Trump the unlikely populist

The New Neo Posted on by

I watched Trump’s speech in Mobile last night without ever planning to do so. I was flipping around looking for something to watch on TV (in the background while I was doing some cooking) and noticed that CNN was showing it with comprehensive, wall-to-wall coverage, as though it was of the same importance as a State of the Union message.

That in and of itself got my attention. Not only that, the commentary at CNN seemed surprisingly respectful and even serious—not a lot of mocking and derision. So I watched, despite the fact that (as regular readers here know) I don’t like to listen to political speeches.

Of course, Trump giving a political speech is not like anyone else giving a political speech. He’s in his element in front of a crowd. And even in Alabama, the New York shtick that you would think wouldn’t play so well there seems to be something they love when Trump does it. People are really really really sick of feeling impotent as Obama has thumbed his nose at them and lied to them, as the GOP has either disappointed or outright betrayed them, and as PC thought has taken over our values, education, the press, some churches, and many novels and movies.

Trump seems immune from PC considerations and also from the ubiquitous need to be beholden to conventional donors. He has the advantage of his familiarity to the public and his relaxation in front of the camera gained from years of being a showman and a TV personality. Trump has a populist appeal—you could see it very clearly during his speech—but he’s a rich-as-Croesus populist who doesn’t trash the rich as so many populists do; au contraire. Nor does he apologize for being mega-rich himself; he brags.

Trump has mastered not just the “art of the deal” but the art of giving a speech that sounds like ad-libbing stream-of-consciousness but is not. As he went along it occurred to me that what he is doing is cheerleading for America, reiterating over and over what he would do for America and what he would do for the people he is speaking to, and fitting his words to their desire that America be what it once was. It’s the flip side of Obama’s hope and change: they hope that he can change things back to a time when America was great, and that’s his explicit message and the slogan on the very flyover-country-looking hats he wears and sells. This is a guy who knows marketing, and it’s no accident that the slogan is also pretty much what Reagan used in 1980 (Reagan put the word “let’s” at the beginning of the phrase, but otherwise it was exactly the same).

Trump is a happy warrior, or at least talks like one. “I will rebuild the military so it’s so strong and so powerful that we’ll never have to use it. No one will ever mess with us” is a typical utterance. He lists stuff—trade, health care, women’s health issues—and says “we’re gonna fix it.” And I guess people believe him, or at least believe he’s sincere about trying. How he’ll get around the impediments that stand in the way is unclear, but people don’t want clarity. They like his style. They like his spirit

“We have a great lack of spirit,” said Trump, and he’s right; and he’s out to provide it, and he does. He says he had thought Obama would be “a great cheerleader,” (hmmm, I thought; I just perceived him as a cheerleader a moment ago, and now he’s using the word). Instead, Obama is “a great divider.” But Trump? “I am going to make this country bigger and stronger and better and you’re gonna love it, and you’re gonna love your president…and you’re gonna be so proud.”

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I’m not a Trump supporter, but that I also get his appeal. Watching him speak at length, I “got” it even more. He makes all other politicians look boring and stilted (hey, many of them are boring and stilted). He makes it all sound so simple—just as Obama did, but in a completely different direction and with a completely, and I mean completely, different style. Populist appeal is a neat trick in a man who’s a multi-billionaire and who grew up in enormous wealth and graduated from Wharton. But he’s got it, and although I’m sure he carefully nurtures it he manages to make it look natural.

From the start of Trump’s rise in the polls I’ve taken him very seriously as a phenomenon. I haven’t understood those who casually asserted “He’s never going to win the nomination.” I’ve long thought he could, because the force of that appeal is obvious, and he’s somehow made himself immune to being criticized for anything he says. His niche is “the more outrageous, the better,” and the more extreme his utterances the more his supporters seem to like him—although not all of what he says is extreme, of course, and some is just common sense.

If I were one of the other Republican candidates I’d be very very scared. And if I were one of the Democratic candidates I’d be scared, too.

Here’s the entire speech, if you’re interested:

“Would any of us voluntarily enter into a deal where we had to play Russian roulette?”

The New Neo Posted on by

Dershowitz on the Iran deal, and his proposal for a better deal.

A proposal which, I might add, is probably moot. But the interview is well worth listening to.

