National Security Adviser John Bolton on Tuesday issued a warning to Iran, telling the regime in a fiery speech in New York that there will be “hell to pay” if it continues on its current course.
“If you cross us, our allies, or our partners … yes, there will indeed be hell to pay,” said Bolton, who was quoted by Fox News, in a speech before the United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) annual summit.
“According to the mullahs in Tehran, we are ‘the Great Satan,’ lord of the underworld, master of the raging inferno,” Bolton said. “So, I might imagine they would take me seriously when I assure them today: If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay.”
“The ayatollahs have a choice to make. We have laid out a path toward a bright and prosperous future for all of Iran, one that is worthy of the Iranian people, who have long suffered under the regime’s tyrannical rule,” added Bolton.
Iran, he continued, “brazenly supports the criminal Assad regime in Syria” and was “complicit in Assad’s chemical weapons attacks on his own people.” He also called Iran the world’s “worst kidnapper of US citizens.”
Bolton also dismissed the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran, saying it was “the worst diplomatic debacle in American history.”
President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran deal in May. Recently, the President signed an executive order officially reinstating US sanctions against Iran.
The deal contained numerous provisions — including “weasel words,” Bolton said Tuesday — that White House officials found insufficient, such as limited inspection mechanisms to ensure Iran’s compliance with the deal, as well as sunset provisions that would lift various restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in as little as 10 years.
The deal “did nothing to address the regime’s destabilizing activities or its ballistic missile development and proliferation. Worst of all, the deal failed in its fundamental objective: permanently denying Iran all paths to a nuclear bomb,” continued Bolton.
“The United States is not naïve,” he stressed. “We will not be duped, cheated, or intimidated again. The days of impunity for Tehran and its enablers are over. The murderous regime and its supporters will face significant consequences if they do not change their behavior. Let my message today be clear: We are watching, and we will come after you.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump addressed the UN General Assembly in New York City and slammed the Iranian regime, noting its leaders “sow chaos, death, and destruction” and “do not respect the sovereign rights of nations.”
“We cannot allow the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism to possess the planet’s most dangerous weapons. We cannot allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America,’ and that threatens Israel with annihilation, to possess the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth. Just can’t do it,” he said.
“We ask all nations to isolate Iran’s regime as long as its aggression continues. And we ask all nations to support Iran’s people as they struggle to reclaim their religious and righteous destiny.”
President Trump seemingly served notice Friday that the days are dwindling for Barack Obama’s Iran agreement. Although deal proponents also gained time to pursue “fixes,” this is a forlorn option. No fix will remedy the diplomatic Waterloo Mr. Obama negotiated. Democrats will reject anything that endangers his prized international contrivance, and the Europeans are more interested in trade with Tehran than a stronger agreement.
There is an even more fundamental obstacle: Iran. Negotiating with Congress and Europe will not modify the actual deal’s terms, which Iran (buttressed by Russia and China) has no interest in changing. Increased inspections, for example, is a nonstarter for Tehran. Mr. Obama gave the ayatollahs what they wanted; they will not give it back.
Most important, there is no evidence Iran’s intention to obtain deliverable nuclear weapons has wavered. None of the proposed “fixes” change this basic, unanswerable reality.
Spending the next 120 days negotiating with ourselves will leave the West mired in stasis. Mr. Trump correctly sees Mr. Obama’s deal as a massive strategic blunder, but his advisers have inexplicably persuaded him not to withdraw. Last fall, deciding whether to reimpose sanctions and decertify the deal under the Corker-Cardin legislation, the administration also opted to keep the door open to “fixes”—a punt on third down. Let’s hope Friday’s decision is not another punt.
The Iran agreement rests on inadequate knowledge and fundamentally flawed premises. Mr. Obama threw away any prospect of learning basic facts about Iran’s capabilities. Provisions for international inspection of suspected military-related nuclear facilities are utterly inadequate, and the U.S. is likely not even aware of all the locations. Little is known, at least publicly, about longstanding Iranian-North Korean cooperation on nuclear and ballistic-missile technology. It is foolish to play down Tehran’s threat because of Pyongyang’s provocations. They are two sides of the same coin.
Some proponents of “strengthening” the deal propose to eliminate its sunset provisions. That would achieve nothing. Tehran’s nuclear menace, especially given the Pyongyang connection, is here now, not 10 years away. One bizarre idea is amending the Corker-Cardin law to avoid the certification headache every 90 days. Tehran would endorse this proposal, but it is like taking aspirin to relieve the pain of a sucking chest wound.
President Trump’s announcement Wednesday that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was both correct and prudent from America’s perspective. Much more remains to be done to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but this was a vital first step.
What is now critical is implementing Trump’s decision. Will the State Department actually carry out the new U.S. policy — which State’s bureaucracy strongly opposed — or will the entrenched opponents of moving the embassy subvert it quietly by inaction and obfuscation?
