Seven problems with John Kerry's Iranian nuclear clock

Kerry may be right that, all else being equal, more “time to act” if Iran reneges and starts racing to enrich WGU is better than less. But how much better?  The U.S. and/or Israel won’t need more than a few weeks to flatten Iran’s enrichment facilities as best they can if it comes to that.

Of course, military intervention isn’t certain to succeed.  The problem with a short breakout time, according to the prevailing conventional wisdom, is that it doesn’t allow for a peaceful, negotiated restoration of the status quo ante (which everyone agrees is a more reliable fix than bunker busters).   “If Iran were to make the decision to make a weapon, military intervention would be the only available response,” explains Albright

Fair enough.  But why should we expect a diplomatic resolution to be possible in the midst of a breakout attempt?  The assumption that Tehran can be made to have second thoughts after beginning a headlong sprint for the bomb flies in the face of everything we know about the Iranian regime – a product, perhaps, of anti-proliferation specialists accustomed to dealing with mercurial dictators like Moammar Qaddafi and Kim Jong-il. 

The challenge is giving the Iranians second thoughts before they begin a breakout. Might not the perception that prompt military intervention will be the only response available to Washington do more to deter an Iranian breakout attempt than the expectation that the international community will have all the time in the world deliberating how to respond and bargaining for Iranian concessions?

Conclusion

Although Kerry has stopped publicly promising a one-year breakout time since negotiators failed to reach an agreement before their self appointed deadline in November, by all accounts it remains a key focus of the U.S.-led negotiating team.

Why this fixation with a number that doesn’t mean anything? Because a one-year nominal breakout time “is what they need to have in order to sell the deal to Congress and U.S. allies,” according to Gary Samore, White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction during Obama’s first term. At this stage in the game, the Obama administration’s red lines in the negotiations have more to do with politics at home than with preventing the Islamic Republic from going nuclear. 

Although the administration’s efforts to frame the Iran nuclear debate as foremost a question of how far from the “finish line” Iran is and will be under a prospective nuclear agreement have been fairly successful thus far (critics of its Iran posture who complain that a year is not enough unwittingly play along), the White House is giving short shrift to a host of other factors critical to thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, such as the status of an underground enrichment bunker purpose-built for a contested breakout, the ability of inspectors to fully account for Iranian inventories, and curbs on research and development.  At the end of the day, neither Congress nor American allies are likely to be very impressed when the particulars of the impending nuclear accord become known.