rickyp wrote:ray

I cannot speak for others, but I'm well aware of these issues and I think it is a bad deal. Perhaps we are smarter than you think?

SInce there is no deal signed yet, how do you know its bad?

Ray Jay wrote:

rickyp wrote:ray

I cannot speak for others, but I'm well aware of these issues and I think it is a bad deal. Perhaps we are smarter than you think?

SInce there is no deal signed yet, how do you know its bad?

Because there is wide scale reporting that it doesn't adhere to the objectives that Obama detailed about a year ago.

rickyp wrote:for your consideration....

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origina ... dari.html#

One of Iran's well-connected conservative editors said that the nuclear deal being negotiated could end Iran's ballistic missile program.

f I was a "conservative" Iranian, this is what I would say publicly in an effort to sell the deal to foreign doubters

rickyp wrote:ray
I

f I was a "conservative" Iranian, this is what I would say publicly in an effort to sell the deal to foreign doubters

You really have trouble understanding that there is a domestic audience and an internal debate within Iran.

Doctor Fate wrote:

rickyp wrote:ray
I

f I was a "conservative" Iranian, this is what I would say publicly in an effort to sell the deal to foreign doubters

You really have trouble understanding that there is a domestic audience and an internal debate within Iran.

You really have trouble understanding the difference between "Ray Jay" and "Doctor Fate." They're so similar . . .

President Barack Obama speaks to the media about progress in nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran in the Rose Garden of the White House, April 2 2015. (Olivier Douliery / Pool/EPA)
By Editorial Board April 2 at 6:11 PM

THE “KEY parameters” for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program released Thursday fall well short of the goals originally set by the Obama administration. None of Iran’s nuclear facilities — including the Fordow center buried under a mountain — will be closed. Not one of the country’s 19,000 centrifuges will be dismantled. Tehran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium will be “reduced” but not necessarily shipped out of the country. In effect, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will remain intact, though some of it will be mothballed for 10 years. When the accord lapses, the Islamic Republic will instantly become a threshold nuclear state.

That’s a long way from the standard set by President Obama in 2012 when he declared that “the deal we’ll accept” with Iran “is that they end their nuclear program” and “abide by the U.N. resolutions that have been in place.” Those resolutions call for Iran to suspend the enrichment of uranium. Instead, under the agreement announced Thursday, enrichment will continue with 5,000 centrifuges for a decade, and all restraints on it will end in 15 years.

Mr. Obama argued forcefully — and sometimes combatively — Thursday that the United States and its partners had obtained “a good deal” and that it was preferable to the alternatives, which he described as a nearly inevitable slide toward war. He also said he welcomed a “robust debate.” We hope that, as that debate goes forward, the president and his aides will respond substantively to legitimate questions, rather than claim, as Mr. Obama did, that the “inevitable critics” who “sound off” prefer “the risk of another war in the Middle East.”

The proposed accord will provide Iran a huge economic boost that will allow it to wage more aggressively the wars it is already fighting or sponsoring across the region. Whether that concession is worthwhile will depend in part on details that have yet to be agreed upon, or at least publicly explained. For example, the guidance released by the White House is vague in saying that U.S. and European Union sanctions “will be suspended after” international inspectors have “verified that Iran has taken all of its key nuclear related steps.” Exactly what steps would Iran have to complete, and what would the verification consist of?

his is an astonishingly good Iran deal

Even though the agreement is only a framework, the summary released on Thursday goes into striking detail on an issue that was always going to be among the most crucial: inspections.

Whatever number of centrifuges Iran has or doesn't have, whatever amount of uranium it's allowed to keep or forced to give up, none of it matters unless inspectors have enough authority to hold Tehran to its end of the deal — and to convince the Iranians that they could never get away with cheating. To say the US got favorable terms here would be quite an understatement; the Iranians, when it comes to inspections, practically gave away the farm.

"I would give it an A," Stein said of the framework. When I asked why: "Because of the inspections and transparency."

There are two reasons inspections are so important. The first is that super-stringent inspections are a deterrent: if the Iranians know that any deviation is going to be quickly caught, they have much less incentive to try to cheat, and much more incentive to uphold their side of the deal.

The second is that if Iran were to try a build a nuclear weapon now, it likely wouldn't use the material that's already known to the world and being monitored. Rather, the Iranians would secretly manufacture some off-the-books centrifuges, secretly mine some off-the-books uranium, and squirrel it all away to a new, secret underground facility somewhere. That would be the only way for Iran to build up enough of an arsenal such that by the time the world found out, it would be too late to do anything about it.

Really robust inspections would be the best way stop that from happening. They would prevent Iran from sneaking off centrifuges or siphoning away uranium that could be used to build an off-the-grid nuclear weapons program, without the world finding out.

The inspections issue has not gotten much political attention. When I spoke to Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Middlebury's Monterey Institute of International Studies, on Tuesday before the framework was announced, he seemed worried that negotiators would not focus on it much. Rather, overwhelming political focus in Washington and Tehran on issues like Iran's number of allowed centrifuges seemed likely to push inspections from the top priorities.

Lewis suggested that a top item on his wish list would be inspections so robust that inspectors don't just get to visit enrichment sites like Natanz and Fordow, but also centrifuge factories. That, he said, "would be a big achievement."

Sure enough, come Thursday, Lewis got his wish and then some: centrifuge factory inspections is one of the terms in the framework, and it's pretty robust. For the next 20 years, inspectors would have "continuous surveillance at Iran's centrifuge rotors and bellows production and storage facilities."

