Most Americans want resolution of Iran nuclear issue: Activist

Most Americans are fed up with conflicts and wars and they want their government to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, says a journalist and anti-war activist in Virginia.

“The latest polls… show that about two-thirds of the US public is in favor of a deal with Iran,” Phil Wilayto, an editor at Virginia Defender Newspaper, told Press TV on Friday.

After more than two weeks of marathon talks, Iran and the P5+1 group of countries - the US, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany – announced the conclusion of nuclear negotiations in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on July 14.

“This whole struggle between the US government and Iran has gone on for so long that people are becoming immune to the propaganda of their own government that Iran poses a terrible threat. They are tired of war, they are sick of war, and they would feel more comfortable if they felt that there is resolution to the tensions between the two countries,” Wilayto stated.

“What we have been trying to point out in our newspaper, the Virginia Defender, and through our work with the United National Antiwar Coalition, is that: 1) there is no evidence, whatsoever, that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, and 2) Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] has declared nuclear weapons to be against Islam, because they are weapons of mass destruction that kill the innocent as well as the aggressor,” he added.

“So the argument that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon has always been a false one, just giving the US government and other Western governments an excuse to impose sanctions, because Iran represents a threat to their achieving hegemony in the region as a whole, the oil-rich region,” the analyst continued.

“You know that if the main export of the region were cucumbers, there would be no tensions at all.  It’s because it has oil, and the world runs on oil, and whoever controls the oil, can control the world,” he noted.

Wilayto made the remarks when asked to comment on US Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s assertion that the negotiated nuclear agreement with Iran would not survive beyond the term of President Barack Obama.

The activist said Rubio is “absolutely right”.

“The agreement between the five countries [sic] and the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a treaty that has to be voted on by the US Congress; it’s an agreement that the president can implement on his own over the objections of Congress,” he said.

“So one result is that some sanctions could be lifted, because they were imposed by a presidential decree and other sanctions or the majority that the US has imposed, were imposed by the US Congress, and they will not be lifted unless Congress agrees to,” said the journalist.

Most Republicans oppose the nuclear agreement with Iran, but they need a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress to override a possible presidential veto, and to reach that threshold, Republicans need Democratic support.

The White House has launched a sales pitch to the Republican-controlled Congress, with 60 days to vote to either approve or disapprove of it.

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