The Iran Deal Will Lead to Another Hiroshima
President Barack Obama errs in thinking that opposition to the 5+1 nuclear deal with Iran is just a knee-jerk reaction from the Republican right. There is certainly an element of that, but the anxiety is deeper and wider than a party scrap. Leading Democrats -- New York Sen. Charles Schumer being the highest profile -- are uneasy at what they see as a false choice posed by the president. "Let's not mince words," Obama says. "The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon." But is it? It may be difficult to continue international sanctions after the U.N. has approved the agreement and Russia and China are eager to go back to doing business with Iran. But the U.S. can do a lot on its own, too.
Retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander, responds to Obama's devil's choice by saying: "There are cyber options to pursue. There are clandestine options to pursue. There are Special Forces options to pursue. I reject a notion that the choice is simply between this deal and going to war." The key question for Congress to weigh is whether the agreement buys time and only that. Iran has made it clear it will continue its bid for regional hegemony. The massive financial gains from the deal will support its imperial surge while enabling a repressive regime that was on the verge of collapse just a few years ago to project power into the corners of the Middle East.
It is appropriate that this debate plays out as the world's gaze returns to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 70th anniversary of the most horrifying few seconds in all of history.
Never again! Never again, the world says and says it with vehemence and urgency. Our "Little Boy" exploded over Hiroshima's Shima Hospital on the cloudless day of August 6, 1945, vaporizing some 140,000 people within a kilometer of the hypocenter. Silhouettes on a few remaining walls were shadows of those who, seconds before, had been living, sentient human beings in Hiroshima, and then Nagasaki. Thousands more were doomed to die over the year from radiation sickness.
Never again! Never again, the civilized world says of the Holocaust, an evil perpetuated over many years. Six million Jews died in Hitler's incinerators and gas ovens, and yet now the United States and the big five powers expect the children and grandchildren of the Holocaust to live under the shadow of a mushroom cloud.
VIDEO: [World Leaders Weigh Future of Nuclear Weapons]
What Holocaust? Almost simultaneously with President Barack Obama rebuking the critics of the 5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, we have Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying this: "If there were such a thing," he reportedly writes in his big new book, "we don't know why it happened and how." Depending on the translator, it seems he no longer talks about massacring the Jews; he just simply wants to make their lives hell on earth through terror so that they leave the Middle East, which just happens to be their historic homeland. Thanks a lot. The level of ignorance and hatred is quite breathtaking. You don't need to be an Israeli to know what one "old fashioned" atomic bomb -- missiles now -- would do to that tiny country.
Secretary of State John Kerry reminded us appropriately of the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing in his campaign to win acceptance for the nuclear agreement with Iran. The Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed as one of 190 compliant nations, has spared us a catastrophe threatening the entire planet. But, as Pope Francis has said, there is a moral incubus on mankind to make a reality of Article 6 of the agreement pledging the abolition of nuclear weapons altogether.
Obama and Kerry insist their deal will stop Iran's devious path to a nuclear warhead. Skeptics fear it will pave the way. Alas, the credibility of the inspections to stop cheating gets less impressive every week. The outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey, advised against lifting sanctions on weapons and ballistic missile shipments to Iran as part of the deal, according to Foreign Policy. Dempsey also rejected Obama's July 15 statement that "without a deal we risk even more war in the Middle East." Dempsey said "there is every reason to believe Iran will use increased revenues from the lifting of sanctions to fund countries' 'maligned activities,'" according to Foreign Policy. As did David Brooks of the New York Times, who wrote, "[Iran's nuclear program] legitimizes Iran's status as a nuclear state. ... Iran wins the right to enrich uranium.
The agreement does not include 'anywhere, anytime' inspections." And most importantly, Schumer came out against Obama's comprehensive plan of action. "In the first 10 years of the deal, there are serious weaknesses in agreement. First, inspections are not 'anywhere, anytime;' the 24-day delay before we inspect is troubling. ... More troubling is the fact that the U.S. cannot demand inspections unilaterally. ... Even more importantly, the agreement would allow Iran after 10 to 15 years be a nuclear threshold state with the blessing of the world community. ... If Iran is the same nation it is today, we will be worse off with this agreement than without it," Schumer said in a statement. "...The very real risk that Iran will not moderate and will, instead, use the agreement to pursue its nefarious goals is too great." He continues, "better to keep U.S. sanctions in place, strengthen them, enforce secondary sanctions on other nations, and pursue the hard-trodden path of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be." Not to mention that a majority of the American public is opposed to this agreement.
