Jesse:
I've been absolutely glued to Andrew Sullivan's coverage of the situation in Iran. So glued, in fact, that I fell behind on my Opinio Juris. So behind, that I missed this tidbit:
As for law, the United States has expressly promised to stay out of matters such as fraudulent Iranian elections. In one of the most unusual international law commitments I have ever read, the United States in the 1981 Algiers Accords has pledged “that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.” Failure to comply with this obligation could result in a claim filed by Iran against the United States before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal.So... in all the "discussion" from the right wing crazies about how Obama should intervene in the election, no one's mentioned this yet? No one thought I should know that it would be an explicit treaty violation for the President to intervene here? Ze sigh.
3 comments:
Good to know.
You target the right wing but, to be honest, nobody influential has mentioned this treaty, from the right wing to the left wing to Biden to Obama to government spokespersons. I think you are being a tad harsh targeting the right wing with your piece.
Had I been targeting the right wing, I think I would have been entirely justified; they're the ones arguing for... whatever it is they want Obama to do, so I think it would have been reasonable to expect them to take a look at the issue.
However, I was actually targeting everyone, right, left, and media for demanding, rejecting demands for, and reporting on demands for, some sort of action or stronger rhetoric, without noticing that intervention would be a treaty violation. These guys all do this stuff for money.
In fact, I was really focused on the blogosphere and the media... didn't even occur to me to blame the right. I wouldn't expect any prominent right wing Americans to know anything about anything, really. And even if the treaty was brought to their attention, I wouldn't expect them to mention it.
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