Negotiate With Iran

[usmcstinger]

Hell no! Let the sanctions topple the government. The people of Iran want freedom!
The sanctions are working that is the only reason they want to talk to us and other nations.
Kerry, forget about trying to get a Pulitzer Prize. Go home and let the sanctions do their job.

 

[waltky]

Iran gets to continue to enrich uranium...

Why the Iranian Nuclear Deal Is Dangerous
November 24th 2013 ~ There’s a reason Iran’s foreign minister has been smiling—he finally got the world’s great powers to sign a deal that lets Iran enrich uranium.

For years the United States has pressed other countries to support and enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions that demand Iran stop all of its enrichment activities and enter negotiations. On Sunday morning in Geneva, U.S. negotiators signed an interim agreement that would tolerate “a mutually-agreed long-term comprehensive solution” for Iran, according to the text of the deal. The agreement signed in Geneva says Iran and six world powers will negotiate over the next six months “would involve a mutually defined enrichment program with practical limits and transparency measures to ensure the peaceful nature of the program.” To be sure, the idea that Iran would be able to enrich uranium after a final status deal has been floated in negotiations for the last two years. But the offer represents a significant softening of earlier demands from the United States and even the Obama administration. During his first term, Obama offered Iran a deal that would have required Iran to import enriched nuclear fuel, but not allow Iran to make that fuel in facilities its government controlled.

The agreement in Geneva is meant to build trust between Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom as their diplomats hammer out a final agreement to end Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon. For now, the world is offering Iran modest sanctions relief in exchange for more transparency regarding its program and an agreement to cap its stockpile of enriched uranium during the talks. Already this language has drawn fire from top Republicans. In a statement Sunday morning, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said, “The text of the interim agreement with Iran explicitly and dangerously recognizes that Iran will be allowed to enrich uranium when it describes a 'mutually defined enrichment program' in a final, comprehensive deal. It is clear why the Iranians are claiming this deal recognizes their right to enrich.” On a phone call with reporters Saturday evening, senior administration officials said the deal did not recognize Iran’s right to enrichment and that limitations on Iran’s enrichment would be negotiated over the next six months.

David Albright, a former weapons inspector and the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said the document does not explicitly acknowledge that Iran has a right to enrich uranium, the process for creating the fuel needed for a peaceful nuclear reactor and also a nuclear weapon. But he also said he was troubled that the language on enrichment was so vague. “I would have hoped some of the parameters were clarified in the initial deal,” he said. “How many centrifuges are we talking about? Is it 18,000 or 3,000? How long will these limitations last, five years or twenty years?” Since 2005, when Iran began spinning centrifuges at Natanz, a facility first disclosed to the public by an Iranian opposition group known as the People’s Mujahedin, the U.S. has called on Iran to stop enrichment altogether. Under the Bush administration, the U.S. declined to even negotiate at first with Iran so long as it continued to enrich uranium.

Over time that condition for the United States melted away. But even President Obama has said that he does not recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Robert Zarate, the policy director for the Foreign Policy Initiative, a think tank that has supported more sanctions on Iran, said the deal signed in Geneva was dangerous. "We're another step closer to a nuclear-1914 scenario in the Middle East or elsewhere,” Zarate said. “If we cannot say 'no' to Iran -- a country, by the way, that's repeatedly violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, international nuclear inspections and U.N. Security Council resolutions -- then good luck getting countries who haven't broken any rules, including some of America's allies and partners, to refrain from getting enrichment and reprocessing or, perhaps eventually, nuclear weapons."

Why the Iranian Nuclear Deal Is Dangerous

See also:

Israeli PM Netanyahu: Iran nuclear deal 'historic mistake'
November 24, 2013 -- Spokesman: "Israel always reserves the right ... to defend ourselves"; The deal makes the world "a much more dangerous place," Netanyahu says; "You are not our enemies," Israel's president tells Iranian people; Last week, Iran's supreme leader said Israeli officials "cannot be even called humans"

While the EU and the United States cheered a deal that world powers reached with Tehran over its nuclear ambitions, Israel was fierce in its criticism Sunday. "What was concluded in Geneva last night is not a historic agreement, it's a historic mistake," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters. "It's not made the world a safer place. Like the agreement with North Korea in 2005, this agreement has made the world a much more dangerous place." "For years the international community has demanded that Iran cease all uranium enrichment. Now, for the first time, the international community has formally consented that Iran continue its enrichment of uranium."

Washington said the changes called for in the agreement will make Iran less of a threat to Israel. "We believe very strongly that because the Iranian nuclear program is actually set backwards and is actually locked into place in critical places, that that is better for Israel than if you were just continuing to go down the road and they rush towards a nuclear weapon," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told CNN's "State of the Union." Netanyahu disagreed. The deal, Netanyahu argued, leaves Iran "taking only cosmetic steps which it could reverse easily within a few weeks, and in return, sanctions that took years to put in place are going to be eased." "This first step could very well be the last step," he said. "Without continued pressure, what incentive does the Iranian regime have to take serious steps that actually dismantle its nuclear weapons capability?"

