POTPOURRI AGAIN

I intended to write a post about Trump, but was side tracked after reading various cyber documents and the print media with more detail about the Iran Deal. I will have to digest the various new information available and then write another blog.

I am not obsessed by the fact that we have a deal , but rather we are not being informed on all the facts Moreover there is too much disinformation being presented plus distortion of facts so I feel that  if I can print a reasonable summary we can make a educated opinion if the "Deal"  will do what it is supposed to do.

If you want to read all 159 pages click on this link http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/full-text-of-the-iran-nuclear-deal/1651/

Meanwhile I shall post some  of JAMA's art that I like.

  La Rumba Supermarket (Emilio Sanchez 1980-)

The top is:(1) Garden of the Generalife in Granada 1913 by Theo  van Rysselberghe;

ONE MORE TIME ABOUT "THE DEAL".

Two commentators to my blog “Why It is Bad”** presented arguments negating why my opinion that the Iran “Nuclear” Deal is bad.

I would also reiterate my position that the deal with Iran can not be a good one despite our President’s maneuvers to make it impossible for Congress and the nation to reject it. Monday’s US sponsored resolution in the UN Security Committee which was actively supported by Russia and China giving unanimous approval of the “treaty”. Yes I know it has been defined as an agreement not a treaty but what else could it be?

Since both Russia and China have economic interests that will benefit by the lifting of sanctions; one by the sale of arms and the other by access to needed petroleum.

No one can give a rational answer to the question why a country rich in oil needs to deveope nuclear power for peaceful use.

In rebuttal to my comparison with “Munich”, Alan Goldstein did correctly point out that before Munich permitting Nazi Germany to annex the German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, Germany had left the League of Nations, had occupied and remilitarized the Rhineland, and had annexed Austria. All acts of aggression.

His point being that Iran had not any such action against its neighbors. He disregards the fact that Iran has been the prop that has kept the Assad government in power in Syria, that has it has waged proxy wars in that part of the world by continually supported various terrorist groups such as Hezbollah in Lebnon and the Yemen Al Queada insurgency as well as others world wide. This is the part of the Deal that my Munich reference was aimed at.

The “Deal” will not change any of these proxy war agressions by Iran . Instead it will increase that nation’s capabilities by allowing it access to millions of dollars

On July 21, 2015 Thanassis Cambanisa a columnist wrote:

“For years, U.S. leaders have staked their hopes for calming decades of sectarian war, insurgency, and tension in the Middle East on rehabilitating Iran, a bête noire in the eyes of Washington and its allies. But if there’s any hope of changing these dynamics, the United States is going to have to dive quickly and deeply into the region’s feuds. Wars have spiraled out of control in four Arab countries, and Iran is only partly to blame. A more cooperative Tehran — which may or may not materialize after the nuclear agreement sinks in — could open the door to calming the bloodshed in Syria, where Iran is a lead player. But the roots of the wars in Iraq and Yemen go deeper than Tehran’s machinations, and Iran has almost no role in the Libyan conflict.

After the deal, like before, U.S. interests will be challenged by clever and aggressive foes, but also by ruthless allies. If the United States wants to alter the dynamic, it will have to give up its linear approach and play what Joseph Nye describes as “three-dimensional chess.” Until now, Washington has insisted on taking on one crisis at a time, meaning that a pileup of disasters has festered while the White House looked only at the Iran nuclear deal.

That mindset won’t work. It will take far more than a change in Iran to end the Syrian civil war. Same for Yemen.

So, what will work?

First, the United States will have to engage Iran and other bad actors in each of the region’s hot spots. Obama has already expressed the intention of doing so: At his press conference on July 15, he spoke of “[jump-starting] a process to resolve the civil war in Syria” and that “it’s important for [Iran] to be part of that conversation.”

Second, at the same time Washington tries to engage diplomatically with Tehran, it will also need to raise the costs for Iran of continuing to do business in the same bloody way it has across the region. With billions of dollars flowing back into the country after the lifting of sanctions, there’s a risk that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will intensify its expansionist approach and investment in proxy wars. A direct war with Iran isn’t a wise option, but ignoring its machinations has left it free reign to expand its dominion in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. The only remaining option is to engage in messy proxy warfare as well, giving sustained military and political backing to anti-Iranian proxies, which will make it expensive for Iran to meddle around the Arab world. This will give the United States a new card in the negotiations to come: It can offer to restrain its proxy militias if Iran does the same.

