Reuters: Iran, world powers reach initial deal on reining in Tehran's nuclear program

[SkinsHokieFan]

I'd oppose making a deal with Saudi Arabia if they ever threatened or tried to develop nukes as well.

 

They already have nukes

 

They are stored in Pakistan. The funding for AQ Khan and the development of the Pakistan nuke came from the Saudi's 

[Kilmer17]

What about Israel?

Israel isn't supplying and supporting terrorists.  So they don't pose the threat that Iran (or SA) does.

 

They already have nukes

 

They are stored in Pakistan. The funding for AQ Khan and the development of the Pakistan nuke came from the Saudi's 

Who controls them? 

[SkinsHokieFan]

Israel isn't supplying and supporting terrorists.  So they don't pose the threat that Iran (or SA) does.

 

Who controls them? 

 

Israel just spent last summer destroying Gaza.

 

Who controls the Pakistan nukes? LOL.

 

Not Nawaz Sharif. Maybe the ISI? And in many ways the Saudi's, considering how they have bought Pakistan

 

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/middle-east/article24783202.html

 

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Pakistan-faces-dilemma-as-Saudi-bills-come-due-30258370.html

 

From the start of this relationship, two things were clear: that Saudi Arabia viewed Pakistan as a unique military partner able to plug the desert kingdom's inherent security vulnerabilities and, second, that the Saudis were determined to cement this alliance through the funding of a vast network of personal, commercial and business partnerships which ultimately drew in most of Pakistan's ruling elite.

Saudi Arabia bankrolled large chunks of Pakistan's nuclear programme precisely because the Saudis saw it as their own route to eventual nuclear power status, should Iran acquire such a capability.

Saudi credits also allowed Pakistan to withstand the economic sanctions, which followed. The man who was central to Pakistan's nuclear decision-making at the time is the same Nawaz Sharif who rules the country's destiny today.

 

 

In my opinion, considering what sell outs Pakistani's are, if the Saudi's came asking for them to launch at whoever, the Pakistani's would salute and say "yes sir" 

[Larry]

I am also one who thinks the "Iran threat" is the most over blown threat of this century

The last time Iran launched a war unprovoked was 2000 years ago.

Now, Iran ain't exactly the most passive country in the Mideast.

They may not be launching overt military invasions, but they aren't Switzerland, either.

[tshile]

I'll take North Korea for the win please.

 

you walked too far

 

swap the n with a q

 

(and what it is we're inspecting)

 

 

though, considering the end result was a poorly executed invasion of the country, maybe the appropriate emoticon is:

[Predicto]

I'm no more scared of an Iranian nuclear missile than a North Korean, Indian, or Russian, but I am very worried that Iran will be happy to supply dirty bombs to eager terrorists.

 

 

 

I'm not.   The Iranians have self interest too.   No one who runs a state wants to let their nuclear material get into the hands of unstable terrorists, even ones supposedly on their side.   It's too likely to come back to burn you, either by the terrorist turning on you  or by the terrorists just mishandling it and irradating a couple counties or by someone else capturing it and using it on you, or by the Americans or Israelis tracking it back to you (which is almost guaranteed to happen).  

 

Here's a detailed analysis by national security experts, if you have a lot of time on your hands.

 

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00127

 

That "giving nukes to the terrorists" thing is a Tom Clancy-type fantasy that even Netanyahu doesn't really believe.  It's a phantom danger.   The main purpose of having a nuke is so you don't have to fear invasion or open attack by the USA, Israel or anyone else.  Nearly all military leverage against you is gone.      

[visionary]

I'm of two minds on this deal.  I'm happy that Iranians are happy about it...but I'm pretty worried that Iran will use this new found freedom and money to **** over a lot more people.  

The fact that all sanctions are going to be removed on every scumbag official and terrorist/sectarian militia organizer of theirs is frightening.  

As someone who has never feared Iran as a nuclear threat, but who assumes they will get nukes anyway if they really want them...it seems like we've just made a huge mistake trading an imagined threat for a real and much more pervasive one.

I'm not entirely blaming the administration, as a lot of this is the fault of all the fear-mongers out there drumming people up into a frenzy over the wrong things.

[Burgold]

 

 

That "giving nukes to the terrorists" thing is a Tom Clancy-type fantasy that even Netanyahu doesn't really believe.  It's a phantom danger.   The main purpose of having a nuke is so you don't have to fear invasion or open attack by the USA, Israel or anyone else.  Nearly all military leverage against you is gone.      

