Ayatollah justifies nuclear deal Wednesday July 15th, 2015 at 8:47 AM
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Iran’s supreme leader insists the US has made more concessions
The drug lord is believed to have paid out tens of millions in bribes before fleeing prison
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The US secretary of state and Iranian foreign minister met bilaterally at least 23 times and are on first name terms but they maintained a business relationship during negotiations
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Washington Post JERUSALEM — A spokesman for Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog says the center-left lawmaker will travel to Washington to discuss Israel's concerns over the Iranian nuclear deal. There is widespread objection in Israel to the deal. It was also a ... Israel concerned over Iran nuke dealThe Globe and Mail Netanyahu: If it weren't for Israel, Iran would've had nukes long agoJerusalem Post Israel News Netanyahu: 'This Deal Gives Iran A Path To A Nuclear Arsenal'NPR Haaretz -National Post all 169 news articles » |
Republicans in Congress said Tuesday the deal announced with Iran was 'worse than we had expected' and that the agreement would not diminish Iran's ability to make nuclear weapons.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/republicans-blast-nuclear-deal/2861629.html
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Reaction to the nuclear agreement with Iran was mixed. President Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani hailed the deal as a triumph of diplomacy, while Speaker of the House John Boehner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the agreement a mistake.
Members of Congress are divided over the landmark international nuclear deal with Iran, which President Barack Obama and his administration pushed so hard to help forge. Most Republican lawmakers are strongly rejecting it as dangerous. But most Democrats say they are reserving judgment until they get a chance to study the details. VOA congressional correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
Originally published at - http://www.voanews.com/media/video/lawmakers-divided-iran-nuclear-deal/2862148.html
In a conversation with Thomas L. Friedman, President Obama explains what he thinks the United States gained from the nuclear deal with Iran.
Produced by: A.J. Chavar
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Watch more at: http://nytimes.com/video
Obama Interview on Iran Nuclear Deal | The New York Times
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Minneapolis Star Tribune A man is suing the Boy Scouts of America and its St. Paul-based council for allegedly failing to protect him from sexual abuse by the same scout leader said to have molested Ramsey County Board Chairman Jim McDonough. July 14, 2015 — 4:29pm. Scott Walker: Boy Scouts ban on gay leaders 'protected children'Washington Post (blog) Scott Walker: Boy Scouts' ban on gay troop leaders has "protected children"Vox Scott Walker just suggested that gay people are pedophilesSalon Religion News Service -Madison.com -KENS 5 TV all 47 news articles » |
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Saudi Arabia's state news agency said the kingdom has warned Iran not to use money that will flow from the lifting of sanctions to incite turmoil in the region.
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An oil refinery in Tehran. Iran has the world’s fourth-largest proven reserves of oil, behind Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Canada.
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President Barack Obama calls sweeping reforms to the US criminal justice system including curbing solitary confinement and voting rights for felons.
Clashes over the weekend in south-western Ukraine between members of a far-right volunteer militia and local authorities have raised fears that violence is spreading beyond the conflict in Ukraine's east and could further destabilise the country's fragile political balance.
They also underline the delicate and highly risky relationship between the Ukrainian government and the volunteer militias, who are helping fight Moscow-supported militants in eastern Ukraine.
On Saturday, in the city of Mukachevo, around 20 members of the ultra-nationalist Right Sector volunteer battalion exchanged gunfire with police and the security detail of a local politician.
At least three people were killed, reports said, two of whom were from Right Sector, and 13 were wounded.
Currently, officials in the capital, Kiev, have sent reinforcements as well as armoured vehicles to the area, which is next to Ukraine's borders with European Union members Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.
Two Right Sector members have given themselves up, officials say, while authorities are searching for the remaining gunmen.
Right Sector for its part has set up a roadblock outside of Kiev, and are demanding the resignation of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and other officials.
Despite the stand-off, Kiev at the moment very much needs the volunteer battalions. They are often more motivated than the regular Ukrainian army and have engaged in some of the worst of the fighting.
Most of the battalions have now placed themselves under Kiev's direct control. But a few, like Right Sector, are still wholly or to a large degree independent.
And as the events in Mukachevo indicate, some of these groups follow their own agenda.
Details are extremely murky over what happened in Mukachevo. Right Sector members say they were cracking down on the illicit export of contraband cigarettes into the European Union, which generates millions of dollars and contributes to local corruption.
Others say that Right Sector is itself involved in the illegal cigarette trade, and has become entwined with criminal interests. Still others say the group has been infiltrated by Russian special services and is engaged in carrying out provocations to destabilise the country.
None of the proponents of these scenarios have provided any conclusive evidence, however. What seems clear is that Right Sector possesses an impressive collection of firepower - which they were capable of employing in a corner of Ukraine furthest from the fighting in the east.
Videos and reports from the fighting suggested they had a large number of automatic rifles, grenade launchers and a hand-fed machine gun. Another key question is how much support they enjoy.
After Mukachevo, some volunteer battalions have come out in support of Right Sector. The group is also a political party - albeit on the extreme fringe, after receiving less than two percent of the popular vote in parliamentary elections last year.
Still, even if they do not vote for them, many Ukrainians view them positively, as patriots who are defending the country from Russian aggression.
President Petro Poroshenko promised this week to move against "illegally armed groups".
At times, Right Sector seems as if it came straight out of the Kremlin's playbook to portray Ukraine as awash with ultra-nationalist extremists.
