Senate Iran — now discussing the nuclear deal and Congress

because the Bible says Israel is never wrong, never misled, always has fantastic leaders loved by God, and if you don't support Israel you're going to hell!

 

That's the whole point of them, though, isn't it? Deterrence?

 

Well yes, that's why I support a kind of "2nd Amendment" of Nuclear Weapons in the world. I'm not worried about the nukes, I'm just ridiculing the people who are trying to get me worried about them.

 

You can own your own personal nuclear weapon if you're in a well-regulated militia?!?

 

you can keep nukes for self defense and you can't be required to employ a trigger lock or store them in a nuke safe to keep them out of the hands of children

 

The only check against tyranny, don't you know?

 

Nuke Buy Backs must be awkward

 

I have been campaigning to get not just the use but even the targeting of nuclear weapons listed as a War Crime at the ICC.
No luck so far guys

 

It really should be.

 

Yeahhh....Iran goes nuclear (they'll blame Trump, and they'll be partly right), then Trump invades, and all hell breaks loose in the Middle East.

I'd have to take the reverse view...we shouldn't have a Second Amendment for regular firearms or nuclear weapons.

 

Best wishes for some of us to live long enough to celebrate 100 years without the use of nuclear weapons in warfare.

 

I'm holding out hope for 75. I'll wait 'til the next administration to make any longer bets.

 

Wait, I thought it was that the End Times require the destruction of Israel thus we back them in order to ensure they reach their ordained end?

(Ye gods, that really is complete bullcrap of the highest order, yet enough people probably believe it.)

 

Yeah, we could be living in the End Times...and that gives Christians an excuse to suspend all conventional morality and start behaving like barbarians.

 

What about all the intervening time between the destruction of the Second Temple up to 1948? Why did the End Times not occur then? And if Israel must be destroyed for the Rapture to occur, shouldn't they be rooting for the other team?

 

Well I was also making fun of the idea that the Bible says Israel is always right... most of the Old Testament is God telling Israel just how wrong and messed up they are, and what a terrible king they have at the moment, and how even the good kings make terrible mistakes, and how it would be better for the Jewish people to escape the fate of Israel. And I think Revelation even says Israel is ruled by an evil leader during the end-times and must be opposed.

 

Why is "End Times" plural?

 

In Christian theology, it's a series of different periods and even eras.

 

Okay so we got some time

 

Time for an update.

In January, before Trump's inauguration, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) hosted a panel discussion entitled can the Iran nuclear deal survive a Trump presidency? The whole panel is a little under an hour long. Not everything in it is all that groundbreaking, but the points made regarding sanctions are worth paying attention to. Firstly, the hawks have caught on to the truth that if the United States unilaterally walks out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) at this point, the US - not Iran - is the one that loses in this equation. Iran will still have the benefits of complying with the deal from the other parties involved - Russia, China, the UK and the EU - in the form of sanctions relief and the potential for renewed investment in the Iranian economy, while the US loses its ability to influence Iran in any way. Then-president Bush said way back in 2004 that "we're relying upon others, because we've sanctioned ourselves out of influence with Iran. In other words, we don't have much leverage with the Iranians right now, and we expect them to listen to those voices, and we're a part of the universal acclaim." With the sanctions heaped against Iran having only increased since then, this rare bit of honesty would be even more true today.

As this in-depth article explains (and it is well worth a read), when the JCPOA was finalised and signed, having failed to prevent the deal itself the new strategy of the hawks became to continue to look for ways to sanction around the terms of the deal - to skirt the spirit and intention of the text so as to prevent Iran from enjoying any of the benefits the deal was intended to offer. The goal of organisations like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is now to sabotage the agreement by continually introducing new sanctions legislation in Congress. Because they know that the US walking out of the deal would be akin to shooting oneself in the foot, they instead intend to undermine it by making Iran so miserable under the deal that they choose to walk out themselves. This would in turn conveniently confirm all the worst fears about Iran peddled by the hawks, which would make a war with Iran not only inevitable, but a moral imperative for freedom-loving Americans™.

Crucially, it is important to understand that not only Iran, but the US as well, has obligations under the JCPOA. This has not been sufficiently communicated to neither the American nor the Iranian people, as the negotiating parties have oversold its merits in both capitals for fear of being branded appeasers by their respective oppositions. Thus, Iranian president Rouhani has not prepared its electorate and Assembly for the bitter fact that the benefits of sanctions relief and attraction of investors will happen slowly and gradually, and that it will take a long time before the effects are felt. And President Obama and his Administration did not sufficiently explain to the American people that - yes - the entire point of the deal is that Iran benefits by upholding it. The US is obligated (as is the European Union plus the UK, Russia and China) to facilitate the reintegration of Iran into the world economy as terms of the agreement.

Finally, the panel makes an important point about the paradox of the stated goals of the proponents of broader sanctions versus the actual results of their proposals. More often that not, US sanctions policies have weakened the private sector to the point of losing all market share in key sectors of the economy, which the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has exploited to swoop in and monopolise it, running counter to America's actual interests.


