Chlorine, Nukes, and American Credibility

One of the greatest Israeli concerns about a possible nuclear deal with Iran goes beyond the terms of any deal itself to the issue of enforcement.  The issue is summed up in a Laura Rozen piece:

The Israelis are also deeply concerned, the former US diplomat said, that if there is a violation by Iran of a final nuclear accord, that the violation will be seen by Washington as too ambiguous or incremental, that there “is no smoking gun.” The Israelis are “nervous that the U.S. will continuously say, ‘we are checking into it, we need more proof,’” the former diplomat described. “At what point does the cumulative effect of the small things add up to a violation?”

She describes the American as “a senior former US diplomat involved in the April consultations in Israel.”

The Israeli concern is serious, because the pattern they fear is familiar. Officials who have gone out on a limb to negotiate a deal despite criticism of it, rejected the criticism, defended the deal, and indeed celebrated the deal as a great diplomatic achievement, do NOT wish to find that it has been violated and that their achievement is in tatters. This was a key problem in our strategic arms limitations negotiations with the USSR. In the early 1980s, Congress passed legislation requiring the administration to report to it on any Soviet treaty violations precisely because it understood and feared the temptation to avoid finding violations or doing anything about them. (See, for example, the McClure-Symms-Helms amendment to the State Department authorization bill in 1983.)

Fast Forward to today, when it’s clear that the Assad regime is using chlorine gas in bomb attacks. This week the Daily Telegraph in London reported as follows: