There is statistical evidence that validates the fact that presidents who enjoy a second term tend to focus on foreign and not domestic affairs. In no particular order it seems:
a) Presidents are worn down dealing with Congress and they do not have as much interaction with Congress in foreign matters and
b) Foreign affairs give presidents an opportunity to establish themselves in an historical way, ie. Reagan with Russia, etc.
In the case of Obama,, with Obamacare falling of its own weight and administrative mismanagement and the opportunity to portray himself as saving the Middle East from Iran's nuclear program, Obama seems ready to cut a deal which, of course, may not be a good one but which could buy him time and relief from the pressures of his domestic failures.
It is ironic that after a great length of time sanctions brought Iran to the bargaining table and Obama is taking his foot off their neck just at the wrong time. Time will tell but all indications suggest the P5 +1 are getting little and giving a lot.
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Dick
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1) Inside Obama's Iran Sanctions Strategy
By Eli Lake, Josh Rogin
The United States is prepared to allow Iran to recoup up to $10 billion in revenues lost to sanctions, according to a U.S. government estimate of sanctions relief proposed this weekend at Geneva.
Three sources briefed by the Obama administration this week on the talks between Iran, the United States and five other great powers, say that U.S. estimates on the value of special exemptions to allow Iran to sell and ship some of its oil and other exports would result in no more than $10 billion worth of sanctions relief.
Colin Kahl, a former senior Pentagon official in Obama’s first term and an expert on U.S. policy to Iran, said in testimony before Congress Wednesday that the package being proposed to Iran was worth no more than $6 to $7 billion in sanctions relief.
For Iran, this relatively modest sanctions relief—compared to the losses it has suffered as a result of its isolation from the world economy—matters. A recent report from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Roubini Global Economics estimates Iran’s government has access to only $20 billion in overseas foreign reserves that it can spend with no restrictions.
The freeze on Iranian revenue is the result of a sanctions regime that has blacklisted the country’s economy from the global financial sector. As a result, Iran has had trouble finding the insurers, banks and shipping companies willing to risk trading Iranian oil.
From Russia to Venezuela, here's how the world views the Iran nuclear talks.
Under the proposal offered in Geneva, Iran would be allowed to sell $3.5 billion worth of its oil in the next six months and a few billion more in sales for its gold, petrochemical and automotive sector, according to briefings from the Obama administration described to The Daily Beast.
The Israelis have said the value of the sanctions relief is more than the Obama administration has been claiming. On Wednesday, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz told reporters that the sanctions relief package being offered to Iran would provide Tehran with $15 to $20 billion of direct relief and that proposed enforcement easing would make the total value of the deal around $40 billion for the Iranians.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki Wednesday disputed those figures, saying: “Without going into specifics about what we're considering, that number, I can assure you, is inaccurate, exaggerated, and not based in reality.”
Nonetheless, the Israelis and other critics of the proposed sanctions relief say there is a risk that any loosening of pressure on Iran before it begins dismantling its nuclear program could encourage countries, banks, and other institutions to skirt existing sanctions and offer Iran's isolated and pressured economy a life line.
Several GOP Senators compared the Obama administration’s strategy towards Iran to the Clinton administration’s strategy towards North Korea, in which Sherman herself was involved
“Business with Iran is driven by greed and fear,” said Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that has supported escalating sanctions on Iran. “In an environment of escalating sanctions where the U.S. surrounds Iran with an economic minefield, fear overrides greed. When sanctions are being de-escalated, as they are today at the request of the administration, greed will override fear.”
Many members of Congress also take the view that no financial pressure on Iran should be relieved until Iran begins to dismantle its centrifuges at Natanz and Qom, or at the very least, until it stops enriching uranium. Until then, senators from both parties have said they support a new round of sanctions aimed at tightening the squeeze on Iran even during negotiations.
