This is a useful analysis explaining (and linking to recent explanations) as to why the uncritical, fanboy “no way this deal could be improved” viewpoint isn’t correct and is sacrificing opportunities for better national security:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
I have made it clear throughout this discussion that the deal strengthens the credibility, legality, and efficacy of an American surgical air campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities. The same can’t be said if Congress kills the deal, which it is effectively powerless to do because of previous authorizations embedded in the laws that authorized the sanctions regime. War or containment are what remain outside of the JCPOA.[/quote]
Do what now? I am not sure where to start with this one. Who brought up surgical strikes against their nuclear sites? Secondly, this very notion you have argued in the past, would be a task next to impossible to pull off given the magnitude and spread out nature of the program. This agreement suddenly makes that more feasible? Forget legal.
No discussions of any kind with regards to the JCPOA have referenced, implied or dealt with military action of any kind. So you are just stating your opinion of what you think it may enable. So your opinion is that this agreement would give us legal authority to do what you previously said would be an impossible task, surgically removing Iran’s nuclear program with targeted strikes.
If that were true, we definitely were in a position to negotiate a more favorable deal.
Iran has a rich history of international violations and hostile actions against the U.S. specifically. We have been and still are well with in our right to strike them for any one of those, from the hostages in 1979, to murder of our Marines, to their bolstering of Assad, to their support of Hezbollah and other terror organizations, to holding 4 American hostages right now, etc. We have been and we would be well within our right to strike them militarily if we wanted to. The population may have a short memory, but the government, particularly the military has a long memory as it should.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
If you read my posts more carefully…
[/quote]
Not bad advice. Perhaps you should follow if before you layout a diatribe against something, someone did not say. You know, save a few keystrokes.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
. . . Obama - so desperate to get Congress on board - very publicly explained that it was this deal or a far worse alternative. [/quote]
The alternatives to the United States’ coercive diplomacy are war or containment, a daunting dilemma to say the least. Critics of the deal (the vast majority of whom hadn’t even bothered to read the text of the JCOPA before voicing their vehement opposition to it) have been unable to articulate cogent policy alternatives. The challenge in Iran policy (as is so often the case) lies not in picking an ideal course but in choosing among lesser evils. Diplomacy is preferable over containment, and containment over war.
As Robert Jervis writes, “The deal with Iran falls far short of what the United States and its European allies would like. Although the question of whether the West could have gotten a better deal is interesting, much more important is the question of whether the deal was better than the breakdown of the negotiations. It was, and by quite a large margin.” According to the senior RAND analyst Dalia Dassa Kaye, failure to reach a deal would likely have produced one or more of the following: an expanded Iranian nuclear program; an erosion of broad international sanctions without any benefit to regional or global security; heightened potential for military conflict; and the loss of opportunities to work on major areas of common concern to Iran and the United States.
[/quote]
Incorrect, according to the way you have framed it. Diplomacy doesn’t mean “this deal” - it means a deal, which would have many iterations or permutations other than the current one. There is not a choice between This Deal and War or the Status Quo, and there never has been. Well, there wasn’t up until Obama negotiated the deal unilaterally and, as a result, created material terms that set a floor below which Iran will not go in future negotiations.
Obama and the other nations had plenty of other diplomatic cards to play. Iran really, really, really wants sanctions lifted in the short-term - knowing that, why not negotiate scaled penalties for lower level malfeasance, which doesn’t include the birth of a nuclear weapon, but is surely to happen?
“Snap back” is a non-starter - countries that have begun to establish deeper commercial relationships (which they want desperately) are unlikely to engage in that for Iran’s misdeeds. Scalable penalties needed to be part of any deal, but the agreement in left toothless in this space.
There was plenty of additional thing to get from Iran through diplomacy. It wasn’t achieved. That was a failure if diplomacy because it was a failure to negotiate from a place of strength to better secure international security.
With more time, a better deal could have been reached. We had leverage to get more out of Iran.
This canard of “This Deal or War” is and always has been a false choice and nothing more than a marketing strategy to impugn the motives of critics of the deal. Enough.
[/quote]
If you read my posts more carefully, you’ll see that I never put forth that false dicotomy. Outside of the JCOPA (reached through coercive diplomacy), the remaining cogent American policy options are a preventative war or containment.[/quote]
You say you didn’t make the false choice, but then you do so in your last paragraph.
No, there are more choices than This Deal or War or Containment! - there is the option of a…wait for it… better deal.
Which we could go back and get, but for President Obama’s personal need to get this done now.
[/quote]
Isn’t ‘coercive diplomacy’ an oxymoron? Just sayin’
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
. . . Obama - so desperate to get Congress on board - very publicly explained that it was this deal or a far worse alternative. [/quote]
The alternatives to the United States’ coercive diplomacy are war or containment, a daunting dilemma to say the least. Critics of the deal (the vast majority of whom hadn’t even bothered to read the text of the JCOPA before voicing their vehement opposition to it) have been unable to articulate cogent policy alternatives. The challenge in Iran policy (as is so often the case) lies not in picking an ideal course but in choosing among lesser evils. Diplomacy is preferable over containment, and containment over war.
