Over the course of a series of mid-1980s summit meetings between the United States and the Soviet Union, President Ronald Reagan was under tremendous pressure to engage the General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on a full range of issues – from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to human rights. The Soviets countered with a narrow focus on arms control, which became the basis for a series of historic agreements to curtail the nuclear arms race. More broadly, this narrow agenda became the fulcrum for tectonic shifts in geopolitics and the history of the world – the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War that dominated global affairs for almost half a century.
The course of history typically bends on the basis of incremental, rather than fundamental change. Nixon’s opening to China began with cultural exchange and exhibition ping pong matches. These are important lessons to remember over the coming months, as members of Congress consider the value of the recently concluded agreement to freeze Iran’s nuclear ambitions and roll back its capacity to produce nuclear weapons. This agreement does not transform a rogue regime, but it does prevent that rogue regime from obtaining the most dangerous weaponry known to man. By doing so, it serves a vital U.S. interest, reduces an avenue for dangerous escalation of chaos and instability in the region, and proffers the possibility for Iran to join the community of civilized nations.
We were relatively new members of Congress and the Senate in 1979 when the Iranian Revolution unfolded and American hostages were taken in Tehran. In Congress and as United States Senators, we supported a range of policies to sanction Iran, isolate it, and check its behavior. That has been the prevailing policy approach for the balance of the last three decades. Unfortunately this approach has not worked. Iran’s influence and regional meddling have increased, as has its capacity to build a nuclear weapon, and the Middle East has become more dangerous and less stable. It is past time for new ideas and a new strategy.
The agreement reached between Iran and the international community represents a new approach. U.S. leadership has fostered all too infrequent consensus among the world’s major powers – including Russia, China, Europe and the United Nations – to give real meaning to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the cause of nuclear containment.
This Agreement does not attempt to solve all of the myriad aspects of Iran’s misbehavior, but rather to address the reality that the world is better off when nuclear weaponry is kept out of the hands of rogue nations. Even opponents of the deal – many of whom rejected it without reading a word of the agreement, and some before it was even concluded – admit that it sets back Iran’s nuclear ambitions for at least a decade. Specifically, the agreement would:
• Reduce Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium by 98 percent for 15 years;
• Reduce installed centrifuges by two-thirds for 10 years;
• Remove all spent fuel from the country;
• Curtail national infrastructure for producing weapons-grade nuclear materials;
• Authorize the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency to engage in extensive surveillance and inspection to verify compliance; and
• Automatically reimpose international sanctions under a snap-back provision in the event that Iran abrogates the agreement.
In short, this agreement cuts off Iran’s path toward assembling nuclear weapons with rules, requirements and an explicit verification regime.
In the coming weeks, an army of lobbyists and millions of dollars of television advertising will attempt to convince the American people and our elected representatives that these provisions are inadequate because the agreement does not address Iran’s revolutionary rhetoric, support of terrorism or unjustified taking of several American citizens. They will say that the international economic sanctions will be lifted to Iran’s benefit. But all of those things are true with or without this agreement.
What the lobbyists and advertising won’t own up to is the ominous reality that rejection of the agreement holds horrendous consequences for the United States. The United States would stand apart from Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia, and the UN Security Council. The international sanctions regime will collapse as consensus is broken. Iran will thus emerge without economic sanctions or constraints on its nuclear ambitions. And bellicose rhetoric will increase for a military strike on Iran that would set back nuclear capabilities far shorter than this agreement and would likely have ramifications more costly and calamitous than the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Rhetoric is the reflexive posture of politicians without a viable strategy. Neither disdain for the Iranian regime or recognition of its sponsorship of terror are a strategy for advancing U.S. national security interests or stability in the Middle East. Nor does it come close to justifying rejection of the agreement. The choice is between dealing with a dangerous regime with nuclear capabilities, or one without them; between going it alone or working within the context of the international community; between careful negotiation and provocative military escalation. Under these circumstances the choice is clear.
The United States must seize this strategic opening to check Iran’s nuclear ambition. War and conventional thinking have not served our interests. Through this first step, we create the opportunity to upturn the dangerous dynamics that characterize the Middle East today and gradually remake the region so that it contributes to regional peace, stability and prosperity.
Timothy E. Wirth is a former U.S. senator and former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs. Gary Hart is a former U.S. senator and special envoy to Northern Ireland.
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