Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, October 22, 2009

Will Iran Accept The Draft Deal?

By Steve Hynd


Will Iran accept the IAEA's draft deal to send the bulk of its uranium stocks abroad to be further enriched? At the moment, there's cause for a little optimism. Gregg Carlstrom notes that Iran's deputy parliament speaker has said that Iran "doesn't accept" the deal, but he doesn't speak for the government. He also notes far more upbeat statements from Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Asghar Soltanieh - but he doesn't make the decisions either.


Still, a report from FARS News Agency gives an indication as to how the decision makers are thinking: again quoting Soltanieh, it says that Iran is happy with Russian involvement but wants France left off any deal.



"Any other country, like France, willing to cooperate with Iran, can serve as a subsidiary to Russia," Soltanieh told FNA.


...The US and Russia first proposed to Iran to supply fuel for its research reactor in Tehran while France joined them later.

At the end of the first day of the talks on Tuesday, Iran crossed France off the list of potential nuclear fuel suppliers for its Tehran reactor for the European country's misconduct and disrespect for previous undertakings and agreements.

Informed sources reiterated that Iran believes any agreement with France would lack the necessary guarantees.

On Wednesday, sources told FNA that the French envoy to the Vienna talks had urged ElBaradei to help Paris join Iran's nuclear fuel suppliers, but Tehran has apparently made its choice and wants to keep France off the bargain.


It sounds to me like Soltanieh went into negotiations with clear instructions from his superiors. If so, then some form of the offered deal will be accepted, either including Argentina as a fuel-rod fabricator (the only other nation rigged to make the same kind of rods as France) or leaving off France from the inked deal but leaving Russia an opening to appoint the French as a sort of "sub-contractor".


Either way, we should know tomorrow.



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