So here it is. The Iranian deal is a shit sandwich so have a big bite, America.
It’s either this or war.
That’s the argument the White House is preparing to make to convince members of Congress, Americans and foreign allies that the framework announced Thursday is the best way to check Iran’s nuclear program.
Obama has capitulated to Iran. Period.
President Obama defended his administration’s “historic” nuclear deal with Iran Saturday, telling Americans that the diplomatic agreement will be more effective than a bombing campaign in preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.
“This framework is the result of tough, principled diplomacy,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly address. “It’s a good deal—a deal that meets our core objectives, including strict limitations on Iran’s program and cutting off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon.”
We don’t know that at all.
President Obama has agreed to a basic framework of a deal with Iran that is supposed to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. What details it may contain we don’t yet know, and the president is apparently determined to see that neither we nor Congress will. That is unacceptable to the American people because the agreement will have a significant effect on America’s national security and that of our Middle Eastern allies.
Mr. Obama has made it clear that the agreement will not be submitted to the Senate for ratification as Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution requires. There are only three instances in which a president can execute an international agreement that does not need senate ratification. According to the Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States, an executive agreement doesn’t need ratification when it is made pursuant to an earlier treaty, pursuant to an act of Congress or when it is within the president’s inherent powers. None of those three conditions pertain to the nascent Iran nuclear weapons agreement.
The president seeks an agreement that will, by all reports, allow Iran to continue to enrich uranium and not mandate international inspectors’ unlimited access to Iran’s nuclear development sites. Iran’s consistent behavior — by refusing to allow inspections at some disclosed locations, by keeping nuclear development sites secret and by cleaning up evidence of nuclear development before inspectors arrive — proves they will cheat on any agreement they sign.
All we have is Obama’s word and his word isn’t worth a goddam thing. On the other hand, the Iranians are thrilled:
In a public address on the state-run TV on Friday, President Rouhani reminded his election campaign slogan that he would keep Iran’s nuclear industry running and remove the sanctions against the country, and said the Iranian nation is now closer to this goal more than ever.
He said his administration had a four-step plan, which included the attainment of an interim deal, “and after months of efforts, specially during the last few days, the second objective was also materialized last night”.
“In this second step, we have both maintenance of nuclear rights and removal of sanctions alongside constructive interaction with the world,” the president continued.
He further described attainment of a final deal as a third step before the July 1 deadline to be followed by a fourth step which would be its implementation.
“The Group 5+1 (the US, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany) has accepted in the framework understanding attained on Thursday night that Iran will have domestic enrichment on its soil; and this means that those who stated that Iran’s enrichment is a threat to the region and the world have admitted today that enrichment in Iran is no threat to anyone,” said President Rouhani.
“I, hereby, declare in a straightforward manner now that enrichment and all nuclear-related technologies are only aimed at Iran’s development and will not be used against any other countries and the world has acknowledged very well today that Iran is seeking peaceful purposes,” he added.
He said Arak Heavy Water Reactor will continue its operation with the help of the most modern technologies and “Fordo (uranium enrichment plant) will remain operational forever with 1,000 centrifuges installed in there and nuclear and physics-related activities and technologies will run there”.
“On the basis of this framework, all sanctions in financial, economic and banking sectors as well as all (UN Security Council) sanctions resolutions against Iran will be canceled on the very first day of the implementation of the deal, and new cooperation in both nuclear and other sectors will start with the world on the same day,” the Iranian President reiterated.
The deal falls way short of the principles Obama espoused.
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.
It’s clear Obama has capitulated, but no one ought to be surprised. DrJohn’s Law. All he’s doing here is sweeping the problem under the rug, getting it out of the way until he’s long out of office. That way, liberals who have zero long term memory will fault whoever is in office at the time instead of the actual perpetrator.
The worst part is that there is no deal. Not yet. The Obama regime has indicated that there could be a limit on how much of the deal is made public.
We have to pass it to find out what’s in it. Where have I heard that before?
Obama is ceding Iran dominance in the Middle East. He speaks of this deal being better than a war.
Where was the deal in Libya? Why wasn’t making a deal better than a war there? Libya now is a safe haven for ISIS.
Barack Obama is turning the Middle East completely to hell. His “deal” is a failure by his own standards. He needs to find some balls. Somewhere.
Barack Obama: won’t negotiate with conservatives, capitulates to Islamists.
And they call Tom Cotton a traitor.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
To be called out by French officials, that Kerry completely caved to keep the Iranians at the table and capitulate to Iranian positions, is rather rich. They know the so-called framework is a bad deal. They know when the details are filled in to make the final agreement, a bad deal is going to be a worst deal.
