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AP:
"President Barack Obama suffered a notable setback in his all-out
campaign to secure Democratic support for the Iran nuclear deal when the
leading Jewish Democrat in the Senate announced his opposition. The
question is how significant the blow will turn out to be. Republicans,
infuriated by Obama's recent comparison of GOP foes of the pact to 'Death
to America' Iranian hardliners, immediately focused on the stunning break
with the president by Chuck Schumer of New York, and they're urging other
Democrats to buck the administration. But there was no quick indication
that the announcement by Schumer, the No. 3 Senate Democrat and party
leader-in-waiting, would trigger a rush of Democratic opposition to the
international accord, which aims to curb Iran's nuclear program in
exchange for billions of dollars in relief from crippling economic
sanctions... Still, a second New Yorker, Rep. Eliot Engel, the top
Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and an additional
Democratic member of the panel, Brad Sherman of California, joined
Schumer Friday in opposing the deal. Five weeks before crucial votes in
Congress, Schumer's decision was seen as a blow to the administration, whose
intense lobbying on Capitol Hill since last month's deal had produced a
steady stream of support from Democrats." http://t.uani.com/1J6emrX
WashPost:
"An Iranian court held its final hearing Monday in the trial of a
Washington Post journalist facing charges including espionage, and a
decision could come within the week, his laywer said. The move toward a
possible verdict comes more than a year after Jason Rezaian, the Post's
correspondent in Tehran, was detained by Iranian authorities. He has
strongly denied the allegations in a case that has drawn appeals for his
release from the State Department, international media watchdog groups
and others. Some U.S. lawmakers also have questioned why negotiations
with Iran over a nuclear deal did not include explicit demands from
Washington for the release of Rezaian and other Americans held in Iran...
Rezaian's lawyer, Leila Ahsan, was quoted by the Associated Press as
saying she expected a court decision 'in a week.' She gave no other
details, and is barred from speaking with media outside Iran. Rezaian
reportedly faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on charges that
include espionage and distributing propaganda against Iran." http://t.uani.com/1Tk7Ihc
LAT:
"President Obama stood by his charge that Iranian hardliners are
making 'common cause' with Republican lawmakers in opposing the landmark
nuclear deal with Iran, insisting that such an accusation 'is absolutely
true, factually.' 'Inside of Iran, the people most opposed to the deal
are the Revolutionary Guard, the Quds Force, hardliners who are
implacably opposed to any cooperation with the international community,'
Obama said in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria broadcast Sunday. He
had made the accusation earlier in the week, charging Republicans with
opposing the deal for political reasons. 'The reason that Mitch McConnell
and the rest of the folks in his caucus who oppose this jumped out and
opposed it before they even read it, before it was even posted, is
reflective of a ideological commitment not to get a deal done,' Obama
said, naming the Senate Republican leader from Kentucky... The CNN
interview aired Sunday amid a morning of political talk shows otherwise
devoted to the discourse among Republican presidential candidates - a
juxtaposition the White House was surely expecting. The more that GOP
candidates and lawmakers pummel the pending deal with Iran, the more the
White House emphasizes that the opposition is political. That has become
harder for the White House since the interview was taped Thursday;
Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York came out in opposition to the
nuclear deal late that evening." http://t.uani.com/1KdBuiZ
Nuclear Program & Agreement
Reuters:
"Iran's foreign minister said on Saturday that accusations about
activity at its Parchin military site were 'lies' spread by opponents of
its landmark nuclear deal with world powers clinched last month. A U.S.
think-tank on Friday questioned Tehran's explanation that activity at its
Parchin military site visible in satellite imagery was related to road
work, and suggested it was a clean-up operation before IAEA inspectors
arrive at the site. 'We said that the activities in Parchin are related
to road construction,' Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted
as saying by the IRNA state news agency. 'They (opponents of the deal)
have spread these lies before. Their goal is to damage the agreement,' he
added. The Institute for Science and International Security in Washington
was quick to deny on Twitter that it was one of the deal's opponents. 'We
are neutral,' the thinktank said." http://t.uani.com/1L1tdEw
Reuters:
"A prominent U.S. think tank on Friday questioned Iran's explanation
for activity at its Parchin military site visible in satellite imagery,
saying the movement of vehicles did not appear related to road work. The
U.S.-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said
this week that Iran might be sanitizing its Parchin military site, where
some countries suspect experiments may have taken place in a possible
atomic weapons program. Iran denied it, saying it was part of road works
near the Mamloo Dam. The think-tank issued a fresh analysis on Friday
disputing Iran's story. 'Commercial satellite imagery does not support
the Iranian explanation,' the think tank said in a statement. 'ISIS
analyzed commercially available satellite imagery taken on July 12, 19,
and 26, 2015 but did not find any visible signatures related to road work
on the road near the dam.' It said it would make little sense for Iran to
'park vehicles three kilometers south of the dam and at the one site that
would create intense concern and suspicion about Iran's intentions to
comply with the recently negotiated (deal).'" http://t.uani.com/1htm3MG
AP:
"Iran's military chief on Saturday backed a landmark nuclear deal
with world powers despite having concerns over it, the official IRNA news
agency reported, a major endorsement that could allow conservatives to
back an accord hard-liners oppose. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, the chief of
staff of Iran's armed forces and a close ally of Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, spoke of 16 advantages of the deal in comments published by
the news agency. While acknowledging concerns the military has,
Firouzabadi wrote that both a recent United Nations vote on deal and the
accord itself 'have advantages that critics have ignored.'" http://t.uani.com/1MY3oFB
Congressional
Vote
LAT:
"Another Democrat, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), announced
Friday that he will vote against the nuclear deal with Iran, and urged a
renegotiation of its terms as soon as President Obama leaves office.
