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"Sucker's Deal": A Rescue Package for the Mullahs
(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - The only reason Iran has come to the table after a decade of contemptuous stonewalling is that economic sanctions have cut so deeply - Iran's currency has collapsed, inflation is rampant - that the regime fears a threat to its very survival. Regime survival is the only thing the mullahs value above nuclear weapons. And yet precisely at the point of maximum leverage, the West would weaken sanctions in exchange for cosmetic changes that do absolutely nothing to weaken Iran's nuclear infrastructure. If at this point of maximum economic pressure we can't get Iran to accept a final deal that shuts down its nuclear program, how in God's name do we expect to get such a deal when we have radically reduced that pressure? The deal is a rescue package for the mullahs. It widens permissible trade in oil, gold, and auto parts. It releases frozen Iranian assets, increasing Iran's foreign-exchange reserves by 25% while doubling its fully accessible foreign-exchange reserves. The prospective deal is already changing economic expectations. Foreign oil and other interests are reportedly preparing to reopen negotiations for a resumption of trade in anticipation of the full lifting of sanctions. And for what? You'd offer such relief in return for Iran's giving up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Yet this deal does nothing of the sort. It leaves Iran's nuclear infrastructure intact. Not a single centrifuge is dismantled. In Syria, the first thing the weapons inspectors did was to destroy the machines that make the chemical weapons. Unless you dismantle the centrifuges and prevent the manufacture of new ones, Iran will be perpetually just a few months away from going nuclear. This agreement constitutes the West legitimizing Iran's status as a threshold nuclear state.