Also, the notion the only other alternative is war is a red herring argument. We have to do this because there is “no other choice”. The world has been down this road before. It’s called the “Munich Agreement”. What’s left to consider is what incident, what miscalculation will spark the wider war.
Although we don’t have details the theory is that the U.N. will have a committee in charge of oversight as to whether Iran complies.
The U.N. is over 1/4 Muslim controlled.
All those countries will side with Muslims over Infidels (even if they might fight those same Muslims on a sectarian level on another day.)
No longer matters what deal Obama comes up with or signs. It is all up to Israel now, which knows that Obama would just as soon see Israel go away…just like Iran.
The plans Israel has been developing to take out Iran’s vaunted underground, hardened, nuclear facilities are likely well under way. Israel will turn those facilities into underground nuclear waste sites, probably by using rocket assisted bunker busters tipped with low yield nuclear weapons.
The Israeli’s will turn the advantage of an underground hardened nuclear facility into a dis-advantage for Iran…detonation will be contained underground, and because there are already nuclear products there, Israeli’s will have plausible deniability they used a nuclear device.
That’s what Obama is setting up. I don’t think Israel will wait much longer, and certainly not wait for the Saudi’s to develop…or buy…their own nuclear weapons capability.
No he hasn’t.
Correct. Bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would not be the end of Iran’s nuclear program unless we followed up with a ground war. We would quickly be pulled into such a war whether we wanted it not. If we bomb Iran, Iran will immediately retaliate with attacks on U.S. forces and interests across the region. What else should we expect? What would we do in a similar situation?
War with Iran would have no good outcome for the United States. It would only be a question of the degree of disaster. Winning or losing would not be the relevant issue. The prize for winning would be trillions more added to the national debt and an interminable Middle East problem on an even larger scale than we have at present.
What is it about negotiating a tentative agreement that is not within the President’s inherent powers? James S. Gilmore III hasn’t bothered to provide an explanation. Apparently we’re supposed to accept that as a fact simply because he said it. Sorry, but I don’t. I’ll need to hear a reason first.
You can’t always get everything you want, but something can be a lot better than nothing. If the accord lapsed, we would be back where we are now. In the meantime, Iran would not have assembled a nuclear weapon, and we would not have suddenly turned our fight against ISIS into a potentially disastrous two-front ground war centered on Iraq. Instead, Iran would continue to be an active and effective enemy of our enemy. To me, that clearly looks like the lesser of three evils. As Obama stated, three options are all that are available:
The problem all along has been that there are only those three options.
Iranian President Rouhani kept his campaign promises. American President Obama didn’t. Obviously, Obama faced tougher opposition than Rouhani or Rouhani was more determined than Obama. Either way you look at it, Obama has failed and lied about it. Shocking.
@Dantes: It is funny how liberals keep decrying how Republicans are constantly seeking war, yet Democrats keep setting up the next, more devastating, one. One needs to read up on Warsaw, 1944 for some insight on what Jews will do when faced with certain death and with their backs against the wall. Here they face extermination; the final “Final Solution” and anyone that thinks Israel will sit back and Hope for Change, expecting the threat to just evaporate or seek the opportunity to just blame someone else for failure is likely to be unpleasantly surprised.
But, all Obama cares about is a deal. Then he can have his headlines, his grandstanding and, later, blame the Iranians for tricking him.
@Greg:
You could be absolutely right, Greg. However, if this deal is what most critics say it is, it means that Israel will probably attack Iran and we will have our forces threatened or attacked regardless. It can’t be put off or ignored or used as a political wedge. It is perhaps the greatest threat to Israel and the region since Israel existed.
Obama reduced our options when he pulled sanctions and prevented even the threat of sanctions to use in negotiations. Obama is weak and immature and has no business fiddling with the safety and security of the world.
Rather than bomb Iran, Israel will more likely use hacking to cause Iran’s own nuclear material to become unstable, rendering it unusable.
Some time back a computer virus messed up Iran’s nuclear program, we don’t know how much.
But it would be the way to go if it needs to be thwarted again.
If the IAEA says it isn’t being given 100% full and unfettered access, that would be the time.
we are already seeing a drop on oil prices some think it may go to 5 dollars
The Israeli defense Forces have already already argued with Bibi over bombing Iran, and stopped it once before http://www.timesofisrael.com/gantz-hints-he-stood-in-way-of-iran-attack/
The former head of military intelligence also says this deal is not bad http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/04/israel-iran-nuclear-agreement-netanyahu-
Even the best case secenario of bombing only delays it by 2 years
What would the cost be to Usrael politically and in casualties from a new war, because make no mistake this would be war
“Iran Agrees to Detailed Nuclear Outline,” The New York Times headline claimed on Friday. That found an echo in the Washington Post headline of the same day: “Iran agrees to nuclear restrictions in framework deal with world powers.”
