2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumON IRAN, JOHN KERRY CLOSES A DEAL AND OPENS A WINDOW
NOVEMBER 24, 2013
POSTED BY AMY DAVIDSON
John Kerry flew to Geneva and, at 3 A.M. SundaySwiss timegot the signatures he needed on a deal to stop the momentum of Irans nuclear program. The parties to the agreement are Iran and the five members of the Security Council plus Germany. Israel isnt a part of it, and Benjamin Netanyahu doesnt like it one bit. (A historic mistake, he said.) That doesnt mean it isnt good for Israel (or even that all Israelis agree with Netanyahu; they dont) or for the rest of us. We have a real opportunity to achieve a comprehensive, peaceful settlement, and I believe we must test it, President Obama said Saturday night; and, in terms of the promise of the deal, hes right. The terms are for six months: Iran has to stop producing uranium enriched beyond a certain degree, stop expanding its enrichment capacity with new centrifuges, and stop using a lot of the centrifuges it has.
Simply put, they cut off Irans most likely paths to a bomb, Obama said, in return for a new path toward a world that is more secure. One path is more appealing than the other.
In return, Iran gets what President Obama called modest relief from sanctions. Mostly, this means letting Iran have access to some of what is actually its own money, frozen in foreign bank accounts. (The Washington Post summarizes the terms.) There is also a commitment not to impose new sanctions during the six months. That will mean some political work on the part of the Administration, since several Congressional Republicans are already angry about the dealCongressman Mike Rogers, told CNN that it was a mistake that might have just encouraged more violence and some Democrats, too, will be skeptical. (Senator Chuck Schumer said in a statement that he was "disappointed." But it should be do-able.
The most important aspect, though, might be the oversight requirements. There will be daily inspections and deep access to sites. This helps if you want to stop a country from secretly developing nuclear weapons. But it also helps if you want to open that country up, to ratchet down hostility and check the many ways Iran can destabilize a region that has troubles enough, to help make it a different place. Iran has a new President, Hassan Rouhani, who, Laura Secor wrote in the magazine last week, is a pragmatist who came to power, in part, on the strength of disaffection, both popular and élite, with the confrontational foreign policy of his predecessor. The regimes rhetoric is still violent, its policies destructivein Syria for example. One doesnt want to be starry-eyed. And Sunday morning there was back-and-forth over the abstract right to enrichment. But, Secor notes, Rouhani has committed himself to finding a quick resolution to the impasse, and the cumbersome, fractious machinery of the Iranian state has backed him with an unusual unity of purpose.
Gone are the grandiose diatribes and the repetitive talking points of the Ahmadinejad years. It would be self-destructive on Americas part not to seize this moment.
full article
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/11/on-iran-john-kerry-closes-a-deal.html
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)But it will be along road ahead. Let's hope whomever succeeds President Obama continues to push this path.
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)This is a remarkable start.