As Robert Jervis writes, “The deal with Iran falls far short of what the United States and its European allies would like. Although the question of whether the West could have gotten a better deal is interesting, much more important is the question of whether the deal was better than the breakdown of the negotiations. It was, and by quite a large margin.” According to the senior RAND analyst Dalia Dassa Kaye, failure to reach a deal would likely have produced one or more of the following: an expanded Iranian nuclear program; an erosion of broad international sanctions without any benefit to regional or global security; heightened potential for military conflict; and the loss of opportunities to work on major areas of common concern to Iran and the United States.
[/quote]
Incorrect, according to the way you have framed it. Diplomacy doesn’t mean “this deal” - it means a deal, which would have many iterations or permutations other than the current one. There is not a choice between This Deal and War or the Status Quo, and there never has been. Well, there wasn’t up until Obama negotiated the deal unilaterally and, as a result, created material terms that set a floor below which Iran will not go in future negotiations.
Obama and the other nations had plenty of other diplomatic cards to play. Iran really, really, really wants sanctions lifted in the short-term - knowing that, why not negotiate scaled penalties for lower level malfeasance, which doesn’t include the birth of a nuclear weapon, but is surely to happen?
“Snap back” is a non-starter - countries that have begun to establish deeper commercial relationships (which they want desperately) are unlikely to engage in that for Iran’s misdeeds. Scalable penalties needed to be part of any deal, but the agreement in left toothless in this space.
There was plenty of additional thing to get from Iran through diplomacy. It wasn’t achieved. That was a failure if diplomacy because it was a failure to negotiate from a place of strength to better secure international security.
With more time, a better deal could have been reached. We had leverage to get more out of Iran.
This canard of “This Deal or War” is and always has been a false choice and nothing more than a marketing strategy to impugn the motives of critics of the deal. Enough.
[/quote]
If you read my posts more carefully, you’ll see that I never put forth that false dicotomy. Outside of the JCOPA (reached through coercive diplomacy), the remaining cogent American policy options are a preventative war or containment.[/quote]
You say you didn’t make the false choice, but then you do so in your last paragraph.
No, there are more choices than This Deal or War or Containment! - there is the option of a…wait for it… better deal.
Which we could go back and get, but for President Obama’s personal need to get this done now.
[/quote]
The myth of a better deal is based upon magical thinking: analysis and prescriptions resting on unrealistic assumptions, unspecified causal relationships, inapt analogies, and a dearth of supporting evidence. Is the deal perfect? No, far from it. But it’s close to the best the US could hope for given the current international milieu (the world that is). Your ideal deal (the world as it ought to be) could only be imposed in the wake of a decisive American military victory over Iran. Outside of that, seeking a “better” deal is a dangerous illusion. Rabbits pulled from small and threadbare hats don’t make for effectual foreign policy.
Your logorrhea aside, quite obviously you do subscribe to false choice theory that you claim you don’t.
But more substantively, of course we could have gotten (and can get) a better deal. We have leverage - as lomg as sanctions remain in place. Iran desperately wants the sanctions to go, as do its potential commercial partners. As long as these remain in place, these parties will come to the table. To say otherwise is to badly misunderstand the nature of how bad these parties need the good things they get from the deal.
Here is the fundamental miscalculation of this deal - we don’t need it more than Iran does, or even as bad as Russia and China, etc., but we negotiated it as if we do. As such, we left very important money on the table and enabled Iran to get pretty much everything it wants.
Forget grading the negotiations in an academic sense - that’s just poor national security policy. We could have secured a number of things by simply waiting longer and letting their desperation turn into important concessions. Like scalable penalties for wrongdoing, or more robust verification processes.
But this is what happens when the third-wheel factor of My Legacy infects the legitimate process.
[/quote]
And apparently have the apparatus in place to do surgical strikes against their nuclear program, apparently legally, if this deal is approved. Now if the Iranians thought that signing this deal would give the U.S. the leverage it needed to militarily remove it’s program, I am pretty sure they would not have agreed to it.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
Iran’s leader not happy about American cultural knock offs invading Iran.
To quote Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, a leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps:
“We thought that they would bring Boeing technology, but they want to bring McDonald?s,”
So, is he saying they would be open to trading technology with the West?
Let’s say we give them Boeing technology, what’s to stop them from using it to update their war machine, much like the Russians used licensed built copies of the Rolls-Royce Nene engines to power their MIG’s during the Cold War?[/quote]
He’s saying to more conservative Iranians that Iranian leadership does not intend to let the worst aspects of American culture infiltrate Iran. More generally, that Iran does not intend to become a nation of fat lazy people that are utterly dependent on Western nations to accomplish anything. This condition is prevalent among many Middle Eastern nations and Iran does not want to join this group (in essence this was the entire point of the revolution).