Third, the United States will face the challenging task of getting its recalcitrant allies onto the same page. In the Syria conflict, that will mean butting heads with Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, all of which have poured money into rival rebel factions, allowed a free-for-all in the border zones, and paved the way for the entrenchment of hard-line Islamists within the uprising.”

Finally;today the FP Report has stated that “the publication of a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that found only 35 percent of Americans approve of his (Obama) handling of Iran generally, with 52 percent disapproving. Even among Democrats, approval is a lukewarm 59 percent.”

“Our Post-ABC survey finds that 56 percent support and 37 percent oppose a deal lifting economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for the nation agreeing not to produce nuclear weapons. But the same poll finds pessimism about whether it will work: Only 6 percent are “very confident” in the deal’s long term success, per Scott Clement. “More than six in 10 Americans say they are ‘not so’ or ‘not at all’ confident that the deal will stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, up slightly since March.”

A separate study released by the Pew Research Center found that people disapprove of the deal, 48 to 38 percent. “Almost 80% of those surveyed by Pew said they already had heard at least something about the nuclear agreement, with about one-third of the public saying they had heard a lot,” the Los Angeles Times David Lauter noted.”

There will be a few more weeks before the agreement becomes a matter of fact and although there may be much pressure against it by perhaps the majority it will be difficult to overturn. I will revisit it when it becomes apparant that the nuclear oportion will not work.

**(http://dpotpourri.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-it-is-bad.html)

Note For Monday.

Sunday was the hottest day of the year capped with a "D League" Oh Hell game. Generation 4 wants to play; Sydney has great card sense.

I will continue my appraisal of the "Deal"  on either Wednesday or Thursday but will be depending on Bernice for Monday's Council Meeting report.

WHY IT IS BAD

This was to be a brief return to the Iran Deal since family will take precedent this coming week however even the abridged the support material resulted in a long document

Congress will have 60 days to consider the deal. If it votes to reject it, Obama has promised a veto which may be difficult to override.

However that may be a moot action since the USA plans to introduce resolutions in the UN Security Council that if adopted will confirm the provisions of the “Deal” and the USA will have to abide. Obama could use this maneuver to defeat any binding Congressional objection.

My searching the internet and columnists and editorials in the Washington Post, New York Times has only resulted in a scarcity of favorable opinions. Moreover all of them are compromised by “a flawed deal is better than no deal”.

This thinking is fueled by a fear that if we reject the deal Iran will go on an aggressive course to (1) destabilize the Mid-East, (2) to produce the bomb, and (3) spread terror in the West especially the USA.

It was fear of war that led to Munich. It was Munich that gave Hitler the impression that England, France and the USA were so afraid of war that he could go unfettered in his piecemeal attempt to dominate Central and Eastern Europe and the Mid-East, precipitating the most destructive war in history.

To ignore the fact that the Ayatollah is as aggressively bent as Hitler was, is a fatal mistake.

Some of the commentary I read; Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post noted that Obama made 17 erroneous or misrepresentation statements in his press conference; a few are:

1. “With this deal, we cut off every single one of Iran’s pathways to a nuclear program, a nuclear weapons program.” Not true. After eight years, the precise restrictions end. Oops, he says it himself: “And Iran’s nuclear program will be under severe limits for many years.”

5. “And my hope is that building on this deal, we can continue to have conversations with Iran that incentivize them to behave differently in the region, to be less aggressive, less hostile, more cooperative, to operate the way we expect nations in the international community to behave. But we’re not counting on it.” This is the most bizarre comment of all. What basis is there for hope? And if we don’t count on it, we are giving an aggressive regime access to conventional arms, billions of dollars and an industrial-size nuclear infrastructure.

6. “So this deal is not contingent on Iran changing its behavior.” Well, maybe that is the most outrageous confession.

15. “The only argument you can make against the verification and inspection mechanism that we’ve put forward is that Iran is so intent on obtaining a nuclear weapon that no inspection regime and no verification mechanism would be sufficient because they’d find some way to get around it because they’re untrustworthy.” That is precisely correct which is why he blew it by letting them keep their nuclear infrastructure.

16. “So the issue of the arms embargo and ballistic missiles is a real concern to us, has been of real concern to us, and it is in the national security interest of the United States to prevent Iran from sending weapons to Hezbollah, for example, or sending weapons to the Houthis in Yemen that accelerate a civil war there.” Again, this is part of a long and rambling answer. This was never supposed to be on the table and we lose any leverage if we lift the embargo.

2. “With this deal, if Iran violates its commitments, there will be real consequences, nuclear-related sanctions that have helped to cripple the Iranian economy will snap back into place.” False again. The deal spells out laborious inspection procedures that include a 24-day notification period. Parchin, for example, is not even included. To snap back sanctions, a committee including Russia and China must agree by a majority.

