Iran and the West: Loans, Not Diplomacy

President Obama rushed to describe the American-Western agreement with Iran as the diplomatic victory that “opened up a new path toward a world that is more secure,” but the truth is that a more accurate description would say it is more like an agreement in a discussion about bad debts than a political or diplomatic agreement.

We are currently facing an agreement that lets all sides claim victory, and this is what occurred in Tehran and Washington. The broad headline of the agreement is that all sides will permit a six month period to prove good intentions, with Iran suspending its program for enriching uranium to 20 percent (a percentage that would enable it to build nuclear weapons) and, in return, getting access to limited amounts of its billions of frozen dollars. A low limit was placed on those amounts to allow President Obama to sign off on them without taking them to Congress and getting its approval on the agreement because Congress, it is believed, would suspend it! Hence, we are actually faced with something more like an agreement in a discussion of bad debts than an agreement that would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, limit their proliferation and guarantee security in the region!

Anyone who has tried to buy a car or house in installments will know precisely the nature of the details of these negotiations and the agreement that was reached. In this agreement we are faced with a customer of ill repute who has an account in the bank but whom the rules of lending don’t suit. Hence, the bank lends him the requested amount from his own seized money to be sure that he will conform in the next six months. This is the story pure and simple.

Certainly, two parties benefit from this: Iran and Obama. Regarding Iran, it is no secret that President Rouhani faces an exhausting internal economy and that he needs to catch his breath at any cost. This agreement gives him an important chance to do that. Regarding Obama, the agreement gives him a chance to dodge the confrontation with Iran and turn it into a crisis to be dealt with by the president who succeeds him. Here, we should think about the Obama administration’s methodology: When it wanted to dodge having to strike Assad, it fell back on Congress because it was guaranteed to oppose the strike. But now, when Obama wanted to pass the bad Iran agreement, he employed a legal tactic, raising the sanctions in a limited manner so that he could sign off on them without taking them to Congress!

Therefore, we are actually faced with a bad agreement, one more like an agreement in a discussion of bad debts than a political agreement defusing a crisis that doesn’t just mean war and destruction, but also the possible beginnings of an arms race in the region. If Iran is claiming that its nuclear program is peaceful, who now will prevent the rest of the countries from beginning similar projects that could, at any moment, turn into complete nuclear programs, as happened in India and Pakistan?

Hence, we are still faced with a “good will” agreement, and the crisis has certainly reached a greater, more dangerous level. It hasn’t been resolved at all, contrary to what Obama is trying to tell us at the moment.