Multiple Takes (Mostly Favorable) on the Iran Deal

With opponents of the Iran nuclear agreement being quite vocal right now,  I thought I'd collect some of the more reasonable discussions, especially by Iran experts and Israelis who back the deal.

• The Iran Project, "Statement by National Security Leaders on the Announcement of a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action."
•  Robin Wright, The New Yorker, "Tehran's Promise: The revolution's midlife crisis and the nuclear deal."
• Shibley Telhami, Reuters, "Netanyahu steered U.S. toward war with Iran – the result is a deal he hates."
•  Americans for Peace Now, "Israeli Nuclear/Security Experts on the Iran Deal." I had already bookmarked many of these individually, such as Avner Cohen and Chuck Freilich, but the APN offers a great selection of quotes and links to Israeli supporters of the deal.
• Anthony H. Cordesman, "The Iran Nuclear Agreement and Conventi0onal Arms Transfers in the Gulf." Cordesman focuses not on the nuclear aspects but on the existing dominance of GCC arms purchases in the conventional sphere.

Finally, if all the heavy reading starts to get to you, Lebanese satirist karl Sharro explains it all at The Atlantic: "The Confused Peron's Guide to the Iran Deal: How the Arab Street Views the Agreement, in One Simple Diagram." [I'll let you click through to see the one "simple" diagram, but the fifth paragraph quoted below summarizes it in one extremely run-on sentence]:

In recent days, some Arab leaders have warned darkly about the consequences of the new nuclear agreement with Iran. But how controversial is the deal in Arab countries, really? How do Arabs feel?

As ever in situations like this, the media has proven indispensable in capturing what the “Arab Street” thinks about the deal. In The Independent, Robert Fisk went a step further and tried to imagine what Arabs think based on his long experience in the region, arguing with typical nuance and subtlety that “the Arabs at least will suspect the truth: that the Americans have taken the Shia Muslim side in the Middle East’s sectarian war.”

To investigate these portrayals of the Arab view of the deal, journalists affiliated with the Institute of Internet Diagrams spent hours in the legendary Arab Street itself. As every foreign reporter in the region knows, the best way to get to the Arab Street is to get in a taxi anywhere in the Arab world and ask to be driven to “the street.” (Don’t say the “Arab Street,” because it’s assumed.) 

The Arab Street is not as grand as you might imagine. It’s quite narrow and crowded, but it’s full of life, and the scent of spices wafts across it at regular intervals to ensure foreign correspondents are in the right frame of mind. Head straight to the busiest café; booking a table in advance will give customers time to put on traditional clothes for a more authentic feel.

Word on the Arab Street is that Barack Obama signed a nuclear deal with Iran so that he can extract concessions over Syria in return for Iran being allowed to control Iraq and for which it has to rein in the Houthis in Yemen to pacify the Saudis and simultaneously restrain Kurdish ambitions thus easing Turkey’s anxiety about Kurdish independence as an incentive for it to cooperate regionally allowing both Saudi Arabia and Turkey to come on board with Obama’s plan for Israel/Palestine which will also appease Egypt allowing it to play a bigger role in Libya to control the southern shores of the Mediterranean reducing migrant flows into Europe to ease the pressure on Greece and Italy for which Europe agrees to soften its stance against Russia allowing for a solution in Ukraine that allows NATO to maintain a presence in the East without threatening Russia which will be rewarded by removing the international sanctions against it allowing it to increase its trade with Europe.