Sherman, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, declared his
opposition the day after Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate's No.
3 Democrat, and Rep. Eliot L. Engel, (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, said they opposed the president's
landmark foreign policy initiative... Sherman said in a statement that though
the agreement includes good and bad features in its first year, it 'gets
ugly in the years thereafter.' 'In 15 years or less, Iran is permitted to
have an unlimited quantity of centrifuges of unlimited quality, as well
as heavy water reactors and reprocessing facilities,' he said. 'We must
force modifications of the agreement, and extensions of its nuclear
restrictions, before it gets ugly.' ... Sherman, like many other critics,
said he hopes the next president can renegotiate the deal to make it more
favorable to U.S. interests. The agreement limits Iran's ability to
develop a bomb for at least a decade in exchange for easing of economic
sanctions." http://t.uani.com/1Pgpz8u
Free Beacon:
"Democratic presidential candidate Jim Webb said he was opposed to
the Iran nuclear agreement being aggressively pushed by the Obama
administration, telling Fox News on Sunday that 'I think it's a bad
deal,' according to The Weekly Standard... Key Democratic Sen. Chuck
Schumer (D., N.Y.) announced he was also opposed to the deal last week,
leading to a war of words with the White House that Webb said he found
disheartening. 'I think we need to put country ahead of party,' Webb
said. 'It troubles me when I see all this debate about whether this is
disloyalty to the president or to the Democratic Party, particularly with
what Chuck Schumer has gone through. I think I've always done that. I
think that's what leadership really is, particularly in foreign
policy.'" http://t.uani.com/1KdKEfh
New Yorker:
"President Obama was in a reflective mood when he met with a group
of journalists at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, a few hours
after he delivered a combative speech defending the Iran deal. He is, in
private meetings, a congenial stoic, even as he chews Nicorette gum to
stay ahead of an old vice. But his frustration-that the bigger message of
his foreign policy is being lost in the political furies over Iran-was
conspicuous. He made clear that the proposed deal-the most ambitious
foreign-policy initiative of his Presidency-is less about Iran than about
getting America off its war track; Obama believes that Washington, almost
by default, too often unwisely deploys the military as the quickest
solution to international crises... Compared to historic pacts, such as
the SALT and START treaties brokered with the Soviet Union, Obama views
the Iran deal as one of the best arms agreements in half a century. 'In
past agreements of this sort-of this magnitude, at least-we typically had
to give something up,' he said. 'We were having to constrain ourselves in
significant ways. In that sense, there was greater risk. In this
situation, we do not surrender our capabilities to break the glass and
respond if, in fact, Iran proves unable or unwilling to meet its
commitments.'" http://t.uani.com/1IEzKPt
Reuters:
"Democrats said on Friday that they would have enough votes to
ensure that the U.S.-led international nuclear deal with Iran survives
review by Congress, despite influential Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer
saying he would vote against it. A spokesman for Senator Dick Durbin, who
counts Democratic votes as the Senate's minority whip and who supports
the deal, said Democrats were still confident they could rebuff
Republican attempts to sink the agreement in a showdown next month. 'The
momentum is behind this deal, as you've seen from Democrats coming out
this week,' spokesman Ben Marter said... So far, at least 14 Senate
Democrats and independents who vote with Democrats and about 34 House
Democrats have announced they would back the deal. There are 46 members
of the Democratic caucus in the 100-member Senate and 188 Democrats in
the 435-member House." http://t.uani.com/1Tke6Fn
NYT:
"President Obama had a tough message for the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, or Aipac, the powerful pro-Israel group that is
furiously campaigning against the Iran nuclear accord, when he met with
two of its leaders at the White House this week. The president accused
Aipac of spending millions of dollars in advertising against the deal and
spreading false claims about it, people in the meeting recalled. So Mr.