To summarise:
NIAC panel discussion: Can the Iran Nuclear Deal Survive a Trump Presidency? (Jan 12th, 53 minutes)
Politico Magazine article: Inside the Plan to Undo the Iran Nuclear Deal (By INDIRA A.R. LAKSHMANAN, July 15, 2016)

 

The Coming Crisis With Iran

I don't agree with all the sentiments in this article. In fact, I think Dr. Parsi often argues for a too lenient stance on Iran in his op-eds in the interest of keeping the peace. I think their destabilizing efforts rightly should be countered in some form, although I'm not qualified to elaborate on specifically how. But this passage struck me:

The US shouldn't conduct a foreign policy in the Middle East of outright adopting Saudi Arabia's stance. Saudi Arabia is as harmful to the region as Iran is, if given free rein. If Trump adopts a policy of carrying out Saudi Arabia's bidding in the Middle East, that is cause for worry. The US would be wise not to take sides in the saber-rattling between the two, and instead aim to balance them off each other so that neither side gains an upper hand, the same way it used to do with Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a bulwark against Iran.

 

When it comes to Iran, I'd say it's much better to err on the side of being too lenient than the other way around. I mean what the heck are they going to do...invade Saudi Arabia? (For anyone who doesn't know...no, Iran can't invade anybody.) The most damage they can do is shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and even then we'd have it back open in a week or so, and Iran's military will be completely smashed. The best thing to do is just take a defensive stance, absorb the small-scale provocations and counter them the best we can, and just wait it out...Iran's regime won't last forever.

 

Except the issue, from a foreign policy standpoint, isn't who Iran can (or cannot) directly invade, it's that Iran is the primary country of state-sponsored terrorism in the world. The last report issued by the State Department and Justin Siberell was in Summer 2016. (Justin Siberell is the State Department's Coordinator of US counter-terrorist policy, and was appointed by Obama in 2012.) So this report was the last unified terrorism briefing Obama received before the election.

Iran remains the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2015, providing a range of support, including financial, training, and equipment, to groups around the world. Iran continues to provide arms and cash to terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Shia terrorist groups.

John Kerry, Obama's SECSTATE, indicated in an interview that "after settling debts, Iran would receive closer to $55 billion. He conceded some of that could go to groups considered terrorists, saying there was nothing the U.S. could do to prevent that. "I think that some of it will end up in the hands of the IRGC or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists," he said in the interview in Davos, referring to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps." link here

Even as the Obama administration was being officially briefed that Iran continued to be the primary state sponsor of terrorism, the administration publicly pushed ahead with the monetary deal, even recognizing the lack of oversight such a deal would bring. The administration knew that any fall out would be the next administration's headache, even with the assumption back then that it was Clinton who was supposed to be elected.

As everyone knows, the obvious lack of oversight and lop-sided nature of the deal was used by Trump during the election because the points themselves are valid. The problem with being too lenient without verification is that Iran is an absolutely horrible steward with regards to the violent groups it supports.

The danger is not that Iran will officially roll tanks into Saudi Arabia. It's how much Iran will secretly siphon off and divert to terrorist organizations, up to and including nuclear technology. It's unlikely that such non-state terrorist groups would attack the US, because that tends to illicit the US's all in response, but it would be horrible if, instead of a bus attack, a small nuclear device was detonated somewhere like Paris or Belgium or Tel Aviv because Iran provided support to a terrorist group and has no control over what the group did once the resources were transferred.

 

Firstly I think it's pretty obvious that Iran won't be getting a nuclear weapon. Not only do we have the Obama deal, but the current situation with North Korea, is only to serving to galvanize the current administration and any future administration to not allow that to happen. Them giving that nuclear technology to a non-state actor is even more unlikely given the consequences that would have for them and the world.

While I'll take the US at its word that Iran is the primary state-sponsor of terrorism worldwide (would they tell us if it were actually Saudi Arabia?), all the while the United States continues to prop up that decrepit and sad excuse for a civilised state in Saudi Arabia it's difficult to take the concerns about Iran seriously. Are we really meant to take their dire concerns about Shia terrorism seriously when Sunni terrorism has proven to be the primary concern? Are we really going suggest biggest state-sponsor is equal to the biggest terrorist related threat in general? If they were really balanced in their concern they would take a far stronger line against the Wahhabists sheltered by the Saudi government. The risk to the world by creating another North Korean situation out of Iran was far greater than loosening the pressure upon the Iranians. Who knows, that secular state which waiting to emerge out of Iran may gain us a worthwhile ally in the region.

 

This is something I've always wondered about... what exactly does that mean? Except in the days of the Iraq occupation, I never heard of Iranian-backed terrorist attacks. Is it because we consider Iran's military a terrorist organization or something?

It reminds me how Cuba was labelled as a state sponsor of terrorism... until the Obama administration decided to repair that relationship, and they were taken off that list completely without a fight.