{"id":43533,"date":"2023-08-15T19:28:48","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T03:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=43533"},"modified":"2023-08-15T19:28:48","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T03:28:48","slug":"iran-hawks-are-terrified-when-diplomacy-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/15\/iran-hawks-are-terrified-when-diplomacy-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Hawks Are Terrified When Diplomacy Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eldar Mamedov responds<\/a> to the hawkish screeching about the deal that the administration reached to get the Iranian government to free five American prisoners that it had been unjustly detaining:<\/p>\n

The outcry is clearly politically motivated, as it seeks to depict Biden as weak and soft on Iran. Yet on substance, the hawks\u2019 objections to the deal are based either on ignorance or the deliberate distortions of facts.<\/i><\/p>\n

To begin with, the $6 billion is not the money the U.S. is going to pay Iran to \u201cbuy\u201d the prisoners\u2019 freedom. These are Iranian assets in South Korea earned from the oil sales and frozen by Seoul under pressure by the Trump administration following its unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran known as the JCPOA. This was followed by the introduction of unprecedented sanctions against Tehran, even though according to Trump White House officials Iran had been complying with its commitments under the 2015 deal. <\/i><\/p>\n

Iran is essentially getting access to its own money which was withheld on no other legal basis than unilateral US sanctions. And even that access is subject to a number of conditions. <\/i><\/p>\n

Iran hawks are opposed to any agreement with Iran, so they freak out even when the US secures the release of Americans at the low cost of letting Iran have conditional access to a portion of its own money. They would rather have five Americans remain in the Iranian government\u2019s custody indefinitely rather than concede anything that could get them released. As concessions go, releasing funds that were frozen as part of a destructive economic war that primarily hurts innocent Iranians is one of the least offensive imaginable. Granting access to these funds through a channel that can only be used for humanitarian goods is even less objectionable.<\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and<\/i> Culture11, and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eldar Mamedov responds to the hawkish screeching about the deal that the administration reached to get the Iranian government to free five American prisoners that it had been unjustly detaining: The outcry is clearly politically motivated, as it seeks to depict Biden as weak and soft on Iran. Yet on substance, the hawks\u2019 objections to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"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-43533","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":"There is nothing more alarming to hardliners that want war and regime change than the prospect of successful diplomacy that lowers the temperature a little between our government and Iran\u2019s."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43533","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\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43535,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43533\/revisions\/43535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43533"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=43533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}