The Nuclear Agreement is Doomed
On Four (Plus One) Issues which Block the Negotiations With Iran

By Meir Stieglitz

March 06, 2015 "ICH" - No nuclear agreement will be signed with Iran this month, nor will a viable treaty be reached later on. It is doomed. Maybe a “framework” or “intentions” understandings will be agreed upon in the coming weeks, but this kind of diplomatic stopgap won’t fare any better than the December 2014 extension. Four strategic issues manufactured by the Israel-Neocon axis and legitimized by the Obama administration plus an incessant Holocaust pimping campaign [see mine: “Pimping the Holocaust Memory” Information Clearing House, June 10, 2011] are blocking the road to a comprehensive reliable nuclear agreement. As a result, the chances for an historical turnaround in the Middle East are being destroyed and the World System at large will be further destabilized. The four issues:

1. Zone of Immunity”: This supposedly sophisticated strategic term was coined by then Israel’s defense minister E. Barak about three years ago in order to facilitate an attack on Iran (preferably an American one; Israeli as plan B). It refers to the point in time at which Iran's nuclear facilities would be allegedly immune from military strike because all the necessary components for developing a nuclear weapon would have been under such level of protection (mainly underground) rendering conventional weapons attack ineffective.

Concerning an Israeli attack, it’s indeed most probable that a conventional strike by Israel wouldn’t annihilate Iran’s capacities to proceed with its nuclear program in a relatively short time. And it’s indeed most probable that Israel is not capable to proceed with a prolonged sequence of conventional destructive attacks. In this sense, the Iranians were and are immune from the very beginning of the crisis. It is, however, irrelevant to the terms of the strategic situation.

Concerning an American attack, there was not, there is not and there won’t be any zone of immunity, not a shred of it. The U.S. forces in the region together with its means for global projection of strategic power, are quite capable of paralyzing Iran’s enrichment facilities either by direct hits or by destroying the lines of transportation and supply – repeatedly so. As a matter of strategic fact all that is needed is one, maybe two, American Carrier Groups currently deployed in the vicinity of Iran -- only boots on the decks and the cockpits.

In sum – no zone, no immunity, just another of Barak’s (feverish and egomaniacal) brainchildren. And indeed the immunity issue is not liable to block an agreement by itself alone. It is, however, influencing a potential agreement in the sense that it’s driving the Iranians to a state of mind envisioning a clear and present danger of an American attack and getting prepared for it.

2. “Breakout Period”: This concept refers to the estimated time needed for Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium (or, to process plutonium from the Arak reactor) to build its first nuclear weapon. There are three interpretations to the time span for a breakout: First, the time needed to produce enough bomb-grade material. Second, the time needed to manufacture a nuclear bomb or two. Third, the time needed to deploy an operative nuclear warhead.  The first interpretation, of course, is the shortest span (estimated usually in months, and for the attack-camp in weeks), the third usually estimated in long years (the attack-camp measure is less than two).

The breakout alarm was introduced to the world in a most successful public relations plot by Netanyahu in his presentation of the “bomb cartoon” during his speech to the U.N assembly in September 2012. One indication among many to the influence of this concept on the negotiations is Secretary of State, J. Kerry, repeated proclamations on the need to extend the supposedly breakout span from short months to more than a year.

In reality however, the whole concept is a strategic fallacy – the Iranian have actually already agreed to very rigors, continues and expansive inspections measures and it seems they may agree to even more harsh inspections regime (terms of the “added protocol” to the NPT and more). Under such inspection procedures it’s practically impossible to raise the level and\or quantity of uranium enrichment (not to speak of plutonium processing) without a nearly immediate detection (within hours, days the most) by the international inspectors and\or intelligence resources. In this sense, it doesn’t really matter whether the Iranian will retain 900 centrifuges, 9,000 or 90,000 -- any Iranian attempt to enrich to forbidden levels and\or quantities will be recognized immediately as a gross violation of the agreement (as will an attempt to expel the inspectors) and most probably met with a debilitating strike not only by the U.S. but by an international coalition.

Nevertheless, the breakout alarm is still a serious block to an agreement and the Obama administration continues to treat it as a valid strategic issue. The latest alarmist brew is a concoction of worst-case scenarios in which Iran ”breaks out” and the West is held incapacitated by some improbable geopolitical tensions or other extreme panicky factors.

While the breakout fallacy is indeed a serious obstruction to an agreement, it is not an insurmountable one. The breakout premises are as unfounded as were the manufactured U.S.S.R’s “first strike” alarms at the height of the Cold War. And indeed there are signs that even the Netanyahu-whipped Obama administration may find the nerve to overcome the attack-mongering campaign -- signs indeed but, alas, not definitive indications.

3. “Sneakout”: The term “sneakout” refers to the worry that the Iranian may build, or already have built, clandestine facilities to produce highly enriched uranium or plutonium and/or to design and assemble nuclear weapons. Supporting that line of thinking is the supposedly Iranian success in hiding the underground Fordow plant until it was near completion. And thus, the logic goes, there may be another mountain in Iran were thousands of new-generation centrifuges are humming and producing bomb-grade uranium for a bomb or more.
As for weapon-design and manufacturing, indeed the facilities needed are much easier to hide than enrichment facilities more so of reactors. Thus the opponents of an agreement are keen on pointing at Parchin military complex as a possible, if not rigorously inspected, site which may be used for design, manufacturing, assembling and even (“dry”) testing of a bomb. Do they have a case?