It always seems odd to me how the obviously brilliant Dershowitz voted for Obama twice. But of course, it’s not odd at all. I’ve noticed how often it is that political affiliation overrules judgement, particularly on the liberal end. Even now, as Dershowitz talks, half of what he says is insightful and tough and half is naive—“naive” because I think he’s a liberal and a patriot rather than a leftist.

More on the thwarted terrorist train attack

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, it turns out there weren’t any Marines involved. Which turns out not to have really mattered.

And there were three Americans, not two. One is in the Air Force, one in the Oregon National Guard, and one a civilian. The three—who are friends—were the ones who tackled and pinned the shooter (the pinning accomplished with the help of an older British man).

It is unclear, but the shooter’s gun may have jammed—although, if so, they had no idea this was the case when they made their charge towards him. One passenger also appears to have gotten shot in the neck by the gunman before they managed to stop further carnage. There were no fatalities and everyone is expected to survive.

Instead of trying to describe the scene, I’ll just let three of them tell about it. The most heroic of all is in the hospital and therefore not part of the interview, although he’s reported to be doing well despite having been badly cut by the gunman:

This is rich:

The man who attacked the train yesterday is denying that he is a terrorist, and claims only to have planned to rob the train.

French TV channel BFMTV also reports that he claimed he found the bag of weapons “in a park in Brussels”.

No doubt.

Here are some facts about the three Americans, with photos. Some of the descriptions of the attack and their actions are based on earlier accounts and are incorrect, but I put the links here because of the photos:

Spencer Stone, Air Force, and the man who was wounded.

Alek Skarlatos, National Guard, who recently served in Afghanistan.

Anthony Sadler, Sacramento resident on his first trip to Europe.

[ADDENDUM: More information here:

When a French passenger tried to enter a bathroom on the train, he encountered the gunman and tried to overpower him and the gun was then fired, Mr Cazeneuve said.

A French-American passenger was injured by the bullet, and the American passengers intervened shortly afterward, he said.

“Spencer got to the guy first and grabbed the guy by the neck,” Mr Skarlatos told Sky News.

“I grabbed the handgun, got that away from the guy and threw it. Then I grabbed the AK-47, which was at his feet, and started muzzle-bumping him in the head with it.

“Everybody just started beating the guy while Spencer held the chokehold until he went unconscious.”

If you scroll down, there’s a wonderful video (I can’t seem to embed it) of an interview with Sadler’s parents. Do yourself a favor and watch it.]

Send the Marines

The New Neo Posted on by

This is quite a headline, and quite a story:

“Unarmed US Marines foil suspected terrorist attack onboard high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris after they take down Kalashnikov-wielding Moroccan gunman known to intelligence services”

A group of unarmed US Marines on board a high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris foiled a terrorist attack after a gunman opened fire with an assault rifle, wounding three people.

The 26-year-old Moroccan national, who was known to security services, came out of the toilet brandishing the gun and opened fire. Fortunately, two US Marines were nearby and overpowered him before he could massacre passengers.

The suspected terrorist had at least nine full magazines of ammunition holding almost 300 rounds. He was also carrying a knife.

Unfortunately, one of the Marines was shot and is believed to be in a critical condition.

…French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve praised the Marines for their timely intervention.

He said: ‘Thanks to them we have averted a drama.

‘(The Americans were) particularly courageous and showed extreme bravery in extremely difficult circumstances.’

That’s what Marines do.

I hope that at some point we get more information on exactly how the gunman was overpowered. It would be very instructive.

Oh, and this:

…Interior ministry spokesman Pierre Henry Brandet said:”…Talking about a terrorist motive would be premature at the moment.”

Sure.

[Hat tip: Ace.]

[ADDENDUM: So far (as of 5:50 PM 8/21/15) there’s not much about this from the American press. Let’s see if there ever is.]

[UPDATE 7 PM: There does seem to be a fair amount of coverage now. Good.]

And then there’s…

The New Neo Posted on by

…this.

From the video at the link:

“They’re scared that maybe there’s no place to make money. If the stock market’s not going to make you money, where do you make it now?”

