by Jennifer Rubin
Hat Tip: Dr. Carolyn Tal
“In whatever diplomatic formula is implemented, we are likely to run into a wall of Russian and Chinese intransigence and lose the power of American economic coercion in response to Iranian cheating or challenging of the IAEA.” That essentially means that once lifted, sanctions won’t be reactivated in any meaningful time period.
If
you are concerned about a rotten deal with Iran that might actually begin a
Middle East nuclear arms race and put Iran on a glide path to getting nuclear
weapons, you might be taking solace in the notion that there is no way the
sides will reach agreement on issues such as anywhere/anytime inspections or on
snapback sanctions. Well, get ready for a series of accommodations that
essentially give Iran everything it wants.
Reuters reports: “Six world powers have agreed on a way to
restore U.N. sanctions on Iran if the country breaks the terms of a future
nuclear deal, clearing a major obstacle to an accord ahead of a June 30
deadline, Western officials told Reuters.” How will this work? I hope you’re
sitting down:
As
part of the new agreement on sanctions snapback, suspected breaches by Iran
would be taken up by a dispute-resolution panel, likely including the six
powers and Iran, which would assess the allegations and come up with a non-binding
opinion, the officials said.
The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would also continue regularly
reporting on Iran’s nuclear program, which would provide the six powers and the
Security Council with information on Tehran’s activities to enable them to
assess compliance.
If
Iran was found to be in non-compliance with the terms of the deal, then U.N.
sanctions would be restored.
The
officials did not say precisely how sanctions would be restored but Western
powers have been adamant that it should take place without a Security Council
vote, based on provisions to be included in a new U.N. Security Council
resolution to be adopted after a deal is struck.
No,
seriously — that’s the plan. We’re going to allow Iran to be part of the
“dispute resolution” and then let Russia and China get a veto in the Security
Council. An official with a pro-Israel organization dismisses the plan, saying,
“It is preposterous to believe that a Rube Goldberg type mechanism can be
erected to stop or punish Iran from violating a treaty. If Iran is allowed to
retain a nuclear infrastructure, you can count on them to find a way to break
out to a nuclear weapon.”
The
plan, in fact, is a formula for paralysis. “Whatever scheme the Russians,
Chinese and Iranians agree to, it is likely to neutralize the power of U.S.
secondary sanctions and ‘multilateralize’ the snapback sanctions mechanism,”
says Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “In whatever
diplomatic formula is implemented, we are likely to run into a wall of Russian
and Chinese intransigence and lose the power of American economic coercion in
response to Iranian cheating or challenging of the IAEA.” That essentially
means that once lifted, sanctions won’t be reactivated in any meaningful time
period. Dubowitz explains: “Without effective economic coercion to enforce the
deal, Iran will be able to inch-out or sneakout to a bomb or wait patiently for
10-15 years when most of the restrictions on its program will sunset. At that
point, after hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, Iran will
have a powerful economy increasingly immunized against any future snapback
scenario.”
But,
you ask, how could the administration agree to such a formula, given that the
president is so concerned about his name being on a deal that allows Iran to go
nuclear? To be blunt, the point is now not to get a good deal, but any deal.
Whatever problems occur downstream will be blamed on his successors. Michael
Doran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, observes, “President Obama has
developed an elaborate fiction designed to blunt the criticism of those who say
that he has traded temporary and reversible concessions by Iran for major
permanent concession by the United States. The concept of ‘snap-back sanctions’
is at the center of this fictive policy, because it leaves the impression that
the ground that the United States has ceded can be easily — no, automatically —
regained if Iran cheats on its agreement.” This is why, he reminds us, many
critics spotted “the impossibility of achieving a true snap-back
mechanism” from the get-go.
Moreover,
the pattern of willful blindness to Iranian infractions has already been
established by this administration, says Michael Makovsky of the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). “After cutting a deal with
Iran those countries will have an incentive to overlook violations so as not
admit to failure, at least while President Obama is in power,” he tells me. “He
has insisted Iran has fulfilled the Joint Plan of Action of January 2014, even
though that’s not true.”
So
now, as Doran and others wonder, will anyone care? As a starting point, the
Israelis and our Sunni allies will care. The latter have already figured out
that the deal is a canard and have vowed to proceed with their own nuclear
weapons programs. That should, one hopes, alert serious U.S. lawmakers who
already have raised concerns over the very issues the president is trying to
paper over. And those who want to be the next commander in chief should be
forced to weigh in, thereby demonstrating whether they are serious about
preventing the Iranians from going nuclear or are willing to accept the
president’s fictions.
The
administration will insist all is well since the Iranians have changed their
outlook and, besides, there is no alternative. Both statements are false. The
Iranians’ international aggression, chiseling on the Joint Plan of
Action, refusal to come clean on past illicit activities and ongoing human
rights abuses tell us that the regime is very much the same as it has always
been. As for an alternative, Makovsky suggests, for example, that “the IAEA
technocrats or perhaps the French government alone, which is the most serious
about preventing a nuclear Iran, make the determination [about violations].”
But
the real problem here is in letting Iran keep its infrastructure. Having done
that, it is nearly impossible to devise a foolproof system for detecting
violations and delivering consequences sufficient to deter further violations.
The only viable solution if we are truly interested in preventing a
nuclear-armed Iran is to reimpose sanctions, begin to check its activities in
the region, make the threat of force credible and then start negotiations from
scratch. Anything else will simply amount to putting a stamp of approval on a
nuclear-armed revolutionary Islamic state.
Jennifer Rubin
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/06/01/the-concessions-to-iran-keep-on-coming/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
As we 
Billoo, who runs the CAIR San Francisco office, made similar arguments in Twitter posts in September and again in February.