The Boeing comments are in reference to the Iranian commercial airline industry that is in ruins from the result of sanctions. It’s more of a humanitarian thing than American technology transfer. Many civilians have needlessly perished on Iranian airplanes that were not able to be properly refurbished or replaced. Boeing, Lockheed, etc. are not going to be selling Iran weapons systems for decades if ever.
Candidly I’m not a weapons expert but I find it highly unlikely that whatever Boeing provides to update Iran’s commercial airline fleet is going to bolster Iran’s ability to militarily challenge the US.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
Well that was fast.
And that is despite a 5 year extension of the weapons embargo in the agreement. [/quote]
The Kremlin announced that it would end the ban on S-300 sales to Iran in March 2015. The following is an excellent article on the weapon system and its implications.
It isn’t surprising that Russia promised the sale of a sophisticated air defense system to Iran to incentivize it to reach a final deal. Iran sought an actualized or quasi-nuclear capability primarily to establish nuclear deterrence vis-a-vis the United States. With that element of deterrence off the table until at least 2040, it’s natural for Iran to seek to bolster its air defenses to ward off a potential preventative attack. The sale will complicate such a surgical air campaign by the United States, but would not thwart it. The Israeli military option, which was already untenable for military-technical and political reasons before a deal, is made even more difficult by the S-300. The J-Post is wrong to imply that these weapon systems will find their way to Hezbollah, PIJ, or Hamas. They’re expensive, they require trained personnel, and their use against IAF or Israeli civilian aircraft would invite multilateral military retaliation. [/quote]
So you agree with the sale?
There is no indication that Russia used this sale to help bring Iran to the table, none. The agreement is so beneficial on it’s own, to Iran, they would have been dumb to not take it.
And yes, it would impact our ability to strike their nuclear program as well as Israels. However, I believe you underestimate Israel’s capabilities and their resolve.
However, military action is [u]not[/u] a consequence of violating JCPOA, sanctions are. We have no evidence of any other kind of retaliation, should Iran violate the agreement.
[T]he agreement [between the UN and Iran] diverges from normal inspection procedures between the IAEA and a member country by essentially ceding the agencyâ??s investigative authority to Iran. It allows Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment [at Parchin] in the search for evidence for activities that it has consistently denied â?? trying to develop nuclear weaponsâ?¦
The document suggests that instead of carrying out their own probe, IAEA staff will be reduced to monitoring Iranian personnel as these inspect the Parchin siteâ?¦
That wording suggests that â?? beyond being barred from physically visiting the site â?? the agency wonâ??t even get photo or video information from areas Iran says are off-limits because they have military significance.
IAEA experts would normally take environmental samples for evidence of any weapons development work, but the agreement stipulates that Iranian technicians will do the sampling.
The sampling is also limited to only seven samples inside the building where the experiments allegedly took place. Additional ones will be allowed only outside of the Parchin site, in an area still to be determined.
I’m inclined to disagree that this is the best deal ever, or even the best deal we could have gotten. This is capitulation. It’s also more proof that the verification process is not built on verification at all, but hope.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
I’m inclined to disagree that this is the best deal ever, or even the best deal we could have gotten. This is capitulation. It’s also more proof that the verification process is not built on verification at all, but hope.
[/quote]
I.E. “Good Faith”
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
I’m inclined to disagree that this is the best deal ever, or even the best deal we could have gotten. This is capitulation. It’s also more proof that the verification process is not built on verification at all, but hope.
[/quote]
I.E. “Good Faith”[/quote]
Iran gets put on the honor system, basically. Iran. Apocalyptic maniacs, Iran. Honor system. The IAEA doesn’t get to independently inspect.
Grudgingly, I have to admit Marx was right about one thing: history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
I’m inclined to disagree that this is the best deal ever, or even the best deal we could have gotten. This is capitulation. It’s also more proof that the verification process is not built on verification at all, but hope.
[/quote]
I.E. “Good Faith”[/quote]
Iran gets put on the honor system, basically. Iran. Apocalyptic maniacs, Iran. Honor system. The IAEA doesn’t get to independently inspect.
Grudgingly, I have to admit Marx was right about one thing: history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
[/quote]
It’s more of a matter of profound nationalism and Iranian internal politics. After all the attention on Parchin, it’s unlikely that Iran would still be using it for nuclear weapons related work - if indeed it was ever so being used. As I wrote earlier, there exists a virtuous circle between inspectors and Western intelligence. You don’t think the US intelligence community is going to devote significant additional collection and analysis assets toward the Iranian nuclear program in the wake of a deal, especially toward suspected undeclared sites? I opined that Obama should devote an additional $ 1 billion toward those efforts to reassure Congress and American allies. It was rumored that the facility had been the site of experiments with high explosive detonators over a decade ago. Even if the article you cited is accurate, it isn’t a death blow to what still amounts to a strident and robust inspections regime. The nature of the nuclear fuel cycle and Iran’s nuclear program ensures that. The redline for the US shouldn’t (and won’t be) an underground nuclear test by Iran as you’ve asserted. At that point, the US will be faced with nuclear deterrence, and the US has (perhaps unwisely) rejected containment formally. We have every reason to believe it will be weaponization research and development, period.