When I was younger and looking towards this time of life, I figured on a certain return on my money that just isn’t possible right now, nor has it been since 2008. I’ve never had the stomach for the ups and downs of the market, and yet I’ve been in it somewhat because of the dilemma expressed in that last quote—how does a fairly modest investor who can’t accept high risk make much money these days?

When I was married, I let my husband handle it all, and I was very very happy to do so. When stocks rose it was nice, when they fell it was awful (I remember 1987). But I always retained my equanimity, in part because we were young, and then at least youngish, and could make more money and wait for the market to rise again.

Now, not so much. I also am well aware that many people have predicted much, much bigger and far more pervasive collapses in the not-too-distant future. It’s the nature of bubbles to burst.

Presidential characters

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s presidential characters, not character.

It occurs to me that one of the things people really like about Trump is that he is a character—flamboyant, unpredictable, colorful, one of a kind. We haven’t had too many of them in the White House (at least in recent years). And although that’s probably a good thing, it gets boring.

In my lifetime, the president Trump reminds me of the most in those particular respects—flamboyant, unpredictable, colorful, one of a kind— was LBJ. Not the public LBJ that we knew from his speeches, but the real LBJ, the private LBJ we only came to know much later. That LBJ was a tremendously eccentric and larger-than-life character. But that was hidden from America while he was president, just as JFK’s sexual escapades and the extent of FDR’s physical handicaps were.

When LBJ was president, he seemed a big drawling yawn of a guy (“Mah fellow Amerrrrcans”) but he was anything but. For example, he was a man who had a habit of—well, of this:

President Johnson did not mess around. He was constantly on the telephone, making dozens of calls every day, and was known for using more than one phone at a time. Apparently he wanted to get some serious talking done, because nowhere was off limits for conversation. Rather than put a conversation on hold, he would have reporters and aides follow him into the bathroom where the dialogue was supposed to continue. Needless to say this often inspired discomfort.

Johnson is reported to have had conversations while exposing his genitals, urinating in the sink, and sitting on the toilet, but as far as the observers could tell, it never caused him any embarrassment. Some presume that his actions stemmed from a desire to show his power and to put others in an awkward position so that he could better control the conversation. Possibly he simply didn’t want to stop talking.

But surely the President wouldn’t behave this way in front of women or influential people . . . right? Wrong. Presidential historian and former White House aide Doris Kearns Goodwin remembers not only regularly accompanying him to the restroom, but also his criticism of his National Security Advisor’s response when asked to accompany him in a similar manner. Apparently extremely uncomfortable with the situation, McGeorge Bundy stood in the farthest corner of the bathroom with his back toward Johnson. The president, dissatisfied with the speaking arrangements, said, “Come closer, come closer.” Bundy complied, and Johnson later remarked, “I thought he was going to sit on my lap! Hasn’t that guy ever been in the Army?”

Now, I’m not suggesting that Trump does anything of the sort, or ever would. But I am suggesting that both LBJ and Trump are sui generis, bold, and unafraid of considerations of taste and decorum that might give other people in their positions pause. This is why we both hate them and like them—there is something transgressive about them.

Trump is also, or at least has been in the past, a womanizer. LBJ shared that particular trait, in abundance:

Johnson had “an unfillable hole in his ego,” Moyers says. Feelings of emptiness spurred him to eat, drink, and smoke to excess. Sexual conquests also helped to fill the void. He was a competitive womanizer. When people mentioned Kennedy’s many affairs, Johnson would bang the table and declare that he had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose.

A while back I compared Trump to Ross Perot. I still think there’s something to that, including the fact that Perot himself was another character.

On the technicalities of the Iran deal and the bigger picture

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve spent countless hours reading about and trying to understand the technical parts of the Iran arms deal—the details of the proposed inspections, what that actually means, and whether it all would be adequate in terms of stopping Iran from duplicitously evading the deal’s requirements or of stopping Iran from having the capacity for nuclear weapons very soon (a short “break-out time”) even if it complied completely with the inspection requirements.

But I find myself coming up against the stumbling block of scientific complexity. This is true whether we’re talking about inspections concerning future actions by Iran, or concerning past actions (Parchin and the “side deal”). I try to learn before I write, but there’s a limit to what I can learn, and there are time pressures. After all, I’m not writing a book, or even a magazine article. I’m writing a blog.

