today the US and Iran signed a deal on Iran's nuclear industry. Iran will reduce its stockpile of partially enriched uranium significantly, open itself up to inspections and convert some of its enrichment laboratories over to physics research. In return the US will slowly remove sanctions on Iran. Seems a good deal all round. Iran has a lot to benefit from normalised relations with the west. In years to come we might see the US starting to sell a lot of commercial items to Iran such as jetliners etc. Israel and Saudi Arabia aren't happy. Little aside, Japan has 3000kg of plutonium and a very skilled technical and engineering clique. They could build an a-bomb in as little as six months if they wanted to. Am not saying that they want to... but if they chose to, they could. Also it is reported that in the event of war Pakistan would supply Saudi Arabia with some of its nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia paid a large part of their development. Also there are 6000 Pakistani troops on Saudi soil for 'security reasons' Say the opposite happened and Iran did not sign the deal and went on and developed the a-bomb, Saudi Arabia would be annoyed and no doubt ask Pakistan if it could have some of their joint nuclear stockpile back now I imagine some in the US congress aint going to be happy with the deal, and Netanyahu is totally pissed.
It works both ways: Iran will benefit from improved ties with the west and vice versa. Undoubtedly there will be attempts by certain players to undermine Iran's improved relations with the West. Saudi for decades - with a willing West - has successfully painted Iran as the regional "bad boy" and has isolated Iran. Saudi involvement in Yemen is part of the long standing Sunni/Shia cold war and is aimed at checking Iran's rise in influence. The U.S. needs Iranian help with Afghanistan and with IS but has no alternative but to support the involvement of Saudi and other allies in Yemen; which off course like with Syria is aimed at Iran. Pakistan had almost a brigade's worth of troop in Saudi during the 1980's. These troops were equipped and paid by Saudi but Pakistan later declared that the troops would defend Saudi but would not be used against Iran. I'm quite sceptical as to the willingness of Pakistan to provide Saudi with nukes. Pakistan needs Saudi cash but is also beholden to China as China acts as a counterweight against India and from what I've read elsewhere; imposes tight control on Pakistan's nukes.
Not sure how tight China's control of Pakistan's nuclear technology is. North Korea got some Pakistani assistance although it may not have been state sanctioned.
Pakistan needs Saudi cash to prop up its economy but from a strategical viewpoint; China is far more important to Pakistan; the main Pakistani security focus remains India and China plays a huge part. Also, if I'm not mistaken Pakistan's Ghauri missiles and others are essentially Chinese missiles and for the Pakistan nuclear programme, China has provided far more assistance than North Korea. I didn't save the link but I remember reading on an Indian blog that China exercises strict control on the deployment of Pakistani nukes and this was one condition the Chinese insisted on before allowing Pakistan access to Chinese missiles. A couple of very interesting articles on why Saudi and Israel opposes the deal and what the effects of Iran signing the deal [positive to some and dangerous to others] might bring to the geo-political situation in the region. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...man-in-the-gulf-it-could-happen-10154920.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/...oppose-iran-nuclear-deal-150401061906177.html
Interesting reads at both sites but Iran and Saudi Arabia are and will remain ugly choices for the ME power broker role. As for the nuke agreement, who knows? The NK deal sucked and opponents of this deal will be quick to point that out. It's a replay of "is any kind of deal better than no deal". I admit that I don't know!
The deal's not perfect, no doubt there but it's a compromise and better than the alternative: war. If no deal had been reached and Netanyahu sensed that he had the support of the U.S: we would probably be looking at a strike on Iran. The Iranians off course would be justified in retaliating, leading to the Americans getting involved and soon there would be another war in the region. What is very telling is that the main reason Israel and Saudi are so opposed to the deal is not because both are worried that Iranian nukes might someday land on Haifa or Riyadh but because a nuclear armed Iran would have more much influence in the region and in Israel's case; it would lose its nuclear monopoly. It also goes without saying that a U.S/Iran rapprochement worries Iran and Saudi. IMO improved Iran/U S. ties and the rise of Iran as a regional power (as it once was) will be good for the region. It will however be interesting to see what Israel and Saudi do next to counter Iran and what Saudi and it's ever willing Arab partners do if the Houthis gain more ground. There are already reports of Saudi special forces in Yemen. Some would say that Saudi would be doing more good if it led an Arab contingent to Iraq to assist in the defeat of IS.
