This guy has no business telling me why I should actually like the Iran deal:
The reflexive reaction of Iran hawks to condemn the interim accord struck in Geneva this weekend is as wrongheaded as the triumphal assessments of those suggesting it ushers in a new, more hopeful era in the region's history. This deal, hard-won as it has been, is just a tentative if hopeful step down a long and twisting road fraught with dangers.
For the hawks to suggest that the deal freezing Iranian uranium-enrichment efforts above the 5 percent level, halting work on the heavy-water reactor near Arak, and granting daily inspections to Iran's centrifuge-laden facilities at Natanz and Fordow makes matters more dangerous in the short term is just indefensible on its face. Absent such a deal, all enrichment and technological advancement efforts would continue unabated and without inspections. Iran would almost certainly move more quickly toward having a bomb without this deal than with it.
Wrong.
One, freezing enrichment is meaningless given that Iran repeatedly draws down their stock to avoid crossing Israel's red line for having too much enriched uranium for Israel to feel comfortable. Why this agreement would have more of an impact than fear of Israel is beyond me.
As for that Arak reactor halt? Well, never mind:
Iran will pursue construction at the Arak heavy-water reactor, Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif was quoted as saying on Wednesday, despite a deal with world powers to shelve a project they fear could yield plutonium for atomic bombs.
Fancy that.
We'll see how the daily inspections go. As long as they only want to go to places Iran is confident have nothing of important going on, I'm sure Iran will be happy to let them go.
Further, what about other locations perhaps more important to other lines of research and development? And what about other lines of research or technical/production programs not covered by the agreement?
So really, the only reason I should like this deal is that it is a "tentative if hopeful step down a long and twisting road fraught with dangers."
Yeah, that's comforting. When we've agreed in our interim agreement with the statement that Iran will not ever seek or develop nuclear weapons, "hopeful" outweighs that road we're supposed to travel. Watch out for the Iranian EFPs, eh?
Sure, in the short run the deal doesn't make the situation worse. But without the deal, the situation isn't likely to have been different.
It's the long run that is the problem with this deal. We've broken the momentum of international sanctions, granted Iran 6 months free of our military threat to continue to work on areas not covered by the interim deal (even assuming they don't cheat or simply have a different understanding of more areas we supposedly agreed on), and provided economic relief that allows Iran to continue to back Assad and which will give Iran the ability to keep their economy going for much more than the 6 months the deal covers.
If the Iran deal was likely to halt Iran's nuclear weapons work, I'd like the deal. Really. Don't pretend to school me on what I should and should not like about this deal, as if I'm an idiot unable to read the agreement (well, the White House fact sheet about the deal, anyway) and remember just who we are dealing with.
But grant the author this much: he surely explained as well as anyone why dolts should like the Iran deal.
UPDATE: This is a bad deal for us.
