The theocratic nutcases who run Iran are boasting that the world powers have surrendered to their will with the newly announced agreement regarding their nuclear weapons program, and it seems they have a point.
A “Joint Plan of Action” announced by the Obama administration and its European negotiating partners allows Iran to keep its centrifuges running, leaves it with enough enriched uranium to build several bombs, entrusts enforcement of the few restrictions that are included to the watchful eyes of the same Nobel Prize-winning nitwits at the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency who have been enabling Iranian nuclear ambitions for the past decade or so, and ends the economic sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. The Iranians claim there is a further secret agreement that is even more to their liking, and the country’s president has been gloating about it on Twitter — “tweeting” apparently being permissible within fundamentalist Islam — while one of its generals has bragged to the press that it’s all due to the world’s fear of Iran’s military might.
Although the White House has denied any secret agreement it has also been suspiciously secretive about the details of what has been agreed to, and what the president has publicly said about the matter sounds considerably less cocky. In remarks to the press the president noted the agreement provides “time and space” to reach yet another agreement, that he can still decide not to agree to it and go back to the sanctions that led to the agreement, that congress shouldn’t re-impose sanctions, and that “What we want to do is give diplomacy a chance, and give peace a chance.”
It is never a good omen when a president of the United States is chanting old hippie slogans, but it is especially worrisome in response to the martial chest-thumping of theocratic nutcases intent on acquiring nuclear weapons. There is still a chance that Congress might scuttle the deal by continuing sanctions, as even some Democrats are unimpressed with the plan, and we hope they will do so despite the White House warnings that it would provoke a war. Allowing an apocalyptic suicide cult to set off a nuclear arms race in a traditionally bellicose region gripped by ancient and irrational hatreds cannot end well, and doing so for the sake of giving peace a chance makes no sense.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 