As to sneaking plutonium, it is virtually impossible to hide plutonium producing reactor and the necessary separating and processing plants. The necessary facilities are a nuclear reactor, even a small one, and vast separating and processing apparatus – easily detected from their start.

As to hiding uranium enrichment facilities, the story of Fordow “sneaking” is much exaggerated – the Iranians were fully aware that it will be found out before the start of the uranium processing.

Under these conditions, Teheran doesn’t have a legitimate cause, “national pride” terms not included, to oppose the expansion of the inspection regime beyond existing facilities. Moreover, they shouldn’t have any reservations about enhancing the transparency of potential suspected facilities and the range of the inspectors’ mandate. The technical issues of separating conventional military complexes from suspected nuclear facilities can be agreed upon without compromising Iranian security interests -- for example, by a tight screening of the international inspectors’ corp. All and all, the strategic template and the adequate technical means to overcome the sneakout worries are already established, and all that is needed is a mutual will and resolve to achieve an agreement – it wasn’t demonstrated yet.

4. Sanctions: On this issue the agreement will rise or fall. And the anti-agreement camp has the wind at its back: by not opposing Congress when it still had the power to do so, the Obama administration has knowingly and from expedient electoral calculations, pushed itself to a corner where it can’t offer the Iranian a full and attested sanctions’ removal, not even a gradual one.

Teheran fully recognize the expected implications of a state of affairs were Congress is under Republicans control and the next president is expected to be either quite averse (or under pressure to abort), to the idea of a nuclear agreement which doesn’t include complete dismantlement of the Iranian nuclear program. Among other understandable reservations, what complicates the issue even more is the fact that the Iranian leadership is probably aware of the way Obama maneuvered the gullible Medvedev (again, for expedient political motives) on the issue of removing the American anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe during the new START negotiations in 2010 (and so they are aware of the subsequent political fate of Medvedev).

Under such terms, the Iranian negotiators are faced with the arduous task of convincing the Teheran regime (and first of all the “Supreme Leader” Khamenei) that it is better to have a “bad deal” -- meaning a deal where the Iranian nuclear program is set back substantially but the removal of the sanctions are more in the realm of the promised than of the contractually obligating -- than to have no deal at all.

Prudently calculating, the Iranian should be aware that they lost their strongest bargaining chip, namely, the threat of destabilizing unsteady global economy by acting to raise oil prices and thus agree to what are unfair terms in their view. But by doing so the signing is bound to be seen not as a result of a magnanimous historical move by Iran but as impressive victory for the Obama administration and a proof that the sanctions regime and “all options are open” policies were necessary and efficient tools to bring Teheran to its (Western) senses –which, in any case, isn’t a sure sign for the treaty employment and durability. So, most probably, the Iranians will stick to their “honor” (and rather substantial investments) guns and the sanctions removal issue will indeed block an agreement and pave the way for the political and strategic rise of the attack-Iran camp.
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The Israel–Neocon axis mastered Obama on this (and every other substantive issue) because they recognized, from the very start of his campaigns, that for him winning the presidency is not the most important thing but the only thing – it takes one to know one. On that premise these spirits of global evil proceeded to shrewdly manipulate the game to be construed from terms of their preferred situation (the four blocks to an agreement plus Holocaust pimping) and Obama willfully complied in order not to risk his elections odds.
Indeed it turned out to be a win-win game for both Obama and the anti-agreement camp: Obama won twice (as he so mischievously taunted the Republicans on his last State of the Union address) and the Israel-Neocon axis are on the verge of preventing an agreement and enshrining their status as masters of the universe.

As to the universe, it lost, big time – with the Iraq invasion; the Ukraine standoff; the return of the nuclear arms race; and now the pending failure to achieve a most feasible M.E. major agreement, the era of Universalism (from about the mid-Eighties to end of first decade), initiated by the World-Historical hero Gorbachev and accredited by the surprisingly humanly motivated Reagan, has been dealt a another severe blow -- a fatal one most probably. Cleo won’t be so forgiving again in our time.

Meir Stieglitz received a PhD in International Relations from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an M.A in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley and a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from the Hebrew University. Dr. Stieglitz did his Post-Doctoral as an adjunct fellow at the CSIA — Kennedy School of Government and at Harvard’s Economics department.  Dr. Stieglitz studies and writings center on the many aspect and implications –Philosophical, Theoretical, Geo-Political, Strategic and economic – of a fundamental query: Is Humanity Possible?  In 2003, Dr. Stieglitz quit all of his public and governmental positions in Israel (including weekly columns in leading Israeli newspapers, academic attachments, media appearances and lectures). He is currently employed as a consultant to International Investments Groups on global Geo-Political, Strategic and Macro-Economic issues.