Foreign Policy

Arms control experts support the P5+1 world powers nuclear agreement with Iran

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POLITICO Tiger Beat on The Potomac reports today that the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan group based in Washington, released a statement (.pdf) Tuesday morning declaring the P5+1 world powers nuclear arms agreement with Iran limiting Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief is “a net-plus for international nuclear non-proliferation efforts.” Nuclear experts fall in behind Obama:

Iran-nuclear-deal-1024x576Among the 75 signatories are the former CIA agent Valerie Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson, prominent opponents of the Iraq War. Others include Hans Blix, a former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); Morton Halperin, a foreign policy veteran of three administrations; and Thomas Pickering, a retired diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Several former United Nations disarmament officials, along with leaders of think tanks and foundations dedicated to preventing the spread of nuclear arms, also added their names. Some of the signatories are already known supporters of the deal, which was struck in July.

Their message amplifies a core argument of the Obama administration: that the nuclear deal is well built and durable, and exceeds historical standards for arms control agreements.

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Why Senator Chuck Schumer is wrong on Iran

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Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert, in a post at Foreign Policy eviscerates the oft-repeated talking point of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adopted by Republicans and, sadly, Sen. Chuck Shumer (D-NY) who should know better, i.e.,  “the 24-day delay” in inspections. Chuck Schumer’s Disingenuous Iran Deal Argument:

Iran-nuclear-deal-1024x576On Thursday evening, right in the middle of the first GOP debate, Schumer reached back, took aim, and heaved a large one. He penned a long piece for Medium that some anonymous hack described as “thoughtful and deliberate.” Uh, OK. Maybe compared to Mike Huckabee’s outrage about “oven doors,” but good grief our standards for political discourse have fallen. Schumer’s missive came across a bit like your crazy uncle who gets his opinions from talk radio and wants to set you straight at Thanksgiving.

(I’m probably not the only one who thinks so. But then, I don’t have to pretend Schumer is some great statesman lest he put a hold on some future appointment or nomination.)

Consider how Schumer describes the inspections regime in the Iran deal.

Schumer starts by repeating the claim that “inspections are not ‘anywhere, anytime’; the 24-day delay before we can inspect is troubling.” This would be very troubling if it were true. It isn’t. The claim that inspections occur with a 24-day delay is the equivalent of Obamacare “death panels.” Remember those? A minor detail has been twisted into a bizarre caricature and repeated over and over until it becomes “true.”

Let’s get this straight. The agreement calls for continuous monitoring at all of Iran’s declared sites — that means all of the time — including centrifuge workshops, which are not safeguarded anywhere else in the world. Inspectors have immediate access to these sites.

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J.E.B.(!) Bush endorses the illegal torture policy of his brother

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Earlier this year I posted about America’s long night into torture (snippet):

Sen. John McCain, for all his bitter sore-loser nastiness toward President Obama over the years, agreed to work with him to codify his Executive Order 13491 into statutory law. On Tuesday, the Senate agreed to the bill cosponsored by Sen. McCain. Senate Votes to Turn Presidential Ban on Torture Into Law:

UnknownThe Senate voted Tuesday to ban the use of torture, moving to ensure that the government does not return to interrogation techniques like waterboarding.

In a vote of 78-21, senators approved an amendment to a defense authorization bill that would restrict all government entities, not just the military, to using only the interrogation techniques described in the Army Field Manual.

The amendment would enshrine in law an executive order that President Obama signed in 2009 permitting only noncoercive interrogation methods.

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Iranian moderates and the Iranian American diaspora support the P5+1 world powers nuclear agreement with Iran

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Iran-nuclear-deal-1024x576Ed Kilgore at the Political Animal Blog has a good summary and additional commentary about an article by Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul at The Atlantic, What the Iran Deal Debate Is Like in Iran, on how moderates inside the government, many opposition leaders, a majority of Iranian citizens, and many in the Iranian American diaspora feel about the P5+1 world powers nuclear agreement with Iran. The Iranian Debate on the Iranian Nuke Deal:

To hear most critics of the Iranian Nuclear Deal, it will strengthen Iran’s conservative, Israel-hating regime and crush the aspirations of those who want to modernize, democratize, or demilitarize that country. But this optic does not accord with the debate on the deal within Iran and in the (mostly) regime-hating Iranian Diaspora, as explained in some detail at the Atlantic by Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul.

Those supporting the deal include moderates inside the government, many opposition leaders, a majority of Iranian citizens, and many in the Iranian American diaspora—a disparate group that has rarely agreed on anything until now.

First and most obviously, the moderates within the regime, including Rouhani and his close friend and political ally, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, negotiated the agreement, and are now the most vocal in defending it against Iranian hawks. Rouhani crushed his conservative opponents in the last presidential election in 2013 in part because he advocated for a nuclear deal. This agreement is his Obamacare—his major campaign promise now delivered. Former Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, as well as moderates in the parliament and elsewhere in government, have also vigorously endorsed the accord. During the negotiations, Rafsanjani, for example, celebrated the fact that Iran’s leaders had “broken a taboo” in talking directly to the United States. Since the agreement was signed, he has said that those within Iran who oppose it are “making a mistake.”

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The Colors fly over Cuba again

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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on August 14, 2015. Pool photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais.

Secretary of State John Kerry was in Havana, Cuba this morning for the formal flag raising ceremony at the U.S. Embassy.  The Colors fly over Cuba again.

Secretary Kerry took with him Three Marines who took down the U.S. flag in Cuba in 1961. Today, they watched it rise again:

It was a few days into January 1961 when three Marines at the U.S. Embassy in Havana were given a sad task: Take down the American flag. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was shutting down the diplomatic compound and pulling Americans out, a response to the downward spiral in U.S. relations with the new government of Fidel Castro.

The noncommissioned officer in charge at the embassy asked for three volunteers — “the biggest, ugliest Marines you can find,” recalled retired Master Gunnery Sgt. Jim Tracy, then a sergeant. He and two others — then-Lance Cpl. Larry C. Morris and then-Cpl. F.W. Mike East — were sent out to part a crowd of about 300 Cubans and take down Old Glory, Tracy said.

“We didn’t have anybody on the sidewalks at all,” Tracy said. “They knew what we were going to do.”

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Marine Corps veterans Francis ‘Mike’ East, James Tracy and Larry Morris wait to present the U.S. flag to Marines stationed in Cuba during the raising of the U.S. flag over the newly reopened embassy in Havana, Cuba on Friday, Aug. 14. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)

On Friday, the Marines, now in their 70s, returned to Havana alongside Secretary of State John F. Kerry to take part in a ceremony to raise the flag again. It has been more than 54 years since U.S. relations with Cuba were severed, but the embassy has reopened following an agreement reached earlier this year between Havana and Washington.

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