But the first thing to know about the highly hyped “historic achievement” that President Obama is trying to sell is that there has been no agreement on any of the fundamental issues that led to international concern about Iran’s secret nuclear activities and led to six mandatory resolutions by the United Nations Security Council and 13 years of diplomatic seesaw.
All we have is a number of contradictory statements by various participants in the latest round of talks in Switzerland, which together amount to a diplomatic dog’s dinner.
First, we have a joint statement in English in 291 words by Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif and the European Union foreign policy point-woman Federica Mogherini, who led the so-called P5+1 group of nations including the US in the negotiations.
John Kerry and his team watch from Lausanne, Switzerland as President Obama makes his state address on the status of the Iran nuclear program talks on April 2nd.
Next we have the official Iranian text, in Persian, which runs into 512 words. The text put out by the French comes with 231 words. The prize for “spinner-in-chief” goes to US Secretary of State John Kerry who has put out a text in 1,318 words and acts as if we have a done deal.
It is not only in their length that the texts differ.
They amount to different, at times starkly contradictory, narratives.
Keep reading…
@Nanny G, #6:
If Kaspersky is to be believed, the U.S. is well ahead of Israeli capabilities in the cyber warfare department. Kaspersky claims the NSA has figured out how to hack computer firmware. They could have an undetectable backdoor to every computer on the planet. A Daily Kos article was more straightforward about the implications.
@Greg: Greggie, according to polls Israel and America think this deal is a real failure!! According to Iran they love it!! They are dancing in the streets!! No wonder, they got everything and committed to ZERO!! Any proof Romney cheated on his 2010 taxes as slimy Harry accused him of on the floor of the Senate?? I’m waiting for your proof sense you agreed with Harry!! Otherwise you a wimpy liberal wining coward with NO credibility!! Prove me wrong Greggie!!
A recent U.S. poll indicates 59 percent of Americans favor lifting sanctions in exchange for Iran restricting its nuclear program in a way that makes it harder for it to produce nuclear weapons.
It would be interesting to know what percentage think the other two options would be a good idea.
@Greg: yeah and those 59% voted for barry.
That was also a matter of evaluating the two other options.
My understanding of this is Iran only came back to negotiating this was due to the sanctions that were working. So now we take them off and Iran will be flush with cash by selling more oil. That money will be used to fund more terrorism this should be obvious everyone. But to those who are sycophants to our highly educated moron president this deal is a good one. What would a bad one look like to them?
@Greg:
Greg
We all need to recognize one the thing above all. Obama is a liar and nothing he says today means shyte tomorrow.
@Greg:
It’s all in the framing of the question and we all know how it goes with a sycophantic media.
Principles in Democracy is not to proliferate dangerous goods around the world, Uranium has its derivations from warfare and is not at all permissible to propagate against the UN laws from 1942 et all. Power words derived from military science included has no bvasis but intimidative tactics from the undiiplomatic presences Iran has not taken a shot yet so find a bvetter dal for the world, and zealous scientific extremists as brokers of Uranium in the future we will not havbe to worry about, that slip a few bundles of chek into the process and deliquently irradicate the competiions to monetary divestitures of thsoe future dcorporations…get the picture we do not live in a scientific aristrocracy that will broker poison as a wolrls of peace because of energy manicals but essentially that who is brokering this is a cruel combination, it is nice to hear that one pound lasts twenty five years before hitting the gas station from air craft carriers but that is not either the point…democracy has no palce for representing nuclear fuel as a bargain for anything, particularly Peace. Find a life!
Give the children a oportunity to see the pure world again some time…And tell Iran anythime they wish to fire go ahead lets get it over with, punk university student and his lawyer counterpart let cultivate Obama too.
Chamberlain was a Dimocrat.
@Nanny G:
Is this the same UN that was ensuring Sadam’s compliance?
@DrJohn:
It doesn’t mean anything today or yesterday either
@Budvarakbar:
Yep!
@Greg:
Other polls say a vast majority think this deal will not prevent Iran from developing a weapon. Oh, I used MSNBC so you would believe it.
@Bill: There is/was no ‘deal’, there is only a capitulation. They asked for it, we gave it to them. We lift sanctions, we send them 130 billion dollars and they get to continue their nuclear program.