Stavridis, now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, bursts through several metaphors to express his dismay, "I think the top issue is the verification regime, which is starting to roughly resemble Swiss cheese. You can drive a truck through some of these holes."
BROWSE: [Iran Political Cartoons]
As Itamar Eichner writes, one of the holes was evident when classified portions of testimony to a Senate hearing revealed samples from Iran's Parchin site will not be collected by IAEA inspectors but by Iran itself. That puts them in a position to fake the samples, leaving no way to discover violations.
Another hole in the cheese is this idea that it is okay for the Iranians to have 24 days grace before inspectors can check suspicious activity on site. Why do they need all this time? It is long enough to cover up wrongful work and that's not all. There is an elaborate process of consultation in which the U.S. would have to seek the support of the majority of a Joint Commission consisting of China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.K., the European Union -- and Iran itself. Why would the Iranians insist on this kabuki dance if they went into this agreement with clean hands and honest hearts?
But let's be charitable and indulge in a little trust. Assume the Iranians will scrupulously observe the fine print of the 100-plus pages of the deal. In 15 years, they will be able to build thousands of centrifuges and will be free of the restrictions on arms deals -- five years for conventional weapons and eight for missile technology (even now their Shahab-3 missile has 1,200 mile range).
While the mullahs are around to do their mischief, Iran will be a menace to all its neighbors. When they are rewarded with more than $100 billion freed from sanctions, they will be able to reinforce the military threat posed by their ally Hezbollah, prolong the agonies in Syria and tighten their grip on Iraq.
Iran is cunning about its nuclear efforts but it cannot credibly pretend to be interested in regional peace. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who negotiated the deal with Kerry, has just said America must use this moment to win the trust of the Iranian people after decades of distrust. To be fair, the U.S. has not been without responsibility for that, especially when we supported Saddam Hussein's war against Iran, to say nothing of the coup that installed the Shah. But how can Zarif blame the U.S. for terror and extremism in the region -- as he just did -- when in Beirut Zarif laid a wreath at the grave of the arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, one of the men who forged Hezbollah on a mission of terror and was one of the plotters of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut?
The shadow of a mushroom cloud haunts the imagination of just about every Israeli. In that most disputatious of democracies 71 percent say the 5+1 agreement brings Iran closer to obtaining nuclear weapons capability. They are not paranoid. They just want to survive. They have every right to fear the agreement. Iran is not Switzerland. It is a gold medalist in deception and terror. The nuclear factory buried under a mountain at Fordow was disclosed only by the opposition -- and of course it remains part of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, a plant that Obama himself had said should be shut down.
READ: [Hiroshima, Nagasaki and How the H-Bomb Split the Manhattan Project Team]
The shadow of a mushroom cloud must also haunt Congress as it decides on an up or down vote on the deal by September 17. Republicans and Democrats alike, in large numbers, do not believe the agreement as it stands will stop Iran from putting a bomb on a missile at some stage. Obama wants to transform the geopolitics of the Middle East and his frustration is justified. It would be fine if Iran would rejoin the international community in all seriousness, but it has shown not the slightest inclination to be sincere about that. That is why it remains a bad idea for the U.S. to launch a strategy based on an embrace of an irreconcilable enemy and the alienation of all our friends.
One of the cardinal principles that I have followed in my own lifetime is "never take the slightest risk of a catastrophic outcome." To give Iran this degree of freedom is a greater risk with a greater danger. It is the modern-day equivalent of the Munich Agreement, of which Winston Churchill famously wrote, "We seem to be very near the bleak choice between War and Shame. My feeling is that we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later on even more adverse terms than at present."
Mortimer Zuckerman is the chairman and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report and the publisher of the New York Daily News.
