A Legacy Obama May Not Want
U.S. aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Gulf of Oman, Dec. 25, 2015
Photo Credit: U.S.Navy/Mass Communication Spec 3D Class J.M. Tolbert
Last October and November the Iranians sent us a message once more through their actions that they really will not halt their development of nuclear weapons. As if we really needed this confirmation, given past Iranian behavior! What they did was to conduct tests of a number of ballistic missiles. Some of these missiles appear to be of relatively short range, but were launched close to the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman, shown above, the destroyer USS Buckley, and the French Frigate FS Provence in the Strait of Hormuz in a “highly provocative” test. The missiles were launched from Iranian missile boats about 1500 yards from the warships.
Violations of U.N. Security Council Resolution
However, more disturbing were tests of the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) Emad, internally developed and produced by Iran. IRBMs make sense only with nuclear warheads. They are entirely too expensive to be used otherwise.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia commons/Tasnimnews/Mohammad Agah
These missiles reportedly have a range of 2000 km (1243 miles) to accurately hit targets , and their development violates a United Nations Security Council resolution that prohibits Iranian ballistic missile development. The Obama administration has known about these missiles for a long time, as demonstrated by an unclassified Defense Department report to Congress, Fiscal Year 2014 Annual Report on Military Power of Iran, January 2015. In that report we find the following point.
(U) Although Iran has paused progress in some areas of its nuclear program and fulfilled its obligations under the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), it continues to develop technological capabilities that also could be applicable to nuclear weapons, including ballistic missile development.
Such ballistic missile development would make sense only if Iran possessed nuclear warheads to put on the missiles. In addition, Iran has a long history of developing a nuclear capability  for making enriched nuclear fuel that makes sense only if they wanted nuclear weapons. It also has a long history of duplicity with the West while discussing its nuclear enrichment and possible weapons development. This practice of deception was actually admitted by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani when he boasted about it on a video. All of these developments would seem to make Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran not worth the paper on which it is written. Knowing all this, why would President Obama prize the so-called “nuclear agreement” so much as a part of his presidential legacy?
Obama Administration Reaction
Early in December 2015 the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power accused the U.N. Security Council during a Council meeting of “dithering” about an appropriate reaction to the Iranian violation. Apparently, there are not many council members who want to deal with the problem. Power declared further,
We don’t see how council members can cast doubt on these violations. In many cases, Iranian officials have boasted publicly about taking prohibited actions, leaving them no plausible deniability. …Â This council cannot allow Iran to feel that it can violate our resolutions with impunity. Some council members may not like those resolutions, but they are our resolutions.
In reaction to the apparent violation, the Obama administration initially said it was preparing new sanctions on Iran. But then Iran reacted to the possibility of new sanctions by declaring they would be a violation of the nuclear agreement themselves. As a result the Obama administration showed its more usual lack of a backbone and dropped the idea of new Iranian sanctions.
Iranian-North Korean Connection
In the meantime Iran is feared to be outsourcing some of the development work for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to another international pariah, North Korea. Much of the information on this alleged connection comes from an Iranian opposition movement, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), and is disputed. On the other hand CIA Director John Brennan is worried enough that his agency is going to monitor any possible collaboration. The Washington Times reported Larry Niksch, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said at a July meeting of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that
There appears to be little in the Iran nuclear agreement that would prevent Iran from continuing or increasing its personnel and financial investments in North Korea’s future missile and nuclear warhead programs. … It seems to me that North Korea may receive from Iran upwards of $2 [billion] to $3 billion annually from Iran for the various forms of collaboration between them.
However, at the very same hearing Jim Walsh, an associate of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testified that there was no real evidence for a nuclear component to the Iran-North Korean collaboration. He said
People who believe there has been nuclear cooperation rely almost exclusively on media accounts. I reviewed some 76 media reports covering a span of 11 years. None of the 76 reports has been confirmed — none. … On the other side of the ledger, the DNI, the IAEA, the U.N. Panel of Experts for Iran, and the U.N. Panel of Experts for North Korea, despite numerous opportunities to do so has never claimed Iranian-North Korean nuclear coordination.
Nevertheless, there does not seem to be any similar disagreement concerning a collaboration over ballistic missiles.
Iranian-Saudi Arabia Hostility
Because of Obama’s overt favoring of Iran in order to get his putatively legacy-securing nuclear deal with Iran, more traditional Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia are feeling very insecure and exposed to future nuclear aggression by Iran. While many of Saudi Arabia’s problems are self-made in their holding-battle against modernity, they have a very legitimate security concern against Iran’s imperial ambitions for a world-wide Shiite Imamate. Seeing the Obama administration openly side with Iran against Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states seem to be thinking they can depend only on themselves for their security against Iran with the U.S. being totally undependable. If Saudi Arabia should decide, perhaps in collaboration with other Gulf states, to develop its own nuclear arsenal, no one should be surprised.
Obama’s Legacy
In pushing so hard for the Iran nuclear agreement, Obama and his administration had been hoping not only to remove the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons, but to draw in Iran and moderate their behavior to help solve some of the region’s problems.
The historical result of this agreement will probably be far different. If Obama has miscalculated and Iran continues to develop nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, then Obama’s legacy might well be an Iran that continues to be a mortal enemy. Another part of that legacy ultimately may be nuclear war between Iran and any who oppose them in the Middle East. This may well be a legacy he will not want.
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