In 1948, the United States, under Harry Truman, was the first country to recognize the modern state of Israel upon its declaration of independence. Nonetheless, Truman, at the State Department’s urging, declined to acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a mistake continued by his successors. Trump has now corrected this error: Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital since 1948, and the sooner the American flag flies over the American embassy there, the better.
The expected protests and violence from the usual suspects in the Middle East have already begun, and more can be expected. Fear of these protests has deterred prior administrations from moving the embassy to Jerusalem. But it is wrong for America to bend to such efforts to intimidate us. Congressional support will be overwhelming, as it should be; over 20 years ago, the House and the Senate legislated almost unanimously that the president should relocate our embassy to Jerusalem. Given the inevitable bureaucratic obstructionism, however, Congress must continue playing an important role — by constantly prodding the State Department and by providing prompt and adequate funding for building a first-class new embassy.
At a stroke, Trump has also extinguished numerous fantasies still thriving at the United Nations and in many national capitals around the world. The first is that several General Assembly resolutions from the U.N.’s early days in the late 1940s still have any force or effect. Trump’s announcement, for example, means that Resolution 181 (creating an Arab and a Jewish state out of Britain’s Palestinian mandate and establishing Jerusalem as a corpus separatum — an independent city under U.N. Trusteeship Council authority) is a dead letter. Moreover, the so-called “right of return” for Palestinian refugees arising from Israel’s 1947-49 war of independence, long out of date and flatly rejected by Israel, is now also on history’s trash heap.
Trump’s embassy decision helps bring into focus the real issues that now need to be addressed. The Middle East peace process has long needed clarity and an injection of reality, and Trump has provided it. Palestinian leaders have for decades said that moving the embassy would bring negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to a grinding halt. That is true only if the Palestinians wish it, and would demonstrate that their commitment to true peace that recognizes the permanence of Israel was a snowflake, insincere from the start.
No lasting peace can be based on illusions, and Trump’s approach has made that objective more rather than less likely.
Almost unnoticed in the coverage of President Trump’s Asia trip, Lebanon is slipping under Iran’s control. On Nov. 3, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Sunni, resigned, citing fears of assassination by Hezbollah, the Shia terrorist group funded and controlled by Iran. No one can say Hariri’s fears are unjustified since his father, former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, was murdered in 2005 — almost certainly at Syrian or Iranian direction.
While the full ramifications of Saad Hariri’s resignation remain to be seen, Tehran’s ayatollahs have now significantly extended their malign reach in the Middle East. This is bad for the people of Lebanon; bad for Israel, with which Lebanon shares a common border and a contentious history; bad for Arab states like Jordan and the oil-producing Arabian Peninsula monarchies; and bad for America and its vital national interests in this critical region.
Sadly, Iran’s progress was foreseeable from the inception of Barack Obama’s strategy of using Iraqi military forces and Shia militia units as critical elements in the campaign to eradicate the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The Baghdad government is effectively Iran’s satellite. Accordingly, Obama’s decision to provide that regime with military assistance and advice strengthened Iran’s hand even further and materially contributed to its efforts to establish dominance in Iraq’s Shia regions.
Moreover, Iran itself, supported by Russian forces in Syria, aided and directed the Bashar Assad regime in fighting against both ISIS and the Syrian opposition. Iran also ordered Hezbollah to deploy from Lebanon into Syria, thus effectively creating a Shia-dominated arc of control from Iran itself to the Mediterranean.
Apparently, neither the Pentagon, nor the State Department, nor the National Security Council advised the new Trump administration of the implications of facilitating Iran’s Middle East grand strategy. Obama’s approach is, ironically, easier to understand, given his determination to secure his “legacy” by conceding vital U.S. national interests to nail down the Iran nuclear deal. Seeing Iran enhance its hegemonic aspirations throughout the region was, in his view, just another small price to pay to grease the way for the nuclear deal. Trump’s advisers have no such excuse.
Hariri’s resignation shows the inevitable consequences of blindly following Obama’s approach. Very little now stands in the way of Hezbollah’s total domination of the Lebanese government, thereby posing an immediate threat to Israel. In recent years, Tehran continued supplying the Assad regime and Hezbollah with weapons systems dangerous to Israel. Even more Israeli self-defense strikes are now likely, as Iran’s conventional threat on Israel’s borders grows.
Nearby Arab states also see the potential dangers of an unbroken Shia military arc of control on their northern periphery. The Middle East thus faces an advancing Syria, backed by Iran’s imminent nuclear-weapons capability, deliverable throughout the region — and likely able to reach America in short order.
The Trump administration cannot continue idly watching Iran advance without opposition. Washington and its regional allies need a comprehensive strategy to deal with Iran, not a series of ad hoc responses to regional developments. Time is fast running out.
Whether to move America’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has long been a subject of political debate in the U.S. and abroad. It’s time now to resolve the debate by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city and relocating our embassy there on incontestably Israeli sovereign territory.
This relocation would be sensible, prudent and efficient for the United States. It would not adversely affect negotiations over Jerusalem’s final status or the broader Middle East peace process, nor would it impair our diplomatic relations among predominantly Arab and Muslim nations.
Over the years, as with many other aspects of Middle Eastern geopolitics, a near-theological view has developed here and abroad about the impact of moving the U.S. embassy. Now is the ideal time to sweep this detritus aside and initiate the long-overdue transfer.
Common sense dictates that America’s overseas diplomats should be located near the seat of government to which they are accredited, giving them proximity to political leaders and major government institutions. This also puts our diplomats near representatives of political, economic and social interests in the nations where the diplomats serve.
If the Middle East peace process is such a delicate snowflake that the U.S. embassy’s location in Israel could melt it, one has to doubt how viable it truly is.
Despite modern transportation and telecommunications capabilities, distance from the seat of government still imposes costs in time and resources, not to mention aggravation, on our diplomats in Israel. There is still no substitute for personal contact, face-to-face communications and easy accessibility – especially in times of crisis – with host-government officials and political leaders.
It’s legitimate for Congress to raise budgetary issues regarding both existing operations and the costs of a new embassy. Here, the verdict is clear. Congress staked out its position in the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate.
Locating a new U.S. embassy in indisputably Israeli territory would be straightforward. Israel’s government has designated a site in Jerusalem’s Talpiot neighborhood, held in Israeli hands since the nation gained independence in 1948, for our new embassy.
Despite the overwhelming diplomatic and managerial advantages of relocating our embassy, numerous political issues have been advanced for keeping it in Tel Aviv. Some of these arguments are offered in good faith, including by those who wish Israel no harm.
But let’s be honest; many of these arguments are made for precisely the opposite reason – to continue to deny to Israel the acknowledgment that it is a legitimate state with a legitimate capital. There is a sense that perhaps repeating the arguments over time can make them more persuasive than their underlying merits.
The United States should treat respectfully all legitimate opinions regarding the embassy move. But we must not be held hostage to the misconceptions of those wishing neither us nor Israel well.
We should not discount our ability to justify our actions, even against propagandists attempting to falsify our intentions and integrity. Succumbing to threats for decades shows precisely the opposite about the character of our nation. It shows us susceptible to intimidation on the embassy location issue and, therefore, potentially also susceptible to intimidation on others.
Where the U.S. locates our embassy in Israel is a matter for America and Israel to decide.
One argument against moving the U.S. embassy is that so doing would prejudice the final status negotiations over Jerusalem. This argument is, at best, disingenuous. No serious proposal has ever suggested building embassy facilities anywhere east of the Green Line into territory Israel captured in the Six-Day War in 1967, in an area known as East Jerusalem.
Instead, proposals call for our embassy in the western portion of Jerusalem that has been Israel’s capital for as long as Israel has existed as a modern state. This is territory that Israel will hold unless its most ardent opponents get their wish and Israel is eradicated. Ironically, despite being the first country to recognize the new State of Israel in 1948, America has never formally recognized its sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem.
The origin of the opposition to establishing foreign embassies in Jerusalem stems from United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, adopted in November 1947, creating three entities out of what remained of Great Britain’s Palestinian Trusteeship: an Arab state, a Jewish state, and “the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.”
Resolution 181 designated Jerusalem as a corpus separatum – a Latin term meaning a city or region given special legal and political status different from the surrounding area, but not considered an independent city-state. Jerusalem was placed under the authority of the U.N. Trusteeship Council – the U.N. Charter body administering, among other things, former mandates under the League of Nations.
Today, just weeks before Resolution 181’s 70th anniversary, it is a dead letter. Whatever else Jerusalem’s final status may be, there is no serious advocacy that Jerusalem be internationalized, and no real-world possibility that it will happen.
Nonetheless, the lingering effects of the internationalization idea persist in the contention that uncertainty exists over whether any part of Jerusalem will ultimately become Israel’s capital city.
In April this year, Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced that: “We reaffirm our commitment to the U.N.-approved principles for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which include the status of east Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view west Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
Moscow’s frank acknowledgement of Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital, and the near-total absence of reaction around the world – especially in the Middle East – evidences the reality into which a U.S. decision to relocate its embassy would fall.
If Russia can accept that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital without receiving massive blowback, then surely so can the United States.
The second argument against relocation of the U.S. embassy is that the broader Middle East peace process would be adversely impacted. Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat said last December, for example, that moving the embassy would cause the “destruction of the peace process as a whole.”
Surely, quite apart from being the kind of threat we should treat with disdain, this argument proves too much to swallow. Given the amount of economic and military assistance Washington has supplied to Israel over the years – not to mention huge amounts of private donations and humanitarian assistance from U.S. citizens – American support for the permanence of modern Israel should not be surprising.
If the Middle East peace process is such a delicate snowflake that the U.S. embassy’s location in Israel could melt it, one has to doubt how viable it truly is. This question calls for realism, not the overheated rhetoric we have heard too often.
