GOV/MIL 10/18/2015 - Iran Nuclear Deal Formally Adopted by Obama Administration

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
IRAN REJECTS OBAMA’S IRAN NUKE PACT, WRITES OWN ‘DEAL’ TO DISARM ISRAEL
Started by Be Well‎, 10-14-2015 01:00 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-NUKE-PACT-WRITES-OWN-‘DEAL’-TO-DISARM-ISRAEL

Iran tests new precision-guided ballistic missile
Started by Housecarl‎, 10-11-2015 04:21 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-tests-new-precision-guided-ballistic-missile


I'm making this a separate thread only because of the significance of the event is akin to having the standard of the XIII Legion on the south bank of the Rubicon River........

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-nuclear-deal-formally-adopted-1445195172

World | Middle East

Iran Nuclear Deal Formally Adopted

U.S. plays down some concerns that Iran hasn’t done enough to answer IAEA questions

By Felicia Schwartz and Jay Solomon
Updated Oct. 18, 2015 7:24 p.m. ET
105 COMMENTS

The Obama administration began implementing its landmark nuclear agreement with Iran with an eye toward lifting expansive sanctions imposed on Tehran in the past decade.

Concerns from opponents of the deal continued to grow, however, as senior administration officials during the weekend played down the importance of a United Nations probe into whether Tehran has attempted to secretly develop the technologies needed to build atomic weapons.

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is committed under the deal to release a report by year-end about the status of Iran’s alleged weaponization work. U.S. officials over the weekend said the IAEA report would have no bearing on moves by the international community to lift sanctions.

“That final assessment, which the IAEA is aiming to complete by December 15th, is not a prerequisite for implementation day,” a senior U.S. official said Saturday. “We are not in a position to evaluate the quality…of the data. That is between Iran and the IAEA.”

Secretary of State John Kerry and other U.S. officials had previously said sanctions wouldn’t be lifted unless Iran substantively cooperated with the U.N. probe.

The shifting U.S. position is stoking criticism from Republicans, who say the White House is essentially agreeing to whitewash the weaponization issue. They also charged Iran with growing more belligerent since the July nuclear agreement, with Tehran testing a ballistic missile this month and convicting a Washington Post journalist of espionage.

“In a key test of its commitment to the nuclear agreement, Iran has given minimum cooperation to international inspectors attempting to determine the extent of Iran’s past bomb work,” said Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “If this is what the last 90 days look like, the next few years look like a disaster.”


Earlier Coverage

Iran Is Pressed on U.N. Nuclear Probe (Oct. 14)
Despite Nuclear Accord, U.S.-Iran Tensions Are on the Rise (Oct. 12)
.

President Barack Obama said that Sunday marked an important milestone toward preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and ensuring its nuclear program is peaceful. He said the U.S. will closely monitor Iran’s adherence to the commitments it made in Vienna.

“We, together with our partners, must now focus on the critical work of fully implementing this comprehensive resolution that addresses our concerns over Iran’s nuclear program,” he said.

Steps announced Sunday by the U.S. and its negotiating partners to move ahead on what has come to be known as “adoption day” are intended to show a readiness for sanctions relief if Iran begins scaling back its nuclear infrastructure.

That relief will only begin on “implementation day,” when the IAEA certifies Iran has lived up to its commitments to curb its nuclear program.

Mr. Kerry said in a statement Sunday that adopting the deal marks “a critical first step in the process of ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

He said the pact, if fully implemented, “will bring unprecedented insight and accountability to Iran’s nuclear program forever,” adding that he is mindful of “how much further we have to go in seeing that this deal is fully implemented.”

The U.S. put forward the necessary paperwork so that when Iran is found to be meeting its commitments as spelled out in the deal, sanctions can be lifted.



The heavy-water nuclear facility near Arak, Iran, in a photo from Jan. 15, 2011. ENLARGE
The heavy-water nuclear facility near Arak, Iran, in a photo from Jan. 15, 2011. Photo: Associated Press
.
For Iran, Sunday marks the beginning of a complex process to dismantle parts of its nuclear program, including decommissioning nearly 15,000 centrifuges, converting its Arak heavy-water reactor so that it will produce less plutonium and reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium 98%. U.S. officials expect it will take about six months.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told Iranian state television Sunday that the country would begin taking its next steps under the deal—including reducing the number of uranium centrifuges in operation, and removing the reactor core at the Arak facility—in short order.

