Trump, Kim sign "comprehensive" document

[Dill]

(06-13-2018, 09:01 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: That all depends on how much we give them. Denuclearization is huge, but the DPRK is guilty of human rights violations exceeding any other country right now. Iran has nothing on what they do. That must be a point of concern before things get too far. The Iran situation and the DPRK situation are hardly equivalent, but I am unhappy that the Obama administration didn't push harder on those issues. It's something I, and people that were in the administration at the time, have a sense of disappointment about.

The Obama team went into the Iran negotiations with great focus, looking to address one problem.

The question was one of priorities: was stalling/preventing an Iranian bomb more important to regional/international security than other issues, such as human rights?  The answer was yes. The goal was in part to prevent a situation of the sort we currently face with NK, namely dealing with Iran AFTER it had a bomb, and in part to enable a shift in foreign policy focus from the Middle East to the Far East. That priority was set in 2009.

Could a nuke deal with Iran  be achieved if human rights issues were brought to the table or restrictions on missile development?  The O-team assessed (correctly I think) that the answer was no.  This was a narrow window of opportunity, which opened momentarily in 2013, and they took advantage of it.

So the choice was between a deal and no human rights discussion, or no deal and no human rights discussion.  The team chose the former.

Nevertheless, I would argue, the issue of human rights was addressed obliquely, as the deal empowered moderates and buoyed the hopes of middle class Iranians.  There was a possibility that the deal, if kept to, would open the Iranian economy enough so there would be strengthened resistance to the conservative "revolutionaries," even regime change incrementally or by revolution.