Nuke yes... materials for a dirty bomb... I don't know.

 

I very much hope you're right though. It makes sense. It's still a very scary scenario. After all, Iran has supplied conventional, biological, and chemical weapons to terrorists in the past.

[TradeTheBeal!]

To whom has Iran supplied chemical weapons? They were absolutely the victim of US supplied chemical weapons in the 80s.

[Burgold]

To whom has Iran supplied chemical weapons? They were absolutely the victim of US supplied chemical weapons in the 80s.

I'll try to look it up. My memory may be playing tricks, but I coulda sworn I remember this. Early guess would be Syria though.

[visionary]

An interesting take that I hadn't considered too much:

 

https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/15/the-saudi-cold-war-with-iran-heats-up/

The Saudi Cold War With Iran Heats Up

 

the days before the nuclear deal with Iran was signed, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sounded excited about the prospect that an agreement could pave the way for other diplomatic breakthroughs in the region. In an interview with his hometown Boston Globe, he spoke about how the deal is “an opportunity here to galvanize people” and potentially “open some doors” to future regional cooperation.

 

Having come up empty-handed on the Middle East peace process, Kerry has now won the centerpiece accomplishment of his term as secretary of state. But on the point of further breakthroughs, he is bound to be disappointed. This success will only exacerbate regional tensions in the short term by escalating the cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

 

U.S. President Barack Obama’s first overtures to Iran in 2009, and the back-channel negotiations that started in 2012, took place when the regional landscape looked very different. That was before Iran and Hezbollah sunk their men and resources into propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, before Shiite militias in Iraq deployed in force to counter the so-called Islamic State (IS) — and, crucially, before disenfranchised Sunnis started feeling, rightly or wrongly, that they were taking a beating by Iran across the region.

 

The negotiations have concluded in Vienna as the rivalry between Tehran and Riyadh is raging across the Middle East, and the deal will make it only harder to get under control. While Riyadh will likely publicly acquiesce to the agreement, the depth of its hostility toward Tehran remains unchanged. If anything, a deal that Saudi Arabia perceives as a rapprochement between its key ally and its archnemesis will only intensify the proxy war.If anything, a deal that Saudi Arabia perceives as a rapprochement between its key ally and its archnemesis will only intensify the proxy war.

The cables include, for example, an undated missive from the Saudi Embassy in Tehran reporting that the Iranians warned Turkey that if any Turkish bases were used to conduct military operations in Syria, Tehran would strike them.

 

Tehran doesn’t shy away from boasting about its growing regional power, taunting Saudi Arabia with loud talk about its influence in Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad. The scrutiny that intelligence agencies give its activities, as well as the U.S. and European sanctions slapped on Iranian officials and institutions, means that Iran’s more nefarious activities get a lot of coverage, painting a more detailed picture of what Tehran is up to across the region.

 

But until it launched a war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s own efforts to bolster its regional influence were quieter and much more subtle. They were, however, no less effective — and included the funding of mosques, Islamic organizations, and religious schools from Morocco to Egypt and all the way to Pakistan and the Maldives.

Instead, tinkering with the status quo has caused deep anxiety within the Arab countries of the Gulf and has frayed ties with America’s allies — from Israel to the United Arab Emirates — which felt betrayed by the administration’s lack of transparency during the negotiations. They’re stepping into what they see as a void — taking more aggressive actions in Syria, launching a war in Yemen, and bombing militants’ bases in Libya.

 

The Obama administration kept a safe distance from regional issues that could antagonize Iran while the nuclear negotiations were ongoing. It has now signaled it wants to deal more forcefully with conflicts in the Arab world — including tackling IS and ending the conflict in Syria — but it will have to work harder and faster to convince the Saudis that it is serious about offsetting Iranian power in the wake of an agreement.

 

 

 

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/meet-drama-obama-120171.html

Meet 'Drama' Obama

But such nonchalance has never been been quite true, and he has seldom worn his fierce urgency so publicly as he does now. Obama wasn’t bellowing or overtly emotional but the intensity level was kicked up several notches.

 

“If we don’t choose wisely, I believe future generations will judge us harshly, for letting this moment slip away,” he said at the top of Wednesday’s proceedings, a statement that reflects his every-second-matters mood during his surprisingly successful second term.

