Posted on

It’s Getting Stupid on Iran

john-kerry-theridgewoodblog

From pretending only Republicans oppose a deal to pretending the U.S.’ reputation is in jeopardy, the stupid on Iran is reaching new highs.

Ed Krayewski|Apr. 6, 2015 12:15 pm

U.S., Iranian, and other negotiators from around the world are going to spend the next two and a half or so months hammering out a deal over Iran’s nuclear program. They spent the last several years hammering out the “outline” which the deal will follow but that doesn’t mean it’s a done deal—within days of the announcement of an agreement on the outline of a deal, Iranian and U.S. officials exchanged accusations that the other side was lying about what exactly had been agreed to in the outline. With six countries, including Iran and the U.S., involved in negotiations, and powerful forces in the U.S. and Iran against a deal that could eventually rob them of their favorite respective stalking horses, a deal is far from certain. It could fail for a litany of reasons.

Domestic opposition to a deal, in the U.S., in Iran, or in any of the other countries participating in the talks is unlikely to scutltle a deal on its own, but would be politically useful to blame by a government reeling from a failure. Domestic opposition, of course, is real. In the U.S. a significant amount of members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, oppose a deal. Liberals have tended to attribute domestic opposition solely to Republicans—Juan Cole laughably tried to connect billionaire donor Sheldon Adelson’s political activity to the prevailing anti-Iran atmosphere among Republican presidential candidates. Cole, like others on the left, are obsessed with Citizen’s United and corporations and other organizations of people spending money on political speech.

But the fact is an anti-Iranian mood has been around for longer than Adelson’s had an interest in presidential politics, and despite the popular media perception, is not exclusive to Republicans. Attributing Republican opposition to monied interests or to a hatred of Obama is intellectually lazy at best. If opposition to an Iran deal were limited only to Republicans then, even though Republicans now control both houses of Congress, it wouldn’t amount to much. When Fox News describes Obama and Congress on a “collision course” over Iran, that’s possible because of Democrat opposition to an Iran deal.

https://reason.com/blog/2015/04/06/its-getting-stupid-on-iran