P.S. “Apocalyptic maniacs”? Do you truly believe that Iran is pathologically irrational? How could you possibly be in favor of diplomacy, in that case? That’s one hell of an assumption to overcome. No Iran experts believe that the clerical regime is millennial or suicidal. The historical record demonstrates that since 1979, material imperatives have repeatively trumped ideology. The regime is odious, ruthless, murderous and calculating, but certainly not crazy. Deterrence is possible, as it was with another theocracy that was far more threatening than the Islamic Republic could ever hope to be - the Soviet Union.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
Well that was fast.
And that is despite a 5 year extension of the weapons embargo in the agreement. [/quote]
The Kremlin announced that it would end the ban on S-300 sales to Iran in March 2015. The following is an excellent article on the weapon system and its implications.
It isn’t surprising that Russia promised the sale of a sophisticated air defense system to Iran to incentivize it to reach a final deal. Iran sought an actualized or quasi-nuclear capability primarily to establish nuclear deterrence vis-a-vis the United States. With that element of deterrence off the table until at least 2040, it’s natural for Iran to seek to bolster its air defenses to ward off a potential preventative attack. The sale will complicate such a surgical air campaign by the United States, but would not thwart it. The Israeli military option, which was already untenable for military-technical and political reasons before a deal, is made even more difficult by the S-300. The J-Post is wrong to imply that these weapon systems will find their way to Hezbollah, PIJ, or Hamas. They’re expensive, they require trained personnel, and their use against IAF or Israeli civilian aircraft would invite multilateral military retaliation. [/quote]
So you agree with the sale?
There is no indication that Russia used this sale to help bring Iran to the table, none. The agreement is so beneficial on it’s own, to Iran, they would have been dumb to not take it.
And yes, it would impact our ability to strike their nuclear program as well as Israels. However, I believe you underestimate Israel’s capabilities and their resolve.
However, military action is [u]not[/u] a consequence of violating JCPOA, sanctions are. We have no evidence of any other kind of retaliation, should Iran violate the agreement.[/quote]
Fuck no, but it’s to be expected for the sanctions levied on the Russian Federation in response to its illegal annexation of Crimea and its meddling in Eastern Ukraine. Hard evidence? Perhaps not. It is more likely than not, however. A preventative air campaign is implied. It wasn’t only biting sanctions that brought Iran to the bargaining table, but the specter of American bombs. In the wake of an egregious violation (such as a detected breakout attempt), Iran understands that in the context of an international agreement, the threat of a military attack is significantly increased. That is indisputable. And because of the virtuous circle between inspectors and intelligence officers, the efficacy of targeting packages would be increased exponentially. Iran’s nuclear program wouldn’t be set back 2-3 years (as it is has been estimated before a deal), but perhaps a decade or longer. Khamenei isn’t about to endanger his $100 billion investment in mastering enrichment technology.
On a side note, much of the $56 billion that Iran will receive as part of a deal will have to be put toward the Iranian economy and population at large. Rhouhani’s election in 2013 was a clear indication that the regime had to pay more attention to the well being of its people or risk its survival. It’s interesting to note as well that the vast majority of Iranians assert their national right to enrichment, even the imprisoned leaders of the Green Revolution. Regime change won’t mean that the Persian Puzzle is solved. The last democracy (Mosaddegh) was decidedly less amenable to US interests than the autocratic Shah.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
I have made it clear throughout this discussion that the deal strengthens the credibility, legality, and efficacy of an American surgical air campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities. The same can’t be said if Congress kills the deal, which it is effectively powerless to do because of previous authorizations embedded in the laws that authorized the sanctions regime. War or containment are what remain outside of the JCPOA.[/quote]
Do what now? I am not sure where to start with this one. Who brought up surgical strikes against their nuclear sites? Secondly, this very notion you have argued in the past, would be a task next to impossible to pull off given the magnitude and spread out nature of the program. This agreement suddenly makes that more feasible? Forget legal.
No discussions of any kind with regards to the JCPOA have referenced, implied or dealt with military action of any kind. So you are just stating your opinion of what you think it may enable. So your opinion is that this agreement would give us legal authority to do what you previously said would be an impossible task, surgically removing Iran’s nuclear program with targeted strikes.
If that were true, we definitely were in a position to negotiate a more favorable deal.
