By RaeLynn Ricarte
It doesn’t bode well for the future of a US-led deal to stop Tehran from building nuclear bombs when that country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, states “Our policy towards the arrogant U.S. Government won’t change at all.”
After his words, there were televised reports of Iranian citizens chanting “Death to America” and burning U.S. flags. Also not confidence-building.
Iranian-sponsored acts of violence are second only to Al-Qaeda in the number of Americans that have been killed. So, it was sobering to have Khamenei say Saturday that Iran would continue its support of terrorist groups.
Especially when President Barack Obama is doing everything that he can to weaken our military. Even more troubling is that the president failed to live up to the agreement he brokered with Congress just weeks ago, which granted American representatives 60 days to weigh in on the deal. Instead, Obama ran to the United Nations for support, a bid to put Congress under pressure from the international community.
And global efforts to lift sanctions that led Iran to the bargaining table will begin before U.S. officials have even determined whether the deal is in our best national security interests.
America is a sovereign nation and we alone should be deciding what is best for our security. In addition, we need to heed the deep opposition to the deal expressed by Israel, our ally that has been threatened with extinction numerous times by Iran.
What is getting little media attention in the deal is that Iran will be given international training in nuclear technology, supposedly for use in “peaceful purposes.” Seriously?
Obama insists the deal’s strength is that “inspectors will have 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear facilities.” However, that applies only to facilities Iran has officially declared. The president says International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors will also be able to access any suspicious location “where necessary, when necessary.” However, there is no clear definition of “necessary” and the determination process is convoluted and gives Iran plenty of time to stall.
If Iran chooses not to cooperate, the process for an inspection moves into three levels of evaluation, with the final judge being the UN Security Council, which is not known for decisive action.
The deal lifts the UN embargo on arms to Iran in about five years — a nice gift for the leading sponsor of terrorism. In return, Iran supposedly reduces the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges for 10 years. And cuts its almost weapons-grade stockpile for 15 years.
We crippled Iran’s economy and fueled unemployment with sanctions to the point that its leaders were willing to deal. We held the upper hand to get Iran to change its behavior.
Obama didn’t even manage to bargain the release of four Americans being held hostage in Iran and that should have been a given.
By Mark Gibson
I don’t put a lot of weight in the words of Iran’s supreme leader: He has been posing his people in front of western news cameras since I was a boy, chanting “death to America.”
Iran is a divided country, with a “supreme leader” fanning the flames of the religious faithful when he needs to heat up the anti-U.S. rhetoric. It is a policy of fear, one he has held fast to since the hostage crisis.
The President of Iran is the highest popularly elected official in the country. The current President is Hassan Rouhani, since August 2013.
The nuclear deal with Iran represents both a historic agreement between Iran and the West and an important shifting of the balance of power in Iran.
Lifting sanctions will help both Iran’s supreme leader and Iran’s president: The Supreme Leader will have more oil funds and access to weapons when the deal is implemented. On the other hand, the supreme leader will not have a nuclear weapon.
An aggressive Iran out to destroy Israel and the West is a scary thing, but Iran armed with a nuclear weapon is even worse.
That single calculation makes this deal an important step forward for the region.
However, the loosening of sanctions will also strengthen the presidential role in Iran’s political equation.
Prior to the Iranian revolution, a generation of Iranians were studying abroad, many of them in the United States.
We the people, Iranian and American both, were friends.
That generation is undoubtedly the reason Iran has both a supreme leader and a president.
The question today is which role — religious or secular — will be able to deal best with the changing landscape of modern society: A landscape of economic growth in Iran, supported by international investment.
By making a deal with Iran, the West has thrown its weight — with a great many reservations and safety checks — to the secular leadership of Iran.
Iran’s supreme leader will continue to rant and rail against the “evil” of the west, and vow to destroy Israel,
That kind rhetoric has the weight of cotton candy, without the color and sugar.
It’s dangerous rhetoric, of course, when no war in the Middle East is cold.
Sanctions are a tool, put in place to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
We now have an agreement and protocol to mothball facilities associated with the development of a nuclear weapon.
As we remove the economic barriers between Iran and the West, the flow of information and ideas will be primarily from west to east, as the ideas of democracy, government and business again flow into Iran.
For Iran to move forward economically, the role of Iran’s president will increase, the role of the supreme leader decrease: Rebuilding the oil fields will require investment, and having a raving lunatic as supreme leader won’t work.
The signing of this deal shows that even the supreme leader of Iran recognizes that.
Commented