Nuclear Extortion: Pioneered by North Korea, Perfected by Iran

With implications reaching far beyond the Middle East, the Iran nuclear deal opens the gates not to a safer world, but to proliferation on a scale likely to defy any peaceful efforts at containment. With the fatally flawed bargain announced Tuesday in Vienna, the U.S. and its negotiating partners have underscored, bigtime, the sorry lesson of the series of failed nuclear deals that helped sustain North Korea’s regime all the way to the bomb: In a game of nuclear chicken, the U.S. will flinch. In the post-Cold War era, nuclear blackmail works.

Iran had before it the example of North Korea’s successful nuclear extortion. Now comes the example of Iran. Welcome to a mafia world in which the rules of the game increasingly favor the worst actors and penalize the most decent. That message will be read into this deal not only by Iran’s near-neighbors, but by nations around the globe, from Asia to Africa to Latin America.

Consider the astounding spectacle played out at the marathon Iran talks, which the White House is now spinning as an historic success. Having already offered concessions, including “temporary” easing of sanctions, merely to achieve the interim deal that brought Iran to the main bargaining table, six world powers then spent 20 months negotiating with Tehran, over-running half a dozen self-imposed deadlines in desperate quest of a deal.

On one side of the table were the U.S., France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany. All except Germany are major nuclear powers, with veto-wielding seats on the Security Council. Combined, they wield economic and military heft on a scale that utterly dwarfs that of Iran. So, for that matter, does the U.S., all by itself. On the other side of the table was Iran, a despotism under international sanctions, wielding one basic, implied threat: that if the offers and concessions of the world powers did not suffice, Tehran would walk away from the talks and carry on toward becoming a nuclear-armed state.

The U.S., de facto leader of the assembled world powers, went into these talks promising that any deal struck would ensure Iran does not get the bomb. In the name of that goal, President Obama was willing to ignore Iran’s record as the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, its arms smuggling and nuclear cheating even during the talks, its gross abuses of human rights at home, its push to dominate the Middle East, its threats to annihilate Israel and its officially celebrated chants of “Death to America.”

Iran emerged from the talks with concessions that secure it a place as a nuclear threshold state, enrich its regime, enhance its nuclear expertise, at best defer the day it is likely to achieve nuclear weapons breakout, and in the interim make it easier for Iran to cheat — in which case it could achieve nuclear breakout much sooner.

These concessions include the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions, access to upwards of $100 billion in frozen oil revenues and the prospect of hundreds of billions more for an oil-rich Iranian regime free to reenter world markets. Via this deal, Iran obtains the “right” to enrich uranium and keep thousands of centrifuges it was forbidden to acquire in the first place. Iran also gets to manage the access of international inspectors, and engage, with international assistance, no less, in nuclear procurement and research. The deal comes with major sunset clauses 10 and 15 years out. The arms embargo on Iran is to be lifted in five years, the missile embargo in eight — regardless of whether Iran’s Islamic Republic carries on, as it has since 1979. as a terror-sponsoring messianic tyranny seeking the destruction of Israel and ruin of America.

Iran’s gains do not end there. The negotiating process itself exalted Iran’s regime to a position of extraordinary importance, framing it not as a pariah permitted to parley, but as a negotiator among equals — whether the equal of the U.S., the European Union, or all six parties put together. Iran’s chief negotiator, foreign minister Javad Zarif, became the grinning centerpiece of the countless photo ops, the press conferences and the final announcement. On stage, Iran’s flag stood flanked by those of the six world powers and the European Union. The world press pored over every utterance of Iran’s supreme tyrant, Ali Khamenei, with his ever-expanding list of Iran’s red lines. With Iran ratcheting up its demands, Secretary of State John Kerry — instead of walking away — finally planted himself in Vienna for more than two solid weeks, crafting concessions to close the deal. By the palatial hotel where the talks took place, reporters waited for Zarif to dispense from a high balcony any scrap of information. In many ways, for close to two years, the U.S. and its partners have treated Iran as the most important nation on earth.

Iran accomplished all this without even the exertion of actually carrying out a nuclear test. Iran won this deal for the simple reason that America and all those other world powers at the table made it stunningly clear they had no serious Plan B. At worst, they might try to resume a sanctions regime which had cost Iran, but had not stopped its nuclear program — a sanctions regime which under terms of the talks was already eroding.

There was no credible threat that all those world powers, with all their combined might, would actually dare to use force. A day after the deal, President Obama underscored yet further his disdain for even the threat of force, saying anyone who wants to make a case for force is free to make it, “But it’s not persuasive.”

That message will be read by opportunistic tyrannies around the globe as an incentive to get nuclear weapons programs of their own, or beef up the programs they’ve already got. They would be fools not to, given the rules of the 21st century world order as now redrafted by the authors of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran’s nuclear program, endorsed by the President of the United States.

Add to this the betrayal by the U.S. of its closest ally in the Middle East, the state of Israel — a democratic nation bracketed by such Iran-supported terrorist organizations as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran’s declared top target for annihilation. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the deal “a historic mistake for the world.” Obama has basically dismissed Israel’s predicament, as well as the concerns of Arab Gulf states about Iran’s aggressively expanding influence in the region. We are well into an era in which America undercuts allies while pandering to hostile despotisms.

Where does this go? Nations hitherto benign on the nuclear front will understand that they would be fools not to get their own nuclear weapons, to deter their more predatory neighbors. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are already heading along this track.

In East Asia, such U.S. allies as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have long refrained from acquiring their own nuclear arsenals because they have been able to rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella. But they share a region with nuclear-armed increasingly aggressive Russia, an increasingly restive China and rogue nuclear-weapons-building North Korea. Relying on America looks ever more like folly, as Obama effectively tells the world that the giveaways of the Iran deal are the best America can do in the face of Tehran’s nuclear extortion. Countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam — jockeying with China — will also surely take note.

In Latin America, Iran’s oil rich best pal, Venezuela, is surely noting the despotism-sustaining benefits that can be leveraged from a rogue nuclear program. Brazil and Argentina are surely weighing the costs, in a proliferation-prone world, of being left behind. And Africa is home to the nuclear-related lesson emerging from the death in 2011 of Libya’s longtime brutal tyrant Moammar Qaddafi. Fearful in 2003 of suffering the fate of Iraq’s dethroned Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi at the behest of the U.S. gave up his nuclear kit. In 2011, with America leading from behind, Qaddafi was overthrown and killed near a sewer pipe. One need not mourn his death to understand the message this trajectory sent to tyrants everywhere.

North Korea, by contrast, leveraged its nuclear program to cut rotten deals with the U.S. and its partners, collected concessions, cheated on the deals and walked away. North Korea has by now carried out three nuclear tests, has by U.S. military estimates acquired the ability to mount miniaturized warheads on missiles, and along the way has managed a transition of power from the second generation of the totalitarian Kim dynasty to third generation tyrant Kim Jong Un.

With Tuesday’s deal in Vienna, Iran has now out-pioneered even North Korea in the art of nuclear extortion. As Congress embarks on its 60-day review of the Iran deal, it would be wise to consider not only the implications for Iran and the Middle East, but for a world in which the rules of the game are that nuclear blackmail pays.

Claudia Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.