Iran Nuclear Deal Reached

[superbeets]

The United States and the United Kingdom have suspended all non-lethal assistance into northern Syria after Islamic Front forces seized headquarters and warehouses belonging to the opposition's Supreme Military Council (SMC), US and UK embassies spokesmen in Ankara have said.
Fighters from the Islamic Front, a union of six major rebel groups, took control of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) bases at the Bab al-Hawa crossing on Syria's northwestern border with Turkey late on Friday, prompting the US announcement, which was made on the following Wednesday.


Infighting among Syrian rebels has weakened their efforts to bring down President Bashar al-Assad in the conflict which began as peaceful protests against his rule in March 2011 and has descended into civil war.

 

[SheriffJoe]

Dave if they do they will wait until the last possible second.

:lolBIG:

What exactly does that mean? Iran is building nukes as we speak.

 

[ScottL]

Don't know what's so funny Joe. It's pretty obvious either A) Israel isn't ready to attack Iran yet or can't wipe out Iran's program without the US, or B) Israel knows how far away from the bomb Iran is, or most likely C) Obama has tied Israel's hands and warned them to wait. And that's why I wrote that Israel will wait until the last possible second. Israel will not allow Iran to go nuclear. Nor would a Republican administration. You think Obama would do nothing to prevent it, or even wants it to happen. I hope you're wrong.

 

[superbeets]

An attack by Israel was imminent. Obama snookered that attack by the diplomacy. That is the reason Obama held secret talks well before the public willingness for talks shown at the UN.


Bottom line

Isreal was ready to go and gave Obama warning that it was within months, hence the race for diplomacy.


Obama fears Israel / Iran conflict more than he does Iran becoming nuclear.

 

[superbeets]

Iran has prepared for a conflict with Israel for decades. It's sole reason for building Hezbollah and fortress Southern Lebanon, is for this inevitability.


Iran desires conflict with Israel and it prefers to hold stall that inevitable conflict until it has the nuclear weapons. Israel is small and just one or two hits would be enough to end its existence. Iran is large and can sacrifice the inevitable overwhelming nuclear response from Israel. It will sacrifice for what it believes is the greater of all goods and that is to end the country of Israel. It will not end the Jewish people as they are spread across the world (around 18 million). But it will end the existence of the Israeli presence in the Middle East. It will be proud to be the Islamic Nation that destroyed Israel and will settle for that the history books.



Lets not forget it is the Revolutionary Guard that controls Iran not the politicians or the Clerics.

 

[superbeets]

Iran wants to be a superpower.

It dreams of another Persian Empire.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Iran wants to be a superpower.

It dreams of another Persian Empire.

Key word... Dreams.

 

[ScottL]

Golly, what a complete and utter surprise!

U.S. ADMITS: IRAN BENEFITS FAR MORE FROM GENEVA ACCORD THAN PREVIOUSLY STATED

Israel's left-leaning Haaretz revealed this evening that U.S. officials have privately conceded to Israeli counterparts that the Obama administration "greatly underestimated the economic benefits Tehran would reap" from the recently signed Geneva accord between the P5+1 global powers and Iran, and that the Islamic republic stands to receive a windfall totaling roughly $20 billion from international concessions, rather than the $6 to $7 billion that administration officials had repeatedly quoted to lawmakers, allies, and journalists. Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), had pegged Geneva concessions as totaling roughly $20 billion even before the deal was announced. Dubowitz and Jonathan Schanzer, the latter being FDD's vice president for research, more recently outlined how the White House had failed to take into account the "the total impact" that suspending automobile sanctions would have on the Iranian economy, and that U.S. officials had specifically neglected the value of "cars produced for the domestic market, wages paid, and other economic activity."

Israeli assessments had similarly far exceeded the administration's public estimates. White House figures and their supporters had belittled such concerns, declaring that the assessments of U.S. analysts and Israeli diplomats were based on incomplete knowledge, and at one point going so far as to tell senators to ignore Israeli estimations. It is not yet clear to what degree the dual dynamic - admitting that sanctions relief will come in at over twice their estimates, after having blasted critics who predicted as much for grossly exaggerating - will erodge the credibility of administration assurances regarding Iran.

