Big day imminent; big problems ahead
[UPDATE: On January 16th, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, confirmed that Iran had complied with its commitments to rein in its nuclear programme. Within hours, nuclear-related sanctions were duly lifted. In a surprise side deal, the Iranians simultaneously released from prison four Americans of Iranian descent (Amir Hekmati, a Marine veteran; Jason Rezaian, a reporter from the Washington Post; Saeed Abedini; and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari). In return, America released seven Iranians who were being held for violating sanctions.]
IN HIS valedictory state-of-the-union address Barack Obama devoted only a few lines to his main foreign-policy achievement: the accord with Iran to restrain its nuclear programme. The words he chose, however, could almost be a summary of the Obama doctrine, if there is such a thing. Contrasting his record with that of predecessors who got bogged down fighting unwinnable wars, Mr Obama said that there was a “smarter approach” based on “patient and disciplined strategy” and mobilising “the world to work with us…that’s why we built a global coalition, with sanctions and principled diplomacy, to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.”
Mr Obama is justified in hailing the Iran deal as a diplomatic triumph. Some time next week “Implementation Day” is almost certain to be declared. That is the moment when Iran is deemed to have complied with all its obligations in dismantling those parts of its nuclear programme that would soon have put it only weeks away from being able to build a bomb. All nuclear-related sanctions will be lifted or suspended (see article).
The speed with which Iran released two US Navy patrol boats and their crews, after they had unintentionally entered Iranian waters on January 12th, was a measure of how America’s relationship with Iran has changed. A call from John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, to his Iranian opposite number, Mohammad Javad Zarif, defused an incident that would once have escalated into an international crisis. The co-operation that Iran has shown in decommissioning its enrichment centrifuges, removing the core of its heavy-water reactor and shipping out most of its low-enriched uranium stockpile has surprised arms controllers.
Yet, just as critics of the deal are wrong to describe it as a disaster in which Iran got everything it wanted, its supporters (including this newspaper) need to be realistic about it, too. The smooth progress towards Implementation Day is largely because the president, Hassan Rohani, and Mr Zarif are desperate to get sanctions lifted. They want to see $100 billion of Iranian assets unfrozen before parliamentary elections next month, in which they hope their faction will oust some of the hardliners who oppose them. Although both back greater engagement with the West for economic reasons (and appear to have the conditional support of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei), nothing else about Iran’s behaviour shows the slightest sign of change. It still hangs gay people, locks up dissidents and stokes sectarian conflict around the Middle East, most destructively in Syria.
A dose of reality
Supporters of the nuclear deal must also recognise that the smiling Mr Rohani sees it in purely transactional terms: by renouncing the pathways to a bomb, Iran gets cash and trade. Hardliners in the regime still loathe the deal. Iran remains committed to expanding its nuclear programme to “industrial scale”, which it will be able to do, even if the agreement holds, after 15 years. It continues to lie about the military aspects of that programme, which lasted until 2009. And there is every chance that, with the $100 billion in its pocket, Iran will start to test the resolve of Mr Obama and whoever comes after him.
It is understandable that Mr Obama sees the deal with Iran as a vindication of his approach to foreign policy. At worst, it helped avoid a war and bought some time, though it is still unclear how much. At best, the deal may help strengthen forces in Iran that favour limited reform. But it will require constant policing and it is not a solution to the Iranian nuclear problem, let alone a reset of Iran’s fraught relationship with the West