Three cheers for the flawed Iran deal

This does not feel like an epochal moment. After so much wrangling — the false starts, constant setbacks and mutual suspicion — the nuclear deal between Iran and the major powers was always likely to disappoint.

Many will say it has lived down to expectations. It should be applauded anyway.

For one thing, there is a fair chance that history will take a kinder view. For another, the agreement must be measured against the more unpalatable alternatives.

Mr Benjamin Netanyahu will not agree. The Israeli Prime Minister’s fulminations against the Tehran regime have grown louder and, it must be said, somewhat delusional.

The other day, Mr Netanyahu said that Iran’s goal “is to take over the world”.

Iran has been ruthless in promoting its Shia proxies as much of the Arab state system has fallen into collapse, but taking over the world? Mr Netanyahu’s answer to Tehran’s nuclear programme has long been to start another war.

Mr Barack Obama’s hope is that the nuclear thaw with Tehran will form part of his legacy — the start of a process that reshapes the geopolitical landscape. The United States President’s predecessor, Mr George W Bush, thought he could do that by fighting wars. Mr Obama wants to demonstrate that diplomacy, albeit in this case coercive, can do a better job.

Richard Nixon’s reputation was forever besmirched by the criminality of Watergate, and yet the disgraced former President is still remembered for the opening up of China. Mr Obama wants posterity to record that he halted the perilous slide to nuclear proliferation.

Supporters of the agreement should not try to hide from its weaknesses. Even with a new, uniquely intrusive inspection regime, Tehran might still press ahead with a clandestine nuclear programme.

Once sanctions are lifted, Iran will have access to tens of billions of dollars’ worth of frozen and new resources.

It will pump more oil and buy technologies hitherto denied it. If it breaks its pledge to stick to a civilian nuclear programme, the so-called “snapback” provisions of the deal may struggle to reinstate effective sanctions.

But then who could claim that sanctions have themselves been effective? As Mr Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s Foreign Minister, has pointed out, economic isolation has not prevented Iran from increasing the number of uranium-spinning centrifuges from 200 to 20,000.

By US calculations, that leaves Tehran within three months of producing enough fissile material for a bomb. One of the purposes of the deal is to push that timeline out to a year.

WILL IRAN CHANGE?

Iran has accepted unprecedented international control and surveillance over its nuclear programme as well as cuts in its uranium stocks and in the number of centrifuges. Yes, it might cheat. But the terms imposed by the US and the other members of the P5+1 group of leading powers will not make that easy.

It can be reasonably hoped of the agreement that it will begin to change the incentives in Tehran. Once back in the community of nations, will Iran — and more specifically the Iranian people — want to return to the exile of sanctions or, in extremis, risk a US attack on its nuclear facilities? Or will it be content to remain a nuclear threshold state? Domestically, a deal would empower the pragmatists against those who have claimed that without the bomb Iran will ever be vulnerable to US plotting of regime change.

No one is predicting that a nuclear accord will usher in an early end to the Sunni-Shia contest, which has Saudi Arabia and Iran as its principal sponsors.

However, Iran’s return to the international community might, just might, tilt the balance in Tehran and change the political dynamics internationally. Iran’s regional power cannot be wished away, however much the neighbouring Saudis demand it. But perhaps it can be rechannelled into a less aggressive posture. There may well be a moment when the regime concludes that it has more to gain from peaceful resolution of the myriad conflicts scarring the region.

The West has tested to destruction the idea that it can impose its will on the Middle East through the deployment of force.

If there is a single message from the violent chaos that now reigns through a great swathe of territory from Iraq to Lebanon, it is that order can be restored only with the support of the regional powers. Sure, Iran’s destructive ambition is a big part of the story; but so too is the deep ambivalence of Saudi Arabia towards violent Sunni extremism and Turkey’s reluctance to empower the Kurds.

An optimist might add that this rare example of successful cooperation between the US and Europe on one side of the table, and Russia and China on others, provides a template for further initiatives in which the leading powers recognise a mutual interest in the rules-based international system. At the very least it is a start.

The clinching argument for this agreement, though, is that it is the best on offer. All the alternatives are worse. Iran’s nuclear capability cannot be wished or bombed away. The best that can be hoped for is that it remains persuaded it is better off without the bomb.

The US politicians who will now seek to scupper the deal in the US have reasons aplenty to dislike it, but nothing credible with which to replace it. No, this does not feel like a heroic moment. But then we live in a world of least-worst options. THE FINANCIAL TIMES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Philip Stephens is chief political commentator of The Financial Times.