Iran deal skeptics get one big thing right

On its own terms, the nuclear deal with Iran is great. The limits on Iran's nuclear development are sharp, and the safeguards in place to restrict it are stronger than we could have hoped for.

But there's a catch.

The emerging deal doesn't touch on any of the nasty stuff Iran does around the Middle East — not even a little bit. Helping Syria's President Bashar al-Assad slaughter innocent Syrians, funding Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, supporting dangerously sectarian militia groups in Iraq: not a peep about any of that in the newly inked agreement at Lausanne.

In one sense, that was a necessary evil. Getting Iran to voluntarily restrict its own nuclear program is hard enough without asking the country to restructure its entire foreign policy. But the deal, in some ways, will make the problem of Iran's harmful regional foreign policy harder to solve: Iran will be more free to act as it pleases in the Middle East, and have more money with which to do that, if the deal is fully implemented.

Even the best things can have dark sides.

There is one reason, and one reason only, for Iran to agree to the serious limits on its nuclear program imposed by the Lausanne deal: relief from crippling international sanctions. And that's what it gets if it complies with the deal, though from the information we have now, it's not exactly clear when that would happen.

Some sanctions — like the American ones punishing Iran for its ballistic missile program and support for terrorism — will remain in place. But post-deal, Iran will be in a much stronger economic position than it was beforehand, taking in potentially billions of dollars per month that it wouldn't otherwise get access to.

And for the deal to work, the sanctions have to stay dropped. The only incentive Iran has to comply with the deal is the threat that sanctions will be re-imposed if it cheats. If new sanctions were imposed over, say, Iran's involvement in the Syrian civil war, Iran would have fewer reasons to stick to its pledge not to develop a bomb. Any Western nation that tries to put new economic pressure on Tehran puts the deal at risk.

Sanctions aren't the only, or even necessarily the best, way for the United States to deal with Iran's nuclear behavior. But the nuclear program ties America's hands in other ways. The intense diplomatic focus on striking and maintaining a deal will make a major diplomatic push on Iran's other issues harder — the State Department's resources and staff aren't infinite. There's also a chance the United States won't want to aggressively confront Iran in other places — like Iraq, where it's supporting powerful and hyper-sectarian Shia militias — for fear of jeopardizing the nuclear deal.

Bottom line: Iran will have a lot more money in tax revenue and oil sales to play with, and the US and its allies will be in a weaker position to make sure that money isn't spent on violence.

Continue Reading: http://www.vox.com/2015/4/3/8340725/iran-nuclear-sanctions-relief