Nuclear deal gives Tehran a powerful hand

By attaining breakout capability to build nuclear weapons, Tehran has won itself a seat at the grown-up table, no matter how odious some of those world powers find its regime, writes Tony Karon

Iran has clearly won an important victory, not by actually building nuclear weapons, but by simply demonstrating the capacity to do so. Abedin Taherkenareh / EPA

politics

Wrangling over the terms of the Iran nuclear deal is unlikely to end soon. Indeed, the agreement to lift sanctions on Tehran is far from a done deal, with the US Congress on course to pass legislation giving sceptical lawmakers greater oversight over the agreement. Barack Obama could find workarounds, of course, relying on a minority of senators to ensure his veto can't be overridden. And the fact that the agreement with Iran involves not only the US, but all five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (the P5+1) has important implications for the fate of sanctions.

When Vladimir Putin last week approved the delivery to Iran of the advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, he served up a timely reminder that it is the other members of the P5+1 who traditionally trade with Iran, and on whose compliance with sanctions their effectiveness largely depends.

Should Congress pull the plug on the P5+1 agreement, sanctions will quickly crumble. The key factor keeping them in place has been the fear of being sanctioned by the US Treasury for non-compliance. The central place of the US in the international banking system has been used to bend reluctant participants to Washington’s will. Thus the significance of last week’s other bit of bad news for US hawks: the confirmation that 57 countries, including key US allies, ignored Washington’s objections and joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank formed by China.

“We’re contemplating a major institution in which the United States has no role, that the United States made substantial efforts to stop and failed,” former treasury secretary Larry Summers told National Public Radio. That’s an unmistakable sign of the relative decline of Washington’s financial muscle as an instrument of geopolitical leverage, and that fact militates against the US sustaining its ability to compel others to comply with its sanctions.

Iran’s adversaries grumble that it has emerged as the big winner from the nuclear deal, usually exaggerating the implications of the agreement.

But in a bigger sense, Iran has clearly won an important victory, not by actually building nuclear weapons, but by simply demonstrating the capacity to do so. The grim reality of the international geopolitical order since the Second World War has been that it is nuclear-weapons capability that buys nation states a seat at the grown-ups’ table.

All five members of the P5 have nuclear weapons, as does Israel, the country leading the charge to reverse the deal. It’s also clear that nuclear weapons achieved a certain immunity for each of those states: for Moscow, nukes achieved the vital goal of being able to match US power and preclude being militarily challenged. For Paris and London they meant strategic independence from Washington. For Beijing, they meant strategic independence from Moscow. India’s nuclear capability matches that of its most powerful rival, China. Pakistan’s matches that of its most powerful rival, India. Israel’s nukes give it a strategic card that trumps all military challenges. North Korea’s establishes its independence from Beijing and Moscow and forces international powers to engage with Pyongyang.

Iran has not built nuclear weapons, of course, but it changed the diplomatic equation by assembling civilian nuclear infrastructure permissible under the NPT but which nonetheless gives it the capacity to build weapons should it choose to do so.

It’s often suggested that Iran was brought to the negotiating table by the sanctions chokehold. But what brought the western powers back to the table? If economic pain focused Tehran’s minds on the need for a diplomatic compromise, then it was the fact that Iran had begun enriching uranium to 20 per cent purity that focused western leaders’ minds on the urgency of agreeing caps on Iran’s nuclear work.

And Iran’s goal in using its nuclear work as diplomatic leverage has been the same as those other states: to establish the unassailable status of its regime as an independent geopolitical force. It ought to be remembered that when nuclear negotiations between Iran and three European powers began in 2003, Tehran’s key demand was for security guarantees, which would have been an immunity from foreign military efforts to topple its regime.

The nuclear deal makes Iran’s regime a partner in an important international security agreement designed to last decades. Even the negotiations to get to this point have required the world’s major powers to sit down with Iran’s regime, treating Tehran with the respect it has long craved.

By attaining breakout capability to build nuclear weapons, Tehran has won itself a seat at the grown-ups’ table, no matter how odious some of those world powers find its regime.

That may irk many of Iran’s adversaries, but it’s worth remembering that it was the P5 themselves that established the unspoken rule that nuclear capability remains the blue-chip currency of contemporary geopolitics.

Tony Karon teaches in the graduate programme at the New School in New York