Dozens of retired generals, admirals back Iran nuclear deal

U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry speaks at a Reuters Newsmaker event Tuesday in New York on the nuclear agreement with Iran. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

Three dozen retired generals and admirals released an open letter Tuesday supporting the Iran nuclear deal and urging Congress to do the same.

Calling the agreement “the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” the letter said that gaining international support for military action against Iran, should that ever become necessary, “would only be possible if we have first given the diplomatic path a chance.”

The release came as Secretary of State John F. Kerry said U.S. allies were “going to look at us and laugh” if the United States were to abandon the deal and then ask them to back a more aggressive posture against Iran.

Not only would U.S. global credibility be undermined, Kerry said, but also the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency would be threatened.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” Kerry said in a public question-and-answer session at Reuters news service headquarters in New York . “But I’m telling you, there’s a huge antipathy out there” to U.S. leadership. Pointing to efforts by Russia and China to join forces with rising, nonaligned powers, he said that “there’s a big bloc out there, folks, that isn’t just sitting around waiting for the United States to tell them what to do.”

Read more at The Washington Post

U.S., Cuba Restore Full Diplomatic Ties After 5 Decades

Without ceremony in the pre-dawn hours, maintenance workers were to hang the Cuban flag in the lobby of the State Department alongside those of other nations with which the U.S. has diplomatic relations. Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than a half century of Cold War and lingering enmity came to an abrupt but quiet end on Monday as the United States and Cuba restored full diplomatic relations.

The new era began with little fanfare when an agreement between the two nations to resume normal ties on July 20 came into force just after midnight Sunday and the diplomatic missions of each country were upgraded from interests sections to embassies. When clocks struck 12:00 in Washington and Havana, they tolled a knell for policy approaches spawned and hardened over the five decades since President John F. Kennedy first tangled with youthful revolutionary Fidel Castro over Soviet expansion in the Americas.

Without ceremony in the pre-dawn hours, maintenance workers were to hang the Cuban flag in the lobby of the State Department alongside those of other nations with which the U.S. has diplomatic relations. The historic shift will be publicly memorialized later Monday when Cuban officials formally inaugurate their embassy in Washington and Cuba's blue, red and white-starred flag will fly for the first time since the countries severed ties in 1961. Secretary of State John Kerry will then meet his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez, and address reporters at a joint news conference.

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana plans to announce its upgrade to embassy status in a written statement on Monday, but the Stars and Stripes will not fly at the mission until Kerry visits in August for a ceremonial flag-raising.

And yet, though normalization has taken center stage in the U.S.-Cuba relationship, there remains a deep ideological gulf between the nations and many issues still to resolve. Among them: thorny disputes such as over mutual claims for economic reparations, Havana's insistence on the end of the 53-year-old trade embargo and U.S. calls for Cuba to improve on human rights and democracy. Some U.S. lawmakers, including several prominent Republican presidential candidates, have vowed not to repeal the embargo and pledged to roll back Obama's moves on Cuba.

Still, Monday's events cap a remarkable change of course in U.S. policy toward the communist island under President Barack Obama, who had sought rapprochement with Cuba since he first took office and has progressively loosened restrictions on travel and remittances to the island.

Obama's efforts at engagement were frustrated for years by Cuba's imprisonment of U.S. Agency for International Development contractor Alan Gross on espionage charges. But months of secret negotiations led in December to Gross's release, along with a number of political prisoners in Cuba and the remaining members of a Cuban spy ring jailed in the United States. On Dec. 17, Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced they would resume full diplomatic relations.

Declaring the long-standing policy a failure that had not achieved any of its intended results, Obama declared that the U.S. could not keep doing the same thing and expect a change. Thus, he said work would begin apace on normalization.

That process dragged on until the U.S. removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in late May and then bogged down over issues of U.S. diplomats' access to ordinary Cubans.

On July 1, however, the issues were resolved and the U.S. and Cuba exchanged diplomatic notes agreeing that the date for the restoration of full relations would be July 20.

"It's a historic moment," said longtime Cuban diplomat and analyst Carlos Alzugaray.

"The significance of opening the embassies is that trust and respect that you can see, both sides treating the other with trust and respect," he said. "That doesn't mean there aren't going to be conflicts — there are bound to be conflicts — but the way that you treat the conflict has completely changed."

Cuba's ceremony at the stately 16th Street mansion in Washington that has been operating as an interests section under the auspices of the Swiss embassy will be attended by some 500 guests, including a 30-member delegation of diplomatic, cultural and other leaders from the Caribbean nation, headed by Foreign Minister Rodriguez.

The U.S. will be represented at the event by Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson, who led U.S. negotiators in six months of talks leading to the July 1 announcement, and Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana who will now become charge d'affaires.

Although the Interests Section in Havana won't see the pomp and circumstance of a flag-raising on Monday, workers there have already drilled holes on the exterior to hang signage flown in from the U.S., and arranged to print new business cards and letterhead that say "Embassy" instead of "Interests Section." What for years was a lonely flagpole outside the glassy six-story edifice on Havana's seafront Malecon boulevard recently got a rehab, complete with a paved walkway.

Every day for the last week, employees have been hanging hand-lettered signs on the fence counting down, in Spanish, to Monday: "In 6 days we will become an embassy!" and so on.

Both interests sections have technically operated as part of Switzerland's embassies in Washington and Havana. The Swiss also were caretakers for the former American Embassy and ambassador's residence from 1961 to 1977, when the U.S. had no diplomatic presence in the country at all.

Source: The Huffington Post

John Kerry: Iran Nuclear Talks 'Could Go Either Way'

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says nuclear negotiations with Iran are still underway ahead of a self-imposed deadline of July 7.

