Daily Alert Archives

The Sun Sets on a Good Iran Deal

(Foreign Policy) John Hannah - The biggest flaw with the emerging Iran nuclear deal is its "sunset" provision. The Obama administration is prepared to sign an agreement that will expire in 10 years. At that point, any restrictions on Iran's nuclear program would vanish. Iran's economy would be free from all nuclear-related sanctions and its government would be treated the same as any other state in good standing. The bottom line: The administration is prepared to allow the Islamic Republic to get within a screwdriver's turn from the bomb, regardless of whether in 2025 Iran is ruled by Ahmadinejad 2.0, or whether it remains the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, or whether its leaders continue to call for the destruction of Israel. That's why Netanyahu said the deal "doesn't block Iran's path to the bomb, it paves Iran's path to the bomb." He was right. The sunset clause almost guarantees that America, Israel, and our Arab allies will have to confront the nightmare of an Iran with nuclear weapons in the not-too-distant future, at a point when economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation will be but a distant memory. Talk about a ticking time bomb. Two weeks ago, Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken discussed the sunset clause, saying, "The Bush administration put on the table the proposition that Iran would be treated as a non-nuclear weapons state after it complied for some period of time with any agreement. And that is exactly what we are doing." Blinken is referring to an annex of UN Security Council Resolution 1747, passed in 2007. The annex set out the latest P5+1 offer to Iran for a long-term agreement on its nuclear program - the centerpiece of which was the suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities. Included in the offer was a vague commitment to "review" the moratorium on Iran's restricted nuclear activities at some undetermined future date, but only after two conditions had been met: 1) confirmation by the IAEA that all outstanding questions about Iran's program had been satisfactorily resolved, including those pertaining to possible weaponization efforts; and 2) confirmation that there remained no undeclared nuclear activities or materials in Iran, and international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's civil nuclear program. There was to be no review before the world - read, the United States - was convinced that Iran has come totally clean about its nuclear activities and has confidence that Iran has truly given up its quest for the bomb. The writer is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2015-03-06 00:00:00
Full Article