Five former members of President Obama’s inner circle of Iran advisers have written an open letter expressing concern that a pending accord to stem Iran’s nuclear program
“may fall short of meeting the administration’s own standard of a
‘good’ agreement” and laying out a series of minimum requirements that
Iran must agree to in coming days for them to support a final deal.
Several
of the senior officials said the letter was prompted by concern that
Mr. Obama’s negotiators were headed toward concessions that would weaken
international inspection of Iran’s facilities, back away from forcing
Tehran to reveal its suspected past work on weapons, and allow Iranian
research and development that would put it on a course to resuming
intensive production of nuclear fuel as soon as the accord expires
The
letter was given to the White House and State Department on Wednesday. A
senior administration official, asked about the contents, said that it
“in large part tracks with the U.S. negotiating position inside the
negotiating room.”
Just a day ago Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
heightened the pressure facing negotiators by appearing to back away
from several preliminary understandings reached between Iran and the
West in early April, including in areas where Mr. Obama’s former
advisers urged a hardening of the American position.
For
the White House, the letter may raise the level of political risk in
seeking approval of any final agreement. A judgment from Mr. Obama’s own
former advisers that the final accord falls short would provide
ammunition for Republican critics who have already said they will try to
kill it when it is submitted to Congress for review.
But
it creates an opportunity for Mr. Obama as well. The letter was also
signed by a number of prominent Republicans from President George W.
Bush’s administration. A determination by them that the standards set
out in the letter have been achieved would undercut the Republican
critique.
“Most
of us would have preferred a stronger agreement,” the letter begins,
going on to assess the proposed accord as useful for delaying Iran’s
program, but not a long-term solution to the problem of a nuclear Iran.
“The agreement will not prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons
capability,” it continues. “It will not require the dismantling of
Iran’s nuclear enrichment infrastructure. It will however reduce that
infrastructure for the next 10 to 15 years. And it will impose a
transparency, inspection, and consequences regime with the goal of
deterring and dissuading Iran from actually building a nuclear weapon.”
The
substance of the letter is less notable for what it says — the
positions were frequent talking points for the Obama administration
before it faced the inevitable compromises involved in negotiations —
than for the influence of its signatories.
Among them is Dennis B. Ross, a longtime Middle East negotiator who oversaw Iran policy at the White House during the first Obama term; David H. Petraeus,
the former C.I.A. director who oversaw covert operations against Iran
until he resigned two years ago; and Robert Einhorn, a longtime State
Department proliferation expert who helped devise and enforce the
sanctions against Iran.
Also
signing the letter were Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s former chief adviser
on nuclear policy who is now the president of the advocacy group United
Against Nuclear Iran, and Gen. James E. Cartwright, a former vice
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an architect of Mr. Obama’s
effort to build up military forces in the region.
Among Republicans, the most notable signatory is Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser in his second term, who presided over efforts to slow Iran’s progress.
At
the core of the letter are what Mr. Einhorn, now at the Brookings
Institution, called “required elements that have not yet been achieved.”
He said that all the signatories supported a negotiated settlement, and
“there is no poison pill here” intended to undercut the chance of an
agreement.
All
five of the Obama advisers had joined in hours of Situation Room
meetings during the president’s first term, and some into the second, to
devise both the strategy to bring Iran to the negotiating table — a mix
of sanctions, sabotage of the nuclear program and the prospect of a broader relationship with the West — and the negotiating objectives.
But
as often happens in negotiations, the mechanics of the trade-offs to
get a deal often conflict with the negotiating objectives. Inside the
White House of late, there has been what one senior official called
“vigorous debate” over the risks of walking away — which would free Iran
to return to full-scale production — versus accepting a deal whose
specifics still leave some officials uncomfortable.
The
letter gets to the heart of some of those areas, all of which are still
under negotiation and, in some cases, in bitter dispute. For example,
the negotiations that ended in April resulted in vague statements about
how inspections would work, beyond an understanding that Iran would sign
an International Atomic Energy Agency convention giving inspectors
broad rights to investigate suspicious sites. But Ayatollah Khamenei, along with his commanders, immediately ruled out allowing foreigners to visit military sites.
The
letter, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said
inspections “must include military (including I.R.G.C.) and other
sensitive facilities. Iran must not be able to deny or delay timely
access to any site anywhere in the country.”
Similarly,
while Mr. Kerry said last week that it was not necessary to make Iran
account for evidence of past effort to work on weapons designs, because
the United States and its allies already had “absolute knowledge” of
those activities, the former advisers view the long-sought answers to
those questions as vital.
The
inspectors, they write, must be able “to take samples, to interview
scientists and government officials, to inspect sites, and to review and
copy documents as required for their investigation of Iran’s past and
any ongoing nuclear weaponization activities.” The letter adds, “This
work needs to be accomplished before any significant sanctions relief.”
On
another delicate issue in the talks, the letter calls for “strict
limits on advanced centrifuge R&D, testing, and deployment in the
first 10 years,” and for measures to prevent “rapid technical upgrade”
when those limits expire.
Some limits were negotiated in April, but the details remain to be resolved.
Perhaps
the hardest part from an Iranian perspective is the insistence in the
letter that the United States publicly declare — with congressional
assent — that even after the expiration of the agreement Iran will not
be permitted to possess enough nuclear fuel to make a single weapon.
The
letter continued, “Precisely because Iran will be left as a nuclear
threshold state (and has clearly preserved the option of becoming a
nuclear weapon state), the United States must go on record now that it
is committed to using all means necessary, including military force, to
prevent this.”
Iran
has always insisted that its nuclear program is only for peaceful
purposes, and has argued that after the agreement expires it should be
treated like any other nuclear state, free to produce as much fuel as it
desires.
The letter emerged from a study group on nuclear issues organized by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
a policy institute. Because only members of the group worked on the
statement, it omits some former major players in the Obama
administration’s Iran policy, notably Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will
have to decide whether to embrace any final deal.
For
Mrs. Clinton, a presidential candidate who has recently separated
herself from some of Mr. Obama’s policies, it will not be an easy
decision: As secretary of state, she sent two of her most trusted aides,
Jake Sullivan and William Burns, to begin the secret negotiations with
Iran that set the negotiations in motion.[source]
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