US Elder Statesmen on Iran Deal

Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush

 

"In my view, the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] meets the key objective, shared by recent administrations of both parties, that Iran limit itself to a strictly civilian nuclear program with unprecedented verification and monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N. Security Council. Iran has committed to never developing or acquiring a nuclear weapon; the deal ensures that this will be the case for at least 15 years and likely longer, unless Iran repudiates the inspection regime and its commitments under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and Additional Protocol.

 

"There is no more credible expert on nuclear weapons than Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who led the technical negotiating team. When he asserts that the JCPOA blocks each of Iran’s pathways to the fissile material necessary to make a nuclear weapon, responsible people listen. Twenty-nine eminent U.S. nuclear scientists have endorsed Moniz’s assertions.

 

"If the United States could have handed Iran a “take it or leave it” agreement, the terms doubtless would have been more onerous on Iran. But negotiated agreements, the only ones that get signed in times of peace, are compromises by definition. It is what President Reagan did with the Soviet Union on arms control; it is what President Nixon did with China.

 

"And as was the case with specific agreements with the Soviet Union and China, we will continue to have significant differences with Iran on important issues, including human rights, support for terrorist groups and meddling in the internal affairs of neighbors. We must never tire of working to persuade Iran to change its behavior on these issues, and countering it where necessary. And while I believe the JCPOA, if implemented scrupulously by Iran, will help engage Tehran constructively on regional issues, we must always remember that its sole purpose is to halt the country’s nuclear weapons activities."

Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State in the Clinton administration

 

"After careful review of its provisions, I have given the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action my strong endorsement.

 

"The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran has rightfully earned a place at the top of the long list of threats to global stability. No diplomatic agreement or military action could guarantee that Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon, but even most opponents agree this accord puts that goal firmly out of Iran's reach for a decade or more. From any vantage point, that is a positive development, but at a time of great turmoil in the Middle East it is especially welcome.

 

"One of the main criticisms that has been leveled against the JCPOA is that it does not address other abhorrent aspects of Iran's behavior -- its support of terrorism, its jailing of several Iranian-Americans, its rhetoric against the United States and Israel or its other destabilizing activities in the broader Middle East. In theory, the United States could have pursued a comprehensive agreement with Iran covering issues beyond the nuclear file, but experience suggests that such an approach would not have yielded results.

 

"By zeroing in on the nuclear issue, the Obama administration took on the most dangerous threat posed by the Iranian regime and brought together the international community around the issue that most united it in opposition to Tehran.

 

"The completion of the nuclear accord does not preclude progress on these other issues. In fact, it gives the United States new tools to shape Iranian behavior. Going forward, the United States should do so by focusing on three key areas:

 

"First, we must subject the implementation of the JCPOA to the strongest oversight possible. …

 

"Second, we must maintain a robust deterrent in the region, increase our efforts to counter Iranian proxies and further enhance the conventional military capabilities of our allies and partners relative to Iran. …

 

"To that end, the third leg of our approach should involve carefully calibrated engagement with Iran."

 

Dick Cheney, Vice President in the George W. Bush administration and Secretary of Defense in the George H.W. Bush administration

 

“[T]his agreement will give Iran the means to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland. I know of no nation in history that has agreed to guarantee that the means of its own destruction will be in the hands of another nation, particularly one that is hostile. What President Obama is asking the United States Congress to do is unique-historically and dangerously unique. The results may be catastrophic. ... It is not, as President Obama claims, the only alternative to war. It is madness.”

 

"Nearly everything the president has told us about his Iranian agreement is false. He has said it will prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, but it will actually facilitate and legitimize an Iranian nuclear arsenal. He has said this deal will stop nuclear proliferation, but it will actually accelerate it, as nations across the Middle East work to acquire their own weapons in response to America’s unwillingness to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

 

"President Obama told us he would never accept a deal based on trust. Members of his administration, including his secretary of energy and deputy national-security adviser, said the nuclear deal would be verifiable with “anywhere, anytime” inspections. Instead, the Obama deal provides the Iranians with months to delay inspections and fails to address past clandestine work at military sites. Inspections at these sites are covered in secret deals, which is historic, though not in the way the president claims. Under the reported provisions of the secret deals, the Iranians get to inspect themselves for these past infractions. Inevitably these provisions will be cited by the Iranians as a precedent when they are caught cheating in the future.

 

"The president has tried to sell this bad deal by claiming that there is no alternative, save war. In fact, this agreement makes war more, not less, likely. In addition to accelerating the spread of nuclear weapons across the Middle East, it will provide the Iranians with hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, which even the Obama administration admits likely will be used to fund terror. The deal also removes restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program; lifts the ban on conventional weapons sales; and lifts sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, on the Quds Force, and on Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani. Under Mr. Soleimani’s leadership, the Quds Force sows violence and supports terror across the Middle East and has been responsible for the deaths of American service members in Iraq and Afghanistan."

