Deal with Iran?

[Tamas]

Reading the draft, what I see is:

-Iran makes a promise to not make nucular weapons, while they are allowed to openly keep the means to make nucular weapons, its only they need to try and keep it a secret
-Iran gets sanctions lifted

How does this accomplish anything other than potentially saving the weakening islamist regime in Iran? What is the rest of the world gaining from this?

[grumbler]

Reading the draft, what I see is:

-Iran makes a promise to not make nucular weapons, while they are allowed to openly keep the means to make nucular weapons, its only they need to try and keep it a secret
-Iran gets sanctions lifted

How does this accomplish anything other than potentially saving the weakening islamist regime in Iran? What is the rest of the world gaining from this?

In reading the draft, you missed the facts that Iran will have to allow unprecedented levels of monitoring, and that sanctions are not, in fact, lifted at all; they are merely eased in a few ways.  Before you ask what the interim agreement accomplishes, you probably will want to read an interpretation of the agreement that mentions all of the actual terms.  If you just make up the terms, the deal will either seem better or worse than it is, based on what you make up.

[Sheilbh]

Reading the draft, what I see is:

-Iran makes a promise to not make nucular weapons, while they are allowed to openly keep the means to make nucular weapons, its only they need to try and keep it a secret
-Iran gets sanctions lifted

How does this accomplish anything other than potentially saving the weakening islamist regime in Iran? What is the rest of the world gaining from this?

As grumbler says you should re-read.

Iran's not promised not to make nuclear weapons and sanctions haven't been lifted. They aren't allowed to keep all the means. But, you're right, everything should be happening openly.

What it does is cap Iran's nuclear work. They go back a couple of steps and stop. All work at the Arak reactor stops. They provide unprecedented access to the IAEA, including daily monitoring visits to the sites involved and far more details about the design of the Arak reactor.

In return $6-7 billions of Iranian assets are unfrozen and there is some lifting of sanctions. Apparently all the sanctions that will be lifted aren't important to the overall sanctions regime and can quickly be reintroduced.

All of this is limited to six months while the two sides try to negotiate a permanent deal. More accurately six months for Iran to decide if they want a permanent deal. If the interim measures are seen as successful within Iran then that increases the chances that Rouhani and Zarif will be empowered to make a real deal.

It's not a complete deal yet. It's nowhere near. But right now this seems like the least-bad option. Trust, but verify.

As it is for six months there's no attack by Israel. There's no progress on an Iranian nuclear weapon. If it all falls through, because of the Syria deal, Western countries aren't involved in a Mid-East civil war so have maximum flexibility if they feel there's a need to attack Iran.

Edit: Incidentally that's why I'm not sure Yi's made a great bet. If Khamenei isn't willing to make a deal then I think the chances of an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities in 6-12 months increase hugely. I especially think that Bibi may see it as a narrow window of opportunity. Also I'd expect Israel to attack Hezbollah soon, in some way or other.

[Viking]

Reading the draft, what I see is:

-Iran makes a promise to not make nucular weapons, while they are allowed to openly keep the means to make nucular weapons, its only they need to try and keep it a secret
-Iran gets sanctions lifted

How does this accomplish anything other than potentially saving the weakening islamist regime in Iran? What is the rest of the world gaining from this?

The problem with this deal isn't the deal itself or even the temporary nature of the deal; the problem is that it is with people who are fundamentally untrustworthy. The Islamic Republic has made a habit of lying and getting caught and has made a habit of breaking promises. The fact that they are giving up enriched uranium and dismantling substantial portions of the plutonium track suggests to me that they have abandoned the Fat Man approach to bomb building (proton gun activation of a plutonium core).

The fact remains that with 40 billion dollars (mossad estimate), 60 years of scientific progress and all the details except the Manhattan Project Blueprints they haven't manged to do in 20 years what a group of refugees did in 18 months with 20 billion (year 2000 dollars) in 1945 from scratch.

The Israelis are right and this will not end the problem. The problem will end when the Islamic Republic convinces us (or the israelis) that if they had a bomb they wouldn't use it offensively. 

[Kleves]

Is the consensus that the inspection regime will be robust enough to prevent Iran from making any progress during the next six months?

[Sheilbh]

Is the consensus that the inspection regime will be robust enough to prevent Iran from making any progress during the next six months?

The key points on monitoring seem to me to be that the IAEA are allowed to conduct daily inspections of the nuclear sites and the Iranians will be giving the IAEA information on precisely what they're building in Arak which is something the IAEA have always said the Iranians have obfuscated on.

I don't know about consensus. Generally most of the response to it is very predictable.