POTUS seems determined to scuttle the Iran nuke deal, motivated no doubt by his obsession with fulfilling campaign promises and undoing the Obama legacy. I doubt he has given much thought to the aftermath of any treaty abrogation only that he notch up a 'win' for his base. Apparently North Korea isn't a big enough crisis to occupy him and he thinks messing with the Iranians somehow makes sense. The good news is he's getting pushback from the IC which he has derided in the past. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...al-violations-white-house-search-intelligence US intelligence officials are under pressure from the White House to produce a justification to declare Iran in violation of a 2015 nuclear agreement, in an echo of the politicisation of intelligence that led up to the Iraq invasion, according to former officials and analysts. The collapse of the 2015 deal between Tehran, the US and five other countries – by which Iran has significantly curbed its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief – would trigger a new crisis over nuclear proliferation at a time when the US is in a tense standoff with North Korea. Intelligence analysts, chastened by the experience of the 2003 Iraq war, launched by the Bush administration on the basis of phoney evidence of weapons of mass destruction, are said to be resisting the pressure to come up with evidence of Iranian violations. The Guardian view on sanctions: an essential tool Editorial: Neither pure diplomacy nor outright war, sanctions are often better than both Read more “Anecdotally, I have heard this from members of the intelligence community – that they feel like they have come under pressure,” said Ned Price, a former CIA analyst who also served as a national security council spokesman and special assistant to Barack Obama. “They told me there was a sense of revulsion. There was a sense of déjà vu. There was a sense of ‘we’ve seen this movie before’.” However, Donald Trump has said he expects to declare Iran non-compliant by mid-October, the next time he is required by Congress to sign a three-monthly certification of the nuclear deal (known as the Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action, or JCPOA). And the administration is pursuing another avenue that could trigger the collapse of the deal.
Trump officially pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal Trump declares US leaving 'horrible' Iran nuclear accord Trump Withdraws U.S. From ‘One-Sided’ Iran Nuclear Deal Soo can someone give me a non biased reason to this decision?
Totally agree Barney and now Kin Jong Un will have to decide whether or not any agreement with the US will be worth the paper it is written on. The ramifications of this decision are far reaching and go beyond just the security aspect.
All the economist I'v heard say there are no jobs to come back to the United States. They're gone and gone for good. Only thing left for POTUS to "Make America Great Again" is to expand what the States already does.
I can't see how this is good, for anyone. Iran then goes back to developing weapons. Saudis and the Emiratis will also go back to developing weapons, Egypt and Qatar and Turkey will love that. Then most nations between europe and China are funding their own weapon programs.
We gave Iran Hundreds of Billions in cash, and Iran would "cease the development of nukes".... you honestly believe Iran just stopped their programs? The same country whom shout death to Israel and death to America? It's been proven they've continued their efforts, they merely hid the program under a separate name having all the same scientist and physicists working on it.. I don't understand how ANYBODY would think that the Iran deal was good, it was an embarrassment!
The European oil and auto industry thought is was great. The subtle point not understood by the breathless MSM is that it is also a message to Kim Jong-un before the Trump meet. That the Iranians have until October to walk this all back.
Working for a treaty to stop nuke proliferation in the Korea while undermining a nuke agreement with Iran. That's an exagertation. The unfrozen Iranian assets was in the of neighborhood of US$100B and according to the US Treasury about half of that would be used to pay Iranian obligations. The Iranian Central Bank estimate was around US$35B left over IIRC.
