Last Crack at Diplomacy? U.S. Prepares for War and Peace With Iran

Though U.S. officials say their patience is wearing thin, talks with Iranian leaders will resume at Geneva on Tuesday over a deal to remove sanctions in exchange for nuclear concessions.Negotiators may be whistling past the graveyard of the tens of thousands of protesters who defied Islamic Regime authorities to call for the overthrow of the theocracy that has held power for 47 years. Nonetheless, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday said the United States would be willing to meet again — through Omani mediators — to reach a deal with a squirrely adversary whose endgame is unchanged.“We’re dealing with radical Shia clerics, ok? These are people who make geopolitical decisions on the basis of pure theology, and it’s a complicated thing,” Mr. Rubio said during a stop in Slovakia on the way home from the Munich Security Conference. “No one’s ever been able to do a successful deal with Iran but we’re going to try.”More than 30,000 are believed dead and thousands more face execution over participation during three weeks of marches across Iran in December and January. Despite the deadliest confrontations since the 1979 revolution, public sentiment remains strong for the overthrow of the regime. Over the weekend, marches around the world turned the spotlight back on. At Munich, more than 250,000 people showed up at a rally with the son of the deposed shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi. The prince and Senator Lindsey Graham egged on supporters to keep up the fight, insisting that assistance is coming. At other cities, including Toronto, where 350,000 reportedly showed up, as well as Lisbon, Sydney, London, Tel Aviv, and Los Angeles, crowds cheered for the end of the Islamic regime.Iranian news sources, Iran International and Iranwire, on Sunday night reported protesters at Baghestan and other cities in Iran chanting slogans through loudspeakers that included “death to the dictator” and “death to Khamenei.”Iran has threatened to strike U.S. bases in the Middle East if it is attacked by U.S. forces but on Sunday, Iran’s chief diplomat Abbas Araghchi, told Al Jazeera that the regime is willing to hold talks on its nuclear program, which is believed to have been capable of producing uranium enriched to a nuclear-weapons grade prior to the American bombings of three key facilities last June. With Iran’s economy collapsing, Reuters reported Sunday that Iran’s deputy foreign minister for economic diplomacy, Hamid Ghanbari, has said that Iran would also be willing to open access to its remaining viable sectors, including Iranian oil, gas, and mining, to U.S. companies as part of a negotiated deal. Iran would also like to purchase more than 100 passenger airplanes in an agreement whose total could be worth as much as $500 billion.“For the sake of an agreement’s durability, it is essential that the U.S. also benefits in areas with high and quick economic returns,” Mr. Ghanbari is quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.President Trump has said that he is willing to give the regime another chance, even as he prepares for an alternative outcome. “For 47 years we’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk,” the president said, adding that it seems like regime change “would be the best thing that would happen.” He confirmed Friday that the USS Gerald R. Ford and its accompanying flotilla is on its way to the Persian Gulf from the Caribbean to join an already strong U.S. presence off Iran’s shores.Even though diplomatic talks will resume this week, CBS News reported Sunday that U.S. military and intelligence officials are shaping up the details of a promise the president made to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December to support Israeli strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile program if a U.S. deal with Tehran is not reached. At a conference in Jerusalem Sunday following his meeting with Mr. Trump at Washington last week, Mr. Netanyahu said that any agreement with Iran must include not only the nuclear weapons issue, but also ballistic missiles and the use of Iran’s proxies to launch attacks on Israel and elsewhere. He added that he warned President Trump that if the Iranians are talking, they’re lying. “Iran is reliable on one thing: they lie and they cheat,” he told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “The president is determined to exhaust the possibilities of achieving a deal, which he believes can be achieved now,” Mr. Netanyahu added. “We’re giving the president’s plan a chance. And he put it very succinctly. He said it can be done the easy way, or it can be done the hard way. We hope that it will be done the easy way, because we know the ravages of war.” Any failure at diplomacy could involve a weekslong military operation in its stead, Reuters reported Saturday, quoting two U.S. officials.

Last Crack at Diplomacy? U.S. Prepares for War and Peace With Iran

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