As normal I agree with Goldberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-24/in-iran-obama-achieves-50-percent-of-his-goals.html

[CountDeMoney]

It's all going to be determined as dual-purpose technology thanks to muddled and watered-down NPT and IAEA definitions, anyway.  The Iranians learned all the lessons of WMD-dodgers before them, and have designed their weapons program accordingly:  horizontal and flattened, with systems and facilities purposefully designed to be as clouded and circumstantial as possible.

I'm almost with Lindsay Graham on this one:  unless they're going to get out of the uranium business altogether, it's going to be useless.  The IRG will eventually get their bomb, regardless of all the useless NPT and IAEA bullshit you throw at them.  And it's all useless, because everybody and their grandmother designed them that way.

Rohani. Yeah, the former chief nuclear negotiator that had been bullshitting the IAEA Board of Governors ten years ago, and now he's President.  And he's the softie of the bunch with no power, since it's the HMIC and the IRG that run the nuclear shop over there.

Fuck these guys.  All it is is a PR stunt and stalling tactic, and there's nothing the international community's going to do about non-compliance anyway.

[Valmy]

I mean what more can we do?  Even tighter sanctions?

[Berkut]

If we are ok with Syria using nerve gas on their people to put down a rebellion, then why aren't we ok with Iran getting a nuke anyway?

Non-proliferation has no cred anymore.

[Sheilbh]

If we are ok with Syria using nerve gas on their people to put down a rebellion, then why aren't we ok with Iran getting a nuke anyway?

But the Syrians are cooperating with the dismantling of their chemical weapons

[The Minsky Moment]

Usually I am inclined to agree with my Scoop Jackson Democrat brother from Baltimore.  But not this time.  Barry is not going to war with Iran, and neither are the GOP chicken hawks.  The whole point of the sanctions regime is to get a good diplomatic resolution.   This is a very good interim deal, the Iranians already went farther than I would have expected at this stage.  If it all goes to hell then we really have lost very little.  But the upside is a mini-diplomatic revolution.  The Islamic Republic has already crossed a big ideological Rubicon just by putting pen to paper: the population -- which by all reports is very supportive -- is not going to easily accept the US back in the role of Satan Incarnate now that the Supreme Leader's government has signed a deal with his authorization.  And there is real practical, realpolitik reasons why the Iranian regime elements would want this to work.  The bombing in Lebanon is a symptom of an intensification of vicious sectarian conflict in the region, and Iran finds itself dangerously isolated.  The regime is now over 30 years old, its insurgent pretensions are frayed, and the writ of its influence no longer extends much past a the rag tag bands and beleagured governments of Shi'a sectarties spread across the Fertile Crescent.  Normalization may be Iran's only escape from isolation.

[Viking]

+1 JR, who is more evil the Devil or the traitor that makes a deal with him?

[Sheilbh]

But the upside is a mini-diplomatic revolution.  The Islamic Republic has already crossed a big ideological Rubicon just by putting pen to paper: the population -- which by all reports is very supportive -- is not going to easily accept the US back in the role of Satan Incarnate now that the Supreme Leader's government has signed a deal with his authorization.

Especially if there's an economic upside from even this relaxation of sanctions. There's a danger that it would be difficult the sanctions regime back, though it's one the P5+1 have tried to avoid.

But there's also a danger in the relaxation for Iran, depending on where it's felt. It could shift the internal politics of the regime if enough of the power-brokers don't want to return to total economic isolation. It could also make it very difficult to do so if the Iranian public see the benefit of conceding this much for economic relief.

[CountDeMoney]

Unfortunately like so many Languishites, Minsky's buying into the revisionist hype.  Iran may not be as big on promoting the Revolution as it was 30 years ago, but it is most definitely in the Aspiring Regional Hegemon business as both a conventional power and a proxy daddy, and that is not going to go away anytime soon.

Of course this agreement is a great deal for Iran:  it gets to buy positive international PR by signing, it gets to buy shampoo with the loosening of sanctions, it gets to buy time for its weapons program.  IAEA inspections and verification processes are time-consuming, easily challenged, blocked and obfuscated and the enforcement and appeals process is an international bureaucratic paper pile heaven if you want to drag your feet.  It's designed to be useless.

The HMIC and the IRG don't give a shit about sanctions anyway.  Just like the North Korean elite they're immune to them, and Iran's sanctions are much more porous.

[Sheilbh]

You're right on the first point.

But on the IAEA, I think you're wrong. What you describe is how it would work if there was a perfectly functioning ideal international system. But there isn't, so their opinions don't matter except in how they influence other countries. It could be that the US and the rest are willing to let Iran drag their feet, challenge, block and obfuscate. I think it's more likely they'd say that any of that is evidence that Iran's not acting in good faith, so there'll be an ultimatum or the deal's off.