The Iran “deal”
The more I think about the Iran deal announced yesterday, the stranger it gets.
One strange thing about it is that it’s not a deal at all; it’s certainly not a contract, a treaty, or an agreement. It’s an announcement of intent with some of the specifics of that intent spelled out and some akin to “a player to be named later.” Preliminary announcements like that either signify basic agreement between the parties and really pan out when the details are ironed out, or are mere hopes and wishes and have propaganda value for the moment but cover up a basic lack of agreement. So it’s odd that pundits are discussing its pros and cons as though it’s something real.
There are also large problems with the deal that make it suspect even if the parties do end up agreeing in June on what’s was announced yesterday by the Obama administration as the basics of the deal. Dennis Ross describes what he thinks is the background philosophy behind the deal:
At some point, the Obama administration changed its objective from one of transforming the Iranian nuclear program to one of ensuring that Iran could not have a breakout time of less than one year. The former was guided by our determination to press Iran to change its intent about pursuing or at least preserving the option of having a nuclear weapon. The latter clearly reflects a very different judgment: that we were not able to alter the Iranian intentions, so instead we needed to focus on constraining their capabilities.
…But if the measure of the negotiations is now about breakout time, then the administration needs to show convincingly that the verification regime will be far-reaching and capable of detecting whatever the Iranians are doing and whenever they do it. In fact, a one-year breakout time depends not just on the number and type of centrifuges, their output and the stockpile of enriched uranium””all of which can be calculated””but also on the administration’s ability to discover the moment at which the Iranians begin to sneak out, creep out or break out from the limitations placed on them.
Moreover, for those who say that one year is not enough time because even discovery of a violation does not ensure a response, the administration will need to explain why this agreement will not function like other arms control agreements, where questions related to noncompliance have historically bogged down in endless discussions…
I’d also recommend reading Duelfer on the deal, as well as the WaPo‘s editorial board, which continues to diverge from the attitude of the far more Obama-friendly NY Times. And here’s the reaction of the Times of Israel.
Obama said yesterday that the deal would “cut off Iran’s most likely paths” to the bomb. There’s a lot of technical information out there as to whether this could be true or not. But to me, as a layperson, the fact that the goal of the US, under the best of circumstances under this deal, is to limit Iran to a one-year breakout period certainly doesn’t sound to me like paths are cut off. The best you can say is that a few speed bumps have been placed in the way, and it’s not even clear that those speed bumps would be effective.
Here’s what the WaPo says:
The “key parameters” for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program released Thursday fall well short of the goals originally set by the Obama administration. None of Iran’s nuclear facilities ”” including the Fordow center buried under a mountain ”” will be closed. Not one of the country’s 19,000 centrifuges will be dismantled. Tehran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium will be “reduced” but not necessarily shipped out of the country. In effect, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will remain intact, though some of it will be mothballed for 10 years. When the accord lapses, the Islamic republic will instantly become a threshold nuclear state.
That’s a long way from the standard set by President Obama in 2012 when he declared that “the deal we’ll accept” with Iran “is that they end their nuclear program” and “abide by the U.N. resolutions that have been in place.” Those resolutions call for Iran to suspend the enrichment of uranium. Instead, under the agreement announced Thursday, enrichment will continue with 5,000 centrifuges for a decade, and all restraints on it will end in 15 years…
The proposed accord will provide Iran a huge economic boost that will allow it to wage more aggressively the wars it is already fighting or sponsoring across the region. Whether that concession is worthwhile will depend in part on details that have yet to be agreed upon, or at least publicly explained. For example, the guidance released by the White House is vague in saying that U.S. and European Union sanctions “will be suspended after” international inspectors have “verified that Iran has taken all of its key nuclear related steps.” Exactly what steps would Iran have to complete, and what would the verification consist of?
The agreement is based on a theoretical benchmark: that Iran would need at least a year to produce fissile material sufficient for a weapon, compared with two months or less now. It remains to be seen whether the limits on enrichment and Iran’s stockpile will be judged by independent experts as sufficient to meet that standard.
The more one reads, the more it seems clear to me that the Obama administration has accepted Iran’s nuclear status and has given up deterring it and is now courting it.
Which brings us to the larger issue, which is the nature of Iran and what sort of relationship we can, or should, have with that country. That is as big an elephant in the room as is the question of Obama’s real intentions, which I’ll leave aside for now.
