Jim Slattery: Top ten reasons Congress should maintain the Iran nuclear deal

1. The Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is good for the United States and Israel. Before we signed the JCPOA in 2015, Iran was in the position to build a nuclear bomb within two months. This so-called “breakout time” – the time required to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear bomb – has been extended to at least one year under the JCPOA. If members of Congress re-impose sanctions, they will invite Iran to restart its nuclear program.

If Iran renews its nuclear program, it would further destabilize the Middle East and pose a serious threat to Israel. How does this make sense when Iran has shut down its effort to build a nuclear bomb? Former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently urged President Trump to keep the deal in place, in part because “Iran is not an existential threat to Israel while the deal is in place.” Do we really want to confront two nuclear threats given the situation in North Korea?

2. Keeping the JCPOA in place despite its imperfections is in our national security interest. While Trump and his hawkish allies in Washington disagree, our top diplomatic and military leaders support the notion that the United States is safer with the JCPOA in place. This is the view of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford, and a number of Israeli military leaders.

3. The U.S. and our allies are not simply trusting, we are verifying. Iran has agreed to the most intrusive inspections in arms control history. As a result, going forward under the JCPOA, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.S. will continue to learn more about Iran’s nuclear activity than ever before.

4. Under the JCPOA, Iran has reduced its supply of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to approximately 300 kilograms. They require more than 1,000 kilograms of LEU to build a nuclear bomb. Iran eliminated more than 80 percent of its centrifuges and shut down its new plutonium enrichment facility in Arak as required under the JCPOA. These steps have been confirmed by the IAEA.

5. After the IAEA certified that Iran had completed the steps required to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, the U.S. released roughly $100 billion of Iranian money that had been held in banks around the world for the last 35 years. This was not U.S. money, it was Iranian money being returned to Iran. It makes no sense to break an agreement after delivering $100 billion to Iran for their compliance with the deal.

6. A great nation like the United States must keep its word as long as Iran complies with its obligations under the JCPOA. Ironically, opponents of the JCPOA have argued that Iran could not be trusted to keep its word. Now it appears the U.S. may not keep its word. Instead of a beacon of stability and leadership, the U.S. will appear to the world foolish and unstable if we walk away from an agreement we led our global partners in negotiating.

7. Breaking our word on the JCPOA sends a powerful message to a young generation of highly educated Iranians. The message is that you cannot trust the Americans. This is a terrible message to send to millions of young Iranians who celebrated the JCPOA as a first step toward an improved relationship with the U.S.

8. Russia will be a big winner if the U.S. walks away from the JCPOA. Russia will use an American withdrawal as a wedge between the U.S. and our European allies. Russia will say that the U.S. is an erratic, unreliable partner, and will look for opportunities to insert itself in commercial and political roles the U.S. currently fills.

9. Russia and China will move closer to achieving their goals of controlling more of Iran’s oil and natural gas reserves, which are some of the largest in the world. Russia desperately wants to maintain its dominance in the European natural gas markets. To do this, Russia must control or disrupt the flow of Iranian natural gas to Europe. Meanwhile, China wants to secure a reliable supply of Iran’s oil and natural gas. Is it wise to push Iran into the Russian and Chinese energy orbit when they prefer doing business with Western Europe and the U.S.?

10. Many hardliners in Iran who opposed the JCPOA will celebrate the U.S. walking away from the deal because their businesses benefit from sanctions and they do not want a closer relationship with the United States for fear of business competition. Many of the hardliners in Washington and Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are the same people who strongly supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. They were tragically dead wrong then and they are wrong now.

Jim Slattery is a former Democratic member of Congress who represented the 2nd District of Kansas from 1983 to 1995.