Liberal Groups Vow To Hold Democrats Accountable If They Help Republicans Kill Obama Iran Deal

[karynnj]

45. I disagree

1) The entire reason the P5 +1 put those sanctions in place was due to the nuclear program. There are other sanctions the US put in place for other reasons - those are unaffected by the agreement.

With countries like the USSR, China etc, a similar method of acting in a step by step manner dealing with their threat was used. Consider that it was within the cold war when we first started to limit nuclear weapons via treaties with the USSR (THAT was a treaty because it committed the US - as well as USSR - to limit their nuclear arsenal.)

The reason for this effort that in some of the P5 went back a decade, was that it was thought that Iran having nuclear bombs was very dangerous to the world. What this deal does is insure that they will not get a bomb for over a decade and it preserves monitoring even beyond that.

2) Now as far as terrorism goes, Iran is in a class with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - neither of whom are sanctioned. It is easy to make the case that both of them have in fact been worse than Iran, but at the level all are at, arguing that any one is better than the rest is silly.

However, you can't really claim that their backing of terrorism has been reduced by the sanctions that were in place for over a decade. There is no reason to assume this will increase due to the expiration of the nuclear program related sanctions.

3) This is not equivalent to going to taking the country to war -- and in fact, Clinton bombed Iraq, Reagan attacked Grenada, and Obama joined with NATO on Libya all without Congressional approval. More importantly, where the Constitution does split the authority on going to war, they assign dealing with foreign nations to the executive branch. There are FAR more executive agreements than there are treaties -- and there is a very clear definition of when something is a treaty. This isn't.

4) As to the Republican claim that the next President can undo this - that is absolutely unrealistic. If we get a deal this June, there will be two possibilities of what happens between then and January 2017 when a new President is sworn in.

If Iran has broken the deal, we will see how well the sanctions snapped back - if they did, there is nothing to change. (If they didn't, President Obama and Congress would already have considered and maybe taken action.) The key is that NO option we have at this moment is taken off the table. In fact, it is Congress destroying the deal that takes the option of having this decade of monitoring and reduction of fissile material and the repurposing of the facility that is the hardest to destroy off the table.

If Iran has NOT violated the deal, the US would have no chance in getting the international sanctions put back in place. Not to mention, other parts of the deal like the repurposing of mountain center and the international monitoring would continue. The US would look silly if we even try to get support for our unilateral sanctions.

5) Look carefully at the arguments of those against giving the negotiators the space to make a deal. Many will SAY things that sound reasonable -- until you look at the details. It is utterly bizarre that some argue that it should be rejected because 13 to 15 years from now, the breakout time could be extremely short. Given that the situation per Netanyahu as well as real experts is that if there is no deal, they would then be two or three months away from a bomb NOW - 13 to 15 years AND continuing monitoring even then seems a pretty good deal.

Oddly, some of the people AGAINST a deal now speak positively of the interim agreement's provisions and argue we can stick with that - however, we can't. These are things Iran agreed to WHILE continuing to negotiate in exchange for some moderate relief from sanctions. This is the SAME deal they blasted back in November 2013 when it was proposed and there is no offer by Iran (or the rest of the world) to make it permanent.

6) Here, the majority of the US population wants a diplomatic deal - this has been seen in every poll - even though the voices against it have for the last several months had far more coverage because while negotiations are ongoing it is not helpful making everything public. Yet more people are for it than against it.

7) I am happy this thread exists as there is lot of money and power behind the forces that want this to fail and they are lobbying everyone on any of their lists to call their Congressmen and Senators. WE NEED TO DO THE SAME.

8) One sanity test is to look at who are the voices on each side - Frankly, I trust the P5+1 members that were at the table - including not just Secretary Kerry, but our Secretary of Energy, who was an MIT professor of Nuclear Physics FAR more than Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly shown that he has no compunctions against lying in service of what he thinks is right.

The idea that a better deal can be had is arrogant and implies that the good people who worked on it were either not committed enough, not smart enough or too lazy to get the "better deal".

This is a chance to avoid a war that has been brewing since the Bush years. There is no risk in taking the chance because, it puts us in a BETTER position than not taking it if there really is a movement to breakout by Iran. We have FAR more monitoring than now - and we lose the monitoring we do have under the interim agreement if this falls apart. NOTHING IS PERMANENTLY TAKEN OFF THE TABLE.

9) Finally, I have always believed as Kerry said repeatedly since forever - you only go to war as a last resort. This is a clear case of where if they get a final deal, diplomacy will have avoided a war. Given that we give up nothing - the sanctions on the program were there to bring Iran to the negotiating table - this is a chance for peace, not war. I gladly stand with Obama, Kerry and Moniz - especially against Bolton, McCain, Cotton, Cheney and Netanyahu.