Merkel singled out Turkey as the key to a crisis management strategy and Juncker said the fund-raising would include a billion euros for Ankara.
But Tusk, just returned from Turkey, said money “is not the big problem. It is not as easy as expected.”
Ahmet Davutoğlu, the Turkish prime minister, wrote to the EU leaders on Wednesday demanding bold concessions from the Europeans as the price for Turkey’s possible cooperation. He proposed EU and US support for a buffer and no-fly zone in northern Syria by the Turkish border, measuring 80km by 40km.
This would stymy the Kurdish militias fighting Islamic State in northern Syria and would also enable Ankara to start repatriating some of the estimated 2 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. The militias are allied with the Kurdistan workers’ party (PKK) guerrillas at war with the Turkish state for most of the past 30 years. Ankara reignited the conflict in July after the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in a general election.
“There are many people who doubt the sincerity of their motives,” said a senior EU official. “They’re not offering too much.”Ah, our good friends in Turkey. Not ones they to let a crisis go to waste. Why not use the situation with the refugees as an excuse to further their military-campaign against the Kurds, to date, one of our few effective allies in the fight against ISIS ? It's not as if the warzone in question were the source of most of the refugees in the first place, after all...Not as if undermining the Kurds would strengthen ISIS and help prolong the fucking war. And a chance to bully the members of the union they so desperately want to one day join themselves into the bargain ? Genius.
Paul Waldman writes about the asymmetric political risks that Democrats and Republicans face over the Iran nuclear deal:
If the agreement proves to be a failure — let’s say that Iran manages to conduct a nuclear weapons program in secret, then announces to the world that they have a nuclear weapon — it will indeed be front-page news, and the Democrats who supported the deal might suffer grave political consequences. So in order to vote yes, they had to look seriously at the deal and its alternatives, and accept some long term political peril.By contrast, there probably is less long term risk for Republicans in opposing the deal....If the deal works as intended, what will be the outcome be? Iran without nuclear weapons, of course, but that is a state of being rather than an event. There will be no blaring headlines saying, “Iran Still Has No Nukes — Dems Proven Right!”...
In a way, it's actually worse than this. Even if Iran doesn't get nukes there will be endless opportunities to raise alarms that it's going to happen any day now. Israeli leaders have been warning that Iran is three months away from a nuclear bomb for over two decades. There will always be new studies, new developments, and new conflicts that provide excuses for hysterical Fox News segments telling us we're all about to die at the hands of the ayatollahs.
...So have no worries. Iran could be nuclear free in 2050 and Bill Kristol's grandkids will still be warning everyone else's grandkids that the ayatollahs are this close to getting a bomb. It's kind of soothing, in a way, like a squeaky door that you'd miss if you ever oiled it.
Tell Congress to do their constitutional duty & reject the Obama-Kerry #IranDeal --> http://t.co/SaIyuq4w01 pic.twitter.com/2rFJgdDHhV
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 26, 2015
Officials: Iran nuclear deal fuels Middle East arms race, boosts Russia’s influenceThose 'officials' being, apparently, professional neo-con lunatic and bomb-thrower John Bolton, perpetual (to the point that it almost seems like compensation for something) warmonger Lindsey Graham, an obscure first-term senator called Ben Sasse, and some unknown 'intelligence official'.
The newly announced Iran nuclear deal and the negotiations leading up to it already are fueling an all-but-declared nuclear arms race in the Middle East, according to current and former government officials who say the situation also creates an opening for Russia to exert more influence in the region.As opposed to the inevitable arms-race that would result in the absence of a deal, as Iran felt compelled to seek a deterrent against an attack by the United States or Israel, and the almost inevitable move of Iran closer into Russia's orbit.
"We have given Iran the path it has been seeking for almost 35 years. The other states in the region are not going to sit idly by, which is why in effect the nuclear arms race is already underway," former U.N. Ambassador and Fox News contributor John Bolton said, adding that Iran and other nations have used civilian nuclear energy programs as cover for covert enrichment programs.You've given Iran the path they've been seeking ? Huh ? Because, it is so much easier to develop nuclear weapons whilst under international monitoring and scrutiny, than to do so under a covert programme ?