For example, I learned a lot yesterday researching this post I wrote on Parchin. I found some supposed experts about nuclear arms development who wrote the equivalent of “don’t worry about it, it’s fine, and so are the regular inspections under the deal.” That doesn’t change a host of other things not of a technical nature about the deal, of course, such as the lifting of sanctions and the intent of the Iranian regime and the keeping of the four prisoners, for example. Nor does it address the competence of the IAEA to do what it says it will do. It doesn’t even tell us who these experts are and what their political agenda is, something I’ve learned can be very very important in evaluating things.

It also fails to answer questions about what the experts leave out of their explanations. For example, when I did my research I could find no attempt in the pro-deal literature to respond to an important point made by Senator Menendez in his speech, when he wondered why the administration, in allowing Iran control over soil samples etc. in the side deal, chose to forego getting reliable forensics to find out something about Parchin that has been the goal of the international community for years: “to determine how far along [the Iranians] were in their nuclear weaponization program so that we know what signatures to look for in the future”¦it makes a difference if you are 90 percent down the road in your weaponization efforts or only ten percent advanced.”

And so today when I saw this post by Josh Marshall it seemed relevant. In it, Marshall (a liberal/left guy) tells us:

The opponents of the Iran nuclear deal are doing fairly well in the media-pundit-sphere. But they’ve had an extremely difficult time making substantive arguments against the deal because according to almost all technical experts it is about as tight and comprehensive and total a surveillance regime as we’ve ever seen. Ever. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon under any circumstances for 10 to 20 years. Unless they choose to cheat. And if they do, the U.S. and the international community will almost certainly catch them and catch them before they’re able to weaponize. But here’s the problem ”” that’s only the opinion of people who actually know what they’re talking about…

Let me share with you a deep truth: The nuclear stuff is complicated.

Indeed it is complicated in the technical scientific sense (at least, to those of us who aren’t scientists). And although that’s relevant, nowhere near all the objections to the deal are either technical and scientific (I’ve already listed some that aren’t; there are others). Among other things, one gets into the realm of wondering why we should trust a couple of experts whose politics and biases we know nothing about, and who although expert are hardly error-proof. Experts have been proven wrong time and again (in another passage in his speech, Menendez addresses that fact). Experts also might be naive in terms of their imaginative powers concerning how they might be deceived and in what creative ways a determined group of people can do so.

People can be forgiven for not trusting those experts who have proven wrong in many ways. People can be forgiven for thinking that no inspection regime, no matter how supposedly rigorous, can stop an enemy bent on evading it or even on merely defying it and saying “So, what are you going to do about it?” People can be forgiven for believing that Iran means exactly what it says when it repeatedly calls America the Great Satan and screams for its death (and for the death of the Little Satan, Israel, and celebrates a special holiday dedicated to its obliteration).

Omri Ceren discusses a different set of problems with the Parchin side deal, the lies that have been told so far:

The Obama administration spent the last two years telling lawmakers and reporters that any deal with Iran would require the Iranians to provide International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors robust access to the Parchin military base, where the Iranians conducted hydrodynamic experiments relevant to the detonation of nuclear warheads. The IAEA needs the access to determine how far the Iranians got as a prerequisite to establishing a verification regime. Here’s Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in 2013: the Joint Plan of Action requires Iran to “address past and present practices… including Parchin”; Sherman in 2014: “as part of any comprehensive agreement… we expect, indeed, Parchin to be resolved”; State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf in 2015: “we would find it… very difficult to imagine a JCPA that did not require such [inspector] access at Parchin”; etc…

White House officials and validators continued to declare that in no way would the IAEA ever agree to that kind of arrangement, since it would preclude the agency from securing a chain of custody over the evidence. But the administration refused to transmit the side deal to Congress””which would have resolved the debate””and instead claimed that the U.S. couldn’t get the text because it was a confidential Iran-IAEA bilateral agreement. Business Insider confirmed that in fact U.S. diplomats can call for the agreement at any time because Washington sits on the IAEA’s Board of Governors. Nonetheless Kerry told Congress that not only did the U.S. not have the text, but that he hadn’t even seen the final wording, though he added that maybe “Wendy Sherman may have” (she subsequently clarified she hadn’t either).

