"Iran deal puts burden of proof on the West" by Yochi Dreazen July 18, 2015
Yeah, so? That's where it should be.
Three months ago, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the Obama administration would only accept a nuclear deal that gave inspectors “anywhere, anytime” access to Iran’s enrichment facilities.
I knew this deal was no good.
But little-noticed provisions in this week’s landmark pact mean there will often actually be just “some places, sometimes” access — and only after weeks of negotiations over each site that could give Tehran enough time to hide evidence of any illicit work being done there.
There’s no question that the agreement provides for far more extensive and intrusive oversight than Tehran has ever accepted before. Watchdogs from the International Atomic Energy Agency will have access to Iran’s nuclear sites for the next 25 years, including the ability to make daily visits to the main uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz. The inspectors will also theoretically be able to visit many of the country’s military bases as well. Iran has also agreed to the IAEA’s “additional protocol,” which allows the watchdog to seek permission to inspect an even wider range of Iranian facilities.
The United States and its allies made a significant compromise, however. If Iran bans access to a specific site, the IAEA has to prepare a written dossier making a detailed case for why the watchdog agency should be allowed into the facility. The officials charged with then making the call on whether or not to open the doors? Iranians involved in running the nuclear program — potentially including some of those who decided to close off the site in the first place.
For the record, the U.S. does not allow inspection of its nuclear facilities.
Diplomatic documents can be excruciatingly boring, but it’s worth reading some of the language in the agreement to see just how high a bar the IAEA will have to clear, and just how much deference is given to a country with a long history of concealing its nuclear-related work.
Requests for access, the agreement states, “will be made in good faith, with due observance of the sovereign rights of Iran, and kept to a minimum necessary.” They will “not be aimed at interfering with Iranian military or other national security activities.” And if Tehran says no, the IAEA dossier will include all “available relevant information.”
That’s just the start. Iran has a full two weeks to try to persuade the IAEA that it doesn’t need to send inspectors to the facility. If neither side budges, a panel of officials from the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany, the European Union, and Iran would get a week to weigh the case. If they couldn’t come to a unanimous decision backing the IAEA, the dispute would go to a simple majority vote. If the vote goes against Iran, the panel would send Iran a letter with “advice” on how to resolve the IAEA’s concerns. Iran would then have three days to do so.
All told, the process would take 24 days — enough time, according to critics like Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director general of the IAEA, for Iran to take steps to conceal its work.
Of course, that would be the process for any country they are inspecting and monitoring. The Iranians are no different. But don't let that sabotage the sabotage of the deal.
In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine, Heinonen also warned that foreign intelligence services monitoring Iran’s nuclear program for potential violations would be reluctant to provide the IAEA with evidence that would ultimately be relayed to the Iranians, for fear of giving away how it was collected in the first place.
God. We won't be getting any fanciful war lies regarding the matter.
During his White House press conference defending the deal, President Obama said the United States would “gain unprecedented around-the-clock monitoring of Iran’s key nuclear facilities in the most comprehensive and intrusive inspection and verification regime ever negotiated.” He’s right that Tehran has agreed to give the IAEA more access to its nuclear program than ever before. He should be forthright enough to acknowledge, though, that the burden of proof will often rest with the United States and its allies. Iran, in other words, will be innocent until proven guilty.
And that is the problem with the AmeriKan media. They want guilt before innocence in this case.
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The case for Iran's innocence, and what the whole world knows:
"The Iran Nuclear Straw Man
By Patrick Foy | CounterPunch | July 17, 2015
Am I laughing. As Peace Prize Obama lectures us and the Republicans and Neocons have a cow, maybe we should pause to contemplate the full fraudulent spectacle in progress and analyze what we are being told about the just-concluded nuclear negotiations with Iran.
First of all, I’ve been wondering what in the world the phalanx of negotiators could possibly have been talking about behind closed doors all these many months, busting through multiple deadlines, in view of the fact that Iran possesses no nukes and has no nuclear weapons program, is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and that Iran’s Mullah leadership has denounced and outlawed nuclear weapons from day one.
In the second place, it is amazing that any deal at all was arrived at, since Obama & Company, following in the footsteps of Bush and Clinton, has allowed the incredible demonization of Iran to go unchecked and unchallenged. The demonization continues and may yet blow up the agreement on Capitol Hill.