Washington’s role as honest broker in the peace process will not be enhanced or reduced in the slightest by moving our embassy to Jerusalem. To say otherwise is to mistake pretext for actual cause.
Moving our embassy may produce new talking points for those who have never reconciled themselves to Israel’s existence in the first place, but it will not “cause” any change in the existing geopolitical state of play.
Finally, we hear constantly the argument that concedes an eventual decision to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel, but pleads that “right now” is not the correct time. This approach argues for a temporary deferral of the move, but curiously, “temporary” deferral has now lasted for nearly 70 years. We hear it still today.
The fall of Raqqa, capital of the Islamic State’s “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq, is unarguably an important politico-military milestone, albeit long overdue. Nonetheless, ISIS, a metastasized version of Al Qaeda, remains a global terrorist threat, and prospects for Middle Eastern stability and security for America’s interests and allies are still remote.
Even as ISIS was losing Raqqa, Iraqi regular armed forces and Shia militia were attacking Kirkuk and its environs, held by Iraqi Kurds since June 2014, when ISIS burst out of Syria and seized large swathes of territory from Baghdad’s collapsing army.
The battles for Raqqa and Kirkuk reveal much about the mistakes in U.S. strategy for defeating ISIS, and the consequences of not supporting Iraqi Kurdish efforts to establish an independent state. The two battles are closely related, proving again the historical reality that the Middle East is replete with multi-party, multi-dimensional conflicts, and contains more troublemakers than peacemakers.
Most importantly for Washington, Raqqa and Kirkuk demonstrate that Tehran’s malign regime is on the march, while American policy stands in disarray, even while President Trump rightly condemned Iran’s continued regional belligerency and support for global terrorism. How this came to be is a lesson in bureaucracy. Existing policies, on auto-pilot as always when new presidents take office, especially when Republicans replace Democrats, persisted after Jan. 20, without being subjected to searching review and modification.
Had the incoming Trump administration immediately reversed Barack Obama’s support for the Baghdad government, effectively a satellite of Tehran’s mullahs, we would not be, as we are now, objectively supporting Iran’s hegemonic regional ambitions. President Trump did order a faster operations tempo against ISIS, and made significant changes in the rules of engagement for U.S. military activities.
Unfortunately, however, he was apparently not given the option to dump Obama’s strategy of relying on regular Iraqi government troops and Shia militia, both dominated by Iran. Of course, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds could not have defeated ISIS alone, despite receiving U.S. advice and equipment and carrying a major part of the hostilities. The new administration should have pressed other Arab states, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in addition to Syrian opposition forces, to take more substantial military roles.
The result is that, today, as the ISIS caliphate disintegrates, Iran has established an arc of control from Iran through Iraq to Assad’s regime in Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. If this disposition of forces persists, Iran will have an invaluable geo-strategic position for possible future use against Israel, Jordan or the Arabian Peninsula’s oil-producing monarchies. Thanks to Obama and the bureaucracy, the United States seemingly has no post-Raqqa politico-military policy, allowing Iran greater regional dominance by default.
Iran’s grand strategy became even more evident in the swift pivot of significant military resources from the anti-ISIS campaign to the anti-Kurd campaign, resulting in Kirkuk’s capture. Iraq’s government and its sycophants have said the Kirkuk assault was necessitated by Iraqi Kurdistan’s overwhelming vote for independence on Sept. 25. In fact, the referendum merely provided a pretext, not the reason, for the Iran-directed military action.
The real reason was that ISIS’s impending demise freed up regular and militia forces for what could be just the first stage in an Iranian effort to re-subjugate Iraqi Kurds to Baghdad. (To be sure, the Kurds themselves may have been partially responsible for their Kirkuk defeat. Conflicting media reports indicate that one Kurdish faction may have tried to cut a deal with the Baghdad — and implicitly Tehran — authorities, leading to Kurdish resistance around Kirkuk melting away.)
U.S. strategy, designed under Obama but continued by default under Trump, thus focused on one war while Iran was preparing for or waging three wars. Unfortunately, the cliché fits all too well: Washington is playing checkers while Tehran is playing not merely chess, but three-dimensional chess.
America saw only the war on ISIS and the need to destroy the caliphate. Iran shared that objective, but also prepared for two future conflicts: one against Israel and the Arab monarchies on a “southern front,” and another against the Kurds, on a “northern front.” Even as U.S.-directed mopping-up operations against ISIS continue, Iran is executing its two follow-on strategies, most visibly to the north against the Kurds, but perhaps even more significantly in the long term to the south.
There, Iran is continuing the long struggle for hegemony within Islam and in the broader Middle East, Shia against Sunni, Persian against Arab. Israel is just unlucky enough to be in the middle, not to mention being a prime target for Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.
Russia is also benefitting from America’s Middle East myopia. Moscow built from scratch a new air base at Latakia in Syria and increased its overall regional influence to levels not seen since Egypt’s Anwar Sadat expelled Soviet advisers in the 1970s. Russia’s next objectives are not yet clear, but the 180-degree reversal of more than four decades of successful U.S. efforts to keep Russia from meddling in the Middle East is stunning and dangerous.
