**updated**
“These are the most crippling sanctions that have been placed on any country since the case of Iraq in the 1990s. …the U.S. is now engaged in a blockade of Iranian petroleum…. – Juan Cole on “The Alonya Show”
Speaking of Iran, the ultimate insider on Iran David Ignatius writes about the Iranian nuclear talks today:
The nuclear talks with Iran have just begun, but already the smart money in Tehran is betting on a deal. That piece of intelligence comes from the Tehran stock index; the day after the talks opened, it posted its largest daily rise in months and closed at a record high.
Tehran investors may be guilty of wishful thinking in their eagerness for an agreement that would ease the economic sanctions squeezing their country. My guess is that they probably have it right. So far, Iran is following the script for a gradual, face-saving exit from a nuclear program that even Russia and China have signaled is too dangerous. …
The Iranians seem to be preparing their public for a deal that limits enrichment while preserving the right to enrich. In an interview Monday with the Iranian student news agency, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi explained that “making 20 percent fuel is our right,” but that “if they guarantee that they will provide us with the different levels of enriched fuel that we need, then that would be another issue.” Salehi seemed to be reviving a 2009 Turkish plan to export Iran’s low-enriched uranium abroad, and receive back 20 percent fuel for its Tehran research reactor, supposedly to make the isotopes. That earlier deal collapsed because of opposition from Khamenei, who apparently is now ready to bargain.
… Translation: The Iranians expect to be paid, in “step-by-step” increments, as they move toward a deal. At a minimum, they will want a delay of the U.S. and European sanctions that take full effect June 28 and July 1, respectively. That timetable gives the West leverage, too — to keep the threatened sanctions in place until the Iranians have made the required concessions. It’s a well-prepared negotiation, in other words, and it seems likely to succeed if each side keeps to the script and doesn’t muff its lines.
We haven’t heard from Fox News yet. Delay implemetation of the sanctions? Obviously Fox News, the Weekly Standard,and the rest of the right wing echo chamber can call up old bromides from the 2004 Bush campaign. ‘Surrender monkeys’! and lets remember John McCains ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb….. bomb, bomb Iran’.
They’ll drag out John Bolton any number of retired Colonels on Fox’s payroll.