The editors of the Wall Street Journal call the president on using his favorite fallacious argument, the false dilemma, in characterizing the Iran deal his team has negotiated with the Iranians:
The debate is raging over President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, and Mr. Obama held a rare press conference Wednesday to say that “99% of the world community†agrees with him. Then why bother with a press conference? Mr. Obama made other claims we’ll address in coming days, but for today it’s worth rebutting his assertion that “none†of his critics “have presented to me or the American people a better alternative.â€
Specifically, Mr. Obama resorted to his familiar default of the false political choice. “There really are only two alternatives here. Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through force, through war. Those are—those are the options,†Mr. Obama said. He added that no better deal was or is possible than the one he has negotiated.
Their preference is what they call “coercive diplomacy”:
Take the sanctions regime, which finally started to get tough in December 2011. By 2013 Iran had an official inflation rate of some 35%, its currency was falling, and its dollar reserves were estimated to be down to $20 billion. Mr. Obama had resisted those sanctions, only to take credit for them when Congress insisted and they began to show results in Tehran.
Yet Mr. Obama still resisted calls to put maximum pressure on Iran. He gave waivers to countries like Japan to import Iranian oil. He was reluctant to impose sanctions on global financial institutions that did business with Iran (especially Chinese banks that offered Tehran access to foreign currency). The U.S. could have gone much further to blacklist parts of Iran’s economy run by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. A bipartisan majority in Congress was prepared to impose more sanctions this year, but Mr. Obama refused as he rushed for a second-term deal.
Mr. Obama now argues that the sanctions could not have been maintained, and that they are sure to collapse if Congress scuttles his deal. But there was no sign sanctions were collapsing as long as the U.S. continued to keep the pressure on. And to the extent support did weaken, one reason was the momentum of Mr. Obama’s negotiations. The more the U.S. gave the impression that it desperately wanted a deal, the more other countries and businesses began to maneuver for post-sanctions opportunities.
My preference is even simpler and doesn’t require the the brinksmanship that requires an attention span and appreciation of detail of which our present crop of politicians may be incapable: do nothing. Veto any attempt at lifting sanctions, excoriate unilateral sanction-breakers but otherwise do nothing.
For those who believe that the arrangement negotiated by Sec. Kerry and his team represents the best of all possible worlds, please explain what we get from the deal. I know what the Iranians get. I know what the Germans get. I know what the Russians and the Chinese get. I know what President Obama and Secretary Kerry get. It’s not nearly so clear as to why the deal is good for the United States.
For those who believe that the arrangement negotiated by Sec. Kerry and his team represents the best of all possible worlds, please explain what we get from the deal. I know what the Iranians get. I know what the Germans get. I know what the Russians and the Chinese get. I know what President Obama and Secretary Kerry get. It’s not nearly so clear as to why the deal is good for the United States.
Exactly! That’s the blunt question on many people’s minds, especially when our bottom line contingencies, to make this deal happen, were radically changed from what the Obama administration initially asserted were non-negotiable, firm terms. Basically, the thresholds of what we expected from this “deal” got lower and lower, until, like our quantitative easing of interest rates, were almost zero.
Also, the takeaway from the WSJ editorial matches the observations of those who remember how Obama pushed back on the sanctions, and then did the glory run when it benefited him. And, then turned around and said they weren’t working, when he was the one refusing to go along with Congress’s efforts to implement them further.
I understand, though, some people steadfastly standing by this president’s visionary processes to achieve peace, prosperity and fairness for all, as it mirrors their own ideological wiring. However, I can’t fathom nor rationalize how anyone can deny and continue to digest the blatant lies, misinformation, changes of mind that have been so characteristic of the last 7 confusing years. From unfullfilled promises regarding the PPACA, to his convenient evolution on marriage, his pre-election castigation of too much debt, his trivialization of scandal after scandal, mismanagement of resets, red lines, miscalculation of the ISIS threats etc. — the list is just too long — he weaves and bobs to only the tune of his own truth and mind set, casting other disagreeing advice aside. It’s become a one-man government, with one branch calling the shots, which his acolytes seem to only circle the wagons around, throwing spit balls to those who see it differently.
