The Iran talks have just gone into overtime, and that is not a bad thing.
Iran’s nuclear program is now frozen, thanks to an interim deal negotiated one year ago. For the first time in a decade, Iran is formally blocked from making any progress on its nuclear program. In fact, the negotiations have rolled it back, making Iran get rid of some of the most threatening aspects of its work.
But this freeze is at risk. Some in the U.S. want to kill the talks. The negotiations have dragged on for over a year and that should be long enough, they say. And, besides, the Iranians are liars and haven’t lived up to their end of the bargain. Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, for one, says, “Iran came to the table cheating on its nuclear commitments . . . and it will cheat on any undertakings it signs.”
He is right not to trust Iran. But this agreement isn’t about trust; it’s about verification. Every step that Iran must take is carefully laid out in the formal agreements. Then, international inspectors are sent in to make sure Iran takes those steps.
So far, Iran has done everything it is supposed to do. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, reported this week that Iran remains in full compliance with the current deal. It has stopped installing new centrifuges. It has actually eliminated the kind of uranium that worried us the most and stopped making more.
Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Iran was just weeks away from a nuclear bomb. They just needed 60 more kilograms of medium-enriched uranium, he said, to cross his “red line,” which he defined as possessing enough material for one nuclear bomb.
Today, all this uranium has been eliminated under the deal.
How do we know? UN nuclear inspectors on the ground have verified it. The interim deal gave them unprecedented access. They went from visiting key sites once every two weeks to visiting every day.
And intelligence agencies from many nations, including the U.S. and Israel, keep Iran under close surveillance. There is no doubt: Iran is further away from a bomb today than it was a year ago.
Still, it is not far enough away. Negotiators from six nations have been working to roll Iran’s program back, to allow it a program that can make fuel for its research reactors, but not fuel for bombs.
After a year of talks, they came very close but could not get to a final agreement. The parties adjourned when they could not get a deal by their self-imposed deadline of Nov. 24, and agreed to extend the negotiations for four more months. They now want to get a “framework” deal by March on key elements, then lock it all down with the technical details by next summer.
But the key part, worth repeating, is that while this work continues, Iran’s program remains frozen.
“We would be fools to walk away,” Secretary of State Kerry said this week. “The world is safer because this program is in place.”
Kerry is right. The U.S. is safer; Israel is safer. Our allies in the nuclear talks — Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia — are more secure today than a year ago. We have put Iran’s program in an iron box with a camera on it.
Some members of Congress, claiming more pressure is necessary to get the long-term deal we need, want to put new sanctions on Iran. At first, this seems logical.
Sanctions brought Iran to the table in the first place, says the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce of California, so we should “tighten the economic vise . . . to force the concessions that Iran has been resisting.”
The problem is what happens next. If we slap on new sanctions, it would break the terms of the freeze. Other nations — already chafing under the sanctions, which hurt their trade with a key economic partner — could blame us for killing the talks and refuse to go along.
The sanctions regime could unravel. Iran could restart its program unconstrained. This could lead to a new war, if Israel or the U.S. then attack Iran, as some already urge.
There are no good alternatives to the current negotiations, no matter how frustrating they may seem. If we stop talking, we could soon be bombing.
U.S. military commanders say this would require hundreds of attacks. And the bombing would only set back Iran’s program, not end it. It would also trigger a war that would make the Iraq War look like a warmup act.
We are strongest when we use all the tools of our national power, including diplomacy and defense. Our negotiators have asked for four more months. We have nothing to lose by giving them this short overtime — and a great deal to gain.
Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund and author of “Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It is Too Late.” He is a member of the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board. These views are his own.
