It’s starting to look like the nuclear agreement between the White House and Iran won’t actually improve relations between the two countries, the New York Times conceded this week.
“On Tuesday, the eve of the 36th anniversary of the student takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran, state television announced the arrest of a Lebanese-American missing for weeks — after he had been invited here by the government. He has been accused of spying,” Thomas Erdbrink reported this week.
“Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, said the ‘Death to America’ slogan is eternal. New anti-American billboards in Tehran include a mockery of the Iwo Jima flag-raising photograph that symbolized Marine sacrifice in World War II,” the report added. “And an Iranian knockoff version of K.F.C., the chicken chain widely associated with the United States, was summarily closed after two days.”
For the 164-year-old newspaper, these events don’t signal a softening of relations between the United States and Iran, which many hoped for when the nuclear deal was struck. In fact, it looks like things are about to get much worse, and even after the Obama administration worked so hard to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran.
“Anyone who hoped that Iran’s nuclear agreement with the United States and other powers portended a new era of openness with the West has been jolted with a series of increasingly rude awakenings over the past few weeks,” the Times noted.
Considering that the Times spent most of the 20 months of negotiations between the Washington, D.C., and Tehran offering favorable coverage for the deal, it would appear that the newspaper is included in the group of those who have been “jolted” by recent Iranian vocations.
From publishing stories that suggested Republicans and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were doing the world a disservice by opposing President Obama and the deal, to publishing a graphic tracking which Jewish members of Congress opposed the agreement, the Times’ was by all appearances in favor of the effort.
The newspaper’s editorial board even complained this summer that a series of prerequisites that Netanyahu asked be added to the deal were “unrealistic” and a threat to Iranian jobs. One request from the Israeli prime minister included that Iran shutter its underground enrichment facility at Fordo.
“Shuttering Fordo was an early goal, but, in the end, the agreement would allow Iran to keep a small number of centrifuges spinning and to produce medical isotopes at the plant,” the Times’ editorial board wrote. “For the Iranians, it was a matter of political symbolism and jobs to keep the plant open; Mr. Obama apparently felt there were enough protections that he could agree.”
The editorial board repeated again that the prime minister’s demands were “unworkable.”
“Getting to a final deal won’t be easy. Mr. Obama must continue to be tough and determined in the coming months of negotiations. Israel’s demands, however, must not become an excuse to scuttle what seems to be a very serious and potentially groundbreaking deal,” the board wrote.
The United States government agreed to a deal this summer that eases economic restrictions on Iran in return for limitations on Iran’s nuclear program. The U.S. also agreed to lift more than $100 billion in international economic sanctions on the State Department-designated state sponsor of terrorism.
