Says it all
European Union High Representative Federica Mogherini, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and US Secretary of State John Kerry pose for a group picture at the United Nations building in Vienna Photo: Joe Klammar/AFP
European Union High Representative Federica Mogherini, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and US Secretary of State John Kerry pose for a group picture at the United Nations building in Vienna Photo: Joe Klammar/AFP
[h=1]Iran nuclear deal: what it doesn't cover[/h][h=2]Human rights, the release of Western prisoners and support for Hizbollah and Hamas fall outside the agreement[/h]
However, most of these issues were never on the table:
Human Rights
There is no obligation on Iran to soften its human rights record, release political prisoners, or reduce its use of the death penalty, which it uses more often than other country in the world apart from China, including for homosexuality.
Western prisoners
Families of three Iranian-Americans held in Iran, including a Washington Post reporter, Jason Rezaian, hope that the deal will smooth the path to their release, but there is no direct link. A fourth American, Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent hired as a private contractor by the CIA, went missing eight years ago.
Funding militant groups like Hizbollah and Hamas
Far from stopping Iran's support for outfits described in the West as "terrorist", Iran may simply end up with more cash from released assets and oil sales to increase it.
Syria
The nuclear deal is unconnected to Iran’s wider interests in the Middle East, including its support for President Bashar al-Assad. Some hope it will be more amenable to a deal to end the Syrian war, or other conflicts, but it may simply feel empowered to up its support for regimes and militant groups the West does not like.
Personal freedoms
One young woman student posted a request to President Hassan Rouhani on her Facebook page: “Sir, does this nuclear deal mean that we can now get rid of our restrictive Islamic hijab and feel free?" However, there is no suggestion that Islamic laws on personal behaviour will be relaxed.
However, most of these issues were never on the table:
Human Rights
There is no obligation on Iran to soften its human rights record, release political prisoners, or reduce its use of the death penalty, which it uses more often than other country in the world apart from China, including for homosexuality.
Western prisoners
Families of three Iranian-Americans held in Iran, including a Washington Post reporter, Jason Rezaian, hope that the deal will smooth the path to their release, but there is no direct link. A fourth American, Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent hired as a private contractor by the CIA, went missing eight years ago.
Funding militant groups like Hizbollah and Hamas
Far from stopping Iran's support for outfits described in the West as "terrorist", Iran may simply end up with more cash from released assets and oil sales to increase it.
Syria
The nuclear deal is unconnected to Iran’s wider interests in the Middle East, including its support for President Bashar al-Assad. Some hope it will be more amenable to a deal to end the Syrian war, or other conflicts, but it may simply feel empowered to up its support for regimes and militant groups the West does not like.
Personal freedoms
One young woman student posted a request to President Hassan Rouhani on her Facebook page: “Sir, does this nuclear deal mean that we can now get rid of our restrictive Islamic hijab and feel free?" However, there is no suggestion that Islamic laws on personal behaviour will be relaxed.
An Iran deal is no substitute for a Middle East strategy, Mr President
Barack Obama has obsessively pursued a historic nuclear deal, but in the meantime the rest of the region has descended into chaos
There is a relentlessness about President Obama, a determination to pursue his priorities, that is undoubtedly impressive: a virtue admirable in a corporate executive, or an ordinary politician implementing some manifesto pledge. Whether it is so admirable in the most powerful man in the world, however, is another matter, and with the Iran deal for which he has fought so intensely now becoming a reality, the question of whether Mr Obama’s strength of purpose is a good thing is about to be put to the test.
Mr Obama was never a “foreign policy” guy. Introspective in character, obsessed with detail, he preferred domestic issues like health care reform to the grand sweep of history. His big foreign policy stances before his election were negative – get out of Iraq, get out of Afghanistan. All American presidents in practice have to take account of Washington’s unique power, but even after entering the White House he remained minimalist. His now largely forgotten “pivot towards Asia” was in reality a pivot away from the Middle East, a “George Bush” arena he regarded with distrust.
It may seem odd to think now, but at the beginning he was in many ways less progressive than Mr Bush, who demanded political reform and democratisation of client states like Egypt. Mr Obama did not overtly oppose the spread of democracy, of course, but in his address to the Muslim world from Cairo in June 2009 he said: “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone. No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.”
History quickly knocked that idea off course: Mr Obama soon found himself unwillingly cajoled into forcing democracy on to Egypt and sending in the air force to dislodge Colonel Gaddafi from Libya, and bit by bit plunged the Middle East, for all his quietist leanings, into chaos and war.
The strangest thing is that he has seemed curiously unconcerned. Around the Middle East, there is puzzlement as to what his game plan is or even on whose side he stands in all the region’s complex feuds and fights. Is he for President Sisi or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? Does he want the Assad regime to stay or go? Most importantly, does he prefer Sunni Saudi Arabia or Shia Iran?
Washington’s historic allies – broadly, the Sunnis – are apoplectic at a response to the region’s chaos that seems neither heavy-hitting nor to allow them to take over and restore order themselves. What is worse is that they know there is a simple explanation, and one they can do nothing about.
With his lawyer’s focus on winning the case you have, Obama has concentrated on one international project above all else: the Iran nuclear deal is his foreign policy ObamaCare, his legacy to the world. An ending of Iran’s nuclear menace – at least for the next decade – would allow a wider rapprochement, a modern-day equivalent of President Nixon’s visit to Mao’s China. It would be one result, at least, to justify that Nobel Peace Prize
The hopeful believe that once Iran is accepted back into the international mainstream the country can be persuaded to deal constructively on a range of Middle East issues. Saudi Arabia, they point out, has been America’s friend for years but has failed to stop – has encouraged, many would say – the growth of militant Islam. Perhaps a new balance can be found. As one academic put it, if Saudi Arabia can be America’s friend without being its ally, Iran can be an ally without being a friend.
Not even White House advisers are pushing this line. There is too much of a history of zero-sum politics in the modern Middle East. It is far more likely that Iran will take its gains and bank them: their newfound legitimacy and returned billions of frozen assets will further sponsor the interests of their regional allies – Assad, Hizbollah, the Houthis rebels in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and its allies, in turn, will up their support for their own proxies, deepening the region’s crisis.
The State Department is well aware of this. Its diplomats do not doubt – as we should neither – the boon of a nuclear deal, but they fear what comes next. Mr Obama is saying nothing. Even for Iraq, where America’s credibility and sense of moral responsibility are most in play, he said recently he did not yet, with 18 months left of his presidency, have a “complete strategy”.
It is perhaps time for one; even a partial strategy would be welcome. A deal is no substitute for a policy.
Barack Obama has obsessively pursued a historic nuclear deal, but in the meantime the rest of the region has descended into chaos
There is a relentlessness about President Obama, a determination to pursue his priorities, that is undoubtedly impressive: a virtue admirable in a corporate executive, or an ordinary politician implementing some manifesto pledge. Whether it is so admirable in the most powerful man in the world, however, is another matter, and with the Iran deal for which he has fought so intensely now becoming a reality, the question of whether Mr Obama’s strength of purpose is a good thing is about to be put to the test.
Mr Obama was never a “foreign policy” guy. Introspective in character, obsessed with detail, he preferred domestic issues like health care reform to the grand sweep of history. His big foreign policy stances before his election were negative – get out of Iraq, get out of Afghanistan. All American presidents in practice have to take account of Washington’s unique power, but even after entering the White House he remained minimalist. His now largely forgotten “pivot towards Asia” was in reality a pivot away from the Middle East, a “George Bush” arena he regarded with distrust.
It may seem odd to think now, but at the beginning he was in many ways less progressive than Mr Bush, who demanded political reform and democratisation of client states like Egypt. Mr Obama did not overtly oppose the spread of democracy, of course, but in his address to the Muslim world from Cairo in June 2009 he said: “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone. No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.”
History quickly knocked that idea off course: Mr Obama soon found himself unwillingly cajoled into forcing democracy on to Egypt and sending in the air force to dislodge Colonel Gaddafi from Libya, and bit by bit plunged the Middle East, for all his quietist leanings, into chaos and war.
The strangest thing is that he has seemed curiously unconcerned. Around the Middle East, there is puzzlement as to what his game plan is or even on whose side he stands in all the region’s complex feuds and fights. Is he for President Sisi or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? Does he want the Assad regime to stay or go? Most importantly, does he prefer Sunni Saudi Arabia or Shia Iran?
Washington’s historic allies – broadly, the Sunnis – are apoplectic at a response to the region’s chaos that seems neither heavy-hitting nor to allow them to take over and restore order themselves. What is worse is that they know there is a simple explanation, and one they can do nothing about.
With his lawyer’s focus on winning the case you have, Obama has concentrated on one international project above all else: the Iran nuclear deal is his foreign policy ObamaCare, his legacy to the world. An ending of Iran’s nuclear menace – at least for the next decade – would allow a wider rapprochement, a modern-day equivalent of President Nixon’s visit to Mao’s China. It would be one result, at least, to justify that Nobel Peace Prize
The hopeful believe that once Iran is accepted back into the international mainstream the country can be persuaded to deal constructively on a range of Middle East issues. Saudi Arabia, they point out, has been America’s friend for years but has failed to stop – has encouraged, many would say – the growth of militant Islam. Perhaps a new balance can be found. As one academic put it, if Saudi Arabia can be America’s friend without being its ally, Iran can be an ally without being a friend.
Not even White House advisers are pushing this line. There is too much of a history of zero-sum politics in the modern Middle East. It is far more likely that Iran will take its gains and bank them: their newfound legitimacy and returned billions of frozen assets will further sponsor the interests of their regional allies – Assad, Hizbollah, the Houthis rebels in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and its allies, in turn, will up their support for their own proxies, deepening the region’s crisis.
The State Department is well aware of this. Its diplomats do not doubt – as we should neither – the boon of a nuclear deal, but they fear what comes next. Mr Obama is saying nothing. Even for Iraq, where America’s credibility and sense of moral responsibility are most in play, he said recently he did not yet, with 18 months left of his presidency, have a “complete strategy”.
It is perhaps time for one; even a partial strategy would be welcome. A deal is no substitute for a policy.
In Iran deal, a vote for diplomacy: Column
Lawrence Wilkerson and Kate Gould 7:13 a.m. EDT July 14, 2015
Congress, support the agreement and make the world a safer place.
The Iran deal reached in Vienna is a historic victory. Exquisite diplomacy has delivered Washington and Tehran from years of teetering on the brink of war to one of the greatest diplomatic achievements of the nuclear age. This deal seals off Tehran's potential pathways to a nuclear weapon and subjects Iran to a robust transparency and inspection regime.
Now, every member of Congress will have the opportunity to stand on the right side of history and support this deal. This September, both chambers of Congress are expected to vote on whether this agreement will go forward. Lawmakers have the responsibility to ensure that this landmark diplomatic achievement is protected from the hardliners in the U.S., Iran and elsewhere who are working to sabotage this agreement before the ink has dried.
