Nuclear deal with Iran

Great Debates
781

Yes, I am quite aware of it. I am also quite aware that it is not going to happen, and especially if there is nothing for the US to point to as a violation of any agreement. Yes, US can go through the motions and using the UNSC veto force through sanctions unilaterally. It can also nuke Iran. Neither of the events are likely to happen. In fact, about the same likelihood for both.

In fact, bookmark this for 5-15 years from now: Iran will get a nuclear bomb and there will be no reimposition of sanctions. I guarantee it. Well, Obama guaranteed it. I am just watching and commenting.

782

You still say that no qualified atomic scientist is willing to put his reputation on the line over this? 'Cause I found him. And if this is the level of your predictive acuity, I am much reassured.

783

Even this sounds better by a lot then no agreement. With no agreement it would probably be a matter of months. Not that I’m certain that a bomb is more important to Iran than being accepted in the international community.

784

Whatever. International agreement.

You seem to be positing that our leaders are either trying to facilitate and nuclear Iran, or are too stupid to have ever considered Iran might try to cheat. Those are the options behind your theory, and they are both absurd.

Iran knows what we want from them. Either they do it, or they don’t. And we get to keep choosing our reaction to their actions.

785

Hey, everybody has their baggage. Iran didn’t overthrow our government and install a brutal puppet dictator. Iran didn’t smile and shake hands with our deadly enemy as he invaded us using poison gas. Iran didn’t shoot down a US commercial airliner and kill 300 civilians, explain its actions by saying “oops,” and then give a medal to the responsible officer.

Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who.

If your goal is a more moderate Iran, it seems like the best way to do that is by giving them a chance to live up to the agreement, and show it the advantages of open trade with the West. As many others have pointed out, we always retain the option of starting yet another war if we aren’t satisfied with their conduct, in spite Terr’s belief that the US has to have iron-clad proof before invading a Middle-Eastern country. If all else fails, it’s probably not too soon to trot out the “babies thrown out of incubators” thing again.

If your goal is perpetual war in the Middle East, most likely with more frequent terrorist attacks in the US, carry on.

786

Executive agreement, which isn’t legally binding. It’s not a treaty, by design, because that would require Senate ratification, which wasn’t a sure thing.

787

Hey, calls for genocide are just baggage. Good to know. :rolleyes:

788

It is, of course, legally binding as even the most casual research or reading would show you.

789

Today we have sanctions without a smoking gun of Iran building a weapon. You’re saying that in the future, sanctions are impossible if there’s no smoking gun? The JCPOA doesn’t require that. You’re just using your predictive mind reading abilities to know this, I suppose?

Let’s say President Rubio wants to accuse Iran of cheating absent a smoking gun. Is someone going to tell him he can’t do that? Like, the U.S. motion at the UNSC is going to be ruled out of order or something? Tell me how you imagine that works.

I’m not predicting that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon - that’s something nobody can possibly predict with any accuracy - but this is one crappy prediction. Believe me, I will remember it.

790

I don’t want to get into an extended debate on this, not only because it’s a separate issue from the topic of this thread, but because I don’t read Farsi, and hence can’t read the speeches and documents for myself to verify what was said, and hence cannot be absolutely sure of my ground.

However, people like Juan Cole and others, who are fluent in Farsi, say that the alleged calls for extermination of Jews, which is the translation you get from sites like World Nut Daily, are better translated as calls for the expulsion of Zionists, which may be politically unacceptable, but is not morally reprehensible. Similarly, the threat to “wipe Israel off the map” is just that, a call to redraw borders and end Israeli rule of what they consider Palestinian land, and not a call for genocide. 1500 years of history suggests that Muslims would have no objection to allowing Jews to live there under a majority Palestinian government. And there have been several 21st century overtures from Muslim countries, including Iran, suggesting that they would accept an Israel confined to the original UN borders.

All of that aside, I repeat, what is your goal? Is it to try to make Iran more moderate, or is it to punish them forever for bombastic speeches of the past?

Because if we don’t want perpetual war, we have to start somewhere. And the fact is that there actually is a country that didn’t just talk about exterminating Jews, it carried it out. And it wasn’t Muslim, it was Christian. And it wasn’t in the Middle Ages, it was within the memory of hundreds of millions of people alive today. And we didn’t punish it forever; we gave it extraordinary foreign aid, including an unprecedented airlift, beginning the same year that we discovered the full extent of its genocidal programs, including horrific death camps.

But again, if your goal is not a more moderate Iran, but perpetual war, then carry on.

791
792

First, it was utterly defeated, occupied, and de-nazified. When same happens to Iran, we’ll talk about comparisons.

793

Yeah, reading that might be a good start for you. Or you might need to start with a dictionary.

794

“Executive agreements are considered politically binding to distinguish them from treaties which are legally binding.” Italics in the original.

What are you disputing?

795

I fully support your goal to de-nazify Iran, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

796

Shame on me for not reading the wiki page before assuming it was basically correct. It is well-established under U.S. law that an executive agreements are legally binding for some purposes. Unlike treaties, what they do not do is override federal statutes. And they do not enjoy the same enforcement power as treaties under international conventions. But they are domestically and internationally legally binding in lots of other respects, depending on the precise nature of the agreement. The Algiers Accords, for example–which contain both political and legal commitments–have been enforced by federal courts in the U.S.

797

Can Hillary Clinton cancel the agreement on Jan 20, 2017? Yes or no? If the answer is “yes”, I don’t consider that “legally binding”.

798

So that means you don’t consider executive orders legally binding either. Good luck with that!

“[L]egally binding” does not mean “cannot be changed without Congress.” It means it is enforceable either in a domestic court or by an international body according to some pre-existing body of law.

799

I never said anything about Congress. Can the next President, Hillary or Bernie, issue a new executive order cancelling this one? Again, this is a yes or no question.

800

I’m not sure what was unclear to you about my previous reply.

Whether or not a new President may rescind an executive agreement depends on the scope and nature of the agreement and its effect under international law. The more important point is that even if it were entirely revocable, that is not relevant to whether it is legally binding.

An executive order is entirely revocable, for example. But it is also enforceable in court.