The Obama administration has made the case that it needs to offer limited sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for more rigorous inspections and more transparency from the country regarding its nuclear program. Some sources briefed on the negotiations say Iran is prepared to cap the total amount of nuclear fuel it will store at any one time in the six-month negotiation period.
On Wednesday, a showdown between Congress and the administration took place at the Capital Building. In a closed session, Secretary of State John Kerry, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, and Undersecretary of Treasury David Cohen spoke to members of the Senate Banking Committee and Senate leadership from both parties.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who is also the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, emerged from the briefing flabbergasted that the officials refused to tell senators any details of the pending agreement. “It was an emotional appeal and I was very disappointed in the presentation. It lacked content,” Corker said. “If I were trying to convince somebody of something, I would lay out details. I am stunned that in a classified setting… there would be such a lack of specificity.”
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who is preparing his own legislation to tighten sanctions on Iran, got into several heated discussions with the officials inside the classified briefing, he said. Kirk said the Israeli government briefed him on the proposed agreement Wednesday morning and told him the Iranian concessions would only amount to a 24-day delay in their progress towards nuclear capability—and in exchange, Tehran would receive billions of dollars worth of sanctions relief.
“The briefing was fairly anti-Israeli. I was supposed to disbelieve everything the Israelis just told me. I don’t. I think the Israelis probably have a pretty good intelligence service,” Kirk said. “The administration very disappointingly said ‘Discount what the Israelis say.’ I think that was wrong as a policy matter.”
Kirk said he would use every legislative avenue available, including the upcoming debate over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), to try to secure a vote on a new sanctions package. He reminded the officials that the last sanctions package he sponsored with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) passed the senate by a vote of 100-0.
Several GOP Senators compared the Obama administration’s strategy towards Iran to the Clinton administration’s strategy towards North Korea, in which Sherman herself was involved. A 1994 framework agreement with Pyongyang was hailed at the time but was later scuttled due to North Korean cheating. North Korea subsequently tested a nuclear device on three separate occasions.
“After Wendy led the effort to give North Korea nuclear reactors and food, her record on North Korea is a total failure and an embarrassment to her service,” said Kirk. “Today is the day when I witnessed a future of nuclear war in the Middle East some day that will be part of our children’s heritage. This admin, like Neville Chamberlain, is yielding a large and bloody conflict in the Middle East involving Iranian nuclear weapons.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also said that the North Korean example looms large as senators consider whether to pause their sanctions push against Iran. He also said senators don’t trust the administration to negotiate a good deal.
“There’s a real belief among members of Congress on both sides of the aisle that the administration wants a deal too much,” Graham said. “You should not begin to put any capital into the Iranian economy until they begin to dismantle the centrifuges.”
State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki, previewing Kerry’s pitch before his Capitol Hill meetings, said that Kerry would tell senators that more sanctions now could ruin the negotiations and start both sides on the path to war.
“We put crippling sanctions in, not just to bring Iran to the table, but to give us the strongest possible hand at the negotiating table with the greatest amount of leverage and international support. And the sanctions now have worked,” she said. “This is a vote for or against diplomacy… I think the consequences of not moving forward with a diplomatic path is potentially aggression, potentially conflict, potentially war.”
Eli Lake is the senior national-security correspondent for The Daily Beast. He previously covered national security and intelligence for The Washington Times. Lake has also been a contributing editor at The New Republic since 2008 and covered diplomacy, intelligence, and the military for the late New York Sun. He has lived in Cairo and traveled to war zones in Sudan, Iraq, and Gaza. He is one of the few journalists to report from all three members of President Bush’s axis of evil: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
Josh Rogin is senior correspondent for national security and politics for The Daily Beast. He previously worked at Newsweek, Foreign Policy magazine, Congressional Quarterly, Federal Computer Week magazine, and Japan’s leading daily newspaper, The Asahi Shimbun. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C.