 

Obama began by fumbling for the list of pre-vetted reporters who were allowed to ask questions. The list, usually pored over by staff to exclude wild-card questioners, couldn’t have mattered less. He was in a mood to confine the questions and answers to the stage, like an actor playing a president talking to himself in a one-man show.

 

When a grave wire service reporter asked an opening query about Iran’s military capability, Obama blew past as if he were invisible — and said he first he wanted to dispense with critics’ attacks on the deal. For the next 10 minutes or so, he filibustered to the floodlights, leaning on the lectern as he laid out arguments pressed by congressional Republicans and Israel-centric Democrats, swatting them aside one-by-one. He never got around to answering the question.

 

When Jonathan Karl of ABC News asked an Iran question – then tried to slip in what Obama thought was a frivolous Donald Trump query — the president cut him off and launched into another 10-plus minute answer that had little relation to anything Karl asked.

 

He was especially eager to address Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s claim that he had made an “historic mistake” by cutting the deal with Iran. “You have a large country, with a significant military, that has proclaimed that Israel shouldn’t exist, that has denied the Holocaust, that has financed Hezbollah,” he explained. “There are very good reasons why Israelis are nervous about Iran’s position in the world, generally.”

But, he added, “those threats are compounded if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.”

 

Then it came time for Major Garrett, a veteran and well-liked correspondent for CBS, to ask a question.

 

“As you well know, there are four Americans in Iran, three held on trumped-up charges, according to your administration, one whereabouts unknown… Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content with all the fanfare around this deal to leave the conscience of this nation, the strength of this nation unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?”

 

Obama’s eyes flashed anger and he shot back, “That’s nonsense. And you should know better,” which surprised a gathered White House press corps accustomed to a more veiled variety of Obama disdain.

If Obama has a public reputation for message discipline and self-control, his staff has often struggled to keep him from displaying his thin-skinned and professorial proclivities in public. That was an especially tough task during the rocky debate prep sessions in 2012 when he sniped at an aggressive John Kerry, who was playing Mitt Romney, and lectured over anyone who tried to clip his answers into sound bites.

 

But most of the advisers who could tell Obama to chill out — David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs — are gone now, and Obama is left to police himself. And he did, just barely, at the end of the long press conference just before he was about to call an end and hop on Marine One to Andrews. He opened the floor for questions — but only about Iran — and reporters began shouting them at the rostrum.

 

“In 6.5 yrs of covering WH never seen Obama stay longer than required at a press conf.,” Tweeted Carol Lee, a longtime White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and POLITICO, “that’s how much he wants #IranDeal to work out."

[grhqofb5]

you walked too far

 

swap the n with a q

 

(and what it is we're inspecting)

 

 

though, considering the end result was a poorly executed invasion of the country, maybe the appropriate emoticon is:

 

Qorth Korea??

[Larry]

I have to confess that I can see how lifting sanctions will be seen by Tehran as a green light to step up their already powerful use of covert powers in the Mideast. 

 

I'll still jump at the deal, cause I'd much rather have an even more covert Iran than a nuclear one.  But yeah, I certainly assume there will be effects we don't like. 

[visionary]

I have to confess that I can see how lifting sanctions will be seen by Tehran as a green light to step up their already powerful use of covert powers in the Mideast. 

 

I'll still jump at the deal, cause I'd much rather have an even more covert Iran than a nuclear one.  But yeah, I certainly assume there will be effects we don't like. 

I don't think there's any way to stop a country that seriously wants nuclear weapons from obtaining them (by making them or getting them from someone else). 

But I don't think Iran would ever use them. They would never do something that would put their hold on power or their lives in so much danger.

They much prefer undermining and manipulating others and forming militias to do their work for them to overt attacks anyway.

[Larry]

I'm not sure that we won't ever use them (again). 

 

And I trust Iran a whole lot less. 

 

I also would rather not have a nuclear Iran, even if they don;t use them. 

 

Even if the only effect of a nuclear Iran is that they become invasion proof, that still has a huge effect on their behavior.  (And on their neighbors.) 

 

Edit:  Although, a nuclear Iran would probably be really good for our defense contractors. 

[visionary]

I'm not sure that we won't ever use them (again). 

 

And I trust Iran a whole lot less. 

 

I also would rather not have a nuclear Iran, even if they don;t use them. 

