Claudia Rosett notes the many similarities between the agreement concerning Iran’s nuclear program and that made in 1994 concerning North Korea’s nuclear program, which led to the Communist regime’s testing a nuclear weapon in 2006. This latest deal, she concludes, threatens even greater danger to the world:
Like the North Korea deal, the Iran deal dignifies a despotic, murderous regime, and provides its worst elements with relief from economic distress, via a flood of rejuvenating resources. In North Korea’s case, the main help arrived in the form of aid. In oil-rich Iran’s case, it comes in the far more lucrative form of sanctions relief, including access to an estimated $55 billion or more (by some estimates, two or three times that amount) in currently frozen funds held abroad. . . .
Like the North Korea Agreed Framework, the Iran nuclear deal pivots narrowly on nuclear issues, as if ballistic missiles, terrorism, arms smuggling, gross violations of human rights, blatant declarations of destructive intent and the malign character of the regime itself were irrelevant to the promised “exclusively peaceful” nuclear program.
Like the North Korea deal, the Iran deal comes loaded with incentives for the U.S. administration to protect its own diplomatic claims of success by ignoring signs of cheating. Monitoring of nuclear facilities is shunted to the secretive International Atomic Energy Agency, which has no power of enforcement, and will have to haggle with Iran for access to suspect sites. . . .
To be sure, there are two highly significant differences between the 1994 North Korea deal and the 2015 Iran deal. Iran, with its oil wealth, location in the heart of the Middle East, messianic Islamic theocracy, and global terror networks, is even more dangerous to the world than North Korea. And, bad as the North Korea deal was, the Iran deal is much worse. Along with its secret side agreements and its promises to lift the arms embargo on Iran in five years and the missile embargo in eight, this deal lets Iran preserve its large, illicitly built nuclear infrastructure and carry on enriching uranium, subject to constraints that will be problematic to enforce and are themselves limited by sunset clauses that even North Korea never managed to obtain at the bargaining table.
Read more on Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/claudiarosett/2015/08/31/nuclear-fiascoes-from-diplomatic-failure-with-north-korea-to-debacle-with-iran/