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The Iran Deal: Choosing Sides
Geraldo Rivera on Fox Business just now, rebuking critics of the Iran deal:
Too bad, we are moving forward. This is not an existential threat to Israel or any place else. This is the future.
On Facebook, our own Mona Charen:
This is a shameful, terrible day for our country. President Obama and his party are the Neville Chamberlains of our time. Every American should call and write his congressman and senators to urge a veto override. This is the worst betrayal of this country one can imagine. It would be treason if committed by someone other than the president.
I’m with Mona.
You?
Published in Foreign Policy, General
The French were part of this deal. They’re a member of the P5+1.
Yes, they were, but they wanted a tougher deal than Obama.
That is the embarrassing part. Obama had to talk the French into letting Iran get a nuclear weapon.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/european-leaders-discuss-iran-nuclear-talks-1426845251
And American taxpayers didn’t pay the terror-sponsoring state hundreds of billions of dollars to spread the
love,unicorn farts,“hope.”We mention Neville Chamberlain and I wonder if even 10% of the voters know who he was or why references to Munich are appropriate.
Churchill said of the Munich accords that Chamberlain had a choice between war or dishonor. He chose dishonor and would get war.
Obama could choose between American security or his grand ambition to reshape the Middle East. He’s on the path to a Middle East nuclear arms race and giving $100 billion to the regime that vows death to America every Friday. This same regime has been at war with the U.S. for 36 years and killed thousands of Americans.
In 2009 Iranian demonstrators shouted “Obama, are you with us or with them?”
If there ever was any doubt, Obama has given us his answer.
Munich was in 1938. WWII was 12 months later.
Obama’s legacy is war and I only hope it will not be a surprise attack by nuclear tipped ICBM’s from Iran. We might lose that war.
Some legacy.
I think we can assume far more than 10% of Ricochet members get the reference (even if far less than 10% of this year’s high school graduating class do.)
Not for nothing, but what’s your version of an acceptable deal?
Eric Hines
Not so much. Obama is signing an Executive Agreement, nothing more; that requires exactly zero Congressional involvement. What the Corker bill achieved is a long-shot possibility of the Congress canceling the Executive Agreement before the end of Obama’s term (Obama could cancel the Agreement at any time, himself…).
The next President can cancel the Agreement on his signature.
The hard parts, and they’d exist with or without the Corker Bill, with or without an Executive Agreement, with or without an actual treaty, will be reimposing the sanctions, which Obama IMNSHO will refuse to enforce in any event, and recovering the money, which Obama will/would find a way to release in any event.
The USAF, I’m told, also is accumulating a usefully sized stockpile of MOABs for a strike. Most of what the Israelis need for their own strike is a runway in the desert in eastern Saudi Arabia–which is not beyond the pale. Russia’s SA-300s, too, won’t be delivered to Iran for some months, and then there’ll be training and workup. And they’re over-rated.
Eric Hines
For those of use who are interested we’ll probably be able to get an English version of the agreement. For those who are interested in Iran they will probably get a Persian version. How close do they match?
Iran has already published an English version.
It seems obvious that if they thought it was a bad deal for them, they would not have published the final agreement before Obama did.
Thanks. I’m perusing through it looking for “inspect” to see what that’s about. Seems to be a lot of generally accepted practices stuff in there.
Para 71/2.
Problem solved. They will only do nuclear research in the one place they let us look.
What could possibly go wrong with that plan?
Any place, it would take months to get into (see Para 74-8)
Also funnily enough in the first paragraph in the prologue it’s not P5+1, its P3+3. Algebra is fun isn’t it.
So what are our realistic options now? Can anyone refer me to a coherent analysis of what a Republican President could do to mitigate the damage in January ’17?
From the article I posted earlier
Here is what the agreement says
So, they addressed the evidence by denying it.
Any guesses who talked France out of that demand?
UPDATE: Para 66 talks about completing activities under a separate agreement, which can be found here.
Mona is correct. Geraldo is as uninformed as he is opinionated.
My personal favorites are now:
I have to admit uncertainty. How much simulation effort back in’41 – ’44 went into the Little Boy design?
“Designing, developing, acquiring, or using computer models to simulate nuclear explosive devices.”
I guess plutonium implosion bomb design is out at least.
“Designing, developing, fabricating, acquiring, or using explosively driven neutron sources or specialized materials for explosively driven neutron sources.”
The fissile material for the initial arsenal could easily come from a combo of stuff they’ve already enriched but not reported at known or unknown sites, plus whatever they may enrich at uncontrolled sites in the future.
It doesn’t take much analysis.
Wipe out Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and incipient ICBM program. Of course, there will be the need to show how Iran is cheating on the deal, but they always cheat. What to do about it is the key. Taking any such dispute to the UN is a sucker’s game. Making the UN irrelevant could be a welcome side effect of the enterprise.
