Iran Nuclear Deal Options Term Paper

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nuclear deal with Iran. A tentative agreement has recently been signed, and the final details need to be worked out by the end of June. The parties at the negotiating table have an interest in a negotiated agreement, even if some other stakeholders do not. Given that, while there still risks that the deal may be scuttled or delayed, in all likelihood the deal will pass. The trade-off for the U.S. will be that it gets some certainty with respect to the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for allowing Iran to have a civilian nuclear program for power generation, subject to strict controls. The paper analyzes the other options on the table and explains why a negotiated agreement with Iran is superior to the other potential alternatives that are available.

Introduction

At the time of writing, Iran is engaged in talks with the United States and several other stakeholder nations on a deal is believed to govern how and when Iran acquires nuclear power. The European Union, the UK, China, France, Germany and Russia are also represented at the discussions. The talks are ongoing at this point, but they are believed to be close to resolution. A tentative deal was reached on April 2nd, 2015, and there is a self-imposed deadline to finalize the details of the deal by the end of June, 2015 (Nasralla, 2015). The deal has many critics, including Israel, but also among other stakeholders who have not been invited to the talks. There is widespread concern, given the unpredictable nature of Iran's religious leadership and the lack of controls within the governance of that country, of any increase in Iran's nuclear capabilities, for any purpose.

Statement of Problem

A critical foreign policy issue at present is the pending nuclear deal with Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a pariah state, but is possessed of a strong military and substantial oil wealth. The state has been working to develop nuclear fission capabilities for many years, something that concerns many within the international community. While Iran maintains that it wants only to operate nuclear power plants, many nations including the U.S. And Israel maintain that Iran wants to acquire nuclear technology in order to develop nuclear weaponry. Such weaponry would in particular represent an existential threat to Israel, a concern heightened by the genocidal rhetoric of the Iranian regime towards Israel, something that has gone on for years. In 2005, then President Ahmedinejad vowed to "wipe Israel off the map" (Richter & Barnea, 2009). If Iran was a peaceful and trustworthy state, there would be no concerns about it acquiring nuclear technology, but its persistent threats against Israel, and its role as a state sponsor of terrorism, aimed at Sunni Muslims in many different countries, has not only made it a pariah state but created the imperative to ensure that it never develops or otherwise acquires nuclear weapons.

At issue is mistrust of the intentions of Iran. There are several parties that have expressed their concerns about Iran gaining access to nuclear technology, and there are several reasons for this concern. Israel is the most concerned, and their interests in this negotiation are theoretically represented by the United States. The Israeli concern lies with the genocidal rhetoric towards Israel that is near commonplace in Iran, and with the religious government that runs Iran. Religious leaders are far less inclined towards rational thought, and any clear thinker would have reason to fear that the threat of mutual destruction might not be a deterrence for a mullah who fancies himself a martyr. Israel has at numerous points in the past attacked the Iranian nuclear program. It is all but assumed that Israel created the Stuxnet virus that apparently set the Iranian nuclear program back two years (Katz, 2010), and Israel is presumed to also be responsible for assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists as well.

The current deal is aimed to reducing Iran's nuclear potential (Raviv, 2015). The policy of the United States towards Iran has always been to treat Iran as hostile. The countries had not had official representation in each other's capitals since the Iranian Revolution. For its part, Iran wants a deal because the country has been crippled by sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries aimed at hurting the country's economy in retaliation for pursuing the nuclear program. The talks have gone on for years. Iran has always maintained that it has the right to enrich uranium and seems to want to use the threat of its nuclear program to gain concessions from the West, including removal of key sanctions (Anishchuk, 2013).

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Other stakeholders include the Arab states. Saudi Arabia has long opposed an Iranian nuclear deal, because of the threat posed to it by Iranian nuclear weapons. This relates to the power struggle between the two in the region, and the schism between Sunni and Shia Islam. Iranian allies in the region like Hamas have also expressed concern about the deal, feeling that ay security Iran wins will make the state less likely to lend its support to Hamas and other groups it has long supported in the region (al-Ghoul, 2013). Saudi Arabia feels that Iran's influence thrives on sectarian instability. Saudi's interest includes delaying a deal until it can reduce Iranian influence in the region, in the hopes of getting a better deal later (Al Jazeera, 2015). The newspaper assert that Israel's primary interest in maintaining the balance of political power in the region as well, though what Al Jazeera writes about Israel should always be taken with a grain of salt.

There is considerable risk associated with the nuclear deal. Thought admittedly a biased source, the Anti-Defamation League argues that Iran's foreign policy will be emboldened if it is able to achieve a deal on its nuclear program. This is one of the reasons why Saudi Arabia is so concerned about the deal, not considering that Iran could hit Saudi with missiles. There is also concern that Iran will be able to test an intercontinental ballistic missile by this year, which may give it the capability to strike against several U.S. interests. The entire Middle East could be destabilized if Iran were to gain nuclear weapons (ADL, 2015). The group also points out that a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2011 stated that Iran is engaged in activities that pertain directly to the development of nuclear weapons, including the pursuit of detonators (ADL, 2015).

Internally in the U.S. there is also significant opposition to the deal. The famous letter from the Republican senators demonstrated little more than unprofessionalism and a lack of understanding of basic foreign relations, which was sad to see. The bigger issue, however, is that the deal will need to be sold to the American people, and President Obama has allowed that Congress could have some sway over a future deal. How this will affect the negotiations is unknown, as this is a multilateral deal. It cannot go through without U.S. approval, but for its part Iran has a similar issue with its own governmental nuclear committee, so this can be chalked up to domestic politics that does little to alter the scope or content of the agreement (Labott, 2015).

Thesis and Hypothesis

The working thesis is that a deal with Iran over its nuclear program will be reached. The tentative deal in place as of April 2nd could still be scuttled if a final agreement on terms is not reached by the end of June, assuming that the self-imposed deadline is not extended. It could very well be extended.

The hypothesis is that the deal will be struck, and it will offer some exchange of a limited nuclear program in exchange for assurances that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons. There will be provisions for inspections, for example. The hypothesis also holds that the deal will lift some of the sanctions that the West, especially the United States, has put upon Iran as the result of its pursuit of nuclear power. The alternative hypothesis is that the deal will be scuttled at the last minute.

Predicting Alternatives

There are several alternatives on the table. The contents of the tentative deal are at this time little known. In principle, the deal allows for Iran to maintain some of its nuclear capability, in exchange for removal of some sanctions and for greater guarantee of security for the Iranian state. Israel is already readying its strategy on the assumption that a deal will be reached. If a framework is reached, Israel will reportedly push for the controls against Iran to be tightened, leveraging the framework to improve its own protection against Iran (Casey, 2015). Iran has already rejected a key tenet of the deal, which was to send most of its uranium stockpile to Russia, on the grounds that the country had spent billions to acquire the uranium and would not simply surrender it (Sanger & Gordon, 2015).

It is expected that the null alternative,….....

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