuela and Iran have all been budgeting at $100/barrel or more.
The demand side also has an impact on foreign policy. While supply has been booming in the Western Hemisphere, demand is booming in the East, especially China and India. Middle Eastern oil that used to get shipped to Europe and the US will now go to Asia. That is already true for 50% of the oil coming through the strait of Hormuz. The percentage is headed up to 90% within the next decade. US diplomats are busily reassuring Gulf oil producers that Washington is fully committed to maintaining its close relations with them, but it is hard to believe we are that dumb (or that they are).
Rapidly declining oil imports from the Gulf will eventually make the Americans reevaluate. If and when the Iranian nuclear issue is resolved, Washington will want to renew the effort to move its diplomatic and military attention even more definitively to the East, where its economic and commercial focus already lies. China and India will have to pick up more of the burden for energy security, by holding larger oil stocks (neither keeps the 90 days that International Energy Agency members commit to) and naval patrolling. The US should be welcoming them with open arms into a multilateral effort to protect Hormuz. A few extra burdens of this sort would also encourage New Delhi and Beijing to restrain their oil demand and contribute more to limiting global warming.
The ramifications of lower oil prices are profound. We would do well to start thinking hard about them and acting accordingly.
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Why coming clean is important
The Middle East Institute published this piece last night under the heading Iran’s Nuclear Secrets Need to be Revealed. It puts me in agreement with hawkish views. But I think there is no escaping the need for Iran to come clean, at least to the IAEA.
Expert American opinion on the outcome of last month’s nuclear negotiations with Iran is sharply divided. Those who want Iran to give up all enrichment technology are relieved that a “bad” deal was averted. Pressure is building in Congress, especially but not exclusively among Republicans, for new sanctions.[1] Some would like to see Congress authorize the use of military force.[2] Others think an interim arrangement limiting Iranian enrichment (the November 2013 “Joint Plan of Action,”[3] which took effect January 20, 2014) is good enough for now and certainly better than no limits.[4] They resist the idea of new sanctions and hope for an agreement by the new July 2015 deadline that will provide as much as a year’s warning of any Iranian moves to produce the material needed for a nuclear weapon.[5]
Both perspectives focus on the overt Iranian nuclear program, which is monitored and safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under provisions of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). But no country since the IAEA was founded in 1957 has used an overt program or safeguarded material to obtain nuclear weapons. Nuclear powers India, Pakistan, and Israel never signed the NPT. North Korea signed but withdrew before testing a nuclear weapon, using material produced clandestinely. South Africa developed and tested nuclear weapons clandestinely before it became an NPT signatory in 1991, when it gave them up. Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan had many Soviet nuclear weapons on their territory but transferred them out and joined the NPT in the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that clandestine and non-safeguarded nuclear programs are a much greater risk for proliferation than the ones the IAEA monitors.
Iran is an NPT signatory. Its safeguarded facilities are in compliance with its NPT obligations. It is also in compliance with the Joint Plan of Action. But Iran has not implemented all resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors or the UN Security Council, nor has it implemented the Additional Protocol that permits short-notice inspections of suspect locations. The IAEA’s bottom line is ominous:
The Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.[6]
The question of covert facilities is said to preoccupy some American negotiators, but the negotiations have focused on Iran’s overt, safeguarded program.[7]
The clandestine route to a nuclear weapon is far more likely. The IAEA has asked Tehran to explain research efforts that IAEA scientists associate with nuclear weapons research, including initiation of high explosives (to compress fissionable material) and neutron transport calculations (required to initiate a chain reaction).[8] Tehran has not yet provided a satisfactory response to these inquiries or access to facilities where unsafeguarded activities may have taken place in the past. American intelligence agencies have said publicly that they believe this weapons-related research ended more than a decade ago.[9] But earlier efforts that betrayed “possible military dimensions” remain a source of profound distrust of Iranian intentions, not only in the United States but also in Israel and elsewhere.
Iranians are quick to respond that the Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against production or use of nuclear weapons. This can be “secularized,” meaning it can be issued as legislation.[10] They also emphasize that Iran would be far less secure if it obtained nuclear weapons but in the process triggered Saudi, Egyptian, or other efforts to match the prize. Far better, some say in private, to gain the underlying technology but stop short of weaponizing, which is an expensive process of not only producing the weapons but also making them compact enough to be mounted on missiles and launched. [11]
Americans concerned about an Iranian clandestine nuclear program want Tehran to “come clean” about its past activities.[12] This is what Muammar Qaddafi did in 2003, when he opened up Libya’s clandestine (but still rudimentary) nuclear program to intense American scrutiny and removal. It is difficult to picture Iran doing as much as that. But it could, and should, go much further than it has so far in answering frankly the IAEA’s pointed questions about its past weapons-related research and development.
The United States can hope that the current negotiations on Iran’s overt nuclear program will put a year between any decision to get nuclear weapons and the result, in exchange for some measure of sanctions relief. It has to aim to do at least that well on the clandestine side as well. This will mean not only Iranian implementation of the Additional Protocol that allows surprise inspections, but also a clear and comprehensive account of past weapons-related nuclear research and development.