Politico reports that testimony given today by Secretary of State John Kerry to the House Foreign Affairs Committee fell far short of convincing lawmakers to adopt the administration's perspective on Iran, with Kerry not only stumbling in answering questions regarding the consistency of the White House's read on Iranian calculations - administration officials have sought to simultaneously insist that sanctions coerced Iran into coming to the table and that new sanctions will push Tehran away - but failing more broadly to convince lawmakers that Iran's nuclear program can be checked with the leverage that the U.S. currently has at its disposal. The outlet described "a rare display of House unity" with "all the members of the committee who questioned Kerry essentially [telling] him no."

A string of administration officials have recently been dispatched to the Hill as part of a campaign to persuade lawmakers to forgo passing new sanctions legislation. Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, this week threatened that any new sanctions legislation - up to and especially the type being considered in the Senate, which would impose new financial pressure only if the six months of upcoming negotiations failed - would cause Iran to abandon talks. Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), assessed today that Zarif is essentially bluffing, and that "Tehran needs relief from the toughest U.S. financial and energy sanctions" lest it face "continued stagnation or a renewed recession."

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Very good news. Proving once again you need to talk to your enemies to get things done.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/23/world/meast/iran-nuclear-talks-geneva/index.html

That went well.

http://news.yahoo.com/iran-halts-nuclear-talks-us-blacklist-move-063122680.html

 

[ScottL]

Parts of Two Key Iraqi Cities Fall to Qaeda Group Active in Syria - Yasir Ghazi and Tim Arango
Radical Sunni militants aligned with al-Qaeda threatened Thursday to seize control of Falluja and Ramadi, two of the most important cities in Iraq, setting fire to police stations, freeing prisoners from jail and occupying mosques. Both cities are in the western province of Anbar. Nearly one-third of the American soldiers killed in the war died trying to pacify Anbar, and Americans fought two battles for control of Falluja. The Sunni militants fought beneath the same banner as the most hard-line jihadists they have inspired in Syria - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. (New York Times)

 

[Willie99]

why are the Iranians the only ones out there talking about this great deal?
why are the Iranians boasting?
why are the Iranians mocking us? calling us weak? claiming victory?
why won't Obama release the details?
why is our best and strongest ally in the Middle East disgusted with our leadership? mocking us as badly as our enemies are?



is that what the least prepared man in the room meant when he said he was going to restore international respect?

why are his meaning of such words always the polar opposite of what dictionaries tell us they mean? is that part of Ebonics?

what a fucking embarrassing douche bag we have representing our country, and a staff of used tampons to accompany him

the worst ever, in every way possible, He's bad at things I didn't know a president could be bad at.

fucking douche is even texts when at a basketball game, wears girly jeans and you know Michelle kicks his ass

 

[ScottL]

Gee I wonder what this Fuckstick would do to all of mankind if he attained the power?

Rouhani Approves Execution of Arab-Iranian Poet - Amir Taheri (Asharq Al-Awsat-UK)
Last July, an Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced 14 human rights activists to death on charges of "waging war on God" and "spreading corruption on earth."

Last month, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited Ahvaz, capital of the province of Khuzestan, where he gave the green light for the executions.
The first two executions were carried out last week when Hashem Shaabani and Hadi Rashedi were hanged.

Both men were well known for advocating greater cultural freedom for Iran's ethnic Arab-speaking minority, believed to number almost two million.
Shaabani, 32, was especially known for the poetry he published both in Persian and Arabic.

 

[ScottL]

Kerry Tells Iran that Existing Sanctions Will Stay in Place as Nuclear Negotiations Continue - Anne Gearan

Secretary of State John Kerry told Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif Sunday that the U.S. will continue to enforce existing sanctions on Iran while bargaining over a deal to rein in Iran's nuclear program. Kerry and Zarif have portrayed the interim deal reached in November very differently. Kerry stresses that the deal forces Iran to stop the uranium enrichment work most likely to lead to a bomb and degrade its existing stocks of the most potent uranium. Zarif stresses the economic benefit to Iran and recognition of Iran's right to a uranium enrichment program.
Zarif said in an interview Saturday that Iran was not prepared to give up research on centrifuges used to purify uranium as part of a final nuclear deal. (Washington Post)

 

[ScottL]

In Iran We Trust? If Tehran Breaks Its Promises, We're Unlikely to Know - Gabriel Schoenfeld (Weekly Standard)

• President Obama has proudly declared that diplomacy opened a path to "a future in which we can verify that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful and that it cannot build a nuclear weapon." How much confidence can we have that the ayatollahs will not press ahead with their nuclear program in clandestine facilities, as they have done in the past? And how much confidence can we have that our intelligence agencies will catch them?
  
