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Date Posted: 14:31:53 11/23/13 Sat
Author: Joe Rizoli (Right on the money)
Author Host/IP: 146.115.156.139
Subject: Rick Holmes and the Iran problem

Seems The Metrowest Daily News may be getting educated here:
Graet article on the Iran nuclear situation.

Updated Nov 22, 2013 @ 12:10 AM
A few hard truths about Iran
By Rick Holmes
The U.S. and its allies imposed strict economic sanctions against Iran with the goal of changing its leaders’ calculations about developing a nuclear weapons capacity and get Iran to the negotiating table. It worked. Iranians elected the most moderate candidate for president on the ballot. With the blessing of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini, the Iranians agreed to talks with the U.S. and its European allies.

Which has Bibi Netanyahu, surviving neocons and those who hate anything Obama does mad as hell. Deep in their dark hearts, they don’t want a peaceful resolution and a less-threatening Iran. They want war with Iran.

The talks are on-again and off-again. I’m not ready to endorse the first attempted agreement that flopped a couple of weeks ago, or any agreement in particular. Negotiations are a dance, and I’m willing to let the song play out. But a couple of points you don’t see in most of the western commentary:

1. Everyone scoffs at the notion that Iran demanded a “right” to enrich uranium, as if that was some outrageous demand. But the U.S. has a “right” to enrich uranium, as does every other country at the negotiating table. All signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act have an explicit right to enrich uranium to a specific level of purity needed for nuclear power generation. Is the U.S. trying to enforce the treaty Iran and other countries signed, or make exceptions to it?

2. Everyone says the U.S. “can’t trust Iran,” because of well-documented bad acts, like financing Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, meddling in Iraq, etc. (how dare they violate the sovereignty of Iraq? That’s our job). But trust really isn’t the point. If the countries could trust each other, we wouldn’t be trying to negotiate a specific, enforceable agreement.

But can Iran “trust” the U.S.? Consider that in the last few years, the U.S. and/or Israel has assassinated Iran’s nuclear scientists on the streets of Tehran. The U.S. has sent financial support to opposition forces in Iran – with the neocons demanding we do more to interfere in Iran’s internal politics. Consider that the U.S. and/or Israel launched a cyber-attack against Iran, inserting the Stuxnet virus into its computer systems to slow down the nuclear program. By all the definitions I know, that should be classified an act of war.

We can’t trust Iran, but the Iranians are supposed to trust us? I don’t think so. I think they’ve got excellent reasons to want nuclear weapons – not least of which are the nukes Israel has, the nukes Pakistan has, the nukes the Russians have and the evidence from the Bush administration that the best guarantee against an unprovoked U.S. invasion is a nuclear deterrent.

Read more: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/community/blogs/holmes-and-co?view=true#ixzz2lVhVGJLR
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