[1] Geoff Dyer, “Republicans Push for New Iran Sanctions,” Financial Times, November 25, 2014, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/70385cdc-74c3-11e4-a418-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3KrkTEhJA.
[2] Eric Edelman, Dennis Ross and Ray Takeyh, “A Nuclear Deal with Iran Will Require the West to Reevaluate its Presumptions,” The Washington Post, December 4, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-nuclear-deal-with-iran-will-require-the-west-to-reevaluate-its-presumptions/2014/12/04/b58748a2-7b30-11e4-b821-503cc7efed9e_story.html.
[4] Paul Pillar, “What Really Matters about Extension of the Iran Negotiations,” The National Interest, November 24, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/what-really-matters-about-extension-the-iran-negotiations-11732.
[5] See Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars event, “Iran Nuclear Extension: Key to Deal or an Empty Room?” December 1, 2014, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/iran-nuclear-extension-key-to-deal-or-empty-room.
[6] “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Report by the Director General, IAEA, November 7, 2014, http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/gov-2014-58.pdf, paragraph 66.
[7] David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, “In Iran Talks, U.S. Seeks to Prevent a Covert Weapon,” New York Times, November 22, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/world/middleeast/in-iran-talks-us-seeks-to-prevent-a-covert-weapon.html.
[8] “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement.”
[9] James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, “U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb,” New York Times, February 24, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/world/middleeast/us-agencies-see-no-move-by-iran-to-build-a-bomb.html?_r=0.
[10] Seyed Hossein Mousavian, “7 Reasons Not to Worry about Iran’s Enrichment Capacity,” Al Monitor, November 4, 2014, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/11/iran-nuclear-enrichment-uranium-iaea-fatwa-sanctions.html.
[11] Anthony H. Cordesman, “Assessing a Deal or Non-Deal with Iran,” CSIS, November 20, 2014, http://csis.org/files/publication/141119_Assessing_an_Iran_Deal_or_Non-Deal.pdf.
[12] David Albright and Bruno Tertrais, “Making Iran Come Clean about Its Nukes,” Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304081804579559630836775474.
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Punt and rethink
Having failed to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program by today’s deadline, the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) and Tehran have decided to punt. The new deadlines are March 1 for a framework political agreement and July 1 for the definitive agreement. Iran continues to get access to $700 million per month with the current Joint Plan of Action (JPA) extended. That’s a lot of money, but nowhere near enough to compensate for Iran’s loss of oil revenue due to the recent sharp fall in prices.
The interesting question is how this punt will be received politically in the US and in Iran.
With the Republicans taking over control of the Senate, there is a real possibility of new sanctions being passed, whether the Administration wants them or not. My guess is that something along those lines will happen, possibly new sanctions to be triggered if the March 1 deadline is missed. These would likely focus on the Iranian financial system, making transactions with the rest of the world far more difficult than they are today.
In Iran, the JPA restrains the overt nuclear program from dashing towards accumulating the material necessary to build a nuclear weapon, but Tehran has still not clarified the possible military dimensions of some of its past nuclear activity. With the Majlis likely to amplify its belligerence, there will be internal pressures there to accelerate any clandestine activities and to ensure maximum development of enrichment capacity consistent with the JPA. The punt gives Iran time to try to move the goal posts before the game starts again.
Meanwhile, the war against ISIS in Iraq has Iran and the US fighting on the same side, to support the Shia-led government in Baghdad, while it puts them at least nominally at odds in Syria, where Tehran supports Bashar al Asad’s minority Alawite regime while the US supposedly supports the Syrian opposition. But President Obama is doing nothing militarily to harm Assad’s forces and has said that he is not trying now to remove Assad, presumably in order to avoid disrupting the nuclear talks with Iran.
It is high time for Washington to reconsider its position in Syria. Would the nuclear talks go worse if Bashar al Assad were under more immediate threat, or would they go better? If Washington were to accept the Turkish proposal to create a protected area within Syria in which the opposition could govern, would the nuclear talks go worse or better? The answers to these questions are unclear, but it is arguable that a more robust American position in Syria opposing Assad and supporting the opposition would give Tehran something to worry about and increase American leverage on the nuclear issue, not decrease it.
Washington needs also to reconsider whether it is wise to give absolute priority to the nuclear talks in their current configuration. If the JPA is the best the P5+1 are going to get, it might make sense to accept the limited time it puts between Iran and a nuclear weapon (less than six months?) and refocus on possible military dimensions. There really is little precedent for a country using facilities safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency to gain nuclear weapons. Clandestine facilities are the far greater threat.
With the resignation of Secretary of Defense Hagel, President Obama has an opportunity to use the appointment of his replacement as a way of signaling what he plans to do on Iran, the nuclear talks and Syria. Some rethinking is in order. Let’s hope it gets done.
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