Smoke signals don’t count, guarantees do

The smoke signals from two days of P5 + 1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) talks with Iran are good:  the Iranians proposed a solution to a crisis they claim is unnecessary, they met bilaterally with the Americans, they signed on to an optimistic statement with European Union High Representative Ashton, and new talks will convene in Geneva on November 7 and 8.  The Iranians may even have given an interview to an Israeli radio station.  This kind of open, cooperative and positive atmosphere marks a sharp improvement from the past.

But we need to  be hardnosed.  The Iranians are increasing their capacity to produce fissionable (bomb) materials rapidly, both by enriching uranium and by soon making plutonium.  There is no reason to believe that they will back off recognition of what they term their “right” to enrich (and I imagine to reprocess).  They are much closer to a nuclear weapons capability today than ever before.

The Americans meanwhile are under pressure not to allow in a negotiated settlement any enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of plutonium in Iran.  That is almost surely not achievable.  But lifting of sanctions in the U.S. Congress will require an airtight agreement that verifiably and irreversibly ensures Iran is not diverting nuclear material to a weapons project.

Common ground lies somewhere in the area of enrichment up to 5% inside Iran with shipment of higher enriched materials and plutonium out of Iran and tight, frequent and unannounced inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  This would be significantly tighter than the arrangements Brazil, Argentina and many other potential proliferators have made with each other and the international community.

The military option, whether Israeli or American, is not attractive.  It might set back the Iranian nuclear program by as much as five years, but Tehran would surely abandon its denials and redouble its efforts, precipitating a rush to nuclear weapons by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others.  Repetition of military attacks with unintended and unpredictable consequences would be required at more and more frequent intervals.  This is not a formula for a peaceful world.

Nor is containment of a nuclear Iran a good alternative.  It would put nuclear war on a hair trigger:  Israel would need to lanuch on warning against all of Iran’s nuclear assets if it wanted to survive, which it surely does.  To imagine that Jerusalem and Tehran could reach the kind of modus vivendi that prevailed between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War is delusionary.

So we are on a good path, or at least a better one than the alternatives, but one that will not be easy to complete.  The same split Congress that brought us budget crises will not roll over and play dead when President Obama brings it a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear threat.  It will demand, as it should, ironclad guarantees that we haven’t been rolled and will not be tricked.  But if the guarantees are good, the deal is one they should take.  Smoke signals don’t count, but guarantees do.