Quote:No, that's not what i'm saying and that's not what we're saying.  

 

Why relieve american sanctions?  Why allow them to get 150 billion dollars?  At what point do they have to show that they are responsible?  At what point do they have to demonstrate that we tangibly get something out of making these economic concessions?  

 

You could have left those sanctions in place until Iran came to the table with a reasonable proposal.  As it stands now, we KNOW that they are still violating deals with the international community, buying weapons systems from Russia (the exact weapons systems to defend against air strikes in the event they violate the deal) and their leader is publishing books about how to trick and ultimately destroy America.  It's like something out of the twilight zone.  

 

Also, you can't just say that "well last time we went over there it didn't really work out" without confronting the reality that the reason for most of our setbacks was military assistance from the very country that we are making concessions to?  Quasim Soelimani himself is personally responsible for between 500-1000 deaths of US troops and Iran basically funded the post Sadamm Insurgency in Iraq.  Why give these people more money more weapons when they openly tell anyone who listens they aren't going to change their behavior towards Israel, they aren't going to change their behavior towards our interest in the region, they are going to ramp up their sponsorship of international terrorism that potentially threatens our stateside national security.  

 

To TJBender's point, if this deal truly represented a normalizing of relations and a turning from terrorism on the world stage from Iran then i could live with some of the concessions because the chance for them to neutralize their aggression in the region and stabilize the middle east would be too great to ignore.  Right now it looks like we are just further arming the people we may be forced into engaging militarily in the near future anyway because THEY are heck bent on war, not us.

To that argument, if I were on the other side of the table, would be...and this differs from what the US sends to Israel?

Yes they hate them, and yes Israel is our ally. Fine. That does not compute in their way of thinking. Its basic. Oh..they can have weapons and nukes..but we cant?  To try to get into their head is futile. To get into the minds of the reformers over there is another. However with overthrowing govts, we've seen how great that can work out. So, its complicated. We dont trust them and they dont trust us. Then we have cat and mouse with the Russians. 

But, Trump says he has a plan for all this that would work, but dadgummit, he wont tell anyone.

 

Keeping sanctions? That is basically trying to enforce your will. In negotiations both sides need to feel theyve won something. The smarter negotiator gets the bigger slice of the pie.

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