 

Even if the only effect of a nuclear Iran is that they become invasion proof, that still has a huge effect on their behavior.  (And on their neighbors.) 

They're already invasion proof.  Most of the neighbors are unhappy about this deal...well...except for the ones Iran is funding.  They seem pretty ecstatic.

 

 

That said...I do feel bad for the people in Iran suffering from the sanctions.  It's a shame we couldn't have only removed some of the sanctions (and I'm still not sure if adding new sanctions would nullify the deal)

[visionary]

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/07/15-middle-east-iran-deal-obama-hamid

Why I'm torn about the Iran deal: Was it worth it?

 

I’ve resisted the urge to comment much on the Iran negotiations, in part because I wanted to support a deal and, now that it’s been struck, I do – but with major reservations. I can’t help feeling that we’ve paid a tremendous cost for what can only be described as a narrow – if understandable – focus on the minutia of Iran’s nuclear program, including extremely technical questions about, for example, centrifuges. I’ve found it hard to relate to this sort of discussion, because I’ve never quite seen Iran’s nuclear capability as the issue. Iran’s nuclear program mattered of course, but it mattered more because of the kind of regional actor Iran happened to be (if Iran was a U.S. ally and a democracy, we’d be having a different conversation). Our Gulf allies, for all their faults, recognized this. For them, this – Iran’s destabilizing role in the region – was what worried them most. And while they exaggerated Iran’s meddling, while conveniently eliding their own, they were right to view Iran as a fundamentally negative force in places like Syria and Lebanon.

 

The Obama administration underscored time and time again that this wasn’t about Iran’s other activities in the region: it was about the nuclear program. This, I gathered, was intended to reassure, but its effect was the opposite. Sure, any Iran deal depended on “dissociating” the nuclear issue from everything else, but the problem was that everything else mattered a whole lot, and perhaps just as much. To the extent that a successful deal – and keeping the Europeans on board – depended on “siloing,” the drawbacks of a deal were built in to the process. These starting assumptions did not start with President Obama, but with Bush, a fact all too often ignored.

 

Administrations can, of course, “walk and chew gum at the same time,” but that neglects the interrelated nature of Middle East conflicts. The boutique case-by-base approach to the region that Obama has championed sounds smart and nuanced in theory – a welcome respite Bush’s self-consciously grandiose frameworks – but if the Arab Spring underscored anything, it’s that politics are rarely only local. In nearly every major crisis and conflict – whether in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, or Bahrain – external actors with regional ambitions have played an outsized, even decisive role.

 

It’s difficult to believe in the durability of Egyptian authoritarianism without understanding Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ view of the Muslim Brotherhood as a transnational and not just a local threat. In Iraq, Iran seems like a potential (or actual) partner in the war on ISIS, until you realize that Iran is the determined patron of the Syrian regime, whose brutality has fueled ISIS’ rise to prominence. Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s “Iraq-first” strategy against ISIS seems reasonable, until you realize our opponents treat Iraq and Syria as a combined theater, and that the fact that we don’t puts us at a profound disadvantage. In short, thinking that we can “silo” the Iranian nuclear issue, or even Iran, suggests a detachment from the region’s realities as they’re actually lived.

When it comes to allies – especially ones that become nervous rather quickly and act rashly when nervous – you can afford to alienate them, but only up to a point. So you pick your battles. We wanted the Saudis to limit their public criticism of the Iran talks and to go along with them, however grudgingly. We knew this was asking a lot, which made it difficult to make other big asks, on, say, putting pressure on the Sissi regime in Egypt to be even just a tiny bit less repressive. But it is perhaps in Yemen where the most damage has been done. (And this isn’t just about the civil war. From 2011 onwards, we outsourced our Yemen policy to Saudi Arabia. To correct this, we outsourced our Yemen policy to Saudi Arabia).

 

It’s no secret that our Gulf allies feel that we haven’t done nearly enough to counter Iran’s ambitions in the region. The fact that Obama seems to hold out hope that a deal could help rehabilitate Iran both regionally and internationally doesn’t help matters. But, putting that aside, we do know that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries opted to launch a destructive intervention in Yemen, at tremendous human cost, in part because of fears of U.S. disengagement and nervousness over U.S. policy toward Iran. As Ken Pollack recently testified to Congress: “In private, GCC officials make no bones in saying that they felt compelled to [intervene in Yemen] because the United States was embracing Iran rather than deterring or defeating it.” American officials, despite having major qualms about the intervention, had little interest in picking a fight with Saudi Arabia over Yemen, when they were already expending their political capital to reassure the Saudis about the Iran negotiations.

