How a Republican president could kill the Iran deal

By Nahal Toosi

The deal is at most a political arrangement — not a treaty or other form of signed legal document

If the next president hates the nuclear deal with Iran, he (or she) can undo it after taking office.
The dilemma: Do it with blunt force? Or go for a soft kill?

The accord reached this week in Vienna promises broad sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for significant curbs on its nuclear program. The agreement has taken years to negotiate, involves seven countries as well as the European Union and the United Nations, and relies upon the expertise of scientists as well as diplomats.
But at the end of the day, the “deal” is at most a political arrangement — not a treaty or other form of signed legal document.
That means that the presidential candidates who have threatened to cancel the deal — so far all of them Republicans — can keep their promise by using the presidency’s executive authority to reimpose suspended U.S. sanctions on Iran and withdrawing from panels involved in implementing the accord.
That abrupt approach may be quick, but it also carries risks.
For one thing, a sudden U.S. withdrawal could anger the European and Asian countries also involved in the deal, making them less inclined to reimpose their own sanctions on a country they consider an alluring trading partner. The international business community may resist efforts to once again seal off a youthful, well-educated nation with vast energy reserves. And Iran could respond to the U.S. move by resuming elements of its nuclear program, which the West has long suspected is aimed at making weapons.
“If we try to reimpose sanctions on Iran and no one follows, then we have the worst of all worlds,” said Robert Einhorn, a former Iran nuclear negotiator at the State Department.
Instead, even the deal’s most ardent critics say, a new president might be better off taking a more subtle, longer-term approach, one that involves laying the groundwork to ultimately convince the world that Iran — through perceived violations, intransigence, foot-dragging or whatever a president chooses to highlight — has left the U.S. no choice but to quit the deal.
“You say it’s a bad deal, but you don’t just rip up the deal,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
The first step for a newly inaugurated president would be to order a review of the accord, which will already have been in effect for roughly a year and a half.
It’s possible the Iranians will have been accused of violating the deal by the time a new president takes office, so a review could tally those transgressions to sow doubts in the minds of the American public about the soundness of the agreement. Depending on how major the violations are, the U.S. might also be able to persuade other nations the deal isn’t working.
Even if the Iranians haven’t committed any or many notable violations, there are other factors a president could point to.
Take the regional situation: If Iran, either directly or through proxies, has escalated its interference in other countries in the Middle East, a president could blame the nuclear deal by saying it has given Tehran economic leverage to pursue mischief outside its borders. America’s Arab allies, who have watched Iran make inroads everywhere from Syria to Lebanon to Iraq, have long argued that the Iranian government will take advantage of sanctions relief to funnel more money toward its regional aggression.
Here, a U.S. president — and a hawkish Congress — also has the option of leveling new sanctions on Iran that aren’t necessarily tied to its nuclear program but rather to its support for terrorist groups. (Existing sanctions that target Iran over its support for terrorism and its abuses of human rights won’t be lifted under the nuclear deal.)
At the very least, the new sanctions will increase the tension between the U.S. and Iran, possibly even leading to a backlash from Tehran that boosts the U.S. president’s standing.
Dubowitz said it’s critical that the U.S. sanctions target in particular the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful military unit that controls a large chunk of the Iranian economy and is behind much of the country’s interference in other states. At the same time that the U.S. is adding sanctions, it should remind the international business community of the riskiness of doing business in Iran, Dubowitz added.
How U.S. allies in the region — especially Israel — feel about the deal in 2017 and beyond could also affect a U.S. president’s ability to make a case against the Islamic Republic. If Israel’s leaders insist that the accord is not working and can point to intelligence or other evidence that backs up their claim, that gives added credence to the president’s decision to walk away from the agreement. (Already on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ripped the deal as “a historic mistake.”)
Not that any of this is simple or predictable.
A president determined to get rid of the deal, but unwilling to do so through an abrupt withdrawal, could find that it will take longer than one term, or even two, to make his case to the world. He might even find it hard to get his own administration on board.
“Even if you get a total nut job in the Oval Office you’re going to have a policy fight internally,” arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis said. “Regardless of what Republicans say, they tend to do things that are much more moderate because it’s hard to move the government.”
At least one Republican presidential candidate appears to be taking this reality into account. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said earlier this month that although he was disturbed by President Barack Obama’s efforts to strike a deal with Iran, he wouldn’t promise to undo it if elected. His stance was far more cautious than that of other GOP White House contenders such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who have said they’d revoke the deal unless it meets their more stringent requirements.
“I’m not one of those guys who’s going to say to you, ‘On Day One, I will abrogate the agreement,’” Christie told a group of Republicans in New Hampshire. “On Day One, I will look into and try to decide what to do with the agreement, depending on where we are at that moment. Because, by the way, it’s not just us involved anymore. We have a number of our allies around the world who’re at that table as well, and sanctions are most effective when not only we do it, but the other allies do it.”
Still, it’s not unprecedented for an administration to abandon an agreement signed by a predecessor. Even if the agreement rose to the level of a treaty, a U.S. president has so much power in the realm of foreign policy that he could withdraw from it, the way George W. Bush left the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. America’s 1994 nuclear deal with North Korea, meanwhile, died a slow and painful death after years of alleged violations by both sides.
One potential wild card in the Iran case is whether the U.N. Security Council will pass a resolution that gives the deal some binding status under international law, said Tyler Cullis, a legal fellow with the National Iranian American Council, a group that supports the talks. Although a president could in theory simply disregard such a resolution, he would be taking the risk of putting the U.S. in violation of international law if he unilaterally withdraws without a lawful justification.
Dubowitz, one of the most vocal skeptics of the Iran talks, insisted that if he was president his goal wouldn’t be to outright destroy a deal but to try to ensure that Iran never achieves nuclear weapons capability.
He doubts the current deal does that because, he says, Iran will be able to expand its economic might as sanctions fade, making it even easier for it to resume nuclear activity once restrictions on its program start to drop off after the first 10 years of the agreement.
So he envisions a 10-year timeline to strengthen America’s hand against Iran, one that would involve a U.S. president laying the groundwork for his successor and making some new demands from Iran. The president could insist, for instance, that if within five years U.N. inspectors cannot verify that Iran’s nuclear program is entirely peaceful, then the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities that would have dropped off after year 10 would stay on.
It might not make for an easy soundbite on the 2016 campaign trail, but this more long-term approach could ultimately yield a less-dangerous Iran without undermining America’s international standing.
“There’s always a quicker way, but the question is ‘Is there a smarter way to accomplish your objective’?” Dubowitz said. ““I hope all our candidates are thoughtful in how they deal with what I think is increasingly an incredibly difficult situation for the next president to handle. This deal is going to leave the next president with an excruciatingly difficult decision: either to accept an Iranian bomb or to bomb Iran.”