So you are willing to accept an Iranian nuclear capability?
Accepting the deal results in a lower chance of this than your plan.
I don’t think its worth going to war over. So, yes.
I also don’t think it’s worth going to war over, but I don’t think a war would be likely to end Iran’s nuclear capability (in fact, I think the reverse is more likely).
Absolutely.
Not that my opinion matters on this point: As a signatory to the N.P.T., Iran has an “inalienable right […] to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”
Here’s the relevant bit, from Article IV:
So there.
What does that entail though? Does it mean that if Hezbollah or another Iranian proxy launches a high casualty attack on the US that we just have to let it go because they have a nuclear deterrent?
Certainly true.
Be warned, anecdotal evidence ahead: I’ve been to Iran, and I’ve met dozens of people saying “marg bar Khomeini” (death to Khomeini), that the mullahs are all crooks and thieves and should all hang, that everything was better in the days of the Shah or even before the introduction of Islam (!), that all they really want is for Iran to be “like California,” what with the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll - etc.
But in all the time I spent there, I never met a single Iranian - not a one - who didn’t insist, if the subject was brought up in the course of conversation, on the country’s right to a nuclear program. I really came away with the impression that nothing - no carrot, no stick, no sanctions, no war, no regime change, no nothing - would ever make them accept the full dismantlement of their nuclear program.
If we are attacked then we respond in force.
Which is why it is US policy that Iran cannot get a bomb. Even if that means war. That policy has not changed, and I do not believe future US Presidents will bluff. Can we call making empty threats the Obama Doctrine once he leaves office?
Just so we’re all clear, you have presented no evidence that Obama was ever bluffing with respect to an Iranian nuclear bomb being unacceptable.
All right, I concede, maybe. Answer me this: Obama says that the choice is either this agreement or war. Is that what is actually going to happen, or is that a bluff?
On that, your guess is as good as mine. Hopefully we’ll never have to find out.
Also, his argument is not that it’s “this agreement or war.” His argument is that if we reject this agreement, war becomes* more likely* than it would otherwise be. That proposition ought to be uncontroversial. In one scenario, Iran agrees not to pursue a bomb and allows a rigorous inspections regime. In the other scenario, Iran agrees to no such thing and allows no inspections. Which one do you think presents conditions that are more conducive to war?
The cynic in me says that Obama is quite happy knowing he most likely won’t have to make the war decision. Someone else will have to. So, most likely we’ll never know. What future presidents do, I don’t know. I think HRC would use force against Iran if it came to that, and I’m pretty sure any of the GOP hopefuls would, too, except maybe Rand Paul. Bernie Sanders probably wouldn’t.
No, the President said it’s this agreement or war:
If you’re not sure, then you concede that he’s possibly bluffing. Which is dangerous. US Presidents do not make empty threats.
That’s not what he’s saying. He’s that, if we assume that a nuclear armed Iran is unacceptable, then it’s either this agreement or war. He has said that more than once.
Ok, I don’t dispute the quote. But Obama is clearly omitting from discussion a third possibility, namely that we reject the deal and yet Iran takes no further steps to develop a bomb. In that case, but I think only in that case, there is no deal but no war.
Note, however, that the scenario I just mentioned would be viewed by Iran hawks as an impossibility and hopelessly naive to even contemplate, so in fact what Obama is doing is framing the issue on his opponents’ own terms.
Whose goal would that be, and why?
John Kerry more fully unpacks the administration’s position with respect to the choice between this agreement and war.
So, to the extent that Kerry speaks for the administration, Obama isn’t saying, “If Congress rejects the agreement, we begin bombing in 5 minutes.” Rather, that absent this agreement, a chain of events leading to war becomes quite likely–unless, as Kerry contemplates at the beginning of the exchange, Iran was to suddenly stop all of its nuclear activities even in the absence of a deal. A highly abbreviated way to put all this is, “It’s this agreement or war.” I don’t disagree that Obama is demagoguing by putting it so starkly. But substantively his broader point is correct: rejecting the deal puts us at grave risk of this crisis escalating to war.
Kerry is dancing around like a Prima Ballerina. He can’t just answer yes or no, and so I have to take Obama at his word. No one is saying that the choice is either this deal or WAR TOMORROW, but they are saying it’s either this deal or war (in the not too distant future). Obama punctuated his statement with “those are the choices”. If there were other choices, he ruled them out with that statement.
Now, of course, we know there are other choices. But the administration wants to make it sound like you are gunning for war if you oppose this deal. That, in fact, may be true of many or even most of the opposition, btw, but it’s still overselling the situation.
And there’s another question, beyond making it work for us is making it work for them. Indications are that, after an agonizingly slow process, “secular humanists” are gaining a degree of power they did not previously possess. This despite the Islamic revolutionary constitution that virtually guarantees an Islamic theocracy, with the only real political question being who is more Islamic than who.
We need to strengthen their hand. If the people can see direct and immediate benefits from this agreement, it will weaken the ultra-conservative Islamists. I daresay that would be a good thing. A* very *good thing, good for them, good for us, don’t get gooder than that. Yes, our responsibility to our own people is first and foremost, but we also have a human obligation to the ordinary Iranian civilian. We failed miserably in our duty to innocent Iraqi civilians, we let the warheads stampede us into slaughter and massacre.
I hold that we should lift as much and as many of the sanctions as we can, sooner the better. I know we are not the Great Satan, you know it too. Let them know it. And that is not only a deft strategic move in the cold light of realpolitik, it is the correct human move. Such opportunities do not arise often, we should not let this one slip away.
Give peace a chance. Christ Jesus, give it a fucking chance!