President Trump must not allow bureaucratic inertia to block his efforts against Iran’s threat. Washington should recognize Kurdish independence and urgently supply training and equipment, particularly armor and artillery which the Kurds need to withstand the U.S. equipment previously supplied to Baghdad’s forces.
But broader leadership is also required. Rapidly increased pressure against Iran’s role as the world’s central banker of international terrorism, stressed in Trump’s Oct. 13 speech, cannot come fast enough. Abrogating Obama’s Iran nuclear deal cannot be delayed further.
Moreover, U.S. efforts to pressure Iran are undercut if the Europeans, through trade and investment, are propping up the ayatollahs. The administration should not allow the Europeans a free ride, but should instead pressure them to reduce their business dealings with the mullahs.
If not, Tehran will rightly conclude the United States is really not serious about confronting their threat to us and our allies. That is the legacy of the Obama administration. It should not also be the legacy of the Trump administration.
As Abba Eban observed, “Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources.” So it goes with America and the Iran deal. President Trump announced Friday that the U.S. would stay in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, even while he refused to certify under U.S. law that the deal is in the national interest. “Decertification,” a bright, shiny object for many, obscures the real issue—whether the agreement should survive. Mr. Trump has “scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it.”
While Congress considers how to respond—or, more likely, not respond—we should focus on the grave threats inherent in the deal. Peripheral issues have often dominated the debate; forests have been felled arguing over whether Iran has complied with the deal’s terms. Proposed “fixes” now abound, such as a suggestion to eliminate the sunset provisions on the deal’s core provisions.
The core provisions are the central danger. There are no real “fixes” to this intrinsically misconceived agreement. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a party, has never included sunset clauses, but the mullahs have been violating it for decades.
If the U.S. left the JCPOA, it would not need to justify the decision by showing that the Iranians have exceeded the deal’s limits on uranium enrichment (though they have). Many argued Russia was not violating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (though it likely was) when President Bush gave notice of withdrawal in 2001, but that was not the point. The issue was whether the ABM Treaty remained strategically wise for America. So too for the Iran deal. It is neither dishonorable nor unusual for countries to withdraw from international agreements that contravene their vital interests. As Charles de Gaulle put it, treaties “are like girls and roses; they last while they last.”
When Germany, Britain and France began nuclear negotiations with Iran in 2003, they insisted that their objective was to block the mullahs from the nuclear fuel cycle’s “front end” (uranium enrichment) as well as its “back end” (plutonium reprocessing from spent fuel). They assured Washington that Tehran would be limited to “peaceful” nuclear applications like medicine and electricity generation. Nuclear-fuel supplies and the timely removal of spent fuel from Iran’s “peaceful” reactors would be covered by international guaranties.
So firm were the Europeans that they would not even negotiate unless Iran agreed to suspend all enrichment-related activity. Under these conditions, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed their effort could proceed. Today, JCPOA advocates conveniently ignore how much Barack Obama and the Europeans conceded to Iran’s insistence that it would never give up uranium enrichment.
The West’s collapse was a grave error. Regardless of JCPOA limits, Iran benefits from continued enrichment, research and development by expanding the numbers of scientists and technicians it has with firsthand nuclear experience. All this will be invaluable to the ayatollahs come the day they disdain any longer to conceal their real nuclear strategy.
Congress’s ill-advised “fixes” would only make things worse. Sens. Bob Corker and Tom Cotton suggest automatically reimposing sanctions if Iran gets within a year of having nuclear weapons. That’s a naive and dangerous proposal: Iran is already within days of having nuclear weapons, given that it can buy them from North Korea. On the deal’s first anniversary, Mr. Obama said that “Iran’s breakout time has been extended from two to three months to about a year.” At best, Corker-Cotton would codify Mr. Obama’s ephemeral and inaccurate propaganda without constraining Iran.
Such triggering mechanisms assume the U.S. enjoys complete certainty and comprehensive knowledge of every aspect of Iran’s nuclear program. In reality, there is serious risk Tehran will evade the intelligence and inspection efforts, and we will find out too late Tehran already possesses nuclear weapons.
The unanswerable reality is that economic sanctions have never stopped a relentless regime from getting the bomb. That is the most frightening lesson of 25 years of failure in dealing with Iran and North Korea. Colin Powell told me he once advised British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw : “Jack, if you want to bring the Iranians around, you have to hold an ax over their heads.” The new proposals aren’t even a dull razor blade.
The JCPOA is also packed with provisions that have never received adequate scrutiny. Take Annex III, which envisages full-scale assistance to, and cooperation with, Iran’s “peaceful” civil nuclear efforts. Annex III contemplates facilitating Iran’s acquisition of “state of the art” light-water reactors, broader nuclear-research programs, and, stunningly, protection against “nuclear security threats” to Iran’s nuclear program.