Analogies with the USSR during the Cold War are not very good, because although both Iran and the Cold War USSR have been our enemies (not that Obama thinks in those terms), they are enemies with very different natures. Both wage proxy wars with us all over the world, they desire domination, and they severely repress and control their populations. After that the comparisons fall down. The USSR had nuclear weapons by the time we were negotiating with them; I doubt that negotiations of any sort would have stopped them from obtaining them, even though the task of developing them was more difficult back then because the knowledge was secret rather than in the public domain (see this for a description of the Soviet efforts). The USSR was a ruthless regime, but our negotiations with the Soviets were based on their inherent rationality about survival, and the fact that both sides already had the capacity to destroy each other several times over.
Iran operates under a very different sort of philosophy, an apocalyptic religious one. Iran’s entire history with the US (and with Israel) since 1979 has been to call for the destruction of what it refers to as the Great and Little Satans. “Death to America” is a favorite chant to this day. How does one negotiate with such an adversary? The answer is “very very carefully and expertly, and from a position of great strength and pressure, and be willing to walk away if they don’t give you what you want.” Reagan’s adage “trust, but verify” has to be changed to “distrust, and verify to the nth degree, and carry a very big stick.”
Obama displays a different attitude (whatever his real attitude may be). It can be summed up as the notion that Iran wants to be a nation like any other, and if we treat them well they’ll be eager to “rejoin the international community, and we can begin to chip away at the mistrust between our two nations. This would provide Iran with a dignified path to forge a new beginning with the wider world based on mutual respect.”
This seems delusional to me (again, perhaps it’s not his real attitude, but let’s just take him at his word for the sake of this post). What indication has the post-1979 Iranian government ever given of such an interest? And what about its current aggressive behavior would lead anyone to think anything of the sort? The Iranian people are another thing; perhaps it’s what they (or at least many or some of them) want. But the people of Iran and the government of Iran are hardly the same thing.
Unfortunately, the same has become true in this country as well.
[ADDENDUM: This post hardly scratches the surface of the questions and problems raised by this deal and by the perception of Obama’s conceding to Iran. One, however, is the escalating arms race that probably will ensue in the Middle East. If this deal doesn’t reassure other nations like Saudi Arabia—and I see no reason why it should—those consequences could also be catastrophic.]
people are stupid… duh…
half of them have iqs below 100..
of those above 100, only a few are above 110 or 120
many more idiots in the distrubution of halves than geniuses.. and even the geniuses are dumbed down in terms of understanding reality vs some abstract narrow verticle field…
“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.”
– H.L. Mencken, the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920
Great quote Art!
A few years ago, I recall an interview in which President Obama mentioned “my Muslim faith,” and the interviewer said quickly, “you mean your CHRISTIAN faith,” but the cat was out of the bag for anyone to whom this wasn’t already obvious. But that leaves a troubling question: all right, the President is a Muslim, but is he a Sunni or a Shiite? If President Obama is a Shiite, beholden to that school of Islam, his behavior toward Iran becomes easier to understand. My apologies if the school of Islam under which he was raised is mentioned in his biographical material.
Charles,
He’s almost certainly Sunni as Indonesia’s Shia pop. is .5%, or half of one %. Pakistan, where he visited as a youth is Sunni as well.
Yet, he’s clearly favoring the Shia. I suspect for him it’s a matter of pragmatism. Iran is the Muslim nation most favorably positioned to attain regional dominance.
I also suspect that Obama isn’t particularly wedded to any particular Muslim sect, narcissistically seeing himself as above petty differences.
Finally, I think that Obama believes that socialism and Islam can be made to be compatible. That there is nothing in Islam that precludes an embrace of an Islamic socialism.
There is no doubt that islam was a significant factor in bho’s early, formative years. Shiites are the majority in Indonesia which just might (wink, wink) explain bho’s willingness to assist tehran’s ambition to go nuclear and dominate the ME. Plus, the messiah is not so naive as to believe his vaunted charm can tame the mullahs into joining the 21st century or even the 17th. He wants them to have the bomb.
GB,
Perhaps my info on the sects in Indonesia is wrong…. I may have read 0.5% and jump to 50%. However, bho does seem obsessed with pleasing tehran.
There’s nothing strange about this ‘deal’ if one seriously entertains the notion that Obama is only engaging in this charade in order to buy time for the Mullahs.
