Menendez's Attack on Diplomacy

It shows how unreasonable opposition to reviving the nuclear deal is and how pointless it was for Biden to try to placate Iran hawks like Menendez over the last year.

Sen. Bob Menendez delivered a speech today attacking the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the negotiations in Vienna. It was a typically bad speech filled with false and misleading claims, but it is worth noting because it shows how unreasonable opposition to reviving the nuclear deal is and how pointless it was for Biden to try to placate Iran hawks like Menendez over the last year. Iran hawks will never accept any agreement that would be even minimally acceptable to Iran, because they do not want to see U.S.-Iranian tensions reduced.

Because of Menendez’s position as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the administration thought it necessary to go slow and offer no sanctions relief, and it indulged in a lot of silly rhetoric about desiring a “longer and stronger agreement” to keep Iran hawks in their own party quiet. The problem is that Menendez’s opposition to any achievable agreement has been unwavering and there was never anything that the administration could have done that would win him over. Feigning interest in a “comprehensive” agreement that could never be successfully negotiated, Menendez has never supported a realistic diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue.

Menendez makes a number of misleading claims, including this one: “In February 2021, we saw the consequences of not insisting Iran permanently ratify the Additional Protocol. Iran simply decided they were done with the Additional Protocol and refused to allow the IAEA to fully investigate locations where it found traces of uranium enrichment.” It is disingenuous to blame this on Iran’s voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol, since Iran took these steps in protest against the Israeli assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in late 2020. Iran was still choosing to implement the AP until Israel launched that attack, and if the JCPOA survives until 2023 they are expected to ratify it and adhere to it permanently. The development that Menendez wants to pin on the supposed “weakness” of the JCPOA was the fault of the Israeli government’s backfiring sabotage operations.

He claims that Iran already possesses missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons: “The ballistic missiles to deliver them. That, they already had.” This, too, is false, as any serious study of Iran’s missile program will demonstrate. As Gawdat Bahgat and Anoushiravan Ehteshami conclude in their new book, Defending Iran, “the available evidence does not support the claims that Iran has developed an ICBM capability.” Iran’s missile program has been built up for conventional deterrence and not as a means of delivering nuclear weapons, which the Iranian government isn’t even trying to acquire.

Menendez then falsely asserts that “Iran’s behavior continues to indicate that it is actively moving towards developing nuclear weapons capabilities.” On the contrary, Iran has no nuclear weapons program and has still shown no sign of starting one. The Iranian government has deliberately stopped short of enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels. Iran continues to make the political decision not to pursue nuclear weapons despite being sanctioned as if they had chosen the opposite. That indicates that they do not intend to develop nuclear weapons capabilities, and the U.S. should be willing to take that yes for an answer.

It is remarkable that Iran hawks like Menendez still cling to their unreasonable pre-JCPOA insistence on dismantling Iran’s enrichment facilities. The only reason why Iran agreed to any additional restrictions on its nuclear program was the compromise that allowed them to retain domestic enrichment at low levels. Menendez’s defense of a “zero enrichment” position in 2022 is further proof that opponents of the nuclear deal are ideologues with no desire to find a workable compromise. Judging the JCPOA by this absurd standard, Menendez predictably finds it wanting.

Menendez said, “It’s time to start thinking out of the box and consider new strategies for rolling back Iran’s nuclear program and addressing its dangerous and nefarious activities,” but everything Menendez has to offer is the most stale, conventional hawkish nonsense. There is nothing new or imaginative about further tightening sanctions, slapping new sanctions on Chinese entities that do business with Iran, and calling for snapback of international sanctions. These are more of the same brain-dead tactics that have brought things to their current state. Iran’s nuclear program has expanded as much as it has because of “maximum pressure.” One can only guess at how much worse things could get if Menendez’s recommendations were implemented.

He then touts the importance of bipartisanship by saying that “the best guarantee of a sustainable, diplomatic agreement with Iran and the international community is to build one that garners bipartisan political support.” No such agreement will ever be concluded because the GOP is sure to oppose any diplomatic agreement that a president from the other party signs and the terms that Republican hawks would insist on are non-starters in Tehran. It is not possible to garner bipartisan support for a diplomatic agreement when at least one of the two major parties is opposed to diplomacy itself. The best that the U.S. can hope to get is an agreement that restricts Iran’s nuclear program for as long as it lasts until some future administration tears it up.