"We are not yet where we need to be on several of the most difficult issues," Kerry said in a Sunday press conference on the ninth day of the talks in Vienna, Austria.

Kerry reiterated that U.S. was looking for a "good deal," and it was prepared to walk away from the talks if it faced "absolute intransigence" from the Iranian government.

The secretary of state, who spoke with the press after meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, said that negotiators are still pushing for a finalized deal by July 7th.

“At this point, this negotiation could go either way,” he said.

Read more at The Huffington Post

U.S., Cuba restoring diplomatic ties after 54 years

Chief of Mission at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana Jeffrey DeLaurentis (L) talks to Cuba's interim Foreign Minister Marcelino Medina in Havana July 1, 2015.

REUTERS/ENRIQUE DE LA OSA

The United States and Cuba formally agreed on Wednesday to restore diplomatic relations on July 20, setting up a trip to Havana by John Kerry, who would become the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the country in 70 years.

Sealed by an exchange of letters between U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro, the deal fulfills a pledge the former Cold War enemies made six months ago. It also attempts to end the recriminations that have predominated ever since Fidel Castro's rebels overthrew the U.S.-backed government of Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959.

The letters set a date of July 20 for the re-establishment of relations, and embassies could be opened at that time or later.

Kerry, speaking from Vienna, said he would visit Havana to raise the U.S. flag outside the future U.S. embassy, currently labeled an interests section.

"The progress that we mark today is yet another demonstration that we don’t have to be imprisoned by the past," Obama said from the White House Rose Garden. "When something isn’t working, we can - and will - change."

Obama noted that ties were severed in the year he was born, 1961.

A long battle of subterfuge and outright aggression followed as Cuba closely aligned with the Soviet Union, nearly leading to nuclear war in 1962 over Soviet missiles stationed on the island.

Isolating Cuba had been a foreign policy pillar under 10 U.S. presidents, continuing long after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Washington's allies repeatedly condemned the policy, and Obama declared it had failed to promote democracy or improve the lives of Cubans living in a one-party state.

"It hasn’t worked for 50 years. It shuts America out of Cuba’s future, and it only makes life worse for the Cuban people," Obama said while noting stark differences between the two governments would remain.

Cuba's Communist government controls the media and represses political opponents, a policy it has justified based on U.S. attempts to destabilize the government and Washington's open support of dissidents.

Castro, 84, Fidel's younger brother and Cuban president since 2008, welcomed diplomatic ties that he said should reinforce the principles of sovereign equality and non-interference in his country.

"Cuba is encouraged by the reciprocal intention to develop respectful and cooperative relations between our two peoples and governments," Castro wrote in his letter to Obama.

Obama said the agreement would increase U.S. contact with ordinary Cubans, permit a larger staff of diplomats and grant them more freedom of movement across the island.

Since 1977, both countries have operated with interests sections protected by the Swiss government.

MAJOR OBSTACLES AHEAD

With diplomatic relations restored, the United States and Cuba will turn to more difficult bilateral problems likely to take years to resolve.

Cuba's Communist government said in a statement that to have normal overall relations, the United States must rescind its economic embargo and return the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, which it has leased since 1903, as sovereign Cuban territory.

Asked whether he could envision a day when the United States might give up the base, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a Pentagon news conference there was "no anticipation and no plan, with respect to the Guantanamo Bay naval station in Cuba."

Obama, a Democrat, has asked the Republican-controlled Congress to lift the 53-year-old embargo, but the conservative leadership in Congress has resisted.

A Cuban government statement said the United States also needed to halt radio and television broadcasts beamed into the country and stop "subversive" programs that the United States says are intended to promote democracy.

While critics including Republican presidential candidates have accused Obama of capitulation, the Cuba deal marks a major achievement for him. Obama has been criticized for foreign policy stumbles, especially in the Middle East.

Public opinion polls show majority support for engaging with Cuba, even among Cuban-Americans who had historically been firm supporters of the embargo.

Following 18 months of secret negotiations brokered by Pope Francis and Canada, Obama and Castro announced in December they planned to reopen embassies and normalize relations. The agreement also included a prisoner swap. 

Source: Reuters

U.S., Cuba To Announce Embassy Openings Wednesday: Report

US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a briefing on the '2014 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices' at the State Department on June 25, 2015 in Washington, DC. AFP PHOTO/MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) | MANDEL NGAN via Getty Images

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will announce Wednesday that the U.S. and Cuba have reached an agreement to open embassies in Havana and Washington, a senior administration official said.

The announcement marks a major step in ending hostilities between the longtime foes.

The U.S. and Cuba have been negotiating the reestablishment of embassies following the Dec. 17 announcement that they would move to restore ties.

For Obama, ending Washington's half-century freeze with Cuba is seen as a major element of his foreign policy legacy. He has long touted the value of engagement and argued that the U.S. embargo on the communist island just 90 miles south of Florida was ineffective.

Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are expected to speak Wednesday morning about the embassy openings. The official insisted on anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter ahead of the president.

Since the late 1970s, the United States and Cuba have operated diplomatic missions called interests sections in each other's capitals. The missions are technically under the protection of Switzerland, and do not enjoy the same status as full embassies.

While the opening of embassies marks a major milestone in the thaw between the U.S. and Cuba, significant issues remain as the countries look to normalize relations. Among them: talks on human rights; demands for compensation for confiscated American properties in Havana and damages to Cuba from the embargo; and possible cooperation on law enforcement, including the touchy topic of U.S. fugitives sheltering in Havana. - The Huffington Post