US-Iran: The ever-spinning deal

Predictably, the spin war unleashed the minute the deal was clinched in Geneva centers on Iran's right to enrich uranium. US Secretary of State John Kerry said no; not implicit in the document. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said yes, implicit in the deal and in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) itself. 

In a Voltairean best of possible worlds, we're just at the stage of a road map for a definitive deal allowing Iran its rightful, peaceful nuclear program (enrichment included) under non-stop IAEA monitoring and far away from breakout nuclear capacity. 

One of the key points of the deal is that the P5+1 (United States, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany) will "not impose new nuclear-related sanctions for six months, if Iran abides by its commitments under this deal, to the extent permissible within their political systems." 

Would it be then "permissible" for the US Congress -- operating under Israeli and Wahhabi petrodollar remote control - to come up with even more sanctions and scotch a future deal for good? That's a possibility. So it depends on the Obama administration's political capital to prevent it. Then, ideally, by May 2014 we could have the building blocks for the end of the key UN/US sanctions that constitute a de facto oil and banking blockade of Iran. 

Now for the hysteria brigades

Perhaps the trillion-dollar enigma of the moment is this: Has the Obama administration abandoned the notion of regime change in Tehran for good? 

It may be too early to tell. A case can certainly be made of this being a "lose-lose" proposition for Tehran. If Tehran follows every single concession -- as it will -- and by May 2014 there are no actual major dividends, there won't be much incentive to discuss a definite deal. 

And if the hardliners in Tehran regain the upper hand and Iran restarts enriching uranium to 20% that will be branded as a deal-breaker. And yet another nasty sanctions package will follow, not to mention the full resurrection of the dogs of war. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his team have repeatedly made it clear to US negotiators they only have a small window of opportunity before hardliners of the Revolutionary Guards variety try to revert to confrontational mode. 

Immediately after the deal was signed, Rouhani once again stressed Tehran does not want and will never build a nuclear weapon; one just needs to be reminded of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's fatwas branding a nuclear weapon as anti-Islamic. 

And to think that all this could have happened 10 years ago, in early 2003, when the Khatami administration in Tehran -- via Swiss intermediation -- offered to put everything on the table; the nuclear program, Hezbollah, even normalization with Israel. 

Predictably, the neo-con cabal led by Dick, Rummy and Wolfie utterly rejected negotiating with a certified member of the "axis of evil" (as in George W Bush's 2002 State of the Union address); the clueless neo-cons were entertaining wet dreams of snuffing out Saddam Hussein and then embarking on the next adventure, "real men go to Tehran"-style. Kerry couldn't help but invoke it in Geneva to add polish to what's being spun as the major foreign policy victory of two Obama administrations. 

Predictably, the very restricted circle of those against even the idea of Geneva completely freaked out. That starts with neo-cons and assorted Republicans who have backed every demented horse in recent geopolitical history, from the embryo of al-Qaeda in 1980s Afghanistan to the Contras in Nicaragua, from the Mujahideen-e-Khalq "exiled" in Iraq to Bandar Bush's goons let loose in Syria. 

In the Wahhabi petrodollar front, the House of Saud's King Abdullah had already met in extreme urgency with self-deposed emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and Kuwait's Sheikh Sabah in Riyadh on the eve of the breakthrough in Geneva.

And then there's that sociopath posing as Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu. Imagine his reaction when he read those finally unfrozen reports about months of secret US-Iranian negotiations in Oman.[1] The bottom line: Bibi was totally frozen out of the New Great Game in Eurasia by the Obama administration.