No one actually believes that the Mullahs can be trusted to keep any agreement.
According to Obama, they’re perhaps 2-3 months away from breakout. Why would obsessed, ideological/religious fanatics agree to delay for another ten years or even one year? Please.
So Obama cannot think that negotiations with Iran have any chance of validity at all. He has to have another reason for this dog and pony show.
The idea that he thinks that this will be an actual legacy hinges upon the idea that he believes that an agreement will be honored by the Iranians. Please.
Why is it so hard to accept that he’s a traitor? Because it hasn’t happened till now? Because Hollywood doesn’t make movies where the bad guys win? Because its too terrible to contemplate?
“He wants them to have the bomb.”
Bingo.
Everything he’s done is consistent with that assertion.
PS: I had to look up Indonesia’s religious mix to be certain.
It’s a cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words, well here are two that tell the whole story;
Barack Obama Meets Palestinian President Mahmoud
and
observe the faces* on the two sides of the table
*evidence that Lurch is Obama’s patsy.
Charles:
That “my Muslim faith” thing is a truncated quote. Obama was actually saying this. He was not saying he is or was a Muslim.
The mé¶bius strip logic of our president: The way to prove to Iran that it doesn’t really need to build the bomb is to let them build it.
Some straight facts:
Barry Soetoro was indoctrinated within a Saudi funded Wahabbist institution. His Arabic is of a perfect Saudi accent — actually radio broadcast ready. Yes, he is fluent in Arabic… orally. Written Arabic is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.
(Arabic is an extremely simple language (animal domestication centric) without the flood of irregular forms found in English. It’s the written form that throws Occidentals.)
His pipeline into Tehran is via Valerie girl. In many, many, ways Valerie girl is Barry’s brain. There is no daylight between her nostrums and Barry’s pipe dreams.You’d better believe that she’s been involved in all of the negotiations up past her eyeballs.
As you must have noted by now, Barry prefers to have women as his PRIMARY go-betweens. Should they argue with the wan — he tunes them out. You can find White House photos of him doing just exactly that — to his own gals.
&&&&&&&
How many times do I have to post it?
Islamism = Islam + Communism/ Bolshevism
Islam has NO economic theories for the modern age. Caravan raiding is hopelessly dated.
The Baron over at Gates of Vienna has written up — at great length — the socialist economic underpinnings proffered by the Islamists.
This out pouring of Communist agitprop is TOTALLY FILTERED OUT by our MSM.
To a person, the MSM of the West does not consider the Bolshevist economic platform of the Islamists to be controversial at all. Consequently, they edit all out, — deemed not news worthy.
Barry Soetoro is — in the fullness of his vision — a True Believing ISLAMIST.
His own economics are Socialist-Fascist… his creed is Islam…
That’s why he thought that he had to visit “all 57 states.”
(There are exactly 57 Islamic nations — something that ALL Muslims are taught as children… it being a triumphalist creed.)
The catalog of Barry’s disdain for Christianity is too extensive to post here. It would read like a Russian novel.
Whereas the endless tributes that Barry proffers to Islamic norms are boundless — and normally suppressed by our own MSM.
Barry’s VERY FIRST official media effort was a narrow cast to IRAN! January 21, 2009. He hadn’t even addressed Americans — save for his inaugural. His ‘negotiations’/ charm offensive with Tehran began at that time. (!!!)
neo
snopes is too tortured.
snopes also has a fulsome reputation for being to the left of the President.
The ENTIRE reason for snopes is to shoot down criticism aimed at leftists… and buttress any dirt to sully those non-leftist.
Neutral: hardly.
blert:
It’s not that it’s snopes. I don’t think much of snopes and I’m not saying it’s correct because it’s snopes.
But that IS the correct quote from the interview, and that’s the point. It stands on its own and can be found in many many sources. Snopes was just the first one that came up; I’ve researched it before and am convinced Obama was just alluding to what other people have said of him.
He may or may not be a Muslim, whatever he said. But he did not refer to himself as a Muslim; it was not an admission of his Muslim faith.
I have long believed that you either have to live with Iran becoming a nuclear power, or you have to use force to stop it. So, I don’t really blame the administration for not coming up with a deal to stop the program or even to hinder it in any significant way since the country isn’t going to support another large scale war in the Middle East any time soon. However, this administration is congenitally incapable of admitting failure, so you get this fake agreement to make an agreement. Obama and his aides are the kind of people who won’t admit the sky is blue if, at any point, one of them had claimed otherwise.
