Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged JCPOA

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Paul Merrell

Poll: Nearly 2/3 of U.S. Public Opposes Withdrawing from Iran Nuclear Deal « ... - 0 views

lobelog.com/drawing-from-iran-nuclear-deal

Iranian-nukes-myth JCPOA Trump polls

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Amid growing speculation about a Trump administration’s intentions regarding the Iran nuclear deal, a new poll has found that nearly two-thirds of the U.S. public opposes withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated 18 months ago between Iran and the P5+1. The poll, part of a much larger survey by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation (PPC) about public attitudes about the U.S. role in world affairs, was released Thursday to foster better informed debate about the issue in advance of Trump’s inauguration. It included 2,980 respondents and was conducted December 22-28.
  • Reaction split along predictably partisan lines. Nearly nine out of ten Democrats (86%) favored continuing the deal so long as Iran complies with it, while 40% of Republicans agreed with that position. Among self-described independents, 58% said the U.S. should stick with the deal. The poll was released just a day after 37 leading U.S. scientists—including Nobel laureates, nuclear experts, and former White House science advisers—sent an open letter to Trump in support of the deal. The deal provided a “strong bulwark against an Iranian nuclear-weapons program” and a “critical U.S. strategic asset,” the scientists wrote. It remains very unclear what Trump will do. He has often referred to the JCPOA as “disastrous.” Last March, he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that his “number one priority is to dismantle [it].” In the same speech, however, he declared that, as president, he will ensure that the deal is “enforce[d] like you’ve never seen a contract enforced before…” At still other times, he has said the agreement should be renegotiated.
Paul Merrell

AIPAC's Plan B? « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/aipacs-plan-b

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth deal AIPAC-moves

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • A summary of a draft bill, which I obtained from a source who asked to remain anonymous, is circulating that is designed (almost certainly by AIPAC) to appeal to those Democrats eager to “kiss and make up” after their defiance of Washington’s most powerful foreign-policy lobby group (whose reputation for omnipotence just took a very heavy hit) and its funders. While much of the summary appears innocuous and consistent with the administration’s own policy and intentions, it also contains a number of “poison pills,” which, if approved, appear calculated to raise new obstacles to implementation and Tehran’s confidence that the U.S. will fully comply with both the spirit and the letter of the JCPOA. With proposed banking sanctions, for example, it appears to do what Fred Kagan and the policy director of the neo-conservative Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), Juan Zarate, have urged with respect to codifying existing non-nuclear sanctions and reducing or eliminating the president’s waiver authority. (See the Mikulski post for more details.) It also would set up a process for “expedited procedures” that can be used by Congress to approve new terrorism-related sanctions against Iran under certain circumstances and create a Coordinator for Compliance whose responsibilities include not only overseeing Iran’s implementation of the JCPOA but also reporting on non-nuclear issues (like terrorism) that are outside the scope of the agreement.
  • Yet another provision would authorize the delivery to Israel of Washington’s most powerful Massive Ordinance Penetration munitions (MOPs) and the means to deliver them against Iran’s nuclear facilities, a move that administration officials have long said they strongly oppose. This would be one part of a much-enhanced package of military assistance for Israel. Other provisions appear designed to effectively “renegotiate” certain provisions of the JCPOA; for example, by eliminating the exemption of any contracts agreed between Iran and foreign companies during the agreement’s implementation phase in the event that sanctions are “snapped back.” It also requires Iran to abide by the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s (NPT) Additional Protocol as of “adoption day,” even if the Iranian parliament has not yet ratified the Protocol. We hear that the sponsors intend to push this through Congress as a companion to the disapproval resolution. The idea is to enable nervous Democrats to demonstrate their strong support for Israel and their undiluted distrust and hostility toward Iran. They reportedly fear that if this measure isn’t enacted now, then it could prove much more difficult to pass once Iran begins implementing the JCPOA, and particularly if and when the IAEA declares that Iran has cleared up long-pending questions regarding “possible military dimensions” (PMD) of its nuclear program. The IAEA expects to conclude its PMD-related inspections by mid-October and issue a final report by December 15. Here is the summary of the draft bill which, as I understand it, is still very much a work in progress. The Iran Policy Oversight Act of 2015
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15
     