This vote may be the single biggest vote on war and peace of the decade. As forty national peace and security and faith-based organizations supporting the deal have warned lawmakers, "this will be among the most consequential national security votes taken by Congress since the decision to authorize the invasion of Iraq."
The reason this vote is happening at all is because policymakers set up an extra-constitutional process in which Congress would vote on this agreement through passage of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 (INARA). INARA lays out a process in which both the House and the Senate would vote on a 'resolution of disapproval.' If the resolution of disapproval were to be signed into law, the President would be barred from suspending statutory sanctions, as required under the deal.
Such an outcome would only invite disaster. If the U.S. doesn't make good on its end of the bargain, there is little reason to believe Iran would make good on its nuclear concessions. Even our allies would question the purpose of negotiating with Washington when Capitol Hill sabotages a multilateral agreement of this significance. For the U.S. to renege on its obligations would risk an unconstrained Iranian nuclear program and an escalating cycle of hostilities that would put our countries back on a path to confrontation or possibly even war.
That is why President Obama is expected to veto such a dangerous measure, should Congress dare to take us to the edge of this diplomatic cliff. To override the President's veto would take a whopping two-thirds of lawmakers in each chamber voting to reject diplomacy, and risk a path of confrontation and possibly war.
However, our elected officials can take the high road and vote for the national interest of America. In fact, we don't have to risk going to the brink at all if 41 senators block a resolution of disapproval from getting a vote. If 41 senators simply vote against what's known as "cloture," which would allow this legislation to go forward, then the American people will have won.
And even if a majority of the House of Representatives vote to disapprove this deal going forward, without the Senate's vote going forward, this reckless disapproval legislation won't make it to the president's desk.
While opponents of diplomacy are always thinking of new shenanigans to sabotage a deal, they know that the vote on the deal will define the Iran debate for years to come. That's why opponents of a deal are pouring millions into attack ads going after key senators in advance of this landmark vote.
If the Senate fails the nation in this initial cloture vote, then the threat of both houses of Congress voting to reject the deal looms large. In that scenario, the fate of this watershed agreement will be determined by whether 34 senators and 146 representatives take a stand for diplomacy and the real interests of the nation, preventing an override of the President's veto.
A clear majority of Americans want members of Congress to choose diplomacy. We suspect strongly that a supermajority — over 75% — would support the deal if they knew the truth and had not been led astray by billions of dollars spent in creating subterfuge, half-truths and outright lies. The overwhelming consensus among national security and non-proliferation experts is that this deal makes the U.S. and the world a safer place. Voting for the deal means not only ensuring one of the greatest diplomatic achievements of our time, but finally beginning to cease the endless cycle of U.S. military misadventures in Southwest Asia.
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson previously served as chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and is currently distinguished adjunct professor of government and public policy at the College of William and Mary. Kate Gould is the legislative associate for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
Lawrence Wilkerson and Kate Gould 7:13 a.m. EDT July 14, 2015
Congress, support the agreement and make the world a safer place.
The Iran deal reached in Vienna is a historic victory. Exquisite diplomacy has delivered Washington and Tehran from years of teetering on the brink of war to one of the greatest diplomatic achievements of the nuclear age. This deal seals off Tehran's potential pathways to a nuclear weapon and subjects Iran to a robust transparency and inspection regime.
Now, every member of Congress will have the opportunity to stand on the right side of history and support this deal. This September, both chambers of Congress are expected to vote on whether this agreement will go forward. Lawmakers have the responsibility to ensure that this landmark diplomatic achievement is protected from the hardliners in the U.S., Iran and elsewhere who are working to sabotage this agreement before the ink has dried.
This vote may be the single biggest vote on war and peace of the decade. As forty national peace and security and faith-based organizations supporting the deal have warned lawmakers, "this will be among the most consequential national security votes taken by Congress since the decision to authorize the invasion of Iraq."
The reason this vote is happening at all is because policymakers set up an extra-constitutional process in which Congress would vote on this agreement through passage of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 (INARA). INARA lays out a process in which both the House and the Senate would vote on a 'resolution of disapproval.' If the resolution of disapproval were to be signed into law, the President would be barred from suspending statutory sanctions, as required under the deal.
Such an outcome would only invite disaster. If the U.S. doesn't make good on its end of the bargain, there is little reason to believe Iran would make good on its nuclear concessions. Even our allies would question the purpose of negotiating with Washington when Capitol Hill sabotages a multilateral agreement of this significance. For the U.S. to renege on its obligations would risk an unconstrained Iranian nuclear program and an escalating cycle of hostilities that would put our countries back on a path to confrontation or possibly even war.
That is why President Obama is expected to veto such a dangerous measure, should Congress dare to take us to the edge of this diplomatic cliff. To override the President's veto would take a whopping two-thirds of lawmakers in each chamber voting to reject diplomacy, and risk a path of confrontation and possibly war.
However, our elected officials can take the high road and vote for the national interest of America. In fact, we don't have to risk going to the brink at all if 41 senators block a resolution of disapproval from getting a vote. If 41 senators simply vote against what's known as "cloture," which would allow this legislation to go forward, then the American people will have won.
And even if a majority of the House of Representatives vote to disapprove this deal going forward, without the Senate's vote going forward, this reckless disapproval legislation won't make it to the president's desk.
While opponents of diplomacy are always thinking of new shenanigans to sabotage a deal, they know that the vote on the deal will define the Iran debate for years to come. That's why opponents of a deal are pouring millions into attack ads going after key senators in advance of this landmark vote.
If the Senate fails the nation in this initial cloture vote, then the threat of both houses of Congress voting to reject the deal looms large. In that scenario, the fate of this watershed agreement will be determined by whether 34 senators and 146 representatives take a stand for diplomacy and the real interests of the nation, preventing an override of the President's veto.
