{"id":22524,"date":"2013-12-10T12:27:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T20:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=22524"},"modified":"2013-12-10T12:27:52","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T20:27:52","slug":"is-congress-trying-to-convince-iran-that-us-policy-is-really-regime-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/10\/is-congress-trying-to-convince-iran-that-us-policy-is-really-regime-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Congress Trying to Convince Iran that US Policy Is Really Regime Change?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The House of Representatives is currently considering putting forth a vote on additional sanctions on the Iranian economy. Iranian Foreign Minister\u00a0Javad Zarif has <a href=\"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/09\/hardliners-in-the-us-and-iran-a-mirror-image\/\">declared<\/a> unequivocally that additional sanctions would mean &#8220;the entire deal is dead.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Well, that seems to be the point. This piece in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.al-monitor.com\/pulse\/originals\/2013\/12\/trust-verify-iran-agreement.html\"><em>Al Monitor<\/em><\/a> authored by Daniel Kurtzer and Thomas Pickering, two former U.S. diplomats, along with former Iranian diplomat\u00a0Seyed Hossein Mousavian, spells it out in plain English:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[I]f the West does not lift the specified sanctions or, worse, should\u00a0US\u00a0Congress\u00a0or another country actually impose greater sanctions during this six-month period, it will be a clear sign that the West is not interested in a negotiated deal and that the United States has not distanced itself from a policy of regime change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I argued something similar in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/indepth\/opinion\/2013\/09\/2013923112820696548.html\">a piece for Al Jazeera<\/a> back in September. On the road to high-level diplomatic negotiations, Washington&#8217;s biggest obstacle was in convincing Iran we weren&#8217;t solely after regime change. Typically, rival states don&#8217;t engage in good faith negotiations if one is convinced the other is out to destroy their regime.<\/p>\n<p>But Congress is doing everything in its power to make sure not to disabuse the Iranians of this view. They say it will strengthen the West&#8217;s negotiating hand, as if they are pretending not to hear the Iranians saying explicitly that talks will fall apart if more sanctions are imposed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The House of Representatives is currently considering putting forth a vote on additional sanctions on the Iranian economy. Iranian Foreign Minister\u00a0Javad Zarif has declared unequivocally that additional sanctions would mean &#8220;the entire deal is dead.&#8221; Well, that seems to be the point. This piece in Al Monitor authored by Daniel Kurtzer and Thomas Pickering, two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-22524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22525,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22524\/revisions\/22525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22524"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=22524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}