Obama The Iran Deal We Should Have Done

I am fooling nobody. I am stating facts that you don't want to accept. The snapback is part and parcel of the agreement or none of the powers would have signed it. You can imagine that you know what the signing powers see, but what they actually agreed to is in writing and is undeniable. You can invent fanciful scenarios if you wish, but if the Iranians break the agreement the snapback provisions will happen automatically.

All the powers signed the agreement! It is binding and there are no provisions for any security council veto.

 

The Iranians are quite civilized, well-educated, and have an elected government, they just have religious leaders in a position of power. And religious leaders all over the world are all about bombast and rhetoric. Islamic religious leaders are particularly about inflammatory rhetoric. We don't plan based on what third-world dictators claim, we plan based on what they are actually capable of. Do you actually want to start another middle east war because some third-world muslims like to chant "Death to America" on Fridays? They can't drink, chanting is their happy hour. You see this behavior is places where they don't have a lot of confidence in themselves. So they pump themselves up with nationalistic talk. Talk is cheap. Don't believe their propaganda, their own people have trouble believing it.

 

And apparently you are as ignorant as shane.

 

"Ignorant" is a retort for "gullible." I am great deal less gullible than you imagine and I suppose that you are a great deal less ignorant than you talk.

No, my objection is not because you think Iranians are untrustworthy, it's because you said that Iranians were uncivilized. Well, they are civilized, well educated for a middle eastern country, and have an elected government. Before the 1979 revolution by the mullahs, they were the most westernized country in the muslim world. They are still far more modern than most of their neighbors.

You can call them over-religious, insular, inflammatory, hostile, xenophobic, and suspicious. But it is a mistake to imagine that they are uncivilized. This is Persia, one of the oldest civilizations on earth. They are a modern country with advanced technology, as we can see. They are radicals, but they are not fools. They support terror, but not terror against the US. Their terror support is against their traditional enemies Israel and Saudi Arabia via Hezbollah, mostly. But do not take these guys lightly and write them off as uncivilized. Iranians are not Arabs. They aren't bedouins in tents. They don't do suicide bombing. They don't do beheadings. They are avowed enemies of Al Qaeda, The Taliban, and ISIS. For all their bluster, they permitted the US to overfly Iran to strike the Taliban in Afghanistan.

There is still a desire among many Iranians to return to a modern, secular state. As long as they are insulated from the western world, the mullahs can keep control. That's why the ayatollahs are against their own elected leadership on this deal. The more that Iranians get to deal with Western economies, society, culture, and commerce, etc., the more they will want to look forward instead of backwards as the religious fundamentalists among them wish. But make no error, there is a split in Iran between forward looking moderates and religious conservatives. This deal empowers the moderates, not the mullahs.

This is not a country that we need to go to war with. They are not a threat to us and they got nuthin' we need. We can defeat them like we beat the Soviets, who had real nuclear weapons. Wreck their economy, outspend them in military power, assemble a giant coalition of powerful allies, make them a deal that they can't refuse, and let them crumble from within.

Then we need to be in position to turn them into allies as we did Germany, Japan, and the Warsaw Pact countries. Russia would like to have it the other way. But Iran is always more suspicious of Russia, who has long desired their warm-water ports. And Russia is a threat right on their border, while we are far, far away.