"Iran - then and now" series are often misleading. They cherry-pick extreme examples from non-representative slices of the population.
We've all seen photos of the stylish, 1970s Iranian 1%, but not of pervasive poverty and disenfranchisement that their brand of progress perpetuated on the other 99%. The Shah's elite may have looked American but this doesn't mean that they presided over progress or gave much thought to human rights.
The Muslim world has never known how to do democracy right because of a number of reasons including tribalism, nepotism, elitism. They have never understood what it means to be a liberal democracy. Add to that the colonials wanting to continue this tradition because corruption is easier to exploit and we have the precarious situation in the Middle East which has now deteriorated to an unfixable point.
> The hostile rhetoric hasn’t changed. At Friday prayers, as
> on previous visits, I heard thousands chanting “Death to
> America.” This year, twenty times.
> ....
> “ ‘Death to America’? This is politics and not related to
> people’s thinking,”
Or in other words Iran is a country where large portions of the population hold very different conflicting beliefs, like many other countries including the USA.
What I find interesting is that Kerry's willingness to gamble that the future generation/future ruling class will be pro-American (or become pro-America because of this deal).
> What I find interesting is that Kerry's willingness to gamble that the future generation/future ruling class will be pro-American (or become pro-America because of this deal).
It definitely is interesting, but not entirely surprising. If you look at what Iran has endured at the hands of the US, yet look at westernisation within Iran, the significant pockets of western-leaning young people, and an Iran which is militarily structured to fight defensive wars, it looks like Iran's anti-US rhetoric is just that, rhetoric, a political coping mechanism to unify the country through hard times, but not intrinsically the soul of a culture that's thousands of years old, that anti-US rhetoric could, then, start to dissipate when said hard times and foreign pressure would end. And this diplomatic deal is the first step on exactly that path.
I mean, look at it from Iran's perspective, let's reverse it. It's a bit silly but bear with me.
Imagine the UK had some business conflict over oil in the US. Iran then helped overthrow Harry Truman, and installed a pro-iranian dictator who spread Iranian culture in the US, to improve this business relationship. That alone would be insane and ample fuel for anti-Iranian rhetoric for decades to come.
The dictator's rule (a pretty shitty one) went on for decades until he was overthrown and a new leader emerged in the US, directly followed by Iran funding Canada and arming it, which attacks the US and starts a bloody war of almost 8 years, all during our lifetime. When Canada appears to lose Iran backs it even more, and when Canada uses chemical weapons killing an equivalence of more than half a million Americans, both military and civilians, Iran tells Canada exactly where US soldiers are located, and was later found indeed having shipped chemical and biological weapons to Canada. And when a civilian US airplane flies above US territory and gets shot down by an Iranian cruiser, killing 290 innocent people, Iran never apologises and there are zero consequences, as if it never happened, to give you a sense of the relations.
When the war eventually ends, Iran invades various countries neighbouring the US, like Canada and Mexico, that just years earlier had been allies. Not just that but under false pretences, deemed an illegal invasion by the United Nations and abhorred by virtually the entire world population. (makes the US wonder, if Iran attacks a former ally, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands, tortures and a ruined, failed state, based on forged-evidence... there's perhaps only 1 thing that can deter Iran from attacking you. The ultimate deterrence, a Nuclear weapon, only ever used by Iran by the way, twice). Not just that but Iran keeps backing other countries like, China (read Saudi Arabia), who is a bit further away and who is a huge rival in the region. This is followed by Iranian politicians and media left and right calling to bomb the US, invade the country, hell even with a presidential nominee in Iran joking 'bomb, bomb, bomb, bom the US', referencing the Iranian Beach Boys classic Barbara US (this analogy is getting stretched pretttty thin by now, I know).
Followed by Iran leading the world into sanctioning the US (furthering existing sanctions that had been on the US for decades) which causes deep issues, and when someone from Iran finally wants a diplomatic solution, hawks in Iran invite the president of China over to give a speech about the US's danger to the world, a speech laden with lies contradicting China and Iran's own intelligence on the US.
