A Response to Henry Kissinger and George Shultz on the Iran Deal
In the Wall Street Journal, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Secretaries of State, have damned with faint praise the strategy of diplomacy pursued by the Obama Administration with respect to Iran and its nuclear program. Their bottom line: unless there is an effective grand strategy to address Iran's role in the Middle East "the projected nuclear agreement will reinforce, not resolve,the world's challenges in the region."
Kissinger's and Shultz's oped is elegantly drafted and contains insights that all reasonable people ought to take into account. But the overall argument, and its rhetoric,are fundamentally defective and dangerous.
Kissinger and Shultz begin by framing the context as one where Iran's strategy has been "mixing shrewd diplomacy with open defiance of U.N. resolutions." They thus insinuate that by playing diplomacy the US has bought into Iran's strategy. This is sophistry, with all due respect. Perhaps Iran did play its cards well to get to a point where there would be a diplomatic agreement. But grave security interests are at stake; pique that Iran's shrewdness may have been a factor bringing us to the table, or anxiety that they may have scored gains by the deal, are not a valid reason for rejecting a diplomatic solution. That is a zero- sum, boys' school playground attitude to assessing the ultimate consequences of diplomacy.
Second, Kissinger and Shultz assess the understanding arrived at in Lausanne on the false premise that it contains all of the detail that would exist in a final deal; this is simply contrary to the insistence of all partners that crucial implementation aspects will have to be resolved over the next months. Thus, Kissinger and Shultz complain of the "vagueness of the criteria" of verification. But this is exactly the kind of matter that was expected to be the subject of the negotiations ensuing from the Lausanne understanding.
Kissinger and Schultz rightly say that Iran "permanently gives up" very little in this deal. But let us be realists here. What does permanence mean in international affairs today? Of course, no one could guarantee that politics in Iran would not change in a bad way. The agreement provides a limited period of effective restraint, and given all of the challenges in the Middle East this is indeed a diplomatic triumph. Those who seek guaranteed permanent answers ought to consult religion and stay out of diplomacy.
Even more implausible is the claim of Kissinger and Shultz that the Iran deal as currently conceived would allow Iran "permanent relief from sanctions." Not only does this go against the US statement of the deal, it also has no basis in the Iranian statement, translated from Farsi.
Kissinger and Shultz further suggest that the deal is a signal to Saudi Arabia and other states in the Middle East that the US is tolerating nuclear proliferation in the region and thus that they should move forward to themselves acquire nuclear weapons. Kissinger and Shultz are without any warrant assuming that these powers would adopt the same view as they do that the Adminstration's strategy is to tolerate a nuclear Iran, rather than to devise the most effective way of countering it. In any case, the Saudis have already spoken, and they do not perceive things as Kissinger and Shultz would have us believe.
It is entirely correct to warn that there is nothing in this exercise of diplomacy that will guarantee "an end, or at least a moderation, of Iran's...militant hostility to the West and established international institutions,..." Yet why believe that we can address both the specific risks posed by unrestrained nuclear ambitions of Iran and this broader challenge in one fell swoop? There is no evidence, no reasoning, that Kissinger and Shultz adduce to suggest that theirs is a more plausible approach than the incremental, sequential one represented by the Administration's strategy.
In fact, Kissinger and Shultz display a romanticism that goes far beyond the caution and sober calculations of most of those who support the strategy of a deal; what they hope for is a grand understanding between the US and Iran on the meaning of "stability" in the Middle East. Who could possibly ask for that, given present uncertainties? Going forward with the deal on Iran will moderate one source of instability in the Middle East-it seems perverse to argue against going ahead on the grounds that one should wait for a grand overall deal to produce stability to somehow emerge providentially.
There is a lack of hardheaded examination of the facts in Kissinger's and Shultz's contrast between Iran as an enemy and a source of instability in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia's status as "an American ally." The Saudis have not been shy of bankrolling terrorism, and engaging in actions that profoundly undermine US interests globally. Calling them an ally has a lot to do with oil, and its price is tanking, an often unspoken consideration in all these discussions. A shrewd American policy would be to declare neither Saudi Arabia a perpetual ally nor Iran a presumed enemy, but to put both powers on notice that each of them will have America's ear where they support not undermine our interests and values. ( Indeed, one great virtue of Obama's strategy it that it seems to have already delivered that salutary message in Riyad.)
Kissinger and Shultz end with the notion that America must develop a "strategic doctrine for the region" and must postpone any diplomatic initiatives such as the Iran deal until such a doctrine has been fully worked out. I am reminded here of Kissinger's wonderful dissertation on the Congress of Vienna, "A World Restored." Kissinger, an inconsistent actor, is in a charming but dangerous way a consistent thinker. Now he bids us believe that we can return to a world where a great power can stabilize a region as messy as the Middle East-and as dynamic-through a "strategic doctrine." But ISIS, technology, social media,democracy, and many other developments put in question whether waiting for a grand strategic doctrine is in fact far less prudent than waiting for the Messiah. And certainly less prudent than the kind of diplomacy that Kissinger at his best and Shultz too were able to practice with an admirable finesse. Why begrudge John Kerry and Barack Obama?