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Trump Withdraws US From Iran Nuclear Deal (nytimes.com)
President Trump on Tuesday announced he is withdrawing the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, a historic accord signed in 2015 that aims to limit Tehran's nuclear ability for more than a decade in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions against the country. "This was a horrible one-sided deal that should never, ever been made," Mr. Trump said at the White House in announcing his decision. "It didn't bring calm, it didn't bring peace, and it never will." The New York Times reports: Mr. Trump's announcement, while long anticipated and widely telegraphed, plunges America's relations with European allies into deep uncertainty. They have committed to staying in the deal, raising the prospect of a diplomatic and economic clash as the United States reimposes stringent sanctions on Iran. It also raises the prospect of increasing tensions with Russia and China, which also are parties to the agreement.
One person familiar with negotiations to keep the accord in place said the talks collapsed over Mr. Trump's insistence that sharp limits be kept on Iran's nuclear fuel production after 2030. The deal currently lifts those limits. As a result, the United States is now preparing to reinstate all sanctions it had waived as part of the nuclear accord -- and impose additional economic penalties as well, according to another person briefed on Mr. Trump's decision. Despite Trump's decision, President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran would remain committed to a multinational nuclear deal. "If we achieve the deal's goals in cooperation with other members of the deal, it will remain in place. [...] By exiting the deal, America has officially undermined its commitment to an international treaty," Rouhani said in a televised speech. "I have ordered the foreign ministry to negotiate with the European countries, China and Russia in coming weeks. If at the end of this short period we conclude that we can fully benefit from the JCPOA with the cooperation of all countries, the deal would remain," he added.
One person familiar with negotiations to keep the accord in place said the talks collapsed over Mr. Trump's insistence that sharp limits be kept on Iran's nuclear fuel production after 2030. The deal currently lifts those limits. As a result, the United States is now preparing to reinstate all sanctions it had waived as part of the nuclear accord -- and impose additional economic penalties as well, according to another person briefed on Mr. Trump's decision. Despite Trump's decision, President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran would remain committed to a multinational nuclear deal. "If we achieve the deal's goals in cooperation with other members of the deal, it will remain in place. [...] By exiting the deal, America has officially undermined its commitment to an international treaty," Rouhani said in a televised speech. "I have ordered the foreign ministry to negotiate with the European countries, China and Russia in coming weeks. If at the end of this short period we conclude that we can fully benefit from the JCPOA with the cooperation of all countries, the deal would remain," he added.
I have a feeling that a lot of Trump's nonsense will be corrected once Trump is gone.
I think there is a potential for Trump to be like the Mule in the Foundation Trilogy; in the same way that he's extremely disruptive in the moment, but may ultimately have little effect on the course of history.
The Paris Accord, the Iran deal, the Wall, ... if the rest of the planet just holds shit together until Trump is gone, the next president is reasonably likely to just put a lot of the pieces pretty much back where they were.
Not that I really expect trump to resign or anything, and we may have several more years of his chaotic nonsense, but he will ultimately have to go and unless America decides to double down and elect Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho for president... or maybe Ted Nugent, things will probably return to normal pretty quickly.
They were already preparing to build nukes, the were never honest the deal was broken before it started. Did you see the intel from Israel?
How the US deals with them should be correct, we would be stupid (were being stupid) to let enemies get Nukes if we can stop them. Only someone sick in the head would let that happen (by the way this is what happened prior to WWII with Germany.) They burn our flags chant death to America etc. They announce themselves as our enemy.
For some sort of insanity people want to let our enemies get Nukes. How long have we heard crying that Trump was going to cause a nuclear war with North Korea?
Now we are going to get the same crying about Iran for a while from the same people. I say go ahead and cry, but fortunately as good or bad as trump is he is not all FUD (like Obama wrt Iran and this whole sh*t deal we just canned. It was a sham to make people feel good.)
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
If you realize that this is a complex issue then why would you suggest such a simplistic and short-sighted action? Also, we don't produce anywhere near the amount of oil needed to match our consumption.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl...
Did you see the intel from Israel about WMDs in 2003?
The "intel from Israel" consisted of a PowerPoint presentation with a slide that said, "Iran is Cheating". You could change the word "Iran" to "Iraq" in everything that's been presented by Israel and you'd get an exact copy of the run-up to the Iraq War. Coincidentally, the people who are most keen to believe the "intel from Israel" are the exact same people who insisted that Saddam was hours away from being able to send a nuke to New York. It's been 15 years since Bush invaded Iraq and the Likudniks assume we've forgotten by now.
You've been played. No, you played yourself.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The US absolutely can not produce all the oil it needs domestically, even with fracking. The US consumes approximately 20 million barrels of oil per day and imports just over half of that. Doubling domestic oil production is just not something that the US can do. Even if it could (it can't) that production would require a huge investment and would be very short-lived.
More to your meaning, the US could probably live without imports from the middle-east (about 2.6 million barrels of oil per day). It would be immensely painful. Certainly, many many countries would like to see the US pull out of the region, but I think US interests in the region have as much to do with the Jewish community's strong connection to Israel as oil interests.
That's not what the article says, at all.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Misrepresent the truth, yes, to help the region deescalate. Too bad Trump and Netanyahu seem to be trying to inflame the situation.
The idea that Iran, who has lied,
Who hasn't?
The point of the deal is you didn't have to trust Iran because they're subjected to rigorous inspections.
who has claimed to want to destroy entire countries
You mean their blowhard former President once made a comment that sounds like that when translated and taken out of context.