Iran has a rich history of international violations and hostile actions against the U.S. specifically. We have been and still are well with in our right to strike them for any one of those, from the hostages in 1979, to murder of our Marines, to their bolstering of Assad, to their support of Hezbollah and other terror organizations, to holding 4 American hostages right now, etc. We have been and we would be well within our right to strike them militarily if we wanted to. The population may have a short memory, but the government, particularly the military has a long memory as it should.
[/quote]
You are misrembering my posts from another thread. I explicitly made it clear that Israel didn’t have a good military option because of military-technical and political reasons. That is even more true now that an international agreement has been struck. The US Air Force is more than up to the task, however. And for all the flack that the Obama administration gets for its security policy in these parts, it was a champion for the development and deployment of the 30,000 lbs. Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), which is the only non-nuclear munition capable of destroying the enrichment facility at Fordow.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
. . . Obama - so desperate to get Congress on board - very publicly explained that it was this deal or a far worse alternative. [/quote]
The alternatives to the United States’ coercive diplomacy are war or containment, a daunting dilemma to say the least. Critics of the deal (the vast majority of whom hadn’t even bothered to read the text of the JCOPA before voicing their vehement opposition to it) have been unable to articulate cogent policy alternatives. The challenge in Iran policy (as is so often the case) lies not in picking an ideal course but in choosing among lesser evils. Diplomacy is preferable over containment, and containment over war.
As Robert Jervis writes, “The deal with Iran falls far short of what the United States and its European allies would like. Although the question of whether the West could have gotten a better deal is interesting, much more important is the question of whether the deal was better than the breakdown of the negotiations. It was, and by quite a large margin.” According to the senior RAND analyst Dalia Dassa Kaye, failure to reach a deal would likely have produced one or more of the following: an expanded Iranian nuclear program; an erosion of broad international sanctions without any benefit to regional or global security; heightened potential for military conflict; and the loss of opportunities to work on major areas of common concern to Iran and the United States.
[/quote]
Incorrect, according to the way you have framed it. Diplomacy doesn’t mean “this deal” - it means a deal, which would have many iterations or permutations other than the current one. There is not a choice between This Deal and War or the Status Quo, and there never has been. Well, there wasn’t up until Obama negotiated the deal unilaterally and, as a result, created material terms that set a floor below which Iran will not go in future negotiations.
Obama and the other nations had plenty of other diplomatic cards to play. Iran really, really, really wants sanctions lifted in the short-term - knowing that, why not negotiate scaled penalties for lower level malfeasance, which doesn’t include the birth of a nuclear weapon, but is surely to happen?
“Snap back” is a non-starter - countries that have begun to establish deeper commercial relationships (which they want desperately) are unlikely to engage in that for Iran’s misdeeds. Scalable penalties needed to be part of any deal, but the agreement in left toothless in this space.
There was plenty of additional thing to get from Iran through diplomacy. It wasn’t achieved. That was a failure if diplomacy because it was a failure to negotiate from a place of strength to better secure international security.
With more time, a better deal could have been reached. We had leverage to get more out of Iran.
This canard of “This Deal or War” is and always has been a false choice and nothing more than a marketing strategy to impugn the motives of critics of the deal. Enough.
[/quote]
If you read my posts more carefully, you’ll see that I never put forth that false dicotomy. Outside of the JCOPA (reached through coercive diplomacy), the remaining cogent American policy options are a preventative war or containment.[/quote]
You say you didn’t make the false choice, but then you do so in your last paragraph.
No, there are more choices than This Deal or War or Containment! - there is the option of a…wait for it… better deal.
Which we could go back and get, but for President Obama’s personal need to get this done now.
[/quote]
The myth of a better deal is based upon magical thinking: analysis and prescriptions resting on unrealistic assumptions, unspecified causal relationships, inapt analogies, and a dearth of supporting evidence. Is the deal perfect? No, far from it. But it’s close to the best the US could hope for given the current international milieu (the world that is). Your ideal deal (the world as it ought to be) could only be imposed in the wake of a decisive American military victory over Iran. Outside of that, seeking a “better” deal is a dangerous illusion. Rabbits pulled from small and threadbare hats don’t make for effectual foreign policy.
Your logorrhea aside, quite obviously you do subscribe to false choice theory that you claim you don’t.
But more substantively, of course we could have gotten (and can get) a better deal. We have leverage - as lomg as sanctions remain in place. Iran desperately wants the sanctions to go, as do its potential commercial partners. As long as these remain in place, these parties will come to the table. To say otherwise is to badly misunderstand the nature of how bad these parties need the good things they get from the deal.
Here is the fundamental miscalculation of this deal - we don’t need it more than Iran does, or even as bad as Russia and China, etc., but we negotiated it as if we do. As such, we left very important money on the table and enabled Iran to get pretty much everything it wants.
