Thursday, April 9, 2015
Khamenei and Rouhani Trash Obama's Version of the Iran Deal
Are we surprised? I don't think so. It was always obvious to everyone but President Obama that Iran's nuclear negotiations had a completely different goal than that of the rest of the world. So, today, the world just nodded when the Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the final say on matters of state, announced to a crowd shouting "Death to America" that most of a fact sheet put out by the White House was contrary to what was agreed. AFP reported that Khamenei also said there is no guarantee of a final deal by the June deadline : "What has been done so far does not guarantee an agreement, nor its contents, nor even that the negotiations will continue to the end. Everything is in the detail, it may be that the other side, which is unfair, wants to limit our country in the details," he said. He added: “I was never optimistic about negotiating with America....Nonetheless I agreed to the negotiations and supported, and still support, the negotiators.” ~~~~~ The Ayatollah wasn't alone in trashing the Obama-Kerry version of what was agreed in Lausanne last week. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said there will be no deal unless world powers simultaneously lift economic sanctions imposed on Iran. The United States, United Kingdom France, Russia, China and Germany - the P5+1 group - reached an unwritten understanding with Iran last week on limits to its nuclear program in return for lifting crippling economic sanctions. The White House has insisted that the sanctions would be lifted in phases, but that no details have as yet been negotiated. In a televised address Thursday at a ceremony marking Iran's nuclear technology day, President Rouhani appeared to rule out a gradual removal of the sanctions, which have crippled Iran's energy and financial sectors and seriously damaged its economy. Rouhani said : "We will not sign any agreement unless all economic sanctions are totally lifted on the first day of the implementation of the deal. We want a win-win deal for all parties involved in the nuclear talks." Striking a defiant pose, Rouhani added : "The Iranian nation has been and will be the victor in the negotiations." The Lausanne agreement apparently includes the lifting of sanctions after international monitors verify Iran is abiding by the limitations set out in the final agreement and that sanctions will resume if Iran fails to fulfill its obligations. White House spokesman Josh Earnest has consistently said : "It has never been our position that all of the sanctions against Iran should be removed from Day One." ~~~~~ Khamenei struck a hard line that contradicts much of what President Obama has said Iran agreed to. For example, Khamenei ruled out any “extraordinary supervision measures” over Iran’s nuclear activities and said that “Iran’s military sites cannot be inspected under the excuse of nuclear supervision,” according to the AP. But he also repeated his denials that Iran has any intention of building nuclear weapons, which he has declared to be forbidden by Islam. The Ayatollah said : "The nuclear industry is a necessity, for energy production, for desalination, and in the fields of medicine, agriculture and other sectors." ~~~~~ Dear readers, negotiators have until June 30 to sort out the critical details leading to an agreement that will accommodate Iran's only goal - relief from the sanctions as soon as possible - while guaranteeing world powers that Iran won't develop a nuclear weapon. Rouhani's statement today that the Islamic Republic’s chief gain was the fact that US President Barack Obama acknowledged that the people of Iran will not surrender to bullying, sanctions and threats, that “Our triumph is that the biggest military and economic power in the world, i.e., the US and the country’s President, acknowledged the fact that the Iranian nation will never yield to pressure, sanctions and bullying,” adds weight to the truth that Congress, Israel and the world have tried to make Obama understand. With Congress moving closer to passing legislation sponsored by GOP Senator Corker that will give it up-or-down power over sanctions and any Obama deal with Iran, the President has been selling his version of what was achieved in Lausanne as the reason for Congress to step aside and give him final control over the sanctions and the agreement. The Jerusalem Post weighed in on the side of Congress today, reporting another Iranian aggressive action -- writing that Iran is building an explosive fleet of so-called “suicide kamikaze drones” while also providing know-how on assembling the new weapons to its terrorist allies Hamas and Hezbollah, according to a new report, which was also cited by the Washington Times and published by the Army's Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The report states that “no aspect of Iran’s overt military program has seen as much development over the past decade as Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Whereas a decade ago Iran’s UAVs and drones were largely for show, a platform with little if any capability, the Iranian military today boasts widespread use of drones, employed not only by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), but also by the regular army, both regular and IRGC navy, and the regular and IRGC air forces.” the Jerusalem Post quoted the report as saying. And, perhaps the biggest blow to Obama came yesterday when Senator Chuck Schumer, tipped to become the Democrat Senate Leader when Harry Reid retires in 2016, announced that he supports the Corker bill : “This is a very serious issue that deserves careful consideration, and I expect to have a classified briefing in the near future. I strongly believe Congress should have the right to disapprove any agreement and I support the Corker bill which would allow that to occur." This leaves Obama's veto-proof position in the hands of his staunchest supporter in Congress, Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader. But the leftist wing of the House Democrat caucus is calling for her to step aside because they think she cannot lead them in their goal of taking back House seats in 2016. President Obama must be sleeping badly. To quote Shakespeare's Henry IV, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."