 

"The Obama nuclear agreement with Iran is tragically reminiscent of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s Munich agreement in 1938. Each was negotiated from a position of weakness by a leader willing to concede nearly everything to appease an ideological dictator. Hitler got Czechoslovakia. The mullahs in Tehran get billions of dollars and a pathway to a nuclear arsenal. Munich led to World War II. The Obama agreement will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East and, more than likely, the first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

 

Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, National Security Advisor to President Bill Clinton

 

“I think the agreement is a strong agreement. I think it prevents Iran from developing a nuclear weapon for at least 10, probably 15 years. I don’t think it depends on trust. I think it’s verifiable. If they cheat, we can go to the U.N. I think Jim [James Woolsey] is wrong about the way of reimposing the sanctions. The way the agreement is written, Russia, China and Iran cannot stop us from reimposing the sanctions.

 

“If we or our allies believe Iran is cheating, and we go to the U.N., we cannot be blocked by Russia, China and Iran alone or in combination. That’s a pretty strong provision. And I think it’s essential to the fabric of this agreement. We’re not relying upon anything other than our own judgment as to whether or not they’re cheating on this agreement.”

 

“We’re not giving them [Iranians] a nickel. Let’s understand what this is. This is a return of their money, which is being held in Chinese banks, European banks, during the sanctions. That money was being held. The sanctions were for the purpose of getting them to the table and negotiate an agreement. They have done that now. And so the money comes back. Now, having said that, it’s not $100 billion. It’s probably less than that. They don’t get it until they’ve done everything that they’re obligated to do under the agreement. So we’re not writing a check for Iran.”

 

Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense in the Ford administration and the George W. Bush administration

 

 

Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration and the Obama administration

 

“We must now face the reality that there are serious consequences to voting down the agreement or pulling out of it. I think we swallow hard, acknowledge our negotiators got out-negotiated, and that we have a flawed deal, and make the best of it. ... The agreement rests on the overly optimistic belief, the hope really, that [removing] sanctions will lead Iran over time, in effect, to become a normal country. We should harbor no illusions about the regime we are dealing with. ... Once the sanctions are lifted, it will be nearly impossible to get them reimposed by the United Nations, by Russia and China especially, despite the administration’s assurance of snap-back provisions.”

 

Colin Powell, Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration and National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan

 

 

“I think it is a good deal. I’ve studied the, very carefully, the outline of the deal and what’s in that deal, and I’ve also carefully looked at the opposition to the deal, and my judgement after balancing those two sets of information is that it’s a pretty good deal. Now, I know that there are objections to it, but here is why I think it is a good deal.

 

“One of the great concerns that the opposition has is that we are leaving open a lane for the Iranians to go back to creating a nuclear weapon in 10 or 15 years. But we’re forgetting the reality that they have been on a super highway for the last 10 years to create a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program, with no speed limit. And in the last 10 years, they’ve gone from 136 centrifuges up to something like 19,000 centrifuges. This agreement will bring them down to 5,000 centrifuges. These will be under IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) supervision, and I think this is a good outcome. This that, they had a stockpile of something in the neighborhood of 12,000 kilograms of uranium. This deal will bring it down to 300 kilograms. It’s a remarkable reduction. I’m amazed that they would do this, but they have done it. And with respect to their plutonium effort, the plutonium reactor at Arak, which is now starting to operate, it’s going to be shut down, except for minor parts of it. And concrete will be poured into the reactor core vessel. And so these are remarkable changes, and so we have stopped this highway race that they were going down, and I think that’s very, very important. Now, will they comply with it? Will they actually do all of this? Well, they get nothing until they show compliance, and that’s the important part of the arrangement.”

 

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter

 

 

“Ultimately, the basic implication is war or peace... This agreement involves a compromise by Iran, a significant compromise, in the sense that it has abandoned many of the things that it has valued and sought. Rightly or wrongly. But it has abandoned them at least provisionally by signing this agreement. But secondly, it achieves something even more important. A degree of cooperation between – substantive cooperation between the United States and China in the present circumstances with Russia. This is not trivial. This is very important. It affects, first of all, the region, to which it applies, and help, maybe, to stabilize it. And secondly, it affects our relations with China and Russia in different ways, point perhaps, and I don’t want to sound naïve, but pointing perhaps to the possibility of more serious reconstructive dialogue between us and Russia regarding Ukraine.”

