At present, no issue facing this
country is more important than approving President Obama’s nuclear deal with
Iran. The moment for this peaceful, diplomatic breakthrough must not be allowed
to pass. Though the Iran Nuclear deal now seems to have enough votes to sustain
a veto, we must not relax our efforts to support the deal. People do change
their minds, and merely surviving a veto is a very low bar for a deal of such
importance.
It is important to continue to rally support
for the deal for other reasons. Rarely has a political issue been surrounded by
more falsehood, deception, and hyperbole. Among the people who argue that we should reject Obama’s deal and bomb Iran
immediately are Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Bill Kristol and Benjamin
Netanyahu—the same cast that gave us the debacle of the Iraq war. They were
dead wrong then and they are using the same bad arguments now. We must continue
to educate people about how misguided and bigoted these hawkish opponents to
the deal really are.
Wide
opposition to the treaty also reveals how misinformed the American public and
many of their elected representatives are. The difference in quality between
the arguments of the backers and the opponents of the deal provides a good
basic roadmap to sorting out the truth of this issue.
Supporters
of the deal, experts in their various fields, make cogent, rational arguments
that the deal is good policy, tough, effective diplomacy, and is based on sound
technical expertise in terms of our ability to monitor and verify Iranian
behavior. They note that there is no other real option for discouraging Iran
from building a nuclear weapon, and that war would be a tragic mistake. Most
experts agree that the use of violence would probably actually force Iran into
trying to develop a weapons program—a
decision most experts agree they have never yet made.
In stark contrast, the very loud, vociferous and
ideological opponents of the deal make arguments that rely largely on emotional
predictions of Iranian behavior that are based on religious, racial and ethnic
stereotypes of the worst kind, on misrepresentations of deal itself, and on
issues that have nothing to do with nuclear issues directly related to the NPT
or its requirements. They are marked by
the belief that Iranians are simply not rational or trustworthy actors. Much of
this sort of argument emanates from the AIPAC/Zionist faction—and their
opportunistic Christian Zionist supporters.
Mike
Huckabee, for example, recently called
Iranians “animals,” Carly Fiorina, on national TV, called Iran “the source of
most of the evil in the Middle East today,” and even one of Obama’s negotiators
claimed that “deceit was in their (the Iranian) DNA.” None of this racist
demonization is plausible or defensible. Anyone who has studied the record will note
that Iran has acted in an extremely rational way at every step of this largely
manufactured crisis. Most strikingly, their policy has always been predicated
on the legitimacy of international law. They have always accepted the
predicates of the NPT and worked hard to meet their obligations under that
treaty. That is a far cry from the likes of ISIS and other Sunni extremist
groups, groups which reject the very precepts of western based international
law.
The most unreported, yet key implication of
the recent negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 group is that almost every
unresolved piece of “evidence” that Iran ever had a nuclear weapons program AT
ALL has basically been refuted and discredited as baseless. It is not surprising
that this has been overlooked in favor of discussion of future verification and
other details—the entire intelligence community and defense establishment,
remembering how they were taken to task for getting the analysis on Iraq dead
wrong—is understandably reluctant to admit that most of their assessments of
Iran for the last 20 years have been wrong too. Even the President sees that
there is a serious downside for US credibility if that issue were to be totally
revealed. It is also not surprising that many of the false charges against Iran
were fabrications of Israel intelligence services.
Opponents
of the deal falsely claim that inspections and verifications will end in 15
years, or that the deal is a license to create a bomb, or that the US is
“giving” Iran 150 billion dollars. These
allegations are simply not true or are gross misrepresentations of fact.
Opponents
of the deal also commonly complain about issues that are totally unrelated to a
nuclear weapons program: that Iran still
holds several American prisoners, that it continues research and development of
various conventional weapons, that it engages in a foreign policy with which we
disagree, and that it refuses to open all its military sites to US inspectors.
None of these issues is connected to the specific charge that Iran had a concealed
nuclear weapons program. Iran is a major power surrounded by enemies—of course
it develops conventional weapons; of course it denies the US access to its
military establishment; of course it conducts an independent foreign policy. It
is a fully sovereign nation, and will remain so whether we like it or not.