But you can't relate to anything like that.
and it the worlds leading sponsor of terror,
Whether or not that's true is irrelevant. The deal was about Nukes, not missiles, Hezbollah support, or anything else.
would not use the principle of Taqiyya (Shia being much more flexible in its use) to lie about their goals is ridiculous.
WTF? You think the only people on the planet capable of lying are Muslims following your distorted understanding of religious practice? Was it really that necessary to discredit your already dumb argument by demonstrating to everyone that you're an ignorant Islamophobe?
The perfidy of the Iranian government is well documented as is the avoidance measures they took to truly by limited in their goals to become a nuclear power.
Good for Trump.
Yeah, good for Trump. He's destroyed a perfectly good non-proliferation deal and risked a Nuclear arms race in the Middle East because he's too big a wuss to admit that he got suckered by the Fox News/GOP push to smear Obama in the lead up to the 2016 election.
Risking Nuclear war is one thing, but admitting you were wrong??? That's unthinkable!!!
I stole this Sig
Hahaha! Please clarify...it almost sounds like you feel that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot.
Um... or they might be for it because it's working now? There are lots of potential reasons.
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61% percent of congress both democrats and republicans said "Nah dawg, no way, no deal" so Obama did it without approval.
Where is the evidence for what you are saying? Every partner in this treaty agrees that Iran has maintained their obligations. So do members of the Trump administration (James Matis). You are just a troll spewing bullshit.
He's keeping yet another campaign promise.
You know our own SecDef and head of the joint chiefs of staff came out and said Iran is abiding by the terms of the deal?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It wasn't a legally enacted treaty - never went to Congress for approval as all treaties must.
It's not a treaty. It's an agreement. Iran agreed to do a thing, the UNSC permanent members and the EU agreed to do a thing, all within the bounds of their respective executive powers. Congress's approval was not necessary, because nothing in the deal required legislative authority.
We were prevented from inspecting numerous locations considered 'military' by Iran's leaders - which is the most likely place to develop a nuclear program.
False - that is categorically and unquestionably incorrect.
The agreement provided for guaranteed inspection of *any* location the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors deem potentially in violation. Iran has a limited ability to push back - they have a 24-day window to negotiate an alternative, but if we decide we *need* to see it, we will see it or the sanctions will kick back in. 24 days is not enough to hide a nuclear weapons facility from close inspection - particularly not when we have satellite surveillance and can easily see any large movement of equipment and materiel away from the site.
Additionally, a term of the agreement required Iran to accede to the "Additional Protocol", which has even more stringent requirements allowing short-notice inspections of any site by the IAEA - and that protocol will *not* expire with the rest of the agreement.
As I type this the news on tv is showing me Schumer, Menendez, and other democrats speaking AGAINST the Iran deal in 2015 - who now oddly embrace the deal they were against because Trump ended it.
Schumer and Menendez were the *only* two Democrat senators to oppose the deal. A symbolic resolution decrying the bill was passed through the House on party-line vote, and was never formally voted on in the Senate due to lack of sufficient votes. And I have not seen either of them publicly support the deal to this day. I strongly suspect your sources are being misleading on this, as they clearly are on other issues.
So I saw a TRS-80 at the Smithsonian museum several years ago.
I got mine in February of 1978.
I wrote articles for Kilobaud Microcomputing back in 1980.
How'd you get your start?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
And in one fell stroke Trump handed Iran the win.
The US has never had any material pressure economically against the Iranian regime. We've had sanctions on them for 30 years. The only thing that drew Iran to the table was European sanctions that through the hard work of the Obama administration was able to draw Europe to the table and get them to implement sanctions to drive Iran to a deal. By withdrawing the US from the deal all US pressure is now gone and the deal is directly between Europe and Iran (what Iran wanted from the beginning). The US will implement sanctions, Europe won't and Iran gets what they wanted, the US out of the deal and monitoring regime and Europe on board to maintain the deal and keep sanctions off.
And with the stroke of a pen Trump snatched defeat from the Jaws of victory.
It would be humorous if it wasn't so bloody SAD.
I guess you're not aware of the Green River oil shale that has about 1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, enough to run 100% of current US demand for nearly 3 centuries. All it takes is a desire to get it.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Something about that line stinks. I did a quick Google Search to check its veracity. (https://goo.gl/p6ni4E)
... in next weeks’
It looks like "someone" made the claim and every single newsbot out there reproduiced it on their respective sites... and JUST that line.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s president says if negotiations fail, Islamic Republic will enrich uranium ‘more than before
That's it. There are hundreds of articles out there made up of that one line.
According to everyone including Netanyahu, they were not building nuclear weapons. I guess you must be smarter than all of Mossad and the CIA put together. Or you are complete doofus.
We tried doing that with Syria, letting them just sort their own shit out. The resulting civil war led to a refugee crisis and the rapid growth of ISIS, and then let Russia expand its military reach into the Mediterranean.
A Saudi-Iran war would result in a refugee crisis bigger than any since WW2, an oil crisis bigger than any since ever, and if it went nuclear (Israel is a known-but-undeclared nuclear power, Iran and Saudi Arabia are just a serious political push and a year away from building their own nukes), a radioactive crisis when the winds carry it either eastward towards China, or southwestward into Africa.
Peace, if possible, is a vastly preferable alternative.
The sheer force of sucking vacuosity is threatening to disrupt the space time continuum.
The waves of lies after lies are beating down the defenses of the still sane.
He's steering his nuclear-armed bumper car into every obstacle at full throttle, while he races down the track backwards against the traffic.
My slashdot username is truly relevant again. I coined it in the lead-up to the J.W. Bush "weapons of mass delusion" Gulf War.
I could never have imagined a more dumb-ass president than JW. Boy was I wrong.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The UN observers, US Secretary of Defense and the joint chiefs of staff are satisfied that Iran is following the terms of the agreement. You're so desperate to believe that Iran is doing stuff in secret, *somehow*, that it becomes an easy chip to play for political gain for Trump. It's almost too easy.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Trump will be willing to sign the exact same deal he just abandoned, just with his name on it instead of Obama's, which was the whole point from the beginning.
Jeebus won't come back unless we have a nuclear war in the middle east.
I wish i was kidding but this exactly what American evangelicals believe. They wish for war so they can be raptured and go spend eternity with invisible sky daddy.
It's almost impressive how many wrong things you can cram into one post.
"Old man yells at systemd"
of what America's word is worth when they make a "deal".
Trump will one day be gone, but the USA's untrustworthiness will take much long to repair.
Isolationist
I.e., retracting somewhat from globalism. Compared to the world, the US is hardly isolationist.
America deciding everything for everyone? "Fuck you, America" ...maybe America isnt the problem here.
America not deciding everything for everyone? "Fuck you, America"
nationalist
The US has always been nationalist, retard. Retards like you help validate the nationalists.
Islamophobic
Not any more than most Western countries. There are no laws against Muslims, unlike say, France. Muslims dont form ghettos in the US.
anti-immigration
The US is actually enforcing its existing laws regarding illegal immigration. Come here legally... gee, what a concept. Fuck you, America.
anti-refugee
The rise of conservative parties across Europe show refugees, entering without documentation and from terrorist-ridden places, isnt popular in quite a bit of the Western world.
intolerant of its own people
The US is more tolerant than ever, but reporting has increased exponentially, and it's quality has seen the inverse. But gimme some more of dat juicy 24-hour news feed - I'm so informed.
warmongering, and oligarchical, America's beacon has dimmed and she is doomed
Been hearing this for a loooooooong time.
I mean, at least try to insult American well.
The rest of the world needs to recognize and appreciate that America is becoming a shithole country and move along without the US.
Isolationist, nationalist, Islamophobic, anti-immigration, anti-refugee, intolerant of its own people, warmongering, and oligarchical, America's beacon has dimmed and she is doomed.
You know what? Screw it.
It doesn't matter how much of our wealth we give away, there will always be someone like you spewing lies and hatred, trying to guilt us into giving more. It will never be enough
We owe you nothing. We owe the world nothing. We sometimes enter into agreements with allies for a common goal, but these one-side giveaways are going to stop. It's not our problem, and we are tired of all the giving.
The US allows about 1.1 million immigrants into the country every year, which is remarkably generous by world standards. We are not anti-immigration, we are anti illegal immigration, and would like to look after the safety of our own citizens by filtering out the criminals.
We are not anti-refugee, but after awhile the refugees need to go home. The [minor] hurricane refugees have been here for 10 years, we're done supporting them, now it's time for them to go home.
Paris accord? We foot the bill. TPP? A horribly one-sided deal. Iran agreement? Billions in aid, which they used to further develop nuclear weapons *and* funneled money to terrorist organizations.
You may not have noticed, but America's beacon has brightened considerably in the last year or so.
Unemployment is down, and the economy is up. ISIS is defeated, the Korean war is over. Jobs are coming back, and we got money back from the IRS.
Presidential approval is up around 50%.
We're doing actually pretty well for a change, despite all the knee-jerk negativity.
Take a look around and see what's happening.
People are starting to feel good about our country once again.
We're done giving away our wealth, we need to look after our own citizens for a change.
We owe you nothing.
Let's face it, USA evangelicals are growing ever more Taliban-like: xenophobic, anti-diplomacy, anti-education, anti-subject-expert, and zealotic.
Table-ized A.I.
Netanyahu wants the US to go to war against Iran, he believes this will solve Israel's problems. He's a fool, just like Trump.
The scariest thing is Trump might be stupid enough to try to launch military action against Iran and just like Bush before him he'll spend another trillion dollars on a war that should have never been started to begin with over weapons of mass destruction.
Yep, nothing to do with anything except cancelling anything Obama implemented.
It's almost as if that Lion King joke stuck in Trumps craw.
I hope Iran, Russia, China, and the EU pick up the slack and prosper from trade deals with each other.
Iran? Nope. Too much fundamentalism. Russia? Nope. They've been empire-building since before the USA was even a thing. China? Nope. They'd like to rule the world, too. They're not going to play nice with Russia.
Truth is, America is still the world's most benevolent superpower. If China or Russia were where we are, things would be even worse. That doesn't mean don't fix the problems with America, but it does mean have some perspective.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We already knew they had a nuclear program and lied about it, so that's not news. Israel is trying to whip people like you into a froth with some old facts. They have nothing new of interest whatsoever.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The US absolutely can not produce all the oil it needs domestically, even with fracking.
Not only can it (see sibling comments) but it doesn't need to, either. We have more than enough unused land (crappy land, too, not the good stuff) to produce 100% of our transportation fuel from algae feedstocks with current technology. That accounts for 71 percent of our oil consumption...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Israel claims they have a bunch of evidence and the US intelligence services have confirmed the information. Is that not enough for you?
No. It's not enough for Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and CIA, either. In fact, none of the information Israel has is new. We already knew Iran lied about their nuclear program; that's actually part of what led to the Iran Nuclear Deal. What Israel has uncovered is the specific details of Iran's former nuclear program, which explains how they lied. But we already knew they lied, so Netanyahu has dropped exactly zero bombshells with his powerpoint presentation.