Parchin is the military facility where most of Iran’s past nuclear arms-related work was carried out.

Additionally, the draft agreement made public on Tuesday contains no stated limits on Iran’s Russian-made Bushehr nuclear power facility that analysts say could produce plutonium for dozens of bombs.

On the nuclear power-generating Bushehr reactor, Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said that leaving it out of the accord was a mistake.

“That reactor can produce enough plutonium for dozens of bombs per year,” he said. “Iran could remove the fuel from the reactor and use a small, cheap reprocessing plant to extract plutonium, and get its first bombs in a matter of weeks.”

Also, the accord will lift international sanctions on several Iranian entities currently engaged in supporting terrorism and building ballistic missiles, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)- the IRGC Qods Force, and the Al Ghadir missile command.

The Qods Force is Iran’s Islamist military and covert action force that has been engaged in backing terrorism.

The Qods Force is regarded as the main foreign policy tool for special operations and terrorist support to Islamic militants, including Hezbollah and the Taliban.

Administration officials said in a phone briefing for reporters that future U.S. sanctions relief will be limited and will not be lifted on measures targeting Iranian terrorism support or human rights violations.

United Nations arms sanctions blocking military sales to and from Iran will be lifted in five years under the deal, and sanctions prohibiting sales of ballistic missiles to Tehran will end in eight years. U.S. restrictions will remain. This is a sunset provision and there is not prohibition for them being lifted earlier.

Iran and some non-Iranian participants in the Vienna talks had pushed for immediate end to both arms and missile sales.

China and Russia, however, could begin selling arms to Iran covertly right away. Both nations have done so in the past.

Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy from 2005 to 2009, a scholar in residence at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, with Ray Takeyh a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations wrote that. “Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not enter into Tuesday’s historic deal with six world powers to reset relations with the West. It was the promise of more than $100 billion in sanctions relief, rather, that greased the wheels of the recently completed diplomacy in Vienna. And though the windfall of cash will certainly strengthen its position, the real prize for Iran was regaining access to SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is the electronic bloodstream of the global financial system that has been off-limits to the country since March 2012.” ( also Jonathan Schanzer, Mark Dubowitz. FP Group 7/18)

· Yes there may the danger of Iran increasing its support of international terrorist groups or even overt attacks of the Sunni nations that are opposing it in the region as well as Israel; but I believe that this is a lesser danger now than what an empire seeking Iran will, be able to start 10 years from now. I also believe that this document does not accomplish what it is supposed to do.

VERY SHORT NOTE

Friday was a lost day; overslept and then spent the rest of the day doing spring cleaning in my computer room. At least I now can see that my desk has a top and that a  mess of papers are now in 3 disorganized piles.

Dawg had a trim and a bath and kept celebrating the rest of the day; preventing me from sitting down and posting  a blog. I may be able to post  something  in the afternoon on Saturday; but Saturday  evening Casey, Sydney, and supporting cast will be here for a week. However, an interruption may make it possible to post on Wednesday.

Obviously I most likely will not be at Monday night's Council meeting. Unless there  has been some unexpected change from the Agenda Fixing Session that meeting should be routine. I do not forget that we are in OZ.

There will be an added resolution Monday night permitting an extension of the period for payment of  3rd Quarter City Taxes due on August 1st due to a delay in the mailing of the tax bills.

THAT DEAL

I would have posted some additional comments on the Iran Deal today but although there has been a spate of TV comments and a few columns about the “deal” I still have not enough information to form any type of an opinion. Suffice to say there are pros and cons expressed.

I did watch Obama’s press conference and am of the opinion that he avoided answering any of the reporters’ questions even though they were obviously preselected.

The text of the agreement is now on line, all 159 pages. However according to one writer in the Washington Post Wednesday AM;

“More than 100 pages of text and annexes went online about 6:30 a.m., and the European Union site where it was posted soon crashed. The Obama administration won’t get all the supplemental material to Congress for up to five days, and then there will be a battery of briefings.”

I plan to keep up with this important news and will write something more definitive- for what it is worth- in a few days. The best I can see right now is that there are altered interpretations being given by both sides on the deal.

Although this is not called a treaty it is being treated as one and Congress will have a vote. Obama has said that he will veto any rejection. It is questionable if there are enough votes in Congress to override a veto; time will tell.


Why am I making such an issue about this? I believe it could impact on the lives of our children and grandchildren as much as Munich did  to my generation.