Story 1: Profiles in Perfidy: Obama and Kerry Lying To American People — The Traitorous Terrorist Treaty — Strategic Surrender To Terrorist Islamic Republic of Iran– No Dismantling and Destruction of Nuclear Infrastructure/Bomb Factories — No Surprise Inspections — No Economic Sanctions — No Limits on Missiles — No Sanctions On Individual Terrorists or Terrorism — The Sellout of America For Nobel Peace Prizes Will Result in Middle East Nuclear Arms Race, Proliferation and War — Iran Celebrates Victory and $150 Billion of Unfrozen Assets To Finance More Terrorism and Oppression — Congress Must Veto The Traitorous Terrorist Treaty — Terminate With Extreme Prejudice — Videos
per·fi·dy
(pûr′fĭ-dē)
n.pl.per·fi·dies
1. Deliberatebreach of faith;calculatedviolation of trust;treachery:“thefink,whoseperfidywasequaledonly by hisgall”(GilbertMillstein).
2. Theact or an instance of treachery.
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Iran, World Powers Reach Nuclear Deal
Accord sets White House on course for months of political strife with dissenters in Congress, Mideast allies
By LAURENCE NORMAN and
JAY SOLOMON
Updated July 14, 2015 1:14 p.m. ET
Iran reached a landmark nuclear agreement with the U.S. and five other world powers, a long-sought foreign policy goal of President Barack Obama that sets the White House on course for months of political strife with dissenters in Congress and in allied Middle Eastern nations.
The accord, which comes after a decade of diplomatic efforts that frequently appeared on the verge of collapse, aims to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief.
The Obama administration and its partners hope the deal will resolve a dispute that at times threatened to spark a military conflict. In the optimistic view, it would ease tensions with Tehran over time and pave the way for fresh attempts to resolve some of the region’s many other conflicts.
In an address from the White House early Tuesday, Mr. Obama hailed the deal, threatening to veto any vote in Congress against it.
“Today, because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region,” he said. “Because of this deal, the international community will be able to verify that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon.”
Critics in Washington, Israel and the Gulf nations that neighbor Iran say the deal will merely delay the country’s path to nuclear weapons. After 10 years of restraint on its activities mandated by the agreement, Iran will then be able to ratchet up its nuclear program and potentially unleash a nuclear arms race in the region, they fear.
Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahucalled the deal a historic mistake.
“Wide-ranging concessions were made in all of the areas which should have prevented Iran from getting the ability to arm itself with a nuclear weapon,’’ Mr. Netanyahu said. “The desire to sign an agreement was stronger than everything else.”
The deal could provoke new strains in U.S. ties with its traditional Middle Eastern allies in Israel and Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia. All have warned that lifting tight international sanctions will deliver an economic windfall that enables Iran to expand its regional influence by boosting funding for proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere.
ENLARGE
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, far right, and U.K. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, second from right, gesture toward Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, far left. Iran’s Ali Akbar Salehi is second from left. Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stands center.PHOTO:HERBERT NEUBAUER/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
The last two years of diplomacy were the most intense dialogue between Washington and Tehran since diplomatic relations were ruptured after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“Today, a new page has turned,” Iranian PresidentHassan Rouhani said in a nationally televised speech, adding that the deal met all his country’s goals.
The final round of negotiations stretched for more than two weeks and was punctuated by tensions and setbacks, at times devolving into shouting matches among international officials. The U.S. repeatedly warned it was willing to walk away from a bad deal while Iranians threatened to rev their nuclear program back up.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has spearheaded negotiations over the past two years, praised his Iranian counterpartJavad Zarif as a tough negotiator and a patriot, saying the two had maintained mutual respect throughout often heated talks.
However Mr. Kerry said the administration was fully aware that the nuclear deal would not resolve Washington’s concerns about Iran’s actions.
“From the very beginning of this process, we have considered not only our own security concerns but also the serious and legitimate anxieties of our friends and our allies in the region—especially Israel and the Gulf States,” he said.
“What we are announcing today is an agreement addressing the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Period.”
At the heart of the agreement between Iran and 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. In exchange, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations will lift tight international sanctions on Tehran, a move that Western diplomats say could help Iran’s economy to expand by 7% to 8% annually for years to come.
Iran, which analysts say could double oil exports quickly after sanctions are lifted, will also receive more than $100 billion in assets locked overseas under U.S. sanctions.
Mr. Obama has cast the nuclear diplomacy as an effort to avoid another costly, risky war in the Middle East. He recently said that even if the U.S. took military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it would only partially set back Tehran’s program, not eliminate it.
The nuclear agreement still faces significant hurdles before it takes full effect.
Iran must take an array of specific steps. It must disable two-thirds of its centrifuge machines used to enrich uranium, which can be used as fuel for nuclear energy or nuclear weapons. It must slash its stockpile of enriched uranium and redesign its nuclear reactor in the city of Arak so that it produces less plutonium, which can also be used in a weapon.
Oil-rich Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for entirely peaceful purposes, such as producing electricity and medical isotopes.
ENLARGE
After years of stalling, Iran also must disclose information on its past nuclear activities, which many Western officials suspect was aimed at gaining nuclear weapons know-how. It must provisionally implement an agreement giving United Nations inspectors much broader access to non-nuclear sites including military installations inside the country and eventually get parliamentary approval for that agreement.
The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency and Iran set out a short-term road map that says both sides will aim to finish their discussions of past nuclear work by the end of the year.
The nuclear deal is sure to fan intense political debate in Washington, where Congress may vote within 60 days on the agreement. As a last resort, the Obama administration may have to rely on the support of Democrats to uphold a presidential veto if the Republican-led Congress votes to overturn the agreement.
Among other steps, the U.N. Security Council is supposed to annul past resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran and replace them with a new resolution.
The U.S. will maintain sanctions on Iran linked to its rights abuses, ties to terrorist groups and to support for Syria’s regime among others.
Observers warned that given the complexity of the agreement, which contains one main text and five detailed annexes and totals about 100 pages, the risks of disputes over implementation of terms could cause delays or even derail the deal.
“The technical obstacles can be surpassed with goodwill and diligence, but political hurdles can turn into poison pills,” said Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst at Crisis International, an international conflict resolution group.
According to senior U.S. officials, the agreement will allow a Security Council ban on conventional arms sales to or from Iran to end after five years—or earlier if the U.N. nuclear agency gives its final, full all-clear that Iran’s nuclear program is purely peaceful. That is expected to take many years.
In addition, a ban on trading ballistic missiles and parts with Iran will expire after eight years unless the IAEA gives its all-clear earlier. Iran is committed to using a special procurement channel to buy a wide range of products that could be used in a nuclear weapons program, the official said.