The country would start honoring its obligations as soon as President Hassan Rouhani gives the order, Mr. Salehi said, adding that he expected the go-ahead by the end of the week.

While outside Western officials have suggested it will take Iran several months to carry out these steps, Mr. Salehi said Iran would make efforts to complete them within two months.

If the U.S. and other world powers involved in the deal don’t honor their obligations and the deal falls apart, he said, Iran could reinstall the centrifuges within seven to eight months.

Building a new reactor core at Arak would take at least two years, he said.

—Asa Fitch and Laurence Norman contributed to this article.

Write to Felicia Schwartz at Felicia.Schwartz@wsj.com and Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com
 
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Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-orders-steps-towards-lifting-iran-sanctions-151009517.html

West prepares to end sanctions as Iran deal adopted

AFP
By Dave Clark
6 hours ago

Washington (AFP) - The United States and Europe began preparing to lift the trade sanctions that have hobbled the Iranian economy, as a historic nuclear deal came into effect.

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«Ã

The procedure to lift the embargo began 90 days after the UN Security Council endorsed the accord signed in Vienna in July, a milestone referred to as "Adoption Day."

But foreign firms will not be able to resume ties with Iran's oil industry and banks right away -- sanctions will remain in place until Iran fulfills its end of the bargain.

The next stage in the process -- "implementation day" -- will only come when UN nuclear watchdog the IAEA confirms Iran has dramatically scaled back its nuclear program.

Iran said that lengthy process will probably start this week.

On Monday, envoys of the deal signatories -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- will meet in Vienna to form a commission to oversee the implementation of the accord.

Tehran will have to surrender or dilute the bulk of its enriched nuclear fuel stocks, dismantle most of its centrifuges and halt a reactor capable of making plutonium.

Only then will the sanctions "waivers" that US President Barack Obama ordered his administration to issue on Sunday come into effect and trade can begin to resume.

"Today marks an important milestone toward preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and ensuring its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful going forward," Obama said in a statement.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who played a central role in the painstaking negotiations between Iran and the West, added: "If fully implemented, it will bring unprecedented insight and accountability to Iran's nuclear program forever."

The European Union also adopted a legal framework for lifting sanctions imposed on Iran.

The accord "brings us a step closer to the beginning of implementation of the (July deal), to which we are strongly committed," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a joint statement with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.

US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said: "As Iran begins taking its nuclear-related measures and the United States and our partners prepare to lift nuclear-related sanctions in response, we move one step closer to a successful JCPOA and a more secure international community," using the acronym for the nuclear accord.

- 'Huge task' -

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's nuclear agency, was awaiting President Hassan Rouhani's order to remove thousands of centrifuges from sites at Natanz and Fordo.

"What we need to accomplish is a huge task. We hope to start this week or next week," he told state television.

Dismantling the centrifuges, which enrich uranium, was part of the July 14 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, between Iran and six world powers.

In addition to slashing the number of centrifuges at Natanz and Fordo to around 6,000, Iran will have to satisfy the IAEA that its Arak reactor cannot be used for military purposes.

China has agreed to work with Iran and the United States to "modernize" Arak so that it cannot produce plutonium, which can be used in a bomb, US officials said.

Iran has always denied seeking a nuclear weapon, which would dramatically alter the balance of power in an already unstable and war-torn Middle East region.

"We will start our actions when the president gives the order," Salehi said, estimating that the work to comply with the JCPOA would take around two months.

- Challenges remain -

With Iranian citizens restless for economic relief, Tehran has said it hopes "implementation day" will come quickly -- in less than two months -- but Washington is more cautious.

"For us it's important that it's done right, not that it's done quickly," a senior administration official told reporters. "We cannot imagine less than two months."

