re: #330 darthstar

“no legal value and mostly a propaganda ploy” - just like the Bibi speech…another swing and miss by Republicans.

The Iranians know all about propaganda, so they recognize it when they see it. They also seem to have a better grasp of international law than the GOP does, which is rather comical.

No one knows the actual details of what the negotiations are or what the specifics of the deal will be as it’s still being negotiated.

It just seems that the GOP is far more interested in scuttling the talks, to proceed directly to further sanctions, or military action, even though Iran seems to be in the same position as North Korea - on track to eventually get nuclear weapons, and constraining them seems to be the only alternative.

Heck, this seems to be a situation straight out of ST: Undiscovered Country, where Klingon, Vulcan, and Earth reps all conspired to thwart peace talks because peace was a greater danger to their belief system than ongoing conflict that was unsustainable. Iranian hardliners may be thinking that these talks are denying them their right to pursue nukes, while GOPers in the US want to see talks fail because they want to pursue harsher sanctions or even military action to thwart Iran. Throw in Israeli and Saudi interests that might want to see talks fail and you’ve got vested interests in watching this fail.

On the other side of the ledger, there are a lot of people who want to see them succeed because of the costs of going nuclear in Iran is sapping the economy at a time they can ill afford it; the difficulty of figuring out a military option that wouldn’t turn out to be a clusterfuck; and practical considerations that a nuclear North Korea hasn’t actually changed the dynamics there, so why would a nuclear Iran be different.

Now, there are significant differences between the Iranian and North Korean experience, not the least of which is a religious fervor in Iran that includes a centuries long conflict between Sunni and Shi’a, with Shi’ites gaining the upper hand in the Middle East (though Pakistan could arm Saudi Arabia to negate that advantage). Self preservation might limit what Iran is willing to do (and what North Korea has done so far), and continuing the regime means doing only so much sabre rattling (turning the nukes into an empty threat).

North Korea is contained, so it isn’t a stretch to see a contained Iran.