194 replies to this topic

[LFC]

The Republicans are on it!

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Extending U.S. sanctions on Iran for 10 years would breach the Iranian nuclear agreement, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said on Wednesday, warning that Tehran would retaliate if the sanctions are approved.

The U.S. House of Representatives re-authorized last week the Iran Sanctions Act, or ISA, for 10 years. The law was first adopted in 1996 to punish investments in Iran's energy industry and deter Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The Iran measure will expire at the end of 2016 if it is not renewed. The House bill must still be passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama to become law.

Iran and world powers concluded the nuclear agreement, also known as JCPOA, last year. It imposed curbs on Iran's nuclear program in return for easing sanctions that have badly hurt its economy.

"The current U.S. government has breached the nuclear deal in many occasions," Khamenei said, addressing a gathering of members of the Revolutionary Guards, according to his website.

"The latest is extension of sanctions for 10 years, that if it happens, would surely be against JCPOA, and the Islamic Republic would definitely react to it."

Instead they'll "get tough." I guess they'll thump their chests, fling poo, and Trump can display his tiny hands. Of course when Tehran freaks out, justly blames America, multiple nations refuse to reinstate sanctions, and Iran's nuclear program goes balls to the wall, right-wingers will blame Obama because ... eeerrrr ... uuuuhhhh ... well ... well, isn't it OBVIOUS! And I'm no fan of Iran's current government but if I was looking at a hostile GOP controlled Congress, President Trump, and seeing a treaty tossed aside as if it were nothing, I'd be cranking up the program while simultaneously calling North Korea to see if they had a couple of spares they'd be willing to sell.

[LFC]

Here we go. Trump appears to be getting on board. I wonder if David Frum is going to start swooning over him as he becomes more and more neoconesque?

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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he has told Congress of plans to review whether sanctions relief given to Iran as part of the 2015 nuclear deal was in US national security interests.

The notification came as the White House certified that Iran was complying with its commitments under the deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama, which is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods,” Tillerson wrote in a letter to Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan.

“President Donald J. Trump has directed a National Security Council-led interagency review of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that will evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the JCPOA is vital to the national security interests of the United States.”

The certification of Iran’s compliance with the terms of the deal must be issued to Congress every 90 days. The latest notification was the first issued by the Trump administration.

[LFC]

It sounds like Tillerson was ordered to do some hasty chest thumping on Iran.

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared the Iran nuclear deal a failure on Wednesday but left open the possibility the Trump administration will uphold it nonetheless.

The top American diplomat sought to reinforce the notion that the U.S. is aggressively countering Iran’s destabilizing behavior throughout the Middle East, even though President Donald Trump so far has not pulled out of the deal. Tillerson spoke a day after certifying to Congress that Iran is complying with its obligations under the 2015 deal, a requirement for Tehran to continue receiving relief from nuclear sanctions.

“The JCPOA fails to achieve the objective of a non-nuclear Iran,” Tillerson said, using an acronym for the 2015 nuclear deal. “It only delays their goal of becoming a nuclear state.”

He said the deal, brokered by former President Barack Obama’s administration along with other world powers, represented the “same failed approach” the U.S. has taken to North Korea. Like with the North, Tillerson said, the Trump administration was unwilling to be patient with Iran, ticking through a list of countries where he said Iran was supporting terrorism and violence.

Tillerson’s hastily arranged statement before cameras at the State Department reflected the competing forces pulling at the Trump administration as it develops its policy toward Iran. On the one hand, Trump wants to show he’s being tougher than Obama toward Iran, but on the other hand, he’s not yet ready to rip up the deal.

[LFC]

It looks like Trump wants some justification, ANY justification, for axing the Iran nuclear deal. This is certainly pure Trump. Make up your mind and then send your minions off to find a fig leaf. Just like firing Comey because he helped Trump with his ill timed announcement.

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President Donald Trump has instructed aides to find a rationale for declaring Iran in violation of the Obama-era nuclear deal, the New York Times reported Thursday

Citing several unnamed foreign officials, the Times reported that the United States has raised the possibility of international inspectors demanding access to various military sites in Iran in search of nuclear activity — a suggestion that would be met with Iranian opposition.

Trump has reluctantly signed off on Iran’s compliance with the deal twice since taking office. Such affirmations are required every 90 days. Before his July 17 signature, a slew of top diplomatic and national security adviser urged Trump to stay in the deal, according to the Times, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has been sidelined from many major decisions in recent months.

It seems Trump’s patience is running thin.

On July 21, Foreign Policy reported that Trump had entrusted a group of White House staffers to make the case for withdrawing from the deal. As it’s not a formal treaty but rather an executive agreement initiated during the Obama administration, Trump’s latitude to re-impose sanctions on Iran is broad.

“This is the President telling the White House that he wants to be in a place to decertify 90 days from now and it’s their job to put him there,” an unnamed source close to the White House told the magazine.