Finally,
opponents cite the danger Iran represents to Israel. Actually the reverse is
true. While Iran has talked peace, Israel has repeatedly threatened war: Iran
has basically negotiated in good faith. Netanyahu has tried everything to
derail a peaceful outcome: Iran has gone great lengths to make a diplomatic
solution possible.
By most estimates, Israel has 200-300 nuclear
warheads. They have reliable delivery systems that can reach Iran on missiles,
planes, and submarines. They have assassinated Iranian scientists and cyber-attacked
peaceful civilian Iranian nuclear facilities and repeatedly planted false
stories about Iranian nuclear ambitions in the media. Iran, by contrast, has no
nuclear warheads, no program to build them, and no way to reliably deliver
them. The bottom line is, occasional inflammatory remarks by hard-line Iranians
are empty threats—Netanyahu’s repeated threats are not empty—they are Israeli policy.
A
simple fact sums up the flaw in the “Israeli security” argument. Earlier this
year, Netanyahu created a furor with his speech to Congress. In that speech he
assured the audience that Iran had an active nuclear program, that Iran was
determined to get a bomb, and that an inspection/verification regime would
never work in uncovering the program.
It
was, in fact, almost exactly the same argument he gave to Congress in 2002-2003
when he testified about Iraq as a so-called “expert” witness. He claimed then
that Saddam Hussein definitely had reconstituted a weapons of mass destruction
program, that he was “hell-bent” on getting a nuclear weapon, and that
inspections could never be trusted.
In
fact, he was wrong on all counts then as he is now. Iraq had totally disarmed
and had never reconstituted a WMD program and above all, inspections had correctly made that very assessment.
Given Netanyahu’s record, it is a
mistake to count Israel as a reliable US ally. The idea that we would betray
our real allies—Britain, France, and Germany—by backing out of a deal we led
them to, just to please the notoriously unreliable Netanyahu, is just
incredible. The dual loyalties of Senators like Menendez, Schumer, and Wyden
can no longer be tolerated. American
senators should put American interests first. A vast number of educated,
knowledgeable Israeli’s are in favor of this treaty. They know that the deal is
in Israel’s best interests—and they know Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing
government is not.
Why has the US acted in the way it
has?
US animosity towards Iran began with the 1979
hostage crisis. At that time, the US backed Shah was overthrown and 52 Americans
were held in Iran for 444 days and then released unharmed. After the new
Iranian regime assumed power in 79-80, the US adopted a policy of regime change
and for about 8 years supported Saddam Hussein in a vicious war of aggression
against Iran, hoping this would result in the overthrow of the Iranian regime.
The US and its Gulf Arab allies invested about 75 billion dollars supporting
Saddam in that war, which resulted in over 600,000 Iranian deaths. During that
war, the US gave technical support to the Iraqi air force, which used that aid
to repeatedly deliver WMDs (chemical weapons) against Iran.
The war gave an interesting insight into how
Iran really thinks and acts in regard to WMDs. During that war, Iran never used chemical weapons against Iraq.
That’s right. Iran never used WMDs, even
though they had a sophisticated chemical industry and could easily have done
so, and even though chemical weapons were repeatedly used against them.
They were expected to use chemicals, they
threatened to do so, they were accused of doing so, but they never did so. Why
not?
It appears that those “mad mullahs” thought
chemical weapons were so disgusting that they issued a “fatwa” against them.
And those same mullahs not only did nothing to seek nuclear weapons, instead
they virtually froze Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and issued fatwas against
nuclear weapons too. In a deeply religious country, these fatwas have great
force.
There are still survivors of US/Iraqi
chemical weapons attacks who cough out chunks of lung every night in Iran. Yet,
Iran has never stooped so low as to use these weapons…
So Obama’s deal is a great deal. Americans
can act like we stopped Iran from getting nukes, and Iran can rest content
knowing that they never really wanted them.
The story should have a happy ending… except
that so many misguided people are trying to sabotage it. A US peace with Iran
could lead to real progress in stabilizing a chaotic Middle East. More war will
only make things worse. It’s time to let your reps know how you feel. Keep
pressing Wyden and the other lagging senators to support the deal. Keep
correcting their misstatements and misinformed judgments.
