A BIT OF BOTHER – AT 9:37 A.M. ET: We learn more about the Iran nuclear "agreement" every day. What we are learning is that there's no agreement at all, simply some working papers put out by different governments, with no one really agreeing with anyone else. In fact, there may not even be an agreement on June 30th, which is the deadline for achieving one. From AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Snap back? Not so fast.
The biggest enforcement provision in the preliminary nuclear agreement with Iran is turning into one of the mostly hotly contested elements. And the debate barely involves Iran.
Instead, it concerns the Obama administration’s promise to quickly re-impose sanctions on Iran if the Islamic Republic cheats on any part of the agreement to limit its nuclear program to peaceful pursuits.
This would be relatively straightforward for the sanctions imposed by the US, as Congress is eager to keep the pressure on. But it is far from clear whether President Barack Obama can guarantee such action at the United Nations, which has imposed wide-ranging penalties that all UN members must enforce.
At present, there’s no firm agreement on how or when to lift the sanctions in the first place. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and President Hassan Rouhani said Thursday they want all sanctions lifted on the first day of implementation. That’s not the position of US and other negotiators, a major issue that still must be worked out.
Assuming it can be, that still would leave the big question of possible re-imposition.
The disagreement on this issue is between the US and its European allies on one side, and Russia and China on the other — all countries involved in the nuclear negotiations. And even though all six world powers and Iran agreed last week to the framework agreement that is supposed to be finalized by June 30, the “snapback” mechanism for UN sanctions remains poorly defined and may prove unworkable.
“If Iran violates the deal, sanctions can be snapped back into place,” Obama declared last week.
He went further this week, saying that restoring the international sanctions would not require consensus among UN Security Council members. And Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who helped seal last week’s pact, insisted “no one country could block the snapback.”
That assertion rests on an informal compromise reached at the talks in Lausanne, Switzerland, to bypass the typical UN Security Council process if Iran breaks the agreement.
COMMENT: I love the term, "informal compromise." Apparently, there's a lot of "informality" in the "agreement." The fact is, once sanctions are lifted, powerful economic interests in the West will seek to make fortunes in Iran. Governments, especially Germany, will be hard pressed to reimpose those sanctions.
And how will we define a "violation"? Will we announce it, or restart negotiations, which could take years, to "explore" the issue.
Iran announced yesterday that it would never permit inspections of military sites. Without those inspections, the agreement is meaningless.
It's pretty clear that the "agreement" announced last week is essentially meaningless. The devil, as usual, is in the details, and the details haven't begun to be worked out, if they can be worked out at all.
April 10, 2015 |