For me, at least one other issue comes into play, and it’s a factor which has pushed me to be more supportive of the Iran deal than I expected to be. It’s striking how little discussion there has been about what Iranians think and want. As small-d democrats, Americans should always at least take into account public opinion in other countries. Presumably, Iranians know their country better than American politicians do. According to opinion polls, a majority of Iranians favor a deal. We all saw the pictures of ordinary Iranians celebrating the framework agreement in April. This time around, the regime has been more careful, closing off public spaces, with hardliners warning of the dangers of Iran Deal-induced “happiness.” Importantly, as Nader Hashemi notes, “some of the most vociferous defenders of a nuclear deal with the West are Iranian civil society and human rights activists.” It makes little sense for us to say that an Iran deal will make progress on human rights less likely, when Iran’s own human rights activists seem to think the opposite. In a survey of 22 leading human rights activists, support for ongoing negotiations was “unanimous,” while over half believed that a deal would lead to a significant improvement on human rights in Iran. Of course, they could be wrong, but we shouldn’t bet on that.

 

To be sure, the link between a deal and the empowerment of Iranian reformers as intuitive as it might seem, is far from guaranteed. As many have noted, conservatives may be just as likely to gain from a deal for any number of reasons. What seems inescapable, however, is that the failure of negotiations would have been a major, perhaps even decisive loss for Iran’s reformist trend. President Hassan Rouhani, who buoyed expectations with his come-from-behind election victory two years ago, has been losing popularity and goodwill. On human rights, he pledged to expand personal freedoms and broaden space for civil society. As for the economy, it can sputter along, as it has, but without sanctions relief, Rouhani’s hands are tied. His raison d’etre, then, depends on a successful deal. Without one, we would have likely had more of the same: conservatives in control and dominating the country’s politics. Now at the least there is a glimmer of possibility, even if the road toward substantive reforms remains a difficult one.

 

Taking these various, and very different, factors into account, the deal is, on balance, a mixed bag. I don’t think an Iran nuclear deal deserved the near-obsessive focus it received from this administration. Too much was subsumed and compromised due to the desire for a deal, an administration priority which took precedence over nearly everything else. Now that a deal has been concluded, U.S. officials may have more room to maneuver. Of course, the implementation of a deal will still require constant attention, to say nothing of the domestic fight which is still to come. But perhaps, at some point, the U.S. will be able to act and think beyond Iran’s nuclear program and re-focus attention on the broader issues and conflicts in which Iran plays a major role. The U.S. will now come under pressure to “compensate” (or overcompensate depending on your perspective). It will need to reassure skeptical Gulf allies that it will do more to counter Iran’s regional designs.

 

 

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/dealing-with-iran-post-deal

Dealing with Iran Post-Deal
BY FREDERIC C. HOF

 

One may see the nuclear agreement with Iran as the product of a faulty premise and still respect the industry of US Secretary of State John Kerry and his team in arriving at respectable terms consistent with that premise. One may see the prospect of a regionally aggressive Iran soon to be flush with cash as alarming and still—given the positions of Washington’s closest allies and the international community in general—counsel Congress to show solidarity with the commander-in-chief. What really matters at this point is that the United States and its partners pivot from their exclusive focus on closing the nuclear deal to address Iranian behavior that makes the battle against the so-called Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS) something between difficult and impossible.

 

The premise has been that Iran, left to its own devices, will field nuclear weapons, and that a nuclear-armed Iran would be exponentially more dangerous to its neighbors and to the region than it is now. Two years of track two discussions with senior, well-informed Iranian interlocutors have convinced me that this is not the case.

[Renegade7]

Idk, man, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't on this one. On the one hand, we coulda stayed pat and risked having a desperate Iran with a bomb anyway and have to go to war. This is gives a chance for peace, even if its not 100%, its a chance for peace.

And I can live with Iran not being super clean if they are helping stabilize Iraq and fight ISIL. At least long enough to see what effect their younger, more moderate generation can have and hopefully some further positive effect on their society and all our future.