Regardless of what one's personal opinions are about Iran and its nuclear programme; the 2015 deal averted a strike that would have led to war. A war nobody wanted and one that would have been disastrous for the region. An opinion many had during that period was that Iran was not developing nukes per say but the ability to assemble nukes if it had to. Given the Iran is faced with a nuke armed Israel [which the U.S. never discusses] and has the unconditional support of the U.S, that the Gulf Arabs have armed themselves to the teeth and that the U.S. has a history of regime change; it's not hard to figure out why Iran might want nukes.To date both the EU and the IAEA have maintained that Iran has lived up to its end of the bargain. If Trump wants to back off from the deal the onus is on him to provide irrefutable proof that Iran is indeed not ''behaving'' ..... The U.S. backing out of the deal will send North Korea the message that the U.S. can't be trusted and that a deal signed now might not be worth anything in the future. It will also reinforce the point made by Iranian hardliners that whatever concessions Iran makes; the U.S. will never be satisfied. Iranians [even those in the opposition] will support their government as they will see Trump's actions as another hypocritical and double standard attempt by the U.S. to further isolate Iran to the benefit of Iran's enemies. The question remains : what does the U.S. hope to achieve and by backing out from the deal; does it actually benefit the U.S. or U.S. allies like Israel and Saudi? Is the U.S. using nukes as a pretext for further action to weaken and isolate Iran as part of its grand strategy in the region? One thing's for sure; U.S. attempts since 1979 to do way with Iran as a regional player have failed. Like it or not Iran is a major regional player with great influence and there can be no long term regional stability without Iran. Analysis: Trump's withdrawal from Iran nuclear deal isolates US ''Trump's unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal - a move driven largely by domestic politics - will further isolate the US from its European allies and set in motion ripple effects that could lead to wider proliferation of nuclear weapons and regional tensions in the Middle East, analysts say. The reality is that for reasons that have nothing to do with foreign policy, the president just took a highly flawed, but still functional accord, and scrapped it without an alternative," Aaron David Miller, a Middle East analyst at the Wilson Center''. It’s not clear if Trump and Netanyahu want a war with Iran – but they may fall into one all the same ''Western debacles in the Middle East since 9/11 have not produced a learning curve; or there is such a curve, it points down rather than up. In the wake of the popular uprising in Syria in 2011, the US and its regional allies – Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar – backed the armed opposition to president Bashar al-Assad. Whatever they supposed they were doing, they ensured that for Assad to survive he needed maximum engagement of Russia and Iran in Syria.'' NUCLEAR CHUTZPAH ''Listening to Netanyahu accuse Iran of hiding secret nuclear facilities was pure pot calling the kettle black. Israel’s early nuclear program at Dimona in the Negev desert was entirely concealed from US and UN inspectors, including fake walls in the nuclear complex that completely fooled them. When Netanyahu accused Iran of cheating, he knows of what he speaks. Most of what Netanyahu ‘revealed’ about Iran’s alleged nuclear program was old stuff, dating back to 1999-2003 and readily available in reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency. This respected UN agency now reports that Iran has fulfilled all of its commitments and abandoned its earlier nuclear program that did not produce any weapons before it was ended.''
Perhaps not having the Trump administration to deal with regarding the TPP is not such a bad thing after all. I am beginning to think the same might apply to NAFTA as well. What does an agreement mean with this guy, SFA judging by the number of lawsuits against him. China will likely ease up on Kim Jung Un with regards to the pending nuclear talks.
While US did officially pull out of the deal, the European allies have not. As a matter of fact: #Europe will do whatever it takes to keep #Iran in the nuclear deal" says #German Chancellor Merkel. Straight from Merkel.........so I don't think that US leaving just gives Iran a free pass to build nukes I don't know if this is supposed to go into this thread or the ISIS/Syrian war one.......but since we're already here: An hour after Trump made the announcement, Israel conducted strikes against Iranian targets in Damascus Israel reportedly launches airstrikes in Syria immediately after Trump withdraws from Iran deal Also PressTV-Netanyahu heads to Russia after Israel strikes Syria Also: President Erdogan: United States will lose, because they don't keep any of their words. and today some events unfolding today: #BREAKING: Very large amounts of Israeli military equipment now pouring into Golan Heights region including tanks, Missile Defence Systems, MLRS and other machinery as tensions with Iran and Syria rise images via @IntelCrab
