P5+1 and Iran agree landmark nuclear deal at Geneva talks

This was posted in The Economist this morning, I think it is fairly accurate...

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Funny thing is that it appears to have been withdrawn.

Yes, that cartoon is completely true. here in Iran there are some groups and people who have a lot of benefit because of enmity between Iran and the US. The majority of them are extremist religious who need an evil state and who is better than US for them? Also there are some groups and bands who earn a lot of money of this enmity especially from Iran sanction. Babak Zanjani is a good example. A 42 years old man whose wealth is about 13.8 billion $. And the majority of his legendary wealth is because of sanction especially oil sanction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babak_Zanjani
we have a lot of people like him in Iran. I know some of them and I know some of their tricks.
 
Yes, that cartoon is completely true. here in Iran there are some groups and people who have a lot of benefit because of enmity between Iran and the US. The majority of them are extremist religious who need an evil state and who is better than US for them? Also there are some groups and bands who earn a lot of money of this enmity especially from Iran sanction. Babak Zanjani is a good example. A 42 years old man whose wealth is about 13.8 billion $. And the majority of his legendary wealth is because of sanction especially oil sanction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babak_Zanjani
we have a lot of people like him in Iran. I know some of them and I know some of their tricks.

I think the biggest obstacle to an agreement is that these people exist on both sides which is what the cartoon is pointing out.
 
West's 30-year vendetta with Iran is finally buried in Davos


By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Economics Last updated: January 23rd, 2014

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/financ...iran-is-finally-buried-in-davos/#dPostComment

Photo: GETTY



The Iranian nuclear deal is on. Hassan Rouhani's charm offensive in Davos has been a tour de force, the moment of rehabilitation for the Islamic Republic. His words were emollient.
"The world hasn't seen a speech like that from an Iranian leader since the Revolution," tweeted Ian Bremmer from the Eurasia Group.
Anybody betting on oil futures in the belief that Iran's nuclear deal with great powers is a negotiating ploy – to gain time – should be careful. There is a very high likelihood that the sanctions against Iran will be lifted in stages, leading to an extra 1.2 barrels a day on the global market just as Libya, Iraq, and the US all crank up output.
“One of the theoretical and practical pillars of my government is constructive engagement with the world. Without international engagement, objectives such as growth, creativity and quality are unattainable," said Rouhani.
"I strongly and clearly state that nuclear weapons have no place in our security strategy,” he said.
Behind closed doors in Davos, the Iranian leaders made a sweet sales pitch to oil executives. BP said it is eyeing the "potential". Chevron and ConocoPhillips have been approached, assured by Iran's leader that there are "no limitations for U.S. companies." Total's Christophe de Margerie hopes to restart work at the South Pars field.
The strategic reality is that sanctions have brought Iran's economy to a standstill, with a 5pc contraction of GDP over the last year. The currency is worthless. The Iranian Islamic Revolution is a spent ideological force, near the end of the political road.
You can never be sure about the first thaw following a long freeze, yet this feels like the Gorbachev moment for the old USSR. Margaret Thatcher recognised at once that something had changed. Others clung to their Cold War reflexes.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/financ...rexit-greatly-inflates-relevance-of-dying-eu/
Mr Rouhani could not resist as swipe at Saudi Arabia – the Sunni arch-enemy for Tehran – deploring "despotic states that depend on foreigners."
Nor could he bring himself to hold out an olive branch to Israel. When asked if he was willing to make peace with everybody, he deflected the question – twice – saying only that Iran would "normalise relations with all countries that we have officially recognised".
The counter-attack from Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu was swift, and from the very same chair in the Congress hall in Davos. “Rouhani is continuing with the Iranian show of deception. At a time when Rouhani talks about peace with the countries of the Middle East, he refuses – even today – to recognise the existence of the state of Israel, and his regime daily calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.
“At a time when Rouhani claims that Iran is not interested in a nuclear project for military purposes, Iran continues to strengthen its centrifuges and heavy water reactor, and to arm itself with intercontinental missiles, the sole purpose of which is for nuclear weapons,” he added.
Mr Netanyahu is of course in a very difficult position. His country has been left in the lurch as the Obama White House conducts a pirouette – like the Kissinger switch on China in the early 1970s – turning its entire Mid-East diplomacy upside down. It is not easy for anybody to adjust, whether the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf, or Israel, or even Sunni Turkey.
This is the new reality. The 30-year US vendetta with Iran is over in all but name. Davos may have clinched it.


