Nuclear deal with Iran: thumbs up or thumbs down?

Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose the most urgent threat to international security and peace in the year ahead. This weekend, the U.S. (with its five partners—UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China) reached an interim agreement with Iran that essentially halts both Iran’s nuclear advance and further economic sanctions for six months. The question going forward is whether it will be possible to negotiate a more ambitious, comprehensive deal that stops Iran verifiably and interruptedly short of a nuclear bomb. And if not, what are the alternatives? 

From the clamor over the interim agreement, it is clear that this issue engages deep emotions as well as brain cells. As our former colleague at Harvard, the late Senator Pat Moynihan, once observed: everyone is entitled to his own opinions— but not to his own facts. 

Our objective at Harvard’s Iran Matters is to provide a one-stop shop for best analysis and best facts about the core issues of the Iranian nuclear challenge. Harvard’s Belfer Center’s panel of experts, co-chaired by Graham Allison and Gary Samore, will provide regular updates identifying what members of the panel judge to be best analyses for competing answers to core questions. 

Question of the day 

The question of the day is straightforward: how to assess the interim agreement? Considering all the positives and all the negatives, net, from the perspective of U.S. national interests, does this merit a thumbs up?  Or a thumbs down? 

Best analyses for thumbs up:

• Former nuclear negotiator Robert Einhorn provides a thoughtful and detailed defense of the Obama administration’s two-step approach—interim deal now and comprehensive agreement later—in a speech at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies on October 24. The punch line: “No negotiated solution to the Iran nuclear issue will be ideal. . . . Any agreement will be criticized, both in Israel and the United States. But the test for any agreement should not be how it measures up against the best outcome we can imagine. A better test is how it compares to alternative means for dealing with the problem.”

• Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, two of America’s wisest national security advisers, note that Obama’s efforts are intended as a first step to “test” Iran’s willingness to roll back its nuclear activities.

• Al Hunt in the New York Times challenges critics of the interim deal to provide a better alternative: military strikes? Greater sanctions? Something else? Bob Blackwill in Politicoreminds “armchair” observers that the most likely alternative—a military strike—may bring the U.S. and Iran (and Israel) to the brink of war.

• In the Financial Times, CFR President Richard Haass reminds us that diplomacy is the art of the possible and not the perfect and makes a cogent case for supporting the interim agreement as the best available option. Opponents of the deal, he argues, are “asking too much.” 

Best analyses for thumbs down:

• Adding nuance to a chorus of critics who argue an interim deal will let the air of a tough sanctions regime that has devastated Iran’s economy, Mark Dubowitz and Orde Kittrie write in the Wall Street Journal that the Obama administration underestimates Iran’s ability to “fully exploit the loopholes opened by the Geneva deal, and how an environment of sanctions relief and de-escalating sanctions could change the market psychology from fear to greed.”

• Mark Wallace and Matan Shamir explain the same risk below, highlighting the need for the U.S. and its allies to strictly enforce existing sanctions to maintain leverage for negotiating a final deal.

• David Ignatius, while generally sympathetic to diplomacy with Iran, highlights the potential negative ramifications in the Washington Post. Among them: the tricky case of diplomatic history, which is “full of interim agreements that never get into second gear,” and the dangerous message an agreement sends to U.S. allies in the Middle East: more evidence of “a general U.S. retreat.” A Wall Street Journal interview with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal provides more content on the final point. Saudi Arabia’s angst comes most significantly from the dual reality that the Middle East is rumbling with the likelihood of profound change, even revolution, and that the U.S. will not—and cannot—guarantee previous stability. Those in power in the region hope that this can be 1848 but fear that it may 1789. 

Best press news analysis:

The Associated Press gets the prize for its story this weekend revealing the Obama administration’s secret negotiations with Iran. The significance of this story is that secret, back-channel negotiations demonstrate not only the seriousness of the parties involved about reaching a deal but also their professionalism. Is this another example of the Obama administration “leading from the behind the scenes”? 

The AP story also helps illustrate the dilemmas of coalition diplomacy. On one hand, the willingness of the U.S. and Iran to establish a secret bilateral channel reflects Washington and Tehran's determination to negotiate an agreement, since the P5+1 multilateral format inhibits serious give and take. On the other hand, the secret U.S.-Iran talks have upset U.S. allies, who resent being excluded from the “real” negotiations and are suspicious of secret deals made behind their backs.