Other times, when they attack LGBT rallies or sport white-power symbols, they seem very sincere indeed in their far-right convictions.
Whatever the group's motives, for many, their weaponry and willingness to use them are sufficient cause for concern.
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Clashes raise questions over Ukraine's Right Sector
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Military spokesman: 8 Ukrainian troops killed, 16 wounded in war-torn eastern Ukraine
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U.S. officials could never be fully certain that Iran’s Supreme Leader was on board with a nuclear agreement, and he repeatedly blindsided participants on both sides as talks neared a conclusion.
The announcement that world powers reached a nuclear deal with Iran delivered a powerful geopolitical jolt, setting off what promises to be months of contention in Washington and around the world.
Republicans in Congress said Tuesday the deal announced with Iran was 'worse than we had expected' and that the agreement would not diminish Iran's ability to make nuclear weapons.
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States handed back to Iraq on Wednesday antiquities it said it had seized in a raid on Islamic State fighters in Syria, saying the haul was proof the militants were funding their war by smuggling ancient treasures.
ADEN (Reuters) - Saudi-backed Yemeni militiamen took over the main port of the southern city of Aden and the adjoining district of Mualla on Wednesday, residents and the fighters said, as part of an offensive against the country's dominant Houthi group.
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NICOSIA (Reuters) - Two missiles fell off a British warplane as it was landing at the Royal Air Base in Cyprus on Wednesday, a base spokesman said.
WASHINGTON — On one thing, at least, both sides in the fierce debate over President Obama’s nuclear accord with Iran agree: He will go down in history because of it. The disagreement relates to how. As a peacemaker or an appeaser?
For all of the focus on details like the number of centrifuges or the scope of inspections, the emerging battle represents a larger conflict of visions between Mr. Obama’s faith in diplomacy as the most rational way to resolve differences and his critics’ deep skepticism over the wisdom of negotiating with what they see as an adversary that cannot be trusted.
The Iran agreement, after all, is the culmination of an approach stemming from Mr. Obama’s first campaign for president, when he vowed to talk with America’s enemies, a promise that drew scorn not just from Republicans but even from his Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now, with the Iran deal in hand and the reopening of an embassy in Cuba this month, Mr. Obama is realizing that aspiration.
This has become a season of diplomacy. At the same time he is securing pacts with Tehran and Havana, Mr. Obama hopes to work out a trade agreement with 11 Pacific Rim nations by the end of this month. European leaders have just negotiated at least a temporary economic accord with their Greek debtors. And the United States is trying to broker a global climate change agreement before a Paris summit meeting in December.
Video | What Obama Says the Iran Nuclear Deal Means In an exclusive interview with Thomas L. Friedman, the president explains why he has no second thoughts about the accord with Iran.
Fatigued by the warfare of recent years, the world in effect is testing whether it can work out at least some of its problems at the bargaining table instead of the battlefield. For Mr. Obama, the flurry of negotiations offers a chance to leave behind accomplishments in a foreign policy arena that otherwise has been dominated by stalemated armed conflicts in the Middle East.
“Part of our goal here has been to show that diplomacy can work,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times. “It doesn’t work perfectly. It doesn’t give us everything that we want.” But, he added, “what we can do is shape events in ways where it’s more likely that problems get solved, rather than less likely, and that’s the opportunity we have now.”
Still, there are many examples in which diplomacy did not achieve what it intended to, especially in cases where one of the parties has been less committed. An agreement reached by President Bill Clinton to constrain North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons fell apart when the country was caught cheating. It now has at least 10 nuclear bombs.
More recently, Russia joined not one but two agreements to bring peace to Ukraine, but the first collapsed and the second is widely expected to do the same as the West accuses Moscow of violating its terms. The United States also recently accused Russia of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by President Ronald Reagan.
With time in Mr. Obama’s presidency running short, critics said he had grown so enamored of diplomacy that he cast aside conditions he once set for a nuclear agreement with Iran. Some of the more virulent opponents compared it to Neville Chamberlain’s infamous Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938.
“The president disagrees with himself — everything that’s in this deal is what he said he would not do,” said Danielle Pletka, a national security scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “The analogies to Chamberlain are much too facile, but I do think at a certain moment he needed to stop and say to himself, ‘Why have I given on all of the things I said I wouldn’t give on?’ And the answer is because ultimately the deal itself became more important than what was in it.”
The divide over diplomacy was just as stark during the presidency of George W. Bush, but it played out inside his administration. Hawks like Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to keep the pressure on Iran and North Korea. “We don’t negotiate with evil,” Mr. Cheney once said at a meeting. “We defeat it.”
But more moderate figures like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wanted to try talking. Mr. Bush sided with the Cheney view in his first term while turning to the Rice approach in his second.
Republicans said Mr. Obama had abandoned what they called a tougher line under Mr. Bush, who reached out to Iran and North Korea but never secured enduring agreements. Former Bush aides said Mr. Obama should have taken advantage of the increased economic pressure on Iran to hold out for a better deal.
“Most Republicans supported efforts to use diplomacy, backed by our considerable economic leverage, to deny Iran a nuclear weapons capability,” said Kristen Silverberg, an ambassador to the European Union under Mr. Bush. “Instead, President Obama is sacrificing a decade’s worth of sanctions for a deal that grants Iran rights to a vast nuclear infrastructure. It’s part of his effort to pull the U.S. back from key challenges in the Middle East. It’s not diplomacy. It’s retreat.”
Others argued that critics were unrealistic in expecting a deal with no compromise. Among those supporting the agreement with Tehran on Tuesday was R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state who led the Iran diplomatic effort for Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice.
“If I could have designed a perfect alternative, it would be a 100-to-0 victory for the United States and the submission of Iran,” Mr. Burns, a career diplomat who worked for Democratic and Republican presidents, told a House committee. “That alternative is not available to the United States, and whether we oppose it or whether we support it, we’ve got to think in the real world about what the alternatives have been.”
Mr. Obama argued that the only real alternative was war, since sanctions alone could not force Iran to capitulate, and many nations would abandon sanctions if the United States walked away from an agreement. “Put simply,” he said, “no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East.”
That argument offends critics, who say it reveals a lack of imagination by Mr. Obama about other options and a cynical effort to frame his opponents as warmongers.
“Americans have been presented with a false choice: diplomacy or war,” said Mark Wallace, the chief executive officer of United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group, and another Bush ambassador. Such a binary view ignores other tools, he said, including further economic pressure, covert measures and the threat of force.
“Some of my former colleagues in the diplomatic world suggest that we must put all our eggs in the diplomatic basket to the exclusion of the other tools,” Mr. Wallace said. “President Obama subscribes to this theory.”
And in making clear “that diplomacy was the only option,” he said, he effectively emboldened Iran.
Mr. Obama’s approach should come as no surprise. In a July 2007 debate among Democratic presidential candidates, he was asked if would be willing to meet “without precondition” during his first year in office with the leaders of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela.
“I would,” he answered, contrasting himself with Mr. Bush. “And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.”
In the end, Mr. Obama did not meet with those leaders in his first year in office, but by his seventh, he has met and talked on the telephone with President Raúl Castro of Cuba as part of their diplomatic reconciliation. He once talked briefly on the phone with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, and he has sent letters to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
He has stayed away from the others. Rather than meet with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Mr. Obama has called on him to step down after he waged brutal warfare against political opponents. During peace talks that proved fruitless, Mr. Obama barred members of the Syrian government from even participating, although he did accept a Russian-mediated deal with Mr. Assad to give up his chemical weapons.
As for North Korea, Mr. Obama has increased sanctions and otherwise largely ignored the isolated nuclear state. Efforts to engage or support peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan have gained little traction over the years. And Mr. Obama has increased sanctions on Venezuela.
What distinguishes Mr. Obama is his willingness to see the situation from the other side’s position, a trait that tends to outrage domestic critics because the other side is generally viewed as loathsome.
“When we are able to see their country and their culture in specific terms, historical terms, as opposed to just applying a broad brush, that’s when you have the possibility at least of some movement,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Friedman.
He compared it to Reagan’s negotiating arms agreements with the Soviet Union. “And the same was true,” Mr. Obama said, “with respect to Nixon and Kissinger going to China, which ended up being a very important strategic benefit to the United States.”
The question now is whether Mr. Obama’s going to Iran, at least figuratively, will provide the same.
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Only hours after the conclusion of an agreement with Iran to lift oil and financial sanctions in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, President Obama is a man who evinces no second thoughts whatsoever about the deal he struck. In a 45-minute interview in the Cabinet Room, the president kept stressing one argument: Don’t judge me on whether this deal transforms Iran, ends Iran’s aggressive behavior toward some of its Arab neighbors or leads to détente between Shiites and Sunnis. Judge me on one thing: Does this deal prevent Iran from breaking out with a nuclear weapon for the next 10 years and is that a better outcome for America, Israel and our Arab allies than any other alternative on the table?
The president made clear to me that he did not agree with my assessment in a column two weeks ago that we had not used all the leverage in our arsenal, or alliances, to prevent Iran from becoming a threshold nuclear power, by acquiring a complete independent enrichment infrastructure that has the potential to undermine the global nuclear nonproliferation regime. Personally, I want more time to study the deal, hear from the nonpartisan experts, listen to what the Iranian leaders tell their own people and hear what credible alternative strategies the critics have to offer. But the president certainly argued his case with a conviction and internal logic with which his critics and Congress will have to seriously contend.
“We are not measuring this deal by whether it is changing the regime inside of Iran,” said the president. “We’re not measuring this deal by whether we are solving every problem that can be traced back to Iran, whether we are eliminating all their nefarious activities around the globe. We are measuring this deal — and that was the original premise of this conversation, including by Prime Minister Netanyahu — Iran could not get a nuclear weapon. That was always the discussion. And what I’m going to be able to say, and I think we will be able to prove, is that this by a wide margin is the most definitive path by which Iran will not get a nuclear weapon, and we will be able to achieve that with the full cooperation of the world community and without having to engage in another war in the Middle East.”
To sell this deal to a skeptical Congress, President Obama clearly has to keep his argument tight. But I suspect his legacy on this issue will ultimately be determined by whether the deal does, in the long run, help transform Iran, defuse the U.S.-Iran Cold War and curtail the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East — not foster their proliferation. That, though, will be a long time in determining. For the near term, the deal’s merit will be judged on whether Iran implements the rollback of its nuclear enrichment capabilities to which it has agreed and whether the deeply intrusive international inspection system it has accepted can detect — and thereby deter — any cheating.
