Thank you very much.
Honourable members of this subcommittee, I am privileged to appear again before you today to discuss the issue of Iran's nuclear negotiations, Iran's human rights abuses, and the intersection between the two. It's a great honour to appear beside my colleague from FDD, Ali Alfoneh.
As many of you know, American officials are optimistic about the possibility of reaching a final nuclear deal with Iran before the summer, but the west must be careful not to let their wish for a deal blind them to Tehran's tactics. Iran’s leaders want a bomb and they want sanctions relief, and they want us to ignore their vast system of domestic repression. But a flawed nuclear deal, based on a complicated technical compromise that will likely permit Iran to retain essential elements of its military nuclear infrastructure, may end up giving them all of these things.
Confident that a deal is nigh, Washington has gone from a policy of disclose and dismantle—essentially insisting that Iran come fully clean on its military nuclear activities, coupled with demands to dismantle key elements of its military nuclear infrastructure—to defer and deter.
This new approach involves punting on some of the tougher issues, such as demands for full disclosure on Iran's nuclear weaponization activities before any nuclear deal is signed, and relying heavily on international weapons inspectors to stop the regime from achieving its decades-long objective of building a nuclear bomb.
U.S. participation in the upcoming negotiations isn’t premised on an expectation of Iranian veracity. If it were, Mr. Obama wouldn’t conclude any deal with Tehran until it had come fully clean about its past deceits. Instead, the west has lowered its nuclear demands in the face of Iran’s insistence that key elements of its nuclear program, and indeed its terrorism track record and human rights abuses, are non-negotiable.
We know that the interim deal reached in Geneva recently, number one, concedes to Iran an enrichment capability on Iranian soil, despite multiple UN Security Council resolutions that called on Iran to suspend all enrichment activities. Number two, it permits Iran to continue advanced R and D work on centrifuges, therefore increasing its ability to enrich uranium. Number three, it drops the previous P5+1 demands that enriched uranium be shipped out of the country and that the Fordow enrichment facility and the Arak heavy-water reactor be shuttered. Number four, it doesn’t demand that Iran halt its ballistic missile activities that could deliver nuclear weapons—again, in contravention of multiple UN Security Council resolutions. Unless a final deal requires all of these conditions among others, and doesn’t replace them with technical fixes that are too easily reversible, Tehran appears poised to retain a military nuclear infrastructure.
The French, who undoubtedly would like a deal, are quite familiar with Iranian nuclear mendacity. They are much less confident that a technical algorithm can solve what is a strategic problem, which is the essential nature and conduct of this regime, certainly exemplified by its human rights abuses and its support for terror abroad and terror at home. They rightly believe that if Tehran refuses to come clean on its past nuclear weaponization activities, there can be no confidence in any Iranian commitments in the future and no way to design an effective verification and safeguards regime to stop Iran from building a bomb.
What explains this diminishment of western negotiating leverage?
Among numerous reasons, it’s the Syria chemical red line debacle that undercut the credibility of Mr. Obama's insistence that the use of military force is on the table against an Iranian nuclear weapons breakout. It is also the White House’s recent panic attack about a recent bipartisan Senate bill mandating more sanctions if the nuclear talks fail or if Tehran engages in further terrorism. Iran had threatened to walk away from the table if the bill moved forward, and Mr. Obama, anxious to keep Tehran at the table, turned his fire on senators, including from his own party, accusing them of undermining diplomacy and risking war. This anxiety tells everyone, including Iran’s Supreme Leader, that Mr. Obama is not serious about backing up his diplomacy with real teeth. But it doesn’t end there.
Mr. Obama downplays the sanctions relief he has offered to Tehran. I ask you, shouldn’t one always overvalue the concessions one gives to the other side?
Well, Iran's negotiators understand the wisdom of undervaluing the relief package that they received so that they can ask for more at the end of the first six-month period of the Geneva interim deal, which is set to expire in July.
