Returning to the Iran Deal

Diplomacy is a means, not an end. But it is a means we should not totally abandon in regards to Tehran.

Tuesday’s Iranian attack starkly emphasized a longstanding danger: the risk of an attempted Iranian nuclear breakout. Iran uses its proxies and its ballistic missile program as a conventional deterrent. The threat of saturation strikes from Lebanon or Iran itself, strikes large enough to overwhelm Israeli air defenses, is meant to keep Israel in check. Israel has largely neutered that threat. Hezbollah’s leadership is dead, and it appears to retain no meaningful long-range strike capabilities. Meanwhile, Israel has blunted two major Iranian ballistic strikes while demonstrating the ability to destroy Iranian air defenses at will. Iran is now more vulnerable than it has been in many years, and so might rationally decide to make a dash for a nuclear weapon to restore deterrence.

If that happens, the US should—and, I expect, will—conduct airstrikes to keep Iran from reaching its goal. If we do not, Israel will probably try the same. However, America can provide a volume of fire that Israel can’t, and also has penetrating munitions and corresponding delivery systems Israel lacks. Perhaps the more interesting question, though, is whether—assuming no breakout attempt occurs for now—any kind of renewed nuclear deal makes sense. 

The answer is “maybe,” but it requires a correct understanding of the strategy behind negotiations. The original JCPOA, the Obama-era executive agreement designed to keep Iran from nuclear weapons, is often derided as naïve appeasement. Trump’s decision to scrap it, meanwhile, was an act of tough realism. In a sense that is true. Obama’s foreign-policy people, to say nothing of our European negotiating partners, largely ignored Iranian fanaticism. They treated diplomacy as an end in itself, and attributed to Iran a degree of good faith and meekness it does not possess. Sometimes they seemed to blame the West for Iran’s belligerence.

But that is a failure to appreciate the purpose of negotiations, and a failure to integrate them into a broader strategy. It does not rule out negotiations in the abstract. In fact, negotiations do have a role to play in our long-term strategy, and even the JCPOA was probably a good idea, only adopted for the wrong reasons. 

Our strategic goals in Iran are not complicated: we need to keep the Iranians from obtaining a nuclear weapon, part of a broader need to neuter the strategic threat Iran presents. Iran’s strategic goals are incompatible with our own. Iran seeks regional hegemony, an aim that is far easier for a nuclear power. As long as Iran’s theocratic government remains in power, no obvious compromise exists, and the West cannot convert Iran by being nice. So the United States needs to be prepared to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions by military force one way or the other. 

But willingness to eventually use force makes negotiation more effective, while also slotting diplomacy into a broader scheme. Iran is far more likely to haggle in good faith if it truly believes that a nuclear breakout attempt means war. Meanwhile, from our standpoint, negotiations function as a delaying tactic. A JCPOA-style framework will not change Iran’s ultimate aims. But it buys time to undermine the Iranian regime in other ways. The ayatollahs preside over a deeply ambivalent, at times outright hostile, populace. Consider last year’s widespread and violent protests over Mahsa Amini’s death at the hands of the morality police. America needs to prepare to take advantage of those internal tensions—and of course Azeri, Kurdish, and Baloch separatism. 

Diplomacy is no end in itself. We should not kid ourselves into expecting a negotiated solution. But diplomacy backed by force is more likely to work than diplomacy in the abstract, and it stands a good chance of delaying Iranian nuclear acquisition. We will probably need to bomb them either way, in the end. Still, delaying that outcome creates at least the chance of an unexpected off-ramp.

Jonathan Meilaender is a JD candidate at Harvard Law and is concurrently engaged in a Master’s program in German and European studies at Georgetown University. He received his BA in Politics from Saint Vincent College where he was also Editor-in-Chief of the Saint Vincent College Review. @JMeilaender