Mr. Kerry said that with three of the countries—Iran, Russia and China— opposed to maintaining the arms ban and able to walk away from the deal, he believed “we did very well to hold onto” these restraints. However, the agreement also includes specific oversight measures that few other countries have ever agreed to. There will be monitoring and oversight of Iran’s uranium mines, plants for manufacturing key parts of centrifuge machines and a range of activities that could be used to develop a nuclear warhead.
Iran deal reached, Obama hails step towards ‘more hopeful world’
Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear deal on Tuesday, capping more than a decade of negotiations with an agreement that could transform the Middle East.
U.S. President Barack Obama hailed a step towards a “more hopeful world” and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said it proved that “constructive engagement works”. But Israel pledged to do what it could to halt what it called an “historic surrender”.
The agreement will now be debated in the U.S. Congress, but Obama said he would veto any measure to block it.
“This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction,” Obama said. “We should seize it.”
Under the deal, sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and United Nations will be lifted in return for Iran agreeing long-term curbs on a nuclear programme that the West has suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb.
The agreement is a political triumph for both Obama, who has long promised to reach out to historic enemies, and Rouhani, a pragmatist elected two years ago on a vow to reduce the isolation of his nation of almost 80 million people.
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Both face scepticism from powerful hardliners at home in nations that referred to each other as “the Great Satan” and a member of the “Axis of Evil”.
“Today is the end to acts of tyranny against our nation and the start of cooperation with the world,” Rouhani said in a televised address. “This is a reciprocal deal. If they stick to it, we will. The Iranian nation has always observed its promises and treaties.”
For Obama, the diplomacy with Iran, begun in secret more than two years ago, ranks alongside his normalisation of ties with Cuba as landmarks in a legacy of reconciliation with foes that tormented his predecessors for decades.
“History shows that America must lead not just with our might but with our principles,” he said in a televised address. “Today’s announcement marks one more chapter in our pursuit of a safer, more helpful and more hopeful world.”
REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION
Republicans lined up to denounce the deal. Presidential candidate Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, called it a terrible deal that would make matters worse. Former senator Rick Santorum, another candidate, said the administration had capitulated to Iran.
The Republican-controlled Congress has 60 days to review the accord, but if it votes to reject it Obama can use his veto, which can be overridden only by two-thirds of lawmakers in both houses. That means dozens of Obama’s fellow Democrats would have to rebel against one of their president’s signature achievements to kill it, an unlikely prospect.
While the main negotiations were between the United States and Iran, the four other U.N. Security Council permanent members, Britain, China, France and Russia, are also parties to the deal, as is Germany.
Enmity between Iran and the United States has loomed over the Middle East for decades.
Iran is the predominant Shi’ite Muslim power, hostile both to Israel and to Washington’s Sunni Muslim-ruled Arab friends, particularly Saudi Arabia. Allies of Riyadh and Tehran have fought decades of sectarian proxy wars in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
But there are also strong reasons for Washington and Tehran to cooperate against common foes, above all Islamic State, the Sunni Muslim militant group that has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq. Washington has been bombing Islamic State from the air while Tehran aids Iraqi militias fighting it on the ground.
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters that the deal was about more than just the nuclear issue:
“The big prize here is that, as Iran comes out of the isolation of the last decades and is much more engaged with Western countries, Iranians hopefully begin to travel in larger numbers again, Western companies are able to invest and trade with Iran, there is an opportunity for an opening now.”
“HISTORIC MISTAKE”
Still, Washington’s friends in the region were furious, especially Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has cultivated a close relationship with Obama’s Republican opponents in Congress.
“Iran will get a jackpot, a cash bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars, which will enable it to continue to pursue its aggression and terror in the region and in the world,” he said. “Iran is going to receive a sure path to nuclear weapons.”
His deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, denounced an “historic surrender” and said Israel would “act with all means to try and stop the agreement being ratified”, a clear threat to use its influence to try and block it in Congress.
Some diplomats in Vienna said the strong Israeli response could actually help, by making it easier for Rouhani to sell the agreement back in Iran.
While Saudi Arabia did not denounce the deal publicly as Israel did, its officials expressed doubt in private.
“We have learned as Iran’s neighbours in the last 40 years that goodwill only led us to harvest sour grapes,” a Saudi official who asked to remain anonymous told Reuters.
Nor were hardliners silent in Iran: “Celebrating too early can send a bad signal to the enemy,” conservative lawmaker Alireza Zakani said in parliament, according to Fars News agency. Iran’s National Security Council would review the accord, “and if they think it is against our national interests, we will not have a deal”.
It will probably be months before Iran receives the benefits from the lifting of sanctions because of the need to verify the deal’s fulfilment. Once implementation is confirmed, Tehran will immediately gain access to around $100 billion in frozen assets, and can step up oil exports that have been slashed by almost two-thirds.
The deal finally emerged after nearly three weeks of intense negotiation between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif – unthinkable for decades, since Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Hatred of the United States is still a central tenet of Iran’s ruling system, on display only last week at an annual protest day, with crowds chanted “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!”.
But Iranians voted overwhelmingly for Rouhani in 2013 on a clear promise to revive their crippled economy by ending Iran’s isolation. Hardline Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not block the negotiations.
“Today could have been the end of hope on this issue, but now we are starting a new chapter of hope,” Zarif, who studied in the United States and developed a warm rapport with Kerry, told a news conference.
Kerry said: “This is the good deal we have sought.”
European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said:
“I think this is a sign of hope for the entire world.”
Obama first reached out to Iranians with an address in 2009, only weeks into his presidency, offering a “new beginning”. But he followed this up with a sharp tightening of financial sanctions, which, combined with sanctions imposed by the EU, have imposed severe economic hardship on Iranians since 2012.
Tehran has long denied seeking a nuclear weapon and has insisted on the right to nuclear technology for peaceful means. Obama never ruled out military force if negotiations failed, and said on Tuesday that future presidents would still have that option if Iran quit the agreement.
France said the deal would ensure Iran’s “breakout time” – the time it would need to build a bomb if it decided to break off the deal – would be one year for the next decade. This has been a main goal of Western negotiators, who wanted to ensure that if a deal collapsed there would be enough time to act.
Obama said Iran had accepted a “snapback” mechanism, under which sanctions would be reinstated if it violated the deal. A U.N. weapons embargo is to remain in place for five years and a ban on buying missile technology will remain for eight years.
Alongside the main deal, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced an agreement with Iran to resolve its own outstanding issues by the end of this year. The main deal depends on the IAEA being able to inspect Iranian nuclear sites and on Iran answering its questions about possible military aims of previous research.
For Iran, the end of sanctions could bring a rapid economic boom by lifting restrictions that have shrunk its economy by about 20 percent, according to U.S. estimates. The prospect of a deal has already helped push down global oil prices because of the possibility that Iranian supply could return to the market.
Oil prices tumbled more than a dollar on Tuesday after the deal was reached. [O/R]
“Even with an historic deal, oil from Iran will take time to return,” Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at London-based consultancy Energy Aspects, told Reuters. “But given how oversupplied the market is with Saudi output at record highs, the mere prospect of new oil will be bearish for sentiment.”
Monday 13 July 2015 06.15 EDT Last modified on Monday 13 July 2015 11.36 EDT
European and Chinese officials are pushing for a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme to be signed on Monday, but Washington and Tehran – the two main protagonists at the negotiations in Vienna – will not be rushed.
The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, told reporters that his team “believes that no agreement could be perfect, and conditions are already in place for us to reach a good agreement,” as he joined his counterparts for the endgame of the negotiations. “We believe that there cannot, and should not, be further delay.”
This latest round of talks got under way in the Austrian capital 17 days ago, though negotiations between the international community and Iran over the country’s atomic aspirations have been held on and off for 12 years.
European diplomats at the talks said on Sunday that the major obstacles to a deal had been cleared away and that they expected an announcement on Monday afternoon, but their American counterparts were more cautious. They distributed logistics information to US journalists covering the negotiations about the choreography of events after an announcement, but a senior state department official insisted “major issues” remain.
Meanwhile, the Iranian delegation also suggested the talks were not yet at the finish line. Its foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said: “We believe there shouldn’t be extension but we can continue working by the time that it’s necessary.” Zarif’s deputy, Abbas Araqchi, said: “I cannot promise whether the remaining issues can be resolved tonight or tomorrow night. Some issues still remain unresolved and, until they are solved, we cannot say an agreement has been reached.”
Diplomats in Vienna suggested that one reason for the delay was that neither the US nor the Iranian delegations wanted to present the White House or the supreme leader a deadline for completing their review of the final text. However, going beyond midnight on Monday would require a 2013 interim deal to be rolled over for the fourth time in a fortnight, to keep a freeze on sanctions and the Iranian nuclear programme in place
Even after a deal is announced, it would take some hours for the text of the agreement, the English version of which stretches to more than 80 pages, including five annexes, to be “scrubbed” or proofread and reviewed by lawyers. Translations would then have to be completed before the final text was sent to the relevant capitals for approval by national leaders.
Under the expected settlement, Iran will accept curbs on its nuclear programme in exchange for extensive sanctions relief. Tehran would also have to subject its facilities to a more rigorous inspections regime. It would represent a historic compromise after a 12-year standoff that has at times threatened to provoke a new conflict in the Middle East. In a statement issued on Sunday, a senior US State Department official said: “We have never speculated about the timing of anything during these negotiations, and we’re certainly not going to start now, especially given the fact that major issues remain to be resolved in these talks.”
The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, returned to the UK for unspecified reasons. Diplomats said he was expected back on Monday and suggested his departure meant that the main political decisions had been taken as far as the UK was concerned, leaving mostly technicalities to finalise. Over the weekend, Iranian officials had said that the UK and Germany had made forceful arguments about their own red lines, and that was confirmed in the British case by western diplomatic sources. Their concerns appeared to have been resolved by Sunday evening.
Once an agreement is announced, it will not take effect for some time. It must first survive a trial by fire from its critics in Washington and Tehran. The greatest hurdle will be the US Congress, where Republicans have a majority and are expected to vote against the deal after a review period of up to 60 days. They will seek to win over 12 Democrats in an attempt to defeat a presidential veto.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, described the expected deal as “a very hard sell”. Bob Corker, the Republican head of the Senate foreign relations committee, told NBC: “At the end of the day I think people understand that if this is a bad deal that is going to allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, they would own this deal if they voted for it, and so they’ll want to disapprove it. On the other hand, if we feel like we’re better off with it, people will look to approve it.”
The European and Chinese foreign ministers have come and gone over the course of the talks and even Zarif left for a day, but John Kerry remained in Vienna throughout. It is the longest time that a US secretary of state has spent abroad in a single location dealing with a single issue since the aftermath of the second world war.
Kerry has also conducted the gruelling fortnight of diplomacy, including repeated late-night meetings, on crutches after a bicycle accident in May. On Sunday morning he attended mass in Vienna’s 14th-century St Stephen’s Cathedral, where Mozart was married and Vivaldi’s funeral was held. Speaking about a late-night meeting with Zarif hours before, he said: “I think we’re getting to some real decisions. So I will say, because we have a few tough things to do, I remain hopeful.”
The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told reporters as he rejoined the talks on Sunday afternoon: “I hope we’re arriving finally at the last phase of these marathon negotiations. I believe so.”
The road ahead
Although the deal could be agreed and published as early as Monday, it will be months before it starts to come into effect. A number of steps have to be taken first:
The US Congress will have two months to review the agreement, and then an extra 22 days are set aside for voting, a possible presidential veto, and then another vote to see if opponents can muster 67 Senate votes to override the veto. At the same time, Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, will study the deal and issue its own verdict, but has no firm timetable.
Assuming it survives legislative scrutiny, the agreement will be codified and incorporated in a UN security council resolution, which will also lift UN sanctions on Iran, conditional on Tehran taking its agreed steps to reduce its nuclear infrastructure. Some Iranian sources say the resolution will come earlier in the process, while the deal is still under legislative review.
Iran will then begin to disconnect centrifuges, remove the core from its heavy-water plant and reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency will monitor and verify the steps taken. Iran will also work with the IAEA to resolve unanswered questions about alleged past nuclear weapon design work.
At the same time, Barack Obama will grant waivers on economic and financial sanctions, and the EU will vote to lift European sanctions. Both sets of sanctions relief will be made contingent on IAEA confirmation that Iran has upheld its side of the bargain.
In a final step, possibly around the end of the year, economic and financial sanctions will be lifted, and an enhanced IAEA inspections regime will be implemented, routinely monitoring Iran’s fuel cycle from uranium mines to enrichment and fuel manufacture, and visiting undeclared sites.
Obama Can’t Force His Iran Deal on the Country without Congress’s Consent
Having the U.N. Security Council bless a deal wouldn’t make it binding under our Constitution. So, as we warned earlier this week, the international-law game it is. It is no secret that Barack Obama does not have much use for the United States Constitution. It is a governing plan for a free, self-determining people. Hence, it is littered with roadblocks against schemes to rule the people against their will. When it comes to our imperious president’s scheme to enable our enemy, Iran, to become a nuclear-weapons power — a scheme that falls somewhere between delusional and despicable, depending on your sense of Obama’s good faith — the salient barrier is that only Congress can make real law.
Most lawmakers think it would be a catastrophe to forge a clear path to the world’s most destructive weapons for the world’s worst regime — a regime that brays “Death to America” as its motto; that has killed thousands of Americans since 1979; that remains the world’s leading state sponsor of jihadist terrorism; that pledges to wipe our ally Israel off the map; and that just three weeks ago, in the midst of negotiations with Obama, conducted a drill in which its armed forces fired ballistic missiles at a replica U.S. aircraft carrier.
This week, 47 perspicuous Republican senators suspected that the subject of congressional power just might have gotten short shrift in Team Obama’s negotiations with the mullahs. So they penned a letter on the subject to the regime in Tehran. The effort was led by Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), who, after Harvard Law School, passed up community organizing for the life of a Bronze Star–awarded combat commander. As one might imagine, Cotton and Obama don’t see this Iran thing quite the same way.
There followed, as night does day, risible howls from top Democrats and their media that these 47 patriots were “traitors” for undermining the president’s empowerment of our enemies. Evidently, writing the letter was not as noble as, say, Ted Kennedy’s canoodling with the Soviets, Nancy Pelosi’s dalliance with Assad, the Democratic party’s Bush-deranged jihad against the war in Iraq, or Senator Barack Obama’s own back-channel outreach to Iran during the 2008 campaign. Gone, like a deleted e-mail, were the good old days when dissent was patriotic.
Yet, as John Yoo observes, the Cotton letter was more akin to mailing Ayatollah Khamenei a copy of the Constitution. The senators explained that our Constitution requires congressional assent for international agreements to be legally binding. Thus, any “executive agreement” on nukes that they manage to strike with the appeaser-in-chief is unenforceable and likely to be revoked when he leaves office in 22 months.
For Obama and other global-governance grandees, this is quaint thinking, elevating outmoded notions like national interest over “sustainable” international “stability” — like the way Hitler stabilized the Sudetenland. These “international community” devotees see the Tea Party as the rogue and the mullahs as rational actors.
o, you see, lasting peace — like they have, for example, in Ukraine — is achieved when the world’s sole superpower exhibits endless restraint and forfeits some sovereignty to the United Nations Security Council, where the enlightened altruists from Moscow, Beijing, and Brussels will figure out what’s best for Senator Cotton’s constituents in Arkansas. This will set a luminous example of refinement that Iran will find irresistible when it grows up ten years from now — the time when Obama, who came to office promising the mullahs would not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons, would have Iran stamped with the international community seal of approval as a nuclear-weapons state.
Down here on Planet Earth, though, most Americans think this is a bad idea. That, along with an injection of grit from the Arkansas freshman, emboldened the normally supine Senate GOP caucus to read Tehran in on the constitutional fact that the president is powerless to bind the United States unless the people’s representatives cement the arrangement.
Obama, naturally, reacted with his trusty weapon against opposition, demagoguery: hilariously suggesting that while the Alinskyite-in-chief had our country’s best interests at heart, the American war hero and his 46 allies were in league with Iran’s “hardliners.” (Yes, having found Muslim Brotherhood secularists, al-Qaeda moderates, and Hezbollah moderates, rest assured that Obama is courting only the evolved ayatollahs.) When that went about as you’d expect, the administration shifted to a strategy with which it is equally comfortable, lying.
Obama’s minions claimed that, of course, the president understands that any agreement he makes with Iran would merely be his “political commitment,” not “legally binding” on the nation. It’s just that Obama figures it would be nice to have the Security Council “endorse” the deal in a resolution because, well, that would “encourage its full implementation.” Uh-huh.
Inconveniently, the administration’s negotiating counterpart is the chattiest of academics, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Afflicted by the Western-educated Islamist’s incorrigible need to prove he’s the smartest kid in the class — especially a class full of American politicians — Zarif let the cat out of the bag. The senators, he smarmed, “may not fully understand . . . international law.”
According to Zarif, the deal under negotiation “will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the U.S., but rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.” He hoped it would “enrich the knowledge” of the 47 senators to learn that “according to international law, Congress may not modify the terms of the agreement.” To do so would be “a material breach of U.S. obligations,” rendering America a global outlaw.
This, mind you, from the lead representative of a terrorist regime that is currently, and brazenly, in violation of Security Council resolutions that prohibit its enrichment of uranium.
Clearly, Obama and the mullahs figure they can run the following stunt: We do not need another treaty approved by Congress because the United States has already ratified the U.N. charter and thus agreed to honor Security Council resolutions. We do not need new statutes because the Congress, in enacting Iran-sanctions legislation, explicitly gave the president the power to waive those sanctions. All we need is to have the Security Council issue a resolution that codifies Congress’s existing sanctions laws with Obama’s waiver. Other countries involved in the negotiations — including Germany, Russia, and China, which have increasingly lucrative trade with Iran — will then very publicly rely on the completed deal. The U.N. and its army of transnational-progressive bureaucrats and lawyers will deduce from this reliance a level of global consensus that incorporates the agreement into the hocus-pocus corpus of customary law. Maybe they’ll even get Justice Ginsburg to cite it glowingly in a Supreme Court ruling. Voila, we have a binding agreement — without any congressional input — that the United States is powerless to alter under international law.
Well, it makes for good theater . . . because that is what international law is. It is a game more of lawyers than of thrones. In essence, it is politics masquerading as a system governed by rules rather than power, as if hanging a sign that says “law” on that system makes it so. At most, international law creates understandings between and among states. Those understandings, however, are only relevant as diplomatic debating points. When, in defiance of international law, Obama decides to overthrow the Qaddafi regime, Clinton decides to bomb Kosovo, or the ayatollahs decide to enrich uranium, the debating points end up not counting for much.
Even when international understandings are validly created by treaty (which requires approval by two-thirds of the Senate), they are not “self-executing,” as the legal lexicon puts it — meaning they are not judicially enforceable and carry no domestic weight. Whether bilateral or multilateral, treaties do not supersede existing federal law unless implemented by new congressional statutes. And they are powerless to amend the Constitution.
The Supreme Court reaffirmed these principles in its 2008 Medellin decision (a case I described here, leading to a ruling Ed Whelan outlined here). The justices held that the president cannot usurp the constitutional authority of other government components under the guise of his power to conduct foreign affairs. Moreover, even a properly ratified treaty can be converted into domestic law only by congressional lawmaking, not by unilateral presidential action.
