Ongoing talks in Vienna to salvage the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) are showing signs, however faint, of progress. But even if the U.S. under Biden re-enters the accord, a Republican president may once again exit it. Tehran understands this, which is why it is demanding some assurance that a new agreement with Washington won’t be reversed by the next administration.
If the deal is to survive, a critical mass of conservatives will need to support it.
Unfortunately, most Republicans in Congress oppose re-entering the JCPOA, and many have expressed their intention to sabotage any new agreement out of Vienna. Some on the right are even pushing for a preemptive military strike to take out Iranian nuclear reactors. Now is the time for the antiwar right to push the GOP to support the commonsense agreement, which verifiably prevented Iran from developing nuclear weapons. While that might have seemed like a long shot in 2015, when the accord was agreed to and even libertarians like Rand Paul opposed it, conservatives today have good reason to support the deal.
For one, the forces that pushed Trump to tear up the "worst deal ever" have changed dramatically. Mega-donor Sheldon Adelson is dead, Arab Gulf states now support the deal, and even Israel appears to be somewhat less hostile to an agreement. Benjamin Netanyahu still rails against it, but the disgraced former prime minister is currently on trial for corruption, and Trump reportedly suspects that his erstwhile friend "Bibi" manipulated him on Iran. In the last few years, newthink tanks have popped up to take on the foreign policy establishment while old ones are awash with funding from the pro-restraint Charles Koch. Moreover, influential national conservatives are trying to excise the malign influence of war hawks on the GOP. The next Republican president would find it politically easier, should he desire, to change his party’s tune on Tehran.
Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA testified more to his incoherence than his MAGA ideology. That’s why his more consistent "America First" precursor, Pat Buchanan, has been a vocal proponent of the deal. Far from their caricature as chest-beating troglodytes, nationalists seek to avoid war except when doing so is necessary to defend the nation. By contrast, liberal internationalists seek to impose, by force if needed, liberal democracy and an ever-expanding catalogue of human rights. Iran is a theocracy, but it poses no threat to the homeland, so communication and compromise are better than conflict.
Diplomacy with Tehran is also wise from a bigger picture, realpolitik perspective. Conservatives are more prone than liberals to seeing the world in terms of great power politics. The US now operates in a multipolar – not unipolar – world, which imposes more constraints and leaves less room for strategic error. To balance against America, Iran is seeking to ally with the other great powers in the system: China and Russia. These are fair-weather alliances that would weaken if the US reduced the threat it poses to Iran.
On the topic of geopolitics, while Russia should be considered a major power, by far the most important players in the international system are the US and China. Our elected officials, civil servants, and state planners should be focused on avoiding war with a rising China, not on bullying a far-flung regional power because it made us mad in the 1970s.
There are also domestic political reasons for conservatives to support the JCPOA. Trump’s abrogation of the deal awkwardly aligned him with neoconservatives like John Bolton and Bill Kristol. There is little indication this group remains admired by rank-and-file conservatives. Indeed, Trump’s electoral success owed in part to his willingness to denounce their chief failure: the Iraq War. To restore coherence to the populist right, national conservatives should complete their divorce with neoconservatism and embrace a pragmatic foreign policy, embodied in the JCPOA, of realism and restraint.
Americans don’t care enough about international affairs for the JCPOA to move the needle directly, but it is far more popular than would be the event it was designed to avoid, an Iraq War sequel, and was undeniably succeeding on that score. Even the Trump administration certified that the agreement was reining in Iran’s nuclear program – before backing out. Serious parties don’t arbitrarily suspend successful policies; serious conservatives should support reentering the accord.
The final reason post-Trump conservatives should support the Iran nuclear deal is that doing so would constitute a meaningful step, however small, towards American reunification. The US is riven by partisan, racial, and geographical divides, but the JCPOA brings together the pacifist left, the populist right, Democratic doves, and Republican restrainers, not to mention bowtie wearing libertarians and the Congressional Black Caucus. While conservatives shouldn’t compromise their fundamental values, they should be open to agreement across the aisle, lest political entropy lead to ever more explosive forms of dissolution and dysfunction. The US cannot persist as a coherent nation-state if every issue becomes a battleground for blue-red infighting, nor if its international commitments last no longer than the administration adopting them.
Andrew Day is a Foreign Policy Researcher for the Nonzero Foundation. He has a PhD in political science from Northwestern University and currently lives in Prague.
Don’t be naive, Amerikkka will always obey the commands of her little Brother “Israhell”
Interesting to think how different things would be if the GOP became the more anti-war party. I’d need to rethink my ideas about American politics