It didn’t seem possible, but Iran hawks’ arguments against the nuclear deal are becoming dumber than ever. Here is Bret Stephens peddling false information and drawing the most absurd conclusions about the possible revival of the agreement:
But with or without the deal, Moscow will be able to build nuclear power plants in Iran, irrespective of the sanctions over the war in Ukraine. And Beijing – which in 2021 signed a 25-year, $400 billion strategic partnership with Tehran – will be able to conduct a lucrative business in Iran with little concern for U.S. sanctions.
Combined with February’s “no limits” friendship pact between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, an Iran deal represents another step toward a new antidemocratic Tripartite Pact.
Stephens has been dead-set against any agreement with Iran from the start, and his arguments against it have always been shoddy. When the original interim agreement was reached in 2013, he declared that it was “worse than Munich.” Now here we are almost ten years later and he is still making bizarre Axis references to attack a nonproliferation agreement that was doing exactly what it was meant to do until the US started trying to destroy it.
One of the weirdest and most frustrating aspects of the debate over the nuclear deal is the idea promoted by hawks that an agreement that restricts Iran’s nuclear program is actually a great gift to the Iranian government. Yes, Iran will receive sanctions relief in exchange, but that is an inevitable part of any agreement and it is hardly a gift to permit the resumption of normal commerce and trade. All that it means is that the US would no longer be strangling the Iranian economy.
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Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
Indeed:
In order not to have economic war waged against them, Iranians are deprived of nuclear power. That’s the “deal”. They are then forced to burn coal and oil for fuel, filling the cities with smoke, causing lung problems, cancer and death. The smoke in such a city turns even the snot in your nose black.
And this is what they have to do because they are blackmailed by Washington. That’s what they have to subject themselves to in order to have the economic war lifted. That’s the “deal”. Which neocons and Israelis then cry is a “surrender” to Iran. They cry out in pain as they hit you.
“The only reason why someone would continue to oppose the revival of this agreement is if he wanted to create conditions for a new war.”
It’s either that or a failed state. Israel will be satisfied with either.
The insane part of this whole thing is that Iran never had a nuclear weapons program and wouldn’t be able to do anything if they did have one. The entire process was an attempt to either destroy Iran or keep Iran down from the get-go. The JCPOA was never necessary to the West or Iran except to free Iran from sanctions that were illegitimate in the first place.
So the proper way to “debate” this is to acknowledge that fact and stop giving credence to the notion that Iran is an “enemy” of anyone but Israel. But just like the Ukraine issue and Putin, all these “pundits” have to write in a manner that suggests there is some benefit to the JCPOA in terms of “preventing Iran from having the bomb” – which it never wanted and never will.
The JCPOA was never the right way to approach the whole issue in the first place. The right way is to resume diplomatic relations with Iran and stop harassing them. But given Israel’s influence, “That Ain’t Gonna Happen.”
Every article discussing Iran should acknowledge that fact as the primary issue.