The deal was announced today. Laura Rozen of AL Monitor reports on the reactions of the negotiating teams:
But American, European and Iranian diplomats rallied after a couple hours of sleep to express the hope that the nuclear agreement announced July 14 would not only be durable in reassuring the international community that Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapons capability, but that the successful nuclear negotiations could help open a new chapter in relations between Iran and the international community after a tense decade fraught with hostility and mistrust. …
Both Iran and the United States were at pains to show that the parameters of the final deal — whose formal name is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — met their security demands, while rejecting accusations from domestic political critics that they had made excessive concessions to the other side.
It’ll be interesting to see the reaction of the professional Iranian politicians over the coming weeks. The Tehran Times has a barebones report:
Rouhani also said Iran sought four objectives in the nuclear talks and all of them have been achieved.
The first objective was to continue its nuclear activities, the second was to remove “wrong and cruel” sanctions, the third was to annul all the “illegal” the sanctions resolutions in the UN Security, and the fourth was to remove Iran’s nuclear dossier from the agenda of UN Security Council, Rouhani said in a televised speech.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Rouhani stated that 12 years of illusions and disinformation about Iran’s nuclear activities came to an end and now a new chapter has been opened in Iran’s relations with the world.
He also said all through the process of nuclear talks Iran was insisting that a “win-lose” agreement will not last and that only a “win-win” agreement will be long lasting.
The president also said that under the nuclear agreement Iran will have six thousands centrifuges that five thousands of which will operate in the Natanz facility and more than a thousand in Fordo.
An accompanying opinion piece:
The Iranians with an ancient civilization are now proud of their country which succeeded to bring the tough and even hostile talks with great powers to a happy and prosperous end.
The settlement of the nuclear dispute between Iran and the West at a time that some countries in the Middle East are burning in the fire of barbaric violence and terrorism was really heartening and promising.
It shows that highly complicated issues like the Iran nuclear issue are resolvable if the sides show respect to each other’s rights and concerns and also show sincerity.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is not happy, reports AL Monitor‘s Akiva Eldar:
The whole world speaks of a historical agreement with Iran, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks today, July 14, of a “historical mistake for the world.” Netanyahu used this same terminology many times in the past.
On July 12, the prime minister of a state the size of New Jersey, tiny Israel, announced, “We will not accept” the surrender to Iran by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, and also the leadership of the European Union’s 28 members. At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu accused the world powers of capitulating to Iran and ignoring its incessant calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Mr. Eldar is not happy with the Prime Minister, who personally lead the diplomatic effort to defeat any deal:
The defeat in the campaign to foil the Iranian plot to destroy Israel, as Netanyahu claims, will bear his name. The man who chose to personally lead one of the most difficult and intricate diplomatic missions that Israel has undertaken since its inception — if not the most difficult and intricate of them all — will bear sole responsibility for its failure. But we will all pay the price for the deep erosion in the estimation of Israel’s international influence and of the wisdom of its leaders.
The sanctions removal are only the most well-known change for Iran once the deal is implemented; they also will have access to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), reports AL Monitor‘s Paul J. Saunders:
Established in 2001, the SCO became possible only after Russian-Chinese border agreements in 1991 and 1994 that resolved the disputes underlying the 1969 Soviet-Chinese border war. Originally intended to manage technical cross-border issues, the SCO increasingly took on a geopolitical role during the US and NATO war in Afghanistan. At its 2005 summit, the SCO’s members — Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — signed a declaration calling on “members of the anti-terrorist coalition [fighting in Afghanistan] to set a final timeline for their temporary use” of military bases in Central Asia — a delicate way to suggest that the United States and its allies should leave.
… its deeper involvement in the Middle East could have important political implications. First, if regional states perceive the SCO as a political alternative to alignment with (and dependence on) the United States and the West that avoids reliance on a single country — and includes major players such as China, India and Russia — the SCO could provide greater diplomatic flexibility to some Middle East governments. Second, if Iran becomes a full member of the group not long after it gets out from under sanctions, it could strengthen Tehran’s international political cover in pursuing its regional agenda.
On the home front, Politico reports on GOP reaction:
It will be days before Congress receives the full nuclear agreement with Iran and all of its classified annexes for review, but hawkish GOP lawmakers immediately began picking apart the final deal reached early Tuesday as “dangerous” and a “possible death sentence for Israel.”
Congressional Republicans have been warning President Barack Obama against a deal with Tehran for months, telling him to simply walk away as the negotiations dragged on past initial deadlines. But in the wee hours Tuesday, the administration announced a final deal to scale back Iran’s nuclear program and ease strict economic sanctions, so GOP critics’ job has shifted to building support in Congress to scuttle the deal by blocking Obama’s ability to lift those sanctions.
Politico also has a description of the complex agreement here. Daniel Larison at The American Conservative has this to say about the conservative politicians:
The WSJ report summarizes the contents of the deal:
At the heart of the agreement between Iran and the six powers—the U.S., U.K., Russia, China, Germany and France—is Tehran’s acceptance of strict limits on its nuclear activities for 10 years. These are supposed to ensure that the country remains a minimum of 12 months away from amassing enough nuclear fuel for a bomb. After the 10-year period, those constraints will ease in the subsequent five years.
This will limit Iran’s nuclear program more effectively than a decade of sanctions and coercive methods ever did, and it makes Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon much less likely than any other available course of action. The alternatives that Iran hawks have been proposing for the last two years–ending negotiations, more sanctions, threatening or taking military action–would have left Iran’s program under fewer constraints and would have pushed Iran towards building nuclear weapons. It is important to remember that the loudest, shrillest opponents of this deal would have made a nuclear-armed Iran more likely if they had their way. So when the hard-liners start their inevitable cries of “appeasement” and “surrender” start, keep in mind that their “solution” would have failed and backfired as usual. If the deal is implemented fully, this should take the nuclear issue with Iran off the agenda for at least the next decade and possibly much longer than that.
The Grapes of Wrath
But here’s the thing. Remember when Mitch McConnell vowed to do everything necessary to defeat President Obama at every turn, on every initiative? To this independent, that vow appears to have included intellectually dishonest assertions concerning the ACA, Libya, and a number of other initiatives pushed by Obama.
And they have been wrong nearly every time.
So let’s just step up to the plate here (it being the day for the All-Star game, after all), and finish hitting the ball: The GOP, because of its short-sighted concern about the calamity of a center-right politician winning the Presidential election, rather than a far-right fringe candidate, has managed to lose the trust of nearly every independent voter in the USA. And this is damn near treasonous: this country doesn’t need to be dominated by either party; it benefits far more from tough, but honest debate on all topics. And once the debate is closed, then we should close ranks.
Not attempt to butt into Presidential business by writing idiotic letters to our rivals. Or deny the best findings of science when it doesn’t play nice with ideology. In other words, govern, dammit. Fill those empty judicial seats. Tell your corporate sponsors to go away because you’re running a government, not a company.
So when I think about reading the analyses of the deal to be published by the GOP Senators, all I can think is, They’re pre-written, pre-judged, and predicated on defeating Obama. Debate on the merits? They have been so consistent in their opposition, so ridiculous in their reasoning, so intemperate in their words, and so … consistently … wrong, that I no longer think they know what a debate on the merits might be. Instead, it’s all about being partisan.
And that is a disservice to this country.
