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The Hidden Costs of the Nuke Deal with Iran

[Foreign Policy] Michael Singh - The U.S., by offering to remove Iran's low-enriched uranium and turn it into the raw material required to make medical isotopes, is testing Iran's claim of peaceable intent and the Obama administration's hopes for engagement. However, this comes at a cost. The P5+1 have had to accept the uranium enrichment which Iran has conducted in recent years in defiance of multiple UN Security Council resolutions. Even if it ultimately does not reach a deal to send its low-enriched uranium abroad, Iran will surely seek to pocket this concession and declare a measure of victory. Similarly, by presenting the admission of IAEA inspectors to the until-recently-covert Qom enrichment plant as a concession, Iran gains tacit international acceptance of a facility built in defiance of its Nonproliferation Treaty obligations. The current U.S. initiative also risks demoralizing Iran's ascendant political opposition by bolstering the regime at a time when its legitimacy at home appears to be waning. Given that an internal transformation in Iran may be the best hope for long-run peace and stability in the region, any action that risks delaying it could be costly indeed. None of this is to say that the current approach should not be tried; it is simply to say that it is not free. The writer, an associate fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is former senior director for Middle East affairs at the U.S. National Security Council.
2009-10-22 06:00:00
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