Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Are The Iranians On Board With The Obama Administration's Deal?

     Yesterday, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to support the Iran nuclear deal recently penned by that country and the United States and its allies. My fellow conservatives have gone apoplectic over this development, but it was to be expected that the Obama administration would take this step for fear that the U.S. congress might be able stop the deal through its legislative authority. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen. The UN Security Council resolution supporting the deal has both its own authority and limitations.
     The resolution will lift the UN sanctions against the terrorist state of Iran, however the U.S. sanctions will remain in effect, at least until the congress has either said yea or nay, the president has vetoed that decision if it is a nay, and the congress has had the opportunity to override that presidential veto if they can muster a 2/3 majority. And although the lifting of the UN sanctions through this current resolution is a boon to Iran, the sanctions they ultimately want lifted are the ones imposed by the U.S. congress. Besides which the UN resolution lifting their sanctions will not even go into effect for 90 days.
     What is being missed by most in the consternation over whether or not the U.S. congress will ultimately approve or stop the badly penned deal is whether or not Iran will approve it. Many powerful factions in the Iranian structure are not happy with the deal on the table. They like parts of it, i.e. the releasing of Iranian funds frozen by sanctions (although they have been paid $700 million a month for the last few months by the Obama administration as an incentive to negotiate), but they are unhappy about other parts of the deal that they see as ceding control of Iranian military assets to foreigners.
     Many experts on the Middle East have suggested that the Ayatollah is not sanguine about some parts of the deal and is trying to sabotage it by increasing his anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric in recent weeks. This would serve to fire up the resistance to such a deal by the more radical factions in the Iranian power structure, such as the Iranian republican guard. The guard has been the most virulent opposition to any deal, and the Ayatollah's radical rhetoric is seen as a nod to their opposition, and a way for the Supreme Leader to save face at home while holding out hope to the "world community" that there are "moderate" factions within the country trying to gain control.
      The passage of the recently structured deal is in doubt, not only by the United States congress, but by the Iranian parliament as well. We conservatives, and all those with any common sense, see this deal as the destructive force that it is. But for an Iranian regime that wants no limitations or interference in their national nuclear machinations, the deal is not the boon to their interests that we in the United States see it to be. To be sure, the bottom line is that with or without this deal Iran is not only a danger and threat in the region, but to the world. And I fear that with or without this agreement we will either be provoked into an eventual military response, or the complacent acceptance of Iran as a Middle East empire and a world power.       

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