Nuclear non-proliferation, particularly in the ME, has been a US policy goal for decades. So the benefit to the US is clear unless one isn’t concerned about nuclear proliferation, or is much more concerned about other issues besides nuclear proliferation.
As a practical matter, your suggestion that we “do nothing” is certainly viable for a time, but sooner or later we’d be forced by circumstance to do something. Certainly other actors wouldn’t stand still. More problematic, it’s not clear (to me at least) what the do-nothing strategy aims to achieve, much less how it would achieve it.
It comes down to priorities because, like anything else, there are always trade-offs. If one’s priority is punishing Iran, hoping for regime change via sanctions, or hoping to build a case for war using sanctions, then this deal is bad compared to some alternatives. On the other hand if nonproliferation is the priority then this deal is better than alternatives. Either priority will come with tradeoffs. There is no Goldilox policy despite what the editors of the WSJ, Sen. Lindsey Graham and the neocon establishment believe. These are the people who believe that we can “win” in Syria with no downsides by arming “moderates” to conquer all the other factions and then impose a Western-oriented democracy (we’ve got 60 volunteers so far!). Fantasyland doesn’t have tradeoffs.
Anyway, if it isn’t clear, I come down on the side that puts the priority on nonproliferation first. Now that I’ve had a chance to study the details, this deal is very good from a non-proliferation standpoint – not perfect, but perfection was not achievable through negotiation. It’s easily the most intrusive nuclear verification regime ever achieved by diplomacy and is only topped by the verification regime forcibly place on Iraq following Desert Storm as an armistice condition.
You want to sanction the Chinese who are breaking the sanctions, yet expect the Chinese to continue to participate. That alone should point out the problem. China and Russia participated in the sanctions for the purpose of obtaining an agreement, not just to have permanent sanctions. If you don’t negotiate a deal, they are out. Then you have no effective sanctions. If you really believe Iran is out to develop nukes, then they have them within three months of the sanctions ending, according to Israel. (If the real purpose of sanctions is to keep Iran poor, Germany isn’t staying either.)
What the US gets is an Iran that does not develop nukes. As we know form our prior experience with inspections, they are quite effective at finding nuclear efforts. If we had just listened to the inspectors in Iraq, we should never have invaded there. Can Iran cheat? Maybe, but it will be awfully darn difficult. Iran will have just consented to the most invasive, comprehensive inspections program anywhere, anytime. I doubt they have the expertise to cheat. I am not sure anyone does. Anyway, it was the false belief that Iraq had nukes that lead to one of the worst foreign policy decisions in our history. Thousands dead and trillions of dollars lost for no reason.
What I think is especially telling from the critics is that you get vague complaints that amount to Obama sucks. Or, you can’t trust Iran. Very little criticism explaining why it is bad to monitor all of their mines and all of their production sites. Doing away with their uranium stocks or shutting down centrifuges. Why are those things bad for the US? Oh, and BTW, the Russians, Chinese, French, Germans and Brits also get an Iran w/o nukes, which was also their goal. (If Russia and China just wanted the sanctions gone they could have broken them long ago.)
Steve
Here is probably how the Iranians are reacting to “The Deal.”
It seems to me that if non-proliferation is your goal you should want to shut Iran’s nuclear development program down entirely. Other than weapons the only reason I can think of for the massive program they have is to put themselves into the business of selling nuclear technology.
You’ve already indicated you don’t believe they’re developing nuclear weapons. That leaves proliferation.
I do not expect the deal to do anything. If it works, great. Otherwise, oh well. If the Iranians want nuclear weapons, they are going to get nuclear weapons.
We know that sanctions do not work, and they might even help. North Korea had no trouble developing nuclear weapons with sanctions, and they are having no trouble developing long range missiles under sanctions. Many of the N. Korean people are starving to death, and they have not risen up. Need I mention the Cubans?