Charles
To answer your concerns:
Playing Both Sides of the Fence
Neo
In 1980’s, post-1979 regime when Khomeini fatwa massive killing of his opposition, millions who greeted him lost faith with the revolution but Saddam give the regime a fresh blood where all the opposition rapped with the regime.
Let not forgot that the current regime, having troubles with Iranian people, due to the sections imposed by UN/USA, however looks lifting the sanctions is afresh blood again for current regime to survive again, may be more to come if wakeup on a regime got a Mushroom Cloud?
The Legacy of the People’s Ayatollah: Montazeri
BY MAZIAR BAHARI 12/20/09 AT 7:00 PM Newsweek
Do you give your trust to the regime and his Rulers?
blert is right about Baraq Hussein’s verbal fluency in Arabic.
The only way to handle Iran’s enriched uranium is to physically remove it from the country, if reducing nuke-making is the object.
Required reading for these times: “The Curve of Binding Energy” by John McPhee. It’s forty years old, but the physics hasn’t changed. It’s about nuclear proliferation, and needs to be more widely known.
” . . . ensuring that Iran could not have a breakout time of less than one year.”
Yikes! I first heard that on the TV at work today in the break room.
That so jumped out at me – I was thinking the same as that article – when did it change from stopping them to slowing them down?
And, of course, the news folks were all talking about how great this was; how “historic” it was; the US and Iran haven’t had formal diplomatic relations in decades and now they have a deal.
Yea, it is only possible because, just like the deal with Cuba, Obama gave away the family farm! (actually, he threw Israel under the bus; but you get the metaphor)
Sadly, I think many folks will believe the news media that this is “historic” and a “‘great” thing.
I heard on Fox News tonight that His Infantile Majesty’s “sympathy call” to Kenya’s president today failed to mention—Duuuhhhhh—that the butchered college kids were specifically CHRISTIANS. So, VTC* not only won’t call Islamist murderers by name, but won’t say the religion of the Victims…
But, hey, at least he got tough as nails with the Persian Mullahs…and…let…them keep their Nuke Sites. VTC*..VTC*…VTC*
*VAST Testicular Concavity*
Yes, Obama acts exactly like an associate professor of liberal BS (maybe cultural anthropology) at some “highly ranked” BS college (Amherst? Brandeis? Columbia? NYU?). But he is, also like the profs, eminently personally corrupt. So, what have the ayatollahs offered him that he so badly wants? Safety from the Big Kablooey? He’d take their word for it? No. He wants stuff. So what kinda stuff?
DC
He wants to be fronted as an eminence.
A real put-on.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/who/eminencefront.html
The boychild – mannish boy wants to ride the rising tide of islamic ascendancy. Dreams of his father.
blert is right about Baraq Hussein’s verbal fluency in Arabic.
Iraninans specks Farsi not Arabic
ba-
Neither blert nor I claimed he was speaking at length, and his openers, the ones I’ve heard, were smoooth Arabic, that salaam aleikum, inshAllah type stuff. Maybe the openers are said the same; who knows what’s Farsi besides Farsians?
For those unaware: the Standard Drill for ANY Wahabbist imam is to have ALL students reciting the Koran from front to back — over and over… until it can be said entirely from memory — and with comprehension.
THIS was how Barry learned to speak Arabic with a SAUDI accent — and rather perfectly at that.
By the time one has picked up the vocabulary of the Koran — and the classroom — one is almost all the way home to Arabic fluency.
To repeat: Arabic is NOT loaded with the staggering complexities found in English, Chinese, etc.
It’s a LOT closer to the poetic roots of human speech.
This poetic form is overwhelming to those new to Arabic. It also makes it all the more easy to pick it up.
[ You’ll see the same structure in other primitive languages… like Hawaiian. In Hawaiian, it’s extremely common for syllables to repeat: Likelike Highway, for example.
It’s not pronounced like-like — it’s : lee kay lee kay Highway.
Arabic is like that: a whole lot of sound for not all that much content… flowery expressions are used at every turn…
And in all practical speech, Koranic invocations are dropped in at every turn, inshallah.
