The Real Goal of the Nuclear Deal: Iran Détente

By Jonathan S. Tobin, COMMENTARY

To listen to President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry defend their nuclear deal in recent weeks, you’d think the issue at stake is a narrow one that solely concerned whether or not the agreement retards Tehran’s quest for a bomb. The assumption from the administration and its apologists that the deal does this even minimally is a dubious one. But one of the subtexts of the misleading way they have been conducting their end of this debate is their effort to distract both Congress and the public from the broader goals of the pact. While critics of the deal have highlighted Obama’s refusal to make the sanctions relief dependent on an end to support for terrorism, ballistic missile production or the nature of Iranian government, the answers from the administration have been consistent. They want to restrict the discussion to purely technical nuclear issues that can be obfuscated by deceptive claims or to the false choice between the agreement and war. But, to its credit, one of the president’s chief media cheerleaders did highlight the real goals of the administration in an article published on Friday. The New York Times feature titled “Deeper Aspirations Seen in Nuclear Deal With Iran” ought to be required reading for all members of the House and Senate.

The choice here isn’t one between a flawed nuclear deal and war, but between Iran détente with a tyrannical, anti-Semitic, aggressive Islamist regime and a reboot of the diplomatic process that has been hijacked by appeasers.

As the Times points out, prior to the announcement of the final, lenient terms of the deal that expires in ten years the administration wasn’t so coy about its real objective:

Before his fight for the deal in Congress, Mr. Obama was far more open about his ultimate goals. In an interview in The Atlantic in March 2014, he said that a nuclear agreement with Iran was a good idea, even if the regime remained unchanged. But an agreement could do far more than that, he said:

“If, on the other hand, they are capable of changing; if, in fact, as a consequence of a deal on their nuclear program those voices and trends inside of Iran are strengthened, and their economy becomes more integrated into the international community, and there’s more travel and greater openness, even if that takes a decade or 15 years or 20 years, then that’s very much an outcome we should desire,”

And in an interview in December, Mr. Obama even seemed to welcome the rise of a powerful Iran. “They have a path to break through that isolation and they should seize it,” he said. “Because if they do, there’s incredible talent and resources and sophistication inside of — inside of Iran, and it would be a very successful regional power.”

The importance of this context for the discussion of the deal cannot be overemphasized.

The deal ought to be defeated on its own merits because it fails to achieve the administration’s stated objectives about stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions. All it accomplishes, if it can even be said to do that much, is to delay Iran’s march to a bomb for the period of the agreement while permitting to continue research with a large nuclear infrastructure under a loose inspections regime that makes a mockery of its past promises on all these issues.

But the point on which the administration has been most reluctant to comment is the more than $100 billion in frozen assets that will be released to Tehran. Critics rightly believe this money will, one way or another, help subsidize Iran’s terrorist allies and push for regional hegemony that worries neighboring Arab states as well as Israel, whose existence is threatened by Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state with Western approval.

No rational argument can be mustered against this assertion since the money will be Iran’s to use as it likes and any prohibitions on Iranian adventurism are likely to be even less effective in a post-deal environment than they were prior to it. But if, like President Obama, you believe that Iran is in the process of transforming from a revolutionary threat whose goals are mandated by the extreme religious beliefs and Islamist ideology of its rulers into one eager to be friends with the world, the prospect of a stronger Iran doesn’t trouble you.

That’s why President Obama did not predicate these negotiations on any pledges, even ones that were transparently false, of good behavior from Iran. He claims that insisting on an end to Iranian state sponsorship of terror or forcing it to renounce its goal of eliminating Israel would have prevented him from getting a deal on the nuclear question. But that formulation has it backward. The point of the negotiations was never about the nuclear details, something that was made clear by the astonishing series of concessions that the administration made throughout the talks. In October 2012, during his foreign policy debate with Mitt Romney, Obama pledged that any deal would eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Now he is advocating for one that leaves it in place under Western sponsorship while rewarding Tehran with the lifting of sanctions.

What Obama always wanted was a deal at any price because he thought it was the pathway to a new entente with Iran that would end the conflict with its Islamist leaders. But while a future in which Iran would no longer be a terror sponsor bent on destroying Israel and dominating the Middle East would be a good thing there is no rational reason to imagine this will happen. Indeed, by strengthening its government the president is ensuring that they will never have to choose between their aggressive goals and economic prosperity.

That’s why rather than being sidetracked into debates about the nuclear details, opponents need to focus on the real goal of the deal: détente with a regime that threatens the U.S. and its allies. The deal fails as a nuclear pact. But it is perhaps an even greater disaster when one realizes that its premise is a naive belief that Islamist tyrants are so enraptured with Obama that they are about to abandon their deeply held beliefs and evil intentions.