Obama told the Aipac leaders that he intended to hit back hard. The next
day in a speech at American University, Mr. Obama denounced the deal's
opponents as 'lobbyists' doling out millions of dollars to trumpet the
same hawkish rhetoric that had led the United States into war with Iraq.
The president never mentioned Aipac by name, but his target was
unmistakable. The remarks reflected an unusually sharp rupture between a
sitting American president and the most potent pro-Israel lobbying group,
which was founded in 1951 a few years after the birth of Israel... The
tone of the current dispute is raising concerns among some of Mr. Obama's
allies who say it is a new low in relations between Aipac and the White
House. They say they are worried that, in working to counter Aipac's
tactics and discredit its claims about the nuclear accord with Iran, the
president has gone overboard in criticizing the group and like-minded
opponents of the deal." http://t.uani.com/1P0WiOi
Sanctions
Relief
Reuters:
"Dozens of companies tied to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, a
military force commanding a powerful industrial empire with huge
political influence, will win sanctions relief under a nuclear deal
agreed with world powers. The development is likely to anger critics of
the accord, not least in the United States and Israel, but may be
welcomed by Iranians eager for Iran to reopen to the outside world. The
IRGC will act for Western firms in many ways as a gatekeeper to some of
the most lucrative areas of Iran's economy. Such is the clout of
companies with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC),
which sees itself as the defender of Iran's Islamic revolutionary ideals
and bulwark against U.S. influence, that their release from financial
curbs could of itself help ease return of swathes of the economy to the
mainstream of world trade... In all, about 90 current and former IRGC
officials, entities such as the IRGC itself, and firms that conducted
transactions for the Guards will be taken off nuclear sanctions lists by
either the United States, EU or United Nations, according to a Reuters
tally based on annexes to the text of the nuclear deal... The benefits
that will accrue to the Guards, its recent annual turnover from all
business activities estimated at around $10-12 billion by one Western
diplomat, have been the focus of much of the outrage in U.S. Congress
over the deal... 'They're going to be the number one beneficiary of the
sanctions lifting,' said Bob Corker, chair of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, at a hearing about the deal last month." http://t.uani.com/1IZfBaB
WSJ:
"The Obama administration is investigating whether the commander of
Iran's elite overseas military unit, the Qods Force, secretly visited
Russia last month in violation of a United Nations travel ban. U.S.
officials view Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani as Iran's top intelligence official
who oversees Tehran support of militias and terrorist organizations in
Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. The U.N. blacklisted Gen. Soleimani for
his alleged role in developing Iran's nuclear and ballistic-missile
programs, essentially putting him on a travel ban. The U.S. sanctioned
him in 2005 for his alleged role in supporting international terrorism,
barring him from doing business outside Iran. A senior U.S. official said
Washington believes Gen. Soleimani visited Moscow in late July to meet
with Russian officials... Fox News reported Thursday that Gen. Soleimani
took a commercial flight to Moscow on July 24 and held three days of
talks, including meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu." http://t.uani.com/1f3mlYD
Sanctions
Enforcement
WSJ:
"The U.S. Treasury Department is cautiously preparing for the
lifting of economic sanctions on Iran, but is insistent that foreign
companies don't jump the gun. Treasury, under the nuclear agreement
signed with Tehran last month, is preparing to roll back layers of U.S.,
European Union and United Nations sanctions imposed on Iran over the past
decade. But U.S. officials are emphatic that foreign governments and
firms not start investing in Iran until it follows through on the
commitments it made in Vienna to roll back its nuclear program... 'We
need to keep everyone onside,' said a senior Treasury official working on
Iran. 'We want to make sure they're not tripping over themselves to get
in before Iran has actually taken the steps it agreed to under the deal.'