 

“My feeling is that this agreement is different from many, I would even say most agreements. Most agreements in international affairs are like pacts. You do this, we do this, we agree, we do it. This is a process. This agreement is a process. And I want to repeat that. This agreement is a process. In other words, there are a series of reciprocal actions over a longer period of time in which we move forward, there is reciprocity, we then move forward, then there is agreement, there is a look at it, investigation, perhaps additional side negotiations. It is a process designed to change an incredibly complex relationship into a more positive one in which the domestic evolution of public attitudes towards each other, I’m talking of America and Iran, takes time. But there is the real possibility that if it succeeds, Iran rejoins the international community and becomes a force of good. If it doesn’t, and especially if it doesn’t because war is abetted from the outside, we’re going to have a mess on our hands in the Middle East like none that we have known before.”

 

William Cohen, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration

 

“I think once we decided that Iran would be allowed to go forward with an enrichment program on its own soil, then I think we were just negotiating from behind the curve at that particular point. You may remember that Russia, at one point early in the game, said “We will do the enrichment of the uranium on Russian soil and then we’ll transfer it to you so you can have enriched uranium to the right level for commercial purposes. And Iran said no. And we didn’t really come out strong enough, I don’t think, at that time. Once we said, “No, no, you have a right to enrich.” Well, then the question is how much do you need, what percentage do you need. And of course they went up to 20 or 25 percent, which is closer to purposes for making a nuclear weapon as opposed to you know building a pharmaceutical plant. So I think that we were behind the curve on that one and conceded too much up front. And as a result of that we’ve been negotiating, I don’t think, from a position of strength, but one from weakness.

 

“[T]his is a deal you’ve got, unless there are major holes that we can point to saying this is not verifiable, they’re not removing this type of equipment, they’re not putting it in safe storage, they’re going to be able to constitute it within a very short period of time. Unless you can show that, I think the deal is going to go remain in force and we’ll have to hope that 10 years from now or 15 years from now, when the restrictions run out, that Iran will have become so embedded into the international system as a welcome partner that they’ll forego trying to build a nuclear weapon. I remain skeptical about that, but that is the hope at this point.”

 

William Perry, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration

 

“We applaud the announcement that a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been reached with Iran to limit its nuclear program. We congratulate President Obama and all the negotiators for a landmark agreement unprecedented in its importance for preventing the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran.

 

“This JCPOA will put in place a set of constraints and monitoring measures that will help to assure that Iran's nuclear program will be for peaceful purposes only. Major U.S. objectives have been achieved: uranium enrichment limited to 3.67% and only at the Natanz plant; the Arak reactor will be re-designed to minimize the amount of plutonium produced and Iran is barred from separating plutonium and all spent fuel will be removed from Iran; a 98% reduction in Iran's stockpile of low enriched uranium for 15 years; unprecedented surveillance of nuclear activities and control of nuclear related imports; a two-thirds reduction in the installed centrifuges for ten years; constraints on research and development of advanced centrifuges. The agreement will set up a highly effective multilayered program to monitor and inspect every aspect of Iran's nuclear supply chain and fuel cycle, including continuous monitoring at some sites for 20-25 years, and permit inspections on short notice. We have followed carefully the negotiations as they have progressed and conclude that the JCPOA represents the achievement of greater security for us and our partners in the region.

 

“We acknowledge that the JCPOA does not achieve all of the goals its current detractors have set for it. But it does meet all of the key objectives. Most importantly, should Iran violate the agreement and move toward building nuclear weapons, it will be discovered early and in sufficient time for strong countermeasures to be taken to stop Iran. No agreement between multiple parties can be a perfect agreement without risks. We believe without this agreement, the risks to the security of the U.S. and its friends would be far greater. We have also not heard any viable alternatives from those who oppose the implementation of the JCPOA.”

 

Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration

 

“[T]he Iran deal provides the United States with an opportunity to define a policy of strength, not ambivalence, in the Middle East. The administration need only make clear that the fundamental purpose of the nuclear deal is not just to constrain Iran's nuclear ambitions but to build a strong coalition that will confront both Iran and terrorism in the future. ..

 

“With the Iran deal, President Obama has taken the right first step in seeking to limit Iran's ability to obtain a nuclear weapon. As of this week, he has the votes to veto potential congressional disapproval. Rather than sending a message of a divided America, Congress should support the deal. What should sell it to those who still object is this: The agreement opens the door to a larger U.S. strategy to advance peace and stability in the Middle East. That makes the Iran deal not just a gamble but an opportunity for a safer world.”

 

“The key to this deal, indeed the key to any arms control deal, is in the inspection and verification protocol. The most important question Congress will ask will be whether the inspectors can visit any site, talk to anybody, and review any document. Vigilance is the only thing that will ensure this deal is a success.”

Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State in the Obama administration

 

 

“Here’s how I see it – either we move forward on the path of diplomacy and seize this chance to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon, or we turn down to a more dangerous path leading to a far less certain and riskier future. That’s why I support this deal. I support it as part of a larger strategy toward Iran.

