Obama & Iran

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Info on Iran & Nukes!

With Bibi Netanyahu lamenting an "historic mistake", Eric Cantor calling the deal "in fact dangerous", Lindsay Graham describing it as a "nightmare", Senator John Cornyn deeming it but a distraction from Obamacare, Morning Joe Scarborough exclaiming Iranian victory and Obama desperation, Dan Senor bemoaning the "degree of panic" he senses from our allies, Bill Kristol seeing it as a "terrible deal" & John Bolton damning the deal as "an abject surrender"...

There is no question as to where the neo-cons and chicken-hawks stand - pounding out the drum beat of war as per usual. Fortunately, when the neo-cons lose, America wins.

Neo-cons hate, just hate, the thought of peace negotiations. They are paid by the military industrial complex to fear-monger and beat on those war-drums. As John McCain giddily chortled to an audience of conservatives - bomb, bomb Iran. Ha-friggin-ha.

US intelligence first warned of an Iranian "clandestine nuclear weapons development program" as far back as the '70s. Bibi claimed in his 1992 book, that Iran was "close" to weaponizing their nuclear program.

While Iran does of course have the right, as any other sovereign nation, to develop and maintain nuclear power capabilities - the West (as we are known by some) have determined that Iran should not be allowed nuclear weapons.

No matter that Pakistan, North Korea, India, Israel, Russia and so on, already enjoy said nuclear capability - hard-liners (Netanyahu, namely) have decided that Iran is not to even have the ability to be anywhere close to the capability of nuclear weaponization.

Here in lies the problem - nuclear power and nuclear weapons both require enriched uranium. While power can be harnessed from the warmth emitted from a tiny amount of enriched uranium, it cannot be weaponized until enriched beyond 20% - the yellow cake stage.

The cost to carry out such a task is...prohibitive. Especially so given the international sanctions imposed upon Iran. Which explains the purpose of the sanctions. That being said, the sanctions rely upon the cooperation of the international community.

In the presidential debates in 2008, Obama was chastised by chicken-hawks far and wide for his shocking display of naivete in promising to negotiate with Iran for the first time since 1979.

Shortly after winning reelection, Obama put feelers out to Rouhani, who was among six candidates for president of Iran (not the Supreme Leader, it should be noted). Rouhani ran as a (relative) moderate who would negotiate with the West in hopes of a deal to trade nuclear concessions in exchange for an easing of the sanctions that continue to ravage the Iranian economy and harm the poorest of Iranians the most.

After a year of negotiating on the down low, as it were, those talks have now come to fruition. Iran's nuclear program is delayed, and if they did choose to reneg on this deal and make a mad dash to weaponize, we would know about it much sooner given the daily inspections agreed upon in this deal.

Perhaps as important, the lines of communication have been opened. Peaceful dialogue has commenced, in the wake of decades of mud-slinging and demonizing to respective domestic crowds. Most important, is that the war-mongers drum-beat is muffled. Iran is their shiny object. And as they are wont to do, they will have a hissy-fit. They will cry and cry, they will render their garments. They will bemoan the peacenikian wussification that will surely bring about the impeding doom of America.

Hopefully they stop short of leveling new sanctions. With Iran having extending their proverbial hand - if we turn around, slap that hand away and break the first deal in decades by imposing new sanctions post-haste? Again, sanctions require international cooperation in order to be effective.

Here in the US, we've been warned time and time, for decades in fact, against negotiating with terrorists. That's all well and good if your aim is only to exert American power by force rather than tact (guess which option fills the pockets of defense contractors.

In a perfect world there would be no nuclear weapons whatsoever. Unfortunately, none of us happen to reside in Shangri-la. What we can strive for is peace. With disaster averted in Syria (much to the dismay of the neo-cons), and progress being made with Iran, the chicken-hawks have fallen on hard times - and that's always a good thing.