Iran Archives - Fran Moreland Johns

A CLOSE LOOK BY AVERAGE CITIZEN MAY CAUSE PESSIMISM

Nuclear optimism is a tough sell.

On a recent Zoom event President Emma Belcher of Ploughshares Fund, one of my all-time favorite nonprofits, talked with Iranian affairs expert Ali Vaez about that beautiful, once-friendly country and its nuclear weapons situation. I brought every ounce of my congenital optimism to the conversation.

It is worth emphasizing here that my understanding of nuclear weaponry is about on par with my understanding of Iranian affairs. I.e., nonexistent. What I do know is that we have a lovely planet to live on and it would take only a few nuclear weapons to do it in. The U.S. now has 5,000 or so; Russia pretty much keeps up, and then there are China, N. Korea, a few somewhat friendlier countries . . . but so far not Iran.

How to maintain optimism in light of the above? Currently no one able to pull the first trigger wants to risk blowing himself and the rest of us to bits. And most of these guys — they’re all guys — are relatively sane. (This is debatable, and could change.)

Throw in the complicated animosities of Israel, Saudi Arabia (“If Iran gets one, we’ll get one ourselves . . .”) and others, and pessimism quickly prevails.

It is a bizarre game, this You-fire-at-me-and-I’ll-fire-at-you, but once we Americans launched it others wanted in. Proliferation rapidly became strategy. Then, some years back, a few level heads acknowledged that things (and weapons) were getting out of hand and we began cautiously moving in the other direction. (“I’ll reduce my supply if you’ll reduce yours.”) Ploughshares was founded in 1981 to support the reduction — and in a best case scenario the elimination — of nuclear weapons;

Bringing Iran into the nuclear-armed fold has not seemed a very good idea. This led to the “Iran Nuclear Deal” — the Joint Cooperative Plan of Action (JCPOA to its friends) signed by Iran, Russia, China, the U.S., Britain, France and Germany in 2015 — which limited Iran’s nuclear activities (the things one does on the pathway to getting a nuclear weapon) in return for removal of a bunch of anti-Iran sanctions.

People who understand these things speak in terms of how long it would take Iran to have its own nuclear weapon. It was a matter of months when the treaty was in force. It is now a matter of days.

This is largely because former president Trump, in his infinite wisdom, pulled us out of the JCPOA treaty in 2018. It’s complicated, but the Council on Foreign Relations summarizes it here. The chaos since then is also complicated, as anyone who reads the headlines (in legitimate newspapers, not on social media) can attest. JCPOA participants periodically try to resurrect it. Such efforts have been thwarted, though, by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and other struggles of humankind.

Much of the above was discussed — far more completely and eloquently — by Dr. Belcher and Presidential Adviser Vaez. Toward the end of the conversation there was this exchange:

“All we can hope for,” said Vaez, “is preserving the status quo.”

Added the Ploughshares president, “It’s a very bad status quo.”

Here is the question I was poised to enter into the Chat: “Is there a ray of hope anywhere?” It felt unanswerable.

Still, Ploughshares is strong, and there are yet a few months until election day.

The mood was sheer celebration. “We’ve moved the boulder in the road,” said Joe Cirincione; “this model can be useful for other work.” Moving the boulder, a distinguished group of speakers repeatedly explained to the small, celebratory-mood audience, will lead to a safer world for our children and grandchildren, a world “where nuclear weapons are a thing of the past.” He was speaking of the Iran nuclear deal.

The Iran deal – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed in Vienna on July 14 by the U.S., Iran, China, Russia, U.K., France, Germany and representatives of the E.U. – runs to approximately 159 pages, very few of which this right-brained writer has read. But I absolutely trust Joe Cirincione.

Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund, a nonprofit that works to bring about a world in which our children and grandchildren might live without the threat of being blown to bits by a nuclear bomb. A really attractive idea. (Ploughshares Fund was founded in 1981 by Sally Lilienthal, a remarkable San Francisco woman this writer was privileged to know in the decade before her death in 2006.) It was at a small gathering of Ploughshares supporters that Cirincione and several others – who have not only read the entire 159 pages, but helped write them – explained the details, and the impact, of the Iran deal to us, our grandchildren, and the world.

Many of the details are beyond the technical comprehension of most lay citizens (and more than a few of the politicians whose knee-jerk opposition has little to do with the safety of our future.) They include things like requiring that Iran reduce its 20,000 centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium, to 6,104 over the next 10 years, giving up its most advanced centrifuges while using only their older model. Then there is the business of how far the country will be allowed to enrich uranium: no more than 3.67 percent, which will be okay for power plants but is far below the level needed for weapons. Iran also agreed to reduce its stockpile of uranium by 98 percent.

These extraordinarily complex details were part of a conversation between Cirincione and Kelsey Davenport, Director for Nonproliferation Policy, Arms Control Association at the event. Davenport was among the outside experts traveling to Geneva, Vienna and elsewhere to help work out the agreement – “and knows more about the Iran deal than anyone I know,” Cirincione remarked, and spoke of the long, often painful path toward its success. Davenport said she could usually tell right away how some negotiation went – discussions that often ran into the small hours of the morning – by the expression on someone’s face.

We should all be smiling today.

Tag: Iran

Nuclear Weapons & the Iran Deal

Celebrating the Iran Nuclear Deal