"I was shocked to read that they got them to agree to let us walk around their centrifuge production facilities. That's amazing," Stein said.

It's not just centrifuge factories. Inspectors will have access to all parts of Iran's nuclear supply chain, including its uranium mines and the mills where it processes uranium ore. Inspectors will also not just monitor but be required to pre-approve all sales to Iran of nuclear-related equipment. This provision also applies to something called "dual-use" materials, which means any equipment that could be used toward a nuclear program.

"The inspections and transparency on the rotors, and the bellows, and the uranium mines is more than I ever thought would be in this agreement," Stein added

rickyp wrote:

his is an astonishingly good Iran deal

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/2/8337347/iran-deal-good.

A shorthand people sometimes use to evaluate the size of Iran's nuclear program is its "breakout time." If Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei woke up tomorrow morning and decided to kick out all of the inspectors and set his entire nuclear program toward building a nuclear warhead — to "break out" to a bomb — right now it would take him two or three months. Under the terms of the framework, his program would be so much smaller that it would take him an entire year to build a single nuclear warhead.

Likely to be most problematic of all is Iran’s response to questions about its past research into nuclear weapons production, including bomb designs and detonators. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that Iran has stonewalled on all but one of a dozen questions the agency has posed. Iran has denied the IAEA access to its Parchin military base, where the United Nations nuclear watchdog group suspects it tested explosives that could be used to detonate a bomb.

Iran denies it has ever pursued a military application to its nuclear program. But U.S. intelligence officials say they are confident Iran aggressively researched bomb-making until 2003, when that aspect of its program was halted.

Thursday’s agreement is vague on this score. The fact sheet says only that Iran “will implement an agreed set of measures to address the IAEA’s concerns,” but those measures aren’t detailed.

The past research into bomb-making “appears to be one of the few Achilles’ heels here,” said Joseph. On that point, he added: “It doesn’t appear as if Iran agreed to do anything specific.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/t ... z3WGVgRKHU

On Friday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Europe 1 radio that France had rejected an original of the deal outline as “not solid enough”, and had held out for firmer conditions. However, Fabius told the radio station that the Iranian delegation had responded by threatening to walk out of the talks.

The French delegation was considered by observers to be one of the hardest bargainers of the P5+1 countries, a group which also included the U.S., Britain, Germany, Russia and China. Fabius told Europe 1 that France wants a firm deal “to prevent other countries in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia from embarking on nuclear proliferation.”

Fabius said his rejection was of the same deal, the day before Kerry accepted it:

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who represented France in the nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, revealed on Friday that his nation had rejected an original version of the deal reached the day before for not being “solid enough.”

“I’m a little puzzled by the political agreement,” said Olli Heinonen, a previous inspections chief at the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. “You’re going to leave Iran as a threshold state. There isn’t much room to maneuver.”

t's shocking that a Vox writer thinks this is a good deal. He cites one "expert." Okay. I find this paragraph of your link interesting

A shorthand people sometimes use to evaluate the size of Iran's nuclear program is its "breakout time." If Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei woke up tomorrow morning and decided to kick out all of the inspectors and set his entire nuclear program toward building a nuclear warhead — to "break out" to a bomb — right now it would take him two or three months. Under the terms of the framework, his program would be so much smaller that it would take him an entire year to build a single nuclear warhead.

So . . . Iran could have a bomb before the deal is signed. Hmm

it would take him an entire year to build a single nuclear warhead

rickyp wrote:fate

t's shocking that a Vox writer thinks this is a good deal. He cites one "expert." Okay. I find this paragraph of your link interesting

:

A shorthand people sometimes use to evaluate the size of Iran's nuclear program is its "breakout time." If Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei woke up tomorrow morning and decided to kick out all of the inspectors and set his entire nuclear program toward building a nuclear warhead — to "break out" to a bomb — right now it would take him two or three months. Under the terms of the framework, his program would be so much smaller that it would take him an entire year to build a single nuclear warhead.

fate

So . . . Iran could have a bomb before the deal is signed. Hmm

.

Which provides you evidence that the effectiveness of the current sanctions in keeping them from a nuclear weapon is nil...

Whats the alternative being offered? Continued sanctions? Unlikely to happen. China was convinced to join sanctions and that makes the sanctions effective. But if the US torpedoes a reasonable deal, China will bail and turn oil rich Iran into a client economy.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani went on state-run television today to explain the deal that has been reached (in principle, at least) to the Iranian people. FARS News describes the speech:

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani underlined on Friday that all the UN and economic, financial and banking sanctions against Iran will be annuled the moment a final nuclear deal between Iran and the six world powers goes into effect.

This was a key bargaining point for Iran. Iran’s compliance with the agreement will stretch, problematically, over a period of years, but all sanctions will be lifted immediately.

In a public address on the state-run TV on Friday, President Rouhani reminded his election campaign slogan that he would keep Iran’s nuclear industry running and remove the sanctions against the country, and said the Iranian nation is now closer to this goal more than ever.

He said his administration had a four-step plan, which included the attainment of an interim deal, “and after months of efforts, specially during the last few days, the second objective was also materialized last night”.

In other words, the West caved on the immediate lifting of all sanctions.

“In this second step, we have both maintenance of nuclear rights and removal of sanctions alongside constructive interaction with the world,” the president continued

.

France walked away. France says we surrendered our principles to get a deal. We should have walked away. Obama could let the Congress increase sanctions

We are not completely at the end of the road and the end of the road should be in June,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. "Nothing is signed until everything is signed, but things are going in the right direction.