It sounds suspiciously like the Clinton administration’s failed Agreed Framework with North Korea. Many Clinton alumni were part of Mr. Obama’s Iran negotiation team. In Washington, nothing succeeds like failure. Mr. Trump and his congressional supporters should expressly repudiate Annex III and insist that Europe, Russia and China do the same.
The Iran nuclear deal, which Mr. Trump has excoriated repeatedly, is hanging by an unraveling thread. Congress won’t improve it. American and European businesses proceed at their own peril on trade or investment with Iran. The deal should have died last week and will breathe its last shortly.
President Trump will address U.S. policy toward Iran on Thursday, doubtless focusing on his decision regarding Barack Obama’s badly flawed nuclear deal. Key officials are now briefing Congress, the press and foreign governments about the speech, cautioning that the final product is, in fact, not yet final. The preponderant media speculation is that Trump’s senior advisers are positioning him to make a serious mistake, based on their flawed advice. Wishful thinking about Iran’s mullahs, near-religious faith in the power of pieces of paper, and a retreat from executive authority are hallmarks of the impending crash.
In short, Obama’s Iran nuclear deal is poised to become the Trump-Obama deal. The media report that the president will not withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but instead, under the misbegotten Corker-Cardin legislation, will “decertify” that it is in America’s national interest. Congress may then reimpose sanctions, or try somehow to “fix” the deal. Curiously, most of the suggested “fixes” involve repairing Corker-Cardin rather than the JCPOA directly.
Sure, give Congress the lead on Iran. What could go wrong? Whatever the problem with Iran, Congress is not the answer. No president should surrender what the Constitution vests uniquely in him: dominant power to set America’s foreign policy. In the iconic Federalist Number 70, Alexander Hamilton wrote insightfully that “decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch” characterize unitary executive power, and most certainly not the legislative branch. President Trump risks not only forfeiting his leading national-security role, but paralysis, or worse, in the House and Senate.
If Congress really wants to “fix” Corker-Cardin, the best fix is total repeal. The substantive arguments for decertifying but not withdrawing are truly Jesuitical, teasing out imagined benefits from adhering to a deal Iran already treats with contempt. Some argue we should try provoking Iran to exit first, because our withdrawal would harm America’s image. This is ludicrous. The United States must act in its own self-interest, not wait around hoping Iran does us a favor. It won’t. Why should Tehran leave (or even modify) a deal advantageous beyond its wildest imagination?
This “shame” prediction was made against Washington’s 2001 unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and proved utterly false. America’s decision to abrogate the hallowed “cornerstone of international strategic stability” produced nothing like the storm of opprobrium Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty adherents predicted. No nuclear arms race followed. Instead, withdrawal left the United States far better positioned to defend itself against exactly the threats Iran and others now pose.
Some say that trashing the deal will spur Iran to accelerate its nuclear-weapons program to rush across the finish line. Of course, before the JCPOA, Iran was already party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which barred it from seeking or possessing nuclear weapons, but which it systematically violated. JCPOA advocates are therefore arguing that although one piece of paper (a multilateral treaty, no less) failed to stop Iran’s nuclear quest, the JCPOA, a second piece of paper, will do the trick, with catastrophic consequences if we withdraw. Ironically, these same acolytes almost invariably concede the JCPOA is badly flawed and needs substantial amendment. So they actually believe a third piece of paper is required to halt Iran. Two are not enough. This argument flunks the smile test: Burying Iran in paper will not stop its nuclear program.
Iran’s ability to “rush” to have nuclear weapons existed before the deal, exists now, and would exist if America withdrew. The director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said recently it would take a mere five days for Iran to resume its pre-deal level of uranium enrichment. This rare case of regime honesty demonstrates how trivial and easily reversible Iran’s JCPOA concessions were. What alone deters an Iranian “rush” is the threat of preemptive U.S. or Israeli military strikes, not pieces of paper.
Nor will U.S. withdrawal eliminate valuable international verification procedures under the JCPOA. In fact, these measures are worse than useless for nonproliferation purposes, although they serve Iran well. By affording the appearance of effective verification, they camouflage Iran’s active, multiple violations of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231: on uranium-enrichment levels, advanced-centrifuge research, heavy-water production and missile programs. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently admitted explicitly it has no visibility whatever into weapons and ballistic-missile work underway on Iran’s military bases.
It is simple common sense that Iran would not conduct easily discoverable weapons-related work at already-known nuclear sites like Natanz and Esfahan. Warhead design and the like are far more likely at military sites like Parchin where the IAEA has never had adequate access. No wonder the IAEA is now barred from Parchin.
It is not just weapons-related work the JCPOA fails to uncover. Substantial uranium-enrichment production and research are also far more likely at undeclared sites inside Iran or elsewhere, like North Korea. This is the lesson Tehran learned after Israel destroyed the nuclear reactor under construction by North Koreans in Syria in 2007.
