Did Iran Negotiate in Bad Faith? On Nuclear Deal

Did Iran Negotiate in Bad Faith? On Nuclear Deal

The Obama administration continued its push to sell the Iran nuclear deal to the public and to a dubious United States Congress on Sunday, as two of the deal’s lead negotiators, Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz hit all of the major Sunday morning talk shows. They were countered, though, by fierce opposition, both from lawmakers and from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who continued to argue vehemently against the pact. 

The deal, struck between Iran and six major world powers, the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia and China, is meant to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon by sharply limiting its ability to process uranium. 

In exchange for accepting cuts to its nuclear program and an intrusive inspections and monitoring regime, Iran receives relief from international sanctions, some of which have been hobbling its economy for a generation. That will mean an immediate windfall of more than $100 billion in frozen assets, the ability to sell oil freely on the international market, and eventually, the lifting of an embargo restricting arms sales to the Islamic Republic.

Critics of the deal object to many elements of it, but most of the arguments share a single assumption as their starting point: that Iran is negotiating in bad faith.

The preamble of the agreement contains the explicit statement, “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.”

“We have to assume that they will cheat on the deal,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), a veteran of the Iraq war who has been vocally in opposition to any deal with Iran,” said on Meet the Press. 

Netanyahu, who faces frequent calls for the destruction of his country from the Iranian leadership, called it Tehran’s “dream deal.”

“It paves their way to many, many bombs after a decade or so,” Netanyahu said, calling it “a very bad deal with a very bad regime.”

The deal “almost guarantees that there will be an arms race in the Middle East,” said Florida senator and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination Marco Rubio.

Not even the Obama administration’s political allies were all rushing to support it. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, refused to commit himself to a position when it comes time for Congress to vote on whether or not to approve the deal. 

“My obligations are to the people of this country…I’m going to do what’s in the best interests of this country,” Cardin said, on Fox News. 

So they shouldn’t count on you? Asked host Chris Wallace.

“It’s not a matter of what party I belong to,” Cardin said. “It’s not a matter of supporting the president. The question is what’s in the best interests of this country.”

The vote Cardin was discussing is part of a process Congress and the president agreed on earlier this year, which gives lawmakers 60 days to assess the deal before voting to approve it or disapprove it. A vote of disapproval could be vetoed by Obama, allowing the deal to go forward, unless two thirds of each house of Congress vote to override the veto. 

“If Congress were to kill this,” Kerry warned on CNN, “then we have no inspections, no sanctions, no ability to negotiate – because I assure you, the Ayatollah? if the United States arbitrarily and unilaterally kills this, you’re not going to have another negotiation, and they will feel free to go do the very things this prevents.”

Kerry, who has been combative in the face of many attacks on the deal as naïve or rushed, responded to one question from CNN’s Jake Tapper with an aggressive defense.

“Guess what, my friend?” Kerry said. “Iran has 12,000 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, and that’s enough, if they enriched it further for 10 to 12 bombs. They have it. That’s what Barack Obama was dealt as a hand when he came in. Nineteen thousand centrifuges already spinning, a country that had already mastered the fuel cycle, a country that already was threshold in the sense that they are only 2 months away from breakout.” 

Kerry also took aim at the assertion that Iran has a clear path to a bomb, outlining what he called “unprecedented” an inspection regime. 

“So we’re expanding that breakout from two months to one year, for 10 years and longer, and we have lifetime inspection, adherence to the [International Atomic Energy Agency], adherence to the advance protocol, 25 years of tracking and monitoring their uranium from mining to milling to yellowcake to gas to centrifuge to waste. That’s unprecedented and we would not have had that without this agreement.” 

Kerry’s position was backed up by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who appeared on Meet the Press.

“This is the better outcome; it keeps Iran away from a nuclear weapon,” he said. “Fundamentally, this is the toughest set of proposals put in place…that we’ve seen in any of these negotiations.”

Others in favor of the deal point out that the current sanctions regime was poised to crumble anyway – many of the existing U.S. sanctions were in place in order to bring Iran to the negotiating table, and a number of U.S. allies have indicated that they are in favor of ending them now that negotiations have taken place. 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a key ally of the administration reinforced that point on Face the Nation, saying, “Regardless of what we do, these nations will drop their sanctions at some point.”

Asked if she thought the deal would survive Congress, she said, “I hope so,” and added, “I believe it’s our one opportunity.”

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Taiwan Makes History With Its Newest Presidential Candidate

Taiwan Makes History With Its Newest Presidential Candidate

Tsai Ing-wen is favored to win the 2016 presidential election in Taiwan, making her the country’s first female head of state. But even if Tsai loses, a woman is still likely to hold the country’s highest political office.

The Nationalists announced deputy legislative speaker Hung Hsiu-chu as their candidate on Sunday, The Guardian reports, confirming that two women will face off in the January vote.

Tsai—who lost the 2012 election to current President Ma Ying-jeou by a small margin—believes that gender is less of an issue than it used to be for the Taiwanese.

“Gender used to be a barrier of some sort for a woman to overcome when they wanted to be in politics. Today in Taiwan, the situation is somewhat different,” Tsai said in a speech for the Center for Strategic and International Studies last month. “I think the young people are generally excited about the idea of having a woman to lead the country.”

Like everywhere else in the world, women don’t enjoy total equality in Taiwan and are still earning about 15 percent less than their male counterparts, according to the Taipai Times. That’s a smaller margin than the wage gap in the U.S. and surrounding countries, such as China’s 40 percent divide and Japan’s 26 percent gap. Taiwanese women also represent a larger percentage of legislators than in most Asian countries, making up about one-third of lawmakers, The Associated Press reports.

So, Why Should You Care? Electing a female head of state would be a first for Taiwan, and with two female candidates, gender is no longer even a point of debate. Relations with China—which insists on sovereignty over the independent nation—are at the forefront of the elections. As the majority of the Taiwanese favor autonomy from China, Tsai’s popularity stems from her plan for cautious relations with the mainland, while Hung wants to boost Taiwan’s economy through increased trade.

Of course, this doesn’t guarantee a race based solely on issues. Personal attacks and smear campaigns often go hand in hand with political elections. But at least Taiwanese voters won’t have to listen to any garbage questioning a woman’s capabilities as a leader.

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US, Cuba restore full diplomatic ties after 5 decades

US, Cuba restore full diplomatic ties after 5 decades

More than a half century of Cold War and lingering enmity came to an abrupt but quiet end on Monday as the United States and Cuba restored full diplomatic relations.

The new era began with little fanfare when an agreement between the two nations to resume normal ties on July 20 came into force just after midnight Sunday and the diplomatic missions of each country were upgraded from interests sections to embassies. When clocks struck 12:00 in Washington and Havana, they tolled a knell for policy approaches spawned and hardened over the five decades since President John F. Kennedy first tangled with youthful revolutionary Fidel Castro over Soviet expansion in the Americas.

Without ceremony in the pre-dawn hours, maintenance workers were to hang the Cuban flag in the lobby of the State Department alongside those of other nations with which the U.S. has diplomatic relations. The historic shift will be publicly memorialized later Monday when Cuban officials formally inaugurate their embassy in Washington and Cuba's blue, red and white-starred flag will fly for the first time since the countries severed ties in 1961. Secretary of State John Kerry will then meet his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez, and address reporters at a joint news conference.

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana plans to announce its upgrade to embassy status in a written statement on Monday, but the Stars and Stripes will not fly at the mission until Kerry visits in August for a ceremonial flag-raising.

The Cuban Interests Section in Washington switched its Twitter account to say "embassy," one of a series of similar changes being made to the two country's social media accounts.

Conrad Tribble, deputy chief of mission for the United States in Havana, tweeted: "Just made first phone call to State Dept. Ops Center from United States Embassy Havana ever. It didn't exist in Jan 1961."

And yet, though normalization has taken center stage in the U.S.-Cuba relationship, there remains a deep ideological gulf between the nations and many issues still to resolve. Among them: thorny disputes such as over mutual claims for economic reparations, Havana's insistence on the end of the 53-year-old trade embargo and U.S. calls for Cuba to improve on human rights and democracy. Some U.S. lawmakers, including several prominent Republican presidential candidates, have vowed not to repeal the embargo and pledged to roll back Obama's moves on Cuba.

Still, Monday's events cap a remarkable change of course in U.S. policy toward the communist island under President Barack Obama, who had sought rapprochement with Cuba since he first took office and has progressively loosened restrictions on travel and remittances to the island.

Obama's efforts at engagement were frustrated for years by Cuba's imprisonment of U.S. Agency for International Development contractor Alan Gross on espionage charges. But months of secret negotiations led in December to Gross's release, along with a number of political prisoners in Cuba and the remaining members of a Cuban spy ring jailed in the United States. On Dec. 17, Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced they would resume full diplomatic relations.

Declaring the long-standing policy a failure that had not achieved any of its intended results, Obama declared that the U.S. could not keep doing the same thing and expect a change. Thus, he said work would begin apace on normalization.

That process dragged on until the U.S. removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in late May and then bogged down over issues of U.S. diplomats' access to ordinary Cubans.

On July 1, however, the issues were resolved and the U.S. and Cuba exchanged diplomatic notes agreeing that the date for the restoration of full relations would be July 20.

"It's a historic moment," said longtime Cuban diplomat and analyst Carlos Alzugaray.

"The significance of opening the embassies is that trust and respect that you can see, both sides treating the other with trust and respect," he said. "That doesn't mean there aren't going to be conflicts — there are bound to be conflicts — but the way that you treat the conflict has completely changed."

Cuba's ceremony at the stately 16th Street mansion in Washington that has been operating as an interests section under the auspices of the Swiss embassy will be attended by some 500 guests, including a 30-member delegation of diplomatic, cultural and other leaders from the Caribbean nation, headed by Foreign Minister Rodriguez.

The U.S. will be represented at the event by Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson, who led U.S. negotiators in six months of talks leading to the July 1 announcement, and Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana who will now become charge d'affaires.

Although the Interests Section in Havana won't see the pomp and circumstance of a flag-raising on Monday, workers there have already drilled holes on the exterior to hang signage flown in from the U.S., and arranged to print new business cards and letterhead that say "Embassy" instead of "Interests Section." What for years was a lonely flagpole outside the glassy six-story edifice on Havana's seafront Malecon boulevard recently got a rehab, complete with a paved walkway.

Every day for the last week, employees have been hanging hand-lettered signs on the fence counting down, in Spanish, to Monday: "In 6 days we will become an embassy!" and so on.

Both interests sections have technically operated as part of Switzerland's embassies in Washington and Havana. The Swiss also were caretakers for the former American Embassy and ambassador's residence from 1961 to 1977, when the U.S. had no diplomatic presence in the country at all.

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