Monday, July 27, 2015

Will the Iran "deal" enhance peace - or have we given up on peace and are looking for something else? What of the accusations that Obama and Kerry are using anti-Semitism to sell their Iran deal?

These are some of the questions being raised by commentators from various political and ideological perspectives. What is so?

Here are several quotes from and links to interesting articles. The most sad and frightening, if true, is the last one.

"What’s most troubling about the White House’s Jew-baiting campaign is that it appears to be a deliberate attempt to turn the debate about the Iran deal into a debate about the influence of rich, powerful Jews with suspect loyalties to their home country. The fact is, the Iran deal isn’t bad because Israel says so, but because it’s bad for America. Another sad fact is that when you ally your country with an obscurantist, anti-Semitic, criminal regime, you’re bound to adopt some of their tactics."

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/192447/guide-for-the-perplexed-iran-nuclear-agreement

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/24/politics/john-kerry-iran-deal/

An interesting proposal:

"This accord will strengthen a contemptible regime. And so I propose—futilely, I know—that now, in the aftermath of the accord, America proceed to weaken it. The conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action should be accompanied by a resumption of our hostility to the Iranian regime and its various forces. Diplomats like to say that you talk with your enemies. They are right. And we have talked with them. But they are still our enemies. This is the hour not for a fresh start but for a renovation of principle. We need to restore democratization to its pride of place among the priorities of our foreign policy and oppress the theocrats in Tehran everywhere with expressions, in word and in deed, of our implacable hostility to their war on their own people. We need to support the dissidents in any way we can, not least so that they do not feel abandoned and alone, and tiresomely demand the release of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi from the house arrest in which they have been sealed since the crackdown in 2009. (And how in good conscience could we have proceeded with the negotiations while the American journalist Jason Rezaian was a captive in an Iranian jail? Many years ago, when I studied the Dreyfus affair, I learned that there are times when an injustice to only one man deserves to bring things to a halt.) We need to despise the regime loudly and regularly, and damage its international position as fiercely and imaginatively as we can, for its desire to exterminate Israel. We need to arm the enemies of Iran in Syria and Iraq, and for many reasons. (In Syria, we have so far prepared 60 fighters: America is back!) We need to explore, with diplomatic daring, an American-sponsored alliance between Israel and the Sunni states, which are now experiencing an unprecedented convergence of interests.

But we will do none of this. We will instead persist in letting the fire spread and letting time tell, which we call realism. Wanting not to fight wars, we refuse to join struggles. Sometimes, I guess, history really is a rut."

The rest of this article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/iran-deal-history/399644/?utm_source=atl-daily-newsletter

And here is a very different evaluation on the same website, which posits "the summary is that the administration has both specific facts and longer-term historic patterns on its side in recommending the deal."

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/the-iran-debate-moves-on/399713/


Here is another defense of the Iran agreement by a former US  Under-Secretary of  State:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/192447/guide-for-the-perplexed-iran-nuclear-agreement

Here are a different set of facts:

"fairly unambiguous conclusions: that the Western delegates crossed all of the red lines that they drew themselves and conceded most of what was termed critical at the outset; and that the Iranians have achieved almost all of their goals."

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/192519/mossad-iran-talks

Here is a review and synopsis of an Iranian plan:

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6263/khamenei-israel-palestine 

There are some areas in which the Iran agreement  might actually bump into law and legal authority:

"Even if Congress doesn’t vote to bar President Obama from lifting sanctions on Iran, the president still wouldn’t be able to deliver fully on the deal’s unprecedented sanctions-lifting commitments. They were promised regardless of any future Iranian aggression in the region, sponsorship of terrorist acts or other misconduct.

Some of the U.S. statutes allow the president to lift certain sanctions on Iran. But many of the most important sanctions—including sanctions against Iran’s central bank—cannot be waived unless the president certifies that Iran has stopped its ballistic-missile program, ceased money-laundering and no longer sponsors international terrorism. He certainly can’t do that now, and nothing in the deal forces Iran to take either step. The Security Council’s blessing of the nuclear agreement has no bearing on these U.S. sanctions.
The administration faces another serious problem because the deal requires the removal of state and local Iran-related sanctions. That would have been all right if Mr. Obama had pursued a treaty with Iran, which would have bound the states, but his executive-agreement approach cannot pre-empt the authority of the states."

 For the full article see:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lawless-underpinnings-of-the-iran-nuclear-deal-1437949928

All sorts of interesting clauses and side deals keep appearing in public awareness such as the following suspicion that the deal "requires" the US to help protect the Iranian nuclear facilities against cyber and military attacks:

https://www.facebook.com/theisraelproject/videos/10154343995967316/

And here is a counter to some of Kerry's claims:

http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-part-of-the-iran-agreement-2015-7


And here is another voice that examines the Iran deal from the perspective of the Democratic party:

http://www.thetower.org/article/the-democratic-party-on-the-edge-of-the-abyss/

The following is a sad and frightening conclusion from an article, which if true make Obama and Kerry  out to be short-sighted and possibly dangerous leaders:

"Yet when even a famous Iranian “moderate” like the former President Hashemi Rafsanjani has said—as he did in 2001, contemplating a nuclear exchange—that “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality,” how can deterrence work?

The brutal truth is that the actual alternatives before us are not Mr. Obama’s deal or war. They are conventional war now or nuclear war later. John Kerry recently declared that Israel would be making a “huge mistake” to take military action against Iran. But Mr. Kerry, as usual, is spectacularly wrong. Israel would not be making a mistake at all, let alone a huge one. On the contrary, it would actually be sparing itself—and the rest of the world—a nuclear conflagration in the not too distant future."

For the article which comes to these conclusions see:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-choice-conventional-war-now-or-nuclear-war-later-1438125451