1a)Armed and Dangerous: Why a Rational, Nuclear Iran Is an Unacceptable Risk to Israel
By Prof. Steven R. David
One of the most pressing issues facing policy-makers today, especially in Israel, is whether it is acceptable to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Some argue that Iranian leaders can be deterred because they are rational, cost-calculating actors who would refrain from using nuclear weapons, like the US and USSR during the Cold War. They believe that efforts to halt Iranian nuclear weapons development should be modest and not involve military force.
Others disagree, arguing that Iranian leaders are religious fanatics who welcome a nuclear apocalypse as a precursor to the advent of an Islamic paradise. An Iran under leaders such as these would be undeterrable, since no punishment exists that would dissuade the Iranian leadership from initiating war. Therefore, a military strike is still preferable to allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
Both sides in this debate are correct on some points, but ultimately miss the essence of the problem. In truth, the Iranian leadership is rational but under some conditions is likely to be willing to use nuclear weapons. History is full of examples of rational leaders who, when faced with the end of their regimes, did not hesitate to seek the mass destruction of all perceived enemies.
Israel cannot rely on deterrence and needs to emphasize policies that assume that Iran will not be deterred. Budgetary allocations, weapons developments, and plans for attack must reflect such a reality. Israel must be prepared to launch a military strike to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. If that approach is rejected, Israel must focus on ballistic missile defense, give serious thought to disarming a nascent Iranian nuclear capability, and be ready to preempt an Iranian attack.
In the not too distant future, Israel may confront a nuclear-armed Iran whose leaders find themselves with nothing to lose and everything to destroy. Whether Israel can meet this challenge may well determine whether it continues to thrive as a state, or perishes in a hail of nuclear warheads.
The arguments and conclusions of this essay have not been changed by recently elected President Rouhani’s softer tone. Unless and until Iran matches Rouhani’s rhetoric with actions that deprive Iran of the capability of producing nuclear weapons, the threat of a nuclear armed Iran behaving recklessly remains.
1b)Senators Appalled by Kerry's Anti-Israel Remarks in Iran Briefing
By Lori Lowenthal Marcus -
At Iran briefing for significant U.S. senators, Kerry reportedly said to Ignore what the Israelis say (Photo Credit: Lori Lowenthal Marcus)
In what was described as a “purely emotional” appeal that did not reveal the necessary specificity to assuage lawmakers’ concerns about a deceptive Iran on the brink of acquiring the ability to produce nuclear weapons, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with members of the U.S. Senate banking committee on Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 13.
Kerry remained adamant that if congress ups the sanctions, it will push away Iranians from the negotiating table. And many members of congress seemed to be just as adamant that de-fanging sanctions at this stage of negotiations, when the Iranians remain unwilling to make major concessions, will mean any deal will be at great cost to the west and have little substantive effect on Iran’s nuclear abilities.
“Our hope is that no new sanctions would be put in place for the simple reason that, if they are, it could be viewed as bad faith by the people we are negotiating with,” Kerry said before entering a closed-door briefing with members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, according to CNN.
“It could destroy the ability to be able to get agreement,” he added, “and it could actually wind up setting us back in dialogue that’s taken 30 years to achieve.”
But after the meeting, the few congressmen who were willing to speak had harsh words both about the content of what was discussed, but also the atmospherics.
“It was fairly anti-Israeli,” Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) said to reporters after the briefing. “I was supposed to disbelieve everything the Israelis had just told me, and I think the Israelis probably have a pretty good intelligence service.” He said the Israelis had told him that the “total changes proposed set back the program by 24 days.”
A Senate aide told BuzzFeed that during the meeting, “every time anybody would say anything about ‘what would the Israelis say,’ they’d get cut off and Kerry would say, ‘You have to ignore what they’re telling you, stop listening to the Israelis on this.’”
“They had no details,” the aide said. “They had no ability to verify anything, to describe anything, to answer basic questions.”
Republicans and Democrats alike have questioned the sagacity of removing sanctions at this point in the negotiations, rather than ratcheting them up now, and then dialing them back down if an acceptable deal is reached.
Kerry’s approach, which placed the onus in exactly the opposite direction, was that the U.S. and the rest of the global community could “dial back up” sanctions later, if no agreement is reached with the Iranians.
“If this doesn’t work, we reserve the right to dial back up the sanctions. I will be up here on the Hill asking for increased sanctions, and we always reserve the military option,” he said. “Let’s give them a few weeks, see if it works, and we have all of our options at our disposal.”
In addition to Kerry, Vice President Joe Biden and State Department’s lead Iran negotiator Wendy Sherman were also present at the meeting. Bret Stephens held up a non-rose-colored lens to Sherman’s career in Monday’s Wall Street Journal.
Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the US correspondent for The Jewish Press. She is a recovered lawyer who previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area graduate and law schools.
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1c)Strains With Israel Over Iran Snarl U.S. Goals in Mideast
As Netanyahu Embraces Hollande, State Department Weighs Another Kerry Visit
The Obama administration's overtures to Iran are straining the U.S. alliance with Israel in ways not seen in decades, compounding concerns about the White House's ability to manage the Middle East's proliferating security crises, said current and former American diplomats
In a sign of Israel's growing disaffection with Washington, French President François Hollande was given a hero's welcome when he arrived in Tel Aviv on Sunday for a three-day visit that would showcase Paris's hard line against Iran's nuclear program ahead of international talks in Geneva this week.
Mr. Netanyahu reiterated his criticism that the U.S.-backed compromise was a "very bad deal" while hailing Mr. Hollande for his opposition to the agreement at a joint news conference Sunday evening in Jerusalem.
"Your support and your friendship is real. It's sincere. You were one out of six," he said, referring to the six world powers participating in talks with Iran.
Both the U.S. and Israel insist the relationship is strong enough to sustain even a pronounced disagreement. But the State Department said on Sunday that it was considering sending Secretary of State John Kerry back to Jerusalem for the second time this month to try and repair the breach with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Kerry irked Israel's government during a trip this month when he appeared to publicly challenge its commitment to the peace process.
Few Middle East experts see any short-term solution to the pronounced rift between the U.S. and Israel. Mr. Netanyahu, these experts said, has defined his political career by confronting Iran and its nuclear program and is unlikely now to back down. And Washington's position is weakened by the fact that its other primary Middle East allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, also are challenging the White House's outreach to Tehran.
"When the U.S. and Israel are at fundamental odds, it weakens U.S. power in the region and sends very bad signals to America's other allies," said Aaron David Miller, a former senior State Department official now at Washington's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "Israel has more in common now with Saudi Arabia. It exacerbates an already fractious region."
The signs of rupture, analysts fear, will imperil Washington's ability to navigate other pressing security issues: Egypt's civic unrest, Syria's civil war and Mr. Kerry's drive to secure a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement.
The discord between Israel and Washington was rekindled on Sunday with Mr. Hollande's visit and an interview Mr. Netanyahu gave CNN criticizing the agreement being negotiated between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, a diplomatic bloc called the P5+1.
The pact, which U.S. officials said could be cinched as early as this week, would cap parts of Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for the West easing some of its economic sanctions on Tehran.
But Mr. Netanyahu repeated his charge that the U.S. shouldn't provide any economic relief to Tehran until it completely dismantles its nuclear facilities, rather than curbing some of their activities. "I think you should increase the pressure, because it's finally working," he said on CNN. "If you continue to pressure now, you can get Iran to cease and desist."
Mr. Hollande appeared to back the Israeli leader's hard line in remarks given upon arriving in Tel Aviv. Paris publicly broke from the other P5+1 countries this month by challenging as too soft the terms of a text agreement presented to Tehran.
"For France, as long as we don't have certainty Iran will renounce nuclear weapons, we will maintain all our demands and the sanctions," Mr. Hollande said.
