True. The timing of lifting sanctions has not yet been settled. This isn't news.

That is news and directly contradictory to what the white house is saying about the deal.

I think you're trying to present this as something that's a game changer. It's just an item that needs to be worked out by the next round.

Now the opposite is being contended by Iran.

It isn't a game changer that kills the deal, it is indicative of the fact that both sides don't even agree on what they claim they agreed to.

The rest is beside the point.

Or war tomorrow. When we've gone about a decade without a deal and no war.

The sanctions are working. We could always pass more sanctions.

I'm sure you, Tom Cotton and Benjamin Putinyahoo have a brilliant plan to convince them to increase sanctions.

If companies are forced to pick between doing business with the largest economy on earth or Iran, with the double bonus of Iranian business causing them to get locked out of the world's largest financial system, what do you think they will do?

We're already sanctioning Russia.

The US has already sanctioned Iran harshly due to terrorism etc. We didn't add many nuclear-related sanctions.

The meaningful part of this agreement is the international sanctions.

Right now we aren't going after them out of deference to the Chinese being willing to help us with negotiations.

That could change if the talks fall apart and that decision isn't in the hands of the president. Such sanctions would be up to congress.

the crowd that wants regime change in Tehran.

If you don't you should just say so instead of doing this dance.

I also don't believe in letting Iran build a bomb.

There is a finite amount we can squeeze out of Iran while maintaining the international consensus on sanctions.

Your Netanyahuesque approach of "nothing but complete capitulation" is a temper tantrum, not a strategy

If the current sanctions aren't convincing Iran to give up their nuclear weapons mission, then there needs to be more sanctions. Yet you appear highly resistant to this idea for some reason.

Stamping our feet and demanding unconditional surrender is not going to accomplish that.

Why lift sanctions in phases? We can lift them and then reinstate them if they fail to comply.

next step. It is kind of a give and take thing. Makes sense to me. When you go for a loan they do not hand you the keys to the bank - they give you a small loan to see if you can get that paid first.

into place.

That could take months. We'd essentially have to start working right now on lifting the sanctions to have them ready on day one.

I can't see how they get Congress to lift the sanctions, makes everything else kind of a moot point.

If the majority committee chairs in Congress aren't happy, they can call the heads of Treasury and Commerce up to Capitol Hill, file a law suit, or Impreach the President. There is precious little else that the GOP and Democratic neocons can do if Obama orders the present sanctions mechanism lifted.

He would get into serious trouble. It would be like if Woodrow Wilson joined the league of nations after congress refused to ratify the treaty.

It's happened plenty of times since. Refusals by Congress to ratify a treaty is hardly unprecedented or a constitutional crisis, in itself. This is kabuki theater intended to continue pressuring Iran to make further concessions.

To temporarily suspend sanctions, that power it is currently written into existing legislation and can be rescinded by Congress at anytime. That's what the Corker bill does, it suspends the President's authority to suspend sanctions for 60 days.

fund or defund authorizations for agencies to carry out laws that it has already passed. If Congress is displeased with the way an agency is administering the law, as I said, it can attempt to defund an activity, it can go to court, or it can Impeach. All this takes a great deal of time and political capital, and by then, the President may have signed any foreign agreement or treaty he pleases, because that is within his Constitutional power, not Congress, which may merely ratify or not sign any treaty.

With legislation that was passed by Congress correct? And in that legislation Congress gave the Executive branch the option to temporarily suspend sanctions. Congress can take that option away with a veto-proof majority vote, which they will vote on soon as part of Corker's proposed legislation.

It doesn't matter what "non-binding" agreements the Administration makes, if Congress passes new or more strict sanctions, the agencies and Administration has no choice but to enforce them, they can't blatantly ignore or not enforce straight forward legislation like sanctions.

Remember the Boland Amendment, and Iran-Contra? But, that was only the sharpest dispute between the branches at that time.

Virtually every federal agency, from CIA to EPA, refused to carry out the letter or spirit of existing law during the 1980s. That may have been before your time, but take my word for it, that's the way the real world works, and it continues to operate that way. If you ever worked in D.C., you would understand that Congress can't simply legislate to force the Administration to do what it wants, particularly in the conduct of foreign affairs, which is Constitutionally the Executive's domain.

Bottom line is in this Iran scenario, this Administration needs Congress to permanently lift the US sanctions against Iran. That's not going to happen with the current framework.

We are assuming that a deal wen has a chance of being made of course, they are still very far apart on most of the key points.