Thursday the AP revealed that its reporters had””in contrast””seen a draft reflecting the final language, and that they were in a position to confirm the concessions made to Iran…

On a political level, that absurdity will confirm suspicions that the IAEA has been pressured by parties who want to put aside substantive concerns over the viability of the nuclear deal in order to preserve it at all costs.

Those are the sorts of considerations that are ignored by the “experts” and by Josh Marshall in his piece suggesting that we should just trust that they are doing what’s in our best interests, and that we are too stupid to know better.

Great early photos

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are some fabulous pictures from the dawn of photography.

I’ve seen a lot of old photos and daguerreotypes. In fact, I own a lot of old photos and daguerreotypes, many of ancestors whose names have been lot in the mists of time and probably will never be recovered. I’m not sure what to do with those; I’m loathe to throw them out but loathe to save them when I’m pretty sure they won’t mean a thing to those who come after me.

But the photos at the link are especially arresting. Unlike a lot of old photos where the subjects seem to have glazed, blank eyes from sitting around and posing statuelike for too long, quite a few of these people seem modern in their expressions. You get the idea they could walk off the computer screen and you could talk to them quite easily. The gulf does not seem very wide at all.

There’s also the first selfie:

selfie

Carly Fiorina: blue diaper baby

The New Neo Posted on by

Hugh Hewitt has a good interview with Carly Fiorina that focuses mainly, but not hardly exclusively, on Hillary Clinton’s problems with her server and her explanations about it.

The following portion of the interview interested me in particular, however. You know the expression “red diaper baby,” for people who were raised by leftist parents and steeped in their philosophy (I know an awful lot of those myself)? Well, Fiorina might be called a “blue diaper baby” (blue having been the original color for the right, and red for the left):

HH: I learned recently ”“ and I did not know this ”“ that you are the daughter of Judge Sneed.

CF: I am.

HH: One of the great ”“ I had no idea, I served with his colleague George MacKinnon and Roger Rob on the D.C. Circuit as their clerk and Judge Sneed was a hero ”“ so obviously you have a conservative judicial temperament and if I ask you what kind of judges you would appoint I imagine you would say judges like Judge Sneed (laughs).

CF: That’s correct. My dad was a great conservative jurist. I watched him on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ”“ obviously one of the most liberal courts in the land ”“ stick to his principles. He wrote many, many, many, many dissenting opinions and was very proud of the fact that when the Supreme Court reversed the 9th Circuit ”“ which happened frequently ”“ that they would just as frequently cite his opinions. So I’ve been asked a lot what kind of justices I would appoint to the Supreme Court and the answer is men and women like my dad. And I also will say, Hugh, because you asked me, that it’s hard to be a conservative jurist. Humility and restraint are required if you are a conservative. You have to be humble enough and restrained enough that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. And in many cases, the humility and restraint to say “You know what, I may not like that the law is this way, but my job isn’t to decide what the law should be. My job is to decide what the law is. I may wish the Constitution were different, but the Constitution is what it is, and our job is to honor and uphold the Constitution. That takes humility and restraint. And I do believe that when we think about the character of our leaders, whether they are presidents or Secretaries of State or Supreme Court justices, we ought to be looking truthfulness ”“ of course ”“ and capability ”“ certainly ”“ and courage is important as well. But I think humility and restraint are undervalued virtues.

I heard another interview in which she discusses learning conservative values at her father’s knee, and how he used to read the Times every day and rail at it. I don’t have time to locate the quote now, but I’m fairly sure it was part of this interview she did at Ace’s.

That Parchin side deal: what’s it about?

The New Neo Posted on by

Even for those of us long inured to the multiple betrayals and lies of the Obama administration, the news yesterday was shocking: the AP story that they had seen documents attesting to an alleged “side deal” in which the UN’s IAEA will allow Iran to do its own inspections of the Parchin nuclear site. This is an agreement the US signed off on but to which it was not party:

The agreement in question diverges from normal procedures by allowing Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence of activities it has consistently denied ”” trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Olli Heinonen, who was in charge of the Iran probe as deputy IAEA director general from 2005 to 2010, said he could think of no similar concession with any other country. and then report to the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

The White House has repeatedly denied claims of a secret side deal favorable to Tehran. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told Republican senators last week that he was obligated to keep the document confidential…

…wording suggests that ”” beyond being barred from physically visiting the site ”” the agency won’t get photo or video information from areas Iran says are off-limits because they have military significance.

