Nuclear talks with Iran end with no progress made; more sanctions and potential war loom

Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post

After three rounds of talks between Iran, the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany (known as the P5+1), on the Iranian nuclear program, no visible progress has been made.

This is likely because one side – particularly the West – came to the table with unreasonable expectations which reflect the wishes of extremist, delusional Israeli politicians who have expressed concerns over the nuclear talks blocking Israel’s ability to conduct a unilateral strike.

It is worth restating that Iran does not have nuclear weapons and is not even pursuing them as stated by none other than U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (twice), Israeli military chief Benny Gantz, and the U.S. intelligence community, to name a few.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of measurable progress in the negotiations, there are currently no plans for further negotiations.This means that starting July 1, a new round of the crippling sanctions which have been imposed on Iran will be become active.

According to some, these sanctions which will include many more potentially devastating measures such as the removal of insurance from any and all tankers carrying Iranian oil “will bring an end to nearly all of Iran’s oil sales, sales which account for nearly 80 percent of Iran foreign revenues.”

Furthermore, Homeland Security News Wire reports, “planning, in both Israel and the United States, for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities has now shifted to a higher gear.”

Of course my readers are likely well aware of the fact that the planning is largely complete and the hardware is in place or will be in coming months.

To make matters even worse, Former Senator Charles Robb is pushing for the Senate to give even more military hardware to Israel, likely thanks in part to the disturbing and almost unbelievable legislation which authorized essentially unrestricted military aid to Israel on the American taxpayer’s dime.

Israeli news outlet Haaretz reported on June 22 that Robb, the co-chairman of the Bipartisan Policy Center, said that the United States needs to significantly improve Israel’s aerial refueling capabilities and stockpiles of bunker-buster bombs.

Robb stated before the Senate that Israel needs KC-135 military refueling aircraft and a whopping 200 bunker-buster bombs in addition to the 100 bunker-busters which Israel already has set aside for a vicious strike on Iran.

Robb stated that even though such an attack would send the price of oil to unbelievable heights and that it would likely spark retribution which “would include terror attacks around the world,” it still needs to be done.

Robb nonsensically claimed that “the possibility that Iran would obtain nuclear weapons was more dangerous,” even though Iran does not have and is not even planning to acquire nuclear weapons according to several sources mentioned above.

The claim that Iran would strike back with terrorist attacks is especially laughablesince the Israeli Vice Prime Minister has advocated using terrorism against Iran in order to fight their imaginary nuclear weapons program.

Similar statements have been made by none other than former Mayor of New York City Rudolph Giuliani in support of the MEK, a terrorist group trained by the Israeli Mossad as well as the United States.

Reading the thoroughly slanted media coverage of the Iranian nuclear program is incredibly frustrating at times since it is so clearly biased and built upon egregious use of the cherry picking fallacy.

For instance, take the claim, “The policy of Iran is to prevent meaningful IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] inspection of the country’s nuclear facilities.”

This is simply untrue. Furthermore, since Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), they have every right to enrich uranium.

Of course, it is well known since 1960 that Israel has an active nuclear weapons program and yet they are not a signatory to the NPT and have their stockpiles and facilities go completely unchecked and unacknowledged by those who so hypocritically criticize the Iranian program.

When one scrutinizes the “evidence” against Iran one will quickly find that all of it is thoroughly speculative or originating from sources so questionable that it should be thrown out immediately.

The attempted deal with Iran was ludicrously unbalanced since it hinged upon Iran not being able to enrich uranium above levels from 5-8% (meaning they could not use it for medical or research purposes), that they would dismantle the centrifuge near Qom (which is the only facility protected from a likely Israeli strike) and that all uranium enriched above 5-8% would be shipped outside of Iran.

“[T]he differences between the P5+1 and Iran cannot be bridged unless one of two things occur: either Iran gives up its ambition to build nuclear weapons, or the world accepts a nuclear-armed Iran,” Homeland Security News Wire nonsensically claims.

For the woefully uninformed, that seems like a legitimate statement. However, it is wholly fallacious, as it is a completely false dilemma and is based on no concrete evidence of any kind.

Thankfully, not all countries are so divorced from reality and willing to go to war that they will continue down this path regardless of the baseless premise.

Chinese Ambassador to the United, Nations Li Baodong, maintains that talks must continue and that a diplomatic approach is the only solution which can settle the remaining differences between Iran and the six world powers which make up the P5+1.

“China will work with other parties to continue to play its due role in the pursuit of a peaceful and political solution for the Iranian nuclear issue,” Baodong said.

While the high-level talks will end, Iran and the P5+1 have agreed to continue the negotiations at a much lower technical level in Istanbul, Turkey on July 3.

This likely means that the next round of crushing sanctions will go through before any talks continue.

It is worth noting that these types of sanctions are nowhere near as innocuous as they may seem.

Similar sanctions resulted in countless deaths of innocent Iraqis and as Ron Paul said late last year, the sanctions against Iran are, in fact, an “act of war.”

It seems that all we can do at this point is hope that the seemingly inevitable war with Iran never actually comes to pass and the diplomatic solutions actually do end up working out, despite the fact that Iran isn’t even pursuing nuclear weapons to begin with.

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This article first appeared at End the Lie.