{"id":17064,"date":"2014-07-19T20:38:19","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T02:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=17064"},"modified":"2014-07-20T06:30:24","modified_gmt":"2014-07-20T12:30:24","slug":"op-ed-dont-lose-sight-of-the-iranian-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/op-ed-dont-lose-sight-of-the-iranian-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"OP-ED: Don\u2019t lose sight of the Iranian threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

By LAWRENCE GROSSMAN<\/span>

NEW YORK (JTA) — The bloody sectarian warfare in Iraq and Syria and the swift takeover of wide swaths of territory by the Sunni fundamentalist ISIS — now calling itself a \u201ccaliphate\u201d — has triggered calls to cooperate with Shiite Iran as a counterweight.<\/span>

Yet we must not allow our justified concerns about ISIS to blind us to the even greater danger to regional security posed by a nuclear Iran.<\/span>

We must remember that a nuclear Iran could credibly threaten our allies with destruction — especially Israel, which Iran has promised to wipe off the map — furnish Hezbollah and other non-state terrorist groups with nuclear weapons, and start a nuclear stampede as other countries in the area initiate nuclear programs of their own.<\/span>

International negotiators resumed talks in Vienna on July 2 to address this danger to world peace. With a July 20 deadline looming, it is the latest — and, unless they are extended, the final — round of negotiations between Tehran and the P5+1 nations (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) aimed at preventing Iran from achieving military nuclear capacity, in return for which the international community will end the economic sanctions that have been placed on the country.<\/span>

This series of talks was agreed upon in an interim agreement, announced on November 24, 2013, after Hassan Rouhani, viewed as a comparative moderate, assumed the presidency of Iran. When the interim accord went into effect in January, Iran froze elements of its nuclear program and the U.S. eased some of the sanctions.<\/span>

Since it was the economic sanctions that had forced Iran to the negotiating table, Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) proposed legislation, to take effect after the July 20 deadline, that would hold Iran\u2019s feet to the fire by ratcheting up sanctions if the current talks collapsed or Iran violated its obligations. But when the Iranians protested this threat of new sanctions, the administration convinced the senators to stand down.\u00a0Nevertheless, Secretary of State John Kerry publicly stated that the sanctions would be re-imposed and strengthened should the talks fail.<\/span>

The key issue separating the two sides is Iran\u2019s enrichment of uranium, which Tehran insists is for peaceful purposes, but the P5+1 warn can be used to produce nuclear weapons. Iran today has some 10,000 operating centrifuges, the mechanisms that do the actual enrichment, and the \u201cbreakout time\u201d — how long it would take Iran to produce a nuclear bomb should it decide to do so — is estimated at a few months.<\/span>

Western observers say that little progress has been made toward a comprehensive agreement due to Iranian defiance and refusal to diminish its nuclear facilities already built. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, has issued several reports raising questions about the military dimensions of Iran\u2019s nuclear program. On June 2, the IAEA\u2019s director general, Yukiya Amano, called Iran\u2019s posture a \u201cjigsaw puzzle\u201d and made clear that the IAEA\u2019s inquiries would not be completed by the July 20 deadline.<\/span>

\u201cThat is not our timeline. It is their timeline,\u201d said Amano, referring to the P5+1. \u201cWe will take the necessary time to resolve all the outstanding issues.”<\/span>

Leading figures in the American administration have said — almost like a mantra — that \u201cno deal is better than a bad deal.\u201d And Secretary of State John Kerry, in a June 30 Washington Post opinion article, noted that the \u201cpublic optimism\u201d shown by the Iranian negotiators \u201chas not been matched, to date, by the positions they have articulated behind closed doors.\u201d<\/span>

Emphasizing the large gap between Iran\u2019s professions of peaceful intentions and \u201cthe actual content\u201d of its nuclear program, Kerry cited numerous previous instances of the country\u2019s violation of international obligations. He wrote that the P5+1 will not agree to an extension of the July 20 deadline \u201cmerely to drag out negotiations,\u201d and warned that should Iran not satisfy the demands of the international community, \u201csanctions will tighten and Iran\u2019s isolation will deepen.\u201d If that doesn\u2019t deter Tehran, the administration has said that \u201call options are on the table.\u201d<\/span>

Should the deadline pass without an agreement or a time-specific extension, we must be prepared to follow through on the administration\u2019s wise words, and encourage the international community to follow suit. Nothing that is happening in Syria or Iraq mitigates the specter of a nuclear Iran.<\/span>

(Lawrence Grossman is the American Jewish Committee\u2019s director of publications.)<\/i><\/p>\n

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