"Every Sunni Arab nation is going to see [a nuclear Iran] as an inevitable outcome," Republican presidential candidate and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. "The worst possible outcome of the deal would be to create a nuclear arms race in the Mideast where Sunni Arabs feel threatened."Why would they see that, unless they were getting their information from Fox News & Bibi ? I certainly hope they have far better sources of intellligence than that. A nuclear arms-race is the inevitable outcome of no deal, as Iran clearly sees a nuclear weapon as the only effective deterrent against an attack by the US and/or Israel (and the desire in the West for 'regime-change' in Tehran, at any cost, with or without the nuclear issue, is real and clear), as neither the US nor Israel is willing currently to wage an actual ground-war against Iran to prevent it obtaining a weapon, and as the completely hypothetical 'better deal' imagined by the Republicans & Likudniks seems to require the total capitulation of Iran to Western interests. Short of the West being willing to threaten Tehran with an actual nuclear assault, there is nothing, no amount of bombings, no amount of sanctions that will ever bring that about, without massive expenditure and loss of lives by the West.
However, the most interesting point reported by The Times of Israel, is Obama’s opinion of the Iranian regime.(Reported by The Times of Israel ! Not like we can't just read the damn transcript for ourselves)
Goldberg asked Obama if the fact that the Iranian regime is anti-Semitic, and thus possessed of a warped view of the way the world works, shouldn’t preclude a negotiating strategy that treats Tehran as a rational player. But the president replied that the regime’s survival instinct is more powerful than other calculations, including its hatred of Jews and imperialist aspirations.
“Well, the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival,” he said. “It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”
Tehran, he continued, won’t make irrational decisions — an apparent reference to the regime breaking away to a nuclear weapon or attacking another country — that would threaten its very survival. “What we’ve been very clear [about] to the Iranian regime over the past six years is that we will continue to ratchet up the costs, not simply for their anti-Semitism, but also for whatever expansionist ambitions they may have,” he said.Just shocking. I can't believe he said all that. It's just outrageous ! What is wrong with the man ?
Obama is right. Iran is suffering severe internal problems. Rampant, out of control drug abuse, obscene levels of corruption, and severe economic problems are tearing at the foundations of the Iranian tyranny.
According to the Daily Mail, around seven per cent of Iran’s population remain addicted to hard drugs. On top of Iran’s already hideous problems with the flood of dirt cheap opium and heroin pouring out of Afghanistan, Iran has lately acquired a dangerous taste for crystal meth.Okay, just WTF now ?
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For all we know, the Supreme Leader of Iran himself could be a meth addict – suffering drug induced psychosis, paranoia, experiencing drug induced delusions about his own mission to remake the world, lusting for the destructive might which nuclear weapons would grant to his addled megalomanic fantasies.
Hitler was a well known meth addict – under the influence of meth, he ordered the commission of irrational atrocities, such as the infamous Nero decree, Hitler’s order to destroy everything of value which might be seized by advancing Russian soldiers. The Nero decree was not executed – Albert Speer, in the final days of the war disobeyed Hitler, and refused to pointlessly destroy the infrastructure of Germany. But an occasional outbreak of reason was more the exception than the norm, in Hitler’s meth fuelled Reich.And that's how the 'article' ends. Reductio ad Hitlerum. Shit.
Obama administration officials are promising a major strengthening of U.S. defense commitments to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies, possibly including a nuclear commitment to their security, in an intensifying effort to win their support for the proposed nuclear deal with Iran.
Officials say they hope to reassure nervous gulf Arab states by providing more military aid and training to their defense forces, and by making more explicit commitments to help them repel external attacks.
The administration is studying whether to make any nuclear assurances, though officials emphasize no decision has been made.
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One challenge for the White House is whether it can expand a defense relationship that already is enormous.
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It's also not clear that U.S. nuclear security commitments would be useful or welcomed by the gulf states.
The administration would have a hard time trying to get Congress, which has been skeptical about the U.S.-Saudi relationship, to enact a treaty that put a U.S. nuclear "umbrella" over Arab Sunni nations, as the United States has over Japan and South Korea.
Such agreements aim to deter nuclear attack by warning foes that the United States would retaliate with overwhelming force if an ally is attacked with a nuclear weapon.
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Another possible gesture would be to declare the gulf states "major non-NATO allies," said Thomas Lippman, a Saudi specialist at the nonpartisan Middle East Institute in Washington. The designation, applied to close allies like Japan, Australia and Israel, provides special help in buying weapons and obtaining U.S. weapons.
Sen. Mark Kirk blasted the nuclear deal with Iran on Thursday, saying the Obama administration’s diplomacy was worse than Britain’s attempts to appease Nazi Germany and predicting Israel would soon be pulled into a war with Iran.
The Illinois Republican trashed a deal struck by global powers with Tehran, concluding in a phone interview “that Neville Chamberlain got a lot of more out of Hitler than Wendy Sherman got out of Iran,” a reference to a top State Department negotiator on the deal.
But Kirk wasn’t done, forecasting that lifting any more sanctions on Iran “dooms the Middle East to yet another war,” one that Israel will have to clean up, perhaps in a nuclear fashion.
“We should be a reviewing presence to see how this unfolds,” Kirk said of Congress’ role, adding: “Which we all know is going to end with a mushroom cloud somewhere near Tehran.”
Kirk’s office called to clarify that Kirk was referring to a nuclear test in Iran.Yah, that's what Kirk meant: an above-ground nuclear test by Iran near the largest and most important city in Iran. That totally makes sense...
If it weren't for that insane 'Axis of Evil' bullshit from the Bush administration (Thanks David Frum !), we might have had a peace deal with Iran over a decade ago. Now, fresh after starting to normalise relations with Cuba (MANY decades overdue), Obama is working on a deal with Iran. And inevitably, as with any of the president's initiatives, the Republicans are doing their damnest to blow things up, their latest effort involving bringing Binyamin Netanyahu, a man who has spent the last decade or more trying to trick the US into waging war against Iran on 
Now, the manner of Netanyahu's appearance does suggest a certain desparation, and one might wonder what is behind the same. Could it be that Bibi is sincere in the suggestion that we are in a once-in-a-lifetime last-minute existential crisis with Iran, completely unlike the dozens of other times he has suggested exactly the same over the decades ? Well, maybe.
So what does Iran really want ? To nuke Israel and ensure its own immediate annihilation, including that of all its ruling classes ? Well, er...maybe... To have, but not necessarily use, a nuclear weapon, and possibly still invite...its own immediate annihilation, including that of all its ruling classes ? Well, er...maybe... To have the plausible threat of one day in the not unforsee-able future being able to, in response to an external threat rapidly develop a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against a country (by which I mean the US, duh) that has treated it as if it were an existential enemy for decades ? Ding-ding-ding, I think we have a winner. And prizes go to those of you who guessed the bleeding fucking obvious. One might reasonably assume that Iran wants peace and prosperity, both of which are threatened by the ongoing sanctions. It also, as the inheritor of a once-great empire, presumably wants a certain degree of respect and authority in its own backyard, a want that is completely unreasonable from the point of view of the country that promoted the Monroe Doctrine in the 1800's. Basically, the Iranians want the same thing as virtually every people on the planet: a chance at a decent life without living under constant imminent threat of having a bomb dropped on one's head. What radical assholes, huh ?Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner caused a furore on Wednesday by joking about her hosts’ accents while on a state visit to China seeking badly needed investment.
Fernández tried to mimic a Chinese accent by switching “rs” with “ls” in a tweet in Spanish that translates as: “Did they only come for lice and petloleum.”
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The controversy comes as Fernández struggles to distance herself from the mysterious death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was found dead in his bathroom on 18 January, hours before he was to elaborate on allegations that Fernández helped shield Iranians connected to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre that killed 85.