It’s been announced that the Obama administration has reached an “historic” deal with Iran over its nuclear weapons development program. President Obama “warned Congress against taking action that could upend work toward a final deal”, in the words of Julie Pace of the Associated Press.
“The issues at stake here are bigger than politics,” Obama said during remarks in the White House Rose Garden. “These are matters of war and peace, and they should be evaluated based on the facts.”
Obama spoke hours after negotiators in Switzerland reached a framework agreement outlining limits on Iran’s nuclear program and setting the stage for work on a final deal over the next three months.
The president called the agreement “a good deal, a deal that meets our core objectives.” He said verification mechanisms built into the framework agreed to in Switzerland hours earlier would ensure that “if Iran cheats, the world will know it.”
The world will know if Iran cheats for about 12 months. According to CNN’s description of the deal’s parameters that is all the warning time the deal likely provides. Tehran agrees to keep 6,104 centrifuges, put its remaining facilities under IAEA inspection. Iran will receive sanctions relief, if it verifiably abides by its commitments. “Iran’s breakout timeline — the time that it would take for Iran to acquire enough fissile material for one weapon — is currently assessed to be 2 to 3 months. That timeline will be extended to at least one year, for a duration of at least ten years, under this framework.”
It will be argued that the deal is ‘better than nothing’ — a word which necessarily means “all Obama could get”. But a better description might be “something rather than nothing”. For a Nothing was what it threatened to be. The agreement was always like a movie McGuffin, “a device or plot element in a movie that is deliberately placed to catch the viewer’s attention and/or drive the logic of the plot, but which actually serves no further purpose – it won’t pop up again later.”
And if it does you will learn that “historic” now means a year’s warning. Time was when “historic” meant centuries, like the pyramids that look down on the Gaza plain. History under the Obama administration now means a year’s grace looking up to you from the paper.
The real drama in the negotiations that regional actors were watching was just how far the “international community” would go to forestall a bomb. The real question was never Tehran’s ambition. That remains manifest throughout the battlefields of the region.
The outcome that everyone wanted to know was: ‘what level of resolve does the leader of the Free world have?’ Now the answer is back: not much. He has it to the extent shown on the agreement. From Riyadh to Damascus, from Jerusalem to Tehran the deal will probably be seen as a face-saving surrender by a beaten fighter trying to insist he won the bout from the floor of the ring. Iran wanted a Green Light. Obama insisted a Red Light. But everyone knew an Amber caution signal was all he would show, or Green after a decent interval. John Kerry has a Forrest Gump like affinity for showing up at the wrong time. First at Paris as young man after Vietnam, now at Lausanne in his dotage after the collapse in the Middle East. Now that’s a movie you could make.
The problem was always how to make the McGuffin seem real. But everyone knew that seeming was always the point already. The president has been a broken reed for some time, by either inclination or necessity. Still there were some who actually thought he could pull off some magic. John Kerry has done the world a favor by ending the fake suspense and showing us where we stand. On the edge of a precipice.
What has changed? The civil war between Sunni and Shia will rage on. A new arms race will likely start in the Middle East. Israel must now face critical security challenges. After all that waiting at the phone, there was after all, no pardon, just a reprieve. Or worse yet, a wrong number. “No this is not the pizza store.”
Nothing has changed; it has only been represented as having changed. And because there is nothing really to crow about president Obama shouldn’t go around warning all and sundry not to interfere with his empty magnum opus. What’s Congress supposed “not to interfere” with?
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