Obama to Congress: Butt out on Iran

The key foreign policy takeaway from President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address was his vow to veto any new sanctions on Iran adopted by Congress while negotiations with Tehran remain underway. His message to the legislature to butt out was also directed at his interlocutors in Tehran and to U.S. partners in the diplomatic process.

The Iranians, after all, have reason to doubt whether Obama has the political authority to deliver on any deal he makes with the Islamic Republic; his forceful statement may have been intended to reassure the Iranians that he can rein in a hawkish legislature. U.S. partners in the negotiation process are also an important audience, since the effectiveness of sanctions is largely dependent on their cooperation — and most are considerably less hawkish on Iran than is the U.S. Congress.

While advocates of further sanctions paint a picture of Iran marching steadily toward building a bomb, Obama pointed out that the current interim agreement under which talks continue has capped Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapon capability. “For the first time in a decade,” he noted, “we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.” International inspectors have verified that Iran’s uranium-enrichment levels have been cut and its stockpiles reduced, lengthening the distance Iran would have to travel to assemble a nuclear device. Strengthening verifiable safeguards against Iran weaponizing nuclear material is the goal of the current negotiating effort, in which Obama acknowledged that success was not guaranteed. He also reiterated that he keeps “all options on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran” — a warning that he or his successor might deem it necessary to go to war to prevent that eventuality. Hawkish elements may doubt that pledge, but Obama was speaking over their heads to the war-weary American public, casting his intention to veto any new sanctions before the diplomatic process has concluded as prudent.

Passing new sanctions now “will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails — alienating America from its allies and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again,” Obama said. “It doesn’t make sense.“

Iran previously raised the level to which it enriches uranium to 20 percent — considerably shortening the reprocessing time needed to reach weapons grade — to boost its leverage and could do so again should talks fail.

Obama’s point about America’s partners is equally significant: The U.S. has scarcely traded with Iran since the revolution of 1979; the current sanctions are effective only because the U.S. and its allies are able to persuade or force other countries into compliance.

Should the U.S. be deemed to be acting outside an international consensus, the likelihood grows that the likes of Russia, China, Turkey, India and other more significant trading partners of Tehran will start ignoring U.S. sanctions.

And if negotiations and sanctions fail to achieve their desired goal, the only alternative, as laid out by Obama, is military action.

That’s his argument for vetoing new sanctions. “The American people expect us to only go to war as a last resort, and I intend to stay true to that wisdom,” he said.

And whatever they choose to do in Congress, it was notable that none of the Republican respondents chose to challenge Obama’s Iran stance in the public square on Tuesday night.