While we're on the subject though, I don't believe anything Israel says. Like, literally anything. They deliberately murder journalists to prevent the truth from being heard. That's not a good look.
You want to see a mushroom cloud before you believe the Iranians are building the bomb? Isn't that a bit too late?
We have been inspecting the shit out of them for years and we know the state of their nuclear program in some detail from a combination of direct and indirect intelligence gathering. The nuclear deal has been working, and you fell for Netanyahu's dog and pony show. What a maroon.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't think this was a treaty, just an agreement. Congress didn't approve it. Which made congress at the time very very angry, but then the president as executive can abide by the agreements anyway and doesn't need permission from congress to remove the sanctions or insist on inspections. However without congress this agreement doesn't have force of law, and the next president can overturn the agreement on a whim. The executive branch decides on foreign policy, not congress.
you don't think that's stuff matters? And this has nothing to do with isolationism. It's the exact opposite. We're prepping for a war. How is that isolationist?
As for the Trade Deal, Trump already supports TPP and literally said he wants guest workers to do your jobs to a bunch of supporters at a rally (that went over about as well as you'd expect, but his approval rating still hasn't budged).
America is exactly what it's always been, a global empire by and for our ruling class. Trump didn't change that, but no, we don't want it. Trump I'll remind you didn't win the popular vote. We are not a Democracy
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War is bad no matter who it's with. People forget this. They see WWII and think "we stopped Hitler, yea!" and become warhawks. Never mind that Hitler came to power because of WWI, and WWI happened because of prior wars, and you can follow the chain all the way back to the Romans. And after WWI we majorly screwed up in Vietnam and Iraq, and yet we still have people who think we could have "won" Vietnam even though technically we were only supposed to be advisors there, and people who think Iraq was a good idea and that we just need more troops on the ground. At some point the world needs to just agree to stop fighting over petty issues, like economics, religion, oil, ideology, tribalism, etc.
Exactly right. Had Obama wished to make the deal permanent, he needed to go to the Senate to have them ratify it. Since the Senate at the time was controlled by Republicans he was in no mood to negotiate with (and likely bet on another Democrat being elected to the Presidency, or at least a squishy establishment Republican), Obama couched it as an executive agreement. Simply put, Trump used the same pen and phone Obama did. (AC due to modding)
According to everyone including Netanyahu, they were not building nuclear weapons. I guess you must be smarter than all of Mossad and the CIA put together.
I have no opinion on this issue specifically, but it is indeed possible that the person you are talking to could indeed be smarter than all of Mossad and the CIA put together. And you probably are, too. Any organisation which actively rejects public scrutiny can very easily be far stupider than any single person who works for them.
In the lead up to the Iraq war, our intelligence services were convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The "evidence" that they presented in public was laughably stupid, but many (including me) figured that they had better information but couldn't tell us because that would give away stuff like exactly how they got it.
What nobody (including me) seemed to question was the premise that our spies knew what they were doing and had some understanding of how the world worked. It turns out that they knew shit. They did not have any information that the rest of us didn't have. That laughably stupid "evidence" was literally all they had, and they convinced themselves anyway.
I've seen a lot of films and TV shows presenting a fictionalised account of MI5, the British agency responsible (amongst other things) for finding foreign spies. Do you know how many foreign spies they have actually discovered since it was created a century ago?
You probably know the answer already by my tone of voice: The number is exactly zero. Even the ones who worked for MI5. Everyone MI5 "caught" by their own devices was not a spy, and every one who was an actual spy was caught by someone else or they turned themselves in.
The assumption that our intelligence services know more than you do, or understand the world better than you do, is a fatal one. This is, if you like, the anti-conspiracy theory. "They" are not suppressing information, "they" are not arranging atrocities, "they" do not possess secret knowledge that you do not, "they" are not secretly running the show. In reality, "they", more than likely not, are incompetent weirdos who live in a fantasy world.
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Are you blind or you just can't read English? That's exactly what it says...."...that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal". How is 'largely manufactured" not 'misrepresenting the true' an it's right there 'for selling deal'.
I do not know nor can predict (nor can anyone else) if Trump's decision is going to turn out 'good or bad', but if the deal was sold to the public on lies & misinformation. And even if Obama truly believed the efforts would disentangle the US from a complex set of relationships & pave the way for the US to get out of the Middle East..it has absolutely failed in that regard specifically because Iran took the money & used it to escalate tensions in the region. We have Yemen bombing Saudi Arabia now (and I'm certainly no fan of Saudi Arabia...but seriously "escalation anyone"???).
This agreement entirely failed to do what Obama believed it would and it was sold using 'smoke & mirrors'. You really think Khomeini put 'moderates' in power because he changed? LMAO.
Dude you live in a fairy tale world where apparently 'everyone just wants to get along', that is so far from the truth (at least in leadership levels in various countries) that I fear for your sanity when reality comes & bites you in the ass.
No, they don't. No.
I know several who hope fervently that they are raptured in their lifetime. What is the use of the Desert gawd if you don't get to heaven and send most everyone else to hell?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I have no opinion on this issue specifically, but it is indeed possible that the person you are talking to could indeed be smarter than all of Mossad and the CIA put together. And you probably are, too. Any organisation which actively rejects public scrutiny can very easily be far stupider than any single person who works for them.