[Progressive whisperer]

LFC, on 28 July 2017 - 02:35 PM, said:

It looks like Trump wants some justification, ANY justification, for axing the Iran nuclear deal. This is certainly pure Trump. Make up your mind and then send your minions off to find a fig leaf. Just like firing Comey because he helped Trump with his ill timed announcement.

Well, if healthcare fails, he needs another win.

Bonus points if he claim to being a war president (got Bush the lesser a second term, after all).

[D. C. Sessions]

I like the "destabilizing the Middle East" line of argument. By all means blame Iran for ISIS (yes, they've done that already) and the chaos in Iraq and Syria.

Oh, wait ...

[gmat]

They even have a cute name for it. "Radical Implementation"

Corker probably thought that one up.

https://lobelog.com/...-war-with-iran/

[JackD]

Let's hope the Senate begins to actually function again.

[Progressive whisperer]

JackD, on 30 July 2017 - 11:02 AM, said:

Let's hope the Senate begins to actually function again.

Is McConnell still alive? And Ted Cruz?

If so, don't count on it.

[D. C. Sessions]

The essential question is whether they retain the power that McConnell had to keep everyone goosestepping in lockstep. A large part of that power was McConnell's appearance of invincibility, which was itself due to the relative ease of unifying the Senate in opposition to the nggr Obama. Thursday night might have been the first rolling pebble in that breaking down. Maybe.

[LFC]

D. C. Sessions, on 30 July 2017 - 11:47 AM, said:

A large part of that power was McConnell's appearance of invincibility, which was itself due to the relative ease of unifying the Senate in opposition to the nggr Obama.

Does that mean that they've had so much "winning" that they got sick of it? (And do their taxpayer provided healthcare plans cover that condition?)

[LFC]

So Trump has now turned to political hostage taking on multiple fronts, including the Iran deal. He is so encased in his own reality where he is all wonderful and all supreme that he doesn't remotely grasp that Congress (and certainly not the Dem caucus) is unlikely to bow to the pressure, our allies almost assuredly won't, and Iran will tell him to go f*** himself. He's discovered that he has the power to destroy things and he thinks that he can extort people to meet his demands. He still doesn't grasp what every sane person does; it's not going to work.

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Donald Trump on Friday placed a gun to the head of the landmark 2015 Iranian nuclear deal while telling Congress and U.S. allies it will be their fault if he pulls the trigger. Both are refusing to go along with the murder.

Democrats in the Senate, who by sheer legislative math are pivotal to Trump’s plans, are gearing up to protect the deal and calling the prime legislative effort from the Republicans to cash out Trump’s hostile posture to Iran a “nonstarter.”

And the European allies who are parties to the deal immediately rejected Trump in a striking defense of the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The capstone of Trump’s long-anticipated speech about the deal was a threat aimed not at Teheran, but at London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Beijing, Moscow and Capitol Hill. Either renegotiate the JCPOA internationally and bolster it congressionally or “the agreement will be terminated,” Trump pledged, adding non-nuclear sanctions to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and entities doing business with it.

The speech also came with a long-anticipated announcement that the president was “de-certifying” Iran’s compliance with the agreement—an assessment that defies Iran’s undisputed compliance with the deal. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which verifies the deal, reiterated after Trump’s speech that “the nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the JCPOA are being implemented.”

Decertification, according to a 2015 law, opens a 60-day legislative window to restore nuclear-related sanctions, a condition known as “snapback.” Though snapback only requires a 50-vote majority, few on Capitol Hill are showing any sign of support for it now. Snapback was designed on the premise that decertification would follow actual evidence of Iranian noncompliance, rather than the circumstance that Trump has created: American intransigence.

[LFC]

The cause of this is another Trumper-tantrum over having to eat his vegies. F***ing child.

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In a meeting with Senate Democrats last week, President Donald Trump’s top national security aide had a message for those worried that the administration may scuttle the Iran nuclear deal: If Trump doesn’t have to see it, he won’t be able to kill it.

The point National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster conveyed, according to a congressional Democratic aide, was that “[Trump] wants this out of sight and out of mind.”

McMaster was more subtle and careful in his words when he hosted a group of roughly 12 lawmakers at the White House, conspicuously timed with the president out of town. But that was the impression he left, three sources familiar with the briefing tell The Daily Beast.

Under the terms of legislation passed around the negotiation of the Iran nuclear deal, the president is required every 90 days to determine whether Tehran is in compliance. The measure was designed to put President Barack Obama (and anticipated successor Hillary Clinton) in a bind—forcing politically-uncomfortable declarations in support of an unpopular nuclear accord on the regular. But in the age of Trump, the 90-day-deadline has presented an unanticipated problem.

“Trump doesn’t want to have to be embarrassed every 90 days,” a Senate aide told The Daily Beast.

Yes, it's all about him. And he wants to ask Sean Hannity and John Bolton what he should do. Yeah, THERE's two mental giants with stable personalities.

