Generally, détente is a necessary tool of disengagement between enemies to avoid greater horribles. For those who still believe in the American military superiority threat to enforce a global form designed exclusively by us – bully power, if you will – it might be useful to note that since WWII the United States has won only two relatively minor conflicts of size: Bosnia and the 1993 Gulf War. We lost or stalemated the rest, or they were tiny (e.g., Grenada and Panama). Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan… and while ISIS may be mostly gone, the Syrian front remains totally in the hands of the Assad regime, with full support from Russia and Iran.
Afghanistan has resumed subjugation by the Taliban, and Iraq, under its Shiite majority (which we installed), is squarely within the Iranian sphere of influence. North Korea, which we were told would yield to Trumpian charm and economic support, has instead been building and testing an increasing supply of sophisticated weapons, mostly ICBMs and potentially submarine launched SBMs which can deliver nuclear payloads to North American targets. Three years ago, after Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – effectively the six-nation United Nations treaty designed to contain Iran’s nuclear weaponization capacity – Iran slowly resumed processing weapons-grade nuclear radiological materials.
Trump’s attempt to use sanctions to bring Iran to its knees, which caused massive economic chaos for most Iranians, backfired in that even those opposed to the autocratic theocracy were galvanized to support their nation against these Trumpian policies. Make no mistake, Iran is most definitely one of our greatest foes. Tehran, mostly through the use of surrogates like Hezbollah, has planted destabilizing seeds throughout the region. Israel shivers at such efforts. The thought of Iran’s power to mine the Strait of Hormuz, crippling regional shipping, also looms high.
While JCPOA was fully operational, our own military intelligence confirmed that Iran was in substantial compliance with the restrictions on creating additional weapons grade plutonium. Israel and American military purists believed that the treaty inadequately dealt with Iran’s efforts to plant her regional destabilizing efforts. Israel in particular pressured the Trump regime to go back to bully tactics, even perhaps using military force, to force both a total ban and elimination of enriched plutonium and force Iran to pull back on its regionally destabilizing efforts. The notion of Iran having nuclear weapons was completely unacceptable to Israel… and most of the rest of the world. The notion of a perfect peace treaty with an enemy you have not conquered and smashed is absurd to those with even a marginal understanding of history. But a stubborn belief that we can force that result persists. Whatever accord is possible will hardly be complete or perfect. But it will have benefits for everyone… if it is even possible.
As the Obama regime reluctantly learned, after decades of predictions of the imminent collapse of the Iranian theocracy, there was absolutely no success at any hardline level of containing Iran’s program toward nuclear weaponization (they are now close to having a functional warhead/bomb). Sanctions, cutting off Iran’s access to the international petroleum market to sell their production, denying access to the global financial system, and severely limiting trade with Tehran in all but the most basic imports… failed. As a repressive autocracy, Iran successfully contained local dissent. Decades passed, and the United States continued as a unifying “Great Satan.” But as serious local rebellion inspired by the U.S. driven sanctions failed to materialize and bring down the theocracy, Trump simply repeated decades of failed polices and dug in his heels. Iran resumed and accelerated its nuclear enrichment program.
With the new Biden regime, after some nasty military exchanges between the United States and Iran – missile attacks, the earlier assassination of a revered Iranian military genius, etc. – at first it seemed that if the JPCOA were to be reinstated, there would need a long cooling off period. Biden had to make it clear that he was not an advocate of “peace at any price.” But the longer the cooling off period, the more enriched plutonium could be manufactured and stockpiled by Tehran. Time was not on our side. And then this, as summarized by Tracy Wilkinson writing for the April 3rd Los Angeles Times:
“The United States will join Iran and other world powers [in the second week of April] in Vienna in a major step aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal that restrains one of Tehran’s potential weapons programs but that the Trump administration sought to kill, authorities announced Friday [4/2]… It is the latest and possibly most fraught attempt by the Biden administration to reverse many of former President Trump’s most controversial and damaging domestic and foreign policy actions.
“The European Union, after a virtual meeting Friday [4/2] with Iran and other signatories of the nuclear deal, but not the U.S., said that members agreed to welcome the return of the United States… This will be the first public meeting with both Washington and Tehran participating — albeit possibly in separate rooms — after months of hostile rhetoric, mistrust and mounting danger, including rocket attacks on U.S. and other targets in the Middle East that have been blamed on Iran…
“In addition to the U.S. and Iran, parties to the agreement — the European Union, China, France, Germany, Russia and Britain — negotiated for years until concluding in 2015. Trump withdrew from the landmark pact in 2018, asserting it had not done enough to curtail other militant activities by Iran… Trump went on to impose an increasingly harsh raft of sanctions that made it next to impossible for Iran to sell its oil in the world market, gain access to its overseas assets or do business with other nations and companies. Iran suffered but did not alter the ‘malign behavior’ Trump said he wanted to stop.
“U.S. and European officials have viewed revival of the deal with increasing urgency since Iran rebuffed President Biden’s first overtures in February — and as Iran’s upcoming presidential election threatens to put into power a group of hard-liners even less inclined to negotiate with the West.
“Biden will still face opposition in Congress, where the nuclear deal was never popular with either political party. Many lawmakers demanded that agreements with Tehran address its ballistic missile production and material support of militant groups throughout the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen… Opponents warned, however, that a lack of domestic support in the U.S. will doom resuscitation of the agreement.
“Unless the president and his team ‘deal honestly with the concerns of domestic critics of the deal, the international community must recognize that the deal won’t outlive the Biden administration,’ said Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.” Nobody is expecting a breakthrough anytime soon. At best, we will get a flawed treaty. Again. But it is a step. A necessary step. And it might endure notwithstanding the right-wing critics. Or we just might have to sit back and watch the evolution of another nation with nukes.
I’m Peter Dekom, and our proclivity to believe our own mythology, believing that our former global power continues to be able to force results, continues to erode our effectiveness and gives comfort to rising and highly competitive world powers.
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