Conservative Analysis of the Iranian Nuclear Deal

            The recent deal between Iran and the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and Germany is dangerously flawed in several respects.  Although Iran is required under its terms to stop or slow down its nuclearization program, ostensibly for energy, but apparently for weaponry, the deal is unlikely to achieve its intent, which is to prevent Iran, which receives all the benefits from the deal, from producing nuclear weapons.

            The deal was negotiated by the administration of Iran’s new President, who had campaigned on a plan to make a detail to allow Iran to escape the harsh measures that were damaging its economy, but must be approved by the Islamist theocratic dictatorship, which remains intent upon obtaining nuclear weapons and would never agree to give up its “right” to have them.  In other words, the Islamic Republic would not have agreed to a deal that significantly curbed its weapons of mass destruction ambitions.  Indeed, Iran’s leaders are claiming that U.S. President Barack Obama’s interpretations about how tough the deal supposedly is on Iran are false. 

            In return for temporary Iranian concessions until a permanent deal is negotiated, the United States is lifting economic sanctions and unfreezing Iranian assets up front while the steps Iran is taking in compliance of the deal are not irreversible.  The concern that conservative analysts of the deal have expressed is that the West will have lost its leverage should Iran renege because of the difficulty of gaining Russian and Chinese approval for the sanctions in the United Nations. 

            The verification process for the nuclear deal with Iran only includes known sites, without requiring the Iranians to make available for inspection any other suspected site.   The deal also ignores Iran’s ballistic missile program.  Such missiles could deliver nuclear warheads far beyond Iran’s borders.  The dangerous oversight reflects the odd statement of Vice President Joseph Biden during the vice presidential candidates debate in 2012 that an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose no threat because Iran had no means to deliver it.  Biden’s statement thus represented a foreshadowing of a shift in the Obama Administration’s policy from not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon to allowing it to have one, as long as it could not launch it from a missile, as if a nuclear bomb is not otherwise dangerous.

            In the pre-negotiations, according to Breitbart News, the U.S. released several Iranian smugglers in exchange for the release of two innocent American civilians held in Iran while three other innocent American civilians continue to be held. In other words, even the usual pre-negotiation acts of good faith were tilted toward Iran’s favor.

            Although the deal was about nuclear weapons, it fails to address Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, which is one of the main reasons for concern about Iranian obtainment of weapons of mass destruction.  Furthermore, the Obama Administration’s direct negotiation with Iran violates American policy of not negotiating with terrorists.  Moreover, the deal legitimatizes the despotic Iranian regime.

            By accepting the nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama Administration fails to reassure Israel and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, which now can no longer rely upon American protection and will now have to turn elsewhere or resort to other means.  The Administration has made the U.S. look weak and disloyal and exposed for not truly standing by its own policy, such as by denying Iranian obtainment of nuclear weapons to any degree more than in expressing empty words.  

           The U.S. Congress must now act to increase sanctions on Iran, or at least, should it be unable to override any veto by Obama, to establish a sanctions plan as a kind of insurance policy that would be triggered as soon as any Iranian violation of the nuclear deal is detected.