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Two White House officials told The Daily Beast that Trump winces at having to twice certify that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear agreement, believing it shows weakness that he had to reluctantly do something he clearly did not see as “tough” on Iran. Trump has consulted both Fox News’ Sean Hannity and former UN Ambassador—and staunch neoconservative—John Bolton on the matter. And each has dinged him for certifying the deal while privately urging him not to do so, one official noted.

At the request of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, Bolton had drafted a plan for how Trump could back out of the Iran deal. But he was never able to formally present the document to the president after Bannon was ousted and John Kelly became chief of staff. While Bolton has not been able to visit the White House to advise the president lately, Trump still asks aides about Bolton, wondering where he is and what his advice would be on Iran, according to a person familiar with the situation.

[LFC]

More Republican floundering as they try to appease the Orange One without f***ing up the whole thing while others want it completely destroyed. They are great at opposition and attacks but a real f***ing nightmare when it comes to actually trying to accomplish something that actually works.

[Progressive whisperer]

LFC, on 13 October 2017 - 05:01 PM, said:

More Republican floundering as they try to appease the Orange One without f***ing up the whole thing while others want it completely destroyed. They are great at opposition and attacks but a real f***ing nightmare when it comes to actually trying to accomplish something that actually works.

Of course, most of those competent or interested in governing have been purged as "RINOs". What's left are the true believers in drowning government and grifters.

[D. C. Sessions]

Progressive whisperer, on 14 October 2017 - 10:34 AM, said:

Of course, most of those competent or interested in governing have been purged as "RINOs". What's left are the true believers in drowning government and grifters.

... and all of the people who vote for them because they're Republicans and would never vote for a Democrat regardless of Satan Himself on R side of the ballot.

[AnBr]

D. C. Sessions, on 14 October 2017 - 10:38 AM, said:

... and all of the people who vote for them because they're Republicans and would never vote for a Democrat regardless of Satan Himself on R side of the ballot.

Isn't that what just happened last year?

[J-CA]

There seems to be a lot of freaking out about this but if the US imposes sanctions and no one else does Iran is not going to hurt that much. It will make financing Iranian investments a little more challenging but all-in-all the Europeans were doing business in Iran for a long time before US sanctions were lifted.
My take is that Iran has a lot more to lose by genuine non-compliance even if the US is acting unfairly here, if they refuse inspections the Russians and Europeans will turn on them and then they really will be in trouble again at some point.
My feeling is that this is just pointless incompetence.

[LFC]

TPM's covering Trump's f***-up on this issue. Here's his take on Trump's incoherence on what he actually wants. If you read the whole thing he compares Trump's floundering and chest thumping to the utterly failed policy of George W. towards North Korea.

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President Trump straight up lied in his speech today on ‘decertifying’ the Iran nuclear deal. He said: “The Iranian regime has committed multiple violations of the agreement.” This is not true. The US, the Europeans, outside observers, the inspectors all agree that Iran is meeting the conditions of the deal. If Iran were violating the deal, all of this drama wouldn’t have been necessary. Trump could have just canceled the deal without any need to justify the decision. He would have had broad support for doing so. That’s the bind he’s been in. The Iranians are keeping their end of the bargain. So Trump really hasn’t had a good rationale – legal or geopolitical – for getting out.

But there’s a different part of the speech I want to focus on. In addition to all the things the President says his new policy will accomplish he made this pledge. “We will deny the regime all paths to a nuclear weapon.”

But of course there was no explanation of how that would happen. It’s possible that the deal might stay in place even if the US pulled because the benefits to Iran and Europe are good enough to keep it going. But assuming the deal gets totally scuttled there are really only three ways to “deny the regime all paths to a nuclear weapon.” 1) You can impose sanctions and other forms of pressure to a great enough extent that the Iranians relent. (That’s kind of what Obama did – crippling sanctions plus covert, often cyber, sabotage.) 2) You sign a new agreement. Or 3) you can go to war and physically coerce them into stopping.

One seems highly unlikely since the European powers, China and Russia don’t want to do that. Without them, really ruinous sanctions aren’t possible. Two seems unlikely mainly because the Trump administration shows really no inclination even to want a deal. Three fits the Trump mentality but it’s fraught with incalculable danger. There’s a reason why it never happened under President Bush and even Israel was held back largely by its own generals.

[LFC]

Meanwhile some in the administration are desperately trying to look like adults. That's what happens when you work for a baby who flings poo; you just look like an ineffective adult who is covered in poo. And of course you have to eventually define these so-called "flaws".

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley on Sunday insisted that the United States will remain in the Iran nuclear deal.

President Donald Trump on Friday said he would likely pull the U.S. out of the deal unless Congress and the other nations in the seven-country accord made a handful of adjustments he demanded.

“Let’s see if we cannot address the flaws in the agreement by staying within the agreement, working with the other signatories, working with our European friends and allies within the agreement,” Tillerson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”