 

“By now, the outcome in Congress is no longer in much doubt. So we’ve got to start looking ahead to what comes next – enforcing the deal, deterring Iran and its proxies and strengthening our allies. …

 

“Some have suggested that we just go back to the negotiating table and get a better, unspecified deal. I can certainly understand why that may sound appealing. But as someone who started these talks in the first place and built our global coalition piece by piece, I can assure you it is not realistic.

 

“Plus, if we walk away now, our capacity to sustain and enforce sanctions will be severely diminished. We will be blamed. Not the Iranians. So if we were to reject this agreement, Iran would be poised to get nearly everything it wants without giving up a thing. No restrictions on their nuclear program. No real warning if Tehran suddenly rushes toward a bomb. And the international sanctions regime would fall apart. So no more economic consequences for Iran either.

 

“Those of us who have been out there on a diplomatic frontline know that diplomacy is not the pursuit of perfection. It’s the balancing of risks. And on balance, the far riskier course right now would be to walk away. ...

 

Question: Madam Secretary, you talked about how you would use American muscle to contain Iran. Can you tell us how you might use the new diplomatic channel to engage Iran on issues, whether it’s support for extremist groups or specifically dealing with the crisis in Syria? Would you be willing to use that diplomatic channel to engage Iran?

 

Clinton: “Yes, I would…and I would because I think that we have to attempt to do that. You know, when I first went to Oman in January of 2011, we didn’t know whether any effort at some kind of secret channel would pay off. We still had the P5+1 [negotiation process] that was going on and we knew that eventually whatever the United States did would have to merge into the international approach.

 

“But we had to begin to explore it and we did. And we explored it over that summer. That’s when we had the first visit to discuss whether anything could be possible.

 

“It takes a while…to figure out who’s at the table, what the conversation is about, how seriously it’ll be taken, who’s backing you up. And so then when the talks actually started just in the Iranian-American channel with Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan and Bob Einhorn was also involved, it was exploratory and it laid down some of the ground rules that we were looking for. And then it was eventually merged into the larger P5+1 once there was a change in government in Iran and there was some real seriousness of effort.

 

“So with respect to the other issues, I have very clearly in the public arena seen the Iranians at the highest levels reject any such discussion. They don’t want to talk about Yemen. They don’t want to talk about anything than other the nuclear agreement.

 

“Now, that was a strategic decision we made back then. You know, number one, it appeared to us in the early discussion with them trying to figure out how to proceed, they wanted to talk about everything as a way to get some items on the table to trade off for the nuclear agreement so that they would not have to make perhaps as many concessions as we were expecting them to make. That’s why we kept very focused on just the nuclear program.

 

“We also had the continuing challenge and it would be even in this instance of our friends in the Gulf not wanting us to talk about anything that affected them in a bilateral channel with the Iranians. And you can understand why. I mean, if they weren’t going to be at the table, they didn’t want the United States talking about Yemen or talking about anything else of interests, vital interests, in their views to them.

 

“So if there were a way to construct such a channel, I would be open to it. But I’m just laying out some of the difficulties of us being able to do that on this suite of other issues that are complex and touch many of the region’s vital interests.

 

“And I think when it comes to Syria, we have historically not wanted to talk to Iran about Syria because we knew Iran was basically the principal supporter – propper-up if you will – of Assad. And we wanted to get the rest of the international community in harness to have a set of expectations and demands we brought Iran in. So you know, we have to readjust this all the time.

 

“Just as I said diplomacy is a balancing of risks, it’s also the constant evaluation of where the opportunities are, where the openings are, what possibly could happen now that didn’t happen before. So I’m open, but I am very sober about how it would have to be constructed and what it would actually cover and who would have to be either at the table or in the first chair behind so that they didn’t feel that they were being left out or negotiated over.”

 

“We have to treat this as an ongoing enforcement effort, which I certainly strongly support and as President would be absolutely devoted to ensuring that the agreement is followed… This does put a lid on the nuclear program, but we still have a lot of concern about the bad behavior and the actions by Iran which remains the largest state sponsor of terrorism which does go after and undermine governments in the region, that poses an existential threat to Israel, that unfairly, unlawfully confines and tries Americans on trumped up charges. That bad behavior is something we have to address.”

 

“Do I trust the Iranians? Absolutely not.” The deal’s critics, she said,  have “a respectable argument… No one should be deluded about the continuing threat that Iran poses to the region.”

 

“I'm hoping that the agreement is finally approved and I'm telling you if it's not, all bets are off.” Rejecting the deal, she said, would be a “very bad signal to send in a quickly moving and oftentimes dangerous world… The Europeans, the Russians, the Chinese, they're gonna say we agreed with the Americans, I guess their president can't make foreign policy. That's a very bad signal to send.”