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Iran Has Signed a Nuclear Accord
New submitter divide overflow writes: According to the New York Times, 'Iran and a group of six nations led by the United States have agreed to a historic accord to significantly limit Tehran's nuclear ability for more than a decade in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions against Iran, a senior Western diplomat involved in the negotiations said on Tuesday. The deal, which President Obama had long sought as the biggest diplomatic achievement of his presidency, culminates 20 months of negotiations.' Not everyone approves.
I literally feel nauseous about this Iran deal. I feel nauseous because my daughter’s future is being seriously jeopardized by a deal that lifts sanctions that have been well designed to stop a state sponsor of terrorism from obtaining nuclear weapons, in return for virtually nothing. Somehow, President Obama has convinced his fellow Democrats that infusing Iran with billions of dollars will make the world a safer place. But all it will do is exacerbate Iran’s aggression in the Middle East, and perversely enable western civilization to fund terrorism activities aimed at it.
We have given concessions to a country that has repeatedly lied, hidden, deceived, and repeatedly and boldly declared its intention to wipe out both Israel and the United States. Any member of Congress who votes for this deal must have a death wish. But of course Congress, in typical fashion, gave away its constitutional power to ratify this as a treaty (with 2/3 of Senate support) when it passed the Corker legislation. Assuming the Republican-controlled Congress votes down the Iran deal and the President vetoes it, I cannot imagine that there are enough Democrats (13 Democrats in the Senate and 43 in the House) to join the Republicans in overriding Obama’s inevitable veto.
There’s enough political cover and ambiguity in the agreement that the real risks to U.S. and Israel will become known only incrementally, after the passage of years, and most likely only after President Obama leaves office. By the time the western world realizes what a mistake the Obama Administration has made, it will be too late. I guess that, once again, we have to pass it to reallyfind out what’s in it.
Humm, shall we discuss the half life of Plutonium? More interesting
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
What's crazy? Isolating Iran certainly hasn't worked up until now. I'm glad to see negotiations and compromise.
Unless the isolation is what brought them to the table to begin with...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Let's look at the great list of broken promises and bullshit by which America exists today as we know it?
None the least of which, the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran's government to install a western puppet and which precipitated the Iranian Islamic Revolution directly,
or the 1990 visit to Saddam Hussein by US Diplomat April Glaspie, who informed him that "The US isn't interested" were he to invade Kuwait, among others.
Considering the sheer volume of lies that the US is built upon, self contradictions with its own Constitution to say nothing of agreements like the Geneva Conventions that it makes pretense of being in accord with but only in semantics, to the UN's failure to reign in "acceptable" war criminals like Israel via US veto?
Considering all that, we're the ones wagging fingers at IRAN, who is at war with nobody but the terrorists that US regime change in Iraq left for the region to absorb?
Wake me from this sea of rhetorical bullshit and Israeli war drums. This deal is better than ANYTHING Israel ever agreed to.
What terms would you be able to convince the Iranians to agree to?
Hans, Hans, you're breaking my balls!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You're rational is the same we followed when arming Afghan jihads against the USSR. That didn't come back to bite us.
The problem with that was, as soon as they ran off the USSR, we wiped our hands and walked away, ensuring that the people with the best access to guns got to rule the country. Had we stayed and helped them rebuild we could probably have swayed most of the country over to our side and enstilled a more democratic government. Instead we got the Taliban.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
" if Iran continues to make nukes"???? They don't have any nuclear weapons at this point, and have no real program to develop them. That is the repeated opinion of US intelligences agencies, not mine.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Why we put it in the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain of course.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Damn, and I was waiting for their electrical model. Honda is moving forward!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
It only works if you actually offer an out.
If you just say "sanctions, in perpetuity", then no that won't accomplish much.
So yes, the sanctions worked. It forced Iran to the table, and now they have a deal. So the next time the West decides to punish a country, at least that country knows there is a way out if they do something to change.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Negotiating a treaty with a country is not the same as "siding with" them. It just means that the countries that sign the treaty agreed on a set of rules of behavior. The alternative to a treaty with Iran isn't "siding against" them, it is having no agreed on rules of behavior, in which case their behavior is unconstrained. So would you rather Iran operate under an international agreement under which they can't have a nuclear program, backed up by inspections and penalties, or would you have them allowed to do anything they want, with no inspections?
