The view from under the Bus |
The participants have not made details of the Memorandum of Understanding public. Descriptions of parts of the memorandum appear as easily accessible items of news or opinion, items with varying, but minimal, degrees of reliability. Without confidence in any one of these items, we outsiders have begun to see a rough outline of the agreement.
The rulers of Iran have, as far as we can see, entered months of negotiation with a consistent narrative: Give us everything we want. The other negotiating party, the government of the United States, has provided two contrasting narratives. On the one hand, the United States threatens that it can destroy Iran if it does not accede to our demands. On the other, the United States reveals that it has no real demands, and so can give Iran more or less what it has wanted all along.
The Iranian demands: Minimal interference with Iran’s nuclear development, minimal interference with Iran’s proxies, minimal interference with suppression of human rights or internal dissent in........