Nor will abrogating the deal somehow induce Iran to become more threatening in the Middle East or in supporting global terrorism than it already is with the JCPOA in force. Consider Tehran’s belligerent behavior in the Persian Gulf, its nearly successful effort to create an arc of control from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, threatening Israel, Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula, and its continued role as the world’s central banker of international terrorism. The real issue is how much worse Iran’s behavior will be once it gets deliverable nuclear weapons.
I have previously argued that only U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA can adequately protect America from the Iranian nuclear threat. Casuistry deployed to persuade President Trump to stay in the deal may succeed this Thursday, but it does so only at grave peril to our country. This is no time to let our guard down.
Supporters of Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear agreement have, over the past two years, tried almost everything to sustain it.
Nonetheless, weaknesses in its terms, structure, implementation and basic strategic fallacy — i.e., that Iran’s international behavior would “moderate” once it was adopted — are all increasingly apparent. For the deal’s acolytes, however, continuing U.S. adherence has become a near-theological imperative.
At the most basic level, the agreement’s adherents ignore how ambiguous and badly worded it is, allowing Iran enormous latitude to continue advancing its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs without being even “technically” in violation.
The adherents ignore Iran’s actual violations (exceeding limits on uranium enrichment, heavy-water production and advanced-centrifuge capacity, among others). Having first argued strenuously there were no violations, they now plead that the violations are “not significant.”
The adherents ignore the “truth-that-dare-not-speak-its-name”: America does not know with confidence where all of Tehran’s nuclear and missile work is being done.
Unfortunately, both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and our national intelligence assets are likely missing significant Iranian facilities (perhaps operated jointly in North Korea) that continue to pursue threatening activities.
The adherents ignore statements by Iran’s leaders (always worth taking with many grains of salt, to be sure) that Iran could restart full uranium enrichment within five days of discarding the deal’s limitations; that reconstructing the Arak nuclear reactor, intended as a plutonium production facility, is easily done because the required “disabling” steps turn out to be not so disabling; and more.
The fact is that Iran’s negotiating “concessions” were always trivial and easily reversible.
The adherents ignore Iran’s ongoing belligerent behavior in the Middle East, including constructing an Iranian “arc of control” once ISIS is defeated in Iraq and Syria, giving Tehran’s military forces a strategic highway from Iran through Shia-dominated Iraq, into Assad’s Syria and then Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon. Israel and our Arab friends clearly see this danger.
The adherents ignore Iran’s continued efforts to threaten and harass U.S. forces deployed in the Persian Gulf region, even as we wrongly pursue Obama’s strategy to empower Baghdad’s Tehran-dominated government in the war against ISIS.
Such blindness is not a strategic option. The Obama agreement’s geopolitical errors, its conceptual fallacies, its textual weaknesses and its operational dangers are now all too palpable. This is a time for action, not equivocation.
Heedless to reality, however, deal supporters are now reduced to a maladroit ploy. The White House, they say, should refuse to certify next month under the Corker-Cardin legislation that the pact is “vital to the national security interests of the United States.”
However, rather than acknowledging candidly that an agreement contrary to our interests should be abrogated, they urge the administration to “fix” problems they spent years denying even existed.
President Trump should reject this “one-shoe-on, one-shoe-off” approach. It is unbecoming and unpresidential at best, dangerously confusing at worst, since it fails to address squarely the risks inherent in allowing the Obama deal’s rapidly crumbling legitimacy to retain any force or effect.
Staying in a bad agreement sends confusing signals to the Europeans, who are confused enough already on this issue, about how America intends to address the Iran threat. Similarly, it shows weakness and indecisiveness to Russia and China at precisely the point when President Trump should project clear-eyed resolve.
While some say we should first deal with North Korea’s more imminent threat, postponing action on Iran, so doing ignores the inextricable relationship between the two, both operationally and in global perceptions.
Just as misguided is the idea that, by not certifying, President Trump could hand over the Iran deal’s fate to Congress. The Constitution’s framers would be appalled by such a notion. Decisive presidents do not wittingly cede their constitutional responsibility to Congress, particularly when existential questions of national security are at stake.
As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Number 70, only the Executive possesses the “decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch” necessary to make critical foreign-policy choices. And Senate Democrats would prove Hamilton right by filibustering any effort to gut the deal legislatively.
Deal advocates next argue we should “strictly enforce” its provisions, but this is delusional. The deal is poorly negotiated and vaguely worded. For example, Obama failed to demand baseline inspection of the Iran program’s military dimensions before inking the deal, and the IAEA is now routinely denied access to regime military facilities.
Trying belatedly to “strictly enforce” such a deal is like trying to nail jelly to a wall. The saying that “Iran has never won a war, and never lost a negotiation” surely applies with full force here.
Nor is it possible to “fix” the deal. A conceivably acceptable Iran agreement would require truly intrusive international inspections, as far as imaginable from those permitted under Obama’s deal. Iran (like North Korea or any authoritarian society) could simply not accept the kind of international presence required to prove compliance. So doing would undermine the regime itself. Fixing the deal is out of the question.
The president need not wait until October, when his presidency’s third Corker-Cardin certification decision is due. As required every 120 days, he must decide this week whether to continue waiving oil- and banking-related sanctions suspended under the Iran deal. Trump granted such a waiver in May, but he should not do so again.
September brings us two telling anniversaries. One, the tragedy of 9/11, reminds us what happens when America lets down its guard, even inadvertently, to international threats. The other, Sep. 6, marked the 10th anniversary of Israel’s successful strike against a nuclear reactor in Syria being built by North Koreans, quite possibly with Iranian financing.
A deliverable nuclear-weapons capability in the hands of Tehran’s ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guards, religious extremists supported by a fascist military, could make another 9/11 far deadlier than the first. This is not the time to light candles to Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, but to snuff them out.
As President Trump wrestles with America’s role in Afghanistan, he should first decide what our objectives are today compared to what we wanted immediately after Sept. 11, 2001.
Initially, the United States overthrew the Taliban regime but failed to destroy it completely. Regime supporters, allied tribal forces and opportunistic warlords escaped (or returned) to Pakistan’s frontier regions to establish sanctuaries.
Similarly, while the Taliban’s ouster also forced al-Qaida into exile in Pakistan and elsewhere, al-Qaida nonetheless continued and expanded its terrorist activities. In Iraq and Syria, al-Qaida morphed into the even more virulent ISIS, which is now gaining strength in Afghanistan.
In short, America’s Afghan victories were significant but incomplete. Subsequently, we failed to revise and update our Afghan strategic objectives, leading many to argue the war had gone on too long and we should withdraw. This criticism is superficially appealing, recalling anti-Vietnam War activist Allard Lowenstein’s cutting remarks about Richard Nixon’s policies. While Lowenstein acknowledged that he understood those, like Sen. George Aiken, who said we should “win and get out,” he said he couldn’t understand Nixon’s strategy of “lose and stay in.”
Today in Afghanistan, the pertinent question is what we seek to prevent, not what we seek to achieve. Making Afghanistan serene and peaceful does not constitute a legitimate American geopolitical interest. Instead, we face two principal threats.
TALIBAN’S RETURN TO POWER
First, the Taliban’s return to power throughout Afghanistan would re-create the prospect of the country being used as a base of operations for international terrorism. It is simply unacceptable to allow the pre-2001 status quo to re-emerge.
Second, a post-9/11 goal (at least one better understood today) is the imperative of preventing a Taliban victory in Afghanistan that would enable Pakistani Taliban or other terrorist groups to seize control in Islamabad. Not only would such a takeover make all Pakistan yet another terrorist sanctuary, but if its large nuclear arsenal fell to terrorists, we would immediately face the equivalent of Iran and North Korea on nuclear steroids. Worryingly, Pakistan’s military, especially its intelligence arm, is already thought to be controlled by radical Islamists.
Given terrorism’s global spread since 9/11 and the risk of a perfect storm — the confluence of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — the continuing threats we face in the Afghan arena are even graver than those posed pre-9/11. Accordingly, abandoning the field in Afghanistan is simply not a tenable strategy.
However, accomplishing America’s goals does not require remaking Afghanistan’s government, economy or military in our image. Believing that only “nation building” in Afghanistan could ultimately guard against the terrorist threat was mistaken. For too long, it distracted Washington and materially contributed to the decline in American public support for a continuing military presence there, despite the manifest need for it.
There is no chance that the Trump administration will pursue “nation building” in Afghanistan, as the president has repeatedly made clear. Speaking as a Reagan administration alumnus of USAID, I concur. We should certainly continue bilateral economic assistance to Afghanistan, which, strategically applied, has served America well in countless circumstances during the Cold War and thereafter. But we should not conflate it with the diaphanous prospect of nation building.
Nor should we assume that the military component in Afghanistan must be a repetition or expansion of the boots-on-the-ground approach we have followed since the initial assault on the Taliban. Other alternatives appear available and should be seriously considered, including possibly larger U.S. military commitments of the right sort.
Even more important, there must be far greater focus on Pakistan.
A VOLATILE & LETHAL MIX
Politically unstable since British India’s 1947 partition, increasingly under Chinese influence because of the hostility with India, and a nuclear-weapons state, Pakistan is a volatile and lethal mix ultimately more important than Afghanistan itself. Until and unless Pakistan becomes convinced that interfering in Afghanistan is too dangerous and too costly, no realistic U.S. military scenario in Afghanistan can succeed.
The stakes are high on the subcontinent, not just because of the “Af-Pak” problems but because Pakistan, India and China are all nuclear powers. The Trump administration should not be mesmerized only by U.S. troop levels. It must concentrate urgently on the bigger strategic picture. The size and nature of America’s military commitment in Afghanistan will more likely emerge from that analysis rather than the other way around. And time is growing short.
John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and, previously, the undersecretary of State for arms control and international security.
The Institute for a Secure America is organized and operated exclusively for charitable purposes in accordance with Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