Forget grading the negotiations in an academic sense - that’s just poor national security policy. We could have secured a number of things by simply waiting longer and letting their desperation turn into important concessions. Like scalable penalties for wrongdoing, or more robust verification processes.
But this is what happens when the third-wheel factor of My Legacy infects the legitimate process.
[/quote]
And apparently have the apparatus in place to do surgical strikes against their nuclear program, apparently legally, if this deal is approved. Now if the Iranians thought that signing this deal would give the U.S. the leverage it needed to militarily remove it’s program, I am pretty sure they would not have agreed to it. [/quote]
Yes, legally. Violation of an international agreement of this nature legitimizes reprisal on the part of the United States. The capability has existed since the international community became concerned about Iran’s nuclear program. It increases the accuracy and the capability of US targeting packages. The capability already existed prior to a deal. Perhaps the regime has calculated that it stands to gain more than it would lose by abiding by the terms of the agreement and stands to lose more than it would gain by remaining wholly recalcitrant. If you don’t believe that to be the case, it’s curious why the Iranians haven’t sought to present the world with a nuclear fait accompli a la North Korea.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
I’m inclined to disagree that this is the best deal ever, or even the best deal we could have gotten. This is capitulation. It’s also more proof that the verification process is not built on verification at all, but hope.
[/quote]
I.E. “Good Faith”[/quote]
Iran gets put on the honor system, basically. Iran. Apocalyptic maniacs, Iran. Honor system. The IAEA doesn’t get to independently inspect.
Grudgingly, I have to admit Marx was right about one thing: history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
[/quote]
It’s more of a matter of profound nationalism and Iranian internal politics. After all the attention on Parchin, it’s unlikely that Iran would still be using it for nuclear weapons related work - if indeed it was ever so being used. As I wrote earlier, there exists a virtuous circle between inspectors and Western intelligence. You don’t think the US intelligence community is going to devote significant additional collection and analysis assets toward the Iranian nuclear program in the wake of a deal, especially toward suspected undeclared sites? I opined that Obama should devote an additional $ 1 billion toward those efforts to reassure Congress and American allies. It was rumored that the facility had been the site of experiments with high explosive detonators over a decade ago. Even if the article you cited is accurate, it isn’t a death blow to what still amounts to a strident and robust inspections regime. The nature of the nuclear fuel cycle and Iran’s nuclear program ensures that. The redline for the US shouldn’t (and won’t be) an underground nuclear test by Iran as you’ve asserted. At that point, the US will be faced with nuclear deterrence, and the US has (perhaps unwisely) rejected containment formally. We have every reason to believe it will be weaponization research and development, period.
P.S. “Apocalyptic maniacs”? Do you truly believe that Iran is pathologically irrational? How could you possibly be in favor of diplomacy, in that case? That’s one hell of an assumption to overcome. No Iran experts believe that the clerical regime is millennial or suicidal. The historical record demonstrates that since 1979, material imperatives have repeatively trumped ideology. The regime is odious, ruthless, murderous and calculating, but certainly not crazy. Deterrence is possible, as it was with another theocracy that was far more threatening than the Islamic Republic could ever hope to be - the Soviet Union.[/quote]
This incredibly and unnecessarily verbose rebuttal (a theme in your posting) is a non-rebuttal. It doesn’t address what is clearly a problem with the verification regime and the additional problem of this absurd honor system approach being held in secret, and therefore withheld from public scrutiny, mainly by Congress.
Try a direct and reasonably coherent response. Trying to respond to the above isn’t a good use of my PWI time.
[quote]2busy wrote:
Oops…
[/quote]
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-un-let-iran-inspect-alleged-nuke-165604071.html
Part of the secret deal? “Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms, operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.”
Who was talking about getting a better deal? Thunder, the one we got just keeps getting better and better…for Iran.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
[quote]2busy wrote:
Oops…
[/quote]
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-un-let-iran-inspect-alleged-nuke-165604071.html
Part of the secret deal? “Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms, operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.”
Who was talking about getting a better deal? Thunder, the one we got just keeps getting better and better…for Iran.[/quote]
It’s simply amazing. We have gone from boastful “anytime/anywhere” verifications to Iran being allowed to self-inspect and self-report on a suspected nuclear site in a secret deal we wouldn’t know about but for a leak. And far from not knowing about the secret deal, the US was briefed by the IAEA and endorsed it as part of the larger agreement, according to the report.
We are through the looking glass. Try to recall a time when a president has worked this way.
And here is another problem, among all the others - this will have political ramifications. This capitulationary approach and rank dishonesty and contempt for Congress makes demagogues like Trump attractive for voters (even middle of the road ones) who are going to react to this. This kind of approach has the potential perverse effect of opening the door to a reckless hawk getting elected, which would be a very bad thing.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
Well that was fast.
And that is despite a 5 year extension of the weapons embargo in the agreement. [/quote]
The Kremlin announced that it would end the ban on S-300 sales to Iran in March 2015. The following is an excellent article on the weapon system and its implications.
