Our View: Iran nuclear deal has made the world safer
Perhaps the Obama administration has found the path to reducing the tension level in the Middle East? It isn’t by dropping more literal and figurative bombs. It’s by being willing to engage, listen, talk and negotiate.
That course of action appears to be paying off.
Iran freed five Americans – including one Northern California native – last weekend. A cause for celebration, but not the most important development in our relationship with Iran. Saturday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran has lived up to the agreement made with the United States and five other nations concerning its nuclear weapons program. Iran has shipped 98 percent of its enriched uranium out of the country and removed two thirds of its centrifuges while filling a reactor with concrete. These last two developments were ahead of schedule.
This is a victory for diplomacy and Secretary of State John Kerry. Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been dramatically slowed without requiring the kind military action Republicans demanded in August. If we had taken that course, instead of welcoming home former prisoners we might be saying farewell to thousands of Americans soldiers.
“We’ve achieved this historic progress through diplomacy, without resorting to another war in the Middle East,” Obama said Sunday.
This doesn’t mean that after 37 years Iran and the United States are pals. We have no reason to embrace Iran. But like it or not, Iran has significant influence in the world’s most volatile region. Its proxy wars with Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Syria are partly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands and the desperate diaspora for hundreds of thousands more. Knowing of that complicity tempers our enthusiasm for any contact with Tehran.
Even as we exchanged prisoners, the Obama administration announced new sanctions on Iranian companies and citizens for violating United Nations prohibitions by launching two ballistic missiles last month.
Iran’s politics aren’t like ours. The nation has moderate forces desperate to join the rest of the modern world, but also a ruling theocracy capable of trumping rational courses of action. And Iran still revels in poking America in the eye, perhaps explaining the detention of 10 American sailors last week.
The fact we’re now on speaking terms contributed to the quick release of those sailors.
How will the six-nation nuclear deal be judged by history? It depends on Iran’s continued compliance and our continued vigilance.
We feel there is room for optimism. By Monday, Iran was working out a deal to build an oil refinery in Spain. The more enmeshed Iran becomes in international partnerships and the world’s economy, the less likely its leaders will be to jeopardize their nation’s prosperity.
It is bewildering that Republicans found so few positive in the release of captive Americans. Instead, they complained. Some seemed to think the release of seven Iranians was too much for the release of five Americans. Other said the Americans were held too long. Still others accused the president of negotiating with terrorists to get them out. Sen. Marco Rubio called it an example of Obama’s weakness.
Meanwhile, in Congress, House Republicans are still trying to sabotage the nuclear arms deal with Iran, offering the “Iran Terror Transparency Act” which would prevent the U.S. from living up to its side of the deal. Would they send back the now former captives?
The world appears to be safer now than it was before the deal with Iran. To keep it that way we need vigilance and fortitude, not bluster, false bravado and empty threats.
This story was originally published January 19, 2016 at 3:04 PM with the headline "Our View: Iran nuclear deal has made the world safer."