Here's a cogent response to that Militant article that bothered me.
Miriam
Iran Nuclear Deal and U.S. Pullout Reflect Epic Bipartisan Failures
The Iran nuclear deal was reached in 2015, during Barack Obama's presidency.
(Jacquelyn Martin / AP)
Editor's note: Scott Ritter was a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq
from 1991 to 1998.
President Trump made it official Tuesday, announcing that he would be
withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint
Comprehensive Program of Action, or JCPOA. "The agreement," he said in his
speech, "was so poorly negotiated that even if Iran fully complies, the
regime can still be on the verge of a nuclear breakout in just a short
period of time. The deal's sunset provisions are totally unacceptable. If I
allowed this deal to stand, there would soon be a nuclear arms race in the
Middle East."
The sunset provisions of the JCPOA are among the least understood aspects of
that agreement. Prior to signing the JCPOA, Iran operated more than 20,000
centrifuges for enriching uranium to use in its indigenous nuclear program.
The level of enrichment attained-3.7 percent for nuclear power reactors and
under 20 percent for use in a medical research reactor-was well below that
needed for use in a nuclear weapon. However, the international community,
led by the United States, was concerned that Iran would be able to use its
large number of centrifuges to rapidly increase the level of enrichment of
its uranium stockpile to more than 90 percent, allowing Iran to have the
fissile material needed for a nuclear bomb (or bombs) in a very short time.
In the lexicon of the nonproliferation specialists monitoring Iran, a new
term was coined-"breakout time." This was the amount of time required for
Iran, once inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who
were monitoring its nuclear enrichment efforts were removed, to produce
enough 90 percent-enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb. Using the 20,000
centrifuges it possessed, Iran's breakout time was estimated to be around
three months if using natural uranium feedstock, or around four weeks if
using uranium feedstock already enriched to 3.7 percent.
The collective wisdom in the arms control community was that Iran needed to
be kept to a breakout time of no less than one year. Under the JCPOA, this
would be done by limiting the number of centrifuges it could operate to just
over 5,000, while limiting the amount of 3.7 percent-enriched uranium it
could have stored at any given time to no more than 300 kilograms. With
these restrictions in place, Iran would have a breakout time of more than
one year.
But for Iran, agreeing to such limitations in perpetuity made little sense.
One of the considerations given to JCPOA calculus was that Iran eventually
would seek to build an indigenous nuclear energy production capability, and
it would require modern centrifuges capable of generating quantities of
enriched uranium far in excess of 300 kilograms. Indeed, one of the key
aspects of the JCPOA is Iran's "long-term enrichment and enrichment research
and development plan," which details how Iran will proceed during the life
of the JCPOA to prepare for the eventual implementation of a large-scale
uranium enrichment program that would far exceed the parameters of the
12-month breakout scenario set forth in the main body of the JCPOA.
The so-called sunset clause of the JCPOA holds that after 15 years-meaning
by 2030-all restrictions on the number of centrifuges Iran is allowed to
operate, as well as the amount of enriched uranium it is permitted to store,
will be lifted. In addition to increasing the numbers of centrifuges Iran
can operate, it also will be able to start using more efficient, modern
centrifuges.
For Iran, this clears the way to replace the inefficient centrifuges it can
possess and operate under the JCPOA with as many highly efficient modern
centrifuges it deems necessary to meet its legitimate needs for nuclear
energy. The JCPOA allows for Iran to begin phasing out its older centrifuges
with more capable models between years 11 and 13 of the agreement. Given the
improved performance characteristics of these newer centrifuges, the
one-year breakout time would be reduced to around four months sometime
between years 11 and 13 of the JCPOA, or as early as 2026. It is this
inevitable demise of the 12-month breakout window that prompted Trump to
walk away from the JCPOA on the grounds that it no longer served U.S.
national security interests.
Trump, however, was not the author of the JCPOA. That "honor" fell to
President Barack Obama. On the issue of Iran, Obama proved as disingenuous
as his predecessor, George W. Bush, when it came to fact-based policy on
Iraq. A 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program
concluded that Iran had not conducted any work on a nuclear weapon since
2003, and that intelligence provided to the IAEA by Israel in 2004 (which
purported to prove the existence of a covert Iranian nuclear program) turned
out to be of questionable provenance. The Obama administration, however,
encouraged the IAEA in 2011 to release a report based upon the same
discredited 2004 Israeli documents. The sole purpose of this report was to
build consensus within the United States and around the world for the
passage of stringent economic sanctions against Iran designed to pressure
Tehran into giving up its nuclear program.
While Obama was able to use the 2011 IAEA report to push through Congress
new unilateral American sanctions targeting Iranian oil sales in early 2012
(these sanctions were then used to pressure other countries to halt their
purchase of Iranian oil through so-called secondary sanctions, which
punished anyone operating in violation of U.S. law), it failed in forcing
Iran to the negotiating table.
With everything the U.S. and its allies threw at Iran, including having
Iranian citizens pay a huge economic cost in terms of a devastated economy
and reduced quality of life, the pressure campaign still failed. The
U.S.-led economic sanctions, rather than forcing Iran to abandon its nuclear
program, empowered it to expand it efforts dramatically. The consequence was
a dangerous situation. The U.S., after falsely building a narrative of Iran
aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapon, now needed to either militarily
confront Iran (and its expanding enrichment capacity) or find a diplomatic
way out of a self-inflicted wound without losing political face at home and
abroad.
