What's next with the Iranians?

The fierce debate over the nuclear agreement with Iran has cooled, but the most interesting part of the drama is about to unfold.

Over the next few months, if all goes well, Iran will do what few countries have done. Peacefully and without the compulsion of an occupying force, Iranian engineers will rip out and destroy major portions of a nuclear complex Iran spent billions to build.

It is a massive job. Iranians will pull out two-thirds of their uranium-enriching centrifuges. They will ship out of the country almost all their stockpile of enriched uranium material that could be used to build a bomb.

They will pull out the core of their plutonium-producing reactor, drill it full of holes, and fill it with concrete. The entire program will shrink to a fraction of its current size and then be wrapped in the most intrusive inspection regime ever negotiated. For the next 25 years, state-of-the-art sensors and innovative procedures will track every ounce of Iranian uranium from the moment it is dug from the earth.

Together, these actions, most experts agree, will block Iran's pathways to a bomb for a generation. Even when some limitations expire, Iran is permanently banned from ever developing a nuclear weapon.

What does this mean for the future of U.S.-Iran relations? Three distinct approaches have emerged. Which we choose may be just as important as ending the nuclear threat.

Those who most ferociously opposed the agreement still want to confront Iran. For them, the real aim was always to overthrow the regime. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, for example, said in 2011 that "it's long since been time" to attack Iran. The goal should be to remove the regime, not appease it with deals. They will try to sabotage the accord. Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner said, "I will use every tool at my disposal to stop, slow and delay this agreement."

Hillary Clinton has a different approach. She fully embraces the agreement as a major national security achievement. But that is as far as she goes. "This isn't the start of some broader diplomatic opening," she said in a recent speech. While not explicitly ruling out further talks, she detailed a new containment policy to pressure and deter Iran. She joked at the Democratic debate that "the Iranians" were one of the enemies she was most proud of making. With Iranian troops now getting more deeply involved in Syria, this policy may appeal to many.

It certainly reassures some of her key donors and supporters. It also helps her present a tough, "realistic" foreign policy whose main pillars in the Middle East will be opposition to Iran and unconditional support for Israel.

But this is not the strategy advanced by President Barack Obama. If Clinton favors containment with some engagement, Obama prefers engagement with some containment.

In his speech to the United Nations, he spoke of exploiting the diplomatic possibilities opened by the Iran accord. While criticizing some of Iran's regional actions, he urged Iran's leaders to change course. If they do, he held out the possibility of working with them to end the bloodshed in Syria and to counter ISIS.

As if addressing both Clinton and the neoconservatives, Obama rebuffed calls for increased U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. He rejected the argument "that the only strength that matters for the United States is bellicose words and shows of military force; that cooperation and diplomacy will not work." The Iran agreement, he said, is proof of the superiority of realistic diplomacy. "If this deal is fully implemented," Obama said, "the prohibition on nuclear weapons is strengthened, a potential war is averted, our world is safer. That is the strength of the international system when it works the way it should."

Henry Kissinger agrees. "Iran's role can be critical" in preventing further Middle East collapse," he wrote Oct. 18. "The U.S. should be prepared for a dialogue with Iran if it moderates its behavior."

Speeches rarely resolve policy disputes. But the facts on the ground over the next few months might. If reports from Iran show the dismantlement of its long-feared nuclear complex, if the lifting of sanctions that will follow does not unleash a new wave of Iranian-supported guerrilla attacks, and if Iran cooperates to reduce the chaos in the region, strong diplomacy will have proven its value.

We will have begun a new chapter in Middle East history. And the system will have worked the way it should.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/whats-next-with-the-iranians-b99595868z1-336436391.html