In the lead up to the Iraq war, our intelligence services were convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Cool story Bro. The people who were convinced were the Neocons running the country at that time. Turns out that was not an intel failure, but a lie.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm betting that the real reason is that Obama negotiated the treaty; I don't really understand the USA internals -- nor should I, as a foreigner -- but can a President really get out of treaties without the Congress consent?
Almost anything a President can enter into unilaterally (an 'agreement' like this, the DACA deal, executive actions in general) can be undone by a President, unilaterally.
this personally? That will tell you all you need to know. He doesn't give a single fuck about the country or the world and never has.
It never was a treaty - President Obama never presented it to the Senate for approval (as must be done for all treaties), so it was a simple "gentleman's agreement" at best. President Trump is right to withdraw on this basis alone -
No. Simply having the power to do something doesn't make it right.
let alone whether or not Iran is violating their agreement. We should not bind ourselves by agreements made dictatorially by a single person.
Reality doesn't give a flying fuck about political masturbation.
If you break something you broke it. It doesn't matter whether you think you are justified in doing something based on some bullshit abstract philosophical conceptualization.
It's still broke.
You still broke it.
You still own the consequences of your actions.
Yes, Iran wants nukes, but it also wants relief from sanctions. Also, as Mattis himself pointed out, the Iran deal was written under the assumption that Iran would try to cheat and made it difficult to do so -- forcing Iran to choose between nukes and relief.
I'll quote Nassim Taleb here: "Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains. In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the “removal” of Gadhafi because he was “a dictator”, not realizing that removals have consequences (recall that he has no skin in the game and doesn’t pay for results).
The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, election forecasting models, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right."
IYI, by the way, stands for Intellectual-Yet-Idiot.
Obama made it an agreement that Congress didn't have to approve because he knew, just to spite him, they'd never agree to anything he did. This was well into the "obstructionist" aspect.
This again. Di you know anything about oil shale? Hint: it's not the same thing as shale oil. Oil shale needs to be mined and economically accessing the Green River Formation requires 'in situ' technologies that don't even exist yet... and that's just the start: oil shale is a horrible, inefficient mess like oil-bearing tar sands.
One can conclude only that either your ignorance is wilful in nature, or that you just don't read.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The people who were convinced were the Neocons running the country at that time. Turns out that was not an intel failure, but a lie.
The DCI during the run up to the war was George Tenet, a Clinton appointee. He told GWB that it was a "slam dunk" to prove that Iraq had WMDs, and GWB had no reason to doubt him. That was an intel failure.
and Saddam before that. We've already proven we're not to be trusted. NK is just buddying up with SK and China so we can't invade while there's a warhawk looking for a fight in the Whitehouse.
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Supposedly even saddam "knew" iraq had wmd/etc...i.e., don't be the bearer of news the guy who can kill you w no compunction doesn't want to hear...
There's no way you have a college education. China is intentionally, willfully, and with decades of planning attempting to be the only superpower and extend their Han-Chinese ethno-nationalism to the rest of the planet. This isn't a secret. It's their public plan. All you have to do is pick up a college textbook and read countless quotes, articles, and books from Chinese officials, military officers, political scientists, and strategists.
Take in what China has done over the last 78 years and compress it down to 5 and you would scream "There's a new Nazi Germany right around the corner! They are at war with us why isn't anyone fighting back!?" Yet since efforts have intentionally been stretched out over nearly a century few notice. But scholars do. Global strategists do. People that read and understand international relations and history do.
And to say that the US rules the world. Absurd.
Absurd to even think the US has ever wanted to. The Marshall Plan is hard evidence that the US has not and does not want to "rule the world" in any sense. NATO and the UN exists because of the disproportionate support of the US. Without that benevolence there would be no global international governmental bodies. There are none today.
Exactly right. Had Obama wished to make the deal permanent, he needed to go to the Senate to have them ratify it. Since the Senate at the time was controlled by Republicans he was in no mood to negotiate with
Your take-away from the Obama administration is that Obama was the one reluctant to negotiate with Republicans?
Were you even paying attention?
I stole this Sig
Equating the actions of Trump with Obama. When someone steals a bag of apples, do you equally castigate the individual who turns the bag back in?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Here was the subject line of his comment:
"Ben Rhodes admitted lying to sell it"
You are welcome on my lawn.
You think that allowing Iran to build a nuclear weapon, become more isolated and have the hardliners get back in power is going to lead to disengagement?
It's the same story as 2003, 2006, 2010 and 2014. We're going to bring peace to a Middle Eastern country by doing everything we can to fuck it up.
You don't get it. It doesn't matter who's in office here. It only matters who's in office in Israel. The intelligence and military apparatus of Israel wanted to keep the Iran deal in place. Netanyahu wants it destroyed to help him because like Trump he's facing all sorts of legal problems for himself, and his family. It's the tail wagging the hintele.
You are welcome on my lawn.
One can conclude only that either your ignorance is wilful in nature, or that you just don't read.
I've never been quite able to pierce the veil of the deeply religious after breaking free of it's toxic grips. So many people who are so certain of their fate and their deity, and so many diametrically opposed. Yet all of them the only true belief. And so many willing to kill those who do not share that one true belief.
Rapture lust and the celebration of the Post Tribulation suffering of the unsaved id a core competency of the group.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Several. Yeah. You know very few, and very little.
I was raised by them - so I know a lot more than you know about them, my friend.
But I certainly will provide some evidence not of my upbringing. Let us start with the little list of the apocalypse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Howard Camping, who's Family Radio group publicized his prediction that the World would end on May 21, 2011 was enraptured with the Rapture. They even made happy songs about it. They are mentioned in this article about the hopeful. https://www.theguardian.com/wo....