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Want to really fight ISIS? We'll need Iran and Syria as allies if you actually want to win.
Why do we have to fight ISIS at all?
Everyone over there hates us, other first world countries won't lend a hand, and in the long run the barbarism of ISIS won't withstand the onslaught of more developed ideas.
Thinking that we will prevent the conflict from coming over here is fantasy storytelling: all our draconian infrastructure didn't prevent the shoe bomber, underwear bomber, or marathon bomber - even when we were warned about those specific threats beforehand.
What's the compelling reason to do anything in the middle east? If the ISIS neighbor countries are good with it, if the European nations think it's none of their business, if it's extremely expensive, if meddling in their affairs will only make them hate us more... why not just ignore ISIS?
What's the benefit in fighting ISIS?
Like it or not, there are no third options.
Nonsense. That is like saying "you're either with us or against us".
You're trying to narrow the choices to two, when there are always options beyond those.
burn it up with a gen IV molten salt reactor.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What everyone needs to understand about this deal is that it is NOT about the geopolitics. It is about limiting the ability of Iran to rapidly produce the fuel for a nuclear weapon. Even with the ability to delay an inspector for a short amount of time it still meets the goals (and yes, 25 days is short when compared to the time needed to design, build, test, and implement an uranium processing facility). Iran has long been able to move money on the black and gray markets, though not as easily as if they were part of the open economy, so anything that monitors and limits their nuclear ambitions is better than where the world is now. Once the domestic economy starts to pick up, the economic incentives should be a strong endorsement to maintain the status quo, and not go back to the sanctions regime. A very large part of the Iranian population has spent their whole life under sanctions and restrictions, and I don't imagine that they will through the modernization of their nation away to push for nuclear weapons, and the Supreme leader and company would do well to remember what happens when you have a large, young, dissatisfied population seeing their world tossed to the gutter. Ask the Shah...
The geo-political and economic results from this were not the main goal. Both Israel and the Gulf States are going to have to quickly adapt to Iran becoming a more potent regional political force. They will have the resources to push their agenda in the area, putting them on the same playing field as the Arab League and Israel. Iran is also likely to become a very rapidly growing economy, after years of pent-up demand. Their technical capabilities make them a rival to Israel economically as well as militarily, but there is a real opportunity for those two nations to partner if they can ever get over the animosity.
In the worst case, the U.S. and Israel return to the sanctions regime and punish anyone who violates it. The dollar is the oil of the world economy, and will remain so for a few decades more at least, so the U.S. has tremendous economic power, and the U.N. is not going to step in to help Iran if they are violating the treaty.
What terms would you be able to convince the Iranians to agree to?
Given how well inspections have worked in the past in North Korea & Iraq, if the Iranians wouldn't allow unfettered access then no deal. We've seen this movie before, and the sequels aren't any good either.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
If you think an ISIS caliphate would be better than the West than a more positive relationship with Iran, all I can say is that you're mentally ill.
Seek help.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
If inspectors have concerns about undeclared sites, they must submit to Iran a request in writing that explains their concerns. Iran may counter with a proposal for “alternative means” of resolving the issue without actually allowing inspectors to inspect anything. If the inspectors and the regime can’t agree to a solution within two weeks, the dispute gets kicked up to a higher level. In other words, Iran has a license to stall for two full weeks whenever it does something suspicious.
After two weeks, the problem gets handed over to the Joint Commission, a new body whose membership and responsibility is defined in Annex IV to the agreement. Basically, the commission has eight members, one for each of the countries who are party to the agreement, plus the EU. A majority of five commission members may “advise” Iran on how to resolve the inspectors’ concerns. The commission has seven days to address the inspectors’ concerns, after which Iran has three days to implement any recommended measures. So, at minimum, Iran will have 24 days to clean up any suspicious sites before inspectors get a first look.
