It is an open secret that the U.S. Special Envoy on Iran, Robert Malley, has contacted Iranian officials to persuade the Islamic Republic to say yes to some nuclear agreement — most likely “a freeze for a freeze.”
Talks are, in fact, at an advanced stage. According to Iran’s Mehr News Agency, Seyyed Mohammad Marandi, an adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, “The text of a (new nuclear agreement) is basically ready and is awaiting both parties’ signature…the time is ripe for the deal.”
What are the outlines of the deal? In exchange for Iran limiting its uranium enrichment to 90% and releasing three U.S. hostages, we would provide nearly $20 billion in sanctions relief. South Korea has withheld $7 billion for imported Iranian oil based on 2019 U.S. sanctions, and the Iraqis owe more than $10 billion to Iran for gas and electricity.
My colleague Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction for the White House National Security Council, told me it could be “a deal without a deal.” In other words, there would be no signing, no ceremony, and no congressional oversight.
It would be a self-inflicted American national security tragedy to strike an agreement that accepts Iranian ballistic missile development, ignores Iranian people’s suffering under a brutal dictatorship, leaves Iran to use the funds to support its American-designated terrorist proxies, and fails to reverse its nuclear weapons development.
There is bipartisan opposition to ending sanctions against Iran and to releasing billions of dollars in frozen funds, especially when Iran is directly helping the Russian war machine kill Ukrainian civilians and aligning with China, America’s number one adversary in the 21st century.
Even more troubling is that, according to Business Insider, the Iranians want the administration to “take steps to provide proactive assurances to investors and financial institutions that sanctions have been verifiably lifted.” This could open the floodgates to tens of billions of dollars more to strengthen the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
How will the Israelis react? According to Yaakov Katz, former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, “Jerusalem understands that it is unlikely that it will succeed in stopping a new deal.”
Iran is an existential threat to the Jewish state. The Israelis worry that the administration is playing them, extending the possibility of a normalization agreement between Israel and the Saudis in exchange for Israel not objecting to a new Iranian nuclear deal.
But the Saudis probably can’t join the Abraham Accords anyway as long as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s father is alive. King Salman is wedded to the Palestinian cause and will try to block full normalization despite his ill health. So Israel, at best, could get some promises or gestures toward normalization, but this wouldn’t begin to compensate for enriching its arch-enemy Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
Defense Minister Gallant said, “The dangers facing the State of Israel are intensifying, and we may be required to fulfill our duty in order to protect the integrity of Israel and especially the future of the Jewish people,” Translation, we may need to strike Iran, with or without American support. A pre-emptive strike with a regional war to follow is not in American national security interests. Is this hyperbole, or is it real?
A report in Israel Hayom said that the security cabinet is now predisposed to accepting the recommendation to strike Iran, unlike in 2012 when Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak couldn’t convince the members of the security cabinet.
How effectively will we be able to track the money we release to Iran to convince ourselves into believing it won’t support its nuclear and ballistic missile program, given Iran’s history of successful money laundering by Hezbollah of its South American drug money?
On a bipartisan basis, Congress should get ahead of this “deal without a deal” and make clear that having the administration do an end-run around Congress, as Obama did, robs Congress of its constitutional responsibility to the American people.
Eric Mandel is the Director of the Middle East Political Information Network and Senior Security Editor for the Jerusalem Report.