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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.

22 of 459 comments (clear)

  1. Only IRAN is celebrating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    THE U.S. SHOULDN’T BE CELEBRATING, EITHER: Michael Oren: Why Israel Won’t be Celebrating the Iran Deal.

    Back in 1994, American negotiators promised a “good deal” with North Korea. Its nuclear plants were supposed to be frozen and dismantled. International inspectors would “carefully monitor” North Korea’s compliance with the agreement and ensure the country’s return to the “community of nations.” The world, we were told, would be a safer place. . . .

    Iran is not North Korea. It’s far worse. Pyonyang’s dictators never plotted terrorist attacks across five continents and in thirty cities, including Washington, D.C. Tehran’s Ayatollahs did. North Korea is not actively undermining pro-Western governments in its region or planting agents in South America. Iran is.

    So why, then, are only Israelis united in opposing this deal? The answer is that we have the most to lose, at least in the short run. We know that the deal allows Iran to break out and create nuclear bombs in as little as three months, too quickly for the world to react. We know that the Ayatollahs, who have secretly constructed fortified nuclear facilities that have no peaceful purpose and have violated all of their international commitments, will break this deal in steps too small to precipitate a powerful global response. And we know that the sanctions, once lifted, cannot be swiftly revived, and that hundreds of billions of dollars Iran will soon receive will not be spent on better roads and schools. That treasure will fund the shedding of blood – of Israelis but also of many others.

    Israelis know that, while the world might weather its deception by North Korea, they cannot afford to be duped by Iran. But neither, in fact, can the United States. Just last week, Iran’s President attended a rally in Tehran where tens of thousands of protesters chanted “Death to America.” The deal will better enable them to carry out that attack – if not today, then against future generations. And Iran’s Supreme Leader has publicly pledged to do just that.

    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.

    1. Re:Only IRAN is celebrating by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Choose one:

      1) Iran/Syria
      2) ISIS

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    2. Re:Only IRAN is celebrating by dywolf · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh boy. This thread is sure to break my all time high score for playing Spot The Nutjob.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    3. Re: Only IRAN is celebrating by Type44Q · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not quite true; from what I recall, their democratically - elected gov't (back in the 50's?) was a threat to a particular western oil company with vested interests in Iran... and thus we have the situation you see today... ;)

    4. Re:Only IRAN is celebrating by dunkelfalke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because the only place they might consider invading would nuke them into slag.

      What? Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have nukes? Or maybe Afghanistan?

      Because we've prevented them from getting WMDs or anything else that would allow them to pose a serious threat.

      I have a tiger repelling rock to sell you. Very cheap.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    5. Re:Only IRAN is celebrating by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Funny

      I have a tiger repelling rock to sell you. Very cheap.

      I hear the Springfield Bear Patrol has been so successful that there hasn't been a single bear attack in all of Springfield this year.

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    6. Re:Only IRAN is celebrating by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah. What an utter dolt, getting Iran to sit down with the current Great Powers and hammer out an agreement. What an utter incompetent. He should totally just keep doing what Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II did, because boy oh boy, they should had fantastic fucking success with Iran.

      You know, I don't think Obama is the best president ever, not even in the top ten, but it takes a complete fucking retard or partisan lunatic to think that somehow he is some sort of bottom-rung President. But because he's black, because he's a Democrat, and because, well I dunno, because he isn't Ron Fucking Paul, somehow in some peoples' eyes he's the second coming of Satan or something.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    7. Re:Only IRAN is celebrating by BCGlorfindel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wow, the overreaching race to make Iran a saint and America the devil. You're overzealous approach led you to spout a lot of utter nonsense. Let's review indeed.

      Iran: Never invaded anyone, never used weapons of mass destruction against anyone, never posed a serious threat to anyone except Hussein's Iraq.

      1.Their official head of state, and until recently their president beneath him, were holocaust deniers. Plenty of FUD has been spread to try and deny this denial, but the fact is plain that both Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have both openly questioned how many Jews were really killed in the holocaust and called for that to be restudied and questioned by scholars more generally. It's just the new face of denial, what is the holocaust after all without millions of victims singled out for their ethnicity alone? It's just some people that died in a war again, so questioning if millions really died IS absolutely denial of the holocaust.
      2. Ali Khamenei called for Israel to removed from the map, and Ahmadinejad called this a very wise statement. Somehow that seems at least a bit threatening to Israel, no? Move on to 3 before crying how Iran's never put action to those words...
      3. Hezbollah was more or less founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Hezbollah is to this day heavily trained, funded, equipped and armed by Iran. Hezbollah absolutely has launched multiple direct assaults on Israel and is eternally stockpiling weapons and arms on Israel's border aimed in on it.

