How about this? Israel admits it has nukes and allows inspectors to the same degree that Iran does. After all, only one nation can actually nuke the other right now and it ain’t Iran with that capability.
Oh no, that would require him actually caring about anything but himself. The only thing he cares about is John Kerry, and how he can build up a reputation for said scumbag that would meet the colossal estimation he has of himself. He wanted that job as it might put him into a position to get him one of them there Nobel Prizes Obama got. Actually, he’s just as entitled to that as Obama, as neither of them are George Bush.
Chuckles!
Troops who serve honorably, yes. Hell, even those who haven’t served DIShonorably. Kerry does not meet either criterion.
Oh, give men a fucking break. “Liberals want” does not mean “Every single liberal, including Lobohan wants”. Also, I didn’t say they wanted it blown up, I said they seem happy to fuck it over. But they hardly seem to come to Israel’s defense. If they wanted to, they’d be as appalled at this deal as Bibi is.
Wow, that’s deep, man. Only if there was some meaningful difference between the two countries. Hmmmmmm. Oh wait, there is: one has vowed to want to destroy the other. Guess which is which!
Oh, I think Bibi would be happy to see Iran destroyed, especially if he could get the US to do the dirty work.
But the West are the ones who put the sanctions on them in the first place.
For us. Israel’s calculation is different and they remain the ultimate solution if Iran gets close to a bomb. And if Iran was to actually use a bomb then no more Iran.
This, please.
Of course one can listen to commentators and other people with opinions. But this is not, as far as I am concerned. the way to decide if this agreement is good or not (of course the only real determination will be in the course of time, as events work out). You read the agreement, or at least a reliable précis of it, combine it with what you know of the world, and make up your own mind.
If all you are going to do is decide which commentator to parrot, that’s not a debate or an argument.
[QUOTE=Ravenman]
I don’t find his [Kerry’s] explanations of the benefits of the deal to be particularly persuasive.
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Since this is a debate thread, I would surely be interested in the reasoning behind this position.
For myself, I don’t trust Iran to do anything that they don’t see to be in their own long-term interest. Maybe they think they can finagle the enforcement of this agreement to pursue their nuclear weapon dreams in secret. Maybe they actually can, but it appears to depend largely on the care with which the IAEA does their job.
I also think that Israel has a point that Iran’s increased revenues when the sanctions are lifted will be used to fuel their non-nuclear regional ambitions. That may be, it even seems likely. This will be nothing more than we have faced in the past. We have to face the fact that Iran will be there doing their thing for years to come. Our best bet in the long term is to expose Iranian citizens as much as we can to our values and to show them how (relatively) well they work in the real world. Radical revolutionary regimes don’t last forever, as recent history has shown. They mellow and soften and gradually become more human. This won’t happen if we try to starve them to death, or if we attack them militarily. We have to be smarter than they are, and mentally tougher in the long run.
Heh. Disregard.
Israel is not monolithic, and many Israelis disagree with Bibi. I think the deal makes Israel safer, based on my understanding, and so do many Israelis.
That’s great, but in the meantime that regime is about to have a lot more money for funding terrorist groups and proxy wars. That could make the region an even more unstable, violent place in the short term, and in the short term makes a US-Iran conflict more likely. Very likely in terms of proxy wars.
I’ll continue to both laugh and be saddened when people who never served in the military accuse medal winners who were honorably discharged, like Kerry, of serving dishonorably.
Israel is far from monolithic, but it’s been Israeli consensus for 60 years that Israel’s enemies can either be negotiated with or fought. If this was being done as part of a process in which Iran was sending out peace feelers to Israel it would make a lot more sense. Strengthening Iran when Iran is still bent on Israel’s destruction does not make Israel safer. Iran was always more likely to use terrorist proxies on Israel than a bomb, given Israel’s retaliatory capability. Once Iran gets a few hundred million dollars worth of new arms to Hezbollah, Israel is going to have to do a lot more fighting.
Just saying “death to America” doesn’t make one a nuclear power. They’ve been saying it for four decades and still don’t have a bomb. Besides, this agreement pertains to their capability to build a bomb - it isn’t a gag order for what gets shouted at rallies.
Iran may or may not have secret facilities. But how would those secret facilities be worse than the ones we know about? Fordow has 15,000 centerfuges today, the vast majority of which will be under lock and key held by the IAEA in a short period of time.
If Iran has hidden facilities, yes, they could violate the deal. If they don’t have hidden facilities, then they could just use all the sites we know about to build a bomb. How is that better?
This idea goes back to the bizarre idea that the negotiations were between the U.S. and Iran, and the U.S. controls what sanctions exist. Maybe the American media is to blame; maybe it’s the provincialism of many Americans. The sanctions and negotiations included Iran’s biggest trading partners, in Europe, Russia, and China. Do you trust Putin to increase sanctions on Iran and keep them up? For how long do you think Putin would do that? You think the Kremlin is going to call up Senator Cotton and ask what they should do when the U.S. And Europe have sanctions on Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine?
I disagree with the other poster who credited your previous post with being on a different planet. These posts quite simply show a lack of understanding of the news and what’s going on in the world.
This is just my impression, but I believe Kerry has a great tendency to rely on sound bites rather than facts when explaining the negotiations. Instead of saying, “This agreement eliminates Iran’s access to the amounts of uranium or plutonium needed to build a bomb,” he says things like “no deal is better than a bad deal.” Secretary Moniz is a far better source, or at least spokesman, of information relating to the substance of the deal.
Given the US’s power in world banking markets, the US can hurt Iran pretty bad all by ourselves. We do not negotiate from a position of weakness for the simple reason that we never have to. The President talked to the Iranians because he wanted to, not because he thought we were in a weak position and had to get whatever deal we could.
During the Obama Administration, there’s never been more than $300 million in exports to Iran in any year. The cumulative total of imports from Iran in that time is less than $200 million.
In 2010, Iran bought $18 billion of goods from China, and sold $12 billion of stuff to China. The idea that the U.S. determines what goes on in international trade is just bogus.
Except that Iran sanctions also apply to companies doing business with Iran. The US is an economic 800 pound gorilla. Anyone we want to embargo is going to get hurt.
Didn’t stop $30 billion in trade between Iran and China in 2010.
Which didn’t make Iran wealthy enough to ignore the sanctions.
Iran was in the position of weakness, not us.
Becaus Europe had roughly the same amount of trade with Iran earlier in the decade, and then they agreed to join the sanctions, too.
The U.S. doesn’t get to decide how much trade occurs between two foreign countries, you know.