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/financ...endetta-with-iran-is-finally-buried-in-davos/
 
I just loved the bit about Netandhairdu complaining about the Iranian's "show of deception".

Coming from him it must have certainly raised a few sly chuckles among those present.

A case of the pot calling the kettle black if ever there was one.
 
Yep I think Rouhani has played his hand masterfully to date and all he has to do to win is not do anything stupid, if he sticks to the same process he has used since election I imagine there will be a major change in the ME power base within a year.

Still there is one thing that could screw it up majorly and that is the religious leaders in Iran, hopefully they wont do anything stupid either.

As for Israel well Netanyahu's whinging is somewhat of an irrelevance as the outcome of this process depends on Iran and Iran alone however he should not worry too much as once the Republicans are back in the Whitehouse it will be back to business as usual.
 
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Pro-Israel PACs Went All In For Senators Supporting Iran Sanctions, But They're Still loosing:



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/30/iran-sanctions-pacs_n_4695417.html


I mentioned this before and find it amusing that after all these years of shadowy lobby groups getting their way with little resistence they have now been dragged out into the light of day and run into a brick wall of indifference .

As I said earlier if Iran sticks to its agreements you will have done the world a great favour by greatly weakening the Israeli lobby in the USA.
 
The truth about Israel's secret nuclear arsenal

Wednesday 15 January 2014 18.18 GMT
Israel has been stealing nuclear secrets and covertly making bombs since the 1950s. And western governments, including Britain and the US, turn a blind eye. But how can we expect Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions if the Israelis won't come clean?





http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/truth-israels-secret-nuclear-arsenal

Because Israel does not threaten to destroy Iran but Iran (and others) threaten to destroy Israel. (in violation of the UN charter)
 
Because Israel does not threaten to destroy Iran but Iran (and others) threaten to destroy Israel. (in violation of the UN charter)

It is rhetoric. You DO know that even if Iran DID have nukes it would be for purely defensive purposes right? Any offensive use by Iran OR her proxies would mean annihilation for her. Israel has admitted that if their state is ever threatened with annihilation they're launching ALL the nukes they have and not just at the Arabs either. Europe will be on the receiving end of it all as well. It is called the Samson doctrine and I think those in power right now in Israel are crazy enough to use it.

Such a good little western ally Israel is.
 
Because Israel does not threaten to destroy Iran but Iran (and others) threaten to destroy Israel. (in violation of the UN charter)

Care to explain where and when Iran has ever threatened to destroy Israel?

Here is what the Israeli deputy prime minister has said in April last year...

"They [Iranian leaders] all come basically ideologically, religiously with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive," Meridor says. "They didn't say 'we'll wipe it out', you are right, but 'it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumour, it should be removed'. They repeatedly said 'Israel is not legitimate, it should not exist'."

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2012/04/2012413151613293582.html


It is an interview well worth watching.
 
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It is rhetoric. You DO know that even if Iran DID have nukes it would be for purely defensive purposes right? Any offensive use by Iran OR her proxies would mean annihilation for her. Israel has admitted that if their state is ever threatened with annihilation they're launching ALL the nukes they have and not just at the Arabs either. Europe will be on the receiving end of it all as well. It is called the Samson doctrine and I think those in power right now in Israel are crazy enough to use it.

Such a good little western ally Israel is.

That's not how nukes are used. Pakistan used them very effectively. When India wanted to retaliate because muslim terrorist, backed by Pakistan, attacked their parliament Pakistan threatend with a nuclear war. India backed off.

What will the world do if Iran closes the strait? Attack a nuclear power? Will Europe send warships if Iran threatens to destroy Paris? Bluff? Highly propable but who will take the risk? Ask the Indians.
 
Ah those Iranian nukes, I found this amusing given that it was written in 2009...
Op-Ed Columnist
Israel Cries Wolf

By ROGER COHEN Published: April 8, 2009
ISTANBUL — “Iran is the center of terrorism, fundamentalism and subversion and is in my view more dangerous than Nazism, because Hitler did not possess a nuclear bomb, whereas the Iranians are trying to perfect a nuclear option.”