      U.S.: Invaded Iraq with no provocation,

      Saddam's Iraq invaded and seized Kuwait with no provocation first. Upon Saddam's elimination of a UN member state, the US kicked him out and returned sovereignty back to Kuwait. They additionally set out and dismantled Saddam's programs for weapons of mass destruction that he very much DID have then. They additionally setup a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect Iraqi Kurds from a second genocide, as Saddam had previously done against them after the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. did however listen to world opinion and stopped there. They left Saddam in power, and stood outside Iraq's borders and watched Saddam commit a second genocide, this time against Shia Iraqi's who foolishly rose up when Bush Sr. suggested they do just that.

      So since the end of the original Gulf War, which Saddam surely instigated, he committed genocide, for at least the second time in his reign. Meanwhile all the signatories to the convention on genocide stood back and had done nothing. Saddam additionally kicked out international inspectors trying to confirm his compliance with his agreement to not restart his WMD programs, and he had done this repeatedly. He repeatedly violated the no-fly zone over Kurdish Iraq. But yes, aside from the genocide and refusal to abide by inspection of his old WMD sites, there was no provocation at all for removing Saddam from power...

      only country in the world to use nuclear weapons,

      This has to be the cheapest shot in your quiver. Even the Japanese, the only country in the world to have nuclear weapons used against it, agree that the nukes probably saved lives, even if you only value Japanese lives, versus an inevitable ground invasion otherwise. And don't compound your folly by declaring how the nuclear bombs where unneeded because Japan was going to surrender anyway. Merely the fact that a second bombing of Nagasaki was required proves that Japan wasn't even prepared to surrender AFTER Hiroshima had been nuked.

      have overthrown countless democratically elected governments (including the one in Iran).

      So remind me, WHO'S the threat to world peace again?

      Much as has Britain, and France, and China, and Japan and Russia and any nation that has ever gotten large enough to ply it's powers globally. America is no saint, but that hardly changes Iran's nature.

      Oh, and if you're going to say t

    8. Re:Only IRAN is celebrating by rubycodez · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Last I checked Iran had government, constitution, borders, provinces, taxes, etc. Your BS claims are without foundation, they have a nation

    9. Re:Only IRAN is celebrating by rubycodez · · Score: 4, Informative

      You are claiming the USA does not and has not supported terrorists, despots, revolutions?

    10. Re:Only IRAN is celebrating by meglon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think you're an idiot. Tell me, how is Obama the worst president ever? Is it his cleaning up of Bush's complete fuck up of the economy... or that he's not siding with sociopath murderers in attacking Iran.. or is it the millions of people who now have health insurance.... please, do tell. I get it, you're just a stupid fucking partisan hack who can't stand that Obama won, and your offshoring, company destroying, money sucking robot didn't win. Too fucking bad.

      Obama's made some mistakes, yes... but all his mistakes combined don't add up to any given year of Bush II's. But yeh, you're still a fucking idiot and partisan hack. You don't need optimism, you need surgery to have your head removed from your ass. Maybe Obamacare will pay for it.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  2. Re:Crazy! by caseih · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What's crazy? Isolating Iran certainly hasn't worked up until now. I'm glad to see negotiations and compromise.

  3. As if America has a great track record either? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Good by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  5. Nuclear Accord? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Funny

    Damn, and I was waiting for their electrical model. Honda is moving forward!

  6. Re:Crazy! by i_ate_god · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...
  7. Re:Good by laird · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  8. Inspection Process by sycodon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  9. Re:Good by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.'"
  10. Re:24/7 access does NOT = "unfettered" access by MozeeToby · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  11. Re:Uhh... what happens with their spent fuel? by mlts · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:Crazy! by nbauman · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

    http://www2.ohchr.org/english/...

    773. At about 12.50 p.m., Khalid Abd Rabbo, his wife Kawthar, their three daughters, Souad (aged 9), Samar (aged 5) and Amal (aged 3), and his mother, Hajja Souad Abd Rabbo, stepped out of the house, all of them carrying white flags. Less than 10 metres from the door was a tank, turned towards their house. Two soldiers were sitting on top of it having a snack (one was eating chips, the other chocolate, according to one of the witnesses). The family stood still, waiting for orders from the soldiers as to what they should do, but none was given. Without warning, a third soldier emerged from inside the tank and started shooting at the three girls and then also at their grandmother. Several bullets hit Souad in the chest, Amal in the stomach and Samar in the back. Hajja Souad was hit in the lower back and in the left arm.

    [The IDF refused to let an ambulance bring them to the hospital, so they walked. Amal and Souad died. Samar had a spinal injury and was left paraplegic for life. The Israeli government never investigated this event or prosecuted the soldier responsible.]

    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