But throughout all this, the US becomes more Iranian every day, anti-Iran hardliners in the US aren't representative of the larger country, the US doesn't invade or attack other countries and seeks diplomatic solutions, it structures its military to fight defensive, not offensive wars, and throughout it all Americans on the whole stay pretty sane and normal people.
It'd be no surprise then that someone in Kerry's position...
The sad part is US has been a force against democratic govt for the last 50 years.
India, Bangladesh ( my own people ), Iran, Nicaragua, Vietnam.
Meanwhile arming pakistan while it was military dictatorship, Saudi, etc.
The US is like any other country - its out for its own interest and securing resources for itself.
I cringe whenever americans take a high ground.
Its just a lot of propaganda, It took me a while to do my own research since no one directly provides the information. But its all there !
I find the fact that people in hacker news who consider themselves to be the more educated crowd do not keep tabs on it. What chance does the rest of the country have ?
The hardline Iranians were part of a generation that was deeply humiliated by the US. They are not the most educated bunch but they did what they had to do and everyone should respect them for it.
I think things would have been much worse by now if it wasn't for the rapid rise of china which went under the radar of american policy makers.
China hopefully provides the balance that is needed to prevent either America or China itself for doing terrible things to other countries.
Iran's problem is a completely US manufactured crisis.
I do not understand how people are so myopic to history.
FACT:
# Iran had a democratic secular government in 1950.
# However this govt was not friendly to a British oil company ( BP ).
# The British requested american help to protect the interest of British multinationals.
# The grandson of Theodore Roosevelt personally helped overthrow this democratically legitimate government.
# The hated shan was put in power whom the iranian people really did not like. The shan went back to trading oil for weapons with the Americans/UK.
# From the perceptive of an iranian it must suck to know that your government was overthrown by some foreign entity just for the sake of a oil company. The iranian/persian who are among the oldest of civilizations ( 5,000 years ).
# Of-course this leads to a revolution and a anti-american ayatollah is put in power.
# Americans are nothing but vindictive when it comes to geo-politics and arm Saddam to his teeth giving him chemical weapons.
# Saddam Invades Iraq just while the Iranian are recovering from a revolution to now have to face against a terrible dictator who wants to invade their country.
# Iran had to indure a 8 year war in the 1980s, a war that took a huge toll. The battles fought looked like something out of WW2.
# Next america invades the country to their left and their right and puts a huge amount of ground troops in the south and allies with all of Iran's neighbour. Most of whom hate the Iranians just because they are not the SAME wahhabi muslims as them.
# Iran ofcourse wants a nuclear weapon to stabilize the huge power imbalance they face. They never interfered or invaded a neighbour for 1000s of years and now suddenly they are treated like the scum of the earth.
# The biggest loser in all of this has been the Iranian and poor sunnis civilians who are having to deal with the blunt of ISIS and the likes.
No, it's not the same. Most of the world don't force women to be wrapped in tapestry against their will. Once you do there's zero compassion towards you.
> They never interfered or invaded a neighbour for 1000s of years
No, instead Iran has used proxies like Hezbollah to do their interfering. They use a cowardly approach because they know their actions are despicable, it provides deniability. They want something to occur, but they don't want to take responsibility for it, which tells you all you need to know about the actions in question.
And before you say: well but America has done x y z - that's already understood. We're talking about Iran. Iran doesn't get excused from its misdeeds because America has done something bad too.
Hezbollah was not a aggressive militia group. It was an resistance to illegal Isreali Occupation In Lebanon.
If you consider this to be a cowardly act, then its no more different than the cowardly act of the French resistance against the Nazis.
If the Iranian are cowards then so are the Americans, Pakistanis, Russians, Israeli, Chinese and British.
This is why the Iranian are more than well justified to own a nuclear weapon - since everyone tries to covertly try to overthrow their government, and they do not have a useful deterrent against superpower nations.
> No, instead Iran has used proxies like Hezbollah to do their interfering. They use a cowardly approach because they know their actions are despicable, it provides deniability.
