Judis hopes our deal with Iran serves as a foundation for bigger agreements:
Netanyahu and some American critics of the deal with Iran have compared it to the American agreement with North Korea in 2005, in which North Korea promised to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for economic aid. North Korea subsequently violated the agreement. But a more optimistic comparison would be to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement that Ronald Reagan signed with the Soviets in 1987.
Conservatives denounced Reagan for the pact. National Review called it “Reagan’s suicide pact.” Henry Kissinger charged that it undermined “40 years of NATO.” But, of course, the treaty turned out to be a prelude not only to more comprehensive arms agreements, but to the end of the Cold War. If the United States is lucky – and luck is always a factor in international affairs – the modest deal that the United States and five other nations signed with Iran could like, the Reagan’s INF treaty, be the beginning of something much larger more important, and more welcome.
Matthew Kroenig runs through various scenarios:
[T]here is the danger that the interim deal becomes permanent. (Also in this category would be the possibility that we reach a weak “comprehensive” pact that does not go much beyond the interim arrangement). This outcome should be avoided. As long as such an arrangement is strictly enforced, it would at least prevent Iran from making the final dash to a nuclear weapon, but it would leave far too much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in place for comfort, amount to a de facto recognition of Iran’s right to enrich, and set a dangerous precedent for nonproliferation policy. Moreover, the tough sanctions regime now in place cannot hold forever, and over time the pressure on Iran to uphold its end of the bargain will dissipate.
Gary Samore’s view:
According to the White House, the main oil and financial sanctions against Iran will remain in place during the interim deal. No doubt, the Iranians will try to exploit the limited sanctions relief to create loopholes to evade the remaining sanctions, and the U.S. will need to enforce the remaining sanctions to maintain leverage for negotiating a final deal or another interim deal. Our ability to rally international support to ramp up sanctions will depend heavily on being able to demonstrate that Iran has reneged or cheated on the agreement or is blocking diplomatic progress. Without a credible threat to increase sanctions, I doubt Iran will make additional nuclear concessions.
Jeffrey Lewis imagines a longterm deal:
[W]hen we do get around to thinking about a final deal, I hope we’ll put a lot less emphasis on this idea of “breakout” — the Iranians quickly building a bomb before the international community can do anything about it. This seems to be the popular way to think about limiting Iran’s program. The notion is helpful, but it isn’t the most important factor or a sufficient measure of any agreement. If the Iranians are going to build a bomb, they aren’t going to do it using a declared facility to make just one. The supreme leader isn’t stupid. If he has a change of heart — or a heart attack — a Tehran hell bent for the bomb will dig a tunnel under a mountain and enrich the fissile material there.
What this means is that we should be far more interested in securing access to people and facilities like centrifuge workshops than imposing arbitrary restrictions on the program. (Try this thought experiment: what if Iran announced it was closing all its nuclear facilities but, since it had no nuclear program, had no need of anymore irksome visits from IAEA inspectors? Move along, nothing to inspect here. You wouldn’t feel at all good about that brilliant achievement, would you?)
The most important point is that the supreme leader must believe that any decision to exercise his bomb option — an option he already has, mind you — will not remain secret for very long. That will reinforce what I am sure is his sincerely held religious aversion to nuclear weapons.
The Dish 