A clear majority of Americans want members of Congress to choose diplomacy. We suspect strongly that a supermajority — over 75% — would support the deal if they knew the truth and had not been led astray by billions of dollars spent in creating subterfuge, half-truths and outright lies. The overwhelming consensus among national security and non-proliferation experts is that this deal makes the U.S. and the world a safer place. Voting for the deal means not only ensuring one of the greatest diplomatic achievements of our time, but finally beginning to cease the endless cycle of U.S. military misadventures in Southwest Asia.
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson previously served as chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and is currently distinguished adjunct professor of government and public policy at the College of William and Mary. Kate Gould is the legislative associate for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
[h=1]Iranians’ View of the Nuclear Deal: Optimistic, With Significant Caveats[/h]
Glenn Greenwald, Murtaza Hussain
Jul. 14 2015, 12:25pm
U.S. media coverage of the Iran deal is, as usual, overwhelmingly focused on American and Israeli voices, with the hard-liner fanatics in each country issuing apocalyptic decrees, insisting that the deal is far too lenient on Iran and provides it with far too many benefits. Though largely excluded from U.S. media discussions, there is also substantial debate among Iranians about the virtues of the deal, with most viewing it positively due to the economic benefits it is expected to provide, but with many holding the view that it unfairly impinges on Iranian sovereignty in exchange for very few legitimate concessions.
The optimistic Iranian view is grounded in the expectation that the deal will usher in a normalization of relations between Iran and the West, lifting both the sanctions regime and the threat of war. That view was expressed by the ringing endorsement from National Iranian American Council President Trita Parsi, who proclaimed that “diplomacy has triumphed and war is off the table. The United States and Iran have turned the tide on decades of enmity and instead have secured a nuclear deal that promises a better and brighter future.” He added that “we now know that the U.S. and Iran need not remain hostile enemies, but can interact with each other to achieve shared interests.”
But much Iranian public opinion, while positive, is more nuanced and guarded. Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University (who was one of the individuals targeted for NSA spying), has devoted most of his career to advocating for a normalization of U.S./Iran relations and the lifting of the sanctions regime. To the extent this deal accomplishes that, he said today in an interview with The Intercept, he supports it, though if it ends up confined only to nuclear issues, “then it will be very bad for both countries.” Amirahmadi added that the mood in Tehran is, in general, “very happy.” Ordinary Iranians, he said, “obviously like what has happened” primarily because “they expect money to arrive, which will help the economy and create jobs.”
But he noted several critical caveats. To begin with, expectations among ordinary Iranians are very high: they expect substantial economic improvement, and if that fails to materialize, Amirahmadi sees a likelihood of serious political instability, which “could go in a terrible direction for Iran.” He pointed out that for many years, the Iranian government has, with some good reason, blamed the U.S., Europe and their sanctions regime for the economic suffering of Iranians. “They no longer have that pretext, which means they have to deliver,” he said. He argued that the 1979 revolution was driven primarily by the Shah’s devotion to distributing wealth to a tiny elite at the expense of most Iranians, and that any repeat of that with this new flow of money would exacerbate wealth inequality even further and risk serious domestic unrest.
A similar point was made by Alireza Haghighi, a political science PhD from Tehran University and professor at the University of Toronto. He told The Intercept that the prime driver of the deal from the Iranian side was economic mismanagement during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which weakened the Iranian economy to the point where it could no longer sustain sanctions. “Had it not been for that,” he said, “sanctions could have been managed and no deal would have been necessary.”
As for outright Iranian opposition to the deal, Professor Amirahmadi said that it was largely confined to “conservatives,” by which he means “fundamental Islamists who are now the only real hard-core nationalists in the country.” But he also said that deal opponents “have some valid points.” For one, Iran (unlike Israel) is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and as such has the absolute right to enrich uranium at any levels; “there’d be no reason to join the NPT except to get that right, so the fact that this deal ‘lets’ Iran do what they already had the right to do, at lesser levels, is not really a ground for celebration,” he said. He also pointed out that “the money that will flow to Iran under this deal is not a gift: this is Iran’s money that has been frozen and otherwise blocked.” As a result, he said, the hard-liners have a valid objection to viewing these provisions as real concessions.
Leading Iranian government critics seem to view the deal quite favorably. Hadi Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran is a harsh government critic, but told The Intercept this morning that the deal is likely to alleviate economic suffering among ordinary Iranians.
While he foresees positive outcomes for the country, he said that in the immediate aftermath, “there may be short-term backlash in the form of domestic repression or the flaring of minor conflicts with the U.S, because the state has built its entire identity and official ideology on the idea of countering American imperialism.” Nonetheless, “the center of gravity is moving towards being pragmatic and engaging once again — the anti-imperialism and confrontational attitude has lost its pull on the people, even those who took part in the revolutions, and has lost all content over the years.” He added that “Iran is never going to become a real ally or friend of the U.S, but inside the country people say that the same way that China has both economic cooperation and strategic and political rivalry with America, this is what we should also strive for.”
There are some noble exceptions, but the general exclusion of Iranian voices from establishment U.S. media coverage, whether by intent or otherwise, has had a very distortive effect on how Iran is perceived, allowing them to be depicted as primitive, irrational, apocalyptic religious fanatics. While that caricature arguably applies to the U.S.’s closest allies in the regime, and to some of the most extremist Iranian (and Israeli and American) fringes, it is wildly inapplicable to Iran as a whole.
