Could there be one heck of a surprise coming in tonight’s SotU speech?
Pyongyang has agreed to suspend all its activities in the nuclear sphere, including its reactor in the Yongbyon research centre and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts to conduct monitoring of its atomic facilities as the first step towards dismantling its nuclear programme. Such agreements were reached at talks in Berlin between the US and North Korean chief negotiators at the six-sided Korean Peninsula denuclearisation talks, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported here on Monday.
During the consultations held in Berlin in recent days, head of the North Korean delegation Kim Gye-gwan told US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher R. Hill that in exchange for this move the North hopes to get from the United States economic and energy assistance, as well as guarantees that Washington will unfreeze North Korea’s accounts in Banco Delta Asia in Aomen (Macau) worth 24 million US dollars.
The story hasn’t broken widely, but Chosun Ilbo is the biggest newspaper in South Korea, so it’s not as if this story is coming from the Weekly World News. There was news of some rather interesting talks going on, so it’s not exactly a hail mary to suspect that perhaps these talks have been bearing fruit well outside the spotlight.
And wouldn’t that just frost the MSM’s popsicle, huh? It would be really inconvenient to have to report this after six years of banging on the President for insisting on multilateral talks with the Norks. I hope they choke on their hot shame. But that’s just me.
One wonders what the people of Iran would make of this deal, considering the statements made by Iran’s leading “opposition” cleric, Ayatollah Montazeri (via Hot Air)
“Some countries don’t have oil and gas. Yet, they run their country and stand on their own,” he said, according to a copy of his words seen by AP.
“We have so much oil and gas but make useless expenditures work for others and don’t think of our own people’s problems and the price of basic commodities goes higher and higher every day.”
He complained that people kept on shouting slogans about nuclear rights, but he asked: “Don’t we have other rights too?”
I would think that America would be very well served by letting the people of Iran see the great benefits that North Korea gets if this deal is indeed legit. Mad Mahmoud and the Mullahs might find their time very, very short. The Islamists would lose their most ardent supporter and endless piggy bank in the region. Hezbollah would have to spend at least some time regrouping, which would allow the Lebanese to get at least couple fingers under the arm bar that the Islamists have on their windpipes. The killing in Iraq would slow dramatically as both Sunni and Shi’a militias found their money and equipment chuckwagons weren’t running anymore. Iranian soldiers inside Iraq would find themselves pretty alone pretty quickly.
The world would change. Again.
And wouldn’t that be a fine feather in the cap of this nation and our President? A safer world, short a couple nuclear nations, and a couple more bloodthirsty tyrants.
I wonder how the MSM would spin that during the next administration. Well, once they were done choking on their hot shame, and all.