Here are some highlights from the interview: Asked about whether we failed to use all of our leverage, including a credible threat of force, the president said: “I think that criticism is misguided. Let’s see exactly what we obtained. We have cut off every pathway for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. The reason we were able to unify the world community around the most effective sanctions regime we’ve ever set up, a sanction regime that crippled the Iranian economy and ultimately brought them to the table, was because the world agreed with us, that it would be a great danger to the region, to our allies, to the world, if Iran possessed a nuclear weapon. We did not have that kind of global consensus around the notion that Iran can’t enjoy any nuclear power whatsoever. And as a member of the nonproliferation treaty, the NPT, their argument was, ‘We’re entitled to have a peaceful nuclear program.’
“And what we were able to do,” the president continued, “is to say to them, ‘Given your past behavior, given our strong suspicion and evidence that you made attempts to weaponize your nuclear program, given the destabilizing activities that you’ve engaged in in the region and support for terrorism, it’s not enough for us to trust when you say that you are only creating a peaceful nuclear program. You have to prove it to us.’ And so this whole system that we built is not based on trust; it’s based on a verifiable mechanism, whereby every pathway that they have is shut off.”
The president argued that his approach grew out of the same strategic logic that Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan used to approach the Soviet Union and China.
“You know, I have a lot of differences with Ronald Reagan, but where I completely admire him was his recognition that if you were able to verify an agreement that [was negotiated] with the evil empire that was hellbent on our destruction and was a far greater existential threat to us than Iran will ever be,” then it would be worth doing, Mr. Obama said. “I had a lot of disagreements with Richard Nixon, but he understood there was the prospect, the possibility, that China could take a different path. You test these things, and as long as we are preserving our security capacity — as long as we are not giving away our ability to respond forcefully, militarily, where necessary to protect our friends and our allies — that is a risk we have to take. It is a practical, common-sense position. It’s not naïve; it’s a recognition that if we can in fact resolve some of these differences, without resort to force, that will be a lot better for us and the people of that region.”
Video | Friedman Interviews Obama on Iran: Nixon President Obama on what he learned from Richard Nixon about diplomacy.
Asked if he believed that, given the depth of Iran’s civil society, which in 2009 launched a “green revolution” challenging clerical rule, the forces there for greater integration with the world would be empowered by this deal, the president said:
“With respect to Iran, it is a great civilization, but it also has an authoritarian theocracy in charge that is anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, sponsors terrorism, and there are a whole host of real profound differences that we [have with] them,” said the president. “And so, initially, we have a much more modest goal here, which is to make sure Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. …
“What’s interesting, if you look at what’s happened over the last several months, is the [Iranian] opponents of this deal are the hard-liners and those who are most invested in Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, most invested in destabilizing Iran’s neighbors, most virulently anti-American and anti-Israeli. And that should tell us something, because those hard-liners are invested in the status quo in which Iran is isolated, and they are empowered. They become the only game in town. Not just militarily they call the shots, but economically they’re able to exploit the workarounds from sanctions in order to fatten themselves in a situation in which you have a different base of business people and commerce inside of Iran that may change how they think about the cost and benefits of these destabilizing activities.
“But we’re not counting on that,” the president stressed, “and that’s the thing I want to emphasize, because even over the last several weeks and today, as we announce the deal, what’s been striking to me is that, increasingly, the critics are shifting off the nuclear issue, and they’re moving into, ‘Well, even if the nuclear issue is dealt with, they’re still going to be sponsoring terrorism, and they’re going to get this sanctions relief. And so they’re going to have more money to engage in these bad activities.’ That is a possibility, and we are going to have to systematically guard against that and work with our allies — the gulf countries, Israel — to stop the work that they are doing outside of the nuclear program. But the central premise here is that if they got a nuclear weapon, that would be different, and on that score, we have achieved our objective.”
Asked if President Vladimir Putin of Russia was a help or a hindrance in concluding this deal, Mr. Obama said: “Russia was a help on this. I’ll be honest with you. I was not sure given the strong differences we are having with Russia right now around Ukraine, whether this would sustain itself. Putin and the Russian government compartmentalized on this in a way that surprised me, and we would have not achieved this agreement had it not been for Russia’s willingness to stick with us and the other P5-Plus members in insisting on a strong deal.
“I was encouraged by the fact that Mr. Putin called me a couple of weeks ago and initiated the call to talk about Syria. I think they get a sense that the Assad regime is losing a grip over greater and greater swaths of territory inside of Syria [to Sunni jihadist militias] and that the prospects for a [Sunni jihadist] takeover or rout of the Syrian regime is not imminent but becomes a greater and greater threat by the day. That offers us an opportunity to have a serious conversation with them.”
Video | Friedman Interviews Obama on Iran: Russia’s Role President Obama describes Russia’s crucial role in achieving the nuclear deal.
My biggest concern and that of many serious critics who would actually like to see a deal work is that Iran is just not afraid of a serious U.S. military retaliation if it cheats. I asked the president, Why should the Iranians be afraid of us?
“Because we could knock out their military in speed and dispatch if we chose to,” he said, “and I think they have seen my willingness to take military action where I thought it was important for U.S. interests. Now, I actually believe that they are interested in trying to operate on parallel levels to be able to obtain the benefits of international legitimacy, commerce, reduction of sanctions while still operating through proxies in destructive ways around the region. That’s been their pattern, and I think it is very important to us to make sure that we are surfacing what they do through their proxies and calling them into account. That is part of the conversation we have to have with the gulf countries.”
With such a crowded pool of Republican presidential candidates competing over the right-wing base, it seems unlikely the president will get much support for this deal from G.O.P. members of Congress.
