The experts all agree. They are very nervous about the Trump administration’s continued dithering about whether it will again certify Iran’s compliance in the nuclear deal. As the New York Times helpfully pointed out in an article about a joint letter signed by what we are told is a list of 80 of the world’s leading authorities on nuclear nonproliferation, the experts believe that Trump’s inclination to ditch the deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) has nothing to do with “the merits” of the question.
Much of his national-security team reportedly seeks to persuade Trump to keep the deal, despite his publicly expressed belief that it is a mistake. But the letter from the experts should make him doubly suspicious of their arguments.
Among the many factors that led to Trump’s unexpected victory last November was a deep and abiding skepticism among many voters about the wisdom of experts. To his supporters, Trump, the ultimate non-expert on most policy issues, had the savvy to do the right thing even on topics to which neither he nor they had ever previously given much serious thought. While that cynicism is not always wise, the groupthink in the foreign-policy establishment and among nonproliferation professionals is proof that Trump’s instincts are not always wrong.
Like the International Atomic Energy Agency and the other five nations that signed the JCPOA, the 80 experts say that Iran has been complying with its terms. They worry that ditching the deal because of “unsupported contentions of Iranian cheating” would cancel out the deal’s main achievement, which is “reducing the risk” of Tehran’s getting a bomb. They insist that whatever complaints the U.S. might have about Iranian behavior since the deal went into effect are irrelevant because the whole point of the negotiation was to focus solely on the nuclear-proliferation issue and nothing else. They predict that a Trump decision to blow up the deal will only lead to Iran’s resuming nuclear activity and will make it impossible for the international community to do anything about it.
Trump should ignore their arguments and those inside the administration who are echoing them. It’s wise to have some skepticism about experts’ opinions; their consensus can have little to do with achieving the goals they’re tasked with accomplishing. But the problem is not only that the deal was a bad one. It’s also that plenty of experts place more value on diplomacy per se — getting a piece of paper signed and then defending its value — than on the conviction that diplomacy will stop Iran from getting a bomb.
The agencies that monitor the deal all agree that Iran has kept to its terms. But their certification of Iran’s compliance vindicates Obama’ critics, who warned that once in the deal was in place, the signatories’ desire to preserve it would lead them to ignore a host of small violations. Over the past three years, the IAEA and Washington have routinely ignored reports about a variety of problems, including obstruction of inspections, illegal attempts to purchase nuclear and missile technology, and exceeding the limits on uranium enrichment and production of heavy water.
Viewed in isolation, each violation is insufficient to justify threatening Iran with new sanctions or an end to the deal. So the signatories ignore or rationalize the infractions. In the negotiations that led to the deal, Obama and the secretary of state jettisoned their demand that Iran end its nuclear program and stop advanced nuclear research, and that it concede it had no right to enrich uranium, They always saw getting an agreement on any terms as more important than the details. The same applies to keeping it in place despite multiple violations.
That’s why the arms-control community wound up endorsing a deal that did not put an end to the Iranian threat; at best, it kicked the can down the road for a few years on proliferation.