In late July, the House Armed Services Committee met to hear experts discuss the Iran nuclear deal. As a college student interning in our nation’s capital, I had the privilege of attending.
The event began as an intelligent discussion of American foreign policy. But 90 minutes into the hearing, I watched with disappointment as House Republicans — led by Colorado’s own Rep. Mike Coffman — hijacked the hearing to make a mockery of informed political discourse.
Matters of national security ought to be discussed objectively, relying on detailed and reasonable analysis of facts. Unfortunately, Coffman has repeatedly let his emotions eclipse logic. Rather than using his limited questioning time to ask the expert panelists about the specifics of the deal, he instead made a grandiose argument that the “real” problem with American foreign policy is that we treat other people as being “just like us” in the hopes we can use diplomacy to solve our problems.
I disagree. In my view, the “real” problem with American foreign policy is politicians who prefer cheap political victories to effective policy. It’s easy to pound on the table and say you don’t like the deal. It’s easy to call Iran an evil regime that we cannot trust. It’s easy to pretend we could have forced Ayatollah Khamenei to give up all of Iran’s weapons, resign from power, and allow Iran to democratize.
But it’s much harder to design a policy that will actually prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and therefore keep Americans safe.
President Obama has attempted to do so, in the form of the Iran nuclear deal. The question we should be asking ourselves — the question that the congressman failed to ask that day — is: Are we safer in a world with or without this deal?
It is true that Iran lies, cheats, and steals when it can. That’s why the deal does not require us to trust Iran, relying instead on verification. Its 159 pages outline the most comprehensive nuclear inspection regime ever. Top scientists will have access to the entirety of Iran’s nuclear supply chain, making it extremely difficult to develop a covert nuclear program. This 24/7 covert surveillance of Iran means that if Iran cheats, the international community will snap sanctions back into place — and if it really cheats, we can intervene militarily.
Coffman is right to point out that Iran sponsors terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. That’s exactly why we cannot let Iran develop a nuclear weapon. A nuclear Iran will be more aggressive in its support of terrorist groups and opposition to Israel; an Iran that’s constrained by the nuclear deal, can be more easily managed. While proxy fighters are dangerous, nuclear weapons threaten our very existence.
To be sure, the deal is not perfect. We must keep using all of the tools in our foreign policy toolkit to stop Iran from arming our enemies and harming our allies. But the deal is an important step in the right direction. It forces Iran to dismantle two-thirds of its centrifuges, give up 98 percent of its enriched uranium, shut down its heavy water reactor, and forego enriching plutonium. At its core, the deal makes America safer.
It’s a shame that Coffman — representing you, me, and the state of Colorado — is willing to forfeit that safety for cheap political theater. Suffice to say that this intern was not impressed.
Riley Collins is a native of Centennial and is currently a student at Dartmouth College. He is an intern at the Truman National Security Project in Washington, D.C.
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