Salvage the Nuclear Deal First

What is the purpose of pursuing “further agreements” beyond the JCPOA on this issue?

The New York Times editors are putting an entire stable of horses before the cart with this proposal:

But some key provisions of the deal have an expiration date. That’s why a critical aspect of the process should be to open the way to further agreements that might soothe real concerns about Iran’s long-term ambitions and curtail an incipient nuclear arms race in the region. Ideally, the result would be a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. The Biden administration apparently understands this, which is why it has vowed to pursue a “longer and stronger” agreement in the future.

A nuclear-weapons-free zone would be ideal, but the main obstacle to such a zone is not to be found in Tehran or Riyadh. The editorial refers to “Israel’s unacknowledged and nonnegotiable possession of nuclear weapons” as a reason why skeptics think that a nuclear-weapons-free zone won’t happen, but then they say that “progress could still be made between Iran and its Arab neighbors.” They correctly anticipate the objection of critics of this proposal, but they do nothing to answer it. If Israel’s nuclear arsenal is off-limits and non-negotiable, the region is never going to be nuclear-weapons-free. What is the point of trying to negotiate an agreement for the rest of the region when the main regional violator of the norm against nuclear proliferation is let off the hook? Talking about a nuclear-weapons-free zone while leaving Israel’s arsenal untouched would be like saying that you successfully denuclearized the Korean Peninsula except for those pesky North Korean nuclear weapons.

Israel’s nuclear weapons are rarely mentioned in mainstream discussions of the nuclear deal and nonproliferation in the Middle East, because their existence undermines one of the main conceits of the rest of the debate. The conceit is that Iran’s nuclear program is the major proliferation threat in the region, as if there isn’t already a rogue nuclear weapons state outside of the Non-Proliferation Treaty right in front of us. When the rogue nuclear weapons state comes up, it is usually by way of acknowledging that Israel will never even admit to having these weapons and certainly won’t ever give them up. Then we go back to pretending that Iran’s increased enrichment is the real danger to regional security.

Setting that aside for a moment, what is the purpose of pursuing “further agreements” beyond the JCPOA on this issue? It is fair to say that anyone that hasn’t already had his concerns “soothed” by the successful nonproliferation agreement that exists right now will probably never be satisfied by any agreement, no matter how “long” or “strong” it is. If Iran’s verifiable commitment to keep its nuclear program peaceful isn’t good enough, what exactly would be? Since most hawkish opponents of the JCPOA don’t really care about the nuclear issue and are simply using it as a pretext to keep pressure on Iran, there is no agreement that would cause them to relent in their hostility.

The original nuclear deal has not yet been salvaged. While there is some reason to hope that it eventually will be, it is most premature to start plotting even more far-reaching and ambitious agreements. We have to be prepared to accept that the JCPOA is as far as the Iranian government will ever be willing to go. Instead of trying to come up with new and more extensive demands, the U.S. ought to be focused on how to lock in its commitments in the nuclear deal to make sure that a future administration won’t just turn around and undo everything again.