It isn’t surprising that Russia promised the sale of a sophisticated air defense system to Iran to incentivize it to reach a final deal. Iran sought an actualized or quasi-nuclear capability primarily to establish nuclear deterrence vis-a-vis the United States. With that element of deterrence off the table until at least 2040, it’s natural for Iran to seek to bolster its air defenses to ward off a potential preventative attack. The sale will complicate such a surgical air campaign by the United States, but would not thwart it. The Israeli military option, which was already untenable for military-technical and political reasons before a deal, is made even more difficult by the S-300. The J-Post is wrong to imply that these weapon systems will find their way to Hezbollah, PIJ, or Hamas. They’re expensive, they require trained personnel, and their use against IAF or Israeli civilian aircraft would invite multilateral military retaliation. [/quote]
So you agree with the sale?
There is no indication that Russia used this sale to help bring Iran to the table, none. The agreement is so beneficial on it’s own, to Iran, they would have been dumb to not take it.
And yes, it would impact our ability to strike their nuclear program as well as Israels. However, I believe you underestimate Israel’s capabilities and their resolve.
However, military action is [u]not[/u] a consequence of violating JCPOA, sanctions are. We have no evidence of any other kind of retaliation, should Iran violate the agreement.[/quote]
Fuck no, but it’s to be expected for the sanctions levied on the Russian Federation in response to its illegal annexation of Crimea and its meddling in Eastern Ukraine. Hard evidence? Perhaps not. It is more likely than not, however. A preventative air campaign is implied. It wasn’t only biting sanctions that brought Iran to the bargaining table, but the specter of American bombs. In the wake of an egregious violation (such as a detected breakout attempt), Iran understands that in the context of an international agreement, the threat of a military attack is significantly increased. That is indisputable. And because of the virtuous circle between inspectors and intelligence officers, the efficacy of targeting packages would be increased exponentially. Iran’s nuclear program wouldn’t be set back 2-3 years (as it is has been estimated before a deal), but perhaps a decade or longer. Khamenei isn’t about to endanger his $100 billion investment in mastering enrichment technology.
On a side note, much of the $56 billion that Iran will receive as part of a deal will have to be put toward the Iranian economy and population at large. Rhouhani’s election in 2013 was a clear indication that the regime had to pay more attention to the well being of its people or risk its survival. It’s interesting to note as well that the vast majority of Iranians assert their national right to enrichment, even the imprisoned leaders of the Green Revolution. Regime change won’t mean that the Persian Puzzle is solved. The last democracy (Mosaddegh) was decidedly less amenable to US interests than the autocratic Shah. [/quote]
‘Fuck no’ was really enough. I realize that ‘defensive weapons’ are not part of the embargo, but it’s little comfort to have this happen at this time.
There was no indication, only speculation that it may have been a tactic by the Russians to get Iran to the bargaining table. This likely would have gone through regardless. Russia does not respect the U.S. and neither country feels threatened or compelled due to U.S. military power.
Our grave reluctance to use military force in situations that more than warrant it, is not scaring anybody.
Syria is still gassing it’s people, ISIS is as strong as ever, and Iran is still sabre rattling against America while the ink is not even dry on the agreement. Nobody is afraid of U.S. action.
And Iran just received greater protection against any possible retaliation for violating any agreements. We should not feel comfortable.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
. . . Obama - so desperate to get Congress on board - very publicly explained that it was this deal or a far worse alternative. [/quote]
The alternatives to the United States’ coercive diplomacy are war or containment, a daunting dilemma to say the least. Critics of the deal (the vast majority of whom hadn’t even bothered to read the text of the JCOPA before voicing their vehement opposition to it) have been unable to articulate cogent policy alternatives. The challenge in Iran policy (as is so often the case) lies not in picking an ideal course but in choosing among lesser evils. Diplomacy is preferable over containment, and containment over war.
As Robert Jervis writes, “The deal with Iran falls far short of what the United States and its European allies would like. Although the question of whether the West could have gotten a better deal is interesting, much more important is the question of whether the deal was better than the breakdown of the negotiations. It was, and by quite a large margin.” According to the senior RAND analyst Dalia Dassa Kaye, failure to reach a deal would likely have produced one or more of the following: an expanded Iranian nuclear program; an erosion of broad international sanctions without any benefit to regional or global security; heightened potential for military conflict; and the loss of opportunities to work on major areas of common concern to Iran and the United States.
[/quote]
Incorrect, according to the way you have framed it. Diplomacy doesn’t mean “this deal” - it means a deal, which would have many iterations or permutations other than the current one. There is not a choice between This Deal and War or the Status Quo, and there never has been. Well, there wasn’t up until Obama negotiated the deal unilaterally and, as a result, created material terms that set a floor below which Iran will not go in future negotiations.