”I think it’s doubtful that we get a lot of current Republican elected officials supporting this deal,” Mr. Obama said. “I think there’s a certain party line that has to be toed, within their primaries and among many sitting members of Congress. But that’s not across the board. It’ll be interesting to see what somebody like a Rand Paul has to say about this. But I think that if I were succeeded by a Republican president — and I’ll be doing everything that I can to prevent that from happening — but if I were, that Republican president would be in a much stronger position than I was when I came into office, in terms of constraining Iran’s nuclear program.
“He will be in a position to know that 98 percent of their nuclear material has been shipped out. He would know that the majority of the centrifuges had been removed. He would know that there is no heavy reactor there. He’d know that the international community had signed on to this. He would know everything that we’ve learned from the inspection regime. And he’d still be in possession of the entire arsenal of our armed forces, and our diplomatic and intelligence services, to deal with the possibility that Iran was cheating. ... They’re not going to admit that now. And that’s entire hypothetical, because I feel good about having a Democratic successor. But I think that this builds on bipartisan ideas, bipartisan efforts. We could not have succeeded without the strong support of Congress on a bipartisan basis to impose the sanctions we did on Iran. They deserve enormous credit for that. And as we implement this I think it will prove to be not just good for us but good for the world.”
Video | Friedman Interviews Obama on Iran: 2016 President Obama on his doubts about Republican support for the deal and what it means for the next president.
The president spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel by phone just before the start of the interview. Mr. Obama did not try to sugar coat their differences, but he hinted that his administration has in the works some significant strategic upgrades for both Israel and America’s gulf allies.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to discuss specific details about security agreements or work that we may be doing,” the president told me. “What I can tell you is that that process is in train. Now, with respect to the Israelis, I think it’s fair to say that under my administration, we’ve done more to facilitate Israeli capabilities. And I’ve also said that I’m prepared to go further than any other administration’s gone before in terms of providing them additional security assurances from the United States. The thing I want to emphasize is that people’s concerns here are legitimate. Hezbollah has tens of thousands of missiles that are pointed toward Israel. They are becoming more sophisticated. The interdiction of those weapon flows has not been as successful as it needs to be. There are legitimate concerns on the part of the gulf countries about Iran trying to stir up and prompt destabilizing events inside their countries. So they’re not just being paranoid. Iran is acting in an unconstructive way, in a dangerous way in these circumstances. What I’ve simply said is that we have to keep our eye on the ball here, which is that Iran with a nuclear weapon will do more damage, and we will be in a much worse position to prevent it.”
The president argues that preventing Iran from having any enrichment capacity is simply impossible. The key, he insists, is how well you curb it and verify its limitations: “Now, Prime Minister Netanyahu would prefer, and many of the critics would prefer, that they don’t even have any nuclear capacity. But really, what that involves is eliminating the presence of knowledge inside of Iran. Nuclear technology is not that complicated today, and so the notion that the yardstick for success was now whether they ever had the capacity possibly to obtain nuclear weapons — that can’t be the yardstick. The question is, Do we have the kind of inspection regime and safeguards and international consensus whereby it’s not worth it for them to do it? We have accomplished that.”
The president said he knows he is going to have a fight on his hands with Mr. Netanyahu and those in Congress who share the prime minister’s views, but he seemed confident that in the end he would prevail.
Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Obama said, “perhaps thinks he can further influence the congressional debate, and I’m confident we’re going to be able to uphold this deal and implement it without Congress preventing that. But after that’s done, if that’s what he thinks is appropriate, then I will sit down, as we have consistently throughout my administration, and then ask some very practical questions: How do we prevent Hezbollah from acquiring more sophisticated weapons? How do we build on the success of Iron Dome, which the United States worked with Israel to develop and has saved Israeli lives? In the same way I’m having conversation with the gulf countries about how do we have a more effective interdiction policy, how do we build more effective governance structures and military structures in Sunni areas that have essentially become a void that [the Islamic State] has filled or that, in some cases, Iranian activities can exploit?”
The president added: “And what I’ve also tried to explain to people, including Prime Minister Netenyahu, is that in the absence of a deal, our ability to sustain these sanctions was not in the cards. Keep in mind it’s not just Iran that paid a price for sanctions. China, Japan, South Korea, India — pretty much any oil importer around the world that had previously import arrangements from Iran — found themselves in a situation where this was costing them billions of dollars to sustain these sanctions.
“In some ways, the United States paid the lowest price for maintenance of sanctions, because we didn’t do business with Iran in the first place. They made a significant sacrifice. The reason they did was because my administration, our diplomats, and oftentimes me personally, were able to persuade them that the only way to resolve this nuclear problem was to make these sanctions bite. And if they saw us walking away from what technical experts believe is a legitimate mechanism to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon — if they saw that our diplomatic efforts were not sincere, or were trying to encompass not just the nuclear program, but every policy disagreement that we might have with Iran, then frankly, those sanctions would start falling apart very rapidly. And so, maybe Iran wouldn’t get $150 billion, but they’d get a big chunk of that, because we would not be able to sustain that support.”
It strikes me that the one party that we have heard the least from, but in the end could count the most, is the Iranian people and how they ultimately react to this opening of Iran to the world as a result of this deal. What would Mr. Obama say to them?
