{"id":3946,"date":"2016-06-30T18:30:14","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T23:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=3946"},"modified":"2016-06-30T18:30:14","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T23:30:14","slug":"the-iran-deal-roundup-ctd-31","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/06\/30\/the-iran-deal-roundup-ctd-31\/","title":{"rendered":"The Iran Deal Roundup, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alireza Ramezani reports<\/a> that the United States has succeeded in sowing concern and anxiety in Iran, as the various intellectuals and factions attempt to predict the behaviors of Trump and Clinton with regard to Iran. \u00a0From AL Monitor<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n

Clinton, who claimed that she was the only adult in the presidential race when it comes to foreign policy, announced in January that her approach toward Iran would be to \u201cdistrust and verify<\/a>.\u201d She, however,\u00a0welcomed<\/a>\u00a0full implementation<\/a> of the 2015\u00a0Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a major part of which focuses on lifting economic sanctions<\/a> on Iran. Clinton described the landmark nuclear deal as an important achievement of diplomacy \u201cbacked by pressure,\u201d referring to her effort to intensify sanctions on Iran. …<\/p>\n

Trump has been critical of the nuclear deal, calling for an expansion of sanctions<\/a>\u00a0as a way to force the Islamic Republic to make more concessions, adopting “America First<\/a>” and a \u201cstay unpredictable\u201d approach toward Iran. Yet, Raisdana believes\u00a0that Trump could be more reliable as far as the nuclear deal is concerned\u00a0given the GOP\u2019s record on major foreign policy decisions. In this vein, Raisdana points out that Republican President Richard Nixon ended America\u2019s involvement in the war in Vietnam and opened diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Trump comes from the same party as Nixon, a party that\u00a0can easily change its hostile approach toward Iran if need be, Raisdana said.<\/p>\n

Abdoh Tabrizi disagrees. He told Al-Monitor that Trump is \u201ctoo risky\u201d to deal with, whereas\u00a0Clinton is more predictable. In this vein, he acknowledged that Barack Obama has been an \u201cexception\u201d among US presidents. \u201cWe have to take advantage of the several months of his\u00a0remaining term to hammer out agreements in favor of our country and economy,\u201d Abdoh Tabrizi emphasized, implicitly agreeing with Raisdana that Clinton would not be as favorable to Iran.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I agree with Tabrizi. It’s a signal error of analysis to equate the party of Nixon with the party of Trump. As the years passed in the post-Nixon era, the GOP has transformed from a good conservative counterweight to the Democrats to a right-wing fringe party which is willing to cannibalize even its own if they can’t deliver. Consider this report<\/a> from Steve Benen @ Maddowblog<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n

The unhinged right starts with the ideologically satisfying answer \u2013 President Obama and Hillary Clinton are guilty of horrible Benghazi-related wrongdoing \u2013 and then works backwards, looking for \u201cproof\u201d that matches the conclusion. When their ostensible allies fail to tell these activists what they want to hear, they could reevaluate their bogus assumptions, but it\u2019s vastly easier to believe\u00a0Republicans have let them down.<\/p>\n

Wait, it gets worse.<\/p>\n

As Milbank reported<\/a>, a former Ted Cruz adviser complained yesterday that Gowdy \u201cdid not draw a connection between the dots.\u201d And why not? According to retired Gen. Thomas McInerney, the Benghazi Committee chairman \u201chad his reasons \u2013 political\u201d for holding back.<\/p>\n

McInerney \u201cspeculated that congressional leadership had approved \u2018black operations\u2019 to run weapons from Benghazi to Islamic State forces in Syria.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While such flakes existed back in the Nixon days, they were more or less told to stay in their fever swamps and fume. Now they’re the Tea Party and voters pay attention to them despite – or because of – their bizarre antics.<\/p>\n

Back to Iran. Clearly, neither presumptive nominee is attractive:<\/p>\n

One can perhaps argue that Clinton is more predictable than Trump, yet\u00a0she has insisted that Iran \u201ccontinues to threaten<\/a> the peace and security of the Middle East\u201d and that the country is \u201cviolating UN Security Council resolutions with its ballistic missile program.\u201d These statements indicate that if her concerns are not addressed, Clinton could cause trouble for Tehran, just as she has in the past, pushing\u00a0for tough sanctions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s a certain grim entertainment value in considering the fact that Iran is fairly powerless in this situation – they can do very little to influence our internal politics. I think Clinton’s approach is very sensible, while Trump might back out of his vow to rip up the agreement – but, of course, it’s hard to be certain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alireza Ramezani reports that the United States has succeeded in sowing concern and anxiety in Iran, as the various intellectuals and factions attempt to predict the behaviors of Trump and Clinton with regard to Iran. \u00a0From AL Monitor: Clinton, who claimed that she was the only adult in the presidential \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3947,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946\/revisions\/3947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}