TOC Ready Room 5 Dec 2021: Iran, nukes, Turkey, Ommy-cron – and DeSantis, oh my

This Ready Room installment will be a little different, functioning more as a way of getting some headlines out there than as a more select batch of analyses.  Events are flying thick and fast, and in some ways it isn’t useful to keep going over the same old ground with them (e.g., “Iran nuclear negotiations,” which are lame and tired and haven’t changed in character for at least 18 years).

Nothing has changed with Iran negotiations, except the level of uranium enrichment

In fact, let’s just start with that.  Back in 2013, when the pre-JCPOA “Petunia” was being negotiated with Iran – what became known as the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) – I pointed out that Iran was participating in talks in order to delay decision points for the West.

Expert: Team Obama ‘doesn’t understand’ terms of its own Iran deal

 

AP image

Here’s one I never expected to hear about a presidential administration negotiating America’s national security issues:

Nuclear expert Gregory Jones expressed concern that the administration “does not fully understand” the deal it signed [with Iran].

This will be short.  But

So, what they’re saying is: We skeptics were right about the Iran “deal”

A fresh lament has emerged in the languid saga of the non-deal Iran “deal.”  Suddenly the spin is off the talking point.  Right out there in the open, people have abandoned the sweaty effort of talking as if there’s a deal when there isn’t one, and have lapsed into describing reality, which is that there are just more talks on the horizon – probably, maybe, if the Iranians come back after walking out on Tuesday – and an agreement is looking somewhere between “meh” and “not happening.”

That didn’t take long.  Take a moment to consider what did just happen.

Kerry tries desperately to force deal of century on Iran

 

Chasing Iran around the planet.

Objectively, the deal being offered to Iran in the talks in Geneva is a very good one, for Iran.  Iran already, preemptively, has either announced delays in disputed activities like starting up new centrifuge arrays and continuing construction at the Arak plutonium reactor, or has actually suspended them.  As regards those points of negotiation, Iran wouldn’t even have to change her reported plans over the next six months to comply with the six-month interim deal on offer.

Get real: With Obama and Iran, It’s Deal AND No Deal

Those TV commercials emphasizing the word “and” rather than “or” are the key to understanding the basic proposition in the current P5+1 negotiations with Iran.

In the commercials, ecstatic consumers prefer to get x and y, as opposed to getting x or y.  If it costs the same, who wouldn’t?  Certainly, it’s what Iran would prefer, in the current series of humorously named “negotiations”: relief from sanctions, and the opportunity to continue preparing for a nuclear breakout, with as few concessions to the P5+1 or a UN monitoring program as possible.  Ideally, there would be another “and” in the mix: