Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday ruled out freezing sensitive nuclear work in the country for a long time and said sanctions imposed on it should be lifted as soon it reaches a final deal with major powers, state TV reported.
So Iran wants cash but won't give us anything to get it?
I've long thought the outline of a nuclear deal with Iran is obvious: they will pretend not to have nuclear ambitions; and we will pretend to believe them.
Indeed, I thought we were half way there.
One caveat is that I wondered if Iran's contempt for us would prevent them from lowering themselves to even pretending to cave to our demands, on the assumption that they can rub our noses in our diplomatic defeat and get nukes.
So this statement by Khamenei gives me some hope--as long as we don't accept the nose-rubbing.
Is the appeal of a Nobel Peace Prize-winning faux deal simply irresistible?
The deal's so fine, there's no telling where the money went. We really are in dire straits, aren't we?
UPDATE: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
"This is something that's been going on throughout the negotiations," Kerry said of the Iranian leader's remarks. "It is not new. We are not going to be guided by or conditioned by or affected or deterred by some Tweet that is for public consumption or domestic political consumption. What matters to us is what is agreed upon within the four corners of a document and that is what is yet to be determined."
If Iran's negotiators are willing to pretend in writing not to have nuclear programs, Kerry and the Obama administration won't be worried by anything in the real world that contradicts that paper pretend world of nuclear containment.
Have a super sparkly day.
UPDATE: Say, here's some stuff within the four corners of a document:
The State Department released its annual report on terrorism on Friday, and surprise, surprise, Iran—with whom diplomats in other parts of Foggy Bottom are negotiating feverishly to secure a final nuclear deal—is prominently mentioned[.]
Ah, our proto-partners! Does this even matter to Kerry?
UPDATE: If you like your one-year nuclear breakout time period, you can keep your one-year period?
In a recent interview with NPR, [President Obama] said that the current breakout time is “about two to three months by our intelligence estimates.” By contrast, he claimed, the pending deal would shrink Iran’s nuclear program, so that if Iran later “decided to break the deal, kick out all the inspectors, break the seals and go for a bomb, we’d have over a year to respond.”
Unfortunately, that claim is false, as can be demonstrated with basic science and math. By my calculations, Iran’s actual breakout time under the deal would be approximately three months — not over a year.
Yeah. Always check the definitions section in nuclear deals.