U.S. officials estimate that it will take Iran until around mid-2016 to
implement the steps it agreed to as part of the nuclear deal. At that
stage, the international sanctions on the country will begin to be rolled
back... Treasury officials have said unwinding the sanctions, and
explaining the process, will be extremely complicated and require
extensive engagement with foreign firms and governments... U.S. officials
said they envision that Treasury and State Department officials will need
to make extensive trips to Asia, Europe and the Middle East in order to
explain what can and can't be invested in, in the future." http://t.uani.com/1MfIMqE
Reuters:
"As Congress considers a controversial nuclear deal with Iran, the
U.S. Treasury agency charged with implementing related financial
sanctions is at risk of being overwhelmed by its expanding mission,
former employees and lawyers who deal with the office say. The agency,
the Office of Foreign Assets Control, is responsible for enforcing a
broad array of sanctions and for licensing American companies wishing to
do business with sanctioned countries. Both roles will be especially
critical if some restrictions are relaxed under the proposed nuclear
agreement with Iran. But a growing reliance on sanctions to address
situations as varied as Russia's incursions into Ukraine, cyber attacks
on U.S. businesses, and jihadist financing has increased pressure on the
agency, which is being asked to police a bigger beat while staffing and budgets
have not kept up... That could present a risk for implementation of the
Iran deal, experts say. Without clear and quick guidance, businesses and
banks will likely pull back from trade with Iran, even in areas permitted
if sanctions are eased. In turn, if Iran did not get the relief it
expected from eased sanctions, it would have less incentive to abide by
the terms of the deal." http://t.uani.com/1MktXoA
Anti-Americanism
Free Beacon:
"A senior Iranian official close to the Supreme Leader recently mocked
President Obama's remarks about the recently signed nuclear accord as
'bragging' and accused the U.S. leader of being 'under an illusion' about
the Islamic Republic's hate for America, according to translation of
Persian-language comments performed by the CIA's Open Source Center.
Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Asudi, an adviser to the Supreme Leader
and official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), lashed out
at Obama for claiming that the recently inked nuclear accord would
moderate Iran and bring it closer to the United States and other Western
countries. 'If Obama opens his ears he can hear the voices of millions of
Iranians who shout, Death to America on various occasions,' such as the
Feb.11 anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution, which brought hardliners
into office, Asudi said, according to Iran's state-controlled Mehr News
Agency. Obama 'seems to be under an illusion, and when someone is under
an illusion he does not know what he is saying,' the IRGC leader said,
adding that Obama has been 'bragging' about the deal and Iran's
intentions." http://t.uani.com/1DCimhI
Iraq Crisis
WashPost:
"The expanding U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State
group in Iraq relies in part on an uneasy, arms-length partnership with
Shiite militias backed by Iran - organizations that were once
relentlessly effective killers of U.S. troops. Now, as the campaign
enters its second year, there are signs that this awkward alliance may be
fraying: militia threats of renewed attacks on U.S. personnel, a greater
U.S. effort to bolster Sunni forces that are traditional adversaries of
Iran and accusations that the U.S. air campaign has at times targeted
Shiite forces. The shared desire to defeat the Islamic State appears to
be enough so far to keep the militias and the Americans working in common
cause. But officials and experts said both sides know that their broader
regional objectives are in conflict. 'Let's be frank,' a senior U.S.
military official said. 'They are watching us, and we are watching them.'"
http://t.uani.com/1DH4cLZ
Human Rights
Amnesty:
"The Iranian authorities must immediately halt the implementation of
a death sentence for juvenile offender Salar Shadizadi, and ensure that a
new request for a judicial review made by his lawyers earlier this week
is granted without delay, said Amnesty International. The execution of
Salar Shadizadi, who was jailed and sentenced to death for a crime
committed when he was just 15 years old, was originally scheduled for 1
August and then postponed to 10 August after an international outcry.
'Carrying out the execution of Salar Shadizadi would be a deeply tragic
blow to Iran's obligations under international human rights law, which
strictly prohibits the use of the death penalty for crimes committed by
persons under the age of 18. To carry out an execution while a judicial
review of the case is being sought would also be a slap in the face of
justice,' said Said Boumedouha, Acting Director of the Middle East and
North Africa Programme at Amnesty International." http://t.uani.com/1htlcvf
IHR:
"According to official reports, Iranian authorities have carried out
another amputation sentence in Mashhad's Vakilabad Prison - this is the
second amputation sentence carried out in this prison in one week." http://t.uani.com/1HBvKgR
IHR:
"According to state news agency Mehr, two prisoners,
identified as R.B. and A.N. were hanged to death in public in Mashhad on
the morning of Sunday, August 9th." http://t.uani.com/1L1Am7D
IHR:
"Iranian authorities have amputated the right hand and left foot of
a man for robbery. The Iranian daily newspaper Khorasan reported that the
amputation sentence of a man was implemented in the prison of Mashhad
(Northeastern Iran) Monday morning August 3." http://t.uani.com/1DHbzTN
ICHRI:
"One of the eight Facebook activists sentenced to long prison
sentences in 2013 for social and political commentary posted on their
Facebook pages, has asserted that she was denied access to a lawyer
during her detention, interrogated about private matters, and charged
with crimes she never committed. 'They did not allow me to have a lawyer
until my case went to the appeals court, and even then I did not attend
the trial.' ... Shirazi and her co-defendants managed eight popular pages
on Facebook and shared content from social media sites. On April 14,
2014, she was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of insulting
the Supreme Leader Khamenei and founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah
Khomeini, conspiring against the state, and publishing pornographic
images." http://t.uani.com/1IT6EuW
Foreign Affairs
AP:
"President Barack Obama says a constructive relationship with Iran
could be a byproduct of the deal to limit its nuclear program, but it
won't happen immediately. If at all. Obama told CNN in an interview
airing Sunday that Iran's 'nuclear problem' must be dealt with
first... Obama says resolving the Iranian nuclear issue makes it
possible to open broader talks with Iran on other issues. He named Syria
as an example. 'Is there the possibility that having begun conversations
around this narrow issue that you start getting some broader discussions
about Syria, for example, and the ability of all the parties involved to
try to arrive at a political transition that keeps the country intact and
does not further fuel the growth of ISIL and other terrorist organizations.
I think that's possible,' Obama said, referring to the Islamic State
group by one of its acronyms. 'But I don't think it happens
immediately.'" http://t.uani.com/1IyUrOR
Opinion &
Analysis
Fred Hiatt in
WashPost: "Last week President Obama defended the
Iran agreement in part by dismissing its critics as people who supported
the war in Iraq 13 years ago - 'the same people who seem to have no
compunction with being repeatedly wrong,' he said. Politicians and
pundits should be judged on their records. If you think my support of the
Iraq war in 2002 invalidates any other argument I will ever make, then
you shouldn't read my column. That's fair enough. It doesn't seem to be
Obama's standard, though, when he's feeling less embattled. If it were,
he would not have chosen Joe Biden as his vice president and valued his
foreign-policy advice over the past seven years; nor would he have
appointed Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state in his first term or
John Kerry in his second. For that matter, if it were Obama's standard,
he ought to be worried that so many supporters of the Iraq war, like
Biden, Clinton and Kerry - like me, for that matter - support the Iran
deal. But if the Iraq war isn't a single-issue litmus test for Obama,
what are its lessons for foreign policy, including the Iran deal, and has
the president drawn them correctly? One obvious lesson is that
intelligence on nuclear capabilities is notoriously unreliable. The Iraq
war was fought on the basis of 'one of the most public - and most damaging
- intelligence failures in recent American history,' the Robb-Silberman
commission concluded in 2005. On nuclear weapons, the intelligence
community regularly has been caught by surprise, in Iran and Iraq but
also in North Korea, Pakistan, India and the Soviet Union. Judging by his
certitude on the United States' ability to detect Iranian violations,
it's safe to say that's not the Iraq war lesson Obama has taken to heart.
'If Iran cheats, we can catch them, and we will,' he boasted last week.
No, the lesson Obama has in mind is that war is unpredictable and
destructive and should always be a last resort. I agree with that, as, I
think, would most critics of the Iran deal, notwithstanding the
president's suggestion that they share 'a preference for military action
over diplomacy.' The difficulty is that it is easier in hindsight to
label wars as being smart or dumb, of choice or of necessity, than when
making policy decisions in the face of many unknowns. Nothing illustrates
that better than Obama's own record. He waged his own war of choice in
Libya, a seven-month air campaign that dislodged dictator Moammar Gaddafi
in 2011. Obama then refused to commit U.S. resources to postwar
stabilization, with the result that Libya is now fractured in a brutal civil
war that has opened havens for Islamist radicals. He withdrew all U.S.
troops from Iraq when it had achieved unity and relative stability, and
he denied assistance to moderate pro-democracy forces in Syria when that
nation's dictator turned ferociously on them. The foreseeable, and
foreseen, result of both decisions was growing instability and extremism.
A malignant terrorist-run state put down roots at the heart of the Middle
East... He has been forced to return thousands of troops to Iraq, to
conduct thousands of bombing sorties over Iraq and Syria - in short, to
favor military action over diplomacy, and from a position of
no-good-option weakness... What are the lessons for Iran? From the start,
Obama has made clear that he would use military force, if necessary, to
prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But he also made clear his
judgment that there was no good military option. An attack could at best
delay Iranian nuclearization; it could generate dangerous blowback, and
it could leave the United States unsure what capabilities remained hidden
inside Iran. That judgment, understood as clearly by the Iranians as
anyone, helps explain why the deal Obama negotiated fell so far short of
his initial goals in the enrichment capability it allows Iran, the
failure to account for past behavior, the inspections that Iran can delay
and more. It explains, too, why some of us agree that even this imperfect
deal is better than any alternative now available. But I do not assume
that those who disagree are lusting for another war." http://t.uani.com/1Nl83OQ
WSJ Editorial:
"Chuck Schumer's decision to oppose President Obama's Iran nuclear
deal may not defeat the accord, but it certainly does showcase its
flagging political support. Mr. Schumer is a party stalwart who wants to
succeed Harry Reid as Senate leader, and his defection suggests that the
deal will be opposed by at least a bipartisan majority in both houses of
Congress. Think about how extraordinary that would be. Major foreign
policy initiatives are often controversial, but they typically garner at
least majority support. The resolutions for the Gulf War and the
conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq all earned majority support, as did the
Nixon and Reagan arms-control treaties with the Soviet Union. Mr. Obama may
escape humiliation only because by submitting the deal as an executive
agreement rather than a treaty, Mr. Obama maneuvered to need only
one-third of either house of Congress to uphold his veto of a resolution
of disapproval. In other words, he can still proceed to implement the
accord, but only by ignoring the consensus view of the American public...
