Credit where credit's due...but only where it's due: How Can Obama Claim the Alternative to a Nuclear Deal with Iran is War?

By Dave Lindorff

A kudo to President Obama. But just one.

If he manages to pull off an agreement with Iran on limiting that country's nuclear fuel enrichment program in the fact of determined resistance from Republicans, Neocons, the Israel Lobby and the warmongers in both the GOP and his own Democratic Party, he will have finally earned at least some small portion of the gold in his Nobel Peace medallion.

We could reasonably ask why he thinks it's cool to negotiate with the "Axis of Evil" nation of Iran over the nuclear issue, but not with Russia over Ukraine. After all, Iran doesn't even have a nuclear weapon, and on the evidence, isn't trying to build one, so these negotiations aren't really even preventing a nuclear war; they're just calming the nerves of some trigger happy paranoids in Israel and Washington. But Russia does have nuclear weapons, and has made it clear that if the US pushes too hard at putting NATO weapons and forces near the Russian border, or if it tries to undo the annexation of Crimea, it will use them. Shouldn't that kind of thing call for cool-headed negotiation, instead of aggressive moves like sending offensive armaments to Kiev?

But then we have some other issues too.

If Obama really wants an agreement with Iran on limiting its nuclear fuel enrichment program, why is he being so hard-assed about ending the grinding sanctions that have been imposed on the country? I mean a deal's a deal. If one side gives you want you want, you have to give something in return. You can't say, okay you stop enriching uranium, dilute the stuff that you already enriched to 20%, back down to 3.5%, and shut down most of your centrifuges so you can't make much anymore. But we're not going to end sanctions until you have done this for a while so we know you mean it.

That's double dealing, and hardly conducive to building a new relationship with a country that has good reason to doubt your own sincerity (after all, the US corporate media in reporting on this story never mention it, but Iranian antipathy towards the US didn't begin with the overthrow of America's puppet, the Shah of Iran. It began in the 1950s with a coup orchestrated by the CIA and British intelligence which overthrew Iran's secular elected government -- a catastrophe from which Iran has never recovered.

In fact, as part of the deal Iran probably should have insisted on an apology for that outrage, along with a promise to never again meddle in Iran's internal politics...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to:www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2713