The JCPOA was the result-a deal that recognized Iran's right to enrich
uranium for peaceful purposes (something the U.S. opposed for decades) while
backing away from the fiction that it was pursuing a nuclear weapons
program. The IAEA, the U.S. and every nation that embraced the falsified
intelligence used to underpin the allegations of an Iranian nuclear weapons
program-so-called possible military dimensions, or PMD-could not acknowledge
that what they sold to the world was founded on lies, so they constructed an
inelegant solution. The IAEA, after consulting with Iran, prepared a report
that "resolved" the PMD problem once and for all, and thus paved the way for
the lifting of economic sanctions.
Yes, Iran agreed to an unprecedented level of intrusive inspections and
restrictions on its enrichment program. But the JCPOA's bottom line is that
Iran retained thousands of active centrifuges in full operation. This
represented a major political victory for Iran, given the years-long,
concerted, U.S.-led effort to deny it access to even a single spinning
centrifuge. No matter how hard the Obama administration tried to sell the
JCPOA as a victory for American diplomacy and international peace and
security, Iran brought the U.S. to the negotiating table, emerging with a
nuclear program the world had tried to prevent it from obtaining while
giving up a fictional nuclear weapons program it neither possessed nor
desired.
The JCPOA was made to resolve a difficult and dangerous situation the U.S.
created for itself. As a result, the Obama administration had to craft an
agreement built on a foundation of lies. These lies proved to be its
undoing. If Iran, as the U.S. claimed in pushing for economic sanctions,
possessed a nuclear weapons program, and no effort was made to ensure that
it acknowledged and dismantled that program, then any agreement delaying
Iran access to the ability to produce enough highly enriched uranium for use
in a nuclear weapon kicked Iran's inevitable acquisition of a nuclear bomb
down the road.
This is the heart of Trump's argument against the JCPOA: that the so-called
sunset clauses limiting the number and quality of Iranian centrifuges only
delay, rather than prevent, an Iranian nuclear weapons program from reaching
fruition. To alter Trump's logic, the U.S. would need to discredit the
intelligence it used to justify the economic sanctions it suspended when
signing the JCPOA-the same sanctions the U.S. threatened to "snap back" in
place if Iran was found to be in violation, and that Trump reinstated when
he pulled out of the agreement.
The U.S. failed to do this, and the onus for this failure rests solely with
the Obama administration. To save political face by not having to
acknowledge that the heart of its Iran policy was built on a foundation of
lies, the Obama administration embedded this lie into the heart of the JCPOA
in the form of the agreement to resolve the "possible military dimension"
issue based upon a wink and a nod, as opposed to verifiable inspections.
While this was done as a political expedient designed to breathe life into
the JCPOA, it turned out to be a poison pill that killed the agreement. One
need only witness the briefing by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
in which he cites a newly acquired archive of Iranian documents detailing an
alleged nuclear weapons program, and the extent to which Trump relied on
that presentation to underpin his decision to leave the JCPOA.
Trump will go down in history as the man who walked away from an agreement
that all parties-including the U.S.-acknowledge that Iran was fully
compliant with. Trump only deludes himself and those who support him by
saying that his actions to confront a threat from Iran now, rather than
waiting for it to manifest itself, will make America more secure. Iran's
nuclear program poses no threat to either America or the world, because it
is, and always has been, a peaceful civilian program, something those in
power know to be the case.
Trump was able to exploit the lies the Obama administration perpetrated in
justifying his decision to walk away from the JCPOA. That fact is a sad
reflection of the level of ignorance and antipathy that exists among U.S.
citizens and those they elect to represent them in Congress.
Congress is, and has been, a witting facilitator of these lies. This should
come as no surprise, however, because those the American people elect are a
reflection of those they represent. Since 1979, when an Iranian mob took
over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for more than
400 days, the American people have been programmed to accept all information
that paints Iran and its theocratic government in a negative light. When
President Obama said Iran had a nuclear weapons program, the American
people-even after the previous administration's lies about weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq-did not demand hard evidence to back up the accusation.
Democrats will blame Trump for walking away from the JCPOA, and Republicans
will blame Obama for making such a bad deal. But Congress, empowered by an
ignorant American public willing to swallow at face value any news that
paints Iran in a bad light, has made all of this possible. A lack of
meaningful oversight of the intelligence community has allowed the lies
about Iranian nuclear capability to be promulgated. Those lies were then
used to impose economic sanctions intended to compel Iran to abandon a
program it was not pursuing.
When examined from this perspective, Trump's actions are a logical extension
of the collective will of the American people, expressed over time through
the actions of Congress. True, Obama gave us the nuclear agreement with
Iran, despite its political unpopularity with Congress as a whole. Like all
policies built on a foundation of lies, though, the JCPOA was doomed from
its inception. Eventually, the incompatible notion of a fictional Iranian
nuclear weapons ambition sold by Obama to Congress would collide with the
reality of a renewed Iranian enrichment capacity once the sunset clauses of
the JCPOA expired.
We can point the finger at Trump all we want, but at the end of the day, the
American people-Republicans, Democrats, Independents and all others-share
collective responsibility for his decision to walk away from the Iranian
nuclear agreement. It conforms to a set of facts most Americans embraced,
unquestioning, in endorsing a policy of economic containment that backfired.
Trump's actions in walking away from the JCPOA didn't shred American
credibility. That happened a long time ago, before Donald J. Trump was even
a glimmer in the eye of those who elected him.
Scott Ritter