    Why am I not surprised. The Israel Lobby comes up with plan B.
Paul Merrell

Congress Seeks to undermine Iran Deal by Linking Iran with ISIS | Global Research - Cen... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5498105

war & peace Iran ISIL Congress deal

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • One of the consequences of the Iran Deal was the declaration by countless politicians that they were going to crack down on Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism. Even the White House signed on to this idea. Well now some of the backlash has officially begun: Congress is linking Iran with ISIS, even though Iran is fighting ISIS. [and ISIS is supported by the US, GR ed.] Few mainstream publications have picked up on the fact that in a response to the San Bernardino killings, the Congress last week passed legislation, which the president duly signed, that puts Iran in an axis of international-terrorist evil along with Syria, Iraq and Sudan. The legislation amends our country’s visa waiver program. Iranian dual nationals, as well as US citizens who have visited Iran, will need visas to get into the U.S. Reuters: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Friday said it was “absurd” that Tehran should be included on the list. “No Iranian nor anybody who visited Iran had anything to do with the tragedies that have taken place in Paris or in San Bernardino or anywhere else,” he said in an interview with Middle East-focused website Al Monitor. Secretary of State John Kerry promptly met with Zarif, his Iranian counterpart, to assure him that the new law doesn’t undercut the Iran deal. But the Iranians say that the legislation is the result of pro-Israel lobbying. And even the State Department describes Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism.  
  •  Iranians say the bill reflects pro-Israel lobbying. Reuters: Iran said on Monday that Israeli lobbying was behind a new measure passed by the U.S. Congress that will prevent visa-free travel to the United States for people who have visited Iran or hold Iranian nationality. The measure, which President Barack Obama signed into law on Friday, also applies to Iraq, Syria and Sudan, and was introduced as a security measure after the Islamic State attacks in Paris and a similar attack in San Bernardino, California.
  • More from Reuters‘ description of the Israel lobby angle: Iran, a Shi’ite Muslim theocracy staunchly opposed to Sunni radicalism espoused by groups like Islamic State, says its inclusion on the list is intended to undermine a deal on its nuclear programme that Tehran reached with world powers, including the United States, in July, known as the JCPOA. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said in a televised news conference that the U.S. measure had been passed “under pressure from the Zionist lobby and currents opposed to the JCPOA”. The administration wants to have it both ways on blaming Iran. Yesterday on National Public Radio, Adam Szubin, the counter-terrorism finance under secretary at the Treasury Department, also put Iran in the category of ISIS, as an international terror deliverer: if you are familiar with the model of how al-Qaida or groups like Hamas and even Hezbollah have financed themselves, they’ve typically been heavily reliant on foreign donations, whether from state sponsors like Iran or whether from wealthy what we call deep-pocket donors, often in the Gulf. But that financing model is not ISIL. When you have a group that’s raising hundreds of millions of dollars in a year from internal sources, we don’t have those same chokepoints to go after in terms of the foreign flows.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Meanwhile John Kerry is doing fancy footwork, explaining the legislation away, in a letter to Javad Zarif. we remain fully committed to the sanctions lifting provided for under the JCPOA. We will adhere to the full measure of our commitments, per the agreement. At the State Department briefing Monday, reporters questioned why the legislation didn’t amount to a violation of the Iran Deal:
  • Here is some more blindness in the media on these issues. NPR has continually deceived listeners about Sheldon Adelson’s agenda, and it did so again yesterday. Adelson is a leading opponent of the Iran Deal, as a supporter of Israel. He has called on President Obama to nuke Iran. But in a report on Adelson’s purchase of a Nevada newspaper, NPR once again leaves out the Israel angle of Adelson’s interests. It says blandly: Adelson is also prominently involved in national politics. That link is to a story about his on-line gambling concerns. But as Cory Bennett of the Hill said on CSPAN the other day– something I did not know till now– Iran is said to have undertaken a cyber-attack on Sheldon Adelson’s casino last year because of his call to nuke Iran.  The alleged cyber-attack:  Investigators determined that hacker activists were the ones who broke into servers belonging to the Las Vegas Sands Corporation in February 2014, costing the company more than $40 million in damages and data recovery costs, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Thusday citing a report by cybersecurity firm Dell SecureWorks. The hackers were acting in retaliation to the company’s CEO, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s statement that Obama should detonate a nuclear bomb in Tehran, which stirred controversy around the world. This is the battle behind the headlines. And in a transparent effort to get Adelson’s backing, as well as that of the Andrew Herenstein’s of the world, the neoconservative favorite in the Republican race, Senator Marco Rubio, has vowed to tear up the Iran deal on his first day in the White House if he’s elected. Thus the ideological war over how much the U.S. should support Israel is playing out in global terms; and our media are shying away from the story.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Dec 15
     
