President Obama may be about to make the biggest of his many foreign-policy mistakes. Both Washington and Tehran have hinted that an accord on Iran’s nuclear program may come as early as March 31.
In a Reuters interview last week, Obama broadly outlined the deal. Iran, he said, is already at the “threshold” point, needing just a year to build its first nuclear warhead. Under the deal, Iran would freeze its program at the current point for 10 years, subject to review in five years’ time, but could continue enriching uranium up to 5 percent.
Translation: Washington would acknowledge Iran’s right to build a nuclear arsenal in 10 years (perhaps five) if it so wishes.
In the meantime, Iran could enrich uranium and build up stocks. In exchange for accepting this international “probation,” the form of which remains unclear, Iran would see US, UN and European Union sanctions lifted.
What was the point of 13 years of tensions, sanctions and threats of war, half of it on Obama’s watch, if America was to end up accepting Tehran’s right to build a bomb?
The Obama deal threatens other harm.
First, it further discredits the word of America’s president. Four presidents from both parties, including Obama, are on record pledging not to allow Iran to build a nuclear arsenal.
Ironically, the toughest pledge came from Obama himself, who, waving his finger and repeating his catchphrase, “make no mistake,” has said he’d never let Iran go nuclear.
Second, the deal signals to all nations that building nuclear arms is OK, even for those (like Iran) that promised not to do so by signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That could trigger a stampede that Obama’s successors will find hard to contain.
What was the point of 13 years of tensions, sanctions and threats of war, half of it on Obama’s watch, if America was to end up accepting Tehran’s right to build a bomb?
Turkey has already said it intends to build a nuclear “industry.” Egypt promises to expand its embryonic Nuclear Commission.
Nuclear cooperation featured in last week’s talks between Saudi Arabia’s new King Salman Ibn-Abdulaziz and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The United Arab Emirates is in talks with France to start its own nuclear program.
Even Iraq is toying with the idea. Last Thursday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Obama’s recognition of “Iran’s nuclear rights” is a signal to “other developing nations” to build programs of their own.
Third, the deal badly undermines the United Nations.
Yes, Obama has long accused President George W. Bush of “unilateralism” and ignoring the United Nations. Yet Bush ordered intervention in Iraq on the basis of 14 Security Council resolutions passed between 1990 and 2003. Obama, by contrast, is ignoring six UN Security Council resolutions that demand Iran stop all uranium enrichment.
Worse, by putting the talks under the umbrella of the so-called “P5 + 1” group (the five permanent Security Council members, plus Germany), Obama has created a rival to the Security Council — an ad-hoc body with no clear mission statement, no legal legitimacy and certainly no authority to take over for the UN organ.
Compared to Obama, Bush was a paragon of multilateralism. Indeed, Obama’s approach recalls the actions of the appeasement-struck governments of Britain and France in the face of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany’s aggressive behavior — their separate negotiations that sidelined, and thus doomed, the League of Nations.
Finally, of course, Obama is also trying to script Congress out of the whole Iran nuclear issue by concocting a hybrid document that commits the United States to a course of action on a major issue of national security and international affairs but isn’t a treaty.
Again, Obama has never stopped castigating Bush as an egomaniacal lone rider. Yet Bush sought congressional approval for his major decisions on Afghanistan and Iraq, while Obama refuses to do the same on the Iran nuclear issue.
In 2008, Obama was secretly pressing the Iraqi government not to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement with the Bush team but to instead wait for him to enter the White House. At the same time, he was calling for Congress to have a say on that issue.
Now, however, he claims he can do as he likes without consulting anyone in Congress.
The Obama deal is bad for regional and world peace, bad for international cooperation, bad for US democracy and bad for the Iranian people, because it would give the obnoxious Khomeinist regime another opportunity to claim victory over the “Great Satan.”