Iran Nuclear Deal Saga

[GMantis]

After 5 years the arms embargo is lifted, and after 8 years a missile embargo is lifted.  I'm really surprised Obama and the Western powers agreed to that.  Obama won't see much support for this deal in Congress.  

This is my main concern as well. This is way too soon I think. Guess Putin and Lavrov pressed pretty hard for this to come through, cause they desperately need the money they can obtain from weapon sales (especially now that Russia is in a deep crisis). Should have been at least a 10-12 year embargo.

Somehow I doubt that the opinion of Putin is taken into great account at the moment in the Western world. The fact is that both the EU and the US have motives of their own to support this agreement and some of them are actually against the interests of Russia (lifting the embargo on oil and gas, most obviously).

[GMantis]

After 5 years the arms embargo is lifted, and after 8 years a missile embargo is lifted.  I'm really surprised Obama and the Western powers agreed to that.  Obama won't see much support for this deal in Congress.  

This is my main concern as well. This is way too soon I think. Guess Putin and Lavrov pressed pretty hard for this to come through, cause they desperately need the money they can obtain from weapon sales (especially now that Russia is in a deep crisis). Should have been at least a 10-12 year embargo.

Somehow I doubt that the opinion of Putin is taken into great account at the moment in the Western world. The fact is that both the EU and the US have motives of their own to support this agreement and some of them are actually against the interests of Russia (lifting the embargo on oil and gas, most obviously).

Putin was part of the negotiation so of course if he insisted on something it had to be taken into account.



With Iran's vote in the UN Security Council, is that evidence the Ayatollah has formally okay'd participation in the deal?

Taking Putin's opinion into account certainly doesn't mean obliging his wishes. Looking at the treaty it's hard to see that Russia benefited more than the US and the EU.

[GMantis]

While I am still skeptical of this and don't have much confidence in Iran, I heard Obama in a speech today and agreed with him 100%. He said that diplomacy is the most responsible option, and that any option is better than war.

Clinton said the exact same thing (and a lot more of the same kind of stuff it's actually weird how much of the language is the exact same) about N.Korea....how'd that turn out?  I guess you could argue that N.Korea hasn't nuked anybody yet, but have they exported as much terrorism as Iran has over the last several decades?

The comparison is misleading, since the agreement with North Korea was non-binding (which also meant that the US was later free to ignore its obligations, which certainly helped the eventual collapse of the treaty) and with few safeguards for its implementation. Also Iran can't ignore sanctions nearly as well as North Korea, nor has it an ally that would back it near unconditionally. If Clinton used nearly the same wording as Obama, then this only shows that he was more dishonest than Obama (which explains a lot about his much greater popularity).