Some have voiced hope that, once the nuclear stand-off is out of the way, the United States and Iran can begin moves to improve relations in other domains.

But ties have, if anything, become more fraught, with Iran last week testing a ballistic missile and stepping up its military intervention to support Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Hardliners in both the US Congress and the Iranian regime, opposed to a broader detente, continued to disparage the deal despite Sunday's milestone.

"The Obama administration's belief that this nuclear agreement can usher in a new era of partnership is a complete misread. It's sure tough to look at Iran's actions over the last three months ¨C- let alone 35 years -¨C and think Tehran will live up to its end of the nuclear bargain," said Ed Royce, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"If this is what the last 90 days look like, the next few years look like a disaster," he said in a statement on Sunday.

This week the United States will begin to issue waivers to companies seeking to trade with Iran in sectors touched by nuclear-related sanctions, such as transport, oil and banking.

"Those waivers will be out and issued so people will know what will be getting waived but it won't actually take effect until Iran completes its steps," an official said.

View Comments (639) .
 

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.turkishweekly.net/2015/10/19/news/iran-p5-1-announce-implementation-of-nuclear-deal/

Iran, P5+1 announce implementation of nuclear deal

Middle East
October 19, 2015

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif andEuropean Union (EU) foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini issued a joint statement on Sunday, announcing the start of the implementation of the nuclear deal reached between Iran and the six world powers in July, according to Iran's Foreign Ministry website.

Now, Iran will start implementing its obligations pertaining to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the UN nuclear watchdog will prepare the means to monitor Iran's measures, the statement read. The report did not specify where the statement was released.

According to the nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers reached on July 14 in the Austrian capital of Vienna, Iran would improve the transparency of its nuclear plan, downsize its capacity for uranium enrichment and do changes in the structure of its heavy water reactor in exchange for international and Western sanctions relief.

Based on the agreement, the nuclear deal should have gone into effect on Oct. 18, or the so-called the Adoption Day, 90 days for the UN Security Council endorsed the Iranian deal.

Alson on Sunday, Iran notified Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that it will provisionally apply the Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement when the nuclear deal comes into effect, the IAEA announced in a statement.

In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday ordered his administration to take steps to lift sanctions on Iran, part of the nuclear agreement.

"I hereby direct you to take all necessary steps to give effect to the U.S. commitments with respect to sanctions" on Iran, Obama said in a memorandum to U.S. secretaries of state, energy, commerce and the treasury.

The steps will take effect upon confirmation by the Secretary of State that Iran has met its commitments under the JCPOA, Obama said in the memorandum issued by the White House.

But the sanction on Iran will not be lifted immediately on the Adoption Day, and theUnited States said that no relief from the sanctions will take place until the IAEA verifies that Iran has fully complied with the terms of the agreement.

On July 14, Iran reached the JCPOA with P5+1 over its controversial nuclear program after more than 18 months of marathon talks.

Under the deal, all of the nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran will be lifted if the Islamic republic is proved to abide by the deal over the next 10 years step-by-step.

Source: Xinhua
 

Adino

paradigm shaper
what deal?

iran's take or the admin's take?

how can you have a deal when both sides are agreeing to different things?

where is the sanity?
 

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
what deal?

iran's take or the admin's take?

how can you have a deal when both sides are agreeing to different things?

where is the sanity?

Yup. Obama is ignoring what the Iranians made a big deal of "passing" in their legislature and is acting like the "agreement" they got in Vienna is what is in effect.
 

dstraito

TB Fanatic
what deal?

iran's take or the admin's take?

how can you have a deal when both sides are agreeing to different things?

where is the sanity?

You can not have a deal. And we don't. What we have is a negotiated failure that the other party did not agree to and the capitulation of the US. How dishonest is it to act like there is a deal that was flawed at best because we gave all the concessions and got nothing in return and now we find out that Iran is not only not agreeing to the deal they are violating it all ready in many ways. And then our leaders try to sluff it off, remove sanctions and act like they performed a major deal. What hubris.

Why would anyone trust anything Iran would say or do?