Some Beltway denizens are wondering if Mr. Schumer's decision means that
the President already has 34 Senate votes to sustain a veto. The claim is
that Mr. Schumer would never dare be the final vote to undermine a
President of his own party on so consequential a priority. But precisely
because the stakes are so high, Mr. Schumer may want to lay down his
marker early so it doesn't become a matter of party loyalty if the final
vote is close in September. He joins at least five New York House
Democrats who have already broken against the accord. Note that for his
sins Mr. Schumer is now getting the treatment Mr. Obama usually reserves
for Republicans. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said pointedly Friday
that he 'wouldn't be surprised' if Senate Democrats consider Mr.
Schumer's Iran defection when they choose a new leader next year. This
lashing out follows the President's charge this week that GOP opponents of
the deal share 'common cause' with Iran's Revolutionary Guards. As Mr.
Obama's bitterness grows, so does the backlash against his dangerous
nuclear deal." http://t.uani.com/1IEqXwX
Hooman Bakhtiar in
WSJ: "Congress is debating whether the nuclear
agreement between Iran and the great powers goes far enough to curb
Tehran's illicit activities. But equally deserving of scrutiny are the
nefarious characters whose names would be removed under the deal from
Western sanctions lists. Consider Anis Naccache, the Lebanese hitman who
attempted to assassinate my great uncle Shapour Bakhtiar, Iran's last
prime minister under the shah. On a sweltering July day in 1980, a hit
squad of five Lebanese, Iranian and Palestinian assassins led by Mr.
Naccache approached a building in the Paris suburb of Neuilly. They posed
as journalists, ostensibly to interview Bakhtiar, who had arrived in
Paris a year earlier to launch a political campaign against the Islamic
Republic before Ayatollah Khomeini's nascent regime could entrench itself.
Bakhtiar was renowned in Iran. A genuine liberal, he fought as a young
man with the republicans in the Spanish Civil War as well as with the
French Resistance against Nazi Germany before returning to his native
Iran, where he emerged as a leading man of letters and an outspoken
advocate of constitutional monarchy. By appointing a critic like Bakhtiar
premier in the heady days of 1979, the shah had attempted to stave off
the revolution that would soon sweep him from power. After the shah was
deposed, Bakhtiar called on Khomeini to return to the mosque and tend to
his religious duties instead of creating a theocracy. Khomeini never
forgave him, and my great uncle was soon forced into exile. Anis
Naccache's name is synonymous with political violence. In 1975, as a
lieutenant of the arch-terrorist Carlos the Jackal, he helped lead the
hostage-taking of 11 OPEC oil ministers in Vienna. Four years later he
put his skills at the service of Khomeini's Islamic Republic. But the
attempt on Bakhtiar's life went awry. Mr. Naccache and his team first
killed a police officer posted in the building. But they got the wrong
apartment door, shooting and killing an elderly French woman and wounding
her sister. Unable to break down Bakhtiar's door, they escaped and were confronted
by more French police. In the ensuing firefight the terrorists shot
another officer, paralyzing him for life. Mr. Naccache and three
accomplices were convicted of murder and handed life sentences in 1982. A
fifth team member received a 20-year sentence... France relented in July
1990, and Mr. Naccache and his fellow assassins were put on a plane to
Tehran after a pardon by President François Mitterrand. The French
hostages in Lebanon had been released in 1988, and to no one's surprise
French officials denied that any deal had been made. A different team of
killers was dispatched to Paris to assassinate my great uncle in 1991,
and this time they succeeded... Today Anis Naccache describes himself as
a businessman. According to a 2003 filing with Iran's corporate registry,
he serves as chairman of the board of the Bazargani Tejarat Tavanmand
Saccal company... In 2008 the European Union determined that Mr. Naccache
was linked to Iran's nuclear-proliferation activities-identifying his
association with the same Bazargani Tejarat Tavanmand Saccal firm in its
designation. Brussels added him to a sanctions list due to his alleged
role in Iran's nuclear program, not his terrorist past... Now Mr.
Naccache is set to be removed from the EU sanctions list under the
nuclear deal. Joining him will be numerous other Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps leaders responsible for the deaths of many Iranian
dissidents, U.S. servicemen in Iraq and civilians in Syria and elsewhere.
In their determination to cut a nuclear deal with Tehran, Washington and
Brussels are rubbing salt into the wounds of the victims of Iranian
terror. It is unclear how much, if any, due diligence has been conducted
on the names that the mullahs insisted be removed from sanctions lists...
There is a high price to be paid for the nuclear deal, and it includes
the blood of innocents." http://t.uani.com/1Iythrm
WashPost
Editorial: "The signing of the nuclear deal with
Iran last month touched off an unseemly rush by European governments and
investors to cash in on a hydrocarbon-producing country with a deep need
for investment and 80 million deprived consumers. The weekend after the
end of the talks, Germany's energy and economics minister was in Tehran
with a delegation of business executives. French Foreign Minister Laurent
Fabius, who struck a pose as skeptic of the deal before it was concluded,
landed a few days later. Investors from Spain, Italy and Switzerland,
among others, are joining what some are describing as an incipient gold
rush. Most likely, the bracing reality of Iran will bring most back down
to earth. Iran is No. 130 out of 189 nations on the World Bank's ranking
of ease of doing business. Corruption is rampant and many industries are
controlled by the malignant Revolutionary Guard, whose leaders oppose any
opening to the West. It remains to be seen whether even big oil companies
such as France's Total and Italy's Eni, which worked in Iran before
sanctions were imposed, will be offered sufficient incentives to invest
in new production at a time of a global oil market glut. For investors on
the fence, we have some advice: Before joining the crowd in Tehran, wait
to see what happens to Post reporter Jason Rezaian. Three weeks after the
deal was signed, Mr. Rezaian still sits in Tehran's notorious Evin
prison, where he has been held since his arrest on July 22, 2014. His
continued detention violates multiple Iranian and international laws,
including one very simple one: An Iranian statute says no suspect who has
not yet been convicted may be held for more than a year, unless accused
of murder... These circumstances should raise several questions for those
contemplating investment in Iran. Can the government of Mr. Zarif and
President Hassan Rouhani be relied upon when it makes promises about
terms for Western companies - or will it be sabotaged by Revolutionary
Guard commanders who wish to defend their corrupt economic interests and
keep the West out? If there are legal disputes, can Iranian courts be
relied upon to enforce even straightforward laws? And will Western
business owners visiting Tehran be safe from the fate of Mr. Rezaian - a
correspondent duly credentialed by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic
Guidance who was abducted by security forces and held in solitary
confinement for months without charge while being subjected to harsh
interrogation? Unless and until Mr. Rezaian is released, no investor in
Iran can safely set aside those concerns." http://t.uani.com/1UyIkXE
Robert Joseph in
NRO: "In defending his nuclear deal with Iran in his
speech at American University on Wednesday, President Obama resorted to a
familiar strawman. Congress, he said, is faced with a decision: Either
accept the agreement as negotiated, or go to war. In addition to
presenting this false choice, the president personally attacked the
motives of anyone who differs with him, and he accompanied the attack
with outrageous hyperbole. His description of the Iran accord as 'the
strongest nonproliferation agreement ever negotiated' is not just wrong;
it's demonstrably absurd. One would have thought the president's staff
would have warned him against stating such an obvious falsehood. Someone
in his entourage must be aware of the 2003 agreement with Libya that
resulted both in anywhere/anytime inspections and in the total elimination
of Qaddafi's uranium-enrichment program. All associated nuclear
equipment, hundreds of metric tons of it, as well as Libya's longer-range
ballistic missiles, were loaded on a ship and taken to the United States.
But perhaps President Obama's staff, which includes many individuals with
more experience running political campaigns than dealing with
national-security matters, is not aware of the facts - a condition that
would help explain many of the other foreign-policy blunders of this
administration. If President Obama's deal with Iran moves forward,
longstanding U.S. nonproliferation goals will be among the foremost
casualties, since the agreement will likely lead to more nuclear and
missile proliferation in the region. By setting dangerous precedents on
inspection procedures and by failing to back up in a meaningful way the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation of Iran's
possible military activities, including the design of a nuclear warhead,
the authority of the IAEA will be undermined not just with Iran but with
other potential proliferators. And because the deal would legitimize
Iran's illicit enrichment program and permit plutonium reprocessing in
the future, U.S. policy dating back to the Carter years - which has
successfully discouraged the spread of these capabilities - will lose
credibility and effectiveness with other countries, including close
allies that may want to pursue these technologies. How can we argue that
South Korea shouldn't enrich uranium if Iran receives an international
stamp of approval? Beyond nonproliferation, the damage to American
security interests from the Iran agreement would be immense. Imagine a
more aggressive regime in Tehran enabled with hundreds of billions of
dollars over time and able to buy more weapons and funnel greater support
to its allies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as to terrorist groups
like Hezbollah and insurgent Shia movements throughout the Middle East.
