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There are some days when I sit down to write a post because I’m so damn befuddled by what the subject could possibly be thinking, that he would have advanced such a ridiculous, hare-brained idea. That’s true tonight, as The Daily Beast reports that Donald Trump is considering a French proposal to offer Iran $15-billion in sanctions relief in return for satisfying several conditions:
- Iran would have to come back into compliance with the nuclear accord it signed with the world’s major powers
- Tehran would also have to agree not to threaten the security of the Persian Gulf or to impede maritime navigation in the area
- Tehran would have to commit to regional Middle East talks in the future.
Let’s talk about the lunacy of Trump offering blandishments to Iran to return to the nuclear agreement which Trump himself called one of the worst ever negotiated by a U.S. president. If this deal went forward you’d have Iran complying with the JCPOA, while the U.S. stubbornly remained outside it. Would the obscene irony of this be lost on anyone?
As for not threatening the security of the Persian Gulf, would that include Saudi Arabia ceasing to fund and arm Sunni terror groups launching terror attacks inside Iran, not to mention support for ISIS in Syria? Or is Iran supposed to agree not to respond to threats to its own security by its adversaries?
The notion of regional talks (point 3) is half-baked: who would be involved? What would they talk about? What would the goal of the talks be? This point clearly is intended to force Iran to agree to end its regional involvement and support of groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and Syria. And I see no reason Iran wouldn’t agree to this in return for a few conditions of its own: that Israel cease its own interventions in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. And that Israel agree to a negotiated resolution to its conflict with the Palestinians. And that Saudi Arabia cease its interventions in the affairs of nations in the region like Bahrain, Qatar, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc. After all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
The problem with the Israeli-U.S. approach to Iran is that it is totally one-sided. Iran is always the aggressor. It is never responding to incitement and violence directed at it. Until there is some recognition of reciprocity–that Iran is defending, and has a right to defend itself and its interests–there can be no progress toward stability and security for all in the region.
As I wrote in a post last night, this scheme, while certainly devised with the best of intentions, has all the ingredients of the North Korean summits which ended in abject failure for Trump. The president loves the grand gesture, throwing caution to the winds in order to gain all the glory. He still has his eyes on the prize…Nobel, that is. That may work in real estate deals. But when you’re dealing with international diplomacy and intractable conflicts festering over decades, if not generations–grand gestures and Hail Mary passes tend to fall flat.
The danger of this approach is that after the hopes raised by these grandiloquent plans fizzle, the bitterness of the failure festers. That tends to lead to even greater violence and hate down the line. We have seen this regarding Israel’s rejection of a solution to its conflict. North Korea has returned to testing ever more dangerous nuclear missiles. The Taliban have stepped up their attacks against Afghan targets.
Hey wait a minute.
Netanyahu just provided the world with satellite images of the Iranian Abadeh installation before and after it was uncovered by Israel, which coverup, as seen in the photos, was hasty.
Before the Macron deal is struck, IAEA inspectors need to launch an immediate investigation to see whether Iran violated the nuclear deal.
The IAEA needs to get in there and check to see if the Abadeh site has radioactive residue similar to that found in the “carpet factory” in Turquzabad, which Israel referred the IAEA to back in December.
Richard. Aren’t you curious to know what the Iranians are doing at the Abadeh site?
@benyamin: I’m adding a new comment rule specifically for you: do NOT post a comment until you’ve read the entire post. If you had, you’d have known that the IAEA almost definitely has inspected the site. Israel told them of the site after they discovered it. Surely the IAEA immediately went to visit and did exactly what you suggest, and found nothing. If it had found anything, the IAEA would have revealed that and Israel would know what it found.
Stop being lazy and wasting my time replying.
“the IAEA almost definitely has inspected the site. ”
‘Almost definitely’. That’s reassuring.
There is zero proof that the IAEA has inspected the Abadeh installation.
I submit, that if the IAEA had inspected the site, and had given it a clean bill of health, there would have been no need for Iran to destroy and erase the site like it did this past July.
See what I’m saying?
@ Benyamin:
Put yourself in the IAEA’s shoes. Israel comes to you and says the Abadeh facility is a nuclear weapons site. What do you do? Do you sit on your hands and eat bonbons? Play a round of cards? Or do you send inspectors on the next plane and go straight there to inspect it? Of course you go–and pronto. And then if you find something suspicious or detectable nuclear activity, you tell the member states and possibly the world that Iran is violating its agreements. Did that happen? No.
So what do we think happened here (everyone except you, that is)? IAEA went to Abadeh as soon as the Israelis informed them of their suspicions and found nothing.
After several days of waiting, I still have had no word from the IAEA press office answering my questions about Abadeh. They clearly don’t want to wade into Bibi’s bogus claims at all. If there was a ‘there’ there, they surely would confirm his claim in some fashion.
As for destroying the site, Iran knows that every available satellite in the western world is focussed on every nook and cranny of its territory that could be such a site. Neither you nor I know what happened there and why. We don’t even know for sure that the Israeli satellite images are what Israel claims. But there could be many reasons Iran destroyed the site if that’s what it did.
You are done in this thread.