U.S.-Iran deal faces bipartisan scrutiny

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the United States and Iran was in trou­ble before the ink was dry. Both Democrats and Republicans had mis­giv­ings about the terms of the deal. That type of bipar­ti­san­ship is unusu­al in today’s Congress. 

Briefly, the MoU has 14 parts: 

1. Immediate ter­mi­na­tion of mil­i­tary oper­a­tions on all fronts, includ­ing Lebanon
2. Respect for each other’s sovereignty 
3. Begin 60-day nego­ti­at­ing peri­od for final deal 
4. U.S. removes naval blockade 
5. Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz, with­out tolls (more on this later) 
6. $300 bil­lion plan for Iran’s recon­struc­tion and eco­nom­ic development 
7. U. S. removal of “all types of sanc­tions” against Iran 
8. Iran reaf­firms it will not pro­cure or devel­op nuclear weapons 
9. Agreement “to main­tain sta­tus quo” pend­ing final deal 
10. U. S. issues waivers for export of Iranian crude oil, petro­le­um products 
11. U. S. releas­es frozen Iranian funds 
12. Monitor the suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion and future com­pli­ance of the final deal 
13. Agreement on the time­line for negotiations 
14. Final deal to be endorsed by the UN Security Council 

Item one also includes the word “per­ma­nent” before “ter­mi­na­tion.” This pro­vi­sion was being broached before and dur­ing the sign­ing of the doc­u­ment as Israel con­tin­ued to bom­bard Lebanon, where it is esti­mat­ed that near­ly 4,000 peo­ple have been killed. At the same time, Israel pro­posed a “buffer zone” between itself and Lebanon, rang­ing between 6.2 and 9.3 miles in depth. Of course, the entire zone lies with­in Lebanese ter­ri­to­ry, and it is doubt­ful whether for­mer res­i­dents would be allowed to return to their homes there. Even the Korean DMZ is only 2.5 miles wide. 

While item five stip­u­lates the reopen­ing of the Strait “with­out tolls,” the full text of the clause stip­u­lates “for six­ty days only,” which leaves open the issue of whether Iran will be allowed to impose pas­sage tolls in any extend­ed agreement. 

Item six refers to “region­al part­ners” as the par­ties respon­si­ble for estab­lish­ing the fund. While it may be like­ly for the Arab part­ners to kick in, it is high­ly improb­a­ble that Israel, as one of the U.S. “part­ners,” will ever make any con­tri­bu­tions to such a fund. 

Perhaps the great­est furor in Congress con­cerns items six and eleven. Many in Congress are opposed to any American funds being expend­ed to help rebuild Iran. These same mem­bers were almost uni­ver­sal­ly com­pla­cent in expend­ing bil­lions of dol­lars to destroy Iran’s infra­struc­ture. They even balk at releas­ing the frozen Iranian funds, although this would alleged­ly not occur with­out com­pli­ance with the oth­er terms of the agreement. 

It’s easy to con­sid­er the impli­ca­tions of item six and to won­der why the United States would want to under­take, in part, a pro­gram designed to help its for­mer ene­my. But an exam­i­na­tion of his­to­ry pro­vides a broad­er per­spec­tive on such actions. The Marshall Plan of the late 1940s pro­vid­ed matériel and funds to a destroyed Germany fol­low­ing World War II. This plan result­ed in a coun­try that recov­ered from the war rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly and has become one of the most val­ued allies of the United States. 

Many of the oth­er Mideast coun­tries are already con­sid­ered friends and allies of the United States. 

Perhaps, in time, with renewed diplo­ma­cy and mutu­al under­stand­ing, Iran could enter that group as well, if we can demon­strate that we are more of a friend than Russia and China. 

And per­haps we should remem­ber that, until the United States launched an unde­clared war on Iran and killed near­ly 200 school­child­ren in a sin­gle strike, the peo­ple of Iran had large­ly favor­able opin­ions toward this country. 

It would be advan­ta­geous to make it so again.