Hmm, so you just expect them to sit quietly and accept whatever is happening around them? The constant incursions by western countries into their backyard means they have a huge stake in any wars fought nearby. Imagine China(a country from the other side of the world) attacking Mexico for whatever reason, leading to even more people trying to get illegally into the US- can you imagine the hubbub this would undoubtedly cause? And this is without all the latent religious tension of the middle-east...
The way I see it, the United States made a huge mistake backing a tyrannical figure in Iran when they could have easily encouraged a vibrant democracy. Instead, they decided to support the Saudis who have shown almost no progress towards a better system of governance. They even went as far as praising the late ruler even though the state of human and civil rights in Saudi Arabia is much worse compared to Iran. Expecting a government and people whose country you have wronged time and again over an extended period of time to forgive you is just plain silly. Further, expecting them to sit by idly while the nations around them are tearing themselves apart and being invaded(at times on false pretenses) is just a whole new level of dumb.
What makes me sad is just what complete disarray the GOP is in. I'm sure at some point the GOP actually stood for something. Now? It just seems to have been completely co-opted by religious conservatives. Presidential candidates are cut from that cloth or, worse, they're just puppets for particular private interests (eg Scott Walker is nothing more than an empty vessel for the Koch brothers).
Compounding this is the huge political power that Israel has in US politics. Whatever your opinion about Israel, I think it's fair to say that Israel has been disastrous for US foreign policy in the Middle East for every country's relationship to the US other than Israel.
Earlier this week I was reading that the Obama administration may hasten the release of Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard in an effort to appease Israel. Israel has found unlikely allies in the Jewish lobby (who tend to lean left) and religious conservatives.
Iran is a problem the US made by repeatedly and disastrously screwing with the region. The support of the Shah fomenting the Iranian Revolution, using Saddam Hussein as a proxy to fight Iran (killing hundreds of thousands on both sides) and invading Iraq a decade ago.
The invasion in particular was the last straw. The lesson the "axis of evil" could take away from this was that having nuclear weapons (like North Korea) was the only guarantee of survival. So of course Iran wants the bomb. Whose fault is that?
Yet the GOP in particular seems ready to sacrifice everything for a policy that isn't working just to appease Israel. Well, Israel is just going to have to learn to live in that region because someone there getting nuclear weapons is a question of if not when.
We've come a long way since Eisenhower could (and did) tell Israel to get out of Sinai. The fact that Obama is even trying to stand up to Israel is amazing to me. I honestly hope he succeeds because I think engagement with Iran is the only sustainable course forward.
Not that I understand the heavy opposition we have seen to the deal (beyond the normal partisan politics), but the explanation that the GOP is trying to appease Israel seems lacking. Specifically, that begs the question of why Israel (or rather, Netenyahu et al) oppose the deal. I find it difficult to believe that they would be willingly to obstruct the path to keeping Iran from a bomb just to satisfy their own internal politics, so presumably there is something else to the disagreement.
The military-industrial complex is not a rational animal. It knows that it wants to manufacture more armaments. It also knows that in the past, "sanctions" were an effective pretext and political cover for its singular purpose, since the marketing story for them was seemingly opposed to that purpose. Now, when "sanctions" are widely imagined to have "worked" in accomplishing the goals publicly claimed for them, the beast is angry that it went along with the marketers and pollsters. The military-industrial complex expresses its anger through retired generals, think-tank analysts, and "conservative" politicians. If we just ignore it and stop feeding it so much, it will quiet somewhat, eventually.
By lifting of the sanctions Iran will have significant more resources and at the same time maintain their ability to get to a bomb. They are not giving up any of their capabilities so why do you think this is the path keeping Iran from the bomb?
They can get to a bomb either by violating the agreement (secretly or otherwise) or simply waiting for enough time to elapse. The additional resources will help the regime maintain its power and increase its involvement in various conflicts in the region, in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
The deal is effectively a result of the US having no leverage. There is no real military option. The sanctions are eroding anyways. It's really a choice between the lesser of two evils and it's a difficult one.
> They can get to a bomb either by violating the agreement
Apparently a lot of their material (both the fissile material, as their equipment) is taken away. Meaning to get back to the bomb-producing levels they are at today would take years. If they broke the agreement next year, they'd simply have had years of setback.
