AMAC Exclusive – By Simon Maas
Both critics and supporters of the Iran nuclear deal are missing a crucial point when assessing the state of ongoing talks in Vienna to revive the accord: There’s no winning for the U.S. or its allies.
If negotiations completely fall through, Iran will continue enriching uranium at an accelerated pace, stonewalling international inspectors while marching toward a nuclear weapon. A military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities might be the only way to stop the regime from getting the bomb in such a scenario.
The problem is the Biden administration clearly has no stomach for a military option, even as a last resort — and Iran knows it. When asked about a potential military strike last week, a senior State Department official declined to address the question directly, saying only that Iran would merely trigger more “diplomatic pressure” and “economic isolation” were it not to return to strict compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.
Israel would thus need to be the one to carry out some kind of military operation, which would only buy time rather than eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat and likely lead to massive retaliation from Iran and its proxies.
If the Vienna talks are more “constructive,” however, then there are two other possible outcomes: a limited interim agreement or a full return to the 2015 deal. Both outcomes would be terrible in their own right.
The former could look something like Iran agreeing not to enrich uranium to 90%, or weapons-grade levels, in exchange for the U.S lifting sanctions. Such a deal would in no way roll back Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel has been anxious over the idea of the Biden administration seeking such a partial agreement, which would allow an Iran emboldened with cash to continue stockpiling enriched uranium. Israeli officials voiced their opposition to this potential path to President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who was just in Israel this past week.
As Israeli officials likely realize, such a step would be temporary and almost certainly just a pitstop on the way to a full return to the nuclear deal.
And here we get to the real problem with the Vienna talks: The nuclear deal that the talks are meant to revive paves, not blocks, the road for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.
Indeed, the main issue with the deal was that the key restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program expire over the next decade.
Under the accord, which was implemented under President Obama, beginning in 2026, Tehran is free to enrich uranium using advanced, far more efficient centrifuges and to install and operate more of its older models. Then, in 2031, restrictions on the amount and level of enriched uranium that Iran can stockpile disappear.
So, if the Iranian regime abides by the deal to the letter — and if history is any guide, it won’t— it will be free, within a decade, to build as large a nuclear program as it wants.
In this scenario, Iran would build an industrial-scale nuclear program, getting rich from sanctions relief while advancing its ballistic missiles and conventional arms — with the international community’s blessing. Tehran would have increasingly less incentive to strike another nuclear deal when the current one expires, and the U.S. would lose virtually all negotiating leverage. Of course, the regime would be just as brutal, cruel, and dishonest as it is now, only with nuclear weapons.
In short, the nuclear deal ensures a nuclear crisis between the U.S. and Iran — but at a later date, when the regime is stronger and more formidable. The question for Israel and the United States is: wouldn’t it be better to face an inevitable nuclear crisis earlier, when Iran is weaker?
And all this doesn’t even take into account the prospect of Biden making further concessions to Iran beyond what’s in the original agreement. Remember, Tehran was perfectly happy not to engage in negotiations for the last several months and enrich uranium instead, giving itself more leverage. The Biden administration and its European allies were the ones desperate to get to the negotiating table as quickly as possible.
The tragedy is it didn’t have to be this way.
Former President Trump’s policy of exerting maximum economic pressure on Iran was working. According to the International Monetary Fund, for example, Iran had $122.5 billion inaccessible foreign exchange reserves in 2018. That figure plummeted to an astonishingly low $4 billion last year. The regime was hurting and desperate. With time, it would have been forced to renegotiate the nuclear deal or face an implosion at home.
At the very least, Iran would have had to choose between its survival and sustaining its robust levels of funding to its nuclear program and foreign terrorist proxies.
But maximum pressure was never going to succeed in one four-year presidential term. Iran was obviously going to try and wait out the storm, hoping someone more accommodating — that is, a Democrat — would win the next election and stop the relentless pressure. Another term for Trump might have broken the regime. President Biden continuing the same policy could have done the same.
If only maximum pressure, like so many other Trump foreign policy successes, had survived the 2020 election.
Of course, it didn’t, because Biden entered the White House in January, evidently desperate to appease Iran in a bid to revive the nuclear deal. Blinded by a base hatred for all things Trump, he even lifted certain sanctions without negotiating for any concessions from the Iranian regime and failed to enforce other sanctions that remained in place. The results are telling: Iran exported $27 billion of non-oil goods between April 2021 and November 2021, almost $9 billion more than what it had exported in the same period in 2020.
And now here we are, in a no-win situation.
Iran is clearly using the Vienna talks as cover to advance its nuclear program and become a nuclear threshold state — a country with the ability to produce an atomic bomb quickly if it wishes. The regime is currently on the verge, if not already there, and any realistic outcome from Vienna will guarantee Iran retains this threshold status.
The nightmare scenario of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is no longer some far-fetched fantasy. If it is in the strategic interest of the United States to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons – and it is – then the Biden administration’s approach to Iran is proving to be a massive failure. Israel, and Republicans in Congress, must act with appropriate urgency and speed.
Simon Maas is the pen name of a writer living in Virginia.