Iran says they won with the interim deal:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's remarks about the accord Tuesday appeared to be part of efforts to bring around hard-liners who have denounced the deal, claiming it tramples on Iran's nuclear rights.
"Do you know what the Geneva agreement means? It means the surrender of the big powers before the great Iranian nation," Rouhani told a crowd in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan.
"The Geneva agreement means the wall of sanctions has broken. The unfair sanctions were imposed on the revered and peace-loving Iranian nation," he said. "It means an admission by the world of Iran's peaceful nuclear program."
Our response?
"It doesn't matter what they say," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters in Washington, describing the statement as meant for a "domestic audience."
If there was a consensus in America that we came out ahead in the negotiations, I'd agree with Carney.
But plenty of smart people (and me) think that the publicly available details show that Iran won. If the administration made the actual document public, perhaps we'd have better data. But keeping it secret is a little concerning, don't you think?
If Iran believed they lost this deal, they'd have reason to crow just as Carney stated.
But then why would Iran have made the deal? They could have been better off with no deal, right?
Sure, you can say the same logic applies to us. Why would we make a bad deal?
But that neglects that we have other objectives than defeating Iran.
The administration believes that it must avoid a war over Iran's nuclear program at all costs (rather than the last resort). You'll recall the president boasts he responsibly ended our decade of war in the CENTCOM region and pivoted away from the Middle East.
I'm also sure President Obama wants to earn his Nobel Peace prize premised on his potential for nuclear disarmament issues with a nuclear deal that we can pretend (for a while) is real.
And I'm darkly suspicious that Kerry lusts for a Nobel Peace Prize of his own. He probably even believes he made a good deal.
Shoot, what did Kerry say about the deal? He didn't proclaim victory, giving us a "he said, she said" debate with Iran. Kerry said the interim deal gives us a chance to negotiate a deal that will end Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Which means the deal didn't actually do more than slow parts of Iran's programs that Iran agreed to slow.
How sure are we that Iran needed those programs it agreed to slow during the next 6 months? As I've noted, Iran needs to move all of their nuclear weapons program components across the finish line at the same time to avoid a danger zone when incentive to strike Iran is high because of evidence of nuclear weapons capacity that would be difficult (but not impossible) to ignore. So Iran very likely agreed to slow parts that they don't need to advance while other areas catch up--with a lot of sanctions relief cash to help out.
And Iran has already said that it won't give up the key capability of enriching Uranium. So what are we going to talk about the next half year?
Now, if you assume--as I do--that Iran got the best of this interim deal, in a perfect mullah world they'd just let us believe we won and wouldn't say a thing.
But Iran has domestic opinion to attend to. If extreme hardliners who don't think they should even pretend to negotiate with us oppose any agreements with the Great Satan as tainting the purity of their revolutionary Islamist (Shia version) ideal, the hardliners willing to appear moderate to the outside world have all the incentive to let the mask of pretend defeat slip and accurately proclaim their victory to quiet the radicals at home (and that's relative remember, not implying the Rouhani types are actually moderate in anything but appearance) who have so much contempt for us that they are unwilling to even pretend to lose to us.
Remember, Iran nuking Israel could be explained away as having a "domestic audience" in Iran, you have to admit.
Have a super sparkly day.
