Diplomacy - Not War - Remains the Way to Address the Threat of a Nuclear Iran

War with Iran - already costly - may prove more effective at destroying nuclear diplomacy than at destroying the Iranian nuclear program.

(Note: As I post this Sunday morning, reports of casualties across Israel, and in Iran as well, continue. First and foremost, my thoughts go out to family, friends and colleagues under fire and to the innocent civilians and families suffering across the region from ongoing war.)

As appealing as it may be to some, war doesn’t provide a simple solution to most complex foreign policy and national security challenges.

The United States has repeatedly learned the strategic and human cost of misguided military conflicts - just in my lifetime from Vietnam through Iraq and Afghanistan.

Israel has many strategic challenges - the threat from Iran among them - and, of course, at the front of the line, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

All I have witnessed across the decades and all I have studied has driven home for me the lesson that advancing a country’s national interests and its security demands thoughtful diplomacy and statecraft, which itself can be effectively backed up by strength.

Which brings me to Iran.

For the better part of two decades, J Street has – together with a coalition of partners – promoted diplomacy and not military action as the best means to rein in Iran’s nuclear program.

And through all that time, Bibi Netanyahu and hawks in the US and Israel have been champing at the bit to strike the Islamic Republic’s program militarily.

Their moment came Thursday evening.

I agree that constraining Iran’s nuclear program is a legitimate interest of the US, Israel and the world. I just believe that there was (and remains) a better way.

To understand the road not travelled, we need only go back to 2015 and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the diplomatic agreement which ensured Iran could not develop a nuclear weapon. The so-called “Iran deal” scaled back Iran’s nuclear program, locked it up and placed it under the strictest of international monitoring - permanently.

The fact that the deal worked never dissuaded the hawks – Israel’s Netanyahu, American neocons and their political musclemen at AIPAC – from trying to kill it. They pressed the issue politically in the US and turned a signature achievement of 21^st century diplomacy into a political liability, incentivizing first-term-President Trump to eviscerate the deal in 2018.

For seven years now, Iran – freed of the JCPOA’s constraints – has restarted its advanced centrifuges and again built up stockpiles of near- but not quite weapons-grade uranium.

And all throughout the years – before, during and after the deal – the hawks beat the drums of war.

I’ll admit to my surprise that the same President Trump who broke the JCPOA seemed – in returning to office this year – interested in finding a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue.

The contours of a deal were again clear and within reach: limitations on enrichment and on stockpiles, sanctions relief and comprehensive inspections. Through diplomacy. Without war, death and destruction.

But no. Once again, those who believe in living by the sword and that might makes right have started down the path of conflict.

I am so deeply saddened to read about the loss of life and destruction since the war began - numerous Israelis dead, hundreds injured and, of course, significant damage, destruction and civilian casualties in Iran.

To what end?

To destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment infrastructure?

• Experts - including Israel’s own National Security Advisor today - will tell you Israel can’t do it alone. Critical Iranian facilities are buried deep underground and can’t be reached with the tools at Israel’s disposal. (I worry deeply about reports that the US is getting pressured to finish the job at Iran’s Fordow facility, which we knew in advance Israel lacked the capacity to destroy.)

To prevent the imminent use by Iran of a weapon to destroy Israel?

• While it’s true that Iran could have, in a matter of days, enriched uranium in its stockpile to weapons grade, that’s something it’s had the capacity to do for quite some time. But Iran has not demonstrated the other critical skills for producing a bomb: the ability to weaponize the enriched uranium or the ability to deliver it for military purposes. Claims from Israeli sources that Iran was days away from a nuclear weapon echo claims used a generation ago of WMD to justify war in Iraq.

To destroy Iran’s incentive to pursue a nuclear weapon?

• It’s my view - and the view of many experts - that military action against Iran only increases the regime’s incentive to develop a nuclear weapon.

To bring about regime change?

• What more effectively rallies a diverse population around even an unpopular government than an attack on the homeland?

I am not arguing that Iran is not a bad actor. Make no mistake. To this day, Iran and the proxies it arms – Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, militias across Iraq and Syria and more – aim to harm US and Israeli interests all around the world.

And, yes, Iran has been enriching uranium at levels unnecessary for purely civilian use, while regularly defying the world’s efforts to monitor and control its program.

But the right question is how best to deal with the threat. Even just a couple of days of war has already tragically cost Israeli lives. The risk of escalation into a broader conflict is high. But is any of this really likely to end the Iranian nuclear program?

In the days and months ahead, there’s a good chance that Iran weathers these strikes, continues to retaliate with serious cost to Israel, and then sets about reconstituting its nuclear program in ever more deeply buried and secure locales. In a matter of months or years, it will likely restart enrichment, possibly with intent it had not previously demonstrated to weaponize – and without any monitoring from international inspectors.

I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that, a generation from now, policy makers could be dealing with a nuclear-armed Middle East (not only Iran, but many of its neighbors), and they’ll draw a direct causal line back to this week’s decision.

Don’t be misled by claims that this was a justified “pre-emptive” strike in the sense that term is understood in international law or under the theories of “just war.” A pre-emptive strike requires a real, imminent threat of attack and a reasonable belief that waiting to act would cause harm.

This was the opposite.

Rather than an imminent threat, the Israeli government sensed an immediate opportunity: a moment of historic weakness for Iran and of relative strength for Israel.

Israel’s attack has damaged Iran’s nuclear program and set it back for some period of time. But the damage may well prove far greater on the chances of actually resolving the challenge of Iran’s nuclear program diplomatically.