They have published how it is not only ok but expected to lie to infidels
 

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2015/1018/How-the-Iran-deal-might-change-the-Middle-East

Cover Story

How the Iran deal might change the Middle East

What the calculations are behind the nuclear pact and where it could lead.

By Andrew J. Bacevich, Contributor October 18, 2015

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book, 'America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History,' will appear next year.

Boston — The nuclear deal hat the United States and five other world powers signed with Iran is a means to an end, not the end in itself. In that regard, the pact, scheduled for formal adoption on Oct. 19, necessarily rates as a high-risk proposition. If the agreement succeeds, it may mark a first step toward restoring some semblance of stability to the Greater Middle East, thereby allowing the US to lower its profile there. If it fails, the current disorder may in retrospect seem tame.

When he inherited the Oval Office, Barack Obama inherited that disorder. However naively, many Americans – and many others across the globe – expected this charismatic new president to make short work of such untidiness. My personal collection of Obama-era memorabilia includes a special issue of Newsweek from December 2008 featuring a cover story on “How to Fix the World: A Guide for the Next President.” As a foreign-policy novice, Mr. Obama himself seemed to entertain such exalted expectations, for example, promising a “new beginning between the US and Muslims around the world.” As Obama prepares to retire from office, now considerably grayer than he appeared on that Newsweek cover, no such new beginning has occurred and the world as a whole remains stubbornly unfixed.

That said, Obama may yet leave a foreign-policy legacy of real consequence. Whether that legacy is positive or negative may take years to determine, however. Ultimately, his reputation as a statesman is likely to hinge on how the Iran nuclear pact plays out.

Recommended: How much do you know about Iran? Take our quiz to find out.

Partisan attacks on the deal – comparing Iran to Nazi Germany, likening Obama to Neville Chamberlain, and foreseeing compliant Israelis marched off to death camps – have been predictable and absurd. Even while failing to derail the agreement, those attacks have inadvertently obscured its larger strategic context, thereby hiding from view both its actual risks and its potential benefits.

Indeed, shorthand references to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as it is formally known, as a nuclear deal serve to mask its larger implications. Nominally, the agreement lifts economic sanctions imposed on Iran in exchange for that country accepting limits on its nuclear program. Implicitly, however, it represents an invitation for Iran to come in from the cold. How Iranians respond to that invitation is the question on which Obama’s reputation as a statesman is likely to turn.

• • •

Obama was a teenager when the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and ensuing hostage crisis turned Iran into an international pariah, excluded from playing a meaningful role in regional politics. Yet excluding the troublemaker served mostly to incite more trouble.

During the 1980s, the US saw Iran as a threat to stability. US policy sought to contain the Islamic Republic, a presumed imperative that found the US aligning itself with Saddam Hussein in the brutal Iran-Iraq War that Mr. Hussein himself had recklessly initiated. In the 1990s, with Iraq now joining Iran on Washington’s enemies list, the US adopted a strategy of “dual containment.” Necessitating a substantial US military presence in the region, this approach incited blowback that ultimately found expression in the 9/11 attacks. Abandoning containment, the George W. Bush administration responded by embracing preventive war. Under the banner of its “freedom agenda,” it set out to remake the region, starting with Iraq but with expectations of soon moving on to neighboring countries, including Iran. The application of US military power in a big way was going to yield very large benefits.

Alas, it hasn’t worked out that way. The American military project in Iraq miscarried and the “freedom agenda” went nowhere. Worse, even with all the thousands of lives lost or shattered, all the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, US military efforts have actually made conditions in the Greater Middle East markedly worse. An enterprise intended to foster stability, spread democracy, and further the cause of human rights has instead produced something akin to chaos, while fueling violent radicalism.

By invading Iraq, the Bush administration seemingly affirmed Osama bin Laden’s charges of US imperialism and antipathy toward Islam. In Baghdad, meanwhile, the political order resulting from several years of American “nation-building” manifests a combination of ineptitude and sectarian bias that has left Iraq virtually ungovernable. For radical Islamists generally, American intervention in Iraq has been the gift that keeps on giving.