“What I’d say to them is this offers a historic opportunity,” the president said. “Their economy has been cratering as a consequence of the sanctions. They have the ability now to take some decisive steps to move toward a more constructive relationship with the world community. … They need to seize that opportunity, their leaders need to seize that opportunity. And the truth of the matter is that Iran will be and should be a regional power. They are a big country and a sophisticated country in the region. They don’t need to invite the hostility and the opposition of their neighbors by their behavior. It’s not necessary for them to be great to denigrate Israel or threaten Israel or engage in Holocaust denial or anti-Semitic activity. Now that’s what I would say to the Iranian people. Whether the Iranian people have sufficient influence to fundamentally shift how their leaders think about these issues, time will tell.”
Maybe, I suggested, it was time for the U.S. to launch a new peace process — between Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia and Shiite Persian Iran. After all, without some lowering of tensions between the two any empowerment of Iran is only going to increase tensions between these two historic rivals, whose internecine war is tearing the region apart.
“I have long believed that we have to encourage at least a lessening of the hostilities that currently exist between Shia and Sunni factions in the region,” Mr. Obama responded. “Now, I think when I talked to my gulf allies when we were at Camp David, they’d be very clear in saying that ‘We view ourselves as Arab nations, not Sunni and Shia,’ and I think they mean that sincerely. And many of them would say that our Shia citizens are full citizens and are treated fairly, but what I think is undeniable is that the sectarian forces that have been unleashed are adding to the viciousness and destructiveness of what’s happening in a place like Syria, what’s happening in a place like Yemen, what’s happening certainly in Iraq. And that our best chance at at least reducing the scope of those conflicts is for the Saudis and other Sunni states or Arab states to be at least in a practical conversation with Iran that says, `The conflict we are fanning right now could engulf us all in flames.’
“Nobody has an interest in seeing [the Islamic State] control huge swaths of territory between Damascus and Baghdad. That’s not good for Iran. It makes it very difficult for them to sustain a buffer, which has always been a significant motivator for them since the Iraq-Iran War. It’s not good for the Saudis. It leaves them vulnerable in all sorts of ways, and the truth of the matter is that, most importantly, it’s not good for the people there. You watch the news reports preceding the Arab Spring, but certainly since the Arab Spring started to turn into more an Arab Winter, and you weep for the children of this region, not just the ones who are being displaced in Syria, not just the ones who are currently suffering from humanitarian situations in Yemen, but just the ordinary Iranian youth or Saudi youth or Kuwaiti youth who are asking themselves, `Why is it that we don’t have the same prospects that some kid in Finland, Singapore, China, Indonesia, the United States? Why aren’t we seeing that same possibility, that same sense of hopefulness?’ And I think that’s what the leaders have to really focus on.”
The president also said: “America has to listen to our Sunni Arab allies, but also not fall into the trap of letting them blame every problem on Iran. The citizens of more than a few Arab Gulf states have been big contributors to Sunni Jihadist movements that have been equally destabilizing.
“In some cases, for example, the Houthis in Yemen, I think Iranian involvement has been initially overstated,” said Mr. Obama. “When we see our intelligence, we don’t get a sense that Iran was strategically thinking, ‘Let’s march the Houthis into Sana.’ It was more of an indicator of the weakness of the government in Yemen. They now seek to exploit it. Oftentimes, they’re opportunistic. That’s part of the reason why my argument has been to my allies in the region, let’s stop giving Iran opportunities for mischief. Strengthen your own societies. Be inclusive. Make sure that your Shia populations don’t feel as if they’re being left out. Think about the economic growth. Make sure that we’ve got better military capacity for things like interdiction. The more we do those things, that’s the level of deterrence that’s necessary because it is highly unlikely that you are going to see Iran launch a direct attack, state to state, against any of our allies in the region. They know that that would give us the rationale to go in full-bore, and as I said, we could knock out most of their military capacity pretty quickly.”
I noted to Mr. Obama that one of the issues most troubling nonpartisan critics of the deal is what happens if we suspect that Iran is operating a covert nuclear program at a military base not covered by this deal. There is a process in place that allows for inspections, but it could take over three weeks for international inspectors to get access after raising a complaint. Couldn’t Iran use that time to just scrub clean any signs of cheating?
Video | Friedman Interviews Obama: The Strengths of the Iran Deal In a conversation with Thomas L. Friedman, President Obama explains what he thinks the United States gained from the nuclear deal with Iran.
“Yeah, but here’s where having somebody like [Energy Secretary] Ernie Moniz is pretty helpful, because he assured us that if, in fact, we have good mechanisms to scoop up and sample earth, this stuff has got a long half-life. My high school physics probably isn’t equal to Ernie Moniz’s, but I do remember it’s not that easy to suddenly just hide potentially radioactive material that’s been developed. The same is true, by the way, for the possibility that Iran might import materials that could be used for nuclear programs but might have a dual use. We’ve set up unprecedented mechanisms to be able to look at each one of those imports and say, ‘You got to show us how this is being used to ensure that it’s not being converted.’ ”
The president added: “If you hear a critic say, `Well, this inspection regime is not 100 percent foolproof,’ I guess theoretically, nothing is 100 percent foolproof. But if the standard is what is the best, most effective, most rigorous mechanism whereby it is very, very, very difficult for Iran to cheat, then this is the mechanism, and it goes far beyond anything that was done, for example, in North Korea.”
In conclusion, I noted to Mr. Obama that he was now the U.S. president who’d had the most contact with Iran’s leadership since the 1979 Islamic Revolution there and the onset of the U.S.-Iran Cold War. What had he learned?