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Netanyahu, said easing pressure will remove any motivation for Iran's leaders to make difficult decisions. "It's like having a small hole in your tire, a small hole in the sanctions regime," he said. "In the end, like with your tire, you'll get a flat."

Kerry: 'Very little relief' for Iran

 

[Jackson]

This should go down as one of the worst agreements in history. Again it is Obama and his personal agenda. He wanted to get the failure of Obamacare off the the US headlines and he thought he would do it with PEACE in the Middle East. But the people in the US are smarter than that.

They can see that enrichment activity continues, centrifuges remain in place, billions of dollars are being sent to the Iranian coffers and we are not getting anything in return.

We aren't even getting the three hostages that are in Iran at the present time. Good job. Who said he was good at Community Organizing?

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Shock n' Awe `em - dey tryin' to welch out on nuclear deal...

Troubles Dog Iran Nuclear Talks as Deadline for Deal Draws Nearer
May 26, 2014 – As President Obama prepares to deliver a speech Wednesday expected to push back against criticism of his foreign policy, the negotiations for a nuclear deal with Iran that are a centerpiece of that policy are showing signs of strain.

While cautious about predicting eventual success, administration officials characterize the Iran talks as a significant diplomatic achievement. As the president faces criticism for his approach to challenges from Syria to the Middle East to Ukraine, the Iran negotiations are looking increasingly important for his foreign policy record.

But gaps between the two sides – Iran and the six nation group known as the P5+1 – have widened in recent weeks, and senior Iranians at the weekend underlined again Tehran’s refusal to address its missile program as part of a comprehensive agreement being negotiated in Vienna. “Iran’s missile capacity is defensive, conventional and deterrent and it is not up for negotiations,” Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hussein Dehqan declared on Sunday, characterizing the missile capability as a needed response to the “Zionist regime’s” threats to the region.

The stance was echoed by the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ aerospace division, Brig. Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, who said not only would the missile capabilities not be on the agenda in the negotiations, they would in fact be enhanced. In a speech Monday Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator, said Iran has refused to accept any “excessive demands” in the talks and has defeated its foes’ attempts to turn the nuclear standoff into a “security issue.” CNSNews first reported last February on rumbling differences over the missile issue.

The lead U.S. negotiator in the negotiations, undersecretary of state Wendy Sherman, has repeatedly insisted that the missiles will be covered under a final agreement, but as a July 20 deadline for achieving that final agreement draws closer the assurances are beginning to ring hollow, as the Iranians show no indication of backing down. The issue is a crucial one: Iran’s increasingly sophisticated ballistic missile program already poses a potential threat to U.S. forces and allies in the Middle East and a portion of Europe, and the U.S. intelligence community has warned that “Iran could develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015.”

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[Katzndogz]

Sanctions will never work in Iran. It's stupidity to think they would.

 

[waltky]

Eventually, the inevitable Shia/Sunni conflict will play itself out no matter what we do...

Foreign policy expert says US deal with Iran could unhinge Mideast
June 4, 2014 ~ A deal with Iran to stop the Islamic Republic's nuclear program might avert a Middle East arms race, but it could put the United States in the cross hairs of battle-hardened Sunni militants, a foreign policy expert said during a meeting on Tuesday with Tribune-Review editors and reporters.

The growing number of Sunni and Shiite fighters in the region -- drawn by Syria's three-year-old civil war -- are focused on each other for the moment, said Thomas Sanderson, co-director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "This is not an anti-U.S., anti-Western battle. ... It is about unseating a Shia leader (Syrian President Bashar al-Assad). And for the Shia who are coming to fight, it's about defending him and defending some of the Shia shrines," Sanderson said.

Iran is among Assad's biggest supporters. The United States and Iran cut an interim deal in November to pause Iran's nuclear program, the first formal agreement between the countries since they severed diplomatic ties after Iran's 1979 revolution. The Obama administration's diplomatic outreach to Shiite-dominated Iran unnerved some of America's Sunni allies, including Saudi Arabia. As President Obama tries to shift foreign policy away from the war footing that has defined it since 9/11, he has used the Iranian agreement as an example of his vision of international leadership. "For the first time in a decade, we have a very real chance of achieving a breakthrough agreement -- one that is more effective and durable than what we could have achieved through the use of force," Obama told graduates at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on May 28.

Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons predates the revolution -- before the exile of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi -- and the country's leaders are unlikely to abandon it, said Arnaud de Borchgrave, a veteran foreign correspondent and director of CSIS's Transnational Threats Project, during the hourlong meeting with the Trib. "I am convinced they're going to go ahead with a nuclear weapon. The shah told me that in 1972," de Borchgrave said. "If you look at a map of the world if you're sitting in Tehran, whether you're a mullah or a democrat, you can see that you're surrounded by six of the world's nine nuclear powers: Israel, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and the U.S. Fifth Fleet," de Borchgrave said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani defended his country's nuclear ambitions on Tuesday at an event commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of Iran's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei. "Without a doubt, nuclear power is our definite right," Rouhani said. Iran says its nuclear intentions are peaceful, but Western governments believe the nation is seeking nuclear weapons.

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