4 ways Obama's Iran deal fails the test

As we pass the latest self-imposed, and superfluous, June 30 "deadline" in the administration's quixotic quest for a nuclear agreement with the most belligerent terrorist state in the Mideast, let's review the tenets of a "good" deal:

1) No-notice inspections. In truth, the shortest practicable inspections likely involve about 24 hours of notice, but the principle of go-anywhere/look at anything must be enshrined.

2) Elimination of Iran's current stockpiles of enriched uranium. Again, in truth, if you have an operating cascade, stockpiles can't be eliminated, but they can be reduced to a few hundred kgs as a minimum working stock.

3) The term of the deal should end in the liquidation of the Iranian program as an outlier to the NPT. Here there is an irreconcilable difference in this deal and a "good" deal since at the end of the term Iran emerges, by international agreement, as at worst a threshold nuclear state.

4) Sanctions should be lifted progressively, as Iranian good behavior is validated. We have seen the Iranian supreme leader's proclamation on this point.

So, we have a quadri-fecta: The agreement fails every test of a "good" deal. That said, this isn¹t a terrible deal from a narrow – very narrow – U.S.-centric perspective: It kicks the can down the road, and 99 percent of statesmanship consists in doing just that – avoiding situations that could end in war with agreements that push things into a future/different context. It is a superior deal for the Iranians: They get to reserve the option to resume their stance as a "potential NPT outlaw" while freeing themselves from sanctions. They will have also established a "right to enrich" at a robust level as an unstipulated codicil to the NPT. And just as we can threaten them, in the words of that eminent global strategist John Kerry, with "snap back" sanctions (an interesting term), they can threaten us with a breakout to vastly more enrichment activity with their stored, newer centrifuges.

But, of course, we are not the only interested parties. Though this deal is flawed from our standpoint, it is not acceptable at all to the Israelis; they need a series of events that liquidates the Iranian nuclear threat. Ditto the Saudis. Prudent planning on their part – and they have said as much – would be to meet the Iranians at the 15-year point with the same constructive capabilities of their Shia adversaries: the ability to become a nuclear-weapons state within a year. With the Saudis and Iranians at that place, the Turks and Egyptians will have no reason to think much differently. Now, of course, something could change in 15 years either in the Mideast security environment or the internal politics of Iran, but that's a highly speculative bet. History and present circumstances are not encouraging. The clearest assessment of the agreement, to modify the statement of Mr. Netanyahu slightly: "'This agreement doesn¹t preclude an Iranian bomb. It paves the way to a nuclear Mideast."

And a nuclear Mideast is a terrible prospect. Unlike the case of North Korea, which backed into a bomb capability as the Clinton administration tried in vain to negotiate it away in the '90s, Iran is not surrounded by secure, stronger states but by insecure states who are ideological-religious competitors, namely the Gulf monarchies and Israel. What would be a nuisance for us – an Iranian bomb – would be an existential threat and strategic imbalance for them. Both have the means – though not overwhelming means absent U.S. assistance – to oppose this development. However, in taking steps to oppose an Iranian bomb/threshold status, they would initiate a period of rapid, large change fraught with risk.

The foreign and security policy of the Obama administration has been unblemished by success and marred by a string of catastrophes: the incoherence of its Libya intervention; the mishandling of Egypt and the replacement of any peace process with hostility to the only stable democracy in the region; the squandering of a stable, developing Iraq for the chaos of an ISIS-threatened one; the embarrassment of the Syrian red line; and the shame of the Russian "reset." With that track record, and the distance between what's on the table and a "good" deal, do we dare risk another throw of the dice with this shaky team?

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