Clearly, despite the lecturing from the White House, the prospects for war
increase rather than decrease with the president's deal. So what is the
best course of action to protect our national security? First, we need to
reject the notion that, if Congress does not ratify the deal, there will
be war. The prediction of war is brought to you by the same individuals
who predicted that the negotiations would result in a deal that would
mandate anywhere/anytime inspections, impose constraints on Iran's
ballistic-missile program, and get to the truth on Iran's
military-related activities - none of which was achieved. A worse track
record for prediction would be hard to find. Moreover, Iran does not want
a conventional conflict with the United States at this time, as it would
surely lose... Second, we need to reject the notion that there is no
viable path to return to the negotiations. We can be certain that, if the
Supreme Leader demanded a change in the current provisions, all the
negotiating partners would be willing to reconvene in Switzerland or
Austria. There would be no statement from the White House that this meant
war. That said, the deal negotiated by the P5+1 has made it more
difficult to resolve the Iran nuclear threat through diplomacy - and the
U.N. Security Council resolution adopted to implement it compounds the
difficulty. Economically, the sanctions regime that brought Iran to the
table will be weakened. The door is now open for Russia and China to
resume business with Tehran, commercial and military, including the
provision of advanced air defenses. Some of our key allies will also want
to seek commercial opportunities. And politically, Moscow and Beijing
will surely criticize us if we fail to implement the deal - even as they
continue their respective aggressions in Ukraine and the South China Sea.
Third, we need Congress to reject the agreement as it now stands and
insist that its fatal flaws be corrected... This proposed course of
action will not be easy. But the costs and risks of accepting this bad
agreement far outweigh those of the alternative of returning to negotiations."
http://t.uani.com/1MkG2dk
Adam Garfinkle in
The American Interest: "Over the past few days the
Obama Administration has rolled out the big cannons to sell the Iran deal
to a clearly nervous Congress. The main two salesmen-in-chief have been
the President and the Secretary of State, the former by dint of a
conventional speech, and the latter mainly through an interview with The
Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. (Energy Secretary Moniz went off to Chicago
to bang the gong, but, for better or worse, no one pays much attention to
him because he's not particularly charismatic and his formidable
technical knowledge just makes most people's eyes glaze over.) In some
ways it is a peculiar show. The way the Corker-Cardin (or
Corker-Menendez, if you like the original label) law is written-which
turns the Senate's advise-and-consent function upside down and
gratuitously sticks the House on for good, but probably unconstitutional,
measure-the Administration should objectively have little to worry about.
Both houses would have to override a Presidential veto to stop the deal,
and given the regnant political geometry, that seems too high a hurdle to
get over. But if that's so, why is the Administration rushing to the
ramparts? Well, several interconnected reasons seem either possible or
plausible. The first is that Administration principals know the
weaknesses of the deal and reason that if they do nothing while critics
score points, they might actually lose the argument and the first vote-or
at the least end up needing to use a veto to deliver the deal. That would
be embarrassing and politically costly, so it's worth avoiding if
possible... Third, let it not go unmentioned that the big push is simply
expected of them. This is what Administrations do. This is part of the political
process, and part of the benign required ritual of a deliberative
democracy. All the noise is a natural and healthy aspect of a genuine
policy discourse. Except that there is something a little unhealthy, if
not a bit fishy, about the 'noise' of the past few days. The tone of the
President's speech, part of it certainly, was unpresidentially shrill. It
violated Sidney Hook's rule that a decent person first meet the arguments
of his opponents before disparaging their characters. The President did not
first meet and defeat the arguments of the critics. He first smeared the
whole lot as, essentially, a bunch of neoconservative warmongers who gave
us the disastrous Iraq War. His reference to 'tens of millions of dollars
in advertising' is especially noxious, as if opponents do not have a
right to make their arguments, and as if Democratic politicians know
nothing of political advertisements. He then turned to the critics'
arguments, which are all over the place. In some cases he merely asserted
facts that, in my view, are not true. That does not mean he lied, anymore
than Bush Administration principals lied about WMD stockpiles in Iraq
before March 2003; someone can be both sincere and mistaken about
something, after all, with no intent to mislead. In some cases his
arguments hit home. Several others fell somewhere in between, which is to
be expected when the subject is a complicated, somewhat technical, and
hence a somewhat ambiguous can of worms. Let us take these three
categories in turn." http://t.uani.com/1IT8RXo
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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