The current deal is
just a starting place. A lot of education obviously needs to be done on the US
side to correct the years of mindless demonization of Iran. Only when that is
done will the ever present threat that neo-cons will undo President Obama’s
vital progress towards normalization of relations with Iran finally recede. The
truth is, of the countries in the Middle East, Iran has the most experience
with, and the most longing for, democratization. Iran will only form a better
opinion of the US when we treat them with respect.
In pursuit of this
goal, I have written the following comprehensive resolution on the Iran Nuclear
deal. I hope some of you will take it to your local democratic party in some
form and submit the issues it addresses for consideration. This long version of
the resolution is followed by an example of an edited version (much more
concise) that was recently passed by the Lincoln County Democrats.
…
Resolution
on the Iran Nuclear Deal
Whereas: Both the US Constitution and long tradition give the
executive branch the primary responsibility for the direct and detailed conduct
of US foreign policy.
Whereas: The US Secretary of State, following the lawful directions
of the President of the United States, engaged in and successfully completed,
negotiations with Iran that resulted in a treaty adequately addressing the
relevant concerns of the US, vis a vis the allegation that Iran was conducting
a “secret nuclear weapons program.”
Whereas: All five members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany (P5+1),
were parties to the negotiation and in spite of the fact that all these nations
are closer in proximity to Iran (and would therefore be at more immediate risk
than the US if Iran were to achieve a deliverable nuclear weapon), all of them
were satisfied with the resulting treaty and its rigorous inspection clauses.
Whereas: The major US allies on the council (France, Britain, and
Germany) followed the US lead both in the initial sanctions which the new
treaty suspends, and in the negotiations verifying Iranian compliance with the
original NPT, for the US to now fail to honor the agreement it reached would
seriously damage America’s standing in the world and especially with these
major allies.
Whereas: The recent P5 +1 negotiation established that there was
little or no basis for the many long-standing charges that Iran was in serious
violation of the NPT. In other words, according to all available credible
evidence, Iran had never seriously violated the terms of the NPT and therefore,
it never had a nuclear weapons program.
Whereas: In spite of Iran’s almost total compliance with the NPT,
and in spite of the dubious legality of the sanctions imposed on it because of false
charges that it had, (an abuse of the inspections process) Iran still made
significant concessions to allow even more stringent oversight of its nuclear
activities.
Whereas: 29 leading US experts in nuclear and arms control issues
have endorsed the deal, calling it “technically sound, stringent, and
innovative.”
Whereas: Some 34 US Generals and admirals have also endorsed the
deal calling it “tough and verifiable…the most effective means currently
available to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…America and our
allies, in the Middle East and around the world, will be safer when this deal
is fully implemented …there is no better option.”
Whereas: A unanimous vote by the UN Security Council has already
approved the deal (meaning that, for the rest of the world, sanctions are
already a thing of the past). Even if congress were to refuse to ratify the
treaty and to impose new sanctions, those sanctions would have little effect
except to embarrass the US.
Whereas: For all the many politically motivated charges that
President Obama could have gotten a “better deal,” the fact remains that there is no other deal. The only other
“options” are doing nothing or going to war. Both are supremely bad ideas —President
Obama’s deal is the only real choice.
Whereas: Leading US intelligence experts (as well as most of their
Israeli counterparts) have recognized that Iran has never made the decision to
try to acquire nuclear weapons. Further, they have assessed that even if Iran
did make that decision, they would still be several years away from having a
tested, reliable, deliverable nuclear weapon.
Whereas: US and other military experts agree that even a massive
combined US and Israeli strike against nuclear sites in Iran, would not
significantly delay Iran’s ability to produce a bomb (should it decide it
wanted to). In fact, most experts believe that such an attack would merely
force Iranian leaders to decide that going nuclear was their only viable option.
Whereas: Secretary of State Kerry’s recent negotiations have just
established to the world’s satisfaction that the Iranian nuclear program is
what Iranian leaders always claimed it was—a peaceful, civilian use of nuclear
power.
In this context, for
Israel or the US to attack peaceful civilian nuclear sites would be tantamount
to an act of nuclear terrorism—it would have the same practical effect as the
use of a so called “dirty bomb.” It would lead to the uncontrolled release of
nuclear contamination that would certainly affect the health of local
civilians, and which might even drift across international boundaries. In
effect, it would be a “first strike” use of nuclear weapons—the edge of the nuclear
precipice.