Michelle Bachmann, one of the Republican Presidential candidates called specifically by gawd to run - had this to say:
[the U.S.'s funding of al Qaeda in Syria] happened and as of today the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists, now what this says to me, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s end times history. Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand. (emphasis mine) When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah.”
Praying for the Rapture: https://gracethrufaith.com/ask...
Not just pray for it - desire it! http://christinprophecy.org/ar...
Any questions? Like I said, I was raised by these folks, and I can find plenty more of them if need be.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Here's what will actually happen:
Wishful thinking?
-Iran's economy will go from really bad (google it) to significantly worse.
Truish, European sanctions won't return and their economy is probably still recovering from the sanctions being lifted. It's possible they may keep seeing economic growth.
-Political discontent in Iran will grow.
True
-Internal politics will create pressure on Iranian leadership to negotiate directly with the US.
False. Iranian people will be rightly pissed at the US and negotiating with someone who just screwed you over is a huge loss of face, the Iranian leaders won't be able to negotiate with Trump if they wanted to.
Trump just helped but the Iranian hardliners back in power.
-Trump, being Trump, will gladly negotiate.
He'd love to negotiate but he doesn't have much leverage. The Europeans will never re-engage with the sanctions, especially not with Trump in charge. And the US alone can't hurt them enough economically.
-A new nuclear deal, or other peaceful bilateral initiative, will occur.
No new deal is coming. Most likely everyone ignores the US and a somewhat more belligerent Iran keeps trading with Europe. Less likely, Iran drops out and starts working towards a bomb again. And if they ever come back to the table it's with a much weaker deal, otherwise war is the only way to make sure they don't get a bomb.
-Bilateral relations will thaw for the first time since the Iranian Revolution.
They were thawing, not anymore.
Commenters are forgetting that America isn't THAT unpopular among Iranian youth.
Wasn't unpopular, about to get more unpopular. An Islamophobe who screws over your country is not a popular individual.
Discontent runs high. Trump has leverage. Trump has leverage in a few different ways, in fact.
Trump has weak sanctions and a unilateral war, that's about it.
Anyway, guess what...looks like we might get a new deal with North Korea and an end to that war.
Scrapping a deal that the other side was living up to is not a way to build credibility. I suspect Trump just blew his incredibly slim chance of getting real lasting concessions from NK.
Trump winning isn't that far out of reality.
Reality is not your friend.
I stole this Sig
I've actually read the whole series, and a follow on, and it's entertaining fiction.
But it's fiction.
First, while there is substantial theology devoted to the role of Israel (more specifically Jerusalem) in eschatology, they are two significant points that Christians should agree on:
1. No man can or will know the time when Jesus will return. Not by signs, not by events, not by prophecy, no. Even Christ said He did not know the time, for it was appointed by the Father.
2. The manner of the return of Jesus cannot be predicted with any specificity. His descent from Heaven is the best description, we can lay claim to very little detail, though the imagery in Revelation of compelling, one guide to use in interpreting that book would be, as given to me, consider what is written literally as figurative, and what is written figuratively as literal. For instance, though I thought of the Number of Man, 666, as a literal mark, it may be better to consider it as just sorry of perfection, such perfection being represented by the number 7. 777 would be perfection, in body, mind and spirit. But we fall short of the Glory of God.
Not many Christians subscribe to the theory of some war in the Middle East presaging the return of Christ. No, not really. Many do recognize that Jerusalem is key in God's plans, but how and when are not well understood.
It is, however, good sport to claim this, especially by non Christians, to attempt to denigrate and marginalize Christians with outlandish and fantastic claims. This tactic is used in politics regularly. Nothing new here.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
More specifically, Iran wants security. The US already invaded its neighbour and US politicians have talked openly about attacking Iran for decades.
Nukes are one expensive, risky way to get that. Another is this type of deal with widespread international support.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
BTW, I appreciate the thoughtful post. Thank you.
For a bit of context, 2003 is not the first gobsmacking foul up that the CIA and other intelligence services were collectively responsible for. The other big one was when the CIA told JFK in very certain terms that Castro was so hated that the island was ready to explode with countless insurrections the moment the news got around that there was armed rebellion over in the Bay of Pigs.
In the aftermath, there was a lot of introspection about how it was possible to work so hard to come to a firm conclusion that was completely wrong. The main issues were that (1) personal bias among the intelligence analysts made them prone to like a skewed subset of the data, (2) which made them blind to the fact that the people easily available to interview tended to be personally biased against Castro (the people who loved Castro do not flee to Florida), (3) which made it easy to overemphasize the importance of those isolated bits of data that painted a picture pleasing to their bosses, (4) and bosses smiling on certain kinds of conclusions cultivated group thinking that could not self-correct.
It is worth noting that Dick Cheney, in his frustration that the measly 14 existing different intelligence services scattered about the gov't were not providing the answer he wanted, created a 15th independent service under his personal supervision. And Cheney's supervision was of a style that would inevitably produce the errors described above -- the end result was practically pre-ordained.
Several. Yeah. You know very few, and very little.
The Late Great Planet Earth predicted in 1970 that the Apocalypse would occur within one generation of the founding of the State of Israel (and thus by 1988 by the reckoning of its author Hal Lindsay). It sold 28 million copies by 1990, and millions who read it believed Lindsay's every word (including my grandmother at whose home I read the book myself). She marveled at the fact that she was living at the "end of days".
