COMMENTARY: Step back from war with Iran

“We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient ... that we cannot impose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind ... and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.”

President John F. Kennedy’s words are as true today as they were in 1961. America must work with other nations to achieve its objectives.

This is readily apparent in the Iranian nuclear negotiations. A compromise bill that reached the Senate floor on Tuesday would force a Congressional review of any final nuclear deal and is a crucial step towards reasserting overall Congressional oversight of the executive branch. It also avoids the complications of its earlier, more hard-line version. Yet,some in Congress have made it clear that their goal is to sabotage any workable nuclear deal — not just to reassert Congressional authority.

Sens. Cory Booker and Robert Menendez were right to sign onto the compromise bill. But our senators should not join any effort to sabotage a final deal.

A nuclear-armed Iran, a nation that is clearly our adversary, is something the U.S. must prevent. But the window to block Iran from having thousands of centrifuges passed when the U.S. refused to negotiate a decade ago.

Since a 2003 Iranian offer to suspend enrichment and abandon support for terrorism was ignored, the Iranian nuclear program only accelerated. Despite increasingly harsh sanctions, the number of Iranian centrifuges continued to rise from 5,000 in 2010 to the nearly 20,000 they have today. There is no reason to expect the continuation of sanctions would change things.

Pushing forward with unilateral sanctions now, or sabotaging the deal, would leave the U.S., and not Iran, isolated. The P5+1, which consists of the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Russia and China, agreed to this framework in early April. As Kennedy identified 54 years ago, we cannot bend every nation to our will; we must work with partners. The international sanctions regime will fall apart if America walks away from the table and negotiations collapse.

Those opposing the deal must lay out an alternate route. Some, such as Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, have called for airstrikes — believing they can resolve the issue in days.

This assertion was contradicted by defense and foreign policy experts, including Adm. William Fallon and former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. They endorsed a Wilson Center report in 2012, which found that even an ideal strike would only delay Iran by four years. To stop Iran from getting a bomb, the U.S. would need to conduct a “significantly expanded air and sea war over a prolonged period of time, likely several years.”

The report also stated that strikes would result in counterattacks from Iran that could drag the U.S. into a broader war and increase the likelihood of Iran becoming a nuclear state.

To stop the path towards war, reach out to your representatives and let them know that you support the Iranian nuclear negotiations as the best way to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. Our representatives may listen to where they feel public pressure.

Frank Broomell spent four years in the Marine Corps as an intelligence officer before starting his master’s in public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he will graduate in May. He is a Sicklerville native.