Mr. Netanyahu has annoyed the Obama administration by rallying U.S. lawmakers and pro-Israel groups as well to contest the White House's Iran policy and to press for new economic sanctions on Iran. Some U.S. officials say they consider those moves as blatant interference in Washington's internal affairs.
Last week, Mr. Kerry and other administration officials briefed the Senate Banking Committee on its Iran policy and urged lawmakers not to enact new sanctions on Tehran while the negotiations in Geneva take place. But many senators cited information from Israel that concluded the benefits of the deal were much less attractive than what the White House was claiming.
"The administration very disappointingly said [to] discount what the Israelis say, and I think that was wrong as a policy matter. I think the Israelis have a very good intelligence service," said Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.).
Senior U.S. officials have pushed back in recent days on the idea of there being any rupture between the U.S. and Israel. They said the two countries intermittently have differences—such as over policies on Israeli construction in contested areas—but that the overall relationship remains strong.
"This is a tactical disagreement," said a senior administration official. "We can manage it."
Longtime Middle East watchers, however, said they would have to go back to the 1980s to find a dispute between the U.S. and Israel that rivals the current one.
Then, the Jewish state clashed with the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan over the settlement issue and the Middle East peace process.
But even those dust-ups appeared mild compared with the dispute over Iran, because of the ramifications for the broader region.
"In many ways, this is uncharted waters for the bilateral relationship," said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "This is very dangerous for both sides."
The international response to Iran's nuclear program going forward is one area were a rift is particularly dangerous, said Mr. Satloff and others close to the Israeli government.
Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to strike Iran's nuclear infrastructure if Tehran's capabilities continue to expand. And the Israeli leader has said in recent days that his government won't be bound by any agreement reached between the P5+1 and Iran.
U.S. officials said they envisage an initial agreement between Iran and the international community to last six months. During this time, the two sides would seek to forge a final deal. But if they don't, Israel could move quickly to strike Iran, even if the U.S. doesn't support military action, analysts said.
"I think Israel will respect the 180-day time period," said Mr. Satloff. "But I'd watch out for Day 181."
Mr. Kerry's hopes of forging a Mideast peace agreement is a top Obama priority that stands to be undercut by the friction over Iran.
Mr. Netanyahu's government and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have entered into a nine-month negotiating framework which the U.S. hopes will end with establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
But the talks have stalled in recent weeks, with some Palestinian negotiators quitting their posts following the announcement of new Israeli building in contested areas.
On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu offered a sober assessment of the prospects for near-term peace with the Palestinians.
"We're talking. But I would like to see some movement from the Palestinian side," Mr. Netanyahu told CNN. "You want us to recognize the Palestinian state for the Palestinian people. How about recognizing the Jewish state for the Jewish people?"
1d) Is Rouhani the New Gorbachev?
How to test a supposed reformer: Stand firm on sanctions, wait for proof.
Where have I seen this play before? The plotlines of what is happening with Iran today are familiar to me and should be to others. They go like this:
Thanks to firm and resolute measures by Western democracies, a fierce and aggressive dictatorship has been brought to the edge of bankruptcy and collapse. Suddenly a new leader arises. He looks different from his predecessors: warmer, more human. He speaks and acts differently.
And, sure enough, he elicits warmth in Western capitals, especially Washington. We mustn't forfeit this opportunity, politicians and pundits declare. We must help this promising leader to achieve for his country—and for the sake of world peace—the difficult transition from confrontation to cooperation. The path he travels is perilous; he is surrounded at home by figures who want him to fail. If he seems unprepared to meet our demands today, we must meet him more than halfway so he can meet them tomorrow. We must not let the promise of this moment slip from our fingers.
Such are the voices giving the benefit of the doubt to Hasan Rouhani, the new president of Iran, and branding those less trustful of the regime's intentions as shortsighted enemies of peace. They remind me of the voices I heard—that we all heard—in the first years of Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure in the 1980s as the new leader of the ailing Soviet Union.