But Reuters reports that the IAEA chief Amano has denied it. Or, sort of denied it. See what you think of this careful language:

“I am disturbed by statements suggesting that the IAEA has given responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. Such statements misrepresent the way in which we will undertake this important verification work,” IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said in an unusually strongly worded statement on Thursday…

“I can state that the arrangements are technically sound and consistent with our long-established practices. They do not compromise our safeguards standards in any way,” Amano said.

The U.S. State Department said on Thursday the IAEA would “in no way” hand over responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. “That is not how the IAEA does business,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

“The U.S. government’s nuclear experts are confident in the Agency’s technical plans for investigating the possible military dimensions of Iran’s former program,” he said.

So, Amano is denying that the IAEA “has given responsibility” to Iran for inspections. State Department spokesman Kirby echoes that “responsibility” wording. They all say they are bound to keep the agreement confidential. And the head of the IAEA says to trust the IAEA and that everything’s great. John Kerry has already said in his testimony that he has not even seen the side agreement, which was negotiated between Iran and the IAEA. And Senators have been complaining for quite some time that they have not been given enough information on it.

One of the things that’s frustrating about all these articles is their incompleteness. For example, why should we care about inspections at Parchin in particular? Why would the arrangements there for inspections be secret and separate from the other sites? In other words, what’s Parchin about?

Business Insider reports that Aaron Stein, an expert on nuclear proliferation, has said that Parchin is an old site, a “red herring,” and “They won’t find anything there [anyway]”” it’s completely stripped of anything of value.”

In addition, ten days ago this piece appeared in the WaPo from another nuclear expert, David Albright, who said:

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said over the weekend that my organization, the Institute for Science and International Security, was spreading lies when we published satellite imagery that showed renewed, concerning activity at the Parchin military site near Tehran…But…the Iranians chose to deny the visible evidence in commercial satellite imagery. Iran’s comments would be mirthful if the topic were not so serious.

Here’s a related report from a few days earlier, indicating the same thing. This renewed “activity” may be an effort to cover up evidence of past activity there, but the effort to sort it all out is headache-inducing. This article in Haaretz, a leftist Israeli paper, is actually quite informative, including a long quote from the Obama administration by Ned Price, National Security Council spokesperson, who points out that the inspections of Parchin deal solely with past activities. Haaretz reports on what it sees as the most troublesome aspects:

The Iranians would supply the UN inspectors with still photographs and video footage of several locations within the Parchin compound where components for the production of nuclear weapons are suspected to have been tested. The Iranians may use their own equipment, which will be examined by UN inspectors only to make sure it is in working order.

Even though Iran has been given widespread authority to inspect the site, they are still resisting an inspecting of the entire Parchin compound, terming several locations in it “out of bounds” – meaning no photographs or any other information about them would be handed over to UN inspectors.

Another troubling clause in the draft determines that even though Iranian scientists would be those who sample the soil and the air in Parchin, this activity would be limited, and UN inspectors would receive only seven soil and air samples from the building in which Iran is suspected of having tested the nuclear weapons components.

That quote goes a long way, I think, towards explaining Amano’s language re “responsibility.” As best I can piece it together, IAEA officials will have final “responsibility” but in many cases Iranians will give them the data and the evidence.

This may actually be the most informative article of all, because it describes the history of Parchin and why it matters to the Iran deal. The summary paragraph is this:

Knowing what happened at Parchin more than a decade ago remains key to ending the nuclear crisis because the accord reached last month in Vienna stipulates that sanctions can only be lifted if Tehran resolves all of the IAEA’s concerns over the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program — both past and present.

But it actually was the speech the other day by Senator Menendez (text here) that was most helpful to me in explaining the significance of Parchin. It’s a long speech, but well worth reading in its entirety. Here’s the most relevant excerpt:

The goal that we have long sought, along with the international community, is to know what Iran accomplished at Parchin — not necessarily to get Iran to declare culpability — but to determine how far along they were in their nuclear weaponization program so that we know what signatures to look for in the future…it makes a difference if you are 90 percent down the road in your weaponization efforts or only ten percent advanced. How far advanced Iran’s weaponizing abilities are has a significant impact on what Iran’s breakout time to an actual deliverable weapon will be…

With so much at stake, the IAEA — after waiting over ten years to inspect Parchin, speak to Iranian nuclear scientists, and review additional materials and documents — are now told they will not have direct access to Parchin…

For me, the administration’s willingness to forgo a critical element of Iran’s weaponization — past and present — is inexplicable.