The U.S. Air Force remaining after Obama’s drastic cutbacks of our armed forces should still be capable of that. We already have a new bunker buster bomb (developed in the last 5-10 years) to use against them.
That war will be more difficult, but not impossible, to fight because of the hostile political climate created by Obama. After a week of angry comments from our enemies in Moscow and at the UN, the furor will be over.
The alternative is a war fought by Iran launching an ICBM to explode over the U.S. (Google “EMP Attack” and “90% fatalities in one year.”) That war could be practically impossible to defend against. You do realize that there is practically NO anti-missile defense to protect the U.S. from an attack from Iran or from a missile launched from a ship located off the Atlantic coast?
Most Americans think that there is an East Coast based ABM system. Silly people. Opposition to ABM defenses is an article of faith for Democrats.
The regime in Tehran has been at war with us for 36 years. It’s been a bipartisan non-effort to refrain from fighting back. 2017-2020 must be the time we start defending ourselves. Our future literally depends on it.
Definitely with Mona.
It seems to me that Mona is obviously right. Iran would have had to have a fundamental political and cultural transformation for this deal to work and for Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons. Iran has not really changed so this deal will never work and is a failure. If Iran were really not pursuing a weapons program the deal would be a much, much better one. It is a sad time to be an American.
The odds of an Israeli attack have just gone from 4 to 1 to even.
Eric, President Obama can call a duck an eagle, but if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Euphemizing the treaty with Iran does not alter the nature of the thing.
Obama is unique among U.S. presidents in failing to consult Congress at all about such a significant agreement; he deserves to be checked by a coequal branch of government. Sadly, this will not occur. Instead, the President will sail along unmolested, torturing the plain meaning of words as he goes.
Wow, what a breathtaking bit of illogic. Couldn’t possibly be a guy luring a duck. If it walks like an Iraqi soldier and talks like an Iraqi soldier, it couldn’t possibly be a terrorist; it must be an Iraqi soldier. If it walks like a customer and talks like a customer, it couldn’t possibly be a bank robber. If it walks like a US Army doctor and talks like a US Army doctor, it couldn’t possibly be a terrorist.
You can euphemize an Executive Agreement as a treaty to your heart’s content; it doesn’t alter the fact that that’s all it is. That Obama has chosen not to work with Congress on this particular one is all that makes this Agreement unique; Presidents have been doing Executive Agreements for a very long time. And Executive Agreements have the lifetime of Presidential terms. Except for this one, which Congress can cancel sooner. If enough Democrats can find the stomach to cross Obama.
Eric Hines
It will never get ratified by the Senate…er, well, I hope not.
This is a hell of a knock on Neville Chamberlain.
Remember that the first Munich agreement was a scant 20 years after the Apocalypse known as World War I. No town was untouched by tragedy. The entire population of young men in some towns was wiped out. There were literally tens of thousands of horribly maimed veterans out doing the best they could. The horror of that conflict was in Chamberlain’s face every day. It is no wonder he was willing to do almost anything to avoid it.
Obama on the other hand is a pampered, preening, malignant narcissist. If he’s endured a day’s struggle in his life it would be news. What’s his motivation other than being able to wave a piece of paper around and pretend he’s accomplished something. Likewise John Kerry (who at least, as he is ever quick to remind us, served in Vietnam).
He could probably even get this deal through congress if he wasn’t an arrogant Person Really not Interested in Congressional Koncerns. He’ll just go off and do whatever he wants regardless of congress, like he always does.
Obama has his bolt hole ready, he’ll be insulated figuratively and literally from the effects of this deal, and the effects of the rest of his disastrous foreign policy.
It will never get sent to Senate for ratification. That is a major part of the problem.
Persia is a real country with a real history. It just needs a real government. Helping that occur should be a priority. Or rather lets help them get rid of this one then get out and stay out.
Geraldo is an amazing sponge for whatever the correct view of the day happens to be in the correct circles. He’s a focus group of one and very valuable.
Eric, a question: Does a president have plenipotentiary power to treat an agreement with one or more foreign powers as he wishes, or does the Senate have a role to play?
A temporary agreement may have permanent consequences. Iran will soon have $140 or so billion returned to the country; we can’t get this money back. The international sanctions regime built over many years will likewise be obliterated by President Obama’s sole executive “agreement.”
It seems to me that the Constitution’s check on the president’s treaty power applies to just this sort of situation. At the very least, given the potential apocalyptic consequences, shouldn’t the Republican-controlled Senate have an argument with President Obama over this point?
Consider the alternative. If a treaty is defined only by its duration, could President Obama sign a like “executive agreement” with Vladimir Putin scrapping all U.S. nuclear missiles on his own, or would he need the advice and consent of the Senate? Obama’s successor could terminate the sole executive agreement with Putin, but the US would still be denuded of its nuclear deterrent.