Countries, kingdoms, empires with advanced military hardware always try to keep it exclusively to themselves, and once it begins to get out, they want to keep it away from the smaller and weaker states. This has gone on for thousands of years, and yes, each group thinks that their armaments are too dangerous. Has anybody heard of the Nobel Peace Prize?
When cannons rendered castles obsolete, cities should have been overrun by armies, but it did not happen. The cannon had limitations which made it ineffective in an urban environment. So to with nuclear weapons. Having to fight and occupy the ground that is now contaminated makes them ineffective as first use weapons.
They are last resort weapons. As to using them against Israel, Iran could get several thousand suicide bombers and train them to fly jets. They could then fly to Israel, drop their bombs, and finish kamikaze style. Hamas could simultaneously send suicide bombers to the check points in waves or fences until they were breached.
The point is that if Iran is irrational, they would have acted a long time back,
One interesting thing about the sanctions is that they were specifically for Iran’s nuclear weapons development, but now they have morphed into a general incentive against regional aggression. Am I the only one who suspects that this is one of those “slippery slopes” that the WSJ, conservatives, Republicans, and libertarians constantly warn me about.
Before long the sanctions will need to stay in place because the Iranians burn the American flag, refuse to play baseball, and do not like apple pie even if it was baked by mom.
In regards to keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, I am curious what deal would satisfy those who believe this one is bad.
I do not understand how you can: (1) not trust the Iranian government but (2) believe you can get a deal that keeps them from getting nuclear weapons. It would seem to me that you need an honest government, and the fastest way to get there is to provide the catalyst.
Sanctions have a poor track record of inducing a successful coup. The last direct invasion did not go so well, and the recent Facebook coups were mostly unsuccessful. In Ukraine, the US was able to engineer a successful coup and replace the Russian leaning government with a US leaning one, but Ukraine is not Iran.
During the Cold War, the US tried using ex-pats to form resistance groups to overthrow the governments. This had a so-so track record, but this probably has the best chance of success. The downside is probably substantially greater than the upside, but who worries about risk any more.
I don’t see sanctions so much as a means of fomenting a coup as of reducing the amount of foreign exchange available to the Iranians. It’s doing a pretty fair job of that—that’s why they’re so eager for a deal.
And I think it’s pretty likely that we’ll have better luck with the next generation of Iranians than we will with the revolutionary generation which is what we’re dealing with now. Some things just take time.
China can provide a solution to the banking problem, and with the US excluding more and more countries from the existing system, it will become more and more attractive. Other countries are not required to play by the rules the US has set forth.
How long is the Russian pariah going to refrain from doing business with the Iranian pariah, and then, there is the on and off Chinese pariah. If the eastern Ukraine breaks off, they will be a pariah, and every time somebody leaves the terrorist list, there is the obligatory gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair.
I do not see the sanctions changing the next generation. Cuba and N. Korea have not changed.
I do not care one way or the other, but I do not see much changing. People who think Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon will not be satisfied with anything other than regime change unless they believe that the regime will change, and I seriously doubt that any of them believe that Iran is going to have some sudden conversion.
It seems that the other side is not convinced that Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon. It also seems that they are convinced that there is a way to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and Pakistan and India have been on the verge of war for years. If there was a place to be worried about nuclear war, that is it, but nobody seems to be concerned. If there was a country proliferating nuclear technology, Pakistan is guilty, but nobody seems to be concerned. If there is a concern about a country with a large number of radical Islamist in the government, the country, drum roll, is Pakistan, and again, nobody seems to be concerned.
I am assured that Iran will be as bad as Pakistan, but those same people have no worries about Pakistan. I will get concerned when people get serious.
That will require them to have a currency that is convertible. A convertible currency means that the authorities will have lost control of the currency.
I think that when it comes to a choice between becoming an international banking go-to source and control the Chinese authorities will choose control. I could be wrong.