Since the days of the shah, Iran's pro-American leader, the consensus among experts has been that Iranians want to develop the capability to build a nuclear weapon without actually getting one. What Iran-deal foes like Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) fail to realize is that cancelling the recent nuclear agreement between Iran and the great powers will not lead Iran to give up more, nor will it even necessarily lead to a war. The bottom line is that a dead agreement will leave Iran with a nuclear bomb.
This week, Senator Schumer announced that he will vote against the nuclear agreement. The deal, as it was reached after years of painstaking negotiations, offers sanctions relief in return for a significant reduction in Iran's stockpile of nuclear material. It also shuts down most of Iran's nuclear sites and allows for the most intrusive inspections regime in history. Should Iran cheat, sanctions snap back into place.
Schumer's rationale for opposing this deal--a deal that has seen support from non-proliferation professionals, scientists, former ambassadors, and our allies abroad--is that lifting the sanctions will allow Iran to become economically stronger and in a better position to build a bomb.
Here is the main problem with his rationale: If Iran wanted a nuclear weapon, it would have built one. For over two decades, experts have been warning that Iran is "one year away" from a bomb. Iran's deliberate policy of a short breakout time goes back far before the 1979 revolution that put in place the current government, and it is rooted in two important pieces of the same security puzzle. Iran is surrounded by hostile nations, so it wants the capability to build a weapon if and when it needs one. But those hostile nations, like Saudi Arabia, have a lot of liquid assets to spend on defense. Should Iran actually build a bomb, it would not take long for the Saudis to get their own. The ensuing arms race is likely one that Iran would lose, so why get the bomb unless and until it's absolutely needed?
Schumer and other opponents of the deal deny they want to start a war with Iran to degrade its nuclear program. We should believe most of them, perhaps excepting neoconservatives like Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and John Botlon. A war with Iran would be devastating to everyone involved, especially our allies in Israel, Iraq, and the Arabia Peninsula. Iran has thousands of missiles it will rain down on its neighborhood in the event of an attack, and it can choose to make life miserable for America in Iraq and Afghanistan for decades to come.
If opponents of the deal realize that war is off the table, what do they want? In the current deal Iran gave up a lot of its sovereignty; this is more than Pakistan, India or any other nuclear state has ever accepted. But there are limits. Those who believe that pushing harder with heavier sanctions will force Iran to cry uncle and unilaterally capitulate on all points fail to understand how negotiations work, how the Iranian government operates, or for that matter, how most every nation in the world behaves.
Should the heavy sanctions continue--which by 2015 left Iran's economy between 15 to 20 percent smaller than it would have been without them--Iran will only be left with one option: build a bomb. A bomb would give Iran the necessary leverage to negotiate away the economic pain. But in the meantime neighbors would kick-start their own nuclear programs and a Pandora's Box will have been opened. Everyone would be worse off.
Opponents of the Iran deal have been unable to produce a viable alternative. That is because there really are no alternatives left. Should the Iran deal collapse under the weight of spoilers like Schumer, Iran will get a nuclear weapon. And once Iran achieves and announces that capability to the world, no expert will be able to foresee the consequences.
Nathan Gonzalez is a Truman National Security Fellow and editor of Nortia Press, a publisher of global affairs books.