Whereas: Nuclear sites targeted in an effort to destroy the
peaceful civilian Iranian program would be contaminated by radiation after a
successful strike by conventional weapons. This fact itself might well tempt
Israeli or US military planners to
contemplate the use of actual nuclear warheads in such an attack. Military
logic would suggest that conventional weapons might not succeed and that, since
no one would be able to verify the difference between radiations released by conventional
weapons hitting nuclear targets, and radiation resulting from nuclear weapons
used in a strike, the risk of exposure would be minimal.
Whereas: Almost all the objections to the current deal are
underpinned by the old notion of regime change. The basic idea is that by
maintaining pressure and making more and more demands, the US can destabilize
the Iranian regime to the point where it collapses. This is an incredibly
misguided notion—the people who urge this policy simply have no idea what kind
of chaos or regime would end up taking power. The rise of ISIS in the chaos of our
adventure in Iraq points to how bad the outcome could be…
Whereas: Even if all the safeguards fail, and Iran does somehow
acquire a nuclear warhead or two, there is still a fundamental flaw in
opponents of the treaty. The fact that Iran has pursued peaceful negotiations
and has tried so hard to remain within the framework of the NPT, (even while
the US and Israel were flagrantly violating both the spirit and the letter of
the treaty) proves beyond any doubt that the Iranians are shrewd, practical
rational decision makers. As such, even if they had a weapon, they know that to
ever use it would mean their utter annihilation at the hands of Israel or the
US. In other words, the normal
deterrence that worked with the Soviet Union for decades would work just as
well with Iran.
Therefore, with these facts in mind: The Democrats of Lincoln County
hereby resolve:
1. To
fully support President Obama’s deal with Iran.
2. To
urge our membership, our neighbors, and our elected representatives to support
the deal.
3. To
urge democrats in other counties across the state to support the deal by
passing a resolution similar to this one.
4. To
publically challenge our Senators and Congressional representatives to support
the deal.
5. If
needed, to publically censure and withdraw support from those elected
representatives who oppose the deal.
6.
To engage in ongoing education in our county on this
and related issues.
A few
days ago, the Lincoln County Democrats edited the above material and passed the
following much more concise version. We hope others will follow suit.
Lincoln County Democratic Central Committee Resolution on the
P5+1 Iran Nuclear Agreement
Whereas: The U.S. Constitution empowers the
Executive Branch of government the primary responsibility for the direct and
detailed conduct of U.S. foreign policy.
Whereas: The U.S. Secretary of State,
following the lawful directions of the President of the United States, engaged
in and successfully completed, negotiations with Iran that resulted in a treaty
adequately addressing the relevant concerns of America.
Whereas: All five members of the UN Security
Council, plus Germany (hereinafter, “P5+1”) were parties to the negotiation and
satisfied with the resulting Agreement.
Whereas: Failure to act to honor the
Agreement would seriously damage American standing in the world and our ability
to successfully negotiate with other nations.
Whereas: The Agreement has been endorsed by
global experts in nuclear and arms control issues have endorsed the deal,
calling it “technically sound, stringent, and innovative.” Furthermore the
Agreement has been called “ tough and verifiable…the most effective means
currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…America and
our allies, in the Middle East and around the world, will be safer when this
deal is fully implemented …there is no better option” by leading U.S. Generals,
Admirals and military experts.
Whereas: It is well-known there are two
options –the diplomatic option offered by the P5+1 Agreement or a military
option which would likely lead to direct American military involvement in Iran
that is certain to be expensive in the loss of life and have lasting economic
impact in America.
Therefore, with these facts in mind: The Lincoln County Democratic
Central Committee hereby resolves:
1. To clearly and publicly state that we fully support diplomacy and
diplomatic agreement over military engagement.
2. To fully support the P5+1 Iran Nuclear Agreement with Iran.
3. To urge our membership and our elected officials to support the
Agreement.
4. To urge our peer county Democratic Central Committee’s throughout
Oregon to demonstrate support for the Agreement by passing an equivalent
Resolution.
5. To publicly demand that our Congressional Representatives and
Senators to support the Agreement.
6. To provide ongoing education and information in our county on the
P5+1 Iran Nuclear Agreement.
With best wishes,
Gilbert Schramm