Both the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini (who ignited a revolution which terminated the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979) and the current supreme leader, the Grand Ayatollah Hosseini Khamenei, issued Fatwas which prohibit the manufacture and/or use of nuclear weapons by Iran.
On top of that, the U.S. intelligence community has itself informed the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the Congress of the non-existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program in no uncertain terms in 2007. These conclusions were reiterated in 2011. The information was contained in National Intelligence Estimates compiled by Washington’s 16 intelligence agencies.
Alas, no one at the White House or on Capitol Hill dares mention these important documents, or cares to inform the ignorant American public about the facts. Why? Do the beltway politicians want the average American to remain in the dark? Hmm. What is going on here?
What is going on is blatant extortion and blackmail by the Obama White House, with Tehran on the receiving-end. President Obama has done a very effective job of it, building upon the hysteria, insanity and wholesale mendacity of the Cheney Regency, aka, the G.W. Bush Presidency. Obama does indeed deserve a prize for taking the targeting of Iran to the next level.
The non-existent Iranian nuke program and the purported, much-hyped Iranian race to build a nuclear weapon have been used as a stick to try to beat Iran into the ground, or at least to its knees, via all-encompassing economic and financial sanctions. The injustice and dishonesty of this undertaking is breathtaking. Europe stood by and watched. No, it did more. It joined in. The hapless leadership in Tehran had no choice at the end of the day but to deal with the extortionists. Tehran wanted to reunite with the world economy.
Here it gets tricky. Because Tehran had no nukes and Tehran knew that Washington knew that Tehran had no nukes, what exactly could Tehran do to prove a negative–thereby eliminating the purported “threat”–which negative was already well known to be a fact by the sanctimonious, stone-faced extortionists sitting across the table? Tehran concluded, nevertheless, it should go along with this charade, and not embarrass Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. In short, Tehran decided the best tactic was to humor the bullying White House.
All that mattered for Tehran was an abatement of economic warfare and, most importantly, renewed access to European markets and to the international banking system. To achieve this, Tehran has agreed, under the current document, to amazingly intrusive, and redundant intervention into its nuclear energy program. This amounts to a de facto foreign takeover of the Iranian civilian nuclear program. It is an insult to Iran’s sovereignty, but what has Iran actually lost? It had nothing to lose to begin with.
One might ask as this point: what was the motivation for Washington’s peculiar conduct? Well, here it is. In the United States, as in Europe, there is something called domestic politics, which has now degenerated into a self-perpetuating business, dominated by special interest groups and lobbies, all largely driven by cash, to wit, campaign contributions. It is big business.
Since the general public does not have the time nor inclination to figure out which politician is relatively honest and which is an outright charlatan, advertising is most important to clarify the issue. Brainwashing or, if you like, spin and PR, costs money. It requires enormous campaign contributions and media support.
To achieve that, Washington politicians, if they want to hold onto their jobs, must pander to what is called the Israel Lobby, the most powerful lobby in Washington. In this direct way and by this simple method, domestic politics gets translated immediately into foreign policy. At least with respect to the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy has nothing to do with what is right and wrong, reasonable or ridiculous, or even about what is in the best interests of the United States or the American people.
All that is secondary. First and foremost are the dictates of the U.S. Israel Lobby, whose apparatchiki receive their cue from Tel Aviv, currently run by Likud and its leader, the charming con man Benny Netanyahu whom some consider to be a war criminal. That’s it in a nutshell.
I realize that the above scenario might appear outlandish and grotesque, but it actually conforms to business as usual. For confirmation, you might study chapter 10–“Iran in the Crosshairs”–of The Israel Lobby (2007) by Professors John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt. It should be on the desk of every Senator and Congressman in Washington, if only to give them a second chance to mend their ways.
In the meantime, please read the up-to-the-minute article by Professor William O. Beeman, titled “Iran Won the Vienna Accords By Agreeing to Stop What It Never Was Doing”. Beeman is an Iran expert, curiously unfazed by establishment propaganda.
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NDUs:
Everyone is getting their say in a section I won't be reading:
Farah Stockman: Deal offers a chance for Iranians to enter the world
Farah is a well-meaning person; however, isn't that flag a bit offensive?
Alan M. Dershowitz: US gave away better options on Iran
Makes me sick to see him there, and the Globe didn't have better options with all the thinkers in Bo$ton?