As with Iran today, the economic and political crisis in the Soviet Union was real; so was the pressure exerted on the system from both within and without. Faced with the roiling frustration of its people, Moscow was desperately trying to preserve itself in power at home while simultaneously maintaining its status as a superpower abroad. Mr. Gorbachev, who understood the parlous circumstances in which his country stood, loosened some restrictions on speech and other forms of expression. He released a number of political prisoners and made vague promises of allowing free emigration.
Sure enough, these moves—instituted not to reform the communist system, but to rescue it from collapse—were met with near-ecstatic cheers from Western pundits and politicians, followed by calls for reciprocal "confidence-building" measures: most prominently, the cancellation of economic sanctions and an immediate halt to missile-defense programs like the Strategic Defense Initiative. Anyone urging a contrary policy was branded a warmonger.
Fortunately, one of those alleged warmongers was Ronald Reagan, who along with knowledgeable and tough-minded senators like Henry Jackson (who died in 1983), had long understood that lifting sanctions without any concrete evidence of Soviet reform was precisely the wrong way to proceed. Under the policy known as linkage, famously embodied in the so-called Jackson Amendment of 1974, the U.S. government tied economic concessions to real, verifiable reforms.
There were other alleged warmongers. In 1987, I and others in the movement for Soviet Jewry were planning a massive demonstration in Washington timed to coincide with Mr. Gorbachev's first visit to this country. We were warned not to go ahead. Mr. Gorbachev had become popular in the United States—admired not least for having released the Nobel physicist Andrei Sakharov from exile and some "Prisoners of Zion," myself included, from imprisonment. Mounting a huge demonstration against him would surely be deemed in poor taste by Americans and received by Mr. Gorbachev and his people as an insult.
Yet far from considering the demonstration an irritant, those welcoming it included the American president, who two months beforehand had assured me of his tacit approval, and Vice President George H.W. Bush, a featured speaker at the event itself. It gave President Reagan an opening: You see, he could explain to Mr. Gorbachev, my people will not allow me to ask anything less from you than to open the iron gates.
Nor did many Soviet citizens perceive the rally as an insult. To the contrary, it gave heart to tens of millions. While Western elites regarded Mr. Gorbachev as a reformer, many in his country knew he was already working to retard or reverse the reforms he himself had initiated. Genuine Soviet reformers feared that "free emigration" would mean only the token release of a few hundred famous individuals, under cover of which the Communist Party would retain its political monopoly and its chokehold on the USSR's restive national republics. Until the end of his life, Sakharov himself struggled with Mr. Gorbachev over the preservation of the one-party Communist system. In his conversations with me, Sakharov stressed how only continued Western pressure could, over time, "help" the Soviet leader and the Soviet system reform themselves out of business.
The U.S., to its eternal credit, held firm. The Americans were not ready to accept a bad ballistic-missile deal like the one proposed by Mr. Gorbachev in Reykjavik. They were not ready to cancel the sanctions. And they continued to support public pressure. Four years later, the evil Soviet empire collapsed without a shot having been fired.
Yet here we are again. Today, the Iranian economy is on the verge of bankruptcy. Today Iranian dissidents are rotting in prison by the hundreds or thousands, while a restive populace continues to writhe under the tyrannous yoke of a regime that has abandoned none of its aggressive aims, none of its terrorist machinations, none of its genocidal intentions. Is the Free World, led by Washington, so fixated on a short-term deal with the latest media-hyped dictator as to miss altogether the real opportunity held out by the present moment?
Can Rouhani be the new Gorbachev? Hardly. But if it will happen, it can only happen if we help him as we helped Mr. Gorbachev—if, by fidelity to our principles and by steady, determined statesmanship, we help him to eliminate himself, his regime, and the evil they have visited upon their people and set loose in the world around them.
Mr. Sharansky is chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the author of "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror" (PublicAffairs, 2006).
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