Evidence? Look no further than Islamic State, the successor to Al Qaeda that has declared itself the basis of a new caliphate while carving up large swaths of Iraq and Syria and winning adherents further afield. However loath Americans may be to acknowledge their collective paternity, Islamic State is the bastard child of ill-advised US military interventionism.

No longer the foreign-policy neophyte, Obama today seems to grasp (even if not saying so outright) that US military involvement in the Greater Middle East, dating as far back as the abortive peacekeeping mission in Lebanon during the early 1980s, has been counterproductive. Whether in Iraq or Libya, Somalia or Afghanistan, it has never produced the results promised or expected.

Obama’s acceptance of the risks inherent in the JCPOA constitutes a de facto admission that the attempt to impose order on this region through the application of hard power has failed. Period. Full stop.

Simply trying harder – more bombs or more boots on the ground – won’t produce a more favorable outcome. In effect, the verdict is in: The militarization of US policy in the Islamic world has reached a dead end.

• • •

So without fully exposing his hand, Obama is opting for something different. With his Iran initiative, he is attempting to reverse course. In this sense, the JCPOA represents merely a preliminary step in a complex undertaking fraught with hazards.

The ultimate objective of that undertaking is twofold: first, to extricate the US military from what has become a war without end; second, to hand off responsibility for maintaining regional stability to those with the most to lose if the ongoing meltdown continues – the nations inhabiting the neighborhood.

Inherent in this gambit is a heretical proposition to which few politicians – certainly none of the declared presidential candidates – will openly subscribe: that there are certain tasks that exceed the capabilities of even the world’s sole superpower and that should therefore be left to others. Managing the Greater Middle East is one of those things.

Prominent among those “others” who share an interest in preventing further regional disintegration are Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and Iraq (if it ever manages to get its act together). While the regimes controlling these several nations disagree about many things, they are all fundamentally committed to the status quo. That is, unlike Islamic State, Al Qaeda, or any of their offshoots, they are committed to preserving rather than destroying the existing system of nation-states within (more or less) their existing borders.

Obama is betting that Iran also qualifies as a status quo nation – or, if it is not presently, that it can be coaxed into becoming one. The impetus behind the bet is quite clear. Only by restoring Iran to its rightful place among regional heavyweights – as a player, not simply as a spoiler – will it be possible for a stable equilibrium of power to emerge. Putting it another way, to persist in excluding Iran is to guarantee continuing upheaval, with the US therefore unable to escape from the quagmire in which it now finds itself.

Those persuaded that only the concerted exercise of US military might will restore order to this part of the world – neoconservatives and hawkish right-wingers, for example – might welcome such a prospect. Sensible Americans will not.

Yet sensible Americans would do well to appreciate the uncertainties involved. Iran today remains a theocracy in which some top leaders identify the US as the Great Satan. Longstanding Iranian support for organizations on the US terrorist list such as Hezbollah is well documented. Prior to 9/11, Iran may have had a hand in terrorist attacks against US servicemen in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. During the US occupation of Iraq, Iran certainly provided Iraqi militants with weaponry employed to kill American soldiers. Its seniormost authorities eagerly look forward to the day when Israel will cease to exist. In no respect whatsoever does Iran qualify as a “friend” of the US.

On the other hand, US behavior toward Iran over the years has not exactly invited friendship. Even setting aside the 1953 Anglo-American coup that overthrew Iran’s first democratically elected government – an event that the US treats as ancient history – there remain other episodes with which Iranians might reasonably take umbrage.

Washington’s support for Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War is one. The US Navy’s unprovoked shooting down of an Iranian Airbus transiting the Persian Gulf in 1988, killing 290 civilians, is a second. Washington’s inclusion of Iran in the so-called Axis of Evil, despite Tehran signaling a willingness to help after 9/11, is a third. More recently, US collaboration with Israel in unleashing the Stuxnet computer virus to disable an Iranian nuclear research facility – in effect, a state-sponsored cyberattack – offers another.

So Iran has no more reason to trust the US than the US has to trust Iran.

