The Iran Nuclear Deal and the killing of Soleimani | Guest Opinion

The assassination of General Qasem Soleimani is just the latest escalation in hostilities between Iran and the United States since President Trump scuttled the Iran Nuclear Deal.

When America pulled out of the Deal, Iran tried to stick with the Deal.

But that future is now gone with Trump’s decision to assassinate Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Qods Brigade and the second most powerful man in the entire region.

Soleimani’s assassination also serves to tighten Iran’s relationship with Russia and China. In recent weeks, Iran conducted joint naval operations with the Russian and Chinese navies in the Persian Gulf, with dire implications for oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and potential effects on the global economy.

Most people forget that the Iraq war that toppled Hussein’s Baathist government took out Iran’s natural enemy and caused the defeated Baathists to morph into ISIS. That’s when Iran really started to flex its muscles in the region.

The Iran Nuclear Deal was one of the most effective, scientifically-complicated (and correct) foreign-policy initiatives in history. When the Deal was scuttled, President Rouhani warned that Iran would restart its nuclear program if America’s actions really hurt the country or if the rest of the world did not support the Deal.

So, on January 5, Iran announced that it would no longer abide by limits on its nuclear program stipulated in the Nuclear Deal, putting the final nail in that coffin.

The sad thing is that Iran was actually meeting the terms of the Nuclear Deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), hammered out in Switzerland four years ago by the United States-led P5+1 Group. According to the United Nations, Iran shipped nearly its entire 12-ton fissionable stockpile to Russia last year.

Iran then mothballed 13,000 of its new U-enrichment centrifuges, removed the core of its heavy water Pu-production reactor at Arak, and stopped U-enrichment at its underground Fordow U-enrichment facility and limited their Natanz U-enrichment facility to only enrich U-235 to 3.67%, way too low for weapons.

Iran allowed access to all of their nuclear sites, the uranium mines and mills, the centrifuge plants, and all supply chains, even suspicious sites – with no warning.

This Deal was mainly about nukes, not anything else. Not terrorism, not religion, not Israel, not ISIS, not Syria, not Yemen, although it helped Israel by removing what might be the most serious threat to Israel’s survival — a single nuke dropped on a very small country.

As important as all this was, the Deal was seen by the West as an important step in the democratization of Iran.

America violating this Deal made the Iranian hardliners quite happy. It’s just what they warned their people that America would do. The Nuclear Deal was a major factor in the last two Iranian elections giving the Iranian moderates real power and standing against the Theocrats, demonstrating that Iran could come into the larger world peacefully.

But not now. The moderates have no choice but to chant “Death to America” along with everyone else. There is now no semblance of a reform party or a democratic movement in Iran.

Since Trump pulled out of the Deal, Iran has been slowly ramping up its nuclear program, launching a new generation of advanced centrifuges and enriching U-235 and stockpiling it beyond the limits set in the Deal.

One reason that we got the Iran Nuclear Deal in the first place, is that sanctions were working. Iran’s economy was hurting and protests were rising. Sanctions got Iran to the negotiating table. But when we signed the Deal, we didn’t take all the sanctions off. And when Trump pulled us out of the Deal, we put more on.

We also bullied the rest of the world into going along with us.

Because of this, the Iranian economy was being strangled even as we broke the Deal and they kept to it. Without being able to sell their oil, it’s no wonder that Iran became more belligerent. Thus, the several skirmishes that have led to the present escalation.

Pulling out of this Deal has had unintended consequences that go far beyond Iran. America now has little credibility when it comes to deals of any sort and any nuclear talks with North Korea will certainly suffer.

Even if both America and Iran decide to de-escalate, which appears to be the case as of now, we seem to be back to the drawing board with few prospects for convincing Iran not to develop an atomic bomb.

And that has always been the most important thing.

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