And here’s another excellent point he makes about our own track record in monitoring nuclear development:

The U.S. track record in detecting and stopping countries from going nuclear should make Kerry more modest in his claims and assumptions. The U.S. missed the Soviet Union, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. Washington underestimated Saddam’s program in 1990. Then it overestimated his program in 2003 and went to war to stop a nonexistent WMD program.’…

It is precisely because of this track record that permitting Iran to have the size and scope of an industrialized nuclear program, permitted under the JCPOA is one of the great flaws of the agreement.

It’s also well worth reading this WSJ piece on what’s wrong with the inspections that are supposed to be so foolproof and rigorous according to the administration—the ones about future activity, not past ones at Parchin.

In summary, I’ll just add this quote from Menendez about the entire deal (not just Parchin):

The deal enshrines for Iran, and in fact commits the international community to assisting Iran in developing an industrial-scale nuclear power program, complete with industrial scale enrichment. While I understand that this program will be subject to Iran’s obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, I think it fails to appreciate Iran’s history of deception in its nuclear program and its violations of the NPT.

Its “history of deception” is exactly what the American public has been reacting to. And not just Iran’s history of deception; that of the Obama administration, too.

And then there’s the relationship between Iran and the IAEA:

Should a nuclear accord be signed this time [this was written July 1, not long before the accord was announced], it will aim to primarily constrain, not permanently roll back or “dismantle,” Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure. In that case””in which Iran is still left with significant nuclear capacity””an accurate and comprehensive Iranian declaration of all its nuclear undertakings to the IAEA is essential for reliable monitoring and verification. Absent this complete declaration, including the oft-cited “Possible Military Dimensions” (PMD), IAEA inspectors can neither assemble a clear picture of Iran’s nuclear program, nor set a reference point against which to monitor it and verify there is no violation or diversion.

Iran has a long history of failing to report critical elements of its nuclear activities.

Please read the whole thing.

Obama to world: it’s okay to violate sanctions

The New Neo Posted on by

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, there’s this news:

Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) disclosed in the letter to the State Department that U.S. lawmakers have been shown copies of several letters sent by the Obama administration to the Chinese, German, French, and British governments assuring them that companies doing business with Iran will not come under penalty.

The Obama administration is purportedly promising the foreign governments that if Iran violates the parameters of a recently inked nuclear accord, European companies will not be penalized, according to the secret letters…

“These letters appear to reassure these foreign governments that their companies may not be impacted if sanctions are re-imposed in response to Iranian violations of the agreement,” [Kirk and Rubio] claim [in the letter]. “While Administration officials have claimed that this is not the case, we think it is important for the American public to be able to read your assurances to foreign governments for themselves as their elected representatives review this deal in the coming weeks.”

“The conditions under which foreign investment in Iran would proceed under the nuclear agreement remain unclear,” Kirk and Rubio wrote. “On July 23, 2015, Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that companies that have invested in Iran would ”˜not be able to continue doing things that are in violation of the sanctions’ if sanctions snap back.”

“Foreign investment in Iran will involve long-term contracts in many cases, however, and some interpretations of the Iran agreement indicate these contracts might be protected from the snap-back of sanctions by a so-called ”˜grandfather clause,’” they write.

There’s more in there, but that’s the gist of it.

One of the big arguments Obama and Kerry have used for the Iran deal is that the sanctions were falling apart anyway. However, they were falling apart even before the deal because the US was signalling it would be abandoning them soon, and was desperate to make such a deal. So Obama/Kerry used the fruits of their own abandonment of sanctions to justify lifting sanctions.

One of the other ways in which Obama/Kerry argued for the deal has been the “snap-back” clause, which would revive sanctions in case of Iranian violations. But that’s a horse that’s very difficult to get back in the barn once let out. Now we know they weren’t even going to try.