Obama, therefore, has no power to impose an international agreement by fiat — he has to come to Congress. He can make whatever deal he wants to make with Iran, but the Constitution still gives Congress exclusive authority over foreign commerce. Lawmakers can enact sanctions legislation that does not permit a presidential waiver. Obama would not sign it, but the next president will — especially if the Republicans raise it into a major 2016 campaign issue.
Will the Security Council howl? Sure . . . but so what? It has been said that Senator Cotton should have CC’d the Obama administration on his letter since it, too, seems unfamiliar with the Constitution’s division of authority. A less useless exercise might have been to CC the five other countries involved in the talks (the remaining Security Council members, plus Germany). Even better, as I argued earlier this week, would be a sense-of-the-Senate resolution: Any nation that relies on an executive agreement that is not approved by the United States Congress under the procedures outlined in the Constitution does so at its peril because this agreement is likely to lapse as early as January 20, 2017. International law is a game that two can play, and there is no point in allowing Germany, Russia, and China to pretend that they relied in good faith on Obama’s word being America’s word. It is otherworldly to find an American administration conspiring against the Constitution and the Congress in cahoots with a terror-sponsoring enemy regime, with which we do not even have formal diplomatic relations, in order to pave the enemy’s way to nuclear weapons, of all things. Nevertheless, Republicans and all Americans who want to preserve our constitutional order, must stop telling themselves that we have hit a bottom beneath which Obama will not go. This week, 47 senators seemed ready, finally, to fight back. It’s a start.
Could the Iran Deal Be the Worst International Accord of All Time?
by DANIEL PIPES July 14, 2015 10:27 AM
Barack Obama has repeatedly signaled during the past six and a half years that that his No. 1 priority in foreign affairs is not China, not Russia, not Mexico, but Iran. He wants to bring Iran in from the cold, to transform the Islamic Republic into just another normal member of the so-called international community, thereby ending decades of its aggression and hostility.
In itself, this is a worthy goal; it’s always good policy to reduce the number of enemies. (It brings to mind Nixon going to China.) The problem lies, of course, in the execution.
The conduct of the Iran nuclear negotiations has been wretched, with the Obama administration inconsistent, capitulating, exaggerating, and even deceitful. It forcefully demanded certain terms, then soon after conceded these same terms. Secretary of State John Kerry implausibly announced that we have “absolute knowledge” of what the Iranians have done until now in their nuclear program and therefore have no need for inspections to form a baseline. How can any adult, much less a high official, make such a statement?
The administration misled Americans about its own concessions: After the November 2013 joint plan of action, it came out with a fact sheet that Tehran said was inaccurate. Guess who was right? The Iranians. In brief, the U.S. government has shown itself deeply untrustworthy.
The conduct of the Iran nuclear negotiations has been wretched, with the Obama administration inconsistent, capitulating, exaggerating, and even deceitful. The agreement signed today ends the economic-sanctions regime, permits the Iranians to hide much of their nuclear activities, lacks enforcement in case of Iranian deceit, and expires in slightly more than a decade. Two problems particularly stand out: The Iranian path to nuclear weapons has been eased and legitimated; Tehran will receive a “signing bonus” of some $150 billion that greatly increases its abilities to aggress in the Middle East and beyond. The United States alone, not to speak of the P5+1 countries as a whole, has vastly greater economic and military power than the Islamic Republic of Iran, making this one-sided concession ultimately a bafflement.
Of the administration’s accumulated foreign-policy mistakes in the last six years, none have been catastrophic for the United States: Not the Chinese building islands, the Russians’ taking Crimea, or the collapse into civil wars of Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. But the Iran deal has the makings of a catastrophe.
Attention now shifts to the U.S. Congress to review today’s accord, arguably the worst international accord not just in American history or modern history, but ever. Congress must reject this deal. Republican senators and representatives have shown themselves firm on this topic; will the Democrats rise to the occasion and provide the votes for a veto override? They need to feel the pressure.
In military and other covert operations, terminate with extreme prejudice is a euphemism for aggressive execution (playing on the expression “termination with prejudice” of an employment contract). In a military intelligence context, it is generally understood as an order to assassinate. Its meaning was explained in a New York Times report on an incident during the Vietnam War.[1]
Profiles in Perfidy: Obama and Kerry Lying To American People — The Traitorous Terrorist Treaty — Strategic Surrender To Terrorist Islamic Republic of Iran– No Dismantling and Destruction of Nuclear Infrastructure/Bomb Factories — No Surprise Inspections — No Economic Sanctions — No Limits on Missiles — No Sanctions On Individual Terrorists or Terrorism — The Sellout of America For Nobel Peace Prizes Will Result in Middle East Nuclear Arms Race, Proliferation and War — Iran Celebrates Victory and $150 Billion of Unfrozen Assets To Finance More Terrorism and Oppression — Congress Must Veto The Traitorous Terrorist Treaty — Terminate With Extreme Prejudice — Videos
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Story 1: Profiles in Perfidy: Obama and Kerry Lying To American People — The Traitorous Terrorist Treaty — Strategic Surrender To Terrorist Islamic Republic of Iran– No Dismantling and Destruction of Nuclear Infrastructure/Bomb Factories — No Surprise Inspections — No Economic Sanctions — No Limits on Missiles — No Sanctions On Individual Terrorists or Terrorism — The Sellout of America For Nobel Peace Prizes Will Result in Middle East Nuclear Arms Race, Proliferation and War — Iran Celebrates Victory and $150 Billion of Unfrozen Assets To Finance More Terrorism and Oppression — Congress Must Veto The Traitorous Terrorist Treaty — Terminate With Extreme Prejudice — Videos
per·fi·dy
(pûr′fĭ-dē)
n. pl. per·fi·dies
Iran nuclear deal: full text of joint comprehensive plan of action
Buzzfeed has linked to a document posted by the Russian government that appears to be the text of the deal on Iran’s nuclear programme
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Apocalypse Now – Terminate, with extreme prejudice
Iran, World Powers Reach Nuclear Deal
Accord sets White House on course for months of political strife with dissenters in Congress, Mideast allies
By LAURENCE NORMAN and
Updated July 14, 2015 1:14 p.m. ET
Iran reached a landmark nuclear agreement with the U.S. and five other world powers, a long-sought foreign policy goal of President Barack Obama that sets the White House on course for months of political strife with dissenters in Congress and in allied Middle Eastern nations.
The accord, which comes after a decade of diplomatic efforts that frequently appeared on the verge of collapse, aims to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief.
The Obama administration and its partners hope the deal will resolve a dispute that at times threatened to spark a military conflict. In the optimistic view, it would ease tensions with Tehran over time and pave the way for fresh attempts to resolve some of the region’s many other conflicts.
In an address from the White House early Tuesday, Mr. Obama hailed the deal, threatening to veto any vote in Congress against it.
“Today, because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region,” he said. “Because of this deal, the international community will be able to verify that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon.”
Critics in Washington, Israel and the Gulf nations that neighbor Iran say the deal will merely delay the country’s path to nuclear weapons. After 10 years of restraint on its activities mandated by the agreement, Iran will then be able to ratchet up its nuclear program and potentially unleash a nuclear arms race in the region, they fear.
Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahucalled the deal a historic mistake.
“Wide-ranging concessions were made in all of the areas which should have prevented Iran from getting the ability to arm itself with a nuclear weapon,’’ Mr. Netanyahu said. “The desire to sign an agreement was stronger than everything else.”
The deal could provoke new strains in U.S. ties with its traditional Middle Eastern allies in Israel and Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia. All have warned that lifting tight international sanctions will deliver an economic windfall that enables Iran to expand its regional influence by boosting funding for proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere.
The last two years of diplomacy were the most intense dialogue between Washington and Tehran since diplomatic relations were ruptured after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“Today, a new page has turned,” Iranian PresidentHassan Rouhani said in a nationally televised speech, adding that the deal met all his country’s goals.
The final round of negotiations stretched for more than two weeks and was punctuated by tensions and setbacks, at times devolving into shouting matches among international officials. The U.S. repeatedly warned it was willing to walk away from a bad deal while Iranians threatened to rev their nuclear program back up.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has spearheaded negotiations over the past two years, praised his Iranian counterpartJavad Zarif as a tough negotiator and a patriot, saying the two had maintained mutual respect throughout often heated talks.
However Mr. Kerry said the administration was fully aware that the nuclear deal would not resolve Washington’s concerns about Iran’s actions.
“From the very beginning of this process, we have considered not only our own security concerns but also the serious and legitimate anxieties of our friends and our allies in the region—especially Israel and the Gulf States,” he said.
“What we are announcing today is an agreement addressing the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Period.”
At the heart of the agreement between Iran and 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. In exchange, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations will lift tight international sanctions on Tehran, a move that Western diplomats say could help Iran’s economy to expand by 7% to 8% annually for years to come.
Iran, which analysts say could double oil exports quickly after sanctions are lifted, will also receive more than $100 billion in assets locked overseas under U.S. sanctions.
Mr. Obama has cast the nuclear diplomacy as an effort to avoid another costly, risky war in the Middle East. He recently said that even if the U.S. took military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it would only partially set back Tehran’s program, not eliminate it.
The nuclear agreement still faces significant hurdles before it takes full effect.
Iran must take an array of specific steps. It must disable two-thirds of its centrifuge machines used to enrich uranium, which can be used as fuel for nuclear energy or nuclear weapons. It must slash its stockpile of enriched uranium and redesign its nuclear reactor in the city of Arak so that it produces less plutonium, which can also be used in a weapon.
Oil-rich Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for entirely peaceful purposes, such as producing electricity and medical isotopes.
After years of stalling, Iran also must disclose information on its past nuclear activities, which many Western officials suspect was aimed at gaining nuclear weapons know-how. It must provisionally implement an agreement giving United Nations inspectors much broader access to non-nuclear sites including military installations inside the country and eventually get parliamentary approval for that agreement.
The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency and Iran set out a short-term road map that says both sides will aim to finish their discussions of past nuclear work by the end of the year.
The nuclear deal is sure to fan intense political debate in Washington, where Congress may vote within 60 days on the agreement. As a last resort, the Obama administration may have to rely on the support of Democrats to uphold a presidential veto if the Republican-led Congress votes to overturn the agreement.
FULL TEXT OF THE DEAL
Among other steps, the U.N. Security Council is supposed to annul past resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran and replace them with a new resolution.
The U.S. will maintain sanctions on Iran linked to its rights abuses, ties to terrorist groups and to support for Syria’s regime among others.
Observers warned that given the complexity of the agreement, which contains one main text and five detailed annexes and totals about 100 pages, the risks of disputes over implementation of terms could cause delays or even derail the deal.
“The technical obstacles can be surpassed with goodwill and diligence, but political hurdles can turn into poison pills,” said Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst at Crisis International, an international conflict resolution group.
According to senior U.S. officials, the agreement will allow a Security Council ban on conventional arms sales to or from Iran to end after five years—or earlier if the U.N. nuclear agency gives its final, full all-clear that Iran’s nuclear program is purely peaceful. That is expected to take many years.
MORE ON THE IRAN NUCLEAR AGREEMENT
In addition, a ban on trading ballistic missiles and parts with Iran will expire after eight years unless the IAEA gives its all-clear earlier. Iran is committed to using a special procurement channel to buy a wide range of products that could be used in a nuclear weapons program, the official said.
Mr. Kerry said that with three of the countries—Iran, Russia and China— opposed to maintaining the arms ban and able to walk away from the deal, he believed “we did very well to hold onto” these restraints. However, the agreement also includes specific oversight measures that few other countries have ever agreed to. There will be monitoring and oversight of Iran’s uranium mines, plants for manufacturing key parts of centrifuge machines and a range of activities that could be used to develop a nuclear warhead.
Iran deal reached, Obama hails step towards ‘more hopeful world’
Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear deal on Tuesday, capping more than a decade of negotiations with an agreement that could transform the Middle East.
U.S. President Barack Obama hailed a step towards a “more hopeful world” and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said it proved that “constructive engagement works”. But Israel pledged to do what it could to halt what it called an “historic surrender”.
The agreement will now be debated in the U.S. Congress, but Obama said he would veto any measure to block it.
“This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction,” Obama said. “We should seize it.”
Under the deal, sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and United Nations will be lifted in return for Iran agreeing long-term curbs on a nuclear programme that the West has suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb.
The agreement is a political triumph for both Obama, who has long promised to reach out to historic enemies, and Rouhani, a pragmatist elected two years ago on a vow to reduce the isolation of his nation of almost 80 million people.
Both face scepticism from powerful hardliners at home in nations that referred to each other as “the Great Satan” and a member of the “Axis of Evil”.
“Today is the end to acts of tyranny against our nation and the start of cooperation with the world,” Rouhani said in a televised address. “This is a reciprocal deal. If they stick to it, we will. The Iranian nation has always observed its promises and treaties.”
For Obama, the diplomacy with Iran, begun in secret more than two years ago, ranks alongside his normalisation of ties with Cuba as landmarks in a legacy of reconciliation with foes that tormented his predecessors for decades.
“History shows that America must lead not just with our might but with our principles,” he said in a televised address. “Today’s announcement marks one more chapter in our pursuit of a safer, more helpful and more hopeful world.”
REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION
Republicans lined up to denounce the deal. Presidential candidate Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, called it a terrible deal that would make matters worse. Former senator Rick Santorum, another candidate, said the administration had capitulated to Iran.
The Republican-controlled Congress has 60 days to review the accord, but if it votes to reject it Obama can use his veto, which can be overridden only by two-thirds of lawmakers in both houses. That means dozens of Obama’s fellow Democrats would have to rebel against one of their president’s signature achievements to kill it, an unlikely prospect.
While the main negotiations were between the United States and Iran, the four other U.N. Security Council permanent members, Britain, China, France and Russia, are also parties to the deal, as is Germany.
Enmity between Iran and the United States has loomed over the Middle East for decades.
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Iran is the predominant Shi’ite Muslim power, hostile both to Israel and to Washington’s Sunni Muslim-ruled Arab friends, particularly Saudi Arabia. Allies of Riyadh and Tehran have fought decades of sectarian proxy wars in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
But there are also strong reasons for Washington and Tehran to cooperate against common foes, above all Islamic State, the Sunni Muslim militant group that has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq. Washington has been bombing Islamic State from the air while Tehran aids Iraqi militias fighting it on the ground.
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters that the deal was about more than just the nuclear issue:
“The big prize here is that, as Iran comes out of the isolation of the last decades and is much more engaged with Western countries, Iranians hopefully begin to travel in larger numbers again, Western companies are able to invest and trade with Iran, there is an opportunity for an opening now.”
“HISTORIC MISTAKE”
Still, Washington’s friends in the region were furious, especially Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has cultivated a close relationship with Obama’s Republican opponents in Congress.
“Iran will get a jackpot, a cash bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars, which will enable it to continue to pursue its aggression and terror in the region and in the world,” he said. “Iran is going to receive a sure path to nuclear weapons.”
His deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, denounced an “historic surrender” and said Israel would “act with all means to try and stop the agreement being ratified”, a clear threat to use its influence to try and block it in Congress.
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Some diplomats in Vienna said the strong Israeli response could actually help, by making it easier for Rouhani to sell the agreement back in Iran.
While Saudi Arabia did not denounce the deal publicly as Israel did, its officials expressed doubt in private.
“We have learned as Iran’s neighbours in the last 40 years that goodwill only led us to harvest sour grapes,” a Saudi official who asked to remain anonymous told Reuters.
Nor were hardliners silent in Iran: “Celebrating too early can send a bad signal to the enemy,” conservative lawmaker Alireza Zakani said in parliament, according to Fars News agency. Iran’s National Security Council would review the accord, “and if they think it is against our national interests, we will not have a deal”.
It will probably be months before Iran receives the benefits from the lifting of sanctions because of the need to verify the deal’s fulfilment. Once implementation is confirmed, Tehran will immediately gain access to around $100 billion in frozen assets, and can step up oil exports that have been slashed by almost two-thirds.
The deal finally emerged after nearly three weeks of intense negotiation between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif – unthinkable for decades, since Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Hatred of the United States is still a central tenet of Iran’s ruling system, on display only last week at an annual protest day, with crowds chanted “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!”.
But Iranians voted overwhelmingly for Rouhani in 2013 on a clear promise to revive their crippled economy by ending Iran’s isolation. Hardline Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not block the negotiations.
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“NEW CHAPTER OF HOPE”
“Today could have been the end of hope on this issue, but now we are starting a new chapter of hope,” Zarif, who studied in the United States and developed a warm rapport with Kerry, told a news conference.
Kerry said: “This is the good deal we have sought.”
European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said:
“I think this is a sign of hope for the entire world.”
Obama first reached out to Iranians with an address in 2009, only weeks into his presidency, offering a “new beginning”. But he followed this up with a sharp tightening of financial sanctions, which, combined with sanctions imposed by the EU, have imposed severe economic hardship on Iranians since 2012.
Tehran has long denied seeking a nuclear weapon and has insisted on the right to nuclear technology for peaceful means. Obama never ruled out military force if negotiations failed, and said on Tuesday that future presidents would still have that option if Iran quit the agreement.
France said the deal would ensure Iran’s “breakout time” – the time it would need to build a bomb if it decided to break off the deal – would be one year for the next decade. This has been a main goal of Western negotiators, who wanted to ensure that if a deal collapsed there would be enough time to act.
Obama said Iran had accepted a “snapback” mechanism, under which sanctions would be reinstated if it violated the deal. A U.N. weapons embargo is to remain in place for five years and a ban on buying missile technology will remain for eight years.
Alongside the main deal, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced an agreement with Iran to resolve its own outstanding issues by the end of this year. The main deal depends on the IAEA being able to inspect Iranian nuclear sites and on Iran answering its questions about possible military aims of previous research.
For Iran, the end of sanctions could bring a rapid economic boom by lifting restrictions that have shrunk its economy by about 20 percent, according to U.S. estimates. The prospect of a deal has already helped push down global oil prices because of the possibility that Iranian supply could return to the market.
Oil prices tumbled more than a dollar on Tuesday after the deal was reached. [O/R]
“Even with an historic deal, oil from Iran will take time to return,” Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at London-based consultancy Energy Aspects, told Reuters. “But given how oversupplied the market is with Saudi output at record highs, the mere prospect of new oil will be bearish for sentiment.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/14/us-iran-nuclear-idUSKCN0PM0CE20150714
Iran nuclear talks: comprehensive deal inches closer
Western diplomats in Vienna say American and Iranian negotiators declare they will take their time, even if everyone else is on the same page
Julian Borger in Vienna
Monday 13 July 2015 06.15 EDT Last modified on Monday 13 July 2015 11.36 EDT
European and Chinese officials are pushing for a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme to be signed on Monday, but Washington and Tehran – the two main protagonists at the negotiations in Vienna – will not be rushed.
The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, told reporters that his team “believes that no agreement could be perfect, and conditions are already in place for us to reach a good agreement,” as he joined his counterparts for the endgame of the negotiations. “We believe that there cannot, and should not, be further delay.”
This latest round of talks got under way in the Austrian capital 17 days ago, though negotiations between the international community and Iran over the country’s atomic aspirations have been held on and off for 12 years.
European diplomats at the talks said on Sunday that the major obstacles to a deal had been cleared away and that they expected an announcement on Monday afternoon, but their American counterparts were more cautious. They distributed logistics information to US journalists covering the negotiations about the choreography of events after an announcement, but a senior state department official insisted “major issues” remain.
Meanwhile, the Iranian delegation also suggested the talks were not yet at the finish line. Its foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said: “We believe there shouldn’t be extension but we can continue working by the time that it’s necessary.” Zarif’s deputy, Abbas Araqchi, said: “I cannot promise whether the remaining issues can be resolved tonight or tomorrow night. Some issues still remain unresolved and, until they are solved, we cannot say an agreement has been reached.”