• A three-year study by the Defense Science Board concluded that U.S. intelligence agencies "are not yet organized or fully equipped" to detect when foreign powers are constructing nuclear weapons or adding to existing arsenals. What is more, their ability to find "small nuclear enterprises designed to produce, store, and deploy only a small number of weapons" is "either inadequate, or more often, [does] not exist."
• With regard to identifying Syria's nuclear reactor at al-Kibar, the multibillion-dollar, ultra-high-tech tools of U.S. intelligence were foiled by one of the most low-cost and ancient techniques of warfare: camouflage. Only in 2007, just as it was ready to be loaded with uranium fuel, did U.S. intelligence conclude that Syria had built a reactor, thanks to incontrovertible evidence provided by Israel.
• Under our eyes but without our seeing, the Syrians had come breathtakingly close to possessing an operational generator of the nuclear bomb ingredient plutonium. "How can we have any confidence at all in the estimates of the scope of the North Korean, Iranian, or other possible programs?" asked former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
  
  The writer is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

 

[ScottL]

Dancing in the Nuclear Dark: How Will We Know When Iran Sprints toward a Bomb? - Bret Stephens (Wall Street Journal)

• 
  [*]Last month the Pentagon's Defense Science Board published an "Assessment of Nuclear Monitoring and Verification Technologies," which reported that our ability to detect a nuclear breakout is not good.
  [*]According to the report, "The pathways to proliferation are expanding. Networks of cooperation among countries that would otherwise have little reason to do so, such as the A.Q. Khan network or the Syria-North Korea and Iran-North Korea collaborations, cannot be considered isolated events."
  [*]In his 2012 debate with Paul Ryan, Joe Biden insisted that the Iranians "are a good way away" from a bomb and that "we'll know if they start the process of building a weapon." The report junks that claim.
  [*]Now the administration is pressing for an agreement with Iran based on the conceit that the intelligence community will give policy makers ample warning before the mullahs sprint for a nuclear weapon. That is not true. We are dancing in the nuclear dark.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

The Iran negotiations are about as successful as the implementation of Obamacare.

 

[SheriffJoe]

Reuters: That July deadline for an Iran nuke deal? Probably not gonna’ happen.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/04/uk-iran-nuclear-idUKKBN0EF05Y20140604

It is increasingly unlikely that six world powers and Iran will meet their July 20 deadline to negotiate a long-term deal for Iran to curb its nuclear programme in return for an end to economic sanctions, diplomats and analysts say. …

The latest round of talks in Vienna last month ran into difficulties when it became clear that the number of enrichment centrifuges Iran wanted to maintain was well beyond what would be acceptable to the West. That disagreement, envoys said, can be measured in tens of thousands of centrifuges. …

Barring a surprise breakthrough in the next round in Vienna on June 16 to 20, Western officials said an extension was virtually a foregone conclusion. “We’re far apart,” one diplomat said, adding that the talks would be “long and complicated.” …

If there is an extension, the Obama administration will seek the blessing of Congress. U.S. officials voiced confidence to Reuters they would ultimately get it, but it appears it would not come without a fight.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Great call as always, Guesser.

Has the sewer rat with anger issues ever been right about anything????

face)(*^%

 

[superbeets]

 

[The Guesser]

http://english.eastday.com/auto/eastday/world/u1ai8482131.html
Iran talks heading for new phase

2015/4/1 11:38:40

Wrapping up six days of marathon nuclear talks with mixed results, Iran and six world powers prepared on Tuesday to issue a general statement agreeing to continue negotiations in a new phase aimed at reaching a comprehensive accord by the end of June, officials said.
The joint statement is to be accompanied by additional documents that outline more detailed understandings, allowing the sides to claim enough progress has been made thus far to merit a new round, the officials said.
The talks have already been extended twice as part of more than a decade of diplomatic attempts to curb Teheran's nuclear advance, and the next stage will be presented as a new phase because most of the parties had ruled out another prolongation of this round.
One of the officials said the statement was general in part because differences between the sides remained ahead of a new phase of negotiations toward a comprehensive deal by late June. The second official said other documents will be more technical in nature and will also be made public later in the day.
Both spoke on the grounds of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment.
US officials earlier had said the sides were aiming for a framework agreement by the end of March but then revised the language, speaking of an "understanding", due in part to opposition to a two-stage agreement from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who earlier this year demanded one deal that nails down specifics.
The documents were being finalized among the six countries negotiating with Iran, and the Iranian side had not yet signed off on them, said the first official.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who left Lausanne on Monday saying he would return if a deal was imminent, was heading back to the Swiss city, indicating that an end to the talks was near.