“Well, I haven’t learned yet to trust the Iranian leadership,” said Mr. Obama, “although I think that what John Kerry learned in his interactions with Foreign Minister Zarif — and that then traces back to President Rouhani — is that when you nail down an agreement, they do seem to follow it to the letter, perhaps thinking there may be a loophole here or there, which is why you have to button this stuff down. But the notion that once you put something down on paper that somehow they’re just going to ignore it and try to pocket what they’ve gained, that’s not what we saw during the last two years of the interim agreement. There is, I think, restraints that they feel when they have an agreement and they have a document, that they need to abide by it. So I think we’ve learned that.
“I think that we’ve also learned that there are different voices and different forces inside of Iran, and that those may not be consistent with our values. The so-called moderate in Iran is not going to be suddenly somebody who we feel reflects universal issues like human rights, but there are better or worse approaches that Iran can take relative to our interests and the interests of our allies, and we should see where we can encourage that better approach.
“And then I think the last thing that — this is maybe not something I’ve learned but has been confirmed — even with your enemies, even with your adversaries, I do think that you have to have the capacity to put yourself occasionally in their shoes, and if you look at Iranian history, the fact is that we had some involvement with overthrowing a democratically elected regime in Iran. We have had in the past supported Saddam Hussein when we know he used chemical weapons in the war between Iran and Iraq, and so, as a consequence, they have their own security concerns, their own narrative. It may not be one we agree with. It in no way rationalizes the kinds of sponsorship from terrorism or destabilizing activities that they engage in, but I think that when we are able to see their country and their culture in specific terms, historical terms, as opposed to just applying a broad brush, that’s when you have the possibility at least of some movement.
“In the same way that when Ronald Reagan and others negotiated arms agreement with the Soviet Union, you had to recognize, yes, this is an evil, terrible system, but within it are people with specific historic ideas and memories, and we have to be able to understand those things and potentially try to make some connection. And the same was true with respect to Nixon and Kissinger going to China, which ended up being a very important strategic benefit to the United States.”
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Page 7
Published time: July 13, 2015 16:11
Edited time: July 13, 2015 20:44
Edited time: July 13, 2015 20:44
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has ordered security forces to disarm all illegal armed groups in the country, following a deadly gunfight involving the Right Sector ultranationalists and the police in the town of Mukachevo.
“No political force should have armed cells and no political force will have one,” Poroshenko said during a meeting of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC).
According to the president, the appearance of heavily armed men in Mukachevo, “a thousand kilometers away from the front line,” is an attempt to destabilize the situation in Ukraine.
“The authorities will not allow this,” he promised, tasking the Interior Ministry and Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) with disarming the illegal armed groups.
The president stressed that the essence of the conflict in Mukashevo, situated near the borders of Slovakia and Hungary, was the “redistribution of smuggling routes.”
However, Right Sector spokesman Artem Skoropadsky, said that president’s order doesn’t apply to the ultranationalist group.
“The statement by Petro Poroshenko is addressed to illegal armed groups. We are not an illegal armed group. Illegal armed groups are bandits, and we are volunteer Ukrainian corps Ukrainian, which protects the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Therefore, this statement does not apply to us," Skoropadsky told the RIA Novosti news agency.
On Monday, Right Sector hacked the Twitter account of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) as tensions kept mounting between the ultranationalist movement and the Kiev authorities.
“The NSDC Twitter account is under Right Sector’s control,” the tweet, announcing the hack, said.
A series of messages that followed was dedicated to the events in the western Ukrainian town of Mukachevo, where a group of Right Sector militants are in a standoff with security forces after a deadly shootout with the police on Saturday.
“Right Sector troops acted within from self-defense,” one of the tweets said, while the other urged to “immediately detain police officers, who gave the order to open fire in Mukachevo.”
NSDC is a Ukrainian state agency tasked with developing national security policies on domestic and international issue and advising the Ukrainian president.
The hackers also demanded the resignation of Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Major-General Andrey Taran, chief of the Joint Centre for Ceasefire Control and Coordination in eastern Ukraine.
They said: “Taran provides cover for smuggling in the area of the antiterrorist operation.” This is in eastern Ukraine where Kiev has been fighting the rebels for over a year.
The struggle for control over smuggling routes in the Carpathian Mountains between Right Sector members and local MP Mikhail Lanyo is said to be the reason for the shootout in Mukachevo.
Another tweet on the hacked NSDC account warned that “while crooks and oligarchs remain in control in Ukraine – Maidan 3.0 is unavoidable.” They are referring to the Maidan protests in late 2013 and early 2014, in which the Right Sector helped oust President Viktor Yanukovich.
Screenshot from twitter by @rnbo_gov_ua
According to the Ukrainian authorities, two Right Sector fighters and one civilian were killed and 10 people were injured, including five law enforcement officers, in a gun fight. The skirmish saw AK-47s, heavy machineguns mounted on SUVs and grenade launchers being used.
Two dozen heavily armed ultranationalists took shelter in the woods on the outskirts of Mukachevo and have so far refused to lay down their arms.
They said they were waiting for a direct order from Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh, who instead blamed the authorities and called on the activists “to continue protests until those guilty in the tragedy are arrested.”
Two Right Sectors troops surrendered to the authorities on Sunday after sustaining serious injuries.
Two more radicals managed to break out of the encirclement on Monday by using a child as a human shield.
“Police and security forces of Ukraine tried to detain them, but they grabbed a six-year-old and fled using him as a human shield. The men later released the child,” the press service of the Interior Ministry said, as cited by TASS.