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“But he also repeated his denials that Iran has any intention of building nuclear weapons, which he has declared to be forbidden by Islam” … how can nuclear weapons be forbidden by Islam when all the laws of today’s Islam were written by Muhammad some 1400 years or more ago?
ReplyDeleteThis is not questioning Casey Pop but it is questioning the Ayatollah Khamenei and Iranian President Rouhani's veracity.
This Obama-Kerry deal in the making is falling apart somewhat rapidly. It is crumbling in front of their eyes. It is collapsing in the U.S. House and Senate under the weight of opposition growing within the Democratic Party members.
ReplyDeleteBoth Khamenei and Rouhani are filling the airways with negative comments on the American interpretation of what was the framework agreement.
Could it be that this is exactly what Obama wanted or planned on happening? The whole deal falls apart. Both sides blame each other. Iran goes ahead and builds a bomb that they may already have. And Obama and Kerry face the camera’s in the Rose Garden and says … “We Tried. We had a deal but the House and senate caused the deal to falter with their intervention. It’s not our fault. We did our best.”
My, oh my new version of the Obama Shell Game.
But if this was all a camouflaged lie who all was in on it ???
Any deal with Iran and whoever is the ruling Ayatollah at the time is questionable. Iran is not a trustworthy country. But then neither is the present Obama Administration in the United States.
ReplyDeleteSo it may all come down to a roll of the dice. But trusting the dice on a matter so strategic as nuclear weapons in the hands of religious fanatics, that have absolute power in Iran’s autocratic society that lives as if it’s 1400 years ago in my mind is not worth the roll.
It all comes back to what Ronald Reagan said in his farewell address. “It’s still trust but verify,” he said. “It’s still play, but cut the cards. It’s still watch closely. And don’t be afraid to see what you see.”
Obama will be the First American President to openly sign an “agreement” with the mass-murdering mullahs in Tehran, going along with everything they want, and getting nothing in return. Well, the President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, is now trying to get a phony “agreement” with the mullahs that will give them everything.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Europeans, to their everlasting shame, are standing in line to get their dirty oil from the mullahs, and damn the consequences for peace and humanity.
And yes, the President is quite happy to violate the “advise and consent” clause of the US Constitution, and go to the UN instead, just to get his own g-philiac brownie points from the wretched of the earth. After lying many times over six years that “Iran would not be allowed to have nuclear weapons,” he (Obama) totally collapsed to the mullahs, who now can’t stop laughing. But now Americans have to trust Obama. It’s “trust me, don’t verify.”
No Abe Lincoln. No Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. Not FDR or Truman, all who would have shuddered in horror at our Current Oval Office Occupant, and certainly Ronald Reagan would have turned in disgust.
In 2012, Obama said he was "determined" to prevent Iran from achieving its dangerous nuclear objectives, and promised to use every tool at his disposal to do so. Now he's talking about Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state just as soon as his weak deal begins to expire. Given this extraordinary "evolution," how can he be trusted to make the tough, necessary decisions to protect America and her allies?
ReplyDeleteObama is walking into with his eyes wide open to a nightmare scenario(created by his and John Kerry’s own inadequacies), the zenith, the culmination of more than a decade of progressives and foreign-policy lightweights, public servants that because they have a passport believe they know something about foreign affairs and diplomacy (in the most difficult arena on the planet) convincing themselves that Iran isn’t really what it appears to be, and that a long, lasting peace can be reached with apocalyptic mullahs with a long history of using terrorism to achieve their goals. The foreign-policy “smart set” averts their eyes from Iranian leaders’ rambling about magical green auras and world leaders not blinking in their presence, chanting “Death to America!” and Israel every Friday, pledging to wipe other countries off the map, and the Iranian regime using children to clear minefields.
ReplyDeleteAnd now critics of the critics of the so-called deal say that we are without any alternatives other than this Obama/Kerry negotiated pending deal.
Well, of course we have alternatives. This is one of the most staggering comments I’ve ever heard. We’re without alternatives only if you accept that there’s no such thing as coercive diplomacy, only if you accept that John Kerry is the most brilliant negotiator the world has ever seen since Mark Cuban or Bismarck.