Two Years Later, the Iran Deal Is a Success

The American Conservative:

Philip Gordon and Richard Nephew have written a very thorough and cogent defense of the nuclear deal with Iran:

In fact, the deal is doing exactly what is was supposed to do: prevent Iran from acquiring enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, demonstrate to the Iranian public the benefits of cooperation with the international community, and buy time for potential changes in Iranian politics and foreign policy.

Anyone who thought a deal would immediately change Iran’s regional agenda or who maintains that, if only America and its partners had insisted on such changes in the talks they would have materialized, has a misguided sense of what sanctions and diplomatic pressure can accomplish.

Two years later, the Iran deal is a success. The U.S. and the rest of the P5+1 advanced the cause of nonproliferation and greatly reduced the risk of war with Iran over its nuclear program, and Iran has been and continues to be in compliance with the terms of the deal. It is instructive to look back at the debate over the nuclear deal in order to remember how shoddy the arguments against it were (and still are). Even before the deal was completed, some hard-liners in the U.S. were already likening it to appeasement at Munich, and at least one denounced the interim agreement leading to the JCPOA as “worse than Munich.” These alarmist claims had nothing to do with the substance of the deal, and simply reflected the knee-jerk hostility of Iran hawks to any diplomatic engagement with Tehran regardless of the outcome.

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