South Asia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin writes for The Hill on the benefits of the Iran deal in the absence of an alternative:
There has been a depressing predictability about some of the reaction to Tuesday’s landmark nuclear accord between Iran and the international community.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the agreement as a “historic mistake” before most Americans had had a chance to hear the outlines of the deal over their morning coffee. Politicians seeking the Republican nomination for US president were equally dour, calling the trade-off of sanctions relief for at least a decade of extraordinary nuclear constraints “appeasement” of an authoritarian, terrorist-supporting regime.
What the critics have yet to present, as President Barack Obama noted in his press conference on Wednesday, is a “viable alternative” to a hard-negotiated, complex set of arrangements that has been accepted by his administration and the governments of the world’s other major powers.