Obama and the other nations had plenty of other diplomatic cards to play. Iran really, really, really wants sanctions lifted in the short-term - knowing that, why not negotiate scaled penalties for lower level malfeasance, which doesn’t include the birth of a nuclear weapon, but is surely to happen?
“Snap back” is a non-starter - countries that have begun to establish deeper commercial relationships (which they want desperately) are unlikely to engage in that for Iran’s misdeeds. Scalable penalties needed to be part of any deal, but the agreement in left toothless in this space.
There was plenty of additional thing to get from Iran through diplomacy. It wasn’t achieved. That was a failure if diplomacy because it was a failure to negotiate from a place of strength to better secure international security.
With more time, a better deal could have been reached. We had leverage to get more out of Iran.
This canard of “This Deal or War” is and always has been a false choice and nothing more than a marketing strategy to impugn the motives of critics of the deal. Enough.
[/quote]
If you read my posts more carefully, you’ll see that I never put forth that false dicotomy. Outside of the JCOPA (reached through coercive diplomacy), the remaining cogent American policy options are a preventative war or containment.[/quote]
You say you didn’t make the false choice, but then you do so in your last paragraph.
No, there are more choices than This Deal or War or Containment! - there is the option of a…wait for it… better deal.
Which we could go back and get, but for President Obama’s personal need to get this done now.
[/quote]
The myth of a better deal is based upon magical thinking: analysis and prescriptions resting on unrealistic assumptions, unspecified causal relationships, inapt analogies, and a dearth of supporting evidence. Is the deal perfect? No, far from it. But it’s close to the best the US could hope for given the current international milieu (the world that is). Your ideal deal (the world as it ought to be) could only be imposed in the wake of a decisive American military victory over Iran. Outside of that, seeking a “better” deal is a dangerous illusion. Rabbits pulled from small and threadbare hats don’t make for effectual foreign policy.
Your logorrhea aside, quite obviously you do subscribe to false choice theory that you claim you don’t.
But more substantively, of course we could have gotten (and can get) a better deal. We have leverage - as lomg as sanctions remain in place. Iran desperately wants the sanctions to go, as do its potential commercial partners. As long as these remain in place, these parties will come to the table. To say otherwise is to badly misunderstand the nature of how bad these parties need the good things they get from the deal.
Here is the fundamental miscalculation of this deal - we don’t need it more than Iran does, or even as bad as Russia and China, etc., but we negotiated it as if we do. As such, we left very important money on the table and enabled Iran to get pretty much everything it wants.
Forget grading the negotiations in an academic sense - that’s just poor national security policy. We could have secured a number of things by simply waiting longer and letting their desperation turn into important concessions. Like scalable penalties for wrongdoing, or more robust verification processes.
But this is what happens when the third-wheel factor of My Legacy infects the legitimate process.
[/quote]
And apparently have the apparatus in place to do surgical strikes against their nuclear program, apparently legally, if this deal is approved. Now if the Iranians thought that signing this deal would give the U.S. the leverage it needed to militarily remove it’s program, I am pretty sure they would not have agreed to it. [/quote]
Yes, legally. Violation of an international agreement of this nature legitimizes reprisal on the part of the United States. The capability has existed since the international community became concerned about Iran’s nuclear program. It increases the accuracy and the capability of US targeting packages. The capability already existed prior to a deal. Perhaps the regime has calculated that it stands to gain more than it would lose by abiding by the terms of the agreement and stands to lose more than it would gain by remaining wholly recalcitrant. If you don’t believe that to be the case, it’s curious why the Iranians haven’t sought to present the world with a nuclear fait accompli a la North Korea.
[/quote]
Clearly Iran stands to gain a whole lot from the deal, there were enough carrots in that bag to attract any ass.
We lose leverage by agreeing to the deal. ‘All options’ are no longer available to us, while a whole host of options open up to the Iranians.
Whether or not signing the deal increases justification for attack should not be even a minor motivation for agreeing to such a thing. The whole point is to avoid armed conflict. And nobody is going to support any such attack save for the gravest of violations, which would call for tactical removal of their nuclear capability regardless of the agreement in place.
In other words, if Iran acts in a manner that justifies military action, that action will be grave enough whether there is an agreement in place, to justify military attack. So we do not need this agreement to ‘bomb Iran’. It’s not going to give us justification to bomb them for lesser offenses than exist otherwise. We have not taken military action against Iran for extremely hostile action against the U.S. We sure as hell are not going to take military action because they violated a provision in JCPOA.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
[quote]2busy wrote:
Oops…
[/quote]
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-un-let-iran-inspect-alleged-nuke-165604071.html
Part of the secret deal? “Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms, operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.”
Who was talking about getting a better deal? Thunder, the one we got just keeps getting better and better…for Iran.[/quote]
Yeah, it just keeps getting better and better.
Oh, but this is about past nuclear activity! P.T. Barnum had us pegged.