    It's preposterous for Congress to say that Iran is associated with ISIL and for Obama to sign such a bill. Iran is one of the major military forces in the fight against ISIL in both Syria and Iraq.
Paul Merrell

AIPAC Spent $14.5 Million on TV Ads during Iran Deal Debate « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/tv-ads-during-iran-deal-debate

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth deal lobbying stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • In the aftermath of Senate Republicans’ failed efforts to derail the plan agreed on in July to limit Iran’s nuclear program, responsibility has fallen on AIPAC for its inability to persuade a meaningful number of Senate Democrats to join their GOP colleagues in opposing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). To put it bluntly, AIPAC, a group with historically stronger ties to the Democratic Party, failed miserably. Only four Senators—Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Joe Manchin (D-WV)—broke ranks with their colleagues and minority leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to oppose the nuclear deal. But AIPAC didn’t fail on the cheap. They raised and spent a staggering sum of money in an effort to tilt public opinion against the White House’s signature second-term foreign policy initiative. This summer, AIPAC announced the formation of a new dark money group, “Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran,” dedicated exclusively to opposing the emerging nuclear deal with Iran. The Jewish Telegraph Agency’s Ron Kampeas reported that the group raised “nearly $30 million.” After a review of over 700 FCC disclosures, helpfully tagged by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation’s “political ad sleuth,” we can confirm that the AIPAC spin-off spent at least $14.5 million on television commercials airing on broadcast television networks (ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS) from mid-July until mid-September. This period coincides with the intensive two-month lobbying period from the announcement of the JCPOA in Vienna to the failure of the Senate resolution of disapproval.
  • These numbers don’t take into account the cost of ad buys on cable networks and any lag in the Sunlight Foundation’s Political Ad Sleuth’s tagging of relevant FCC filings. But the broad outlines of AIPAC’s well-moneyed opposition to the Iran deal indicate that the pro-Israel group quickly raised a significant amount of money to blanket the airwaves with anti-deal television commercials, dwarfing any efforts by J Street or other pro-deal groups to air competing ads.
Paul Merrell

What America will offer Israel after the nuclear deal | Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 0 views

www.jta.org/...-israel-after-the-nuclear-deal

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth deal American-Foreign-Policy Israel-reward