As you might imagine, ALL evidences of Barry’s fluency in Arabic are suppressed. He limits himself to the trite introductions. He is, however, totally culturally immersed.
Hence, the gang-sign significance of the up-turned index finger he’s know from his school days. It’s of long standing and universal meaning in Muslim circles.
&&&&&
There is video tape of Barry’s speechifying in Los Angeles years back — with Ed Said the keynote speaker, IIRC.
With an audience of Arabic speakers, it’s a pretty good bet that the suppressed video footage has WAY TOO much Arabic for PR purposes – – 2007 through 2017.
When it finally comes into the public domain….
It’s the written form that throws Westerners. It’s their script.
It’s a remarkably phonetic scheme, though. Further, Arabs don’t hold speakers to tight standards, generally.
Hence the variations on Qatar — Guttar or Kattar BOTH are entirely acceptable.
The average IQ in the Muslim world is approximately 80…
So the oral fluency standard is not up there with Shakespeare.
Ayatollah Soetoro would not pass muster as an imam — as a preacher of Islam. But he can navigate the culture without a tour guide. Heck, he did that when he was of college age.
BTW, Soetoro has ONE great gift — he’s practically a polyglot.
He can speak Harvard — and Baptist minister — and Arab Islamist — all with total facility.
His education falls drastically short when you move away from language and manipulation. He’s INNUMERATE.
He’s rather openly admitted just so. He can’t even perform long division. I’d say he’s hard pressed to add four digit numbers.
It’s due to his psychological block: he hates his Grandmother — and she was a numbers maven.
If you go through the transcripts you can spot times when he’s got millions, billions and trillions all mixed up.
That’s right, he can’t even come to grips with orders of magnitude.
Keep that in mind when you realize that the ‘agreement’ with Iran is loaded to the hilt with numbers, thresholds, and dates. ALL have no resonance with Barry.
For him 600; 6,000; 60,000 — they’re all ‘just numbers.’
So you can understand why Larry Summers bailed out of Barry’s world.
Even SOROS can’t get his points across to Barry. Why?
Too many numbers concepts. It really is that simple.
He should have never been promoted past salesmen.
As an executive, he’s a disaster — and his innumeracy is a big reason why.
The rest turns on his reactive-dependent personality.
He’s a Gonnabee.
blert
Is this a teaching of the chosen people?
Let’s look at his record.
Libya. Gaddafi surrendered his nuclear weapons program to the Bush administration. He might not have been a nice guy, but he exhibited some realism. Obama sided with his terrorist enemies and led a war from behind to remove Gaddafi. He succeeded in that and the country descended into chaos. We had the Benghazi Embassy attack, where our ambassador was killed, yet our CIC was more interested in going to a fundraiser on Air Force 1. Utter disaster.
Egypt: Obama forced Mubarak out and supported the Muslim Brotherhood in his stead. The new President, Morsi, allowed his supporters to run wild, slaughtering Coptic Christians and destroying their churches. Obama said nothing, did nothing, and let the mayhem continue.
The Egyptian people rose up against Morsi in mass demonstrations and the military staged a coup in response. Their new president, el-Sisi recently spoke about the need to reform Islam to counter radicalism. Brave man. Egyptian President Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood for making peace with Israel. Obama had a fit of pique and cut off all military aid to Egypt. He has now relented, probably under intense Saudi pressure.
Iraq: Bush conquered Iraq. It was far harder and took far longer than the American public wanted, but he did it. So long as we had a strong presence in Iraq, we could keep the Sunni radicals and Shiite radicals at bay. Obama pissed that victory away by unilaterally withdrawing all US forces.
Now we have ISIS controlling much of Iraq and Shiite militias controlled by Iran fighting them. The Iraqi Army, absent US support, has been useless in the fight against ISIS.
Afghanistan: Obama wants to cede victory to the Taliban. He is going to withdraw all US troops and he has already traded a deserter for five top Taliban commanders. America lost a lot of brave warriors trying to destroy the Taliban, the people who helped bring us 9/11. It seems Obama could care less.
Iran: The only conclusion I can come to is that he is on their side. Maybe he entertains some fantasy that being nice to your sworn enemies and giving them a pathway to nuclear weapons will make them play nice. Given the history of the regime, that seems extremely unlikely. The people most worried about a second Holocaust are not impressed by this deal.
Yemen: A perfect example of Obama at work.
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