David Gergen: A time to promote broader changes in Iran
So says globalist agent Gergen, and there is that flag again.
Jeff Jacoby: Iran deal is not worthy of Nobel recognition
The Globe's resident neo-con, and the prize has been worthless since they gave it to Obama.
John E. Sununu: In foreign policy, gains matter as much as goals
Jeffrey Lewis: Heading off an even bigger problem in Iran
Edward J. Markey: Iran inspectors must wield real power
What I did read:
"Iran is hostile to US despite deal, ayatollah says; Supreme leader portrays pact as Tehran’s victory" by Thomas Erdbrink New York Times July 19, 2015
TEHRAN — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, voiced support on Saturday for his country’s nuclear deal with world powers but emphasized that the agreement did not signal an end to Iran’s hostility toward the United States and its allies, especially Israel.
He probably said it the other way around and is was "mistranslated" by we$tern media. Not only that, if anyone is being hostile it is Israel. Nutinyahoo threatened as much. Reserved the "right," in fact.
“Their actions in the region are 180 degrees different from ours,” he said, while also praising Iran’s annual anti-Israel rally, known here as Quds Day, and the slogans of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
Of course, as I mentioned earlier below, 25,000 Jews feel safe and are living happily in Iran. Iran even honored Jewish soldiers.
Speaking before a large crowd in Tehran after prayers marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Khamenei portrayed the nuclear pact as a victory for Iran, not least because it does not require the country to completely stop enriching uranium, as some in the West had wanted.
“After 12 years of struggling with the Islamic republic, the result is that they have to bear the turning of thousands of centrifuges in the country,” Khamenei said, referring to the United States and its five negotiating partners.
The speech appeared to remove a main obstacle to formal approval of the agreement in Iran. But Khamenei stuck a far different pose than moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who has said the nuclear accord could ‘‘step-by-step remove bricks from the wall of mistrust’’ between Iran and the United States.
Khamenei stressed that Iran will continue to support its allies in the Middle East, including the Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Palestinian resistance groups, and the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad. While Iran calls its ally Hezbollah a ‘‘resistance movement,’’ the United States classifies it as a terrorist group.
How dare they?
Btw, Hezbollah is actually a legitimate political party and part of the government.
We now return you to your regular scheduled propaganda:
Though analysts said Khamenei’s positive portrayal of the agreement would probably quiet hard-line critics in Iran, it also seemed likely to become fodder for critics in the United States, complicating President Obama’s efforts to sell the deal to Congress and the American people.
Yeah, blame failure on the Iranians! (Guffaws follow)
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Obama has made the agreement a benchmark of his presidency. It is opposed by Republicans as well as Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of the United States’s most significant allies in the region.
They have denounced it as a diplomatic mistake that will strengthen the economic and military power of a nation that aggressively threatens its neighbors, engages in and supports hostage-taking and terrorism, and is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, deal or no deal.
You know, after a while the false accusations don't work and they undercut anything you say. We have heard this same stuff for nearly 25 years now.
Obama has insisted that the agreement is “not built on trust — it is built on verification.” Khamenei portrayed it as an acceptance by the West of Iran’s commitment to go ahead with a nuclear program, which its leaders have insisted was being pursued solely for peaceful purposes.
Like most of his remarks, the speech attempted a delicate balance between appeasing anti-West hard-liners and those longing for change in Iran, with rhetoric that could be interpreted favorably on either side of the domestic divide.
The speech stopped short of a flat-out endorsement of the agreement, but because it did not include any specific criticism of it the deal, analysts said it would probably speed the acceptance of the agreement by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and Parliament.
Under the agreement, Iran is forced to give up large parts of its nuclear program and accept intrusive inspections, even of military sites. The number of its uranium-enrichment centrifuges will be cut by two-thirds.
Iran’s leaders say that what matters is Western acceptance that Iran will continue to have a nuclear program and that when the agreement ends in 2025, Iran will be able to enrich uranium and plutonium without limits.
A draft resolution canceling sanctions against Iran and formalizing the steps Iran is expected to take is to be presented at the UN Security Council on Monday. The five permanent members of the council — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States — negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran along with Germany.
Several leading members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have urged Obama not to submit the agreement to the Security Council until Congress has first voted for its approval or disapproval.