The youth literacy rate in Iran is 98.7 percent, as compared to 82.4 percent in Iraq, 70.8 percent in Pakistan, and 89.3 percent in Egypt. Enrollment in tertiary education is only 2% points below that of Germany, U.K., and France. Iran’s Human Development Index is far ahead of most of its neighbors. As Elahe Izadi explained last year in the Washington Post, “being a highly educated Iranian woman is actually quite normal. Women outnumber men in Iranian universities, a trend that started in 2001.” Similarly, Reza Aslan has pointed out that “Iran currently has the highest number of U.S. college alums serving in any foreign government cabinet in the world.” The country’s vice president, Masoumeh Ebtekar, is a woman.
But the silencing of Iranian voices has meant that absurd, ignorant demonizing caricatures like this are the norm:
American journalists, who pride themselves on “neutrality” and “balance,” should spend some time considering how much of a platform they give to Israelis and how little they give to Iranians. Whatever one’s views, hearing from Iranians themselves about their own country — rather than relying on Israeli and American critics — is a prerequisite to journalistic fairness.
Photo: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, center, Head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi, left, and Hossein Fereydoon, brother and close aide to President Hassan Rouhani, meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna, Austria, Friday July 3, 2015. (Carlos Barria/AP)
Additional reporting provided by Andrew Fishman
Glenn Greenwald, Murtaza Hussain
Jul. 14 2015, 12:25pm
U.S. media coverage of the Iran deal is, as usual, overwhelmingly focused on American and Israeli voices, with the hard-liner fanatics in each country issuing apocalyptic decrees, insisting that the deal is far too lenient on Iran and provides it with far too many benefits. Though largely excluded from U.S. media discussions, there is also substantial debate among Iranians about the virtues of the deal, with most viewing it positively due to the economic benefits it is expected to provide, but with many holding the view that it unfairly impinges on Iranian sovereignty in exchange for very few legitimate concessions.
The optimistic Iranian view is grounded in the expectation that the deal will usher in a normalization of relations between Iran and the West, lifting both the sanctions regime and the threat of war. That view was expressed by the ringing endorsement from National Iranian American Council President Trita Parsi, who proclaimed that “diplomacy has triumphed and war is off the table. The United States and Iran have turned the tide on decades of enmity and instead have secured a nuclear deal that promises a better and brighter future.” He added that “we now know that the U.S. and Iran need not remain hostile enemies, but can interact with each other to achieve shared interests.”
But much Iranian public opinion, while positive, is more nuanced and guarded. Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University (who was one of the individuals targeted for NSA spying), has devoted most of his career to advocating for a normalization of U.S./Iran relations and the lifting of the sanctions regime. To the extent this deal accomplishes that, he said today in an interview with The Intercept, he supports it, though if it ends up confined only to nuclear issues, “then it will be very bad for both countries.” Amirahmadi added that the mood in Tehran is, in general, “very happy.” Ordinary Iranians, he said, “obviously like what has happened” primarily because “they expect money to arrive, which will help the economy and create jobs.”
But he noted several critical caveats. To begin with, expectations among ordinary Iranians are very high: they expect substantial economic improvement, and if that fails to materialize, Amirahmadi sees a likelihood of serious political instability, which “could go in a terrible direction for Iran.” He pointed out that for many years, the Iranian government has, with some good reason, blamed the U.S., Europe and their sanctions regime for the economic suffering of Iranians. “They no longer have that pretext, which means they have to deliver,” he said. He argued that the 1979 revolution was driven primarily by the Shah’s devotion to distributing wealth to a tiny elite at the expense of most Iranians, and that any repeat of that with this new flow of money would exacerbate wealth inequality even further and risk serious domestic unrest.
A similar point was made by Alireza Haghighi, a political science PhD from Tehran University and professor at the University of Toronto. He told The Intercept that the prime driver of the deal from the Iranian side was economic mismanagement during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which weakened the Iranian economy to the point where it could no longer sustain sanctions. “Had it not been for that,” he said, “sanctions could have been managed and no deal would have been necessary.”
As for outright Iranian opposition to the deal, Professor Amirahmadi said that it was largely confined to “conservatives,” by which he means “fundamental Islamists who are now the only real hard-core nationalists in the country.” But he also said that deal opponents “have some valid points.” For one, Iran (unlike Israel) is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and as such has the absolute right to enrich uranium at any levels; “there’d be no reason to join the NPT except to get that right, so the fact that this deal ‘lets’ Iran do what they already had the right to do, at lesser levels, is not really a ground for celebration,” he said. He also pointed out that “the money that will flow to Iran under this deal is not a gift: this is Iran’s money that has been frozen and otherwise blocked.” As a result, he said, the hard-liners have a valid objection to viewing these provisions as real concessions.
Leading Iranian government critics seem to view the deal quite favorably. Hadi Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran is a harsh government critic, but told The Intercept this morning that the deal is likely to alleviate economic suffering among ordinary Iranians.
While he foresees positive outcomes for the country, he said that in the immediate aftermath, “there may be short-term backlash in the form of domestic repression or the flaring of minor conflicts with the U.S, because the state has built its entire identity and official ideology on the idea of countering American imperialism.” Nonetheless, “the center of gravity is moving towards being pragmatic and engaging once again — the anti-imperialism and confrontational attitude has lost its pull on the people, even those who took part in the revolutions, and has lost all content over the years.” He added that “Iran is never going to become a real ally or friend of the U.S, but inside the country people say that the same way that China has both economic cooperation and strategic and political rivalry with America, this is what we should also strive for.”
