Committee members listen to testimonies on Iranian nuclear negotiations. (Tal Axelrod/MNS)
WASHINGTON – House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce said Tuesday President Barack Obama failed to maintain a firm line in Iranian nuclear negotiations, claiming that the U.S. conceded too much without getting anything in return.
“Negotiations…appear to be stalemated. That’s even after U.S. negotiators move closer and closer to Iranian positions,” Royce, R-Calif., said during a committee hearing. “Meanwhile, Tehran has been advancing its nuclear program: pursuing new reactors; testing a new generation of centrifuges and operating its illicit procurement network.”
Nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany) began a year ago with the goal of reducing Iran’s nuclear program. The United States views it as a national security imperative to prevent the country from getting a nuke.
The talks have been extended multiple times with little progress. Members of the committee argued that biting sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place and may be needed to keep it there with the July deadline approaching.
“The fact is Iran has a July 1 program. They just haven’t had to publish yet because they don’t have an open society where they have to make decisions in public,” Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., said. “We ought to have a July 1 program ready to go.”
Several committee members suggested passing a bill now that would allow sanctions to be enacted if negotiations broke down. But Former Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation Robert Einhorn argued that such legislation would derail talks and increase the Ayatollah’s legitimacy because the divided Iranian society would be united by fear of external threats.
However, Einhorn and several other think tank experts said the U.S. needs to keep Iran at the table. “Finding ways to increase pressure on Iran to make a deal is certainly a critical issue,” Senior Fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies John Hannah said. “But simply pressuring Iran for the purpose of accepting what could amount to a bad deal would be a Pyrrhic victor indeed.”
Keeping Iran in check is certainly in America’s national security interest even beyond the nuclear arena, Hannah and several lawmakers said. Iran funds and arms Hamas and Hezbollah, designated as terrorist groups by the U.S., supports embattled President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and aided Houthi rebels in overthrowing Yemen’s president, a Western ally in the battle against al-Qaida.
Whatever action is taken to keep Iran at the nuclear negotiating table and from furthering its regional influence must be rooted in a firm understanding of Iran’s goals and inner workings, said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He argued that actions taken thus far have not done so and backfired.
“…We seemed to have willfully ignored the persistent Iranian claim that they required an industrial-size nuclear program and in quick order,” he said. “Today, we find ourselves in a difficult situation of having conceded on important issues, such as the right to enrich, without comparable Iranian compromises.”
Hannah, Takeyh and the other expert witnesses also noted that even if an agreement is reached, it likely would include an expiration date. The U.S. is aiming for 15 years.
“Some may hope that in those intervening 15 years Iran will be transformed into a normal, non-revolutionary power that is prepared to forego its war with the Great Satan and its ambitions to dominate the Middle East,” Hannah said. “Perhaps those hopes will be borne out. But who would be willing to bet U.S. national security on it? That’s an enormous risk to run.”