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The moment the Iran nuclear deal becomes law, as seems increasingly likely given growing congressional support for the agreement, the focus of the U.S.-Israel conversation will shift to the question of what’s next. What more will Washington do to mitigate the Iranian threat and reassure Israel and other regional allies? For starters, President Barack Obama seems ready to offer an array of security enhancements. Among them are accelerating and increasing defense assistance to Israel over the next decade; increasing the U.S. military presence in the Middle East; stepping up the enforcement of non-nuclear related Iran sanctions; enhancing U.S. interdiction against disruptive Iranian activity in the region; and increasing cooperation on missile defense.
  • There also will be an emphasis on keeping any of the tens of billions of dollars to which Iran will gain unfettered access through the sanctions relief from reaching Iran’s proxies.
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not wanting to be seen as endorsing the deal while there’s still a chance Congress could scuttle it, has directed Israeli officials not to engage with U.S. officials on what could be done after the deal is in place. The Israeli envoy to Washington, Ron Dermer, has said that Israel would be ready for discussions only after options to kill the agreement formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action are exhausted.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Congress has until Sept. 17 to decide whether to allow the deal to proceed. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is leading the opposition to the deal, argued in a memo distributed Monday that U.S. pledges of post-deal security enhancements are inadequate.
  • Obama in an interview Monday with the Forward attached urgency to confronting Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies. Speaking of Israel, he said, “We can do even more to enhance the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation that we have with them, and to see, are there additional capabilities that Israel may be able to use to prevent Hezbollah, for example, from getting missiles.” The emphasis on Hezbollah was appropriate, said Uzi Arad, Netanyahu’s national security adviser from 2009 to 2011. “The president on sensing a degree of urgency with Hezbollah sooner rather than later is absolutely right,” Arad said, noting the group’s role as an Iranian proxy in helping prop up the Assad regime in Syria. “It relates to the need to uproot and to neutralize the violent and anti-American and anti-Israel radical group. It is a matter of urgent joint concern.” Arad outlined a number of areas that would enhance Israel’s sense of security in a post-deal environment, including:
  • * Maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region, even as the United States enhances the military capabilities of Arab Persian Gulf allies that, similar to Israel, will be seeking reassurances in the wake of the Iran deal; * Enhancing joint missile defense programs; * Extending the defense assistance memorandum of understanding, which since 2008 has provided Israel with an average of $3 billion in defense assistance per year, for another 10 years (it’s set to expire in 2018), and delivering promised F-35 advanced fighter aircraft to Israel; * Enhancing joint civilian scientific research and development; * Delivering advanced bunker-buster bombs to maintain Israel’s deterrent edge should Iran cheat on or abandon the deal. “Israel should be given this special kind of ordnance so it could have a more effective military option in case of Iranian violations of the agreement,” Arad said, arguing that this would strengthen the agreement by creating a disincentive for Iran to cheat. *A “declaratory” component emphasizing U.S. longstanding commitments to Israel.
  • * Making clear that the U.S. effort to stop the expansion of Islamist terrorism and extremism targets Iranian activities as well as those associated with the Islamic State terrorist group.
  • Obama touched on many of these issues in a letter he sent to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., on Aug. 19. “It is imperative that, even as we effectively cut off Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon through the implementation of the JCPOA, we take steps to ensure that we and our allies and our partners are more capable than ever to deal with Iran’s destabilizing activities and support for terrorism,” Obama said in the letter, which was first obtained by The New York Times. The president specified four areas where cooperation would be enhanced: extending defense assistance for a decade, joint missile defense research, joint efforts to improve tunnel detection (following the advances made by Hamas in its 2014 war with Israel), and “strengthening our efforts to confront conventional and asymmetric threats.” The letter persuaded Nadler to back the deal and should be a salve to Israeli security officials, said Dan Arbell, a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Washington.
  • Persian Gulf allies would want the reassurances that Israel is receiving as well as specific assurances of assistance in keeping Iran from meddling in Arab affairs, said Michael Eisenstadt, a longtime officer in the U.S. Army Reserve who served in the Middle East. Even with such assurances, Eisenstadt said, Gulf allies would remain concerned that the deal enhances Iran’s stature. “Weapons are Band-Aids on a hemorrhage,” said Eisenstadt, now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “From the point of view of our allies in the region, we’ve contributed to a lot of the problem” by advancing the Iran deal.
Paul Merrell

Iran: A Lesson in the Art of Building Confidence « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/the-art-of-building-confidence

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Iran-negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Much of the comment on yesterday’s “decisive step” towards a “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA), which will ensure the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program, has been based on the factsheet put out by the White House. I prefer to base a few observations on the Joint Statement made in Lausanne by the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. We can be sure that Iran has agreed to every word of the Joint Statement. The same cannot be said of the factsheet, which, in a slightly irritated tweet, Zarif characterized as “spin.” The Joint Statement is far less detailed than the fact-sheet. Even so, it is clear that Iran has had the vision to offer the US and EU many years of confidence that Iran is not using its nuclear know-how to acquire nuclear weapons and that Iran is fully respecting its commitments as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That confidence can come both from the unprecedented access to the program that the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will enjoy and from the thought that no state bent on acquiring nuclear weapons would come close to granting such access.
  • Peter Jenkins was a British career diplomat for 33 years, following studies at the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He served in Vienna (twice), Washington, Paris, Brasilia and Geneva. He specialized in global economic and security issues. His last assignment (2001-06) was that of UK Ambassador to the IAEA and UN (Vienna). Since 2006 he has represented the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, advised the Director of IIASA and set up a partnership, ADRgAmbassadors, with former diplomatic colleagues, to offer the corporate sector dispute resolution and solutions to cross-border problems. He was an associate fellow of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy from 2010 to 2012. He writes and speaks on nuclear and trade policy issues.
Paul Merrell