There are some noble exceptions, but the general exclusion of Iranian voices from establishment U.S. media coverage, whether by intent or otherwise, has had a very distortive effect on how Iran is perceived, allowing them to be depicted as primitive, irrational, apocalyptic religious fanatics. While that caricature arguably applies to the U.S.’s closest allies in the regime, and to some of the most extremist Iranian (and Israeli and American) fringes, it is wildly inapplicable to Iran as a whole.
The youth literacy rate in Iran is 98.7 percent, as compared to 82.4 percent in Iraq, 70.8 percent in Pakistan, and 89.3 percent in Egypt. Enrollment in tertiary education is only 2% points below that of Germany, U.K., and France. Iran’s Human Development Index is far ahead of most of its neighbors. As Elahe Izadi explained last year in the Washington Post, “being a highly educated Iranian woman is actually quite normal. Women outnumber men in Iranian universities, a trend that started in 2001.” Similarly, Reza Aslan has pointed out that “Iran currently has the highest number of U.S. college alums serving in any foreign government cabinet in the world.” The country’s vice president, Masoumeh Ebtekar, is a woman.
But the silencing of Iranian voices has meant that absurd, ignorant demonizing caricatures like this are the norm:
American journalists, who pride themselves on “neutrality” and “balance,” should spend some time considering how much of a platform they give to Israelis and how little they give to Iranians. Whatever one’s views, hearing from Iranians themselves about their own country — rather than relying on Israeli and American critics — is a prerequisite to journalistic fairness.
Photo: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, center, Head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi, left, and Hossein Fereydoon, brother and close aide to President Hassan Rouhani, meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna, Austria, Friday July 3, 2015. (Carlos Barria/AP)
Additional reporting provided by Andrew Fishman
[h=1]Why the Iran Deal Makes Obama's Critics So Angry[/h]
“Mankind faces a crossroads,” declared Woody Allen. “One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
The point is simple: In life, what matters most isn’t how a decision compares to your ideal outcome. It’s how it compares to the alternative at hand.
The same is true for the Iran deal, announced Tuesday between Iran and six world powers. As Congress begins debating the agreement, its opponents have three real alternatives. The first is to kill the deal, and the interim agreement that preceded it, and do nothing else, which means few restraints on Iran’s nuclear program. The second is war. But top American and Israeli officials have warned that military action against Iranian nuclear facilities could ignite a catastrophic regional conflict and would be ineffective, if not counterproductive, in delaying Iran’s path to the bomb. Meir Dagan, who oversaw the Iran file as head of Israel’s external spy agency, the Mossad, from 2002 to 2011, has said an attack “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA under George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, has warned that an attack would “guarantee that which we are trying to prevent: an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.”
Implicitly acknowledging this, most critics of the Iran deal propose a third alternative: increase sanctions in hopes of forcing Iran to make further concessions. But in the short term, the third alternative looks a lot like the first. Whatever its deficiencies, the Iran deal places limits on Iran’s nuclear program and enhances oversight of it. Walk away from the agreement in hopes of getting tougher restrictions and you’re guaranteeing, at least for the time being, that there are barely any restrictions on the program at all.
What’s more, even if Congress passes new sanctions, it’s quite likely that the overall economic pressure on Iran will go down, not up. Most major European and Asian countries have closer economic ties to Iran than does the United States, and thus more domestic pressure to resume them. These countries have abided by international sanctions against Iran, to varying degrees, because the Obama administration convinced their leaders that sanctions were a necessary prelude to a diplomatic deal. If U.S. officials reject a deal, Iran’s historic trading partners will not economically injure themselves indefinitely. Sanctions, declared Britain’s ambassador to the United States in May, have already reached “the high-water mark,” noting that “you would probably see more sanctions erosion” if nuclear talks fail. Germany’s ambassador added that, “If diplomacy fails, then the sanctions regime might unravel.”
The actual alternatives to a deal, in other words, are grim. Which is why critics discuss them as little as possible. The deal “falls apart, and then what happens?” CBS’s John Dickerson asked House Majority Leader John Boehner on Sunday. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” Boehner replied. “And from everything that’s leaked from these negotiations, the administration has backed away from almost all of the guidelines that they set out for themselves.”
In other words, Boehner evaded the question. The only way to determine if a “bad deal” is worse than “no deal” is to consider the latter’s consequences. Which is exactly what Boehner refused to do. Instead, he changed the subject: Rather than comparing the agreement to the actual alternatives, he compared it to the objectives that the Obama administration supposedly outlined at the start of the talks.
After a commercial break, Dickerson interviewed Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who did the same thing. “We have to remember the goal of these negotiations from the beginning,” Cotton said. “It was to stop Iran from enriching uranium and developing nuclear-weapons capability.”
Again, Dickerson tried to steer the conversation away from American desires and toward real-world alternatives. “You have taken the position that if the United States just … walked away from a bad deal, ratcheted up sanctions, that Iran would buckle and come to the table with more favorable terms,” Dickerson said. But “what about an alternative explanation, which a lot of experts believe, which is that they would say, ‘Forget negotiations, we’re going to race towards a breakout on a nuclear bomb?’”
Cotton’s answer: present a “credible threat of military force” and the Iranians will abandon “their nuclear-weapons capabilities.” The senator never explained why threatening war would make Iran capitulate now, given that the United States and Israel have been making such threats for over a decade. Nor did he address the consequences of a military strike, which former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said could “prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations.”
Instead, Cotton returned to comparing the nuclear deal to America’s ideal preferences. The Obama administration, he said, should “get back to that original goal of stopping Iran from developing any nuclear-weapons capabilities.”