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Did you read the last sentence of the first paragraph, which suggests the detailed techniques do not exist. If you read something, read it all, not just the parts that agree with your opinion.
Oh, you didn't get it, yet? Trump's goal is to disassemble, wipe out, destroy whatever Obama did. Would that be bad, or good.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The "intel from Israel" consisted of a PowerPoint presentation with a slide that said, "Iran is Cheating"
If you read it carefully, it doesn't even say that. It says they were cheating in 2007. Nothing in the Israeli intel is relevant to anything that has happened since the deal was reached in 2015.
Yeah, you really need to realize that the majority of Christians are far crazier than you.
There's no biblical basis for the rapture, it's 100% recent bullshit but people believe in it because they're pig ignorant.
There is a sizable chunk of the American population that believes a nuclear war is good because Jesus, scripture doesn't enter into it, just like it doesn't enter into their following horoscopes, eating lobster, wearing mixed fabrics, or trying treating diseases with medication instead of assuming blindness, leprosy, etc are all "demons" like Jesus thought (he wasn't very smart, was he?)
Christ said? Errrrr....you do realize the Gospels were written at least two generations after the Romans nailed him to a cross, yes?
All one has to do is look at the Evangelicals in the American South and their support for apartheid policies to know that arm of the religion thinks of religion in terms of hate. Worse, they will construct logical arguments why Jesus preferred this, it is just that their premises are screwy....garbage in, garbage out, no matter how logical the reasoning.
Mossad doesn't claim Iran wants nukes. The inspection teams all say Iran was complying. Khomeini issued a Fatwa making nuclear weapons illegal to be owned by Islamic countries. The only people decrying the deal were Trump and Netanyahu, for domestic political reasons.
This deal imposes real restrictions on Iran, restrictions the US has decided to simply remove. If Trump really thinks Iran is dangerous, he just gave them carte blanche to be dangerous. He's not very good at this.
1. They don't. Mossad, CIA, MI6 all say they don't. Iran wants nuclear power, not nuclear weapons.
2. It isn't. There is no such thing as an "enemy country". Land masses cannot hate or disagree.
I mean he did kind of throw away that whole post-partisan president thing early when it came to the Obamacare legislation...
Both sides are asshole filled committees that don't negotiate or deal. They only take bribes from lobbyists and make loud statements for the media to push as negotiations. I'm sure the Iran nuclear deal fell apart because some business interest wanted the sanctions again.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The learned lesson in this for other countries is to never make a deal with the President of the USA and expect it to last past the next election. If Congress doesn't pass the deal, then pray we don't alter it further...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
"In the lead up to the Iraq war, our intelligence services were convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction...."
That was the narrative pushed by our leaders, knowing full well that the IC could not speak out publicly to defend themselves. It's a crutch politicians can use at their whim.
Just another day in Paradise
You do realize I know a bit about the origin and history of the Bible, right? And that even then people could remember. Also that some of the New Testament was written OR dictated by those who claimed to be apostles, though many of the Pauline Epistles are generally accepted as genuine, and having been written between 60-90 are about the same generation.
The Nicean Council around 400 settled on a Canon, but that's not when it was written.
And, of course, believers who recognize so this can still accept the sufficiency of scripture. While those who reject all of it will always find reason to do so, so this is all somewhere between pointless and self serving.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You may call it an Intel failure, I call it the failure of a political appointee to report the actual intelligence his agency had. There's a difference between the agency failing, and someone appointed over them following an agenda. This is a failure of the appointee...a political, not intel failure IMO.
In September 2002, the Senate Intelligence Committee met with Tenet in a closed-door session. Sen. Bob Graham requested a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. Tenet responded by saying "We've never done a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq" and resisted the request to provide one to Congress. Graham insisted "This is the most important decision that we as members of Congress and that the people of America are likely to make in the foreseeable future. We want to have the best understanding of what it is we're about to get involved with." Tenet refused to do a report on the military or occupation phase, but reluctantly agreed to do a NIE on the weapons of mass destruction. Graham described the Senate Intelligence Committee meeting with Tenet as "the turning point in our attitude towards Tenet and our understanding of how the intelligence community has become so submissive to the desires of the administration. The administration wasn't using intelligence to inform their judgment; they were using intelligence as part of a public relations campaign to justify their judgment."[43]
Congress voted to support the Iraq war based on the NIE Tenet provided in October 2002. However, the bipartisan "Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Prewar Intelligence" released on July 7, 2004, concluded that the key findings in the 2002 NIE either overstated, or were not supported by, the actual intelligence. The Senate report also found the US Intelligence Community to suffer from a "broken corporate culture and poor management" that resulted in a NIE which was completely wrong in almost every respect.
Just another day in Paradise
The spies in the field knew what they were doing and argued that the evidence that Iraq had wepaons of mass destruction was not credible. But the political appointees and neocons re-wrote the reports to justify "liberating" Iraq. Beware of Bolton, the new appointee who is a proponent of going to war with Iran. He was one of those pushing for war with Iraq in the bush administration.
Apparently you missed the fact that Obama rejected negotiating with Republicans as almost the first thing he did after he took office. He wanted to pass a big spending bill in early 2009. The Republicans had some ideas about what they wanted included in that spending bill. Obama's response to their suggestions? "I won"
The suggestions which Obama rejected were along the lines of "We think it would more effectively stimulate the economy if we spent government money this way." As we learned, the ways in which Obama wanted to spend government money were not very effective at stimulating the economy (the ideas the Republicans were suggesting were probably not much, if any, better).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This cash? It was already theirs. The bigger problem with that payment is that it looked a lot like a ransom.
