President Trump’s threat to pull out of the agreement with Iran to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapon is not a wise move .The agreement under the Obama administration was negotiated by the p5+1 meaning the United States, Great Britain , France, China , Russia and Germany. The five countries are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council ( UNSC) while Germany is the most important country in Europe but for having lost the Second World War is not a member of the UNSC.when kofi Annan was Secretary General Of the United Nations (UNSG) there was a spirited attempt to review and restructure the Security Council which would have possibly brought into it countries like Germany, India, Nigeria, Brazil , Japan and May be Turkey, Egypt or Iran to represent the Muslims and the Middle East geo-political region.It seems the whole idea remains for the time being dead.
In a nutshell the deal tries to deny Iran the possibility of access to the material it would need to make nuclear bombs by stating that Iran’s uranium stockpile will be reduced by 98% to 300kg for 15 years. It also stipulates that the level of enrichment must also remain at 3.67%. Iran will retain no more than 6104 out of the 20,000 centrifuges it possesses . Iran was also to be subjected to intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring . This Agency Of The UN based in Vienna is an International organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose including nuclear weapons. Since the agreement with Iran was signed in 2015 the country has been in compliance with the terms of the agreement. The agreement in some areas is to be in force for 25 years and in some areas for 10 years . But the Iranians are saying that Iran clearly stated that it will never become a nuclear weapons state because possession of weapons of mass destruction is against the dictates of Islam . Opponents of the deal particularly the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses Iran of lying when it said it never planned to have nuclear weapons in the first instance. Netanyahu in secretly acquired Iranian nuclear research documents exposed what he suggested was Iranian advanced plans to build atomic bombs up to 2013 .Because of this and implied hiding of the program from the p5+1 during the negotiations Iran should not be trusted and compensated by lifting of UN sanctions on the country. Of course Israel itself a nuclear power is an interested party and it can be expected to exaggerate alleged Iranian perfidy up to 2015 when the agreement came into being. Those who negotiated the deal say there is nothing new in what Netanyahu is saying because they were aware of Iran’s advanced knowledge of nuclear research and that ,that was why they signed the deal with Iran.
But right now Europe as represented by Britain , France , Germany and Russia as well as China and the IAEA are saying Iran is in compliance with its international obligations. Both President Macron of France and chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany have made trips to Washington DC to persuade Trump that he should stay in the Iranian deal. Nobody knows what the mercurial President Of America would do on May 12 when he has to certify the agreement or pull out the United States out of it . This particular American President seems to be bent on undoing whatever Barack Obama his predecessor did in office in order to wipe out the latter’ s legacies. Trump appears to have a point when he said Iran has not been a force for good in the Middle East in recent times . He points to Iran’s military adventures in Yemen , Syria, Lebanon ,and Iraq where Iran is actively involved in either supporting the Hisbollah in Lebanon , the Hoothies in Yemen , the Shi’a militia in Iraq and the Shi’a Alawite in Syria and those rebelling against the regime of Abdel Fattah el – Sisi in Egypt. Trump argues that lifting of sanctions against Iran and America’s return of Iranian funds confiscated following the Iranian revolution against the shah in 1979 has financially empowered Iran to such an extent that it can support all kinds of incendiary movements all over the Middle East including giving the Houthis rockets to fire at Saudi Arabia. Trump also complains that the agreement should have captured Iranian missile program which poses potential threat not only to Israel but even some European countries since some Iranian missiles have a range of 1000 miles. The response to Trump was that there was an urgency to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons and that including other issues would have deadlocked the negotiations and that short of war what was agreed was the best option in that period and circumstance .
What therefore is the way forward.? If America pulls out of the Iran deal the other signatories May continue with it but because America would sanction any country that trades with Iran this may constrain countries like China and the European Union countries like Germany, France and Great Britain from flouting American laws prohibiting trade with its enemy .in other words American withdrawal may have devastating effect on the deal if it does not kill it outright.And if the USA kills it Iran would withdraw from it and we would be back to status quo ante . Iran would then go back to its nuclear weapons program. How would this then be in favor of Israel and the rest of the world ? Trump says Iran would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons . But how will he stop Iran from doing this apart from going to war or preemptive strike perhaps in collaboration with Israel, to destroy whatever is known about Iranian nuclear weapons infrastructure.This will be dangerous for every country in the Middle East because Iran is a powerful country with the ability to set the whole of the Middle East on fire exploiting the Sunni/ Shi’a schism within Islam . Abrogating the Iranian deal may also have unintended effect on the planned deal with North Korea. This is because North Korea may feel whatever agreement it reaches with the Trump administration may be cancelled by its successor and may therefore not be as forthcoming as it would have been .
The option suggested by President Macron and chancellor Merkel that the deal should be maintained while an addendum on missile development should be separately negotiated with Iran makes sense . The question to ask is if Iran will agree to do this . Iran may not agree to do this and if it agrees it may say a comprehensive nuclear weapons agreement including with the state of Israel would have to be put on the table. This will then become a complex negotiation and the more complex it is the less the likelihood of agreement and in the meantime the Iranian nuclear bomb program will be progressing without internationally binding constraint as it is now.
The irony of all these is that Trump says he wants to withdraw from the Middle East cauldron yet by threatening to abrogate the Iranian deal he will get sucked more into the Middle East . America is dangerously goading Saudi Arabia to resist Iranian influence and if shove comes to push Sunni Egypt would line up on the side of Saudi Arabia and the whole of the Middle East will be sucked into a Sunni / Shi’a problem bringing in at the periphery Sunni states of Turkey and Pakistan . The world does not want this and the earlier we realize this the better but the onus on Iran is to moderate its desire to spread its influence in the Middle East .The people of the Middle East have suffered too much in the last decade beginning with the so called “Arab spring “ which has now morphed into “Arab winter” with wars in Syria , Yemen , Iraq, the Sinai part of Egypt , Libya , Lebanon , Algeria and Palestine and even small Qatar is not left out the problems. What the Arabs want is to be left alone to develop their lands and not to spend trillions of dollars acquiring deadly weapons from America, China, Russia and the European Union to fight one another.