Whether the current deal represents the abandonment of Barack Obama’s “original goal” is less clear than Cotton suggests. In fact, even before talks with Iran began, Obama infuriated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his GOP allies by refusing to adopt the red lines they wanted. For instance, notes the Rand Corporation’s Alireza Nader, Obama never declared that Iran could not enrich any uranium, something Cotton incorrectly claims was “the goal of these negotiations from the beginning.”
But let’s assume that Obama, or George W. Bush before him, did outline goals that the current deal doesn’t meet. So what? Those goals are irrelevant, unless Cotton and company have a plausible plan for achieving them by scrapping the existing deal, which they don’t.
When critics focus incessantly on the gap between the present deal and a perfect one, what they’re really doing is blaming Obama for the fact that the United States is not omnipotent. This isn’t surprising given that American omnipotence is the guiding assumption behind contemporary Republican foreign policy. Ask any GOP presidential candidate except Rand Paul what they propose doing about any global hotspot and their answer is the same: be tougher. America must take a harder line against Iran’s nuclear program, against ISIS, against Bashar al-Assad, against Russian intervention in Ukraine and against Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.
The United States cannot bludgeon Iran into total submission, either economically or militarily. The U.S. tried that in Iraq.If you believe American power is limited, this agenda is absurd. America needs Russian and Chinese support for an Iranian nuclear deal. U.S. officials can’t simultaneously put maximum pressure on both Assad and ISIS, the two main rivals for power in Syria today. They must decide who is the lesser evil. Accepting that American power is limited means prioritizing. It means making concessions to regimes and organizations you don’t like in order to put more pressure on the ones you fear most. That’s what Franklin Roosevelt did when allying with Stalin against Hitler. It’s what Richard Nixon did when he reached out to communist China in order to increase America’s leverage over the U.S.S.R.
And it’s what George W. Bush refused to do after 9/11, when he defined the “war on terror” not merely as a conflict against al-Qaeda but as a license to wage war, or cold war, against every anti-American regime supposedly pursuing weapons of mass destruction. This massive overestimation of American power underlay the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of a half-million Iraqis and almost 4,500 Americans, and cost the United States over $2 trillion. And it underlay Bush’s refusal to negotiate with Iran, even when Iran made dramatic overtures to the United States. Negotiations, after all, require mutual concessions, which Bush believed were unnecessary; if America just kept flexing its muscles, the logic went, Iran’s regime would collapse.
In 1943, Walter Lippmann wrote that “foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power.” If your commitments exceed your power, he wrote, your foreign policy is “insolvent.” That aptly describes the situation Obama inherited from Bush.
Obama has certainly made mistakes in the Middle East. But behind his drive for an Iranian nuclear deal is the effort to make American foreign policy “solvent” again by bringing America’s ends into alignment with its means. That means recognizing that the United States cannot bludgeon Iran into total submission, either economically or militarily. The U.S. tried that in Iraq.
It is precisely this recognition that makes the Iran deal so infuriating to Obama’s critics. It codifies the limits of American power. And recognizing the limits of American power also means recognizing the limits of American exceptionalism. It means recognizing that no matter how deeply Americans believe in their country’s unique virtue, the United States is subject to the same restraints that have governed great powers in the past. For the Republican right, that’s a deeply unwelcome realization. For many other Americans, it’s a relief. It’s a sign that, finally, the Bush era in American foreign policy is over.
- Peter Beinart
- Jul 14, 2015
“Mankind faces a crossroads,” declared Woody Allen. “One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
The point is simple: In life, what matters most isn’t how a decision compares to your ideal outcome. It’s how it compares to the alternative at hand.
The same is true for the Iran deal, announced Tuesday between Iran and six world powers. As Congress begins debating the agreement, its opponents have three real alternatives. The first is to kill the deal, and the interim agreement that preceded it, and do nothing else, which means few restraints on Iran’s nuclear program. The second is war. But top American and Israeli officials have warned that military action against Iranian nuclear facilities could ignite a catastrophic regional conflict and would be ineffective, if not counterproductive, in delaying Iran’s path to the bomb. Meir Dagan, who oversaw the Iran file as head of Israel’s external spy agency, the Mossad, from 2002 to 2011, has said an attack “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA under George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, has warned that an attack would “guarantee that which we are trying to prevent: an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.”
Implicitly acknowledging this, most critics of the Iran deal propose a third alternative: increase sanctions in hopes of forcing Iran to make further concessions. But in the short term, the third alternative looks a lot like the first. Whatever its deficiencies, the Iran deal places limits on Iran’s nuclear program and enhances oversight of it. Walk away from the agreement in hopes of getting tougher restrictions and you’re guaranteeing, at least for the time being, that there are barely any restrictions on the program at all.
What’s more, even if Congress passes new sanctions, it’s quite likely that the overall economic pressure on Iran will go down, not up. Most major European and Asian countries have closer economic ties to Iran than does the United States, and thus more domestic pressure to resume them. These countries have abided by international sanctions against Iran, to varying degrees, because the Obama administration convinced their leaders that sanctions were a necessary prelude to a diplomatic deal. If U.S. officials reject a deal, Iran’s historic trading partners will not economically injure themselves indefinitely. Sanctions, declared Britain’s ambassador to the United States in May, have already reached “the high-water mark,” noting that “you would probably see more sanctions erosion” if nuclear talks fail. Germany’s ambassador added that, “If diplomacy fails, then the sanctions regime might unravel.”
The actual alternatives to a deal, in other words, are grim. Which is why critics discuss them as little as possible. The deal “falls apart, and then what happens?” CBS’s John Dickerson asked House Majority Leader John Boehner on Sunday. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” Boehner replied. “And from everything that’s leaked from these negotiations, the administration has backed away from almost all of the guidelines that they set out for themselves.”
