Harf said she would not reply to Kissinger and Schultz’s article “line by line” and therefore did not answer their “big words and big thoughts” that blow open the entire claim that the United States can slap sanctions on Iran if Tehran violates the deal.
They wrote:
The ultimate significance of the framework will depend on its verifiability and enforceability…
No official text has yet been published. …The new approach complicates verification and makes it more political because of the vagueness of the criteria.
After pointing out that “under the new approach, Iran permanently gives up none of its equipment, facilities or fissile product to achieve the proposed constraints,” Kissinger and Schultz argued:
Devising theoretical models of inspection is one thing. Enforcing compliance, week after week, despite competing international crises and domestic distractions, is another….
Iran is in a position to violate the agreement by executive decision. Restoring the most effective sanctions will require coordinated international action. In countries that had reluctantly joined in previous rounds, the demands of public and commercial opinion will militate against automatic or even prompt ‘snap-back.’
Obama’s track record in attempts to stabilize the Middle East so far has been a failure, by virtually all accounts except those of his officials. Kissinger and Schultz fear that the emerging deal with Iran will end up isolating the United States and not Iran, which after a decade could become a nuclear power and spark a nuclear arms race in the region.
They added:
Cooperation is not an exercise in good feeling; it pre-supposes congruent definitions of stability. There exists no current evidence that Iran and the U.S. are remotely near such an understanding. Even while combating common enemies, such as ISIS, Iran has declined to embrace common objectives… Tehran occupies positions along all of the Middle East’s strategic waterways and encircles arch-rival Saudi Arabia, an American ally. Unless political restraint is linked to nuclear restraint, an agreement freeing Iran from sanctions risks empowering Iran’s hegemonic efforts.
Rather than enabling American disengagement from the Middle East, the nuclear framework is more likely to necessitate deepening involvement there—on complex new terms.