Foreign Policy

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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J.E.B.(!) Bush’s rearticulated Bush Doctrine fail

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So J.E.B.(!) Bush gave a foreign policy speech at the the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library last night and blamed Iraq on President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — because he can’t bring himself to blame his idiot brother “W” for the biggest U.S. foreign policy fuck-up in the past century.

J.E.B.(!) is rearticulating “W’s” Bush Doctrine:

jeb-and-george-bush-11. Preemptive war for political ends is  justified (ignore international law which requires a threat of imminent attack and responding out of self-defense).

2. Imposing democracy through permanent military occupation works (ignore cultural, religious and historical reasons why the Shia-Sunni divide in Muslim countries makes a democratic form of government antithetical to their religious and cultural beliefs, and social structures and norms).

3. When (1) and (2) above prove to be entirely delusional and it all goes to hell, blame everyone else for your failures — especially Democrats (Remember: it’s never your fault!)

I’ll add a codicil to this revised Bush Doctrine: Hope that ill-informed American voters with short memories will not remember what a total fuck-up you were, and put you back into power so that you can do it all again. (This is what J.E.B.(!) is desperately hoping).

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Military Brass in U.S. and Israel who support P5+1 world powers nuclear agreement with Iran

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Iran-nuclear-deal-1024x576I have previously posted about the intelligence agencies officials, ambassadors and nuclear scientists who have all come out in support of the P5+1 world powers nuclear agreement with Iran.  Today the Washington Post reports about the U.S. military brass who support the agreement (and I include the Israeli military brass who support the agreement below). Dozens of retired generals, admirals back Iran nuclear deal:

Three dozen retired generals and admirals released an open letter Tuesday supporting the Iran nuclear deal and urging Congress to do the same.

Calling the agreement “the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” the letter said that gaining international support for military action against Iran, should that ever become necessary, “would only be possible if we have first given the diplomatic path a chance.”

Read the open letter by retired general and admirals

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J.E.B.(!) Bush and ‘The Surge Fallacy’ of the Bush Doctrine

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J.E.B(!) Bush is going to give a foreign policy speech tonight calling for a return to the “Bush Doctrine.” Jeb Bush wants to bring back the Bush Doctrine:

If you were thinking that Bush might be the grown-up in this field — or offer something much different from the approach that was so disastrous for his brother — well, think again. It’s looking a lot like the return of the Bush Doctrine, just with a different Bush.

jeb-and-george-bush-1Well what would you expect when J.E.B.(!) says his idiot brother George W. Bush is a top foreign policy adviser, and at least 19 of the Neocon war mongers who gave us the unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq are foreign policy advisers to his campaign. Jeb Bush’s foreign policy team is eerily familiar, in one Venn Diagram.

J.E.B.(!) Bush, just like Sen. John “Surge” McCain, will argue the Neocon mythology that the war was “won” by the surge, and that it all went to hell after President Obama withdrew American troops and ended our permanent occupation of Iraq.

This mythology is complete bullshit, as Peter Beinhart explains in a must-read article at The Atlantic. The Surge Fallacy:

Over the past decade, the foreign-policy debate in Washington has turned upside down. As George W. Bush’s administration drew to an end, the brand of ambitious, expensive, Manichaean, militaristic foreign policy commonly dubbed “neoconservative” seemed on the verge of collapse.

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