In Moscow, he told reporters: "Prospects for this round of negotiations were not bad, and I would even say good."
Foreign Ministers of five nations at the table already joined US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the talks over the weekend in an intense effort to reach a political understanding on terms that would curb Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
Kerry and others at the table said the sides have made some progress, with Iran considering demands for further cuts to its uranium enrichment program but pushing back on how long it must limit technology it could use to make atomic weapons. In addition to sticking points on research and development, differences remain on the timing and scope of sanctions removal, the officials said.
Officials in Lausanne said the sides were advancing on limits to aspects of Iran's program to enrich uranium, which can be used to make the core of a nuclear warhead.

 

[The Guesser]

[h=1]Sergei Lavrov, Mohammad Zarif claim breakthrough in Iran nuclear talks[/h]By AFP | 1 Apr, 2015, 10.41AM IST


LAUSANNE: Russia and Iran's foreign ministers claimed in the early hours of Wednesday a breakthrough in talks on a framework deal curtailing Tehran's nuclear programme, but the US said not all issues had been agreed.

"One can say with relative certainty that we at the minister level have reached an agreement in principle on all key aspects of the final settlement of this issue," Russian media quoted Sergei Lavrov as saying at talks in Switzerland.

This came after Russia's top diplomat and the foreign ministers of five other major powers and Iran missed a midnight (2200 GMT) deadline to agree the main outlines of what they hope will be an historic accord but continued working through the night.

The powers hope this final agreement, due to be finalised by June 30, will see Iran scale down its nuclear programme in order to prevent Tehran developing nuclear weapons under the guise of its civilian programme.

The stakes are high, with fears that failure to reach a deal may set the United States and Israel on a road to military action to thwart Iran's nuclear drive, which Tehran says is purely peaceful.

The "agreement in principle... will be put on paper in the coming hours or perhaps within one day," Lavrov said, quoted by Ria Novosti after a lengthy day of talks in Lausanne.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he hoped to complete later on Wednesday the framework nuclear agreement, allowing the process of drafting a final accord by the June 30 deadline to begin.

"We have accomplished quite a bit but people needed to get some rest and start over early in the morning. I hope that we can finalise the work on Wednesday and hopefully start the process of drafting (a final accord)", Zarif told reporters.

A senior US official however said there was not yet full agreement on key points of the framework accord.

"All issues have not been agreed," a senior US official told AFP. A Western diplomat said there was no framework agreement yet while a spokeswoman for the European Union, which is chairing the talks, said only that the ministerial meeting was over.

"Talks still ongoing with Political Directors to reconvene early (Wednesday)," Catherine Rey, the spokeswoman, said on Twitter.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius meanwhile followed his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in leaving the negotiations, with Fabius's office saying he would return "as soon as it is useful".

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who arrived in Lausanne last Wednesday, remained however together with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

Under the final accord, the powers want Iran to scale back its nuclear programme to give the world ample notice of any dash to make the bomb by extending the so-called "breakout" time.

In return, the Islamic republic is demanding the lifting of sanctions that have strangled its economy.

But the question is how much detail will be in the framework accord that Iran and the six powers -- the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany -- want to nail down.





If it falls short of firm commitments by Iran then US President Barack Obama will find it hard to fend off attempts by his Republican opponents to pass fresh sanctions on Tehran.

Iran's negotiators are also under pressure from their own domestic hardliners not to give too much away and for President Hassan Rouhani to deliver on his promises to secure the lifting of sanctions.

Fresh US sanctions could therefore torpedo the whole negotiating process that was launched after Rouhani became president in 2013.

Republicans fear that since some of its nuclear infrastructure will likely stay intact, Iran will still be able to get the bomb -- a concern shared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons itself.

"The greatest threat to our security and our future was and remains Iran's attempt to be armed with nuclear weapons. The agreement being formulated in Lausanne paves the way to that goal," Netanyahu told parliament Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia, which has led an Arab coalition bombing Iran-backed rebels in Yemen in recent days, is also alarmed by what is unfolding in Lausanne.

Other areas of the mooted deal, including the future size of Iran's uranium enrichment capacity -- a process for making nuclear fuel but also the core of an atomic bomb -- also appear to have been tentatively sewn up.

But the two sides still appear to be discussing other areas, including what to do with Iran's stockpiles of nuclear material, and how long the deal should last.