[visionary]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/15/obama-turns-to-u-n-to-outmaneuver-congress-iran-nuclear-deal/

Obama Turns to U.N. to Outmaneuver Congress

 

Washington is working on a new Security Council resolution making the nuclear deal legally binding on the next president.

 

Last March, 47 Republicans led by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas wrote a letter warning Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that a future U.S. president could legally revoke any nuclear deal that had been negotiated by Barack Obama’s administration with the stroke of a pen. They clearly didn’t realize that the White House has a way of making that much harder to do.

 

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, on Monday circulated a legally binding draft to the 15-member U.N. Security Council that, if adopted, would give the body’s backing to the landmark nuclear pact trading billions of dollars in sanctions relief for greater international scrutiny of Iran’s nuclear energy program. It also instructs states to refrain from taking any actions that would undermine the agreement. The 14-page draft resolution, obtained by Foreign Policy, is likely to be put to a vote by early next week.

 

The decision to take the deal to the Security Council before the U.S. Congress has concluded its own deliberations on the agreement places lawmakers in the uncomfortable position of potentially breaching a binding resolution by voting down the deal. The strategy has infuriated some Republican lawmakers, who see the administration making an end run around Congress.

 

During a Tuesday phone call to Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) pressed him to put off a Security Council vote. “I urged that the Obama administration not seek action at the U.N. Security Council on the agreement before Congress can review it in detail during the legislatively mandated congressional review period,” Royce said in a statement.

“It actually makes sense that we would go second because then we’ll know what we’re voting on,” said a congressional aide who focuses on the Iran nuclear portfolio. “If we went first, we’d be in the uncomfortable position of approving something that could change depending on what’s agreed on at the U.N.”

 

Indeed, the United States and its negotiating partners have not included some of the most controversial provisions — for instance, a decision to lift an embargo on conventional weaponry in five years and ease restrictions on the development and import of ballistic missile technology in eight years — in the nuclear accord that will be reviewed by Congress. Instead, those provisions are embedded in the new U.N. Security Council resolution, which congressional critics of the deal will have no power to block.

 

The new draft resolution provides weaker restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program than those contained in previous resolutions, which banned Iran from undertaking “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.” The draft under consideration would only “call upon” Iran not to engage in such activities. It also includes no explicit prohibition on Iran’s development or import of conventional missile technology. That means Iran can continue to advance its conventional ballistic missile program without violating the terms set by the U.N. Security Council.

 

But acquiring foreign supplies for its missile program will still be constrained by the deal. A U.S. administration official familiar with the deliberations noted that the draft requires that any company trying to supply Iran with missile-related technology seek approval from a committee composed of representatives from key powers, including the United States. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington would use its position to “veto” the import of any sensitive missile technology into Iran. “The practical effect” of the new resolution is to preserve the same prohibitions contained in existing resolutions, said the official. “It prohibits effectively any transfer of missile technology, conventional or nuclear.”

 

According to an individual familiar with the talks, the compromise on the arms embargo and ballistic missile sanctions came at the eleventh hour of negotiations in Vienna. Iran, backed by Russia, insisted that a final deal lift all restrictions on conventional arms and ballistic missiles immediately. Seeking to break the impasse, Kerry “did some maneuvering between the Iranians and Russians and got it to a five-eight compromise,” meaning the conventional-arms embargo would be in effect for another five years and restrictions on ballistic missile technology would extend for eight years rather than lift immediately. “This was a Kerry special,” said the individual.

[visionary]

Idk, man, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't on this one. On the one hand, we coulda stayed pat and risked having a desperate Iran with a bomb anyway and have to go to war. This is gives a chance for peace, even if its not 100%, its a chance for peace.

And I can live with Iran not being super clean if they are helping stabilize Iraq and fight ISIL. At least long enough to see what effect their younger, more moderate generation can have and hopefully some further positive effect on their society and all our future.

Perhaps...but I think that's based on a false premise.  There's no reason to believe that an increase of Iranian activity or less restraint in Iraq or elsewhere will lead to stabilization.  

It's much more likely (and has already been seen) to increase Sunni disenchantment and resentment and increase support for extremism.

 

 

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-will-benefit-from-the-iran-nuclear-deal-2015-7

'ISIS will benefit' from the Iran nuclear deal

 

The US and other world powers struck a landmark deal with Iran over its nuclear program this week, and the agreement might benefit one group that the US hadn't counted on — the Islamic State.