Apparently there are also mechanisms in place to immediately have sanctions return on Iran if it were found to be working on a bomb. After all, they're a signatory member of the non-proliferation treaty, and the entire world is in support of non-proliferation. If they were found to be working on a bomb, they'd have a much, much weaker moral position than they do today (and it's already pretty abysmal), so the notion that sanctions would return isn't surprising. The notion that all nuclear facilities would be taken away if the agreement was violated, also isn't unrealistic, and that it'd be at the threat of military action, rather than just diplomatic action.
Lastly, as far as continuously referenced experts are concerned, it seems you're overstating the ability to simply violate the agreement in secret. Apparently that's pretty damn hard to do on a normal day, but even harder to do with the level of access and transparency, and while we can mock the US at times in its competence, I have very few doubts about its intelligence capacities.
The rest of your post is spot on though. (sanctions would erode over time, military option doesn't exist, and Iran has a growing economy and population that will strengthen its influence in the region).
A quick overview. Vox is pretty biased and not very technical, but it's still a decent overview on what experts think, how many centrifuges are taken away (70%, leaving only knockoffs of 1970s centrifuges), how much fissile material is taken away (97%), what the limits of enrichment (allowed to enrich to <4%, 20% is necessary for medicine, 90% for a bomb) are, what other requirements will be met (one of its reactor's cores must be replaced with one unable to produce weapon's grade material, spent fuel must be shipped out, inspections and transparency is full) etc:
The equipment isn't taken away. It's just placed in storage for 10 years. The breakout time period I've heard about getting to a bomb is one year. Some have said it's as short as 3 months. Even if we accept "years" not sure that really matters. Somehow I don't think Iran's regime is very concerned about their moral position in western eyes. They have their own ideas of morality. They also have longer term goals, they don't report quarterly results ;)
I think you're also exaggerating the ability of intelligence and inspections to really know what's going on. How long did it take North Korea to go from inspections to a bomb? Iraq? Libya? Syria? Lots of example of the limitations of intelligence gathering.
The agreement basically accepts Iran as a "nuclear threshold" state.
It is very unlikely to push Iran towards any liberal or democratic reforms. The whole framing around how western powers have meddled with Iran historically somehow justifies what's going on today is ridiculous. Two (or more) wrongs don't make a right. The Shah backed by western powers oppressed the people and the current regime backed by other powers oppresses the people (not to mention what happened to moderate Iranians at the time of the revolution). There is an incredible amount of naivety and ignorance around the discussion.
All that said, I tend to agree with Kerry/Obama in that the agreement is perhaps the best we can get right now. It's just not a very good best, kind of an admission of defeat. There is some small chance it will lead to an overall increase in stability but there's also a non-negligible chance of the opposite, less stability and more actors with nuclear weapons.
I'm not sure why you think the GOP is in disarray. The Republicans don't trust Iran not to build a bomb. To think the Iranians won't is naive to a childish degree. We went down this road with the North Koreans. Are memories that short?
And what happened with Democrats and anti-Semitism? When did it become okay to see Evil Jews behind every problem?
Comparing Iran to North Korea is quite a stretch, and frankly doing so reveals that you are severely misinformed about the Iranian people, culture, government, and history. It's OK, majority of people are, and I would be more than happy to clear up any questions you might have regarding the matter.
It's not a stretch at all when it comes to nuclear weapons. The Iranians are doing exactly what the North Koreans did. The "people, culture, government, and history" are relevant only to the extent to which they played into the government's decision to acquire nuclear weapons.
For me a big difference between North Korea and Iran is the balance of soft vs hard power in those countries. In Iran the ordinary people tend to push back in a lot of ways and the government gives ground if grudgingly and slowly. And there is a lot of politics going on between factions with real power.
Given that I'm willing to be very patient. Seriously, the generals of the Red Army ran the soviet union for 35 years after Stalin died and then they passed on. So too will the Iranian revolutionaries.
