Give Iran deal a hard look and serious debate

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivers a statement on the Iran talks deal at the Vienna International Center in Vienna, Austria, on Tuesday.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivers a statement on the Iran talks deal at the Vienna International Center in Vienna, Austria, on Tuesday.

A group of six nations led by the United States reached a historic accord with Iran on Tuesday.

The agreement - to significantly limit Tehran's nuclear ability for more than a decade in return for, after five years, lifting international oil and financial sanctions - is, in President Barack Obama's words "not built on trust - it is built on verification."

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It is also a beginning that Congress should recognize and work to help America and the other nations involved build upon.

The deal comes after 20 months of negotiations. A New York Times review of the 109-page agreement shows that the United States preserved - and in some cases extended - the nuclear restrictions it sketched out with Iran in early April in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Yet, the pact left open areas that are sure to raise fierce objections in Congress. It preserves Iran's ability to produce as much nuclear fuel as it wishes after year 15 of the agreement, and allows it to conduct research on advanced centrifuges after the eighth year. Secretary of State John Kerry, who led the negotiations for the U.S., sought to blunt criticism of this point by saying, "Iran will not produce or acquire highly enriched uranium or plutonium for at least 15 years," and verification measures will "stay in place permanently."

Iranians also won the eventual lifting of an embargo on the import and export of conventional arms and ballistic missiles - a step the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, has warned about, according to The New York Times. But the U.S. won the ability to "snap back" to sanctions if we don't see that Iran is complying.

The current stockpile of low enriched uranium will be reduced by 98 percent, most likely by shipping much of it to Russia - a portion of the deal that seems less than reassuring since Russia is a longtime supplier of military equipment to Iran.

Nonetheless, Iran's lowered stockpile limit, combined with a two-thirds reduction in the number of its centrifuges, would extend to a year the amount of time it would take Iran to make enough material for a single bomb should it abandon the deal and return to a race for a weapon, according to analysts. By comparison, those analysts say Iran now could complete its bomb in two to three months.

Whether this deal will lead to a new relationship between the United States and Iran - after decades of coups, hostage-taking, terrorism and sanctions - is certainly a big question, but "a relationship" actually wasn't the goal. Nor was the goal what Israel and some U.S. conservatives seem to demand: a new regime in Iran.

The goal was to put Iran on a detour from nuclear bomb making. That, this deal seems likely to achieve in trade for millions of dollars in unfrozen Iranian oil exports and money.

If it doesn't successfully stop or significantly slow Iran's bomb-making capabilities, Iran's oil exports and the money from them could freeze again.

President Obama now must begin the mountain climbing necessary to sell the deal to Congress and to Americans. He made it clear Tuesday morning that he would fight to preserve the deal from critics in Congress who are beginning a 60-day review: "I will veto any legislation that prevents the successful implementation of this deal," he said.

House Speaker John A. Boehner threw incendiary rhetoric on the table: "Instead of making the world less dangerous, this 'deal' will only embolden Iran - the world's largest sponsor of terror - by helping stabilize and legitimize its regime."

We urge cooler, less partisan heads to prevail. Wouldn't failing to reach a deal embolden Iran as much or more? With no deal, would Iran not know to hurry up its bomb-making or face some sort of force to stop that threat? And wouldn't that kind of unbridled tit for tat surely lead to the war everyone proclaims not to want?

This is the deal on the table. The other options are to wait two or three months until Iran's bomb is complete or go to war. Is it a perfect deal? No. Is it worth a try? Absolutely.

What do we have to lose in trying it? We already know that the Middle East status quo has not been working, otherwise we wouldn't have been engaged in these negotiations in the first place. We don't have to hurry to be competitive in an arms race. We already have our bomb, or two, or 4,800, according to the Arms Control Association.

President Obama puts it a bit more diplomatically: "We negotiated from a position of strength and principle," he said.

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