 

Hassan Hassan, an associate fellow at the think tank Chatham House and coauthor of the recent book "ISIS: Inside The Army of Terror," told The Wall Street Journal that the nuclear deal could make already-disaffected Sunnis feel even more like the US and Iran are conspiring against them.

 

"ISIS will benefit a lot from this deal; segments of the Sunni community in the region will see Iran as having won and brought in from the dark," Hassan said.

 

The Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh), a Sunni terror group, already capitalizes on Sunni grievances for recruitment and support. ISIS presents itself as the sole protector of Sunni populations in Iraq and Syria, where Shia-aligned regimes dominate.

 

And conspiracy theories about US collusion with Iran, a Shia theocracy, add fuel to the flames as Iran expands its influence across the Middle East.

 

"ISIS has already convinced a number of Sunni tribes that the Iranians are already establishing the Shia crescent," and Sunni interests won’t be protected, Christopher Harmer, a senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, told Business Insider last month.

 

 

Of course all this said, if the goal of the negotiations were to get the best chances of keeping Iran from having nukes...then they probably got that.

I personally think it may have come at too high a cost...but if one believes that Iran is a nuclear threat and that this has to be stopped above all else...then this is probably the best bet for that.

[visionary]

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-iran-intel-20150716-story.html#page=1

CIA: Iran will focus on its economy, not terrorism, with sanctions money

 

A secret U.S. intelligence assessment predicts that Iran’s government will pump most of an expected $100-billion windfall from the lifting of international sanctions into the country's flagging economy and won't significantly boost funding for terrorist groups and sectarian militias it supports in the Middle East.

 

Intelligence officials have concluded that even if Tehran increases support for Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen or President Bashar Assad’s embattled government in Syria, the extra cash is unlikely to tip the balance of power in the world’s most volatile region, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence document.

 

The controversial CIA report, which has been briefed to key members of Congress, thus provides ammunition to both sides in the battle brewing on Capitol Hill over President Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, a sweeping deal to block Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons for at least a decade in exchange for the easing of sanctions that have hobbled the country's economy.

 

Under the deal sealed Tuesday in Vienna, once Iran completes a series of strict requirements, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations will suspend the most damaging sanctions against Iran's financial and energy sectors, and Tehran will be given access to about $100 billion from oil revenues frozen in overseas accounts. That could occur in early 2016.

 

The United States also will rescind most of its banking sanctions, allowing Iranian banks to reconnect to the global financial system, and will lift restrictions on Iran's automotive, shipping and insurance industries, as well as on trade in gold and precious metals. In all, 444 companies or individuals, 76 aircraft and 227 ships would be removed from U.S. blacklists.

 

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/2/8337347/iran-deal-good

This is an astoundingly good Iran deal

 

When Aaron Stein was studying nuclear non-proliferation at Middlebury College's Monterey graduate program, the students would sometimes construct what they thought would be the best possible nuclear inspection and monitoring regimes.

 

Years later, Stein is now a Middle East and nuclear proliferation expert with the Royal United Services Institute (as well as the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and the Atlantic Council). And, in April, he told me that the Iran nuclear deal, the broad strokes of which had just been announced, looks an awful lot like those ideal hypotheticals he'd put together in grad school.

 

"When I was doing my non-proliferation training at Monterey, this is the type of inspection regime that we would dream up in our heads," he said at the time. "We would hope that this would be the way to actually verify all enrichment programs, but thought that would never be feasible.

 

Stein concluded it would make "an excellent deal" — if the negotiators could turn those broad strokes into a formal, finalized agreement. This week, they did exactly that.

 

The full, final Iran nuclear deal "exceeds in all areas," Stein said on Tuesday. "It makes the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon in the next 25 years extremely remote."

 

Like many observers, I doubted in recent months that Iran and world powers would ever reach this stage; the setbacks and delays had simply been too many. Now, here we are, and the terms are astoundingly favorable to the United States. Arms control and nuclear non-proliferations experts are heralding it as a huge success.