In other words, Boehner evaded the question. The only way to determine if a “bad deal” is worse than “no deal” is to consider the latter’s consequences. Which is exactly what Boehner refused to do. Instead, he changed the subject: Rather than comparing the agreement to the actual alternatives, he compared it to the objectives that the Obama administration supposedly outlined at the start of the talks.
After a commercial break, Dickerson interviewed Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who did the same thing. “We have to remember the goal of these negotiations from the beginning,” Cotton said. “It was to stop Iran from enriching uranium and developing nuclear-weapons capability.”
Again, Dickerson tried to steer the conversation away from American desires and toward real-world alternatives. “You have taken the position that if the United States just … walked away from a bad deal, ratcheted up sanctions, that Iran would buckle and come to the table with more favorable terms,” Dickerson said. But “what about an alternative explanation, which a lot of experts believe, which is that they would say, ‘Forget negotiations, we’re going to race towards a breakout on a nuclear bomb?’”
Cotton’s answer: present a “credible threat of military force” and the Iranians will abandon “their nuclear-weapons capabilities.” The senator never explained why threatening war would make Iran capitulate now, given that the United States and Israel have been making such threats for over a decade. Nor did he address the consequences of a military strike, which former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said could “prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations.”
Instead, Cotton returned to comparing the nuclear deal to America’s ideal preferences. The Obama administration, he said, should “get back to that original goal of stopping Iran from developing any nuclear-weapons capabilities.”
Whether the current deal represents the abandonment of Barack Obama’s “original goal” is less clear than Cotton suggests. In fact, even before talks with Iran began, Obama infuriated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his GOP allies by refusing to adopt the red lines they wanted. For instance, notes the Rand Corporation’s Alireza Nader, Obama never declared that Iran could not enrich any uranium, something Cotton incorrectly claims was “the goal of these negotiations from the beginning.”
But let’s assume that Obama, or George W. Bush before him, did outline goals that the current deal doesn’t meet. So what? Those goals are irrelevant, unless Cotton and company have a plausible plan for achieving them by scrapping the existing deal, which they don’t.
When critics focus incessantly on the gap between the present deal and a perfect one, what they’re really doing is blaming Obama for the fact that the United States is not omnipotent. This isn’t surprising given that American omnipotence is the guiding assumption behind contemporary Republican foreign policy. Ask any GOP presidential candidate except Rand Paul what they propose doing about any global hotspot and their answer is the same: be tougher. America must take a harder line against Iran’s nuclear program, against ISIS, against Bashar al-Assad, against Russian intervention in Ukraine and against Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.
The United States cannot bludgeon Iran into total submission, either economically or militarily. The U.S. tried that in Iraq.If you believe American power is limited, this agenda is absurd. America needs Russian and Chinese support for an Iranian nuclear deal. U.S. officials can’t simultaneously put maximum pressure on both Assad and ISIS, the two main rivals for power in Syria today. They must decide who is the lesser evil. Accepting that American power is limited means prioritizing. It means making concessions to regimes and organizations you don’t like in order to put more pressure on the ones you fear most. That’s what Franklin Roosevelt did when allying with Stalin against Hitler. It’s what Richard Nixon did when he reached out to communist China in order to increase America’s leverage over the U.S.S.R.
And it’s what George W. Bush refused to do after 9/11, when he defined the “war on terror” not merely as a conflict against al-Qaeda but as a license to wage war, or cold war, against every anti-American regime supposedly pursuing weapons of mass destruction. This massive overestimation of American power underlay the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of a half-million Iraqis and almost 4,500 Americans, and cost the United States over $2 trillion. And it underlay Bush’s refusal to negotiate with Iran, even when Iran made dramatic overtures to the United States. Negotiations, after all, require mutual concessions, which Bush believed were unnecessary; if America just kept flexing its muscles, the logic went, Iran’s regime would collapse.
In 1943, Walter Lippmann wrote that “foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power.” If your commitments exceed your power, he wrote, your foreign policy is “insolvent.” That aptly describes the situation Obama inherited from Bush.
Obama has certainly made mistakes in the Middle East. But behind his drive for an Iranian nuclear deal is the effort to make American foreign policy “solvent” again by bringing America’s ends into alignment with its means. That means recognizing that the United States cannot bludgeon Iran into total submission, either economically or militarily. The U.S. tried that in Iraq.
It is precisely this recognition that makes the Iran deal so infuriating to Obama’s critics. It codifies the limits of American power. And recognizing the limits of American power also means recognizing the limits of American exceptionalism. It means recognizing that no matter how deeply Americans believe in their country’s unique virtue, the United States is subject to the same restraints that have governed great powers in the past. For the Republican right, that’s a deeply unwelcome realization. For many other Americans, it’s a relief. It’s a sign that, finally, the Bush era in American foreign policy is over.
Thanks for the Laugh, Maroon. Mark Levin and therightscoop.com. I knew I was getting an unbiased, straight down the middle view, looking out for America's best interest there. About as reliable as your state secret future.
I figured as much.
You can't counter a single point he makes (you couldn't even if you had listened to what he said), so you babble about the source instead. Whenever you post an inane article, I can both discredit the source and also point out the flaws in logic of what's written any time I please. You only do the former since you aren't smart enough to do the latter.
If Mark Levin ever talks about who would win between The Rock and Andre the Giant in a steel cage match, maybe I'll post that sound byte for you. That seems to be a much better fit for your wheelhouse.