On Sunday, Right Sector activists were holding rallies in 17 cities across Ukraine, including Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Zaporozhye, Ternopol, Mariupol, Kherson, Kramatorsk, Poltava, in support of the radical brigade blocked near Makuchevo.
The radical movement announced the protest in Kiev will be indefinite, saying the action will be reinforced by troops currently fighting the militias of the People’s Republics of Donetsk (DNR) and Lugansk (LNR).
DNR spokesman, Eduard Basurin, confirmed that “Right Sector is withdrawing some of its troops and deploying them to Kiev on the order of their commanders. It has led to a decrease in the number of (ceasefire) violations.”
Over 100 activists and Right Sector members wearing mask and balaclavas kept up their protest outside the Presidential Administration in Kiev on Monday.
The demonstration went on without incident, as no clashes between the Right Sector supporters and the police guarding the building were reported.
On Saturday, Right Sector spokesman, Artem Skoropadsky, said the group has two battalions in the conflict zone and “have 18 or 19 reserve battalions spread across Ukraine.
“We can send all reserve battalions to the president’s administration and to the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” Skoropadsky threatened, adding that all units are ready to act if the Ukrainian authorities decide to seek armed confrontation with the radical nationalists.
Another Right Sector spokesman, Andrey Sharaskin, told Ukraine’s 112 channel that “over 10,000 activists have been mobilized all across Ukraine” due to tensions with the authorities.
Reports emerged that the Ukrainian authorities were deploying additional units near Right Sector training camps and bases, in order to block them if the nationalists carry out their threats and try to deploy forces elsewhere in the country.
There are reports that Slovakia and Hungary are tightening security at their borders with Ukraine because of the Mukachevo events.
UK journalist and broadcaster Neil Clark told RT that Ukraine’s neighbors are now “paying the price for the US and the EU meddling with internal Ukrainian affairs.”
With the ongoing fighting and humanitarian crisis in the country, it’s logical that bordering nations are“very concerned by the number of people coming…from Ukraine and the destabilizing effect,” he said.
“What we’ve got is a big problem called Ukraine in Europe, which is causing overspill. So the rhetoric in the EU is very supportive of Kiev at the same time Kiev is causing it an awful lot of problems,” Clark stressed.
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In the news
Poroshenko orders all illegal arms group disarmed in Ukraine amid standoff with Right Sector — RT News
Ukraine's ultranationalist Right Sector in standoff with authorities LIVE UPDATES.
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Russia's military aircraft are now crashing from overuse
Russia's Air Force has suffered from a string of crashes over the past month that highlight the ...
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Russia's Air Force has suffered from a string of crashes over the past month that highlight the country's maintenance and modernization woes.
Since June 4, there have been five major Air Force crashes, USNI News reports. On June 4, a MiG-29 and an Su-34 both crashed. The SU-34 is one of Russia's most advanced fighter jets, and wasofficially introduced into service in March of 2014.
These incidents were followed by a Tu-95 Bear bomber suffering an engine fire on June 8, another MiG-29 crashing on July 3, and an Su-24 crash on July 6 that killed both of its pilots.
Most recently, a second Tu-95 crashed on Tuesday close to the Chinese border. The incident has led to Russia grounding its Tu-95 fleet to carry out mechanical inspections of its planes.
Aircraft incidents are perhaps inevitable even in the most advanced militaries. But the rapid pace of crashes in Russia could point to systemic flaws and problems within the country's Air Force as a whole. A possible contributor to the spate of accidents is the rapid uptick of Russian aerial maneuvers resulting from the Ukraine crisis, along with general poor maintenance and an aging fleet.
Russia has been flying sorties across Europe, the Atlantic, and the Pacific with a frequency unseen since the Cold War. This increased workload has put heavy strain on an aging fleet of Cold War-era bombers and fighters that Russia is only now trying to modernize.
"The majority of the equipment, apart from the [recent crash] of a newer Su-34, is very old. Under [Defense Ministers] Anatoly Serdyukov and Sergei Shoigu, the planes are being used very extensively," a Russian source familiar with the matter told Defense News. "If you start to extensively use equipment made many years ago, even if the equipment is certified [in good shape], the percentage of failure becomes higher."
Misha Japaridze / APRussian MIG-29 plane performs a flight during a celebration marking the Russian air force's 100th anniversary in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow.
This issue of older equipment is compounded by the fact that replacement parts for the aircraft are themselves in a poor state of repair.
"These old aircraft require a lot of maintenance, and the spare parts currently in stock are old," Vadim Kozyulin, a military expert at the Russian PIR Center think tank, told Defense News.
This isn't the only sign Russia's efforts to project military power actually mask some dire internal weaknesses: 23 soldiers were killed when a barracks at a training center in Omsk collapsed on July 13th.
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The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union are asking the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records.
Attorneys for the two civil liberties unions filed a 20-page legal brief with the court ...
Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, nominated to be vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that sanctions relief would allow Iran to increase their sponsorship of terrorism during a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing Tuesday.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R., S.D.) asked Selva if Iran was provided sanctions relief with the nuclear deal, would Iran use the funds to increase its sponsorship of terrorism.
“Senator, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to study the entire agreement. But on its face, what I’ve heard from the press, the immediate lifting of sanctions or the sequential lifting of sanctions will give Iran the access to more economic assets with which to sponsor state terrorism should they choose to do so,” Selva said.
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