According to a new IMF report, the Iranian economy is experiencing a modest albeit fragile recovery, with positive GDP growth after the Iranian economy lost over 6% between 2012 and 2014, a halving of Iran's 40% inflation rate, and the stabilization of Iran's previously plummeting currency.
The Obama administration is loath to admit this modest Iranian recovery lest it provoke the ire of Congress after promising that sanctions relief was “limited, temporary, and reversible”. Tehran's reprieve for what could have been a more severe sanction-induced economic crisis, thanks to the de-escalation of sanctions in 2013, has given the Iranian regime some breathing room.
Now, Mr. Obama claims that he can turn sanctions pressure on and off like dials. Even a modest recovery reduces U.S. negotiating leverage. That leverage is eroding further as international companies begin to test the boundaries of western sanctions relief.
As Juan Zarate, a former treasury official, warned, "single-mindedly fixated on getting a deal at all costs," can too quickly reduce critical financial leverage without understanding that it can be "impossible to put the genie fully back into the bottle," once sanctions-induced pressure is relieved.
Tehran senses a desire in Washington for a nuclear deal at all costs and is pushing its advantage through negotiations to retain enough of its nuclear achievements for an atomic weapon at a time of its choosing.
The United States, on the other hand, seems increasingly fooled by these false divisions within the regime between so-called moderates and hardliners about Iran's nuclear program.
Abandoning the long quest for atomic weapons would be an extraordinary humiliation for all of Iran's ruling class. That's not going to happen unless Iran's Supreme Leader and his Revolutionary Guards know with certainty that their regime is finished if they don't abandon the bomb.
What can the Canadian government do about this? There are ongoing risks of Iran's military program, and the Canadian government can continue to play an important role in preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. I have three policy recommendations.
The first involves counter-proliferation. Iran's military program is still dependent on illicit procurement networks. In the event of a nuclear deal, Tehran may continue its long-standing track record of building clandestine nuclear facilities and may continue to source dual-use goods from countries like Canada. The Government of Canada needs to improve gaps in Canadian enforcement with respect to Iran's ability to buy parts and components for its nuclear program and its ballistic missile program. As nuclear expert David Albright recently noted in an April 24 report, Ottawa is not doing enough to stop Iranian exploitation of Canada “as a source of sanctioned goods and as a transshipment country for goods originating in the United States.”
Second, on the issue of human rights, the Government of Canada should build on its global leadership on Iranian human rights by establishing the importance of linkage between any nuclear agreement with Iran and an improvement in Tehran's atrocious human rights record. During the Cold War, western negotiators linked certain arms control agreements with the Soviet Union to demands for Moscow's adherence to human rights under the civil rights portion of the 1975 Helsinki Accords. The Canadian government might support a nuclear agreement but should do so with qualifications, and it would be a tremendous achievement for Canada to have the Ottawa accords, accords that are actually founded in Ottawa, linking arms control negotiations with Iran to continued improvement on Iran's atrocious human rights record.
Third, and finally, in December 2012, the Government of Canada added Iran's Quds Force, the overseas terrorist arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to the list of terrorist organizations under Canada's Criminal Code, a very important step in recognizing the IRGC's threat to international peace and security.
As I urged the subcommittee in prior testimony, the Government of Canada should take the next logical step and designate the IRGC in its entirety, both under Canada's Criminal Code, for its terrorist operations, and under SEMA, for its role in violating the human rights of the Iranian population. Human rights abuses by the Iranian regime fulfill the basic criteria under subsection 4(1) of SEMA, which has already been used to sanction human rights abuses by Syria's Assad regime, by the Government of Zimbabwe, by the Government of Burma, and by the Government of Sudan, among others.
It would be of profound, symbolic, and practical importance for the Canadian government to designate the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij Force for their human rights abuses.
On behalf of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, thank you for inviting me to testify today, and I look forward to your questions.