EU finally stands up to US 'bullying' over Iran sanctions | Asia Times - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...s-bullying-over-iran-sanctions

war & peace economic-warfare de-dollarization EU SPV

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Oct 18 - No Cached
  • By Pepe Escobar September 30, 2018 4:36 PM (UTC+8) Share Tweet Linkedin Print Email Share 0 Comment 0 History may one day rule this was the fateful geopolitical moment when the European Union clinched its PhD on foreign policy. Last week, EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, announced at the UN a “special purpose vehicle” (SPV) to deal with the Trump administration’s sanctions on Iran after the US unilaterally pulled out of the JCPOA,  also known as the Iran nuclear deal.
  • Mogherini crucially emphasized, “in practical terms, this will mean that EU member states will set up a legal entity to facilitate legitimate financial transactions with Iran and this will allow European companies to continue to trade with Iran in accordance with European Union law and could be open to other partners in the world.” The SPV, which according to Mogherini “is aimed at keeping trade with Tehran flowing while the US sanctions are in place,” could be in effect before the second stage of US sanctions begin in early November. This single initiative means Brussels is attempting to position itself as a serious geopolitical player, openly defying the US and essentially nullifying the Iran demonization campaign launched by the White House, CIA and State Department.
  • It may have taken a few months, but the EU-3 have finally realized what Moscow and Beijing already knew: any business with Iran – which is in the interest of all players – must bypass the US dollar. So now we come to a situation where the EU-3 will set up a multinational, state-backed, financial mechanism to help European companies conduct business with Iran in euros – and thus away from US financial enforcers. In parallel, we will have Russia and China doing business with Iran in rubles and yuan.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • And in a total symbiotic way, the SPV opens another path for Russia and China as well. After all, the SPV mechanism will bypass the Belgium-based SWIFT financial network, on which the US interferes at will. SPV may become the preferred post-SWIFT mechanism, allowing for even more cross-border business across Eurasia and expanding to the Global South.
  • The game reveals its complexity when we consider that Iran has been the catalyst for the EU to finally stand up to the US – and potentially get closer to Russia and China. What we see emerging is the contours of a possible cross-Eurasia alliance, in multiple fronts, between Russia-China-Iran – the three key nodes of Eurasia integration – and the EU-3. It’s a game worthy of a Persian chess master: involving energy wars, the balance of power in Southwest Asia, the absolute power of the US-controlled global financial system and the status of the US dollar – bolstered by the petrodollar – as the global reserve currency.
Paul Merrell

Trump Urged Not to Pull Out of Iran Nuclear Deal - Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...-pull-out-of-iran-nuclear-deal

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Trump JCPOA

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 May 18 - No Cached
  • MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Being “Played” By Bogus Evidence on Iran NOTE: The evidence presented by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 30 alleging a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program shows blatant signs of fabrication. That evidence is linked to documents presented by the Bush Administration more a decade earlier as proof of a covert Iran nuclear weapons program. Those documents were clearly fabricated as well. We sent President Bush a similar warning about bogus intelligence — much of it fabricated by Israel —six weeks before the U.S./UK attack on Iraq, but Bush paid us no heed. This time, we hope you will take note before things spin even further out of control in the Middle East. In short, Israel’s “new” damaging documents on Iran were fabricated by the Israelis themselves.
Paul Merrell

Poll: Most Americans Support The 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal [Infographic] - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...-iran-nuclear-deal-infographic

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iran JCPOA polls

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • While de-certifying would not withdraw the U.S. from the deal, it would give Congress 60 days to decide whether or not to reimpose the sanctions on Iran that were suspended by it. According to a new poll from YouGov, Americans are at odds with the president's stance with most of the public supporting the nuclear deal. The research found that 56 percent of the public approve of the agreement, of which 31 percent strongly approve and 25 percent somewhat approve. Only 19 percent of those polled said they disapprove of it. Broken down by party, 68 percent of Democrats support the deal while a surprisingly large 22 percent share have no opinion on the matter. A slight 51 percent majority of Republicans are also in favor of the agreement while 23 percent are against it. YouGov also found that support for the nuclear deal doesn't necessarily mean Americans like or trust Iran with 44 percent regarding the country as a U.S. enemy.
1 - 9 of 9
Showing 20▼ items per page