The $400 million was Iran's to start with, placed into a US-based trust fund to support American military equipment purchases in the 1970s. When the Shah was ousted by a 1979 popular uprising that led to the creation of the Islamic Republic, the US froze the trust fund. Iran has been fighting for a return of the funds through international courts since 1981.
In announcing the agreement, Obama said that paying the $400 million -- plus $1.3 billion in interest -- was saving American taxpayers billions of dollars. The Iranians had been seeking more than $10 billion at arbitration.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
This. It's the same among more conservative Jewish communities: many believe that Messiah will not appear until the Temple of Solomon is reconstructed. That would require blowing up one of the holiest Muslim mosques to get the location right, so long-term peace with the Muslims is pretty much not an alternative.
These things remind me exactly why I left religion. That the angry desert god would demand such an earthly thing as a specific temple, or change his story around and have the last book of the New Testament appear to be a case or ergotism, or possibly the effects of consuming datura.
But there is no doubt the angry desert god enjoys himself some death.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Even if you did, that doesn't mean they're hoping for it as a result of a nuke war as the AC lied about.
The exact mechanism is not terribly relevant. While there are almost as many endtime narratives as there are angry desert gawd worshippers, I was raised with the concept that the righteous would be raptured - transported directly to heaven without the issues of earthly death, and those not so lucky would be subject to a millenium of tribulation.
When I was a teenager, the birth of the state of Isreal was widely considered as the blossoming of the fig tree that would mark the last generation. to wit:
- Matthew 24:32-34 From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. https://www.unsealed.org/2017/...
Well - we didn't pass away after one generation from 1948. Fear not though, for now we ar etold that the Isreali year was 360 days, and that their "generation" was 70, or maybe 80 years.
aaaaannnnnnnnnd lookie there! 2018, and e have another end of the world prediction.
But the neat thing about the whole mess is there is a whole lot of flexibility, so you can make up whatever you like as the only truth. Considering the acid-trip like writings of the last book of the angry desert gawd (personally, sounds more like datura poisoning to me) everyone can have their own personal interpretation.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Almost anything a President can enter into unilaterally...can be undone by a President, unilaterally.
And, because we're taking advantage of that, soon nobody will trust an American president with any commitment beyond his presidency.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
No one paid Iran anything. Stop watching Fox News.
an explicit promise, and one that they only technically adhered to while continuing to sponsor terrorists, destabilize the region, research ballistic missiles, and generally be religious psychopaths in pursuit of their fucked up version of the End Times.
Just for clarity, are you referring to Iran here or the US?
Wow, what a nice little fairy tale. Let me tell you a real story. I was alive and old enough to remember the runup to IRAQ, and I was politically aware enough to watch the news. TONS of people knew Iraq had jack and squat. THere were NIGHTLY news stories about how the UN weapons inspectors, over and over again, weren't finding even hints of a nuclear program. In fact, when bush finally got his authorization of force, they had to hurry inspectors out who had been begging for time to finish yet another inspection trying to debunk the made up evidence.
Evidence by the way that Cheney had to essentially create an office in the pentagon to come up with. After our intelligence continually told him over and over that it wasn't the case, he had to create a department to "find evidence at all cost". The most telling thing I remember was watching the state of the union and hearing bush say "...and a european intelligence report states that Sadam Hussien is actively seeking nuclear materials." I remember thinking "What do OUR intelligence agencies think about it? Why couldn't he cite them in the speech?"
A few days later we learned why, the news started airing reports that our intelligence agency had long considered that particular report fiction. Even the days of the week didn't match up to the numeric dates!
I don't know if you were a child or an early victim of fox news, but it was widely known by anyone paying attention that the Iraq war was being manufactured. There were protests, constant news reports, general skepticism.
Great story bro. Too bad the Iranian foreign minister already said the "agreement" was no longer sustainable for Iran whether or not Trump decides to kill it: https://www.haaretz.com/middle...
1. Hitler didn't come to power because of WWI, he came to power because he promised German socialism at a time when socialism was sweeping across Europe.
2. The US was actually winning the war in Vietnam when the Tet offensive occurred. It was desperate offensive by the Viet Cong. It failed in all of it's objectives, they suffered heavy casualties, and actually left the Viet Cong in a very bad position. But the optics of the Viet Cong offensive triggered a wave of negative sentiment at home, and ultimately led for the push to withdraw the US forces from Vietnam.
3. Iraq in 2008 and 2009 had less violent deaths than the US. But Obama's quick pull-out of the troops allowed the insurgents to reestablish themselves in Northern Iraq.
It's easy to say "the world needs to just agree to stop fighting", but when one side in a disagreement is ready and willing to fight and kill, what other choice is there?
I don't get why a deal to give them access to lots of money in order to promise not to build a bomb was smart in the first place.
Probably because it wasn't just a promise. It was submission to an incredibly intrusive inspection regime that ensures that they are keeping their promise. They have kept their end of the bargain. For us to abandon it is shameful, and does not advance the interests of the US or a nuclear-free Iran in any way.
So... letting them have access to more money seems more likely to speed up bomb construction than pretending the promises are meaningful in my mind.
No one's pretending that. Some people who would rather start a war are pretending that there isn't anything meaningful in place to ensure that Iran keeps their promise, and you appear to have bought into their lies.
Come now, if the money had been in bank accounts since the 1970s, the amount would have been nickeled and dimed to death by service fees. Hell, if it was Wells Fargo, the Iranians might be OWING money. . . .