A Deal of Great Consequence

The historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the Iran deal – is done and it is a triumph of innovative and persistent diplomacy. Six world powers (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany) came to an agreement with Iran that, at the core of it, has a simple-to-grasp quid pro quo: Iran guts its civil nuclear infrastructure in exchange for relief from sanctions that were put in place due to its nuclear activities. Everyone agrees that the deal is historic, but there remains considerable disagreement – outside of the governments that negotiated the deal – about whether this Iran deal is a good deal.

Iran’s concessions under the deal were unsurprising for those analysts who’d been closely following negotiations between the two sides for over 20 months, from when the 2013 Joint Plan of Action, or “interim Iran deal,” was concluded. Most of what Iran conceded was announced in April 2015 in Lausanne, Switzerland, when diplomats revealed that they’d arrived at a framework for the final deal. As foreseen, Iran agreed to reduce its uranium stockpiles by 98 percent, keeping no more than 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium (LEU), as oxide or gas, in its possession. It agreed further to an enrichment cap of 3.67 percent, far below the threshold for the highly enriched uranium (HEU) necessary for a nuclear bomb. Moreover, under the deal, Iran is permitted to enrich uranium exclusively using its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges.

Centrifuge numbers – long a sticking point for negotiators and observers of the deal-making process – were finalized at 6,104 in the final agreement, down from a pre-deal peak of around 20,000. All enrichment activity will take place under the watchful eyes of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at the Natanz nuclear facility. The Fordow underground fuel enrichment plant, a point of concern for those who sought to destroy Iran’s nuclear program with a military strike, will host 1,044 IR-1 centrifuges for scientific research and development purposes.

The deal does a remarkable job of dismantling Iran’s plutonium route to the bomb. The IR-40 heavy water reactor at Arak will be redesigned. The redesign will prevent the production of weapons-grade plutonium from the reactor, and no new Iranian development work on new heavy water reactors can take place for at least 15 years. Additionally, in one of the few “permanent” provisions in the deal, Iran will ship spent fuel from the IR-40 reactor out of the country indefinitely.

Despite the conclusion of the deal after months of careful and detail-oriented diplomacy, implementation remains several months away. As this goes to print, the United Nations Security Council has unanimously approved a resolution formalizing its approval for the deal, including an important provision that would allow the United States to unilaterally “snap back” international sanctions on Iran without the acquiescence of Russia and China. The biggest obstacle is in Washington D.C., where legislators, largely in the Republican Party, seem resolved that this deal is not in the United States’ best interest. Similarly, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s advocates, including Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, continue to extol the virtues of the deal to hardliners in Tehran, who are just as resolved that the deal is a bad one.

Based on preliminary vote counts, it appears unlikely that this diplomatic victory for the Obama administration will be undercut by Congress. Even if Senate Republicans vote down approval of the bill, a presidential veto is unlikely to be overridden – it would require a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. Curiously, in Iran, Zarif and others have testified before the Majlis – the country’s national legislature – that the deal doesn’t constrain Iran’s nuclear program, something critics of the deal stateside have seized on as evidence of its failure. Moreover, the Iranian Majlis, where over 200 of 290 legislators are expected to voice opposition to the deal, has resolved not to hold its own vote on the deal ahead of the U.S. congressional vote. However, given the authority of the supreme leader in Iran, the U.S. vote will be the only that will really matter regarding the implementation of the deal.

American critics of the deal note that the steps Iran is taking are reversible, and that Iran’s “nuclear ambition” remains well in place (despite the Islamic Republic never having declared any official intent to weaponize its nuclear program and its supreme leader issuing a fatwa, or edict, against nuclear weapons). They further emphasize that the deal will not motivate Iran to alter course from its policy of supporting proxies across the Middle East, including in Lebanon and Yemen, and of supporting the Assad regime in Syria. Worse, critics argue, the Iranian regime, newly invigorated by sanctions relief, will be able to better play its hand in the Middle East.

Sanctions relief was always planned to be a part of any Iran deal – it was the “carrot,” so to speak, to encourage Iran’s eventual acquiescence to the technical restrictions on it nuclear program. From a U.S. national interest perspective, it is a bitter pill to swallow that the same deal that will prevent nuclear proliferation in the Middle East will result in a bolder Iran with a deeper pocketbook. Indeed, even John Kerry, the top U.S. diplomat on the deal, has said as much, telling U.S. allies in the Middle East that the deal won’t end U.S. vigilance regarding Iran’s “destabilizing actions” in the region.

Two Conversations

While the second- and third-order effects of this deal within Iran should not be underestimated, the conversation around the Iran deal, in the United States and elsewhere, is occurring on two levels. The first is the pedantic and technical conversation occurring among experts in the arms control community, where there is wide-ranging support. This group has pored through the clauses of the 159-page deal and come to the conclusion that the verification standards, restrictions on Iran, and implementation model are robust. The deal, evaluated on the basis of arms control and nonproliferation, has been widely lauded among arms control experts.

The second conversation around the deal is considerably murkier and focuses on Iran’s “destabilizing actions” around the region, including its support for the murderous regime led by Bashar al-Assad, provision of financial backing to Hezbollah and Hamas, and links to the Houthis in Yemen. For the United States, sealing the Iran deal meant doing business with a regime that, for over 30 years, has pursued regional policies deeply inimical to U.S. interests. Although the recent emergence of the Sunni-Salafi Islamic State in eastern Syria and Western Iraq has led to the alignment of some U.S. and Iranian interests, critics of the deal fear how the Iranian government will use the “windfall” of sanctions relief to expand activities in the region that run counter to other U.S. interests.

Indeed, part of what will make this deal historic is its role in catalyzing a new Iran in the Middle East. Beyond political concerns, however, it is worth recalling that Iran’s reintegration with the global economy will certainly change the country. Consider also that the revolutionaries of 1979 in Iran have grown old. Iran is a very young country today: 60 percent of Iranians are under 30 years old. They weren’t even alive in 1979. Among the Iranian youth, there is little interest in ideological anti-Americanism. Instead, there is an ambition for regional and global excellence – as Karim Sadjadpour has noted, these Iranians would rather have their country follow the fate of South Korea rather than that of North Korea.

The Iran deal, once implemented, may go down as the most significant diplomatic triumph in the modern Middle East since the 1978 Camp David Accords that paved the way for peace between Egypt and Israel. Iran’s overt and covert paths to the bomb – uranium and plutonium – will be blocked for the duration of the agreement, and a robust monitoring and verification regime will make Iranian violation incredibly difficult. Sanctions relief will open a closed economy of nearly 80 million people to the world, and will also embolden Iran as a regional actor. For Iran, the deal will be a reminder of how much it stands to benefit from a normal relationship with the outside world, instead of its prior existence as a heavily sanctioned pariah state. For everyone else, this deal is a testament to the outcomes of painstaking diplomacy.

This is a good deal, and a deal of great consequence.