Diplomats in Vienna suggested that one reason for the delay was that neither the US nor the Iranian delegations wanted to present the White House or the supreme leader a deadline for completing their review of the final text. However, going beyond midnight on Monday would require a 2013 interim deal to be rolled over for the fourth time in a fortnight, to keep a freeze on sanctions and the Iranian nuclear programme in place
Even after a deal is announced, it would take some hours for the text of the agreement, the English version of which stretches to more than 80 pages, including five annexes, to be “scrubbed” or proofread and reviewed by lawyers. Translations would then have to be completed before the final text was sent to the relevant capitals for approval by national leaders.
Under the expected settlement, Iran will accept curbs on its nuclear programme in exchange for extensive sanctions relief. Tehran would also have to subject its facilities to a more rigorous inspections regime. It would represent a historic compromise after a 12-year standoff that has at times threatened to provoke a new conflict in the Middle East. In a statement issued on Sunday, a senior US State Department official said: “We have never speculated about the timing of anything during these negotiations, and we’re certainly not going to start now, especially given the fact that major issues remain to be resolved in these talks.”
The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, returned to the UK for unspecified reasons. Diplomats said he was expected back on Monday and suggested his departure meant that the main political decisions had been taken as far as the UK was concerned, leaving mostly technicalities to finalise. Over the weekend, Iranian officials had said that the UK and Germany had made forceful arguments about their own red lines, and that was confirmed in the British case by western diplomatic sources. Their concerns appeared to have been resolved by Sunday evening.
Once an agreement is announced, it will not take effect for some time. It must first survive a trial by fire from its critics in Washington and Tehran. The greatest hurdle will be the US Congress, where Republicans have a majority and are expected to vote against the deal after a review period of up to 60 days. They will seek to win over 12 Democrats in an attempt to defeat a presidential veto.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, described the expected deal as “a very hard sell”. Bob Corker, the Republican head of the Senate foreign relations committee, told NBC: “At the end of the day I think people understand that if this is a bad deal that is going to allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, they would own this deal if they voted for it, and so they’ll want to disapprove it. On the other hand, if we feel like we’re better off with it, people will look to approve it.”
The European and Chinese foreign ministers have come and gone over the course of the talks and even Zarif left for a day, but John Kerry remained in Vienna throughout. It is the longest time that a US secretary of state has spent abroad in a single location dealing with a single issue since the aftermath of the second world war.
Kerry has also conducted the gruelling fortnight of diplomacy, including repeated late-night meetings, on crutches after a bicycle accident in May. On Sunday morning he attended mass in Vienna’s 14th-century St Stephen’s Cathedral, where Mozart was married and Vivaldi’s funeral was held. Speaking about a late-night meeting with Zarif hours before, he said: “I think we’re getting to some real decisions. So I will say, because we have a few tough things to do, I remain hopeful.”
The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told reporters as he rejoined the talks on Sunday afternoon: “I hope we’re arriving finally at the last phase of these marathon negotiations. I believe so.”
The road ahead
Although the deal could be agreed and published as early as Monday, it will be months before it starts to come into effect. A number of steps have to be taken first:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/iran-nuclear-talks-comprehensive-deal-to-be-announced-as-early-as-monday
Obama Can’t Force His Iran Deal on the Country without Congress’s Consent
Even when international understandings are validly created by treaty (which requires approval by two-thirds of the Senate), they are not “self-executing,” as the legal lexicon puts it — meaning they are not judicially enforceable and carry no domestic weight. Whether bilateral or multilateral, treaties do not supersede existing federal law unless implemented by new congressional statutes. And they are powerless to amend the Constitution.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415401/obama-cant-force-his-iran-deal-country-without-congresss-consent-andrew-c-mccarthy
Could the Iran Deal Be the Worst International Accord of All Time?
by DANIEL PIPES July 14, 2015 10:27 AM
Barack Obama has repeatedly signaled during the past six and a half years that that his No. 1 priority in foreign affairs is not China, not Russia, not Mexico, but Iran. He wants to bring Iran in from the cold, to transform the Islamic Republic into just another normal member of the so-called international community, thereby ending decades of its aggression and hostility.
In itself, this is a worthy goal; it’s always good policy to reduce the number of enemies. (It brings to mind Nixon going to China.) The problem lies, of course, in the execution.
The conduct of the Iran nuclear negotiations has been wretched, with the Obama administration inconsistent, capitulating, exaggerating, and even deceitful. It forcefully demanded certain terms, then soon after conceded these same terms. Secretary of State John Kerry implausibly announced that we have “absolute knowledge” of what the Iranians have done until now in their nuclear program and therefore have no need for inspections to form a baseline. How can any adult, much less a high official, make such a statement?
The administration misled Americans about its own concessions: After the November 2013 joint plan of action, it came out with a fact sheet that Tehran said was inaccurate. Guess who was right? The Iranians. In brief, the U.S. government has shown itself deeply untrustworthy.
The conduct of the Iran nuclear negotiations has been wretched, with the Obama administration inconsistent, capitulating, exaggerating, and even deceitful. The agreement signed today ends the economic-sanctions regime, permits the Iranians to hide much of their nuclear activities, lacks enforcement in case of Iranian deceit, and expires in slightly more than a decade. Two problems particularly stand out: The Iranian path to nuclear weapons has been eased and legitimated; Tehran will receive a “signing bonus” of some $150 billion that greatly increases its abilities to aggress in the Middle East and beyond. The United States alone, not to speak of the P5+1 countries as a whole, has vastly greater economic and military power than the Islamic Republic of Iran, making this one-sided concession ultimately a bafflement.
Of the administration’s accumulated foreign-policy mistakes in the last six years, none have been catastrophic for the United States: Not the Chinese building islands, the Russians’ taking Crimea, or the collapse into civil wars of Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. But the Iran deal has the makings of a catastrophe.
Attention now shifts to the U.S. Congress to review today’s accord, arguably the worst international accord not just in American history or modern history, but ever. Congress must reject this deal. Republican senators and representatives have shown themselves firm on this topic; will the Democrats rise to the occasion and provide the votes for a veto override? They need to feel the pressure.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421151/iran-nuclear-deal-catastrophe
Terminate with extreme prejudice
In military and other covert operations, terminate with extreme prejudice is a euphemism for aggressive execution (playing on the expression “termination with prejudice” of an employment contract). In a military intelligence context, it is generally understood as an order to assassinate. Its meaning was explained in a New York Times report on an incident during the Vietnam War.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminate_with_extreme_prejudice
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