Benjamin Netanyahu 2009? Try again. These words were in fact uttered by another Israeli prime minister (and now Israeli president), Shimon Peres, in 1996. Four years earlier, in 1992, he’d predicted that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999. You can’t accuse the Israelis of not crying wolf. Ehud Barak, now defense minister, said in 1996 that Iran would be producing nuclear weapons by 2004.
Now here comes Netanyahu, in an interview with his faithful stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, spinning the latest iteration of Israel’s attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil:
“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”
I must say when I read those words about “the wide-eyed believer” my mind wandered to a recently departed “decider.” But I’m not going there.
The issue today is Iran and, more precisely, what President Barack Obama will make of Netanyahu’s prescription that, the economy aside, Obama’s great mission is “preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons” — an eventuality newly inscribed on Israeli calendars as “months” away.
I’ll return to the ever shifting nuclear doomsday in a moment, but first that Netanyahu interview.
This “messianic apocalyptic cult” in Tehran is, of course, the very same one with which Israel did business during the 1980’s, when its interest was in weakening Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That business — including sales of weapons and technology — was an extension of Israeli policy toward Iran under the shah.
It’s also the same “messianic apocalyptic cult” that has survived 30 years, ushered the country from the penury of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, shrewdly extended its power and influence, cooperated with America on Afghanistan before being consigned to “the axis of evil,” and kept its country at peace in the 21st century while bloody mayhem engulfed neighbors to east and west and Israel fought two wars.
I don’t buy the view that, as Netanyahu told Goldberg, Iran is “a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest.” Every scrap of evidence suggests that, on the contrary, self-interest and survival drive the mullahs.
Yet Netanyahu insists (too much) that Iran is “a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” Huh?
On that ocular theme again, Netanyahu says Iran’s “composite leadership” has “elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist in any other would-be nuclear power in the world.” No, they exist in an actual nuclear power, Pakistan.
Israel’s nuclear warheads, whose function is presumably deterrence of precisely powers like Iran, go unmentioned, of course.
Netanyahu also makes the grotesque claim that the terrible loss of life in the Iran-Iraq war (started by Iraq) “didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness.” It did just that, which is why Iran’s younger generation seeks reform but not upheaval; and why the country as a whole prizes stability over military adventure.
Arab states, Netanyahu suggests, “fervently hope” that America will, if necessary, use “military power” to stop Iran going nuclear. My recent conversations, including with senior Saudi officials, suggest that’s wrong and the longstanding Israeli attempt to convince Arab states that Iran, not Israel, is their true enemy will fail again.
What’s going on here? Israel, as it has for nearly two decades, is trying to lock in American support and avoid any disadvantageous change in the Middle Eastern balance of power, now overwhelmingly tilted in Jerusalem’s favor, by portraying Iran as a monstrous pariah state bent on imminent nuclear war.
A semblance of power balance is often the precondition for peace. Iran was left out of the Madrid and Oslo processes, with disastrous results. But that’s a discussion for another day.
What’s critical right now is that Obama view Netanyahu’s fear-mongering with an appropriate skepticism, rein him in, and pursue his regime-recognizing opening toward Tehran, as he did Wednesday by saying America would join nuclear talks for the first time. The president should read Trita Parsi’s excellent “Treacherous Alliance” as preparation.
The core strategic shift of Obama’s presidency has been away from the with-us-or-against-us rhetoric of the war on terror toward a rapprochement with the Muslim world as the basis for isolating terrorists.
That’s unsustainable if America or Israel find themselves at war with Muslim Persians as well as Muslim Arabs, and if Netanyahu’s intense-eyed attempt to suck America into a perpetuation of war-on-terror thinking prevails.
The only way to stop Iran going nuclear, and encourage reform of a repressive regime, is to get to the negotiating table. There’s time. Those “months” are still a couple of years. What Iran has accumulated is low-enriched uranium. You need highly-enriched uranium for a bomb. That’s a leap.
Israeli hegemony is proving a kind of slavery. Passage to the Promised Land involves rethinking the Middle East, starting in Iran.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/opinion/09iht-edcohen.html?_r=1&
 
Well seems AIPAC has finally given up, I guess they will have to scurry back into the shadows like roaches and be content with undermining democracy one politician at a time...