AIPAC barks and Congre$$ moves.
Critics say that by restoring Iran’s potential access to about $100 billion in frozen funds around the world, the accord will free the country to finance an expanded campaign of aggression in the Middle East.
Iranian hard-liners have been complaining that the deal’s restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program make it just a symbol rather than an industrial-size energy-producing effort. Many hard-liners also feared that a nuclear deal would be the end of Iran’s hostile stance toward the United States.
As for the end of hostility with the West, such a thing will never happen, said Khamenei, making clear that new relations between Iran and the United States are “dreams” that will not become a reality.
Look at the Zionist War Pre$$'s lead agent getting you all stirred up!! He's an asshole ayatollah, and even I'm ready to go to war with Iran now!
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You know from where the bulk of the troops fighting will come from, right?
"Saudi Arabia says it has blocked attacks; Antiterrorism efforts lead to 400 arrests" by Abdullah Al-Shihri Associated Press July 19, 2015
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia announced Saturday that it has broken up planned Islamic State attacks in the kingdom and arrested more than 400 suspects in an antiterrorism sweep.
Suppose it would be easy enough since they are the ones supplying money and the on-the-ground goons.
The Saudi crackdown underscores the country’s growing concern about the threat posed by the Islamic State, which in addition to its operations in Iraq and Syria has claimed responsibility for recent suicide bombings aimed at Shi’ites in the kingdom’s oil-producing east and in next-door Kuwait.
The Saudi Interior Ministry accused those arrested over the past few weeks of involvement in several attacks, including a suicide bombing in May that killed 22 people in the eastern village of al-Qudeeh. It was the deadliest militant assault in the kingdom in more than a decade.
I'm not going to bother with garbage, folks.
It also blamed them for the November shooting and killing of eight worshipers in the eastern Saudi village of al-Ahsa, and for another attack in late May, when a suicide bomber disguised as a woman blew himself up in the parking lot of a Shi’ite mosque during Friday prayers, killing four.
The Interior Ministry said that in June authorities thwarted a suicide bomb attack on a large mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia that can hold 3,000 worshipers, along with multiple planned attacks on other mosques and diplomatic and security bodies.
Those arrested included suspects behind a number of militant websites used in recruiting, the ministry said.
Saudi Arabia branded the Islamic State group a terrorist organization last year and has joined the US-led coalition targeting it in Syria and Iraq. Authorities have vowed to punish those responsible for terrorist attacks inside the kingdom, the Arab world’s largest economy.
Dubai-based geopolitical analyst Theodore Karasik said the arrests are aimed in part at reassuring the country’s Shi’ite minority, who long have complained of discrimination in the kingdom, which is governed by an ultraconservative interpretation of Sunni Islam.
You can take a look for yourself.
‘‘It sends a message that the Ministry of Interior is not losing a grip and wraps up the potential nodes of Daesh recruits in the kingdom,’’ he said, using an alternate name for the group.
The Islamic State group holds about a third of Iraq and Syria in a self-declared caliphate. The US-led coalition airstrikes have not stopped the group from making advances.
More often than not they are helping.
This is what caught my eye:
On Friday, King Salman of Saudi Arabia met with political leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in a striking example of his willingness to work with Islamist organizations long considered foes, The New York Times reported.
Can a two-state peace deal be far behind?
The Saudi-owned news network, Al Arabiya, confirmed the meeting with Hamas.
Analysts said the meeting appeared to reflect Salman’s determination to rally as much of the Arab world as possible against Iran, Saudi Arabia’s chief rival. Saudis fear that Iran will be empowered by its deal with Western powers to lift sanctions in exchange for limiting its nuclear program.
Oh, I thought it was an altruistic and benevolent gesture, not some self-serving swill.
The meeting included Khaled Meshal, Hamas’s political leader. It was a major shift from the approach of the previous king, Abdullah, who had led a campaign to roll back or eradicate the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates around the region. Hamas is both an offshoot of the Brotherhood and a client of Iran.
But the new king has signaled he is even willing to work with Brotherhood-style Islamists in his efforts to counter Iran, and analysts suggested that Salman might be attempting to pry Hamas away from Tehran.
Maybe even.... gulp.... Al-CIA-Duh and ISIS™?
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Nothing about Yemen, notice that?
