Wednesday
Aug192015
Wednesday, August 19, 2015 at 05:27PM
EDITOR'S NOTE: This op ed column appeared in Wednesday's Oregonian. Les AuCoin as a member of Congress was considered one of sharpest minds on The Hill on defense issues - so much so - he was termed a "defense intellectual" - high praise from those in the know back in the day.
Les is a Pacific alum, has served on our Board and I've been privileged to have him as a guest lecturer when he was still in the House.
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By Les AuCoin
As senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are diamonds in a coal bin. Unlike too many of their peers, they are serious men who put country above party and principle above politics, even when it may risk their political security — which is fitting since they occupy the seats of Mark Hatfield and Wayne Morse, legends who braved criticism to back the power of diplomacy to achieve military security. The Hatfield-Morse way became the Oregon way. It is in this light that I hope Wyden and Merkley will support the Iran nuclear agreement when the Senate votes on it in September.
When serving on the House defense appropriations subcommittee, I saw Ronald Reagan reach an agreement with the former Soviet Union on the groundbreaking nuclear arms reduction agreement (START, for "Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty"). Reagan's inspection terms were so intrusive for the secretive Soviets, many Reagan doubters thought that Mikhail Gorbachev could not survive politically if he accepted them. But the Soviet leader did.
What Oregonians need to know is that the deal with Iran mandates even stronger safeguards against cheating than those Reagan achieved. So said former defense secretary Harold Brown and 29 of America's leading nuclear scientists and arms control experts. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Brown writes, "Compared with past agreements with the then-more threatening adversary the Soviet Union, the provisions for oversight are remarkably more intrusive and capable."
So if the Iran deal serves to "out-Reagan" Reagan — perhaps the most adamant national security president in recent U.S. history — how can critics call it weak? They can't. Not legitimately.
Some think the United States and its allies could get a better deal. Hypothetically, yes. One can imagine utopian measures to make Iran recognize Israel's right to exist, to stop befriending groups like Hezbollah, to support human rights at home. But as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof suggests, don't we have a better chance to achieve additional positive outcomes with a deal than without it? As Kristof writes, "(I)sn't it better that (Iran) give up 98 percent of its stockpile than that it give up none?"
Critics charge the ayatollahs with the slaughter of millions of humans. Correct. But no national security agreement forgives crimes, nor does it make one's foe a friend. Reagan, after all, did not endorse Soviet Communism in the treaty with the USSR. As I used to tell my constituents, we enter international security agreements not to reduce threats from one's friends but from one's enemies. Perforce, 36 retired U.S. admirals and generals have published an open letter in The Washington Post. They write: "We, the undersigned retired military officers, support the agreement as the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons."
I know some lobbyists and constituents are telling Wyden and Merkley that lifting economic sanctions will strengthen Iran's ability to support terrorist groups that destabilize the Middle East. That's a valid concern. But terrorism supported by a nuclear Iran would be even more sinister. Moreover, nothing in the agreement stops our allies or the United States from imposing sanctions on Iranian banks and businesses that do business with terrorists. And if Tehran itself cheats, all sanctions snap back in place. Finally, if such measures prove insufficient, nothing prevents a last-resort military response.
That's why some Israelis with more military experience than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are supporting the deal. They include Ami Ayalon, former head of Israel's security service, and Efraim Halevy, who once ran Israel's national intelligence agency. Halevy, the spymaster, asks the right question: "What is the point of canceling an agreement that distances Iran from the bomb?"
I join with hundreds of thousands of Oregonians in asking the same question of my friends, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley.
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Former Congressman Les AuCoin, D-Oregon, represented the state's First District for nine terms, was dean of the Oregon House delegation, and in the 1980s was an official congressional observer at the U.S.-Soviet START negotiations in Geneva. He lives in retirement in Bozeman, Montana.
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