The GOP majority and Democratic neocons in the Senate are unlikely to agree to any deal with Iran so long as Netanyahu and AIPAC oppose it. That seems unlikely to change. Therefore, a "permanent" lifting of sanctions beyond 01/09/17 is improbable. What we'll see is an Executive Agreement and orders to the agencies lifting sanctions in a phased manner and limited, phased compliance by Iran to match.

The important thing, so long as Obama is still in the White House, "jaw jaw" will continue. With the new Administration, I give better odds for no "war war" to start if sanctions are lifted in proportion to Iran's compliance with an agreed and signed Framework.

Congress is under no obligation to allow the Executive branch to lift the sanctions.

And frankly, IF the plan is to lift sanctions first and confirm compliance later...I'd be for Congress taking away that authority.

Either way, there is a serious disconnect between what Tehran and Washington are saying about what they agreed to.

You'll forgive us if we don't join you, Tom Cotton, Bill Kristol, John Bolton, and Benjamin Putinyahoo in trying to scuttle diplomatic efforts.

One can't make a deal with someone unless they trust them. To a point of course. Verification is required. But Iran is a very large country. If they wanted to hide something, they obviously could. Some level of trust is necessary for this deal to work.

would make it damn near impossible for Iran to sustain any kind of meaningful program.

They can hide 'something' but they can't hide a full-blown nuclear bomb program.

Iran must be hit hard, including with the drop in oil prices wiping out much of what was 23% of Iran's wealth.

From March 27 2015

Jonathan Tirone at Bloomberg Business, quotes Richard Dalton, the Britain’s former ambassador to Iran, on why, if the talks fail, Europe might well refuse to sanction Iran further and might, instead, blame the United States:

“As things are shaping up now, it doesn’t seem like it would be easy to say the fault or the failure comes fully down to the Iranians … if the failure happens now, it may be because of something which the U.S. either does or is incapable of doing.”

Dalton is a diplomat and trying to avoid being abrasive, but it seems pretty clear that his is indicating that the GOP’s 47, who wrote Iran a letter warning that they would undo any agreement the moment Obama went out of office, may well have given Europe an “out.” If the talks, fail, they can be blamed on the Republican Party, not the Islamic Republic. And many European countries will be unable to see why they should punish Iran (and themselves) for the sake of GOP orneriness.

Iran-Europe trade in 2005 was $32 billion. Today it is $9 billion. There isn’t any fat in the latter figure, and it may well be about as low as Europe is willing to go. Tirone also points out that European trade with Iran has probably fallen as low as is possible, and that those who dream of further turning the screws on Tehran to bring it to its knees are full of mere bluster.

Arguably, Iran has simply substituted China, India and some other countries, less impressed by the US Department of Treasury than Europe, for the EU trade. Iranian trade with the global south and China has risen by 70%, Tirone says, to $150 billion. Indeed, at those levels Iran did more than make a substitution. It pivoted to Asia with great success before the phrase occurred to President Obama.

China is so insouciant about US pressure to sanction Iran’s trade that it recently announced a plan to expand Sino-Iranian trade alone to $200 billion by 2025. (It was about $52 billion in 2014). And Sino-Iranian trade was only $39 bn. in 2013, so the rate of increase is startling. China is interested in Iran’s non-oil exports, a harbinger of the post-fossil-fuels future.

It seems to me unlikely that China cares whether the US nuclear deal gets signed off on by Congress or not. China has its own priorities. It took up most of the slack from the fall in European trade all by itself.

In 2014, the previous success of US arm-twisting in getting India to reduce Iranian oil imports was not reproduced. Oil imports alone went up 42%. Sanctions are already crumbling in Asia, and it isn’t clear that if the negotiations fail because the US wasn’t a credible negotiating partner (we’re looking at you, Tom Cotton), the Asian giants won’t likely to tell Washington to jump in the Indian Ocean.

And there is a real possibility that Europe will feel exactly the same way.

Read more at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-26/europe-s-lost-iran-trade-may-signal-u-s-sanctions-split

Now, this is a Persian rug. It's beauty is quite durable and hard-wearing, if treated with some respect.

The ayatollah is not going to sign anything, maybe they will have some low level staffer sign something but it will be meaningless.

When they violate the agreement they will claim they never agreed to the conditions in the first place, this is already evident because there are two sets of conditional agreements.

Iran will continue to escalate their proxy wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and might try to start something with Israel via Hamas and Hezbollah.

You sure can't tell around these parts, what with all the apologists and trolls but Iran is the most aggressive country on planet earth right now.