Sen. Bob Menendez delivered a speech today attacking the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the negotiations in Vienna. It was a typically bad speech filled with false and misleading claims, but it is worth noting because it shows how unreasonable opposition to reviving the nuclear deal is and how pointless it was for Biden to try to placate Iran hawks like Menendez over the last year. Iran hawks will never accept any agreement that would be even minimally acceptable to Iran, because they do not want to see U.S.-Iranian tensions reduced.
Because of Menendez’s position as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the administration thought it necessary to go slow and offer no sanctions relief, and it indulged in a lot of silly rhetoric about desiring a “longer and stronger agreement” to keep Iran hawks in their own party quiet. The problem is that Menendez’s opposition to any achievable agreement has been unwavering and there was never anything that the administration could have done that would win him over. Feigning interest in a “comprehensive” agreement that could never be successfully negotiated, Menendez has never supported a realistic diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue.
Menendez makes a number of misleading claims, including this one: “In February 2021, we saw the consequences of not insisting Iran permanently ratify the Additional Protocol. Iran simply decided they were done with the Additional Protocol and refused to allow the IAEA to fully investigate locations where it found traces of uranium enrichment.” It is disingenuous to blame this on Iran’s voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol, since Iran took these steps in protest against the Israeli assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in late 2020. Iran was still choosing to implement the AP until Israel launched that attack, and if the JCPOA survives until 2023 they are expected to ratify it and adhere to it permanently. The development that Menendez wants to pin on the supposed “weakness” of the JCPOA was the fault of the Israeli government’s backfiring sabotage operations.
He claims that Iran already possesses missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons: “The ballistic missiles to deliver them. That, they already had.” This, too, is false, as any serious study of Iran’s missile program will demonstrate. As Gawdat Bahgat and Anoushiravan Ehteshami conclude in their new book, Defending Iran, “the available evidence does not support the claims that Iran has developed an ICBM capability.” Iran’s missile program has been built up for conventional deterrence and not as a means of delivering nuclear weapons, which the Iranian government isn’t even trying to acquire.
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Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
Another senator with (I) next to his name. And the “I” doesn’t stand for any state or, obviously, Independent.
“for Biden to try to placate Iran hawks” When was this? I must have missed that. Links, please.
I suspect the only reason the negotiations went on this long was because Biden was pushing for additional topics of negotiation, like the Iranian missile program, support for Hezbollah, etc. That’s all I’ve ever read coming from the Biden administration. Not to mention being steadfast on both not reducing sanctions and not agreeing to make the treaty binding.