It is without question that the best strategy for handling negotiations with Iran concerning its nuclear capabilities continues to elude U.S. leaders. This delicate matter has been near the top of the United States’ foreign policy agenda for more than a decade, most recently with the implementation of crippling international sanctions in 2013 that ultimately brought Iran to the negotiating table. Now we are presented with a bad deal that paves the way for greater regional conflict, increased weaponization and proliferation in the volatile Middle East.
As a result of the deal, other countries in the Middle East have begun to perceive Iran as an even greater regional threat. The Gulf States look northwest to the Iranian-backed Assad regime butchering hundreds of thousands in Syria, northwest to the Iranian proxy insurgency Hezbollah controlling swaths of Lebanon and storing one of the world’s largest non-state reserves of high-precision missiles and south to Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen fighting in civilian areas and killing tens of thousands. This Iran deal does not address Iranian behavior in the region. Rather, it emboldens the Ayatollah’s regional grasp.
Although the deal with Iran hoped to prevent an arms race between Iran and its chief rival, Saudi Arabia, even the possibility of this deal’s implementation is already having the opposite effect. Saudi Arabia has already taken steps to acquire nuclear weapons and Egypt’s commencement of its nuclear program would enable it to easily switch to the production of military grade uranium.
Without a deal that requires transparency from Iran and ensures that their path to acquiring a nuclear weapon is cut off for good—not just for eight to 15 years—the region is already acting defensively.
Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran have been increasing for decades, but now may be reaching a breaking point. Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Arab Gulf State coalition is confronting Shi’ite Iranian aggression across the region, militarily (as is currently playing out in Yemen), economically and strategically. Just last week, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman echoed the regional sentiment, declaring a joint Arab military force against regional instability, likely preemptively against the Iranian regime. Driven by the fear of Iran’s rise and its potential to worsen regional instability, Sunni Arab states are seeing their interests align with Israel's for the first time in history.
Even more dangerous are the defensive nuclear weapons programs being developed and financed within the Sunni Gulf states. Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistan's nuclear weapons project and is ready to receive orders of nuclear warheads. Vladimir Putin himself flew to Egypt in February in order to help Egypt begin its own nuclear program and atomic industry in Cairo. Last week, a Russian trade and industrial delegation flew to Egypt to research development of a heavy industrial zone. Turkey is also developing its own nuclear program, with the construction of three plants beginning in 2015. While Turkey has historically been dedicated to the nonproliferation regime, there is fear that Turkey would easily be able to convert their nuclear program into a militarized one, in conjunction with their vast stores of advanced conventional weapons, should Iran pose a geostrategic threat.
A more immediate consequence of this bad deal is currently playing out as John Kerry holds teleconferences with Gulf leaders. The Obama Administration will be pressured for new defense agreements and increased arms sales to Sunni Arab Gulf states, including defense assurances under any scenario of Iranian aggression. Such action would further proliferate the world’s most advanced conventional weaponry in the Middle East while upsetting the balance of military power in the region. In an already volatile area of the world, such an upset would certainly yield major repercussions by increasing tensions between the United States and allies in the region. In the event of a conflict, this would place the United States in the difficult position of having to choose between entangling alliances with allied Gulf States, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar.
Once Iran becomes a nuclear threshold state, there would be no peaceful way to stop Tehran should they decide to pursue a nuclear weapon. The Sunni Arab states most directly threatened by a nuclear Iran have such little faith in this deal and its implementation that they have already flown officials to Russia and Pakistan to procure nuclear weapons of their own for their own defense. This deal with Iran does not make the region safer, as it initially sought to do. Rather, it weaponizes the most unstable region in the world and sets the Arab Gulf on a nuclear arms race that will only end in destruction. Therefore I urge you to contact your elected officials and ask them to vote against this dangerous deal.
Edward Torgas is a Trinity sophomore. His column is part five in a five-part series on the Iranian nuclear deal. The columnists for the five-part series are Torgas, Albert Antar, Eidan Jacob, Max Schreiber and Pi Praveen.
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