Dear Senator Schumer,
Your Press Release dated 08.06.15 describes how you have read the recently-negotiated agreement with Iran regarding its nuclear program. It explains your reasoning behind your decision to vote to disapprove the deal.
Respectfully, I think that your reasoning is self-defeating.
Regarding the negotiated program of inspections and validations, you find that it is better to have the deal over the next ten years than it is to not have it, and yet the opposite is true for the succeeding ten years. So, on the merits of the agreement, it seems that you are neutral overall.
However, it is said that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
That ages-old wisdom would seem, on the basis of your evaluation, to make a compelling case in favor of the deal. Whatever happens during the next decade will set the stage for anything that happens in the following decade; the opposite, of course, cannot happen.
But apparently in your mind, again according to your press release, the truly important factor is that you ". . .believe Iran will not change. . ." And yet, instead of implementing the current deal, you would have negotiations with Iran continue for some indefinite amount of time.
If Iran will not change, then why have new and additional negotiations? What would be achieved by negotiating further with a party that you believe will have nothing new to offer?
Should there be no change in Iran, as you state, then it would seem that, at best, continued negotiations would yield the same results, but with a loss of the knowledge that would be gained from inspections that could be conducted during the additional months -- perhaps years? -- that would be consumed in the restarted and prolonged discussions that you say you favor.
But there is another question about your statement regarding Iran not changing: Why do you say that? It is, after all, an extraordinary statement to make, since evidence of history is that peoples and nations are constantly changing. Why should Iran be an exception?
To be sure, Iran's theocratic government is rigid and repressive with its own population; and, it is fearful and insecure in its international relations. Yet, it also has an elected government, and that elected government pursues policies and practices that are much different from, and much more liberal than were those of its predecessor.
We in the West believe, with justification, that Iran's theocratic government is supreme in its rule of the country. If that is so, then we have to conclude that the elected government is approved of by the majority of the theocratic government. Which also means that change in Iran is theocratically-approved; perhaps not enthusiastically so, but approved nonetheless.
Furthermore, consider China, a far larger country, and one that is at least as bureaucratically-encumbered and conservative as Iran (if not more so). Is not China a prime example of change? Of course it is.
It is inevitable that Iran will change, if only so as to support its continued existence. Iranian leadership can easily look at the history of the Soviet Union to see an example of what happens to a nation that does not change.
Finally, I am surprised that you, an experienced United States Senator, would think that American interests in the Middle East are to be better served by not directly influencing Iran through improved and more frequent contact with our people, our ideas, our institutions and our values. Is it not true that Iran is one of the most important geopolitical players in that volatile and critical region? Of course it is.
Iran is not entitled to nuclear weapons, and according to your own analysis -- and the bird-in-the-hand evidence of time-weighted value -- the deal that is in front of you helps to ensure that such weapons are not developed. Iran will change, and the deal takes advantage of that change.
Even without nuclear weapons, Iran is a very important country in a very important part of the world. It has maintained that position through decades of isolation from American influence.
If now is not the time to begin to bring the full weight of American influence to bear on Iran, and the current deal is not a tool for helping to make that happen, then when is the right time, and what would be the right tool?
Yours Sincerely,
LeftWingCapitalist
2 comments:
Nicely said!
Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Following the death of the Prophet Muhammad, it took about one hundred years to establish a new political/cultural system which encompassed half the known civilized world from Spain to the borders of China. It covered every aspect of life,- religious, social and legal,- and brought with it a stabilizing force and political order.
Now we have updated attempts to repeat this on a larger scale.
The more things change,...
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