If it were a football game it would be about 100-0 in favor of Iran.
The Pope says he like the agreement. But I am old enough to remember when the radical right hated “papists” and how religion was such a big election question in 1960 About 25% of Americans say they are Catholic
@Redteam, #18:
Nope. Neville Chamberlain was head of the UK’s center-right Conservative Party; the same party that Winston Churchill belonged to, and that David Cameron now leads.
@Greg: Well, Obama is a Democrat and he cedes far more than Chamberlain ever did.
Greg, you need to figure out if you’re coming or going.
@Bill, #25:
You can’t cede what you don’t have to begin with. The position we began negotiating from is one where we had little or no moderating control over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Dr. J.,
This is not about “capitulation” since there NEVER was any doubt that he heard the Mad Mullahs’ haunting calls to prayer for Mo! Power to the Mujahedeen. Had to salve his conscious for personally droning a very few of his brothers to death.
May we find some way to extend beyond these next two years and find him a ‘good’ IT person (hopefully V. Jarret) to run his “secret server” in his home (somewhere) paid for by person or persons unknown from overseas unnamed/unknown accounts.
We have a non-agreement which is not worth the paper it is not written on. Got it?
Capitulation, pure and simple.
@Greg:
But we had major sanctions and Iran in world isolation. Now we’re going to lift the sanctions and let them enrich all they want. There will be no snap inspections, so we will never know if they are violating their end of the agreement (which doesn’t even exist).
So yeah, we did go in with a good hand…….we just folded it.
@Greg:
If Obama (the US) didn’t have anything to negotiate with, what was he doing in the negotiations in the first place? Here’s what he had and what he gave up: regional and national security. This is what we were negotiating for, to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
Obama is supposed to be the leader of the free world. If he didn’t want to be, he should never have swapped his community organizing gig for President of the United States. He seems to think his job is to turn the United States of America into one big health insurance company, not protect the citizens from nuclear threat. He was supposed to pull up his big-boy pants and deal with the threat, not pull his Huggies down and bend over.
I think this is a failure to communicate issue.
Of course we have a history of that with Obama’s willful lying about other issues like, ”If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
But look at some of the English-Farsi differences:
ENGLISH: The framework agreement
FARSI: A press release
ENGLISH: Iran has agreed to reduce the number of centrifuges from 19,000 to 6,500.
FARSI: Iran shall be able to reduce the number of centrifuges from 19,000 to 6,500 if it wishes.
ENGLISH: Iran has agreed not to use advanced centrifuges.
FARSI: work on advanced centrifuges shall continue on the basis of a 10-year plan.
ENGLISH: Iran has agreed to dismantle the core of the heavy water plutonium plant in Arak.
FARSI: The plant shall remain and be updated and modernized.
http://nypost.com/2015/04/04/translated-version-of-iran-deal-doesnt-say-what-obama-claims-it-does/
@Greg:
Back door on every computer Greg?? Would that also mean Lerner’s and Hildabeasts??
@Aqua: The big hurt on Iran was that banks were not to honor any of Iran’s transactions. So, for Iran to sell a tanker of oil to someone, they needed to bring a ton of cash. This is a serious issue that actually forced Iran to the table. Now, we are giving this up and allowing billions of dollars to flow into Iran to be used to support terrorism world wide. Is this a good thing to give up to a nation who vows “death to America” and Death to Israel”?
@Randy: Let’s face it, Obama capitulated. Gave everything, got nothing.
@Redteam: There are still believers who have no sense of smell and can not see past their nose.
@Aqua, #31:
That doesn’t seem to have slowed down their nuclear program down much, if Netanyahu is to be believed. The only thing sanctions have accomplished toward that end is to give us a bargaining chip in negotiations.
If you don’t trade the chip for a concession at some point, of what use is it? Would it become more or less likely to accepted in trade for concessions as their nuclear program gets closer to completion?
@Common Sense, #33:
@Greg:
Obama didn’t trade the chip for any concessions; he traded his main leverage to get the Iranians to simply come to the tables. Since he publicly denounced Congress for wanting to have sanctions at the ready in case Iran balked, the Iranians knew who and what they were dealing with. All they had to do was wait him out.
Just as he traded our only chip in Eastern Europe just to impress Russia and got nothing in return. Why, it’s as if Obama’s goal is to fail at all negotiations.
@Bill:
Failure is not good enough, It has to be a white flag surrender.
From The Times of Israel, April 5, 2015:
Ex-intel chief: Deal could set back Iran’s nuclear program by years.
From Wikipedia:
“Aluf Amos Yadlin is a former Israeli Air Force general, Israel Defense Forces military attaché to Washington, D.C. and head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate.”
“Efraim Halevi is a lawyer and an Israeli intelligence expert. He was the ninth director of Mossad and the 4th head of the Israeli National Security Council. Above all, he is remembered for his part in bringing about the peace treaty with Jordan.”
Republicans have become so fixated on their 6-year effort to somehow bringing about failure of any and every Obama policy and initiative that their obsession has totally blinded them to the best interests of the nation.
@Greg: Yes but Netanyahou is concerned about the country, those two yokels are only concerned about politics.
An entirely factual statement, also from Wikipedia:
Sound familiar? Then he was certain about the Iraqi nuclear program. Now he’s certain about the Iranian nuclear program. In both cases, his objective was to get the United States to take action—i.e., to involve itself in a war.
Netanyahu is the career politician, not Yadlin or Halevi.
@Greg: Of course, it was true that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapons program and had a supply of yellow cake.
@Greg:
Yes, he was right then and right now.
Netanyahu couldn’t be trusted then, and he can’t be trusted now.
Yellow cake uranium and aluminum tubes have become part of an alternate, right-wing fantasy history, but the known facts don’t support any of that history’s conclusions.
The only yellow cake uranium found in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow was a stockpile that had been known and inventoried by 1991. It dated from the days when when Iraq did have a nuclear ambitions, but it had been a useless ingredient since Iraq’s nuclear reactor facility was bombed by the Israelis in 1981. Even then the reactor bombing was controversial. Iraq claimed their reactor was for research purposes only; a bullshit private U.S. security firm went to the other extreme, asserting that the reactor was about to begin cranking out usable quantities of weapons grade plutonium. The fact is that scientists who examined the reactor later stated that producing usable quantities of fuel for a nuclear weapon with it anytime soon would have been impossible. They said it would have taken such a reactor decades of continuous operation to accumulate enough.
The Nigerian yellow cake documents have been known to have been forgeries for years now. Both the CIA and the State Department warned that they were likely forgeries before they were presented to the UN. Saddam Hussein wasn’t trying to get more of the stuff; he had no use for what he already had.
The Atomic Bomb fairy doesn’t transform a low-grade uranium ore product into weapons grade plutonium or uranium by waving a magic wand. That transformation requires a huge and prolonged technical effort utilizing highly specialized equipment that Iraq simply didn’t possess and had no ability to acquire. Even a load of magical aluminum tubes wouldn’t have done the trick.
Iran does have such a capability. What Netanyahu ignores is that while it’s questionable whether the program could be eliminated or even long delayed by bombing, bombing would almost certainly provide strong motivation to accelerate it. That’s one reason why we’re talking at this point instead of blowing things up. There’s also the fact that war with Iran would be a very dangerous proposition. I don’t think people are giving those dangers enough thought.
@Greg: You clearly don’t know you a$$ from a hole in the ground. Everyone in the world, except Bush Bashers, know that Iraq had a nuke program and WMD’s. The only reason it was covered up was to prevent the mad dash to Iraq to get these materials when the US left there. We already know that ISIS dug all of them up in the last year. If you don’t believe those WMD’s are legitimately deadly, agree to sniff the gases from one of them. That whole crock of crap you wrote above is just the propaganda of ignorance.
Let us all know if you’ll agree to breathe some of the gases dug up by ISIS. Just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will do.
@Greg:
So funny. decades huh? Do you know how long it took to build two different types of atomic bombs by the US without…….note……I said …..WITHOUT…… a single nuclear reactor existing prior to the beginning of the project. Even then, no reactor was necessary at all to build that Uranium bomb, only the plutonium one. The entire project started in 1939 and the bomb was dropped in 1945, hardly ‘decades’ and think of the technology today vs 1940s
The Saddam Hussein regime didn’t have the equipment necessary to quickly produce sufficient quantities of sufficiently-enriched uranium to build a bomb. The scale of the U.S. project that accomplished this over a period of 6 years was enormous.
I could ignore Bush apologists if they promoted misinformation only to save face. The problem is that they don’t do it only to save face. They do it to enable them to make the same mistakes all over again. They’ve learned nothing from our ill-considered invasion and occupation of Iraq. They take no responsibility for the consequences. Given half a chance, they’ll expand that error to include Iran. They don’t seem to be able to grasp the fact that the only alternatives to negotiation are either pointless or extraordinarily dangerous.