Wall Street Journal: New Tensions Emerge in Iran Nuclear Talks
Heated exchanges took place among foreign ministers as Washington and Tehran struggled to overcome remaining hurdles to a final agreement.
VIENNA—Tensions in the nuclear talks between Iran and six powers have boiled over in recent days, producing heated exchanges among foreign ministers as Washington and Tehran struggled to overcome remaining hurdles to a final agreement, according to people involved in the talks.
The German and British foreign ministers returned to the Austrian capital Wednesday evening as Western diplomats insisted a deal was still possible in coming days. However, time was running out for the agreement to be sealed before a deadline this week, which would give the U.S. Congress an extra month to review a deadline.
People close to the talks have warned that the longer Congress and opponents of the diplomacy get to pick over an agreement and galvanize opposition, the greater the political risks for supporters of the process, which aims to block Iran’s path to nuclear weapons in exchange for lifting tight international sanctions.
WNU Editor: From my experience .... when people are shouting at each other .... a lasting and "solid" resolution or solution to a dispute can never be found.
Just whose shouting at whom here? Are the German, Russian, Chinese, British, and Iranian foreign ministers all shouting at US officials? This would seem to be the only reasonable situation where folks would be shouting at each other here.
ReplyDeleteIt needs to be understood, if this is a poker game, Iran holds all the cards here. The US essentially has nothing here. As for those sanctions, they are going to be lifted even if America opposes them with everything in its power and neglects everything else. If I understand this, I'm pretty sure the Iranians do and I'm pretty sure the other members of the P5+1 have made this abundantly clear to the American delegation.
I watched K.T. Macfarland on Fox News this morning. This talking head pundit blathered about how the US "holds all the cards", "sanctions hurting Iran's economy", and an assortment of other nonsense. Allegedly this lady was a top official in the Reagan Administration. Did she become stupid since this time or has she always been this stupid? since it seems unlikely that one could be really smart and become that stupid unless they've gone senile of which she does not look old enough to have become senile. As such, I must conclude she has always been this stupid. It makes me wonder how we survived Cold War I!! God help us all!!
It's also been my experience that when people are shouting at each other a lasting and solid resolution generally cannot be found. In these cases, we were generally dealing with sides who had relatively equal positions. Given the superiority of the Iranian position over the American one, the Americans are no doubt under a great deal of pressure to make a deal in accordance to whatever Iran wants, US leaders want a deal as badly as they've ever wanted anything, and with the exception of a few Gulf Arab states and Israel the Iranians have pretty much the entire world behind them. (I wish Israel and the Gulf Arab states would have handled this problem about 8 years ago. If any deal is going to be made, I would insist on the interests of Israel being properly represented to the best of my ability as Israel is our most important and most reliable ally.)
As I think I've stated previously, I would have walked away from these negotiations long, long ago and would have begun preparing for the inevitable nuclear armed Iran with sanctions fully lifted. I recognized we were not going to be able to stop this back in 2007. Unfortunately we've lost 8 years we could have and should have spent preparing!!