While I do think that the Iranian people and culture are as a rule of thumb non militant (with enough material prosperity comes a time when you prefer to trade with someone and not kill him), it is the ruling theocracy that overrides everything else. Until Saudi Arabia and Iran both get their Kemal Ataturk (with less genocide if possible) that enshrines the secularist nature of the countries for a century (sadly Erdogan was allowed to exist, lets hope that this gets fixed soon) they cannot be viewed as a reliable partners.
The GOP is right to be concerned about Iran's ability to build nuclear weapons, there has absolutely been an appalling breakdown in the international community's willingness to care about proliferation. But they are utterly, utterly wrong in how they've handled that problem. They've acted like children, and if anything made the situation worse.
> The Republicans don't trust Iran not to build a bomb.
Neither do the authors of this deal. The choices are:
(a) Do nothing and allow Iran to continue to be within 6-7 months of making a bomb, as they are now
(b) Implement the deal and push that time out to 15+ years
(c) Try even harder to negotiate a better solution
(d) Stop them by force before they build it.
If you oppose choice (b), what other options do you propose?
Your read of the timelines is incorrect. It's more like (a) keep sanction and see Iran get the bomb within 5-10 years, (b) do the deal and see Iran get the bomb within a year or two, or (c) let sanctions lapse with no deal and see Iran get the bomb within a year or two.
Those are the choices. To see this deal as any impediment to Iran's nuclear program is woefully naive.
The price of oil is about to fall in the shitter and the Iranians (and the Saudis) are going to have their hands full avoiding a balance of payments crisis and importing gasoline and essentials for the population with the "stranded assets" that are being repatriated to them. The hope is that they'll realize a war will get them minus nowhere and that the populace has some tiny degree of leverage on them. Most of these regime figures (Asgharowladi, etc) just want to make money, go look at the size of their bank accounts in Switzerland.
Other people's sovereignty doesn't go away because we don't like it. I don't like the fact that Israel basically built a porch on the Litani for 20 years and simultaneously was building nukes way bigger than needed for tactical or regional ICBM purposes but I don't go around telling people to bomb Dimona.
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 95.4 ms ] threadLet's stop progress, abolish human rights and heed to words written thousand years ago and interpreted by corrupt barbarians.
Foucoult can write whatever nonsense sitting in warm Paris with all the freedoms and comfort readily available.
I'm more scared by "Iran - then and now" series of pictures.
We've all seen photos of the stylish, 1970s Iranian 1%, but not of pervasive poverty and disenfranchisement that their brand of progress perpetuated on the other 99%. The Shah's elite may have looked American but this doesn't mean that they presided over progress or gave much thought to human rights.
> on previous visits, I heard thousands chanting “Death to
> America.” This year, twenty times.
> ....
> “ ‘Death to America’? This is politics and not related to
> people’s thinking,”
Or in other words Iran is a country where large portions of the population hold very different conflicting beliefs, like many other countries including the USA.
What I find interesting is that Kerry's willingness to gamble that the future generation/future ruling class will be pro-American (or become pro-America because of this deal).
It definitely is interesting, but not entirely surprising. If you look at what Iran has endured at the hands of the US, yet look at westernisation within Iran, the significant pockets of western-leaning young people, and an Iran which is militarily structured to fight defensive wars, it looks like Iran's anti-US rhetoric is just that, rhetoric, a political coping mechanism to unify the country through hard times, but not intrinsically the soul of a culture that's thousands of years old, that anti-US rhetoric could, then, start to dissipate when said hard times and foreign pressure would end. And this diplomatic deal is the first step on exactly that path.
I mean, look at it from Iran's perspective, let's reverse it. It's a bit silly but bear with me.
Imagine the UK had some business conflict over oil in the US. Iran then helped overthrow Harry Truman, and installed a pro-iranian dictator who spread Iranian culture in the US, to improve this business relationship. That alone would be insane and ample fuel for anti-Iranian rhetoric for decades to come.
The dictator's rule (a pretty shitty one) went on for decades until he was overthrown and a new leader emerged in the US, directly followed by Iran funding Canada and arming it, which attacks the US and starts a bloody war of almost 8 years, all during our lifetime. When Canada appears to lose Iran backs it even more, and when Canada uses chemical weapons killing an equivalence of more than half a million Americans, both military and civilians, Iran tells Canada exactly where US soldiers are located, and was later found indeed having shipped chemical and biological weapons to Canada. And when a civilian US airplane flies above US territory and gets shot down by an Iranian cruiser, killing 290 innocent people, Iran never apologises and there are zero consequences, as if it never happened, to give you a sense of the relations.
When the war eventually ends, Iran invades various countries neighbouring the US, like Canada and Mexico, that just years earlier had been allies. Not just that but under false pretences, deemed an illegal invasion by the United Nations and abhorred by virtually the entire world population. (makes the US wonder, if Iran attacks a former ally, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands, tortures and a ruined, failed state, based on forged-evidence... there's perhaps only 1 thing that can deter Iran from attacking you. The ultimate deterrence, a Nuclear weapon, only ever used by Iran by the way, twice). Not just that but Iran keeps backing other countries like, China (read Saudi Arabia), who is a bit further away and who is a huge rival in the region. This is followed by Iranian politicians and media left and right calling to bomb the US, invade the country, hell even with a presidential nominee in Iran joking 'bomb, bomb, bomb, bom the US', referencing the Iranian Beach Boys classic Barbara US (this analogy is getting stretched pretttty thin by now, I know).
Followed by Iran leading the world into sanctioning the US (furthering existing sanctions that had been on the US for decades) which causes deep issues, and when someone from Iran finally wants a diplomatic solution, hawks in Iran invite the president of China over to give a speech about the US's danger to the world, a speech laden with lies contradicting China and Iran's own intelligence on the US.
But throughout all this, the US becomes more Iranian every day, anti-Iran hardliners in the US aren't representative of the larger country, the US doesn't invade or attack other countries and seeks diplomatic solutions, it structures its military to fight defensive, not offensive wars, and throughout it all Americans on the whole stay pretty sane and normal people.
It'd be no surprise then that someone in Kerry's position...
The sad part is US has been a force against democratic govt for the last 50 years.
India, Bangladesh ( my own people ), Iran, Nicaragua, Vietnam.
Meanwhile arming pakistan while it was military dictatorship, Saudi, etc.
The US is like any other country - its out for its own interest and securing resources for itself.
I cringe whenever americans take a high ground.
Its just a lot of propaganda, It took me a while to do my own research since no one directly provides the information. But its all there !
I find the fact that people in hacker news who consider themselves to be the more educated crowd do not keep tabs on it. What chance does the rest of the country have ?
The hardline Iranians were part of a generation that was deeply humiliated by the US. They are not the most educated bunch but they did what they had to do and everyone should respect them for it.
I think things would have been much worse by now if it wasn't for the rapid rise of china which went under the radar of american policy makers.
China hopefully provides the balance that is needed to prevent either America or China itself for doing terrible things to other countries.
I do not understand how people are so myopic to history.
FACT:
# Iran had a democratic secular government in 1950.
# However this govt was not friendly to a British oil company ( BP ).
# The British requested american help to protect the interest of British multinationals.
# The grandson of Theodore Roosevelt personally helped overthrow this democratically legitimate government.
# The hated shan was put in power whom the iranian people really did not like. The shan went back to trading oil for weapons with the Americans/UK.
# From the perceptive of an iranian it must suck to know that your government was overthrown by some foreign entity just for the sake of a oil company. The iranian/persian who are among the oldest of civilizations ( 5,000 years ).
# Of-course this leads to a revolution and a anti-american ayatollah is put in power.
# Americans are nothing but vindictive when it comes to geo-politics and arm Saddam to his teeth giving him chemical weapons.
# Saddam Invades Iraq just while the Iranian are recovering from a revolution to now have to face against a terrible dictator who wants to invade their country.
# Iran had to indure a 8 year war in the 1980s, a war that took a huge toll. The battles fought looked like something out of WW2.
# Next america invades the country to their left and their right and puts a huge amount of ground troops in the south and allies with all of Iran's neighbour. Most of whom hate the Iranians just because they are not the SAME wahhabi muslims as them.
# Iran ofcourse wants a nuclear weapon to stabilize the huge power imbalance they face. They never interfered or invaded a neighbour for 1000s of years and now suddenly they are treated like the scum of the earth.
# The biggest loser in all of this has been the Iranian and poor sunnis civilians who are having to deal with the blunt of ISIS and the likes.
Islamism strips Iran of any but very rudimantary sympathy.
"the year after the Islamic Revolution.., girls were obliged to wear the veil and segregated by gender"
No excuse for that!
And if we are talking about what governments of countries force on their people lets start with the Saudis first.
And I would like to remind you to in america you have similar level of bigotry with Christians.
Iran has slightly more bigotry - does not mean you invade them.
No, it's not the same. Most of the world don't force women to be wrapped in tapestry against their will. Once you do there's zero compassion towards you.
No, instead Iran has used proxies like Hezbollah to do their interfering. They use a cowardly approach because they know their actions are despicable, it provides deniability. They want something to occur, but they don't want to take responsibility for it, which tells you all you need to know about the actions in question.
And before you say: well but America has done x y z - that's already understood. We're talking about Iran. Iran doesn't get excused from its misdeeds because America has done something bad too.
If you consider this to be a cowardly act, then its no more different than the cowardly act of the French resistance against the Nazis.
If the Iranian are cowards then so are the Americans, Pakistanis, Russians, Israeli, Chinese and British.
This is why the Iranian are more than well justified to own a nuclear weapon - since everyone tries to covertly try to overthrow their government, and they do not have a useful deterrent against superpower nations.
Hmm, so you just expect them to sit quietly and accept whatever is happening around them? The constant incursions by western countries into their backyard means they have a huge stake in any wars fought nearby. Imagine China(a country from the other side of the world) attacking Mexico for whatever reason, leading to even more people trying to get illegally into the US- can you imagine the hubbub this would undoubtedly cause? And this is without all the latent religious tension of the middle-east...
The way I see it, the United States made a huge mistake backing a tyrannical figure in Iran when they could have easily encouraged a vibrant democracy. Instead, they decided to support the Saudis who have shown almost no progress towards a better system of governance. They even went as far as praising the late ruler even though the state of human and civil rights in Saudi Arabia is much worse compared to Iran. Expecting a government and people whose country you have wronged time and again over an extended period of time to forgive you is just plain silly. Further, expecting them to sit by idly while the nations around them are tearing themselves apart and being invaded(at times on false pretenses) is just a whole new level of dumb.
Excused by whom? By America? Why not, if America does the same things?
Compounding this is the huge political power that Israel has in US politics. Whatever your opinion about Israel, I think it's fair to say that Israel has been disastrous for US foreign policy in the Middle East for every country's relationship to the US other than Israel.
Earlier this week I was reading that the Obama administration may hasten the release of Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard in an effort to appease Israel. Israel has found unlikely allies in the Jewish lobby (who tend to lean left) and religious conservatives.
Iran is a problem the US made by repeatedly and disastrously screwing with the region. The support of the Shah fomenting the Iranian Revolution, using Saddam Hussein as a proxy to fight Iran (killing hundreds of thousands on both sides) and invading Iraq a decade ago.
The invasion in particular was the last straw. The lesson the "axis of evil" could take away from this was that having nuclear weapons (like North Korea) was the only guarantee of survival. So of course Iran wants the bomb. Whose fault is that?
Yet the GOP in particular seems ready to sacrifice everything for a policy that isn't working just to appease Israel. Well, Israel is just going to have to learn to live in that region because someone there getting nuclear weapons is a question of if not when.
We've come a long way since Eisenhower could (and did) tell Israel to get out of Sinai. The fact that Obama is even trying to stand up to Israel is amazing to me. I honestly hope he succeeds because I think engagement with Iran is the only sustainable course forward.
By lifting of the sanctions Iran will have significant more resources and at the same time maintain their ability to get to a bomb. They are not giving up any of their capabilities so why do you think this is the path keeping Iran from the bomb?
They can get to a bomb either by violating the agreement (secretly or otherwise) or simply waiting for enough time to elapse. The additional resources will help the regime maintain its power and increase its involvement in various conflicts in the region, in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
The deal is effectively a result of the US having no leverage. There is no real military option. The sanctions are eroding anyways. It's really a choice between the lesser of two evils and it's a difficult one.
Apparently a lot of their material (both the fissile material, as their equipment) is taken away. Meaning to get back to the bomb-producing levels they are at today would take years. If they broke the agreement next year, they'd simply have had years of setback.
Apparently there are also mechanisms in place to immediately have sanctions return on Iran if it were found to be working on a bomb. After all, they're a signatory member of the non-proliferation treaty, and the entire world is in support of non-proliferation. If they were found to be working on a bomb, they'd have a much, much weaker moral position than they do today (and it's already pretty abysmal), so the notion that sanctions would return isn't surprising. The notion that all nuclear facilities would be taken away if the agreement was violated, also isn't unrealistic, and that it'd be at the threat of military action, rather than just diplomatic action.
Lastly, as far as continuously referenced experts are concerned, it seems you're overstating the ability to simply violate the agreement in secret. Apparently that's pretty damn hard to do on a normal day, but even harder to do with the level of access and transparency, and while we can mock the US at times in its competence, I have very few doubts about its intelligence capacities.
The rest of your post is spot on though. (sanctions would erode over time, military option doesn't exist, and Iran has a growing economy and population that will strengthen its influence in the region).
A quick overview. Vox is pretty biased and not very technical, but it's still a decent overview on what experts think, how many centrifuges are taken away (70%, leaving only knockoffs of 1970s centrifuges), how much fissile material is taken away (97%), what the limits of enrichment (allowed to enrich to <4%, 20% is necessary for medicine, 90% for a bomb) are, what other requirements will be met (one of its reactor's cores must be replaced with one unable to produce weapon's grade material, spent fuel must be shipped out, inspections and transparency is full) etc:
http://www.vox.com/2015/4/2/8337347/iran-deal-good
My current reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
I think you're also exaggerating the ability of intelligence and inspections to really know what's going on. How long did it take North Korea to go from inspections to a bomb? Iraq? Libya? Syria? Lots of example of the limitations of intelligence gathering.
The agreement basically accepts Iran as a "nuclear threshold" state.
It is very unlikely to push Iran towards any liberal or democratic reforms. The whole framing around how western powers have meddled with Iran historically somehow justifies what's going on today is ridiculous. Two (or more) wrongs don't make a right. The Shah backed by western powers oppressed the people and the current regime backed by other powers oppresses the people (not to mention what happened to moderate Iranians at the time of the revolution). There is an incredible amount of naivety and ignorance around the discussion.
All that said, I tend to agree with Kerry/Obama in that the agreement is perhaps the best we can get right now. It's just not a very good best, kind of an admission of defeat. There is some small chance it will lead to an overall increase in stability but there's also a non-negligible chance of the opposite, less stability and more actors with nuclear weapons.
And what happened with Democrats and anti-Semitism? When did it become okay to see Evil Jews behind every problem?
Given that I'm willing to be very patient. Seriously, the generals of the Red Army ran the soviet union for 35 years after Stalin died and then they passed on. So too will the Iranian revolutionaries.
Evil zionists. It's not the jews who are evil, but their zionists. Netanyahu and his worker bees over at AIPAC, specifically.
Neither do the authors of this deal. The choices are:
(a) Do nothing and allow Iran to continue to be within 6-7 months of making a bomb, as they are now (b) Implement the deal and push that time out to 15+ years (c) Try even harder to negotiate a better solution (d) Stop them by force before they build it.
If you oppose choice (b), what other options do you propose?
Those are the choices. To see this deal as any impediment to Iran's nuclear program is woefully naive.
Other people's sovereignty doesn't go away because we don't like it. I don't like the fact that Israel basically built a porch on the Litani for 20 years and simultaneously was building nukes way bigger than needed for tactical or regional ICBM purposes but I don't go around telling people to bomb Dimona.
Iran is a theocracy, and theocracies can't lighten up too much or they lose first their reason for being, then their power.