The Iran nuclear deal is set to be signed this week. It’s a deal that has been incorrectly attacked by the GOP for its entire gestating period. The International Nuclear Committee has agreed that all the terms of the agreement have been met by Iran and now nothing is holding it up but signatures. The Right has claimed that this will create a nuclear arms race in the Middle East but like most of what comes out of the GOP propaganda machine this makes absolutely no sense. If there weren’t a treaty, that would insure an arms race because Iran would be free to pursue a nuclear policy and that would scare the surrounding Arab nations into getting nuclear weapons too.
And please, let’s put one more of the Right’s ridiculous propaganda messages to bed. We are not paying Iran billions for this treaty. In fact we are not paying them one single cent. The money that will go to them is already theirs. It is currently being held captive in banks around the world because of the sanctions we imposed to force this deal. It’s Iran’s money. It always has been.
When Iran grabbed ten US sailors in Iranian waters the other day the Republican BS machine started up with its nonsense. “This is an act of war. This is Iran acting like the terrorist supporter they are,” etc. The reality is that it was just a giant clusterf**k.
My take is; some dumb or undertrained sailors took a shortcut back to their destination through Iranian waters. Some over zealous Iranian junior officer grabbed them up, thinking he was going to get a promotion. When this got back to the general staff, he almost got his head cut off. There is no way the Iranians wanted this on the eve of the treaty signing. These guys were back in American custody within 24 hours. Everybody knew this was going to happen this way, which is why Obama didn’t mention it in his State of the Union address. He also didn’t mention the other prisoner releases that John Kerry was negotiating and which only came out on Sunday.
As it turns out Iran has released five American prisoners they have held for up to five years. As of Sunday morning most are on planes out of Iran. If Bush or Cheney had been in the White House for the last four years we would have been at war with Iran by now.
On Sunday morning Obama was on the tube explaining what had happened and why. He made it clear that our decision to negotiate instead of shooting first and thinking second was the bases for all this forward movement with what had been an enemy and now has the potential to be our most staunch ally in the Middle East.
But we have to be careful not to over value what happened today. Yes, it is a clear statement of the value of negotiation over aggression, a definite lesson to the Right if they happen to be listening, which for the most part they never do.
We must also remember that the leadership of Iran’s religious government is still dead set against much of the cooperation that the civilian government has shown in these negotiations. They say, with a great deal of truth that if someone like Trump, Rubio or Cruz became our president, all that cooperation would regress because of the GOP candidates statements to the effect that they would prefer to attack Iran, rather than negotiate with them.
Kerry’s ego, unlike Trump or the other GOP idiots, takes second place to his work. Maybe all of the loudmouth, amateur, GOP candidates ought to sit back and watch how the pros do it.
When you look at the GOP reaction to all the good news that has come out of the American/Iranian interactions in the last few days it’s hard to believe that men like Bush, Rubio and Cruz are living on the same planet as the rest of us. Cruz bitches about the seven Iranian’s who we released in the course of the negotiations. He forgets that he last time we negotiated with the Iranians, Ronald Reagan gave them guns for hostages, only we didn’t get the hostages. Bush complains that we have to deal from strength rather than weakness, forgetting that when his brother was faced with such a choice we invaded Iraq, a mistake for which we are still paying. Bush doesn’t seem to see that what we are doing worked because Obama had the strength to resist the hawks and do this the right way. Rubio whines that the people released were hostages not prisoners. What difference does it make? This is a child who has lost the argument and is stamping his feet and whining. This administration got them out. George Bush would have started another war and they would have been killed in captivity.
In the words of Bob Herbert, the GOP candidates have great distain for Obama and yet he keeps outmaneuvering them at every turn. Every one of them had something to say in their debates about the fact that Obama did not mention the hostages in the State of the Union message or include them in the nuclear negotiations. Then a few days later they are free. I know it wouldn’t occur to these war mongers and political hacks that there was another way beside a nuclear attack to get the hostages out and so Obama triumphs again over the blowhard idiots.