Iran Sanctions Would Undermine Nuclear Diplomacy

January 15, 2014 | Edited by Lauren Mladenka and Geoff Wilson

Bellicose, provocative and escalatory - “For years, Iran hawks have argued that only punishing sanctions, combined with the threat of military force, would bring Tehran to the nuclear negotiating table,” writes Jeffrey Goldberg for Bloomberg. “Finally, Iran is at the table. And for reasons that are alternately inexplicable, presumptuous and bellicose, Iran hawks have decided that now is the moment to slap additional sanctions on the Iranian regime.”

--“The bill before the U.S. Senate, which has 59 co-sponsors at last count, will not achieve the denuclearization of Iran. It will not lead to the defunding of Hezbollah by Iran or to the withdrawal of Iranian support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. What it could do is move the U.S. closer to war with Iran and, crucially, make Iran appear -- even to many of the U.S.'s allies -- to be the victim of American intransigence, even aggression. It would be quite an achievement to allow Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, to play the role of injured party in this drama. But the Senate is poised to do just that.”

--“At a certain point, two or three months from now, it may become obvious that the talks are destined to fail, at which point more sanctions would be appropriate. But for now, new sanctions, just as negotiations are starting, would be provocative and escalatory and would undermine the administration’s attempt to denuclearize Iran without going to war,” writes Goldberg. Read the full story here. http://bloom.bg/1hodjSY

Tweet - @KelseyDav: A must read- Sen. Feinstein's floor statement on #Iran nuclear deal and opposing further sanctions: see page 22 http://bit.ly/1d6PIAU

Give it time - “The next few months will answer a fundamental question about Iran’s nuclear program: Are the Iranians serious about eliminating, in Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s words, ‘even the perception that Iran may develop nuclear weapons’ in exchange for sanctions relief,” writes Samuel R. Berger in a piece for Politico. “Achieving that objective in the upcoming negotiation is hard enough. We should not derail it from the start by prescribing its terms.”

--“The six-month interim deal reached between the West and Iran in November, and the implementing agreement concluded last weekend, does not, and was not intended to, resolve the Iranian nuclear threat. But it achieves what prior negotiations failed to do: preventing Iran from talking while it continued to build up its stockpile of enriched uranium. And it gives the United States transparency into Iran’s nuclear program that it has never had before—regular, often daily, inspections of key installations.” Full article here. http://politi.co/1gKtZmA

Dems willing to wait - “Under pressure from the Obama administration, Senate Democrats who favor a new batch of sanctions on Iran signaled a willingness to hold off on levying penalties to give diplomatic negotiations a chance.” Donna Cassata reports for AP. http://bit.ly/1hqL324

Omnibus bill is nuclear paydirt - “New Mexico’s nuclear weapons laboratories and military installations would get big budget boosts under a trillion-dollar congressional spending bill designed to pay for federal government programs through the end of the current fiscal year,” writes Michael Coleman for the Albuquerque Journal. “The nearly 1,600-page spending bill, unveiled by House and Senate appropriators late Monday, would increase budgets for the B61 bomb Life Extension Project and nuclear cleanup work at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.” Full story here. http://bit.ly/1b3ffva

Tweet - @plough_shares: Cash-Strapped Congress Fully Funds B-61 #SolidGoldNuke. Ploughshares Fund statement here: http://t.co/S4JUiLRRP6

MOX boost - “Despite cost overruns in the billions, the mixed oxide fuel facility being built at Savannah River Site is in line to get more money than requested in the massive federal spending bill moving through Congress this week,” writes Meg Mirshak for The Augusta Chronicle. “The MOX plant, designed to dispose of plutonium from surplus nuclear bombs by blending it into commercial reactor fuel, is three years behind schedule, and its projected cost has grown from $4.9 billion to $7.7 billion.” Get the full story here. http://bit.ly/1gKNUSx

Maximum good - “It’s understandable that many in Congress are worried that Iran will escape from the economic corner that sanctions have put it in without meaningfully reducing its nuclear infrastructure or its potential to build a bomb,” says The Washington Post editorial board. “Nevertheless, the senators already may have accomplished the maximum good by proposing the bill, thereby raising the pressure on the administration and Iran. Passing it — which probably would require overcoming a presidential veto — would be problematic.”

--“This diplomacy has been President Obama’s initiative, and he should be allowed to carry it through to success or failure. Congress then would have a mandate to act, either in lifting sanctions or in redoubling them.” Read the full piece here. http://wapo.st/Ldcbqq

Risky meddling - “It's hard to know exactly what the growing number of senators who've signed on to a sanctions bill against Iran think they're doing,” writes the Denver Post editorial board. “If they want to torpedo the interim nuclear deal that the United States and five other nations struck with Iran, then they should say so. But that's not what many say. They claim they support diplomacy and are only trying to assist the Obama administration in the next round of talks by pushing the Iranians” to negotiate seriously.

--“The trouble is, the Obama administration considers the Senate bill a violation of the deal the senators profess to respect. So do the Iranians, who vow to walk away from the table should anything like it pass,” the board says. “We're skeptics about Iran's intentions, too, but support the next stage of talks because the interim agreement, which takes effect Jan. 20, includes constructive concessions from Iran in return for a slight easing of sanctions.” Full article here. http://bit.ly/1fxUK17

Less is still more - “The United States has substantial room to reduce its nuclear arsenal, without risk to U.S. or allied security interests,” writes Steve Pifer in a piece for The National Interest. “Which potential adversary would act differently if the United States had ‘only’ 2,500 nuclear weapons? Would North Korea adopt a more aggressive posture if the United States had just three hundred times as many nuclear weapons as it, instead of five hundred times as many? The answers to these questions are ‘no one’ and ‘no.’” Read the full story here. http://bit.ly/Kj36uV

Nuke numbers - “Russian Strategic Forces in 2014” by Pavel Podvig. http://bit.ly/1eDrWPA

Nuclear cleanup - “The effort to clean up soil and groundwater contamination at the nation’s only plant for assembling and disassembling nuclear weapons has been effective so far,” according to AP. However, “while the sources of the soil and groundwater contamination have been eliminated, the contamination itself remains.” Environmental officials estimate that the cleanup project, located at the Pantex Plant in the Texas panhandle, to cost $135 million. Full story here. http://wapo.st/1kBZwwF

Events:

--”Benefit or Burden? The Future of U.S. Tactical Nuclear Weapons.” Discussion with Rep. Jim Cooper, Gen. Norton Schwartz, and Amb. Richard Burt. Jan. 16th from 1:00-2:30 at 2456 Rayburn House Office Building. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1eA5nez

--”What Will 2014 Bring for North Korea’s Nuclear Program?” Discussion with James Schoff, Toby Dalton, Go Myong-Hyun, Choi Kang, Park Jiyoung, and Shin Chang-Hoon. Jan. 21st from 9:00-12:00 at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. RSVP here. http://ceip.org/1lIxXQo

--”Making Sense of Nuclear Negotiations with Iran: A Good Deal or a Bad Deal?” Discussion with Alireza Nader, Daryl Kimball and Paul Pillar. Jan. 22nd from 10:00-11:00am at 2168 Rayburn House Office Building. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/19Th8zR

--”Resolved: The United States Should Modernize Only One Leg of the Nuclear Triad.” Debate with Christopher Preble and Elbridge Colby. Jan. 27th from 6:00-8:00 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/L7utt2