The Real Iran Threat (Hint: It's Not Nukes)
Why is the national debate now swirling around a prospective nuclear deal with Iran entirely missing a key point? Because it is all but ignoring a huge proverbial elephant that is not in the room but should be:
Iran’s nuclear missile programs. These are part and parcel of what makes the Islamic Republic’s growing nuclear weapons infrastructure so menacing. Ignoring Iranian missiles is nothing less than an original sin of omission in the Obama administration approach to trying to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions by negotiating a comprehensive grand bargain. Far from being a peripheral problem, this lapse represents a fundamental flaw that is likely to bedevil the viability of any agreement that emerges from these negotiations.
To be sure, many other important issues regarding the so-called P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Russia, United States plus Germany) talks with Iran are now coming to the fore of public awareness. In spite of the all too predictable media fixation on a pair of recent partisan brouhahas that have flared up between the Obama administration and congressional Republicans—the invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress on the Iran talks, and then the open letter to Iran from forty-seven Republican senators stressing the constitutional limits of any agreement that is not approved by Congress—the national press deserves credit for also focusing on the actual substance of the deal that is starting to come into focus. Recent coverage has explored many arcane and interrelated issues at an impressive level of sophistication. These include the agreement’s legal status, duration, and durability, the scope of its restrictions such as the number of centrifuges allowed and disposition of existing stocks of nuclear fuel, and even highly technical aspects of the Iranian weapons program that are not covered such as neutron initiators, and fusing, arming and firing systems. For his part President Obama himself has gone out of his way to stress the importance of verification as a critical element in any agreement, although it is unclear how intrusive a process the President deems necessary or what verification mechanisms Iran may be willing to tolerate. These are all important factors that taken together will rightly shape judgments about any deal that is reached. In all of this debate and analysis, however, there is scant notice that
Iran’s nuclear missile programs do not seem to be anywhere in the mix.
The Real Iran Threat (Hint: It's Not Nukes) | The National Interest