I would be very surprised if this lasted longer than 6 months, but whilst it hold it's undoubtedly a good thing, and will hopefully lead to a lifting of sanctions on the people of Iran.

I have reviewed the NRC Handelsblad and The Economist analyses of the deal, I hereby declare opposition to it and I may add to this discussion later today.

You shall, or I will challenge you to it! :-)

So anyway

I think first of all that Iran yes/no having the bomb is very much a binary thing and this treaty insufficiently takes that into account. The west should either:

A. Allow it.
That's a perfectly fair policy; I would oppose it, but it's not an impossible route. The two countries it has particular problems with are themselves well-armed and would retaliate mercilessly in the event of an attack.

B. Not allow it.
And stand by not allowing it, and not letting them increment or itch toward it and not even let them have nuclear energy as it's a too small step in going from energy to weaponry and also: Iran has sufficient energy stored in its soil in the form of petrol. Humanity is a community with a degree of sovereignty just like a country is. If there are heavy-weighing reasons to overrule national sovereignty (I think in case of Iran the aggression of its government propaganda would certainly be such a reason) then we can choose to do so.

I also believe that one of the defects of this accord is that the symbolic fact of getting an accord has been overestimated in importance. I'm not going to celebrate world leaders for flying around in comfortable air planes and signing documents. These well-payed individuals that all have a careless future in the speech circuit ahead of them and the most powerful armies and economies of the world behind them should be held to the highest standards. An accord has to be good, or shouldn't be at all.

Forward, undoubtedly. Netanyahu is just throwing a hissy fit because the US likely won't attack Iran preemptively now. Nonetheless, if Iran uses their nukes as weapons, it's breaking the agreement and we'll end up backing Israel just like usual.

Thank you for your profound understanding bo

I haven't read too many in depth analyses and would welcome some links if people have good ones.

Initial thoughts are that diluting their stockpiles is a substantive blow to their proliferation efforts and should be seen as a serious victory for peace. I do wonder why 5% was chosen as the dilution target (which is on the high end for power reactors).

At any rate, I'm on the 'for' leger for now.

I answered your question, asshole.

Dude

The more I read, the more there is to like about it. They've called for halting creation of the heavy water reactor and will likely demand that it be made as a light water reactor which is worse for plutonium production.
They won't enrich uranium beyond 3.5% and they're taking a lot of their enrichment capability offline.

Short of a novel idea like enforcing a certain amount of U232/Th mixture into their fuel (which is a great idea, IMHO) I think this is a great step in the rigt direction and don't quite understand the opposition.

The opposition from me would be, because I suspect the Iranians, and possibly even eastern powers, to make a deal with this kind of complexities because they plan on using them as loopholes and/or future precedents. I think Kerry et al. think they "tricked" the Iranians into signing an agreement that will frustrate their plans and I personally suspect this will later be categorized as good old western arrogance once it turns out that the eastern powers are the ones that tricked Kerry.

I admit to being generally skeptical of anything that comes out of the current US administration. Barack Obama is not a man with the qualities to direct such a negotiation in a direction favorable to the US or its allies.

I'm not so sure of your analysis red. I think it hinges on the idea that Iran in fact has been aiming to make a bomb, which is debatable in itself. Had they chosen to walk that path they could have reneged the NPT ages ago. (I'd remind everybody that Israel even didnt sign it, there's no IAEA walking around checking proliferation there). A big part of the fear of Iran getting the bomb had to do with the internal consumption of war rhetoric both in Israel as well as the US. Iran for its part has continuously said that its only pursuing electricity, and the west has said that they dont trust that story and therefor will disallow even non-weapons grade stuff.

Nobody can look into the mind of the Supreme Ruler (wouldnt want to if I could), but I wouldnt be surprised if Iran stepped up enrichment simply as a bargaining chip to gain nuclear power. Much like DPRK did for example. Or Khadaffi. Just ratchet up some fears about missiles and nukes, and the west immediately comes to make sweet deals with you if you forego those weapons. Not a high price to pay if you didnt plan on using the weapons anyway.

Red, what complexities are you talking about? I'm obviously not privy to the details but it seems pretty straightforward and direct to me.

Monitoring is the hard part but that was always going to be the case. I don't think you can oppose a deal simply because of a jaded opinion of the current administration. That's just a vote for the status quo which we can all agree is insufficient.

So TMOW, there are several levels of decisions here;

1. Threatening to build the bomb as a means of extortion
2. Building the bomb to have the bomb
3. Building the bomb to be able to develop nuclear power (I find that a vague concept)
4. Building the bomb to use the bomb
5. Using the bomb

I think Iran sweetly hits 1 and 2 and not 4 and 5. And I personally think we shouldn't let them.

@Yonni

The status quo is what it is: the status quo. I live pretty happily under the western nuclear umbrella. And the Iranians don't live happily because their leaders refuse to act sensibly.

One problem with this deal, effectively, is that the IAEA does not get full access. I call loophole.

What do you mean they don't get full access?

The only thing they wouldn't have access to would be clandestine secretive enrichment facilities which, well, would be clandestine. They've got full access to all of the enrichment facilities and nuclear plants on a pretty unprecedented scale, as far as I can tell.

I'm all in favour of a nuclear Iran

"The only thing they wouldn't have access to would be clandestine secretive enrichment facilities which, well, would be clandestine."

No, officer, I'm not hiding an illegal gun in my house. You can search *anywhere* you want, except there's this ehm.. one *tiny* thing: there's one room, you'll be hearing some explosion-like sounds there, some drops of blood *might* slip under the door into the hallway, people begging for their life and so on. If you could just - winks - carefully avoid that room and clear the rest of the house, that would be great.