 

http://www.fpri.org/articles/2015/07/beware-hyde-and-jekyll-defense-iran-nuclear-agreement

Beware the Hyde-and-Jekyll Defense of the Iran Nuclear Agreement

 

After two years of negotiations with Iran over the fate of its nuclear program, the Obama administration has unveiled an agreement abandoning the pursuit of a decisive reduction in the Islamic Republic’s breakout capacity – the ability to quickly and successfully produce a bomb – and lifting the economic sanctions that have hobbled its economy.  The agreement not only sanctifies Teheran's retention of sufficient enrichment infrastructure to produce a bomb in a year or less, but also drops or dilutes a range of other longstanding demands, from closing a once-secret, heavily fortified underground enrichment facility to providing inspectors with a full accounting of its bomb-making research and development.

 

As the Obama administration and its supporters seek to rally domestic and international support for this historic compromise, listen for what can best be described as a Hyde-and-Jekyll defense.

 

When discussing what will happen if the P5+1 world powers maintain their long-standing refusal to accept Iran’s retention of proliferation-prone nuclear infrastructure, the administration has often depicted the Islamic Republic as a menacing force hell-bent on continuing its march toward the brink, whatever the consequences. Secretary of State John Kerry has suggested that Iran might "rush towards a nuclear weapon" if the talks collapse.  Obama has characterized the alternative as “letting them rush towards a bomb.” Outside of the administration, supporters of the pending nuclear agreement have typically offered more measured warnings that the Iranians could “take the lid off their program” and “rapidly ramp up their uranium enrichment.”  Most believe that war will be likely, if not unavoidable, if there is no agreement.

 

However, when speaking about what will happen if the P5+1 recognizes and validates Tehran’s nuclear threshold status, the administration and its supporters have depicted the Islamic Republic as an eminently rational actor likely to abide by the letter and spirit of a prospective agreement. Obama sees the P5+1 as offering the Iranians the prospect of being “a very successful regional power” in return for accepting monitored limits on their nuclear program.  "Without in any way being under an illusion about Iranian intentions … [or] the nature of that regime, they are self-interested," according to Obama. "It is possible for them to make a strategic calculation that, at minimum, pushes much further to the right whatever potential breakout capacity they may have."

 

Put simply, if we continue refusing to lift sanctions until Iran fully unclenches its nuclear fist (dramatically downsizes its enrichment infrastructure, acknowledges past weaponization work, gives inspectors wide latitude, etc.), we will get Mr. Hyde.  But we will get the friendly Dr. Jekyll if we give in and accept the agreement Obama has put before us.  And this is only if we give in – proponents of the agreement are quite certain that the good doctor won’t pop up if the international community stands firm (i.e. that the Iranians won’t, upon further reflection, make more concessions on the nuclear issue, or otherwise try harder to win international confidence).

 

Oddly enough, the Hyde portraiture isn’t one of Iran reverting to its nuclear posture before direct talks with the Obama administration began in early 2013.  Back then, the mullahs weren’t “rapidly” ramping up enrichment capacity (let alone “rushing” for a bomb), but increasing it slowly enough not to cross certain thresholds deemed likely to trigger Israeli and/or American military action (e.g., accumulating enough near-20% enriched uranium to produce through further enrichment sufficient weapons grade uranium for a bomb).  The Iran they suggest will emerge from our failure to compromise is far more unhinged and oblivious to its people’s welfare than the one they sat down with two years ago.  And dumber, too – an attempt by Iran to “rush” for a bomb or significantly narrow its nuclear breakout time by ramping up enrichment capacity would be supremely stupid when international resolve is at a peak.

[Larry]

Wow, visionary. You've posted two articles about the agreement that seem like polar opposites of each other.

Which, I suppose, shouldn't be all that shocking.

[visionary]

Wow, visionary. You've posted two articles about the agreement that seem like polar opposites of each other.

Which, I suppose, shouldn't be all that shocking.

That's the point.   lol.  I don't want people just taking one view or the other for granted. I think there's some good takes (or at least some points to be made) on this by both sides.

[Larry]

That is one thing that I thought I'd spotted, in the previous batch of leaks, that seems to be confirmed, here. 

 

This deal is giving Iran permission to keep enough of a program so that, if they ever back out of the deal, they're a year away from a bomb. 

 

Yeah, I absolutely would have preferred a deal that they had to get rid of all refining capability. 

 

But I'm not at all sure that we ever had enough leverage to get such a deal. 

[ABQCOWBOY]

I think if Obama had single handedly solved world hunger, Conservatives would blast him for his agricultural socialism.

 

 

 

If the President would have had this goal, rather then the ones he's pursued, it would have been a worthy indevour IMO.