Press TV has conducted an interview with Mark Glenn, an author and journalist in Idaho, about US Secretary of State John Kerry’s vigorous defense of the successful conclusion of Iran’s nuclear talks with six world powers.
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Rowhani defended the deal following criticism from Revolutionary Guards and conservative lawmakers that it endangers Iran’s security.
He also said he expects support for the deal from Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival in the Middle East. Half a world away, by coincidence or not, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the agreement appears to have the provisions needed to curtail Iran’s ability to obtain a nuclear weapon.
“If Iran violates the commitments once we suspended the sanctions, we will be able to promptly snap back both U.S. and UN sanctions“, Lew told the committee.
He says it is “unrealistic to think that additional sanctions pressure would force Iran to totally capitulate”.
The White House celebration of the deal with Iran is officially over.
That is a fantasy, plain and simple, and our own intelligence community will tell you that.
“We hope that Iran will make use of the deal’s fruits to re-build their country and to improve their people’s quality of living, not to use it to conduct more subversion in the region”.
President Obama assures us that the nuclear agreement he struck with Iran cuts off every avenue they have for developing a nuclear weapon within the next 10 to 15 years.
“It is necessary for the Group 5+1 members to push for implementing the next steps of the nuclear deal”, he added. “You have 535 secretaries of state, you can’t deal with anybody”.
Even so, no matter the objections and Republicans leveled many in a hearing that stretched until midafternoon Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew were ready with responses.
Although some Democrats raised specific questions, most were supportive and provided openings for witness affirmations that the deal is a good one.
Congress, which received details of the deal over the weekend, has 60 days, which started Monday, to consider whether it wants to pass a resolution of disapproval before the Obama administration can waive the congressionally mandated sanctions.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., released a list of 21 reasons to oppose the deal, including: “The murderous Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called this deal a “great victory” and congratulated Iran on their achievement”.
Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, said a number of lawmakers commented that Kerry was conducting himself in a “condescending” manner.
Many analysts see the chance of the Iranian leadership eventually rejecting the accord as small, since Tehran needs the lifting of sanctions to help its isolated economy.
“This is a deal whose survival is not guaranteed beyond the current term of the president”, said Rubio, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate.
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“That we are only now discovering that parts of this unsafe agreement are being kept secret begs the question of what other elements may also be secret and entirely free from public scrutiny”, Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas said in a statement.
