There are plenty of good questions to ask about the agreement, but criticizing something called a “framework” for not being “final agreement with all details ironed out” isn’t really a fair criticism. It’s like criticizing an appetizer for not being an entree.
But then again, if one has to go to the details of the agreement to find things that you might want to complain about if the answers come back a certain way, then the broad strokes of the agreement must be pretty reasonable.
I agree that scheduled inspections with no surprise inspections, and off-limits areas, would be bad, but I don’t see any implications that this will be the case in any future deal.
What is the point of surprise inspections in this context? I’m not an engineer in the field, but based on news reports about this whole story, I’m pretty sure equipment to make nuclear weapons is not stuff you can just hide when you know the inspectors are coming.
I guess the idea is that with, say, inspections every 3 months, it would be easier for the bad guys to schedule their nefarious activities around these inspections, with time in between to do something to hide it.
Nixon was effective at foreign policy. Obama is clueless and I ask for your explication of his numerous “policy successes.”
(Killing Bin Laden doesn’t count. Leaving Iraq doesn’t count. A monkey could make either of those decisions)
In 1992, Hans Blix led IAEA teams that discovered North Korean production of plutonium while conducting highly scheduled visits. Unrrstricted access is obviously better, but one should not be left with the impression that a whole nuclear program can be hidden by boxing up some equipment and moving it to a warehouse for a few days while the inspectors are in town.
What a shame, then, that our previous primate did not.
Then why didn’t W?
Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense and CIA director, who served in the CIA for 26 years, said that the Bin Laden decision was among the most “gutsy” and “courageous” calls he ever saw a President make.
Would you care to share your foreign policy credentials that demonstrate that your judgment is better than his?
His presidency was defined by the abhorrent and deceitful decision to invade Iraq.
Withdrawing would have been tantamount to President Obama repealing The Affordable Care Act via executive order.
Mostly extricating us from disastrous foreign wars. Preventing us from getting involved in more disastrous foreign wars. Killing Bin Laden. Beginning the end of the boneheaded, pointless, and completely unproductive Cuban embargo policy. Meaningful and promising climate change negotiations with China and others. The Nuclear START treaty with Russia. Improved ties with India and Latin America. Greatly increased global standing, especially in Europe (which had fallen to incredible lows under Bush), Africa, and parts of Asia.
What a coincidence that the biggest successes don’t count. We should totally disregard the fact that Obama specifically campaigned on both ending the Iraq war and on finding Bin Laden, and was successful on both counts.
I am not privy to the goings-on of top-secret military operations.
We only hear about the successes. The rest are “training exercises.”
The “gutsy” and “courageous” people are the ones putting their lives on the line to execute such an operation. All the president did was say “go.” It could have well ended in disaster, or the information was faulty. Kudos for taking the obvious wager, I suppose.
I’m sure it’s possible to look at all the events of the past 5 years in the worst possible light they could possibly portray Obama – all the good things that happened were either luck or due to someone else’s decisions, and all the bad things were because of his incompetence. It’s also possible to do the opposite – all the good things were the result of his courage and brilliance, and all the bad things were due to bad luck or bad decisions of others. The truth is somewhere in between. I think, in general, the positives outweigh the negatives, as far as Obama’s foreign policy so far. If you choose the first tack, you’re just parroting Hannity.
How is this deal (or framework for a possible deal) different than deals reached in the past? It seems similar to things the world community, including the US has agreed to in the past, and similar to promises made by the Iranian government in the past as well. What’s different this time?
So if you were president, you would think it would be an easy call to send two dozen men on a dangerous mission deep into a country where it is quite possible none of them would return, risking not only all of their lives but also the possibility that a not-too-friendly ally in the war on terrorism would take serious offense to the invasion and cease all future cooperation with us on counterterrorism activities.
If you think that possibly sending that many Americans into a life or death situation is an easy call for you, I’m afraid that says more about how you view them as being disposable than it says anything about Obama.
Then there’s his intervention in the Libyan Civil War – which you might call a failure if you look at the state of Libya now, but it was entirely successful in terms of its objective (keeping the rebellion alive long enough to win), and accomplished with no U.S. casualties or on-the-ground entanglements.
From whitehouse.gov, here are the parameters agreed to so far to be included in the eventual agreement. (Warning, it’s a pdf.)
From reading commentary on this, it’s my understanding that the level of access to be provided by Iran to the IAEA in order to monitor and verify compliance seems to be the unprecedented part. Details regarding the when & how of the IAEA inspections need to be negotiated into the final agreement. Details regarding the compliance milestones which will trigger lifting of specific sanctions must also be negotiated.
But the parameters, that is the major elements that must be included in any final deal, have been agreed to by all parties. That’s a major accomplishment and ISTM
a necessary step in all such multi-party negotiations.
I think possible snags in the ‘important implementation details’ mentioned in the first paragraph of the parameters file I linked to above would probably have to do with the ‘when’ and ‘how’ of the compliance triggers and the lifting of sanctions. (But obviously, IANA Foreign Policy Expert.)
If this goes through, is it possible U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran can finally be normalized?
How exactly can one say something is “unprecedented” if it has not been “negotiated into the final agreement”? That is, the “level of access to be provided” - what is it? No specifics? Then why do you (or the White House, for that matter) think it is “unprecedented”?
For example, it would be “unprecedented” if Iranians allowed IAEA to inspect, monitor and verify compliance at Iran’s military sites. Has that been mentioned in the document?