Uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz, Iran
Congressional Republicans are wasting no time in planning an angle of attack on the
six-power deal with Iran curtailing its nuclear program while lifting economic sanctions. Fortunately, they have a very tough path forward in taking an effective stand against the deal. Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act passed in April, Congress can pass a resolution approving the deal, reject it with a vote of disapproval or do nothing. A vote of disapproval would need 60 votes to get past a Senate filibuster and 67 to override the inevitable presidential veto. It would be foolish to say they face insurmountable odds. Stuff happens. But the likelihood that they can sandbag the agreement is very slim indeed.
Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who guided the review act to passage, told Jonathan Weisman and Julie Hirschfeld Davis:
“In the end, those who believe this truly is going to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon will vote for it. Those who believe that is not the case, and the world is not going to be safer—in some ways it may pave the way for them to get a nuclear weapon—will vote against it.”
To bolster their chances,
writes Alexander Bolton at The Hill, they're hoping they can win the PR war with the American public and give some fence-straddling congressional Democrats reason to join the opposition to the agreement:
Some Senate Republicans are thinking about moving a motion of approval of the deal, believing it would put Democrats in a tough spot ahead of next year’s elections. Such a move in the upper chamber could lead to less than half of the Senate backing the president, allowing for more favorable headlines for the GOP. The House, however, is more likely to pass a resolution of disapproval.
A third option is to move legislation sponsored by Menendez and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) placing new sanctions on Iran, which the Banking Committee passed earlier this year and has Democratic support.
Whatever they choose to do, the review act gives them just 59 more days to achieve it. Against their efforts to paint the agreement as a bad deal will be experts who see it otherwise. Activists need to focus some of their efforts hectoring the media to ensure that the views of those experts get as much attention as the naysayers.
Follow me below the tangled orange web to check out the views of one of those experts.
Jeffrey Lewis is the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk and the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. His long résumé includes a stint as director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation and two books on China's nuclear weapons program and its nuclear strategy. Up until the announcement of the framework of the nuclear agreement with Iran in April, he'd been highly skeptical that it would be worthwhile.
But on Tuesday, Foreign Policy published Lewis's piece that is very supportive of the deal and that was taken note of today in an interview by Max Fisher. Lewis arose before dawn Tuesday to read the 150-page agreement in its entirety:
It was really boring, but in a good way. The deal—can we call it the “Vienna Plan,” please?—looks pretty much like the framework deal that was reached in Lausanne in April. I went through the documents, including the White House fact sheet, as well as my own notes from conversations with administration officials. It would seem that the agreement is as good or better in all important respects than what officials described in the spring.
It is possible that the Iranians will cheat. It is also possible that they will insist on tendentious readings of certain provisions. And, although I hate to break it to you, we might not be perfect ourselves. One of my favorite passages in the agreement is an oblique acknowledgement by the Iranians that there is no telling what sort of stunt Sen. Tom Cotton and friends might pull. (Paragraph 26. Check it out.) Even two committed parties may find that they disagree about how to implement an agreement. That’s normal.
Lewis had a lot to say about how reporters, in particular David Sanger at
The New York Times, have practically made a cottage industry out of being wrong on Iran's nuclear program and the progress of the talks. He expects more of the same from Sanger and other journalists who will focus on foes of the agreement, amplifying their tendentious arguments.
His answers to Fisher are telling:
Jeffrey Lewis: It's a good deal because it slows down their nuclear program—which they say is for civilian purposes but could be used to make a bomb, and which we think was originally intended to make a bomb. And it puts monitoring and verification measures in place that mean if they try to build a bomb, we're very likely to find out, and to do so with enough time that we have options to do something about it.
There's a verifiable gap between their bomb option and an actual bomb. That's why it's a good deal.
Max Fisher: So that rests on Iran looking at all of this and saying, "It's not worth even trying to cheat on the deal."
Jeffrey Lewis: It's a slightly more resigned attitude. I can't get inside the supreme leader's head. He might be a guy who likes to take risks. He might be stupid, he might get bad advice. So I don't ever look at a situation where you're trying to deter someone and say, "This will work." Because you can never know that.
What I try to do is ask, "Have we done all of the things that we reasonably can so that more will not help, and we can't imagine more intrusive mechanisms that are likely to be accepted?"
That's the weakest point for those who hope to win the public relations fight. They have no reasonable alternatives to the agreement. The jingoistic bluster they keep spewing may resonate with the bomb-bomb-bomb crowd, but it's a poor substitute for the diplomacy that brought us what most certainly will be a game changer in the Middle East.