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Don't Rejoin the Iran Deal, Fix It

(National Interest) David Albright and Andrea Stricker - Rejoining the Iran nuclear deal without the necessary fixes to it would in essence bless Iran to enlarge its conventional, missile, and nuclear programs without receiving any commensurate concessions from Iran. Rather than making this a partisan issue, a better option is to use the new leverage created by the reimposition of sanctions to build domestic and international consensus to fix the flaws in the deal during the next few years. Statements urging rejoining the deal typically contain notable mischaracterizations, such as asserting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated Iranian "compliance" with the deal. In its quarterly safeguards reports since the deal has been implemented in January 2016, the IAEA has reported that it still has not been able to determine that Iran has no undeclared nuclear facilities and materials and thus cannot conclude that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful. Rejoining the nuclear deal unconditionally means accepting the end of the UN conventional arms embargo on Iran, slated to happen no later than October 2020. At that time, Iran will be able to freely import conventional arms and military hardware from Russia and China and arm itself as never before, posing a much greater risk to U.S. and allied forces in the region. Iran's development of missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons has also continued apace, with Iran conducting multiple launches of nuclear-capable missiles in defiance of UN Resolution 2231. These developments ultimately threaten the U.S. with nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles. David Albright, a physicist and former weapons inspector, is the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security where Andrea Stricker is a senior policy analyst.
2019-04-25 00:00:00
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