Heinrich Boll Stifting North America interviews South Asia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin on the Iran nuclear deal debate in the United States:
“No, I can’t, frankly. There have been heated debates over arms control agreements with the Russians and so on but nothing like this. I’ve never seen such a full-court press on the part of either the proponents or the opponents of a recent foreign policy decision taken by the U.S government.”
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I think they play an extensive role. Now, there are people who simply do not trust Iran and don’t want to see any kind of agreement with Iran. But in this case I have been particularly disappointed that several Republican Senators that I thought might vote for the deal have come out in opposition to it, and I think that’s because of political pressure, frankly, from the Republican Party and their concerns about campaign donations from wealthy individuals who are opposed to the deal.
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I think that actually a number of people do understand the multilateral nature of the deal and understand that the United States really cannot relitigate this agreement. Europe will not follow us, and certainly the Russians and the Chinese will not follow us. Some opponents are making the argument though that if the United States retained certain economic sanctions, particularly on the financial sector in Iran, that this would somehow force at least the Europeans to go along with the United States. I don’t think that’s the case. I think we’ve already passed that point. But this is an argument that’s being made and it’s hard to convince these people otherwise. The only thing that would prove the negative is if the U.S. did walk away and Europe went back to trading with Iran, and European banks started becoming engaged with Iranian banks again, and the U.S. sanctions would be proven to be invalid. But for the moment it’s very hard to convince people of this.
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I think they are zero, they are absolutely zero. This is a process that began more than a decade ago with the E3 countries [editor’s note: The E3 countries include Germany, France and Great Britain]. We had an excellent event at the Atlantic Council back in May with the Ambassadors of the E3 countries and we talked about the long history of these negotiations. The United States really only became enthusiastically involved after Obama took office. But the last two years in particular have become so intense, with so much time spent on the part of not just Foreign Ministers but major portions of the governments of all of the negotiating countries – it’s simply ridiculous to think that we could go back and re-negotiate now.
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I think it’s hard to say. As long as Obama is President, I don’t think that Americans who are opposed to the deal will be able to interrupt its implementation. My concern really comes later if a Republican is elected President and there’s a Republican-led Congress as well. Then I might have some concerns– not so much about the nuclear deal itself but about efforts to re-impose some of the sanctions under the cover of opposition to some other Iranian policies. And then of course we have a mirror image: if these steps are taken in the U.S., then Iranian hardliners will immediately move to try to respond in kind– whether through the Iranian Parliament or through some other action in the region that would be controversial.
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Well, many Iranian dissidents have also come out in support of the deal. My view is that if we don’t have a deal, it makes it more likely for the Iranian government to become more repressive. I think that this deal opens Iran up to more international commerce, more foreigners coming, more influence from the West, and even though the government tries to resist this kind of intervention or interference- whatever you want to call it- into Iranian affairs, it’s really a mission impossible. Iran is already very open to Western influence and it will become more so. And that will ultimately be good for Iranian civil society and for people who want to see Iran evolve in a more democratic way. So I think this is going to be positive for Iranian civil society, although we should obviously not expect miracles over night and we will unfortunately continue to see human rights abuses in Iran for the time being.