Now Even AIPAC Says It's Not The Right Time To Advance Iran Sanctions Bill

The Huffington Post | by Ashley Alman


Posted: 02/06/2014 8:51 pm EST Updated: 02/06/2014 10:16 pm EST
Print Article
n-ROBERT-MENENDEZ-large570.jpg






WASHINGTON -- American Israel Public Affairs Committee changed course on Thursday, coming out against an immediate Senate vote on new Iran sanctions, according to a statement obtained by The Hill.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and author of the predominantly Republican-backed sanctions bill, took to the Senate floor Thursday to encourage his colleagues not to let partisan politics drive a vote on the matter. AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, expressed support for Menendez in a statement several hours later:
AIPAC commends Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) for his strong and eloquent statement on the Senate floor today outlining the threat of Iran's nuclear program and the imperative of dismantling it. We appreciate his commitment to ensure that any agreement with Iran “is verifiable, effective, and prevents them from ever developing even one nuclear weapon.” We applaud Senator Menendez’s determined leadership on this issue and his authorship with Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act. We agree with the Chairman that stopping the Iranian nuclear program should rest on bipartisan support and that there should not be a vote at this time on the measure. We remain committed to working with the Administration and the bipartisan leadership in Congress to ensure that the Iran nuclear program is dismantled.
On Thursday, 42 Republican senators sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) demanding an immediate vote on sanctions against Iran, an effort President Barack Obama has threatened to veto amid fragile nuclear negotiations. Menendez later distanced himself from his Republican colleagues on the Senate floor, expressing concern that the discussion has become "a partisan political issue" rather than a sensitive issue of national security.
“I have long thought of this as a bipartisan national security issue -– not a partisan political issue -– and at the end of the day a national security issue that we must approach in a spirit of bipartisanship and unity, which has been the spirit for which we have worked together on this matter," Menendez said. "I hope that we will not find ourselves in a partisan process trying to force a vote on a national security matter before its appropriate time.”
Requests for comment from Kirk, the Republican cosponsor of the bill, and from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who was among those signing the letter pressing for fast action, were not immediately returned.
AIPAC has completely reversed course on the issue. For months, the group had been lobbying lawmakers hard to push the Iran sanctions bill, even launching an attack on one of its biggest allies, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), for not supporting it. Only in recent weeks has AIPAC begun backing off in the face of resistance from the White House and key Democratic lawmakers, including Reid.
"As usual, Republicans overplayed their hand and it backfired," said a Senate Democratic leadership aide.
Jennifer Bendery contributed reporting.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/aipac-iran-sanctions_n_4741748.html
 
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The leader of Iran is not Rouhani but Khamenei. Rouhani has no control over the Republican Guard, Khamenei has.

In 2002 an enrichment in Natanz and a heavy water plant in Arak were exposed. Iran didn't tell the truth.
In 2005 the regime’s bomb designs in a computer file were discovered. Iran didn't tell the truth.
In 2009 Iran’s secretive Fordow facility was discovered. Iran didn't tell the truth.

All these years Khamenei was in charge. He still is today. He didn't change, only the name of the prime minister.
 
And still no nukes, hell I could have built one in less time the you have been crying wolf.

But let me see if I understand this, your stance is that Iran threatened Israel even though the Israeli deputy prime minister said they didnt, Iran has been building the bomb since at least the 1980s according to various Israeli leaders yet they still don't have one which ties in with all those nasty Iranian leaders who have said since the 1980s "we don't want the bomb".
Israel despite its abhorance of Iran was trading with Iran until at least the late 1980s, was selling them weapons for just as long and was integral in the Iran-Contra deal.

So you will forgive me for suspecting you like your Israeli paymasters are full of sh*t.
 
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So you will forgive me for suspecting you like your Israeli paymasters are full of sh*t.
On top of which he is a blatant liar as seen in the "So why do people hate Israel thread". Not content with the official lies of Israel's own Hasbara Department, he makes up his own, saying the first thing that comes into his head if he feels it will bolster his argument.

Absolutely nothing he says can be taken at face value.
 
It is an ideological battle though, you get the same thing whether you are fighting the Flat Earthers, Anti-Evolutionists, Religion or politics the arguments are always polarised to the point that there is no middle ground.

I am quite happy to park myself in the Iranian corner on this matter based on:
a) They have done nothing to bother me.
b) They have every right to the same technology the rest of the world has.
c) I honestly couldn't care less if they did want nuclear weapons as like the rest of the world they can't use them without their own destruction, MAD works.
d) They piss Israel off and that alone is worth the price of admission.
 
Here is MAARIV claim 30 years ago about Iran attempts for making nukes. Apr.25.1984 in the title they claimed that Iran was in the last stages of making nuke and now in 2014 we are still in the last stages.

ESRAEL%201.jpg
 
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Yep the Israeli story is well beyond its "use by:' date, in fact it would seem that it is about 4 decades past it, perhaps the boy that cried wolf is now the grandfather the cried wolf.

But then the story is not about what Iran is doing or not doing it is about how Israel can play the victim role in order to keep peoples attention off what it is doing else where.
 
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