So you oppose the deal on the premise that Iran would illegally circumvent any deal they got?
Good fucking thing you're not in charge of negotiations.

He's opposing it based on the fact that Iranians are all barbaric sand-people.

I see this as being the main reason that people oppose it...

And you're for it because you trust the Iranians blindly? Good fucking deal you're not in charge either.

I'm fully taking into account that scenario, but this would allow them to have their cake and eat it. You give the IAEA the tourist attractions-tour of the country, look seriously into the camera when you're talking about disarmament and in the meantime you quietly finish the work.
The treaty expires, you set the demands on a renewal extremely high, the demands aren't met and three months later, hey look at that, there's the bomb we developed when we had the sweet trade deals with the Americans - ehm - I mean during the last three months when we couldn't work out our differences.

Why wouldn't you trust Iranians redhouse? They're just like Americans just living in a different part of the world.

..Actually, good point.

I don't trust either of these countries. It's somewhat disconcerting that the presence of the Germans is probably the most comforting ;-)

I really don't see a problem with a nuclear Iran though, it would be beneficial for the region, calm Israel down, and finally put a stop to the Saudi/Israel dominance of the Middle East. The main problem is if Israel does something stupid

so anyway

Interesting take here:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/israelis-saudis-and-iranian-agreement

Interesting site...

"The logic here suggests a process leading to the elimination of all sanctions in exchange for the supervision of Iran's nuclear activities to prevent it from developing a weapon. Unless this is an Iranian trick to somehow buy time to complete a weapon and test it, I would think that the deal could be done in six months. An Iranian ploy to create cover for building a weapon would also demand a reliable missile and a launch pad invisible to surveillance satellites and the CIA, National Security Agency, Mossad, MI6 and other intelligence agencies. The Iranians would likely fail at this, triggering airstrikes however risky they might be and putting Iran back where it started economically. While this is a possibility, the scenario is not likely when analyzed closely."

Not so sure...

I'm not sure either ... but I have seen a lot of good geopolitical analysis from those guys, so my "gut response" of **NO WAY** is tempered to a more mild disapproval.

I fully agree with that Friedman article. A nuclear weapon is not a key interest of Iran, and a crippled Iran is not a key interest of the US. Deal made.

What really is worth analysing imho is the simplified charicature of Iran that has been portrayed publicly for so long - mostly for political interests inside Israel and the US, not because of any serious geopolitical analysis.

America makes Iran regional hegemon

Btw, Red, on your list of levels of decision, it's not entirely true that 'build the bomb' is one thing. They have not been building a bomb yet at all. What they have been making is uranium, which is needed for both nuclear power as well as for nuclear power.

The thing to know is that more 'enriched' uranium is used for bombs, and lesser enriched is used for power. What they have been doing for quite a while is to get uranium for nuclear power levels (5%). More recently, they've started to enrich further, going to 20%. This is beyond necessity for nuclear power, so it implies designs to make a bomb. But that enrichment could just as easily have been started as bargaining chip. I think it's a bit of both; the Iranians arguably figured they could decide along the way to either go along with making the bomb, or to sell off their weapons program for an appropriate price. That last avenue seems to be a trend lately.

@VirtualBob
By the way that's a great nickname whether your real name is Bob or not
anyway
I agree with you that the article is well written, but I find its strength to be the international relations aspect of this and its weakness the technical aspect:

"An Iranian ploy to create cover for building a weapon would also demand a reliable missile and a launch pad invisible to surveillance satellites and the CIA, National Security Agency, Mossad, MI6 and other intelligence agencies."
Missile and a launch pad? Does that really need to be so much more than a somewhat flat, heat-resistant piece piece of land? And also, why would the only danger reside in an Iran that has Missile+Nuke capability? Isn't Nuke capability pretty scary in itself? You can put a Nuke in a truck, or on a plane as well.

Even if there are obvious answers to these questions, I think they are obvious questions and I would have liked to read their answers.

I did some reading for this thread, but it's mostly on Persia (what the west incorrectly called Iran for many years) and 'Greater Iran'. So much land which is "Iranian" is now in Iraq, Pakistan (former British colonies), Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgistan, (former Soviet states), and Afghanistan (a buffer created between the Russian and British Empires), plus XinJiang (Province of China)

That is ignoring the past 60 years of US-British influence (post world war 2) in the region. Occupation during the war (to prevent Germany taking over) and the post war regime which the US put in place.

Given that as your school history (which i'm sure every Iranian school child learns) and the decade-long Iraq-Iran war of the 80s; I can't help but think Iran has a terribly legacy left-over. The want to be the regional power, and oppose Arab dominance... Nuclear weapons would help greatly, but economic growth would also kickstart a new development and rise in power. I'm sure they want China to treat with them, and India, but they are small frys in terms of population now.

Iraq and Afghanistan are lessons in US policy, but i'm sure the Iran is currently aimed to learn from it's lessons - weak neighbours makes Iran more important. Having China, the EU 3, and the US on side only makes sense for Iran, so a combination of weak neighbours and friendly relations with strong but distant powers leaves them in a pretty good position; and not needing nuclear weapons. Overall this looks like a good deal for 'world peace' at least in the medium term.

I'm not convinced if "the Iranians" even know if they're building a nuclear weapon. If they're just kind-of drifting toward that in the usual course of putting a toe up to every threshold, then I guess the agreement serves as a target short of weaponization, where everyone can get onside and not cross certain boundaries. Other than that, I don't think the agreement does much at all but elicit reactions and but a damper on economic-driven discontent within Iran.