But what if Iran doesn’t comply with the commission’s requests within three days? Alas, that is a mystery. Section Q ends with the pronouncement that Iran will implement such measures. However, there is a “Dispute Resolution Mechanism” described in paragraphs 36 and 37 of the main body of the deal. This process requires another 50 days — the precise length is difficult to discern from the text, since it involves three separate levels of evaluation. So in practice, Iran may be looking at a minimum of two and a half months before they have to do anything.
And what if the inspectors are still left out in the cold? Then the only option left for the U.S. (or the U.K. or France) is to go to the UN Security Council and try to blow up the entire deal, in accordance with the “snapback” provisions of the deal.
http://www.nationalreview.com/...> Read more
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Iran is already making war against America both directly and by proxy.
Did you really mean to post a link about Iran supplying the Taliban with cash and arms without any irony? Because that's exactly what we did. Just to drive the point home: We supplied them with cash and arms. A billion dollars in cash, and only God and Uncle Sam know how much in other goodies (much earlier.) And regarding your third link, that number is dwarfed by American military suicides. The American Military is responsible for dramatically more American Military deaths than Iran could hope for. You're batting .333, pretty good for baseball, shit for Slashdot.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, but the problem is, that it is the ppl, not the gov. Their gov is far less friendly than Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm sure that this will work out at least as well as it did the last time a Dem US president made a deal to "stop the development of nuclear weapons".
I'm sure Japan, South Korea, and others in the region still remember that agreement with pride and joy.
-Styopa
Honest question. Do you think a nuclear weapons sized Uranium 235 extraction system (several thousand highly calibrated industrial sized centrifuges) can be moved in days, weeks, or even months? That is what weapons inspectors care about; not nuclear material (which could easily fit in the back of a truck), not nuclear reactors (which by any reasonable international agreements they have a right to), not engineering (which could be done in any random basement).
The extraction equipment is literally the only part of making a nuke that is significantly difficult to hide, it's the only thing the inspectors are actually spending time looking for. And it is far too large and complex an enterprise to hide in a few days time.
So, what does the agreement say about verification?
Is this another "national technical means" (read: spying) situation? Or does this have some other verification measure(s) that aren't mentioned in TFA?
And on an unrelated note - no, Iran did not "sign" the agreement. Anymore than the US did. They "initialed" it (read: the negotiators on all sides agreed to hand this back to their respective governments for ratification/whatever)....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
He and his within 5 second +5 'insightful' posse.
I'm curious about what you said.
Is this something you've noticed anecdotally, or do you have a screen scraping program that loads and interprets slashdot conversations? (Or something else?)
I'd be very interested in statistics about this sort of thing. Anything that throws light on how certain subjects get modded up, correlations of moderator accounts that don't post, and so on.
There's a lot of activity here that seems anecdotally suspicious. It'd be nice to know whether this is due to random clustering or some type of organized push.
Do you have any statistical support?
That would be the best of all worlds. I find it ironic that Iran can go forward with working reactors and cutting-edge technology, while the US still is stuck with 70+ year old reactor tech.
Because you have caused it by conquering Iraq and destabilising Syria. And now we have to take all the refugees you have caused.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
So the next time the West decides to punish a country, at least that country knows there is a way out if they do something to change.
Except that Saddam Hussein agreed to disarm, and then we killed him.
Gaddafi also agreed to disarm, and turned over the Lockerbie bomber. We killed him too.
Historically, there has not been much benefit to acceding to American demands.
What possible use are nukes for Iran anyway? Their ability to manufacture a large number of them or deliver a lot of them at once over any distance (especially intercontinental) makes them less than useful.
Any actual use of them against the US or Israel would result in a retaliation that would seriously threaten the existence of Iranian civilization as its now known. Any US president in office when an American city was targeted by an Iranian nuke who did not turn Iran into the world's largest open air supply of Trinitite might seriously be deposed if not lynched in the streets like Mussolini.
I've read that the Israelis have a standing threat that if Israel is targeted by a nuke, they are retaliating against all major Arab capitals and Mecca, regardless of who's at fault. Ironically or not, the Israelis do collective punishment like nobody since Imperial Rome.
