Keeping up with the Iran Deal

For those interested in the policy merits of the Iran Deal, it’s important to note the letter sent today by 37 leading American scientists, including multiple Nobelists, nuclear arms designers, former White House science advisers and the chief executive of the world’s largest general society of scientists — detailing the effects of the deal to date and urging the incoming President not to “dismantle” it. Here’s the Times article with a link to the letter.

For reasons others have addressed in substantial part, it is not possible for any U.S. president to now “dismantle” the deal in its entirety, the most significant international sanctions having been lifted by a binding resolution of the UN Security Council, a resolution all other veto bearing members of the Council remain committed to supporting. The United States could of course re-impose some or all of the national sanctions it had suspended in support of the deal. But at this point it is hard to see how the sanctions of any individual state, however powerful, would succeed in persuading Iran to abandon its decades old political and military activities in the region or do more than it is already doing to roll back its enrichment efforts.