Surprise! Republicans Criticize Iran Deal
The biggest nuclear breakthrough to come down the pipe in more than a decade,
The P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China,facilitated by the European Union) has been engaged in serious and substantive negotiations with Iran with the goal of reaching a verifiable diplomatic resolution that would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
President Obama has been clear that achieving a peaceful resolution that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is in America’s national security interest. Today, the P5+1 and Iran reached a set of initial understandings that halts the progress of Iran’s nuclear program and rolls it back in key respects. These are the first meaningful limits that Iran has accepted on its nuclear program in close to a decade. The initial, six month step includes significant limits on Iran’s nuclear program and begins to address our most urgent concerns including Iran’s enrichment capabilities; its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium; the number and capabilities of its centrifuges; and its ability to produce weapons-grade plutonium using the Arak reactor. The concessions Iran has committed to make as part of this first step will also provide us with increased transparency and intrusive monitoring of its nuclear program.
…a deal that gives hope to the people of Iran that peace and change in an unforgiving and cynical world is possible,
Iran user: What a great morning! You wake up & facebook is full hope & joy, friends report an agreement. May this happen always. #IranTalks
“Unless the agreement requires dismantling of the Iranian centrifuges, we really haven’t gained anything,” tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina.
“By allowing the Iranian regime to retain a sizable nuclear infrastructure, this agreement makes a nuclear Iran more likely,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, the freshman Florida Republican and potential presidential candidate in 2016. “This agreement shows other rogue states that wish to go nuclear that you can obfuscate, cheat, and lie for a decade, and eventually the United States will tire and drop key demands.”
“Iran will likely use this agreement – and any that follows that does not require any real concessions – to obtain a nuclear weapons capability,” he warned.
…and this piece of Goebbels-worthy garbage from Texas senator, John Cornyn:
Dumb.
Really, what the hell is wrong with these people? A negotiated deal with Iran, a year in the making, and the opening gambit in a plan that seeks peace and stability in the Middle East, is now perceived by the right as a distraction from the only issue that matters to them – taking down the Affordable Care Act.
Yes to manufactured scandals (Benghazi!Benghazi!Benghazi!) and yes to destroying the first real attempt to deal with a broken and dysfunctional health care system in which 50 million Americans are unable to afford health insurance…
…and no to dealing with the problem of nuclear proliferation and diplomatic solutions in place of military action.
Leadership and diplomacy from this president is something conservatives will never accept. We saw it last September when diplomatic efforts on the part of the Obama administration prevented a military strike on Syria and opened up the country to chemical weapons inspectors. In any reasonable scenario that should have been viewed as a diplomatic coup. Not so for Republicans who in the best of times would never be mistaken to be reasonable.
Amazing, Senator Cornyn? Not at all. It’s what smart and effectual leaders do – not that you’d know a whole hell of a lot about that.
Final thought: If President Obama really wanted a distraction from the ACA’s disastrous rollout, he’d actually make neocon’s wet dream of another Middle East war come true. He’d bomb Iran. I wonder what they’d have to say then.
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Seniors for a Democratic Society 
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