They might get some short-term mileage out of stunts with the Straits of Hormuz, but it only works if they are willing to risk a catastrophic retaliation from which recovery is all but unlikely except on geological timelines. And the more serious their threat, the more likely they might face a preemptive strike. Even a conventional preemptive strike would force them to either capitulate or go nuclear. If they capitulate, they lose and future threats will go nowhere. If they go nuclear? Game over. All your base are glassed over.
Those who think we need to choose between ISIS and Iran, just as those who say the only alternative to the current deal with Iran is war -- are being dangerously simplistic. Sort of reminds me of the whole Democrat-Republican dynamic here in the USA of late. It's one line of BS or another -- both of which turn out to be politically motivated; that is, in the self-interest of the politician. I'm tired of hearing how: "This is Bush's fault" and "No, it's Obama's fault" At some point it's our fault. For listening to overly simplistic arguments, believing them, then picking a side. ...often followed by calling each other names.
Sad is what it is.
Sad and dangerous.
Sure, "not everyone agrees", and in particular conservative Republicans are foaming at the mouth, but... The thing is, for all their talk about how this agreement is going to be a disaster for America, I have yet to hear those on the right propose anything that sounds remotely like a workable alternative to the current deal. Say we end up with the deal stopped cold by congress, which could well happen, what then? Sanctions continue, and Iran no longer feels any reason not to go ahead with work on a bomb. Why wouldn't they? How would we stop them? Military force?? Don't make me laugh, that ain't gonna happen. So what's left, increasing the severity of the economic sanctions? We're pretty much doing all we can in that area now, and indeed it has brought Iran to the bargaining table. You want to just toss away the one chance we have to make a deal? It seems to me that if you're going to just say "well, screw that!" in regard to the current agreement, you have to have a better alternative in mind, and I mean something that stands a chance of working. We've got a deal, it's better than what we've had with sanctions in place, why not go with it? If Iran decides to cheat, well, that's the time to start talking tough. All I see now is people wanting to throw away this deal because, well, it might make Obama look good. And it might, but what else is there? I'm waiting to hear of any other plan of action that sounds remotely feasible.
In 1914 Serbia was considered only a regional threat.
What's your point here? Serbia didn't start WW1, was the least prepared for it and suffered, proportionally, more than any other nation. The great powers were all poised to jump on each other at the slightest provocation. Don't blame the children when the parents are fighting.
Indeed. I agree, past Iranian presidents have been pretty immature, and quite frankly stupid in publicly encouraging nuclear enrichment, in return for crippling sanctions that hurt most of its citizens. They couldn't see the big picture and simply wanted to look hard. This is school boy bully behaviour and didn't help the country long term at all.
The current Iranian president seems a lot more sensible. He wants to talk, he wants to be part of the worldwide conversation, and over and above his predecessors immature behaviour, he is focussing on his people's well being. That's leadership. We need to keep talking with Iran, we need to listen to them and they listen to us. This surely is the best way for long term peace? If someone doesn't take the high ground and give in, we'll just be in a silly stalemate for another 200 years because of some issue that is in the past, between people that aren't included in the conversation any more.
Iran has stood and given ground, we (the west) have also given ground. This is sensible negotiation. If we continue to drag up past arguments and events, blame each other for whatever has happened before and refuse to help them because of statements made by past presidents, then we're no better than boys in a school playground. We need leaders who are prepared to talk, negotiate, and give in sometimes, rather than just puffing out your chest and wielding power. Obama in my view is one of these people (and no, I'm not American and don't live in America).
Sure thing, the out is simple. Dismantle the nuclear weapons program, stop supporting terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist.
Do those, all sanctions go away.
Israel could have peace tomorrow if they stopped treating Palestinians the way certain other people treated the Jews in the past.
http://world.time.com/2014/02/...
