The Iran Deal: Victory for Iran, Capitulation for America https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2015/07/the-iran-deal-victory-for-iran-capitulation-for-america/

July 16, 2015 | Elliott Abrams
About the author: Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and is the chairman of the Tikvah Fund.

The nuclear deal with Iran abandons decades of carefully constructed international sanctions, writes Elliott Abrams, and, contrary to the claims of the Obama administration, these cannot possibly be “snapped-back” at a moment’s notice. But that’s only one of the deal’s many flaws:

At five years, Iran begins rearming without any limits; at eight years, it begins modernizing and enlarging its ballistic missiles; after ten years, the nuclear limits start falling away. That is, Iran can then develop warheads and it will have the missiles on which to put them. And its years of conventional military buildup will make any U.S. or Israeli military strike against the Iranian nuclear-weapons program much harder and more dangerous. . . .

On its very first page the document says the deal “will mark a fundamental shift” in how we approach Iran and its nuclear program. You betcha. . . . Once upon a time, faced with an implacable enemy, Ronald Reagan said we would do what Truman and Kennedy had done: persevere until we had won, until there was a fundamental shift in Soviet conduct or an end to the Soviet Union. President Obama is instead throwing in the towel: the fundamental shift in behavior comes from the United States, not Iran. The Islamic Republic remains an implacable enemy, holding hostages, supporting terror, [and] organizing “Death to America” marches even as its negotiators sat in Vienna and Lausanne smiling across the table at John Kerry.

Of course, Obama has a theory: the main problems in world politics come from American militarism, aggression, bullying, and the like, and if we open our own “clenched fist” to embrace Iran, it will respond in kind. We’ve seen the results of such policies in Russia and North Korea, and most recently in Cuba. In fact Obama’s Iran deal is based on his “Cuba model”: hand a lifeline to a regime in deep economic trouble and ignore the population of the country and their quest for human rights and decent government. Call it a historic achievement, and above all don’t bargain hard for recompense. For, you see, in these openings to Iran and Cuba we are only righting the historical wrongs America has committed and for which we need to apologize.

People who do not live in and bicycle around in Lausanne or Vienna, but rather try to survive in Israel and the Persian Gulf countries, understand all of this. Iran has won a great victory: a weak country has outmaneuvered and out-negotiated the United States and the EU. Kerry and the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, will probably share a Nobel peace prize, which is disgraceful, but Zarif does deserve recognition for producing a far better deal for Iran than he had any right to expect. He owes a huge debt of gratitude to Barack Obama and his view of the world. For the rest of us, the rise of Iran means great danger ahead.

Read more on National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421223/iran-nuclear-agreement-john-kerry-mohammad-javad-zarif