From Ian:
Natan Sharansky: Jews stood up to the U.S. government 40 years ago, and should again on Iran
Natan Sharansky: Jews stood up to the U.S. government 40 years ago, and should again on Iran
As difficult as this situation is, however, it is not unprecedented. Jews have been here before, 40 years ago, at a historic juncture no less frightening or fateful than today’s.Watchdog Says Obama Administration ‘Inventing’ Iran Concessions Under Nuclear Deal
In the early 1970s, Republican President Richard Nixon inaugurated his policy of detente with the Soviet Union with an extremely ambitious aim: to end the Cold War by normalizing relations between the two superpowers.
Among the obstacles Nixon faced was the USSR’s refusal to allow on-site inspections of its weapons facilities. Moscow did not want to give up its main advantage, a closed political system that prevented information and people from escaping and prevented prying eyes from looking in.
Yet the Soviet Union, with its very rigid and atrophied economy, badly needed cooperation with the free world, which Nixon was prepared to offer. The problem was that he was not prepared to demand nearly enough from Moscow in return. And so as Nixon moved to grant the Soviet Union most-favored-nation status, and with it the same trade benefits as U.S. allies, Democratic Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington proposed what became a historic amendment, conditioning the removal of sanctions on the Soviet Union’s allowing free emigration for its citizens.
By that time, tens of thousands of Soviet Jews had asked permission to leave for Israel. Jackson’s amendment sought not only to help these people but also and more fundamentally to change the character of detente, linking improved economic relations to behavioral change by the USSR. Without the free movement of people, the senator insisted, there should be no free movement of goods.
According to TIP, four points in the infographic leave out information from the deal. The first claims that Iran has agreed to use only light-water nuclear reactors indefinitely, aside from the existing heavy-water reactor in Arak. TIP said that this “brand new claim” actually “contradicts past statements by President Obama.”Then and Now, Leftists Bowed Before Iranian Anti-Semites
In the President’s post-Vienna speech he noted, “For at least the next 15 years, Iran will not build any new heavy-water reactors,” and not indefinitely, the group said.
The second concession claimed by the State Department is that Iran agreed not to cooperate with other countries on developing uranium enrichment technologies for 15 years. TIP alleges that this is also a “brand new claim,” and “can’t be true because the JCPOA obligates the Russians to cooperate with Iran on nuclear technology at Iran’s underground enrichment bunker at Fordow.”
The third concession listed in the infographic is that Iran has agreed to let the IAEA monitor the production and stockpiling of all heavy water in Iran. TIP points out that this is not a new concession, and was included under the Lausanne framework agreement, which said, “Iran will not accumulate heavy water in excess of the needs of the modified Arak reactor, and will sell any remaining heavy water on the international market for 15 years.” The JCPOA merely repeats this obligation, according to TIP.
The fourth claim was that Iran had agreed not to develop proficiency in uranium or plutonium metallurgy for at least 15 years, which would prevent it from producing the necessary components for a nuclear weapon. TIP claims that “the Iranians have had that proficiency since at least… 2009.”
One of the State Department-listed concessions was that Iran committed not to “engage in certain activities that could be used to design and develop a nuclear weapon.” The Israel Project acknowledged that this clause was included in the JCPOA, but, the group said, it is “100% unenforceable.” TIP quoted former IAEA official Olli Heinonen as saying that there’s “not really even an inspection procedure for that, I think it’s zero. It’s not even one.”
The State Department fact sheet also included two Iranian concessions that TIP said were “widely expected, and were aimed at fixing glaring and well-known loopholes left in the Lausanne text.”
Andrew Young, the ambassador to the United Nations under the Carter Administration, said that Khomeini was "a saint, a Social Democrat saint" and compared his revolution in the name of Allah to the American movement for civil rights. The Ambassador to Tehran, William Sullivan, compared the imam to Gandhi. The consultant of Jimmy Carter, Bill James, wrote that Ayatollah had to be admired "as a man of integrity."
Richard Falk, jurist from Princeton and future UN envoy in the Middle East, led the American mission in the suburb of Paris and hailed Khomeini as "a new model of popular revolution based, in large part, on nonviolent tactics". The Iranian expert Richard Cottam in the Washington Post called Khomeini "moderate, centrist", a hermit who was not interested in power. who would, once he defeated the Shah, retire in the holy city of Qom.
The exact opposite is, of course, what happened.
As Houchang Nahavan, former minister of the Shah and author of "Iran, the Clash of Ambitions" said: "Many leftist movements of Europe sent their delegations to the international conference held in Tehran in favor of the operation of the hostages of 4 November 1979." From France, the gay poet Jean Genet, unaware of what the mullahs did to homosexuals, expressed great sympathy for Khomeini because he had dared to oppose the West.
The journalist André Fontaine, director of the Monde, compared Khomeini to John Paul II in an article entitled "The Return of the divine" while the philosopher Jacques Madaule, re-defining the role of Khomeini, said that "his movement will open the doors to the future of humanity", defining Khomeinism as a "clamor from the depths of the times" who refuted "slavery."
Michel Foucault, in the famous articles in the Corriere della Sera and the Nouvel Observateur, was able to commend the impressive achievement of Khomeini as "the first of the Grand insurrection against global systems, the most modern form of revolt". The same Jean-Paul Sartre, guru of the Left, decided to go in person to Tehran to sustain publicly, with a great reinforcement of publicity, the wild-eyed imam.






















