Saturday night just before midnight, president Obama announced the "breakthrough deal" with Iran that would "slightly relax" sanctions for six months in exchange for not much in the way of real commitments by Iran. The talking points from the Obama supporters tell us that if Iran does not follow the agreement, then sanctions will go right back into place and no harm will have been done.
On Monday, facts and reality put a lie to those talking points. It really did not take long for the entire edifice of sanctions to crumble. Turkey's Minister of Economics announced on Monday that his country would resume full trade with Iran as soon as possible. After all, why should Turkey keep sanctions in place when the major powers were relaxing their own sanctions. The UN resolutions all call for all member states to keep sanctions on Iran until the UN acts, but if the USA, UK, France, Germany, China and Russia are removing sanctions without UN approval, Turkey sees no reason to keep its sanctions in place.
The Turks are just the first to announce the end to their sanctions. More countries, indeed many more countries, will soon follow suit. It took nearly a decade of struggle to get the worldwide sanctions against Iran in place. Obama and Kerry have managed to dismantle that entire structure in a few minutes. No matter what Iran does, there will be no way to get those sanctions back in place in the future in any sort of timely manner.
On Monday, facts and reality put a lie to those talking points. It really did not take long for the entire edifice of sanctions to crumble. Turkey's Minister of Economics announced on Monday that his country would resume full trade with Iran as soon as possible. After all, why should Turkey keep sanctions in place when the major powers were relaxing their own sanctions. The UN resolutions all call for all member states to keep sanctions on Iran until the UN acts, but if the USA, UK, France, Germany, China and Russia are removing sanctions without UN approval, Turkey sees no reason to keep its sanctions in place.
The Turks are just the first to announce the end to their sanctions. More countries, indeed many more countries, will soon follow suit. It took nearly a decade of struggle to get the worldwide sanctions against Iran in place. Obama and Kerry have managed to dismantle that entire structure in a few minutes. No matter what Iran does, there will be no way to get those sanctions back in place in the future in any sort of timely manner.
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