• • •

Yet the case to be made for the JCPOA relies on neither friendship nor trust. Instead, it posits a convergence of interests. In an immediate sense, that convergence translates into a concrete and specific quid pro quo: Iran gets escape from economic strangulation; the US gets a suspension of putative Iranian attempts to acquire the bomb. More broadly and more speculatively, the JCPOA may – there are no guarantees – lay the basis for a collaboration against the antistatist violent radicalism threatening to envelop much of the Islamic world.

Obama’s critics dismiss the possibility of such a collaboration as hooey. Those who govern Iran, they argue, are hate-filled crazies committed to a revolutionary agenda.

That’s one view. Another interprets Iranian hate speech, which is real, as akin to hate speech in American politics – intended chiefly for domestic consumption. To some observers, the chants of “death to America” heard in Tehran seem increasingly pro forma, of no more real significance than the Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rants routinely heard on Fox News.

More significantly, the charge of irrationality just doesn’t stick – nothing in their recent behavior suggests that Iran’s rulers have a death wish or are willing to trade Tehran for Tel Aviv. Ruthless and calculating they may be, but not suicidal. As for the Islamic Revolution itself, it appears in many respects to be a spent force, retaining about as much fervor as the Bolshevik Revolution by the 1970s or the Cuban Revolution today.

Notably in evidence, however, is the undisguised fervor of younger Iranians not to overthrow secular modernity but to embrace it. Arguably, they, not the ayatollahs, represent the future of politics in Iran. Removing sanctions and reintegrating Iran into the global economy will further empower this rising generation of Iranians, who are avidly pro-American. Ayatollahs refusing to accommodate their demands for change will do so at their peril.

So, at least, the Obama administration has persuaded itself – an expectation that more than any other factor explains why the administration believes it is possible for the US and Iran on a selective basis to inch toward making common cause. In that regard, the current de facto US-Iranian collaboration against Islamic State may serve as a precursor of sorts. If not friends, the two nations may in time overcome the reflexive compulsion to be at each other’s throats.

Should the government of Israel sign on to Obama’s bet? Should the Saudi royal family or Sunni Arabs more generally?

Their reluctance to do so is understandable. Should that bet fail, they could well find themselves in the line of fire, facing an empowered Iran with grudges to settle. Among the unwelcome scenarios that could plausibly unfold are these: a region-wide nuclear arms race, an escalation of anti-
Zionism among nations competing to demonstrate their fealty to Islam, or preemptive military action by an Israel that perceives itself to be facing an existential threat. None of these can be dismissed out of hand.

For Israel and other US allies in the Middle East, therefore, the appeal of a Pax Americana – US troops permanently on station to keep order and police the recalcitrant in the region – is self-evident. The problem is that Washington’s efforts at policing the Greater Middle East have definitively and irrevocably gone off the rails. The Pax Americana may have worked elsewhere on other occasions, but in this instance it’s surely not working for the US. Persisting in this ill-advised effort will undermine rather than enhance US security and will further erode America’s standing in the world.

Sooner or later, circumstances will oblige even die-hard devotees of American exceptionalism to come to terms with the very real limits of US power. Sooner or later, US allies in the Greater Middle East, including Israel, will do likewise, which may yet open the door to a process, however halting and incremental, of mutual accommodation between Jews and Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Persians.

Or it may not. In that case, the opposing sides in these several disputes may choose once more to take up their cudgels against one another even as the US opts out. At the end of the day, sovereign states will exercise their sovereignty.

If Obama’s bet pays off – and it may well take a decade or more to determine the outcome – what will it yield? Even in the best case, with Iran choosing to become a responsible stakeholder while abjuring terrorism and perpetuating its pledge not to develop nuclear weapons, don’t expect an epidemic of peace and harmony to break out. The causes of dysfunction roiling the Greater Middle East are too numerous and varied to be settled by any one diplomatic breakthrough, however welcome.

Yet it may just be that concentrating the minds of the parties involved will enable them to do a better job of fixing their part of the world than the US has managed. If nothing else, at least the pointless depletion of American power and influence will have been abated. We, too, must exercise our sovereignty.


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Sacajawea

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Time is short people.

The madness that has possessed our gov, is completely runamok. To say nothing of the openings/opportunities being provided our enemies.
 
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