In arguing for the international deal over Iran's nuclear program the Obama administration is selling, quite intentionally it seems, a (false) case for war on Iran.
The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, argues that the deal is good because the agreed upon additional IAEA inspections would make war on Iran easier:
The military option would remain on the table, but the fact is, that military option would be enhanced because we’d been spending the intervening number of years gathering significantly more detail about Iran’s nuclear program. So when it comes to the targeting decisions that would be made by military officials either in Israel or the United States, those targeting decisions would be significantly informed, and our capabilities improved, based on the knowledge that has been gained in the intervening years through this inspections regime.
Q So if Israel wants to contemplate it, it should wait?
MR. EARNEST: Well, again, what we believe —
Q That’s what you just said.
See – war is easier when we wait a while and let some inspections happen first. Then, when we have a new targeting list, …
Iran has official protested against that remark:
The International Atomic Energy Agency should “condemn categorically” statements made last month by a White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, Iran’s representative to the IAEA wrote in a July 24 letter to the agency’s director general, Yukiya Amano.
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Earnest’s “statement jeopardizes the role of the IAEA” under the Vienna agreement, Reza Najafi, Iran’s envoy to the agency, wrote in the letter. The IAEA must “ensure scrupulous compliance with the principle of confidentiality regarding all information related to the implementation of safeguards,” he added.
The IAEA, under the sycophantic U.S. puppet Yukiya Amano, did not respond to the Iranian letter.
Secretary of State Kerry is also boosting for war on Iran. In front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he argued that Iran is untrustworthy and a bad actor and actually wants nuclear weapons:
In two sentences, Kerry managed to combine the images of Iranian-supported terrorism and sectarian violence across the entire region and Iranian determination to get nuclear weapons. He told the committee about the administration's plans to “push back against Iran’s other activities – against terrorism support, its contribution to sectarian violence in the Middle East,” which he called “unacceptable”. Then he added: “But pushing back against an Iran with nuclear weapons is very different from pushing back against Iran without one.”
The administration’s determination to be just as alarmist about Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions as its opponents creates a US political discourse on the Iran nuclear issue built around two duelling narratives that disagree about the effect of the agreement but have one politically crucial common denominator: they both hold it as beyond debate that Iran cannot be trusted because it wants nuclear weapons; and the only question is whether and for how long that Iranian quest for nuclear weapons can be held off without war.
Obama himself claims that the nuclear agreement is the only alternative to waging war on Iran:
The president made it clear that if the goal is to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, the real choice is between the existing deal and a war. It's a simple fact, though one that skeptics have shied away from.
"Because more sanctions won’t produce the results that the critics want," Obama said, "congressional rejection of this deal leaves any U.S. administration only one option: another war in the Middle East. I say this not to be provocative. I’m stating a fact."
That argument, also made by some 'liberals', is of course complete nonsense. Iran has never strived for nuclear weapons. There is no reason for it to do so even without any agreement. It would just continue its civil nuclear program as it had planned and the IAEA would continue to inspect and report on it. The negotiations and deal with Iran came to pass because the U.S. needs to untangle itself from the chaos it created in the Middle East, not because Iran needs it.
Obama is clearly setting up a false choice and thereby creates the danger that any minor future hiccup in the execution of the agreement will lead to war on Iran "because Obama said so." As Micah Zenko explains:
The most stark and substantial claim made by the president and his senior advisers over the past two weeks is that Congress and the world faces a binary choice: either implement the JCPOA, or prepare for a war with Iran.
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[R]epeating the claim that there are only two choices—the JCPOA or war—is a false dichotomy that the Obama administration should refrain from making any longer. There are simply too many assumptions about the future decisions of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that must be true for this hypothesis to be correct.
The facts speak against Iranian plans for any weapon of mass destruction. Iran has a history of choosing not to use WMD even when it was attacked by such. U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies says that Iran has no nuclear weapon programs. There is absolutely no evidence that Iran and its political leaders have the intention to create one:
Predicting leadership intentions is inherently difficult, and the Obama administration should not assume that it can do so accurately for Iran’s supreme leader. Again, there are many better and more convincing reasons for supporting the JCPOA. Repeating the false dichotomy that it is either this diplomatic agreement or certain war is not one of them.
But repeating the false choice as the Obama administration does makes it very easy for those who want war to (again) invent some "intelligence" to pretend that Iran is not keeping to its agreements and to then go to war. Obama is creating the argument for them. Iran should not that and prepare accordingly. As I explained earlier:
The U.S. has a bad record of sticking to international deals it made.
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Netanyahoo's puppets in the U.S. congress will do their best to blockade the current deal. Should they not be able to do so attempts will be made to press the next U.S. president into breaking the agreement.
There is no sane reason for the Obama administration to use the "bad Iran" claims and the false choice argument "agreement or war". It is kicking the can down the road while making the argument for the next player to pick it up. One gets the feeling that the intentions behind this are not good at all.