Comparing Iran to North Korea is quite a stretch, and frankly doing so reveals that you are severely misinformed about the Iranian people, culture, government, and history. It's OK, majority of people are, and I would be more than happy to clear up any questions you might have regarding the matter.

It's not a stretch at all when it comes to nuclear weapons. The Iranians are doing exactly what the North Koreans did. The "people, culture, government, and history" are relevant only to the extent to which they played into the government's decision to acquire nuclear weapons.

For me a big difference between North Korea and Iran is the balance of soft vs hard power in those countries. In Iran the ordinary people tend to push back in a lot of ways and the government gives ground if grudgingly and slowly. And there is a lot of politics going on between factions with real power.

Given that I'm willing to be very patient. Seriously, the generals of the Red Army ran the soviet union for 35 years after Stalin died and then they passed on. So too will the Iranian revolutionaries.

While I do think that the Iranian people and culture are as a rule of thumb non militant (with enough material prosperity comes a time when you prefer to trade with someone and not kill him), it is the ruling theocracy that overrides everything else. Until Saudi Arabia and Iran both get their Kemal Ataturk (with less genocide if possible) that enshrines the secularist nature of the countries for a century (sadly Erdogan was allowed to exist, lets hope that this gets fixed soon) they cannot be viewed as a reliable partners.

> The Republicans don't trust Iran not to build a bomb.

Neither do the authors of this deal. The choices are:

(a) Do nothing and allow Iran to continue to be within 6-7 months of making a bomb, as they are now (b) Implement the deal and push that time out to 15+ years (c) Try even harder to negotiate a better solution (d) Stop them by force before they build it.

If you oppose choice (b), what other options do you propose?

Your read of the timelines is incorrect. It's more like (a) keep sanction and see Iran get the bomb within 5-10 years, (b) do the deal and see Iran get the bomb within a year or two, or (c) let sanctions lapse with no deal and see Iran get the bomb within a year or two.

Those are the choices. To see this deal as any impediment to Iran's nuclear program is woefully naive.

The price of oil is about to fall in the shitter and the Iranians (and the Saudis) are going to have their hands full avoiding a balance of payments crisis and importing gasoline and essentials for the population with the "stranded assets" that are being repatriated to them. The hope is that they'll realize a war will get them minus nowhere and that the populace has some tiny degree of leverage on them. Most of these regime figures (Asgharowladi, etc) just want to make money, go look at the size of their bank accounts in Switzerland.

Other people's sovereignty doesn't go away because we don't like it. I don't like the fact that Israel basically built a porch on the Litani for 20 years and simultaneously was building nukes way bigger than needed for tactical or regional ICBM purposes but I don't go around telling people to bomb Dimona.

The GOP is right to be concerned about Iran's ability to build nuclear weapons, there has absolutely been an appalling breakdown in the international community's willingness to care about proliferation. But they are utterly, utterly wrong in how they've handled that problem. They've acted like children, and if anything made the situation worse.

> And what happened with Democrats and anti-Semitism? When did it become okay to see Evil Jews behind every problem?

Evil zionists. It's not the jews who are evil, but their zionists. Netanyahu and his worker bees over at AIPAC, specifically.