Tehran does not deserve any deal

The indications from Washington and Tehran are that a deal on Iran’s nuclear program is close. It will supposedly halt Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weaponry. The region doesn’t need a second nuclear-armed power. Smug, secretive, US-protected Israel is bad enough. But there are major dangers that come with a deal that takes no account of Iran’s wider interference in the Arab world.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal this week warned that in the wider context — Iran did not deserve a deal with Washington. It did not deserve to escape the slow stranglehold of US-led international sanctions.
The case against cutting Tehran any slack is overwhelming.
This is a country that has supported the Syrian government’s savage attempt to crush four years of rebellion. This is a country that has since the 1980s fomented the growth of the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon. This is a country that led the former Iraqi government of Nuri Al-Maliki into the disastrous repression of Iraq’s Sunni population. This is a country that has sought to foster unrest in Eastern Province and Bahrain. This is a country that has seized territory belonging to the UAE. This is a country that is even now promoting rebellion in Yemen against an elected government.
Yet despite all this, the Obama White House seems mesmerized by the nuclear deal itself. There appears to be the assumption that an Iran, which has agreed to have its nuclear teeth pulled will somehow become compliant and nonaggressive. It is hard to imagine any worthwhile analyst at the State Department embracing such a nonsensical opinion. No US diplomat with Middle East experience could believe that a nuclear deal is going to transform Iran’s regional ambitions. And the CIA and the Pentagon can be under no illusion about the clear and present threat Tehran poses to the region. Langley and the Pentagon already have the satellite intelligence to prove Iranian bad faith.
Yet the White House is clearly setting great store by a nuclear deal. And of course, it doesn’t take a genius to work out why. The Obama administration has not a single solid foreign policy achievement to its name. Disengaging from Iraq was no triumph. The long-cogitated surge in Afghanistan didn’t work. Relations with Moscow have indeed been reset, but not as Obama meant when he first came to power. They are instead being restored to Cold War levels. Tensions with Beijing continue to rise. The US was duped into releasing military-run Myanmar from sanctions. Now as the evidence piles up of repression, not simply of the Rohingya Muslims but of other minorities, Washington does nothing. A just settlement for Palestinians has never looked more unreachable. Washington’s pusillanimous indulgence of its vicious Israeli ally has everything to do with this most major failure.
So surrounded by the collapse of virtually every foreign affairs issue he has touched, it is not surprising that a nuclear deal with Iran seems so important. And there is another factor. The sheer time it has taken to edge a slippery and insincere Iran to the edge of a deal will make its inking seem far more of a victory than it really is.
Obama does not want to lose the chance to set this single cockade in his bare and battered foreign policy hat. Iran will almost certainly welch on key parts of the deal. Moscow will probably be eager to assist in this. But this will not become immediately apparent. Obama will have his few hours in the bright sunlight of success.
But the reality is that any deal on Iran’s nuclear program that does not take account of its disruptive and malign interference in the sovereign affairs of its neighbors, is going to be a serious mistake.
Increasingly damaging sanctions have driven Iran’s rulers crab-like to the nuclear negotiating table. A far broader agreement ought to have been on the agenda. There was need for a deal that would protect Washington’s friends and allies in the region from Iranian meddling.
No such provisions seem likely. Free of sanctions, the Iranian leadership will be able to buy off its disaffected people with more subsidies. It will be able to rearm. It will have more cash to feed terror groups and regimes.
It knows that once lifted, sanctions will be very hard to re-impose. It also knows that signing a deal will make it seem suddenly reasonable in the world’s eyes. Sheer relief that it has ended its nuclear devilment will blind international opinion to its wider regional aggression. Thus, with the removal of sanctions a golden opportunity for a wider settlement will disappear.