Behold the sainted international community's faith in Iran's pledges to behave:
The U.N. nuclear agency closed the books Tuesday on its decade-long probe of allegations that Iran worked on atomic arms, and Tehran proclaimed that within weeks, it would finish cutbacks on present nuclear programs that the U.S. fears could be turned into making such weapons. ...
Despite Iranian denials, the U.S. and its allies continue to believe that Tehran did work on components of a nuclear weapon. But their overriding interest is moving ahead to implement the July 14 deal.
Forward!
Say, guess what?
Iran violated a U.N. Security Council resolution in October by test-firing a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, a team of sanctions monitors said, leading to calls in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday for more sanctions on Tehran.
The White House said it would not rule out additional steps against Iran over the test of the medium-range Emad rocket.
Of course we've ruled out any effective step.
One, the missile test is part of separate UN provisions and not the actual faux nuclear deal with Iran. Never mind that ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads go together like mullahs and nutballery.
More important, what's past is past, right? And that Iranian missile test is in the past.
As will every Iranian violation of any commitment the moment after the violation takes place. We will always pretend that only the future matters.
And we can totally trust the Iranians not to pursue nuclear weapons.
Damn the violations! Full speed ahead!
UPDATE: Our level of confidence for how likely it is that Iran will become a responsible regional power rather than an aggressive, Shia Islamist, nuclear power is apparently rather low:
U.S. and NATO officials have certified an anti-missile defense site in southern Romania which is scheduled to become operational next year.
Russia has objected to the deployment, but officials insisted that the U.S-led shield is designed to protect NATO members from possible attacks from the Middle East.
The Russians perhaps thought that they had logic on their side: "help" us get a nuclear deal with Iran and therefore remove the reason to build an anti-missile shield in Europe that would also interfere with Russia's ability to nuke Europe with minimal loss of missiles.
I guess nobody has confidence in that logic or that deal. Good call.
