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Where Is the Evidence that Iran Wants to Change?

(New York Times) David Brooks - President Obama's deal with Iran is really a giant gamble on the nature of the Iranian regime. On Thursday, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered his first big response to the sort-of-agreed-upon nuclear framework. What did we learn? We learned that Iran's supreme leader still regards the U.S. as his enemy. The audience chanted "Death to America" during his speech, and Khamenei himself dismissed America's "devilish" intentions. He thinks the U.S. is the embodiment of evil. We learned that the West wants a deal more than Khamenei does. Throughout the speech, his words dripped with a lack of enthusiasm for the whole enterprise. President Obama is campaigning for a deal, while Khamenei is unmoved. We learned that the ayatollah is demanding total trust from us while offering maximum contempt in return. He demanded that the West permanently end all sanctions on the very day the deal is signed. He insisted that no inspectors could visit Iranian military facilities. This would make a hash of verification and enforcement. Khamenei's speech suggests that Iran still fundamentally sees itself in a holy war with the West, a war that is still a fundamental clash of values and interests. His speech suggests, as Henry Kissinger and George Shultz put it in a brilliant op-ed essay in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, that there is no congruence of interests between us and Iran. If Iran still has revolutionary intent, then no amount of treaty subtlety will enforce this deal. It will continue to work on its advanced nuclear technology even during the agreement. It will inevitably use nuclear weaponry, or even the threat of eventual nuclear weaponry, to advance its apocalyptic interests. Every other regional power will prepare for the worst, and we'll get a nuclear-arms race in a region of disintegrating nation-states. At some point, there has to be a scintilla of evidence that Iran wants to change. Khamenei's speech offers none.
2015-04-13 00:00:00
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