Past Paul R. Pillar
Non-resident Senior Swain at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known more commonly as the Iran nuclear deal, is ane of the about significant milestones in efforts to adjourn the spread of nuclear weapons. The understanding severely limits Iran's nuclear activities while closing all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear weapon and establishing the most intrusive international inspection regime that any sovereign state has willingly imposed on itself.

The JCPOA has been successfully serving its purpose for ii years. But political forces both inside and outside the United States that never wanted anyone to brand deals with Islamic republic of iran have not given upwards their effort to kill the agreement. That effort got a new lease on life from the election of Donald Trump, who has fabricated the JCPOA another of his predecessor'southward accomplishments that he aims to destroy.

Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy by Trita ParsiUnderstanding what is at pale in the struggle for the agreement'due south survival requires knowledge not only of the terms of the understanding but also of the history leading to its signing. At that place is inappreciably a question that has been raised about the JCPOA that does not take an respond in that history. Trita Parsi provides in Losing an Enemy a definitive narrative with such answers.

Parsi is almost uniquely qualified to take written such a detailed and insightful account. He has had remarkable access to many of import players on both the American and Iranian sides, including regular conversations with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and interviews with many senior U.Southward. diplomats and political advisers who played major roles.

Parsi also has been a player himself as caput of the National Iranian American Council, an organization representing Iranian Americans that opposes many policies of the Iranian regime while supporting diplomatic means, including the JCPOA, of addressing differences betwixt the United states of america and Iran. Despite such personal involvement, Parsi's book is not a memoir. Information technology is a thoroughly researched and well documented piece of contemporary history.

The principal myth that this history dispels—a myth that opponents of the JCPOA never tire of promoting—is that there somehow was a "better deal" for the taking. Parsi's account of the long, exhaustive and exhausting, negotiations that led to the agreement shows how incorrect that myth is, and how if at that place was to exist whatsoever negotiated closing of pathways to an Iranian nuclear weapon, that closing would have to involve something that looks very much like the JCPOA.

Losing an Enemy lays out the laborious process: the demands and counter-demands, the all-night negotiating sessions, the frustrations on each side, and the shouting matches between Zarif and Secretary of State John Kerry that sometimes got and then loud that aides had to advise them to tone it down lest anybody else in the building hear them.

Parsi'southward book includes earlier history of the Iran nuclear issue, before effective negotiations got rolling afterwards Hassan Rouhani was elected president of Iran in 2013. That earlier history demonstrates the falsity of the notion that increased pressure was the key to making Iran concur to terms they would not otherwise accept.

The George W. Bush administration refused negotiations at a time when an agreement probably would have been possible with the Iranian nuclear programme less far advanced than it would become over the next several years. During those years each side tried to pressure the other: the U.s. and the West by imposing ever more sanctions, and Islamic republic of iran by spinning ever more than centrifuges and enriching ever more than uranium. It was simply when each side came to take the futility of relying only on force per unit area, and to bargain on the footing of mutual respect, that it became possible to identify restrictions on the Iranian program.

When the fate of the newly negotiated JCPOA was thrown to the U.S. Congress, arguments by the agreement'due south opponents took the form of many splats of mud that were thrown up on a wall to run into which would stick. That the arguments lacked validity reflected how, for the principal opponents, the terms of the agreement were not important despite what their rhetoric might have suggested. They did not want anyone to reach any agreement with Iran, regardless of the terms. The chief opponent was, and still is, the Netanyahu government in Israel.

Parsi recounts the history of how Israel switched from, at the time of the Islamic republic of iran-Contra matter, encouraging the United States to do business with the Islamic Republic of Iran to the reverse posture of incessantly excoriating Iran and trying to sabotage any business with information technology. The terminate of the Cold War and the toppling of Saddam Hussein meant that Israel, or at least the Israeli right, needed an enemy in the course of Iran and did not desire, per the title of Parsi'southward volume, to lose that enemy. And like another opponent of the JCPOA, the Saudi regime, the Israeli government wanted to go along Iran, as a potential competitor for regional influence, isolated and sanctioned no matter what it did on nuclear matters or anything else.

The celebrated nuclear agreement was made possible because certain political and diplomatic stars aligned the right manner, including presidents in both the The states and Islamic republic of iran with a sense of perspective and an ability to run across the other side'due south perspective. Those conditions will be difficult to recreate, and impossible to exercise and then under current U.Due south. leadership. Diplomacy can address many other issues of business to Tehran and Washington, equally information technology successfully addressed the nuclear issue. Only that will be possible just by edifice on the JCPOA, and thus merely if the JCPOA survives.

Losing an Enemy: Obama, Islamic republic of iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy by Trita Parsi
New Haven: Yale University Printing, 2017
472 pp. $32.50.

Paul R. Pillar, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies, Georgetown University

Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Boyfriend at the Centre for Security Studies of Georgetown University. He retired in 2005 from a 28-twelvemonth career in the U.South. intelligence customs. His senior positions included National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, Deputy Chief of the DCI Counterterrorist Eye, and Executive Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. He is a Vietnam War veteran and a retired officeholder in the U.Due south. Regular army Reserve. Dr. Colonnade's degrees are from Dartmouth College, Oxford University, and Princeton Academy. His books include Negotiating Peace (1983), Terrorism and U.Southward. Foreign Policy (2001), Intelligence and U.Southward. Foreign Policy (2011), and Why America Misunderstands the World (2016).

All views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, and do non necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of The Defence Post.