With all due respect, contributing editor Joshua Mitnick and the people he quotes are dreaming up a potential outcome from the Singapore Summit that totally ignores the realities of the Iran nuclear deal and the Trump/Kim-Jong-un meeting (“Iran The Loser in Summit’s Wake?” June 15).
Compare the “brilliant deal maker’s” (Trump’s) agreement with North Korea with the “worst agreement ever” — the Iran deal President Obama struck along with the EU, UN, Russia and China to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Kim made the same promises his father and grandfather have made and broken for decades. He made unverifiable claims to close a nuclear testing and a missile-testing site. In return he is keeping his nuclear weapons and missiles; has gained worldwide recognition; broken the economic sanctions [with perhaps only the U.S. sticking to them] that took years to create and were finally biting; and got the U.S. to stop military exercises with our South Korean allies.
In the Iran deal, Iran: decommissioned thousands of centrifuges used to enrich fissionable materials that could be used for a nuclear bomb; agreed to not proceed with creating a bomb for at least a decade; accepted international observers and monitoring equipment to verify that it was complying with the deal; and sent highly enriched uranium out of the country.
Inspectors have consistently found Iran in full compliance. In return the U.S. and Europeans were to lift sanctions [which would have benefitted all participants’ economies] and return Iranian funds that had been frozen to Iran. The U.S. did not fully lift sanctions and withdrew from the deal and is trying to re-impose sanctions, even after bashing our European allies. Iran no longer is obligated to not develop nuclear weapons.
Brooklyn
