Agreement for framework for Iran nuclear deal reached

Great Debates
201

No, that is not clear. Because we currently do not know to any degree of certitude what the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program is today, or what it was before the negotiations started.

What we do know is that Iran has been enriching uranium. It is self-evident that enriched uranium could be for a nuclear weapon; but we don’t have any evidence that Iran has an active program to physically construct such a weapon. They could in theory make that decision at any time.

If sanctions are relaxed in the absence of an agreement with inspections and whatnot, we do not know whether Iran would then order its breakout scenario in which it could rhetorically construct enough HEU to construct s bomb within a fairly short timeframe, such as months. It may be many months, or even years, before they get enough HEU, build a weapon, test it, produce more weapons, and have weaponized bombs mated to missiles. Whether sanctions are on or off at any particular moment doesn’t seem to have a direct impact on whether or not the Supreme Leader wants to order a breakout.

202

Rump’s scenario seems no more fantastical than the idea that increased sanctions will lead to a better deal, or a reduced chance of a nuclear-armed Iran.

203

Terr, you keep going on about London and Berlin, but the UK and Germany are marginal players in this drama. There is only one country who matters for this negotiation and that is China. China, the second largest world economy, does not have much desire to defend Israel’s or the US interests in the middle east. It does not matter if London and Berlin are interested in continuing to impose sanctions or are even interested in imposing tougher sanctions; China is weary of this game and does not have anything to gain by going another round. On the contrary, they have a lot to gain by establishing stronger ties with Iran.

I am going to ask you again; if you could rule US actions in this negotiation, what would be the best outcome here? What realistic changes would you make to the deal that you think would go through that would make it palatable? What would you say to our allies in Europe, who like this deal and want it adopted, to make them follow your lead? How would you convince China and Russia to go along?

204

I would not have made the agreement, especially considering that some of our allies in Europe (France) do not like this deal. I would have continued with sanctions, and increased them where I could. If the world decided not to sanction Iran, I would do it unilaterally, with a US-enforced embargo if needed. Nuclear-weapons-possessing Iran is completely unacceptable. In fact, Obama says it is unacceptable. Except his policies and decisions contradict his words.

The current agreement will lead to Iran getting nuclear weapons, which will lead to a nuclear arms race in the region, which will lead to collapse of NPT, which will lead to nuclear proliferation outside of the region as well.

BTW - Henry Kissinger and George Shultz are not very happy about the deal.

205

His policies and decisions don’t necessarily contradict his words, because his strategy may actually be more likely to succeed then your preferred strategy. We shall see, but we can’t factually assert that stronger sanctions would necessarily lead to a better outcome – they could very well lead to a worse outcome.

This is possible, but it’s just a prediction of the future based on opinion. It’s possible the current agreement framework will lead to the best possible outcome.

Right, and there are plenty of other experts (and non-experts), in Israel, the US, and elsewhere, who are pleased and optimistic about the deal. We shall see.

206

I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of their op ed. Obviously any outcome short of removing the regime and totally dismantling Iran’s nuclear program falls short of ideal, from America’s perspective. Kissinger and Shultz point out some of the possible ways the deal could break down and that Iran could cheat. However, I don’t see anything in the article that suggests the framework agreement wasn’t in their view the best of the available alternatives. Do you?

207

For 20 years, three presidents of both major parties proclaimed that an Iranian nuclear weapon was contrary to American and global interests—and that they were prepared to use force to prevent it. Yet negotiations that began 12 years ago as an international effort to prevent an Iranian capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an agreement that concedes this very capability, albeit short of its full capacity in the first 10 years.
…
Under the new approach, Iran permanently gives up none of its equipment, facilities or fissile product to achieve the proposed constraints. It only places them under temporary restriction and safeguard—amounting in many cases to a seal at the door of a depot or periodic visits by inspectors to declared sites.
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Undertaking the “snap-back” of sanctions is unlikely to be as clear or as automatic as the phrase implies. Iran is in a position to violate the agreement by executive decision. Restoring the most effective sanctions will require coordinated international action. In countries that had reluctantly joined in previous rounds, the demands of public and commercial opinion will militate against automatic or even prompt “snap-back.” If the follow-on process does not unambiguously define the term, an attempt to reimpose sanctions risks primarily isolating America, not Iran.
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Limits on Iran’s research and development have not been publicly disclosed (or perhaps agreed). Therefore Iran will be in a position to bolster its advanced nuclear technology during the period of the agreement and rapidly deploy more advanced centrifuges—of at least five times the capacity of the current model—after the agreement expires or is broken.
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Some of the chief actors in the Middle East are likely to view the U.S. as willing to concede a nuclear military capability to the country they consider their principal threat. Several will insist on at least an equivalent capability. Saudi Arabia has signaled that it will enter the lists; others are likely to follow. In that sense, the implications of the negotiation are irreversible.
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Absent the linkage between nuclear and political restraint, America’s traditional allies will conclude that the U.S. has traded temporary nuclear cooperation for acquiescence to Iranian hegemony. They will increasingly look to create their own nuclear balances and, if necessary, call in other powers to sustain their integrity.
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Until clarity on an American strategic political concept is reached, the projected nuclear agreement will reinforce, not resolve, the world’s challenges in the region.

This is about as strong an indictment of the framework agreement as it gets. It echoes what Israeli politicians have been saying about this. It is a bad deal.

208

Henry Kissinger does not get to have opinions on foreign policy. He should be dangling from a rope by now, if there were any justice.

209

And *their *views are worth considering, um, why exactly?

210

How about Charles Duelfer? Seriously though, is there anyone who isn’t an OBama partisan that likes the deal? We might get fewer names that way than trying to list everyone how is against it.

211

The deal seems to be getting a lot of support in Israel and pretty much everywhere outside of Netanyahu’s extremists and partisan Republicans…
This week, on the website of Israel’s largest newspaper, a retired government official praised U.S. President Barack Obama for reaching a tentative nuclear deal with Iran. Under the headline “Obama was right, Iran capitulated,” Efraim Halevy enumerated several reasons …

… Here in America, though, [Senator Tom Cotton] who has emerged as the foremost critic of the deal dismisses such optimism …

… So. Who are you going to believe?

Tom Cotton is a 38-year-old junior U.S. senator from Arkansas, who sits on a couple of congressional subcommittees.

Efraim Halevy is the former head of Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency.

… Now, it is true that Halevy has been retired for nearly 14 years. But then, the man who succeeded him as Israel’s chief spy, Meir Dagan, seems to share Halevy’s view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his campaign, coordinated with congressional Republicans, to sink the deal. Last month, as Netanyahu stood in the well of Congress denouncing Obama’s negotiations with Iran, Dagan, who ran the Mossad until four years ago, actually serving under Netanyahu, muttered “bullshit” live on Israeli TV …

… Yuval Diskin, the former chief of Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, [said] “From first-hand knowledge I can say that Dagan has done more about the Iranian nuclear threat and other security-related issues than Netanyahu and all the other Likud spokespersons combined,” Diskin wrote recently on the website of Israel’s i24 News.

… I emailed Halevy’s article to Joseph Cirincione at Project Ploughshares, one of the foremost disarmament experts in the world. “It will not surprise you that I agree,” he wrote back. “This deal is a victory for both sides. Iran gets to keep its buildings. And we get to move out most of the furniture. Brilliant.”

Killing the deal, says Cirincione, would be “idiotic.” If the Republican-dominated Congress takes steps to do that, or to impose further sanctions, he said, "the sanctions regime will unravel.

… it’s possible the Republicans truly believe they and their backers really do know more about the Iranian threat than people like Ephraim Levy, Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin, not to mention most of America’s important allies. Or perhaps it’s just the usual wound-the-president politics, coordinated this time by the junior senator from Arkansas. But if they do manage to gut or kill the deal, Cirincione told me, “We will be left with one of two choices: watch Iran vastly expand its nuclear program or go to war.”

It’s possible there are some Republican hawks who would actually prefer the latter option. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Full article here: On the Iran nuclear deal, the Republican view really is different | CBC News

212

The Iranians seem to be convinced that we are a nation of raving war-freaks, that we might invade a country for no good reason at the cost of countless innocent lives. Wherever did they get such a notion?

213

The bolded sentence indicates that Kissinger and Shultz think the agreement falls short of ideal. It does not indicate that they think there is a realistic better alternative. For all his kibitzing, Kissinger never bothers to tell us what the better alternative was and how it should have been pursued. My best guess is that he doesn’t know what that better alternative is.

The framework agreement concedes that Iran will be a nuclear threshold state, albeit never closer than a year away from building a bomb. The fact is, preventing Iran from being a threshold state would cost more to the US than it’s worth. That’s why an equilibrium has been found in the present agreement. Nothing in Kissinger et al’s critique disputes that point.

214

So kicking the can down the road. We’re no longer even trying to keep Iran from getting the bomb. Just pushing it off for the future.

215

Yes, tons, including about a third of Republicans. Also, former Colin Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson, numerous leaders from other countries (including most of Europe), the aforementioned former intelligence leaders in Israel, and many more. This is an absurd claim.

216

The only ones who can definitely stop Iran from getting a bomb in the long run, realistically, is Iran. The best chance is to convince them that they’re better off without it.

217

How would you permanently prevent Iran from getting a weapon? You can’t say, “Not this deal.” Remember that “permanently” is a long time.

218

That’s a very bizarre way to spin an agreement that subjects Iran to strict controls and the most intrusive monitoring in history for 10 years. I guess it would have been better if the agreement had concluded with the words “for ever and ever, until the end of time, unto all eternity” but Iran may as well have asked us to make a commitment that we’ll never level any sanctions against them ever again once they sign this agreement. Putting some sort of time limitation on the agreement serves all parties and is consistent with every other arms control agreement in history.

219

We can’t keep Iran from a bomb? Hopefully that will be the argument Democrats take into the election.

220

Of course we can, just at a cost that most Americans would find unacceptable. The debate in the election will be between those who are honest about that fact and those who are not.