Hon. Jon Kyl: U.S. Foreign Policy in 2015: Outlook and Challenges

On July 9^th, during the Center for Security Policy’s National Security Group Lunch on Capitol Hill, former Senator Jon Kyl, discussed the Obama administration’s approach to the Iran nuclear deal.

Senator Kyl begins his remarks by stressing that Obama’s approach to Iran is based off of a fundamental fallacy; a deeply flawed understanding of what can be achieved through diplomacy with a regime that cannot be talked out of their fundamental belief. He states that this regime’s fundamental beliefs include hegemony in the area, eradication of the state of Israel, and the promotion of their ideology of political Islam. For the President to think that he can convince a regime to abandon their fundamental beliefs is very arrogant and unrealistic.

Another point that Senator Kyl brings up is the huge mistake that this agreement can be verifiable.

“Even if it is verifiable, it definitely cannot be enforced. And if you can’t enforce an agreement and get the other side to change its behavior to abide by the agreement, then nothing else matters. The U.S. is dealing with a country whose policy is premised on violation of anything it agrees to when it suits its purpose to violate it. Why do I say it can’t be enforced? Look at the arms agreement with the Soviet Union in Russia; they are in violation of arms control agreements today. Can we get them to agree? No. Why? Because they don’t want to. How do you make them? The Obama administration’s answer to that question is to enforce sanctions.”

Yes, sanctions worked to bring Iran to the negotiating table, but once sanctions are lifted U.S. and European leverage will vanish. Any Iranian violation of the agreement will be difficult to detect, and even more difficult to respond to through a rigorous international effort. U.S. officials are overconfident when they suggest that it will be possible to create a reliable system to ensure that sanctions could reactivate, or ‘snap back’, automatically. The negotiators will have trouble devising a procedure that is immune to a Chinese or Russian veto in the United Nations Security Council, which is a necessary condition to put the sanctions back in place. Additionally, the Security Council is more divided than five years ago as relations between Russia and the West have soured. Senator Kyl notes that this might just “represent another opportunity to kick us in the shins.”

Senator Kyl brought up another important point that is rarely ever addressed, the message the U.S. is sending to Iranian citizens with the enforcement of sanctions.

“We are basically telling the hapless Iranian people to bare with us on this, we are going to make you suffer like hell in order to get your government to back off the development of a nuclear weapon which would be to our advantage. Wouldn’t it be better to say to them that we are going to help you achieve a degree of freedom and independence and autonomy that you would like to have to develop an economy, so you can be free to say what you want by trying to pressure your government to let go of some of the power that it’s exercising.”

This type of message might actually resonate with people who are asked to suffer a lot. Right now, the Iranian government is telling their citizens that the U.S. is the enemy and they have the sanctions to prove that. If we could somehow change the message by saying that these sanctions are around because their government is uncooperative, then we would be able to gain more support within Iran. Senator Kyl says that if we don’t reach out to the Iranian people, then sanctions to him seem almost impossible.