DON’T KILL IRAN DEAL. IMPROVE IT.
Trump has an opportunity to revive credible U.S. threats of sanctions and military force
The horrible Iran deal,” President-elect Donald Trump tweeted just before the new year. These words have been largely ignored. They should not be. They indicate that his campaign pledge to tear up and renegotiate the nuclear accord with Iran remains viable. To be sure, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as it is formally called, is highly flawed. But it would be risky for America to scuttle it now.
First of all, it is improbable that Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — the other parties to the deal — would agree to jeopardize it. Pulling out would isolate the U.S. from the coalition it created and leave no credible means for stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
A second reason to keep the deal is that during its first seven years, it delivers a period of significant constraints over Iran’s nuclear program along with tight inspections and monitoring. But in the eighth year, 2023, as President Obama has acknowledged, the agreement will gradually allow Iran to build enough nuclear capability to reach almost zero “breakout time” (the time needed to produce enough fissile material to make a bomb).
That makes those first seven years an opportune time to address the deal’s flaws.
Third, tearing up the deal would create a dangerous void: Washington would be provoking Tehran when it has no credible leverage to restrain Iran on its own. Because this is an international rather than bilateral deal, so long as Iran complied with it, international sanctions would not be restored and international legitimacy for military action would be weak or withheld.
The incoming Trump administration should revive the two main levers that brought Iran to the negotiations but were partially abandoned by the Obama administration: a credible threat of sanctions that could severely damage the Iranian energy and financial sectors, and a credible surgical military option.
The prevailing impression today is that the U.S. is not willing to seriously challenge any Iranian violations of the agreement as long as Iran does not produce nuclear weapons.
To restore American deterrence, the new president should make two positions clear:
First, the U.S. is willing to reimpose economic sanctions for Iranian non-compliance.
Second, America will not hesitate to use military force to prevent Iran from dashing for the bomb or from reducing its breakout time to a few months or even weeks after restrictions begin to wane. This red line is crucial to maintaining the deal’s main achievement — prolonging Iran’s breakout time to one year — once international restrictions lift.
The U.S., working with the other powers and Israel, should also use the deal’s first eight years to counter Iran’s non-nuclear misbehavior, which was excluded from the bargain. To secure the agreement, the Obama administration signaled its reluctance to halt Iran’s attempts to achieve regional hegemony.
Trump’s public revulsion toward the deal provides him with more latitude in this realm. The new administration should assertively react to attacks on U.S. forces in the region by Iran or its allies, such as strikes by Yemen’s Houthi rebels against U.S. Navy ships in October. It should thwart Iran’s military aid to terror organizations, including Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas. And it should enforce a United Nations Security Council resolution that prohibits Iran from developing a ballistic missile program designed to carry nuclear weapons.
Close cooperation with Israel could strengthen the American position. Israeli intelligence on Iran can assist in detecting Iranian violations, while an Israeli military threat could also persuade Iran not to exploit the flaws in the accord and shorten its distance to a nuclear bomb.
The U.S. and Israel should formulate a parallel agreement to cope with this challenge, maximizing their joint assets and avoiding public quarrels. Their plan should provide Jerusalem with the necessary legitimacy and capacity to act as a last resort in coordination with Washington to prevent a nuclear Tehran. If deterrence and diplomacy fail, this partnership could be the last chance to stop Iran from going nuclear.
By not canceling the agreement, Trump would have the opportunity to amend its flaws and create a better strategic reality. It is better than negating it, and better than allowing it simply to run its course.