No American president would destroy Iranian nuclear sites without first exhausting diplomacy. It advocates for crippling sanctions on Iran, including medicines, as a way to cause domestic hardship and internal turmoil and its experts are leading advocates for a United States military strike on Iran.
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“The message of the video is that the threat posed by nuclear weapons is greater now because of the failure of the Obama administration to stand up to Iran“, Stewart said, though nothing in the video explicitly says the country is worse off now. For instance, Iran has not been invited to the Geneva peace conferences regarding Syria because it is considered a contributor to the crisis in the country.
But Western officials indicated they have yet to see new proposals from Iran that could end the deadlock. This is not a matter of power balance for Israel insofar as it is a matter of survival.
“All of this is inevitably to some extent posturing, but it’s also real and important in terms of setting the expectations for the negotiating parties”, as well as setting the political context at home, said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution and a former State Department Iran policy adviser. You wouldn’t know from his column that Iran is a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), subjecting it to intrusive inspections for many years.
A few minutes’ thought will indicate that Iran’s leadership has many reasons not to want nuclear weapons, which Khamenei condemned in a fatwa some time ago. “So if you think the Middle East is volatile now, just wait”.
At the same time, Israeli media are reporting a “done deal” in the talks, saying that there are plans to sign the pact early next week, and that the deal was reached after the U.S. made a few “capitulations over the past two to three weeks”.
“Reducing our presence in the Middle East could leave space for Iran to pursue its hegemonic goals”, he warned.
So Mr. Obama’s deal-making is in effect establishing the necessary conditions for military action after January 2017, when a new president takes office. In this respect, a nuclear deal will give the Rouhani government the opportunity to further convince the domestic audience of the value of cooperation with the United States. Most comes from a handful of super-wealthy individuals.
The largest donor is Sheldon Adelson, a casino and business magnate who contributed nearly $100 million to conservative candidates in the 2012 presidential campaign, outspending any other individual or organization.
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If a comprehensive agreement is reached by July 10, under USA law Congress has 30 days in which to decide whether to accept or reject it. Prospects are uncertain for the Obama administration to complete a deal, but if the accord isn’t sent to Congress by Thursday, its month-long review period would be doubled to 60 days. The pathetic irony is that the democratic move of giving Congress a say in the Iran deal (instead of leaving the administration with the authority to seal the agreement), the billionaires have a better shot at drowning out the voices of the American people.