Iranian Foreign Minister Lays Out Condition for Iranian Recognition of Israel
Official's language marks a shift from previous rhetoric
By Karl Vick / Tel Aviv
Feb. 04, 2014
One day after senior Israeli government officials raised eyebrows at an international conference by remaining in the room when Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took the stage to speak, Zarif told a German television interviewer that Tehran could restore diplomatic relations with Israel in the event of a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. “Once the Palestinian problem is solved the conditions for an Iranian recognition of Israel will be possible,” Zarif said in the interview Monday.
The Arab League also offered them a peace plan on similar terms.
When you do something wrong, you're supposed to admit it, then say you're sorry, then promise you'll never do it again, then ask for forgiveness.
You're supposed to teach your children this stuff, shame that nations led by adults have such a hard time with it.
There is no shame in saying you're sorry when you're wrong. Iran might well find a lot of support in Europe if they came clean, the US wouldn't be in any position to push on Iran if they did. Nor would we have any need to.
If you are a Zionist then you are the biggest fucking hypocrite in the world. When did Israel ever admit that they were wrong, much less apologize, or ask for forgiveness, for acting like Nazis?
This was documented by investigators from the Goldstone Commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Ha'aretz, the New York Times, Washington Post, Independent, and others. The Israelis never investigated.
I'll tell you what Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor said: They're all lying. Goldstone, AI, HRW, Ha'aretz, NYT, WP, they're all lying. They're all Jews who have gone over to the anti-Semites.
I hope the Israeli government and their well-paid PR firms are reading this and will see that their propaganda isn't working any more.
Israel is also a nuclear-armed terrorist state. Since they own the U.S. government, we'll have to depend on the Europeans to put pressure on them, and the boycott, sanctions and divestment movement seems t
You're rational is the same we followed when arming Afghan jihads against the USSR. That didn't come back to bite us.
The USSR seemed to have done a pretty good job of keeping Afghanistan under control, building housing, schools, educating women, etc. They were less brutal than GWB, and more competent. (Although anybody is more competent than GWB.)
I agree, which is why I support boycott, divestiture and sanctions against Israel.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And don't forget Ronald Reagan sent arms to Iran. Not only that, he sent them a cake, baked in the shape of a key.
Apparently, by baking Iran a cake, Reagan was demonstrating that he had no religious objections to terrorism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Please.
That's just political posturing and propaganda.
And what is the purpose of propaganda and political posturing? To persuade, to foster public support and political will to take a specific action in line with the posturing and propaganda. I get sick of people just waving this off - talk of genocide - as a if it were just a mere insignificant cultural manifestation.
I don't think the Israelis even believe that any more. The people leading the Palestinians simply want to maintain their grip on power, and Israel's Palestinian policy is guaranteed to keep them in power forever. Quite frankly, I think the hawks in Israel and the goons in Palestine basically have a sort of unspoken agreement whereby they continue this war in perpetuity. Politically, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the best way to hang on to power either side has discovered.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Quite a few of the problems in the middle east today can be traced back to actions taken in the past by western nations.
The Palestinian problem wouldn't even be a problem if Palestine hadn't been taken away from the Palestinians and given to the Jews (first by the British at the end of WW1 when they created "Mandatory Palestine" and allowed the Jews in in big numbers then again at the end of WW2 when the country was split in two, then again when the Jews not only claimed independence for the Jewish part and called it Israel but proceeded to capture the Palestinian part and more land besides)
The current situation in Iran would likely not exist had the US and UK not kicked out Mohammad Mosaddegh in a coup (all because Mohammad Mosaddegh kicked out the British oil company and nationalized the oil industry)
Islamic State wouldn't be such a problem if the US had left things well enough alone in Iraq instead of launching a full-blown invasion just because some circumstantial intelligence suggested Iraq MIGHT have some WMDs somewhere (plus had the US and its allies not go into Iraq they would have been able to focus more on the war in Afghanistan and might not have taken 10 years to take out Osama bin Laden)
Nope. Iran has a ballistic missile program. They don't need enough nukes to wipe the U.S., just threaten New York or Washington.
Israel...total domination over the Sunni countries in the mid-east? How?
You have a very "European" outlook towards Israel (the Jewish state). What a pity.
The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell