Atlanta NAACP chapter calls for removal of massive Confederate sculpture in public park (Nazism at Work?)

A sculpture in Georgia larger than a football field – depicting Civil War luminaries Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson – has become the latest target in the push to purge the South of signs of the Confederacy.
The Atlanta chapter of the NAACP called Monday for the elimination of all symbols of the Confederacy from Stone Mountain Park, whose marquee attraction is the 90-foot-high, 190-foot-wide sculpture carved deep into the mountain.
"Those guys need to go,” chapter leader Richard Rose told WSB-TV, referring to Davis, the former president of the Confederate States of America, and the two Confederate generals. “They can be sand-blasted off, or somebody could carefully remove a slab of that and auction it off to the highest bidder.
"My tax dollars should not be used to commemorate slavery,” he added.
In addition to the removal of Confederate symbols from Stone Mountain Park, located outside of Atlanta, the group says it also wants all symbols removed from state-owned buildings, parks and lands.
A spokesman for the park told WSB-TV that any removal of the monuments is up to the Georgia state legislature.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., who serves the district in which the mountain sits, told local radio station V-103 that he is “not so much affected by Stone Mountain Park as I am by the flag flying at an official government building like a state capitol or even the federal Capitol, a position, the seat of government.”
“I view Stone Mountain as more of a museum-type archaeological place of remembrance for those who want to remember back then and they have a right to remember back then and the park is there,” he said.
The push from the NAACP comes on the heels of the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina state house. A June shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C., that left 9 dead has sparked debates over the Confederate flag's place in the South. The alleged killer, Dylann Roof, was white and posted numerous photos online of himself with the rebel flag.

SHOCK VIDEO: Planned Parenthood sells dead baby body parts

The video is gruesome and appalling.
It purportedly shows a Planned Parenthood executive sipping a glass of wine in a Los Angeles restaurant while casually explaining how they sell body parts from aborted babies.
The undercover video was filmed in July 2014 by the Center for Medical Progress, an advocacy group that reports on medical ethics. They dispatched two actors posing as representatives of a human biologics company to a business lunch with Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services.
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The video shows Nucatola describing in graphic detail how abortionists are able to harvest organs from aborted babies based on the parts that are needed.
“Yesterday was the first time she said people wanted lungs,” she told the undercover buyers. “Some people want lower extremities, too, which, that’s simple. That’s easy. I don’t know what they’re doing with it, I guess if they want muscle.”
To which one of the fake buyer’s replied, “Yeah - a dime a dozen.”
“I’d say a lot of people want liver,” Nucatola said. “And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps.”
She went on to describe how they are able to acquire other organs without “crushing” them.
“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Understand this – she is talking about an unborn baby, folks.
Planned Parenthood issued a statement denying they’ve done anything wrong and accused the Center for Medical Progress of releasing a heavily edited video.
“A well funded group established for the purpose of damaging Planned Parenthood’s mission and services has promoted a heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research,” said spokesman Eric Ferrero in a prepared statement.
Ferrero went on to acknowledge they help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research and they do so will the full consent from patients “and under the highest ethical and legal standards.”
Planned Parenthood denied they made any money off the sale of aborted baby parts.
“There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood,” Ferrero said. “In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field.”
David Daledien, lead the undercover project against Planned Parenthood – a nearly three-year-long investigation on illegal trafficking of aborted fetal parts.
“Planned Parenthood’s criminal conspiracy to make money off of aborted baby parts reaches to the very highest levels of their organization,” he said. “Elected officials must listen to the public outcry for Planned Parenthood to be held accountable to the law and for our tax dollars to stop underwriting this barbaric abortion business.”
The Center for Medical Progress offered a swift refutation to Planned Parenthood’s response – by posting the full and unedited video.
They also posted an advertisement from a major purchaser of aborted fetal tissue that was posted in Planned Parenthood clinics. That advertisement mentions words like “financial profitable,” “financial profits,” “financial benefit to your clinic,” and “fiscal growth of your own clinic.”
Planned Parenthood did not return calls seeking comment on those allegations.
Meanwhile, the outrage over the horrific video has spread like wildfire.
Dr. Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, summed it up in one word – speechless.
“If this does not shock the conscience, what will?” Moore wrote online. ‘It is not only that infants, in their mother’s wombs, are deprived of their lives, but also that their corpses are desecrated for profit.”
Think about that for a moment – desecrated unborn babies for profit.
“This is not only murderous; it is murderous in the most ghoulish way imaginable,” Moore added.
Moore is calling on Congress and the Department of Justice to investigate.
“For years, many of us have called on government leaders to see to it that no taxpayer funds, of any kind, go to Planned Parenthood,” Moore wrote. “Is it not clear that these are not health-care providers but pirates and grave-robbers of those who have no graves?”
La. Gov. Bobby Jindal has already called on the state’s Dept. of Health and Hospitals to conduct an investigation of what he called “this alleged evil and illegal activity.”
GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina posted a Facebook message calling the video tragic and outrageous.
“This isn’t about ‘choice’,” she wrote. “It’s about profiting on the death of the unborn while telling women it’s about empowerment.”
"Beyond disturbing," is what Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tweeted.
I do not believe my words can match the eloquence of Dr. Moore’s. We ask God to bless America – a nation that turns a blind eye to  the slaughter of unborn children – a nation that provides taxpayers to fund an organization that allegedly sells body parts from dead babies.
God bless America? Perhaps we should be asking for His mercy, instead.

 Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. Sign up for his American Dispatch newsletter, be sure to join his Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter. His latest book is "God Less America.

Denver court rules against Little Sisters of the Poor contraception coverage case

A federal appeals court in Denver ruled on Tuesday against a group of Colorado nuns who challenged a provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires employers to provide insurance policies covering contraception.  
Though religious groups are already exempt from covering contraceptives, the plaintiffs – the Little Sisters of the Poor as well as four Christian colleges in Oklahoma – argued the exemption doesn’t go far enough because they must sign away the coverage to another party, making them feel as though they had a hand in providing contraceptives.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.
The court ruled that because the Little Sisters of the Poor had the option of signing a form that would transfer covering contraceptives to a third-party, they failed to show that the ObamaCare mandate placed a burden on their right to exercise freedom of religion.
Following the ruling, Sister Loraine Marie Maguire said “we simply cannot choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith.”
Maguire added that forcing the Little Sister of the Poor to make that choice “violates our nation’s commitment to ensuring that people from diverse faiths can freely follow God’s calling in their lives.”
Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the lead attorney for the nuns, said there have been “untold millions of people” who have gotten contraceptives without involving nuns and that there was “no reason the government cannot run its programs without hijacking the Little Sisters and their health plan.”
"Although we recognize and respect the sincerity of plaintiffs' beliefs and arguments, we conclude the accommodation scheme ... does not substantially burden their religious exercise," the three-judge panel wrote.
The same court ruled last year that for-profit companies can join the exempted religious organizations and not provide the contraceptives. The U.S. Supreme Court later agreed with the 10th Circuit in the case brought by the Hobby Lobby arts-and-crafts chain.
The birth-control rule has been among the most divisive aspects of the health care overhaul. Some advocates for women praise the mandate, but some religious groups have decried it as an attack on religious freedom.
The Denver nuns run more than two dozen nursing homes for impoverished seniors.
Two years ago the U.S. Supreme Court offered the nuns a short-term reprieve on the exemption pending their appeal.
In addition to the Denver nuns, the law was challenged by Southern Nazarene University, Oklahoma Baptist University, Mid-America University and Oklahoma Wesleyan University. Also challenging the waiver process is a group called Reaching Souls International, an evangelist Oklahoma organization that does Christian mission work overseas.
The birth-control exemption was extended to other religious nonprofits while the case was being heard. Those included Wyoming Catholic College in Casper, Wyoming.
The three-judge panel included one judge who also ruled in the Hobby Lobby decision. The judges drew a distinction between the two cases, noting that the religious nonprofits have an exemption process that wasn't available to Hobby Lobby.
While Hobby Lobby faced the prospect of fines for not providing coverage, the judges noted, the nonprofits must only file for an exemption, making the burden less substantial.
The judges called the health law's accommodation for religious objectors adequate.
"The accommodation relieves plaintiffs from complying with the mandate and guarantees they will not have to provide, pay for, or facilitate contraceptive coverage," the judges wrote.
The group that brought the lawsuit on behalf of the nuns and religious schools, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said in a statement that it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"There is no reason the government cannot run its programs without hijacking the Little Sisters and their health plan," Becket Fund lawyer Mark Rienzi said in a statement.

Cyber Security Cartoon

Former Navy SEAL: Why I am no longer a Democrat

I am a conservative Republican, but I didn’t start out that way.
I was raised as a Democrat. I was taught that Harry Truman was the greatest president ever because he was strong, stood up to the communists, and most important, he was from Missouri. I was taught to stand up for the little guy, and that bigger government was the best way to do that. I registered to vote as a Democrat, and several years ago some Democrats even tried to recruit me to run for Congress.
There was one rather large problem. As I got older, I no longer believed in their ideas. Even worse, I had concluded that liberals aren’t just wrong. All too often they are world-class hypocrites. They talk a great game about helping the most vulnerable, with ideas that feel good and fashionable. The problem is their ideas don’t work, and often hurt the exact people they claim to help.
After four tours of duty as a Navy SEAL officer, I came home from Iraq and watched the VA – the second-biggest bureaucracy in the country – fail my friends. The VA was broken and my friends were suffering. And yet, time and again, the only “solution” I heard from liberals was to spend more money. It made me angry.

I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results. It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear.

It’s not that I doubted their intentions. But good intentions are easy. Even easier when you’re spending other people’s money. But they’re not enough. To actually achieve meaningful results, you have to have good ideas, discipline and accountability to go along with it. The problem is that most Democrats seem to think more money and bigger government are the solutions to virtually every single problem. They’re wrong.
It’s easy to give people food stamps; harder to get people into good-paying jobs. It’s easy to encourage dependency; harder to help people into a life of purpose and dignity. The worst are politicians who smugly talk about caring for the little guy, and then abandon the poorest, most vulnerable of our children to schools that give them little chance to succeed. That’s not just hypocrisy. It’s a tragedy.
I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results. It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear. 
I am not a career politician. I’ve never run for office, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers. In fact, the political world is still a very foreign place to me. But I believe Missouri is heading the wrong direction, and I don’t trust the career politicians who created this mess to fix it. 
So what would I do? I believe in limited but effective government. I believe in replacing ObamaCare with something that actually works. I believe in putting working families and job creation ahead of special interests. I believe that in a free society we have to defend religious liberties and the 2^nd Amendment, and protect innocent life, so everyone has the freedom to pursue happiness. I believe in reforming welfare, so every person can have a chance at a life of dignity, purpose, and meaning. And I believe America’s public schools should be the best in the world.
In other words, I believe we have a lot of work to do.
I was raised to stand up for the little guy, for working families and the middle class. I am committed to that principle today more than ever. And if I thought the Democratic Party had the right ideas to do that, I’d still be one of them. But they don’t. And if I trusted career politicians to fix the problems they created, I’d still be standing on the sidelines. But I don’t.
As Americans, we deserve much better than what we’re getting from our government. We don’t need more rhetoric. We want results. And that means changing politics as usual, which won’t be easy. But nothing worthwhile ever is. You have to fight for what you believe in, and I, for one, have never backed down from that kind of fight.

Clinton vows to raise taxes, reform Wall Street in effort to recapture progressive base

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton on Monday took a giant step toward letting Democratic voters know she’s representing the progressive agenda, calling for tax increases and more regulation on Wall Street -- while making a play for a liberal base that has been gravitating toward Sen. Bernie Sanders. 
“I know as much as anybody, the role Wall Street should play for main street,” said Clinton, who vowed, if elected, to “rein in excessive risks” and appoint regulators to “prosecute firms and individuals” who break the law.
Clinton also vowed to increase taxes on large corporations and the country’s highest wage-earners, an apparent effort to recapture her party’s progressive base now captivated by surging primary challenger Sanders and the reformer agenda of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is not a 2016 candidate.
Clinton specifically vowed to revive efforts to institute the so-called Buffet Rule, which is essentially a 30 percent “millionaire tax.”
“Those at the top have to pay their share,” Clinton said during her roughly 35-minute speech at the New School, a New York City college and bastion for progressive ideals. “Wealthy financiers pay artificially low tax rates.”
Clinton also called for minimum-wage increases and urged companies to expand profit-sharing of corporate earnings with workers.
“Hard-working Americans deserve to benefit from the record corporate earnings they helped produce," she said. "That will be good for workers and good for business. Studies show profit-sharing that gives everyone a stake in a company's success can boost productivity and put money directly into employees' pockets."
The speech was greeted warmly on the left.
“Clinton's economic policy speech reflects a very clear understanding that the Democratic Party and the vast majority of the American people want a president who will fight alongside … Warren and refuse to kowtow to wealthy and powerful interests on Wall Street,” said Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America.
"Coupled with Senator Bernie Sanders' early 2016 surge, today's speech illustrates the dominate force the Elizabeth Warren wing is in the Democratic Party and the critical role it has already played in ensuring that income inequality sits at the very center of the 2016 presidential debate."
While top-tier Republican candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has called for an annual growth rate of 4 percent, Clinton asserted that the nation's economy should not be “tethered” to a specific growth figure but rather by how much income increases for middle-class households.
Clinton called out Bush by name. And in her pitch to revive labor unions and their influence on increasing wages, she cited Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the latest GOP contender to enter the race, and suggested the entire Republican Party was trying to squash big labor.
“They made their name stomping workers’ rights,” Clinton said. “I will fight back against these mean-spirited attacks.”
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Allison Moore said in response that Clinton also should have explained how she plans to pay for all the spending.
"Whether she tells us or not, though, it’s pretty clear: she will have to raise taxes on American families," Moore said. "If she doesn’t raise taxes, then she will have to break her promises. That’s Clintonomics: tax hikes or broken promises."
Clinton also pointed to economic progress during her husband's two terms in the 1990s and more recently under President Obama.
In Clinton's approach to the economy, she says more Americans would share in the prosperity and avoid the boom-and-bust cycles of Wall Street that have led to economic turbulence of the past decade.
Clinton, who is seeking to become the nation's first female president, also addressed ways of making it easier for women to join the workforce -- including affordable child care and pay equal to their male counterparts

Amid sanctuary city debate, Obama administration takes heat for pulling plug on enforcement program

The president said it worked. The nation's top immigration agent said it worked. Even the inspector general said it worked. So why did the Obama administration kill a government program that did exactly what Congress intended by identifying and deporting illegal immigrants?
"It worked! It worked, I think, a little too well in terms of broadly identifying individuals that had been arrested and charged with crimes," said Julie Myers-Wood, who directed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency from 2005-2008.
At issue is an ICE program known as Secure Communities. Launched after the 9/11 attacks under the Patriot Act, it required immigration agents to have access to the fingerprints and criminal history of any immigrant booked in jail. That requirement came after studies showed immigration agents failed to identify 86 percent of all illegal immigrants released from jail.
Secure Communities cost more than $1 billion, and in 2012, then-ICE Director John Morton called it "the future of immigration enforcement." That same year, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general called Secure Communities a success, "effectively identifying criminal aliens ... with little or no cost" to local jurisdictions.
But to critics, the program cast too wide a net. In large, Democratically controlled cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, politicians said the program deported too many immigrants guilty of minor crimes, like traffic violations and non-violent offenses like theft and burglary. In response, some 200 cities created "sanctuary" laws to shield immigrants by prohibiting local police from cooperating when ICE sought to pick up an inmate.
Chris Newman, with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told the Huffington Post last year, "The tide has turned against the program, and I think there is now consensus that the program needs to be shut down completely." Fred Tsao, of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, added, "The whole machinery is just so flawed. If the focus really is on people who have committed serious crimes and have been convicted of those offenses, then you don't try to catch people when they've first been arrested, in many cases before they've even had a bond set for them."
Amid the pressure, DHS ended the program last year, replacing it with a narrower version called the Priority Enforcement Program, which targets only those held on certain offenses.
But many argue that Secure Communities worked -- and that sanctuary laws have gone too far, exempting not only drunk drivers and thieves but child molesters and killers, leaving the system paralyzed and the public at risk.
Those concerns were renewed earlier this month after an illegal immigrant released by the sheriff's department in one such city, San Francisco, was arrested for the murder of a woman along a city pier.
"It's not fair for cities to have choices like this. However, DHS and ICE have got to work with the realities that are out there," said Wood. "Until Congress changes the law or until there is a little action against those entities, I think it's very smart for DHS and ICE to try to find a way to come to common ground."
Officials created Secure Communities when studies revealed one out of six illegal immigrants released from jail were re-arrested within three years, according to the Congressional Research Service. A more recent study by Jessica Vaughan at the Center for Immigration Studies found, of 8,000 criminal aliens released by sanctuary cities in 2014, almost 2,000 were arrested again within eight months on charges including domestic violence and murder.
The illegal immigrant population of 11.7 million represents just 3.6 percent of the U.S. population. But according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, illegal immigrants represent 12 percent of murder sentences, 20 percent of kidnapping sentences and 16 percent of drug trafficking sentences.
While some sheriffs support and others quietly agreed to the sanctuary restrictions imposed by lawmakers, Fresno County, Calif., Sheriff Margaret Mims has not. Instead of following the state law -- which limits communication between jail deputies and ICE -- Mims installed two ICE agents in the Fresno County jail.
In the past, ICE relied on deputies to notify them whenever a "person of interest" was scheduled for release. Mims believed that system made it possible for a dangerous offender to slip through the cracks. Under the new system, ICE agents have access to the inmates for interviews and can see their entire criminal history before making a decision on whether to deport them or not. In the last three weeks, Fresno County deported 23 illegal immigrants because of the program, the only one of its kind in the U.S.

Iran, world powers agree to nuclear deal

Iran and six world powers, led by the United States, reached a formal agreement early Tuesday aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in international sanctions relief.
Diplomats from both sides confirmed the deal had been reached after the latest 18-day round of intense and often fractious negotiations in Vienna, Austria blew through three self-imposed deadlines. A final meeting between the foreign ministers of Iran, the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia was underway Tuesday morning, with a press conference expected to follow. President Barack Obama was to make a statement on the agreement from the White House at 7 a.m. ET.
There was no immediate comment on the agreement from U.S. officials, but Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif described the accord as "a historic moment" as he attended the final session.
"We are reaching an agreement that is not perfect for anybody, but it is what we could accomplish," Zarif continued, "and it is an important achievement for all of us. Today could have been the end of hope on this issue. But now we are starting a new chapter of hope."
Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign policy chief, called it "a sign of hope for the entire world."
The Associated Press reported that the accord is meant to keep Iran from producing enough material for a nuclear weapon for at least 10 years and will impose new provisions for inspections of Iranian facilities, including military sites.

More on this...

• Diplomats: Iran nuclear deal likely early Tuesday

• Iran nuke talks: What about our imprisoned Americans?

• Is Putin trying to burn US in Iran nuclear talks?

• What happens if Congress rejects a nuclear deal with Iran?

Diplomats said Iran agreed to the continuation of a United Nations arms embargo on the country for up to five more years, though it could end earlier if the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) definitively clears Iran of any current work on nuclear weapons. A similar condition was put on U.N. restrictions on the transfer of ballistic missile technology to Tehran, which could last for up to eight more years.
Reuters reported, citing Western diplomats, that Iran had agreed to a so-called "snapback" provision, under which sanctions could be reinstated in 65 days if it violated the agreement.
Washington had sought to maintain the ban on Iran importing and exporting weapons, concerned that an Islamic theoracy flush with cash from the nuclear deal would expand its military assistance for Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, Yemen's Houthi rebels, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and other forces opposing America's Mideast allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Iranian leaders insisted the embargo had to end as their forces combat regional scourges such as ISIS. And they got some support from China and particularly Russia, which wants to expand military cooperation and arms sales to Tehran, including the long-delayed transfer of S-300 advanced air defense systems -- a move long opposed by the United States.
The last major sticking point appeared to be whether international weapons inspectors would be given access to Iranian nuclear sites. The deal includes a compromise between Washington and Tehran that would allow U.N. inspectors to press for visits to Iranian military sites as part of their monitoring duties. However, access at will to any site would not necessarily be granted and even if so, could be delayed, a condition that critics of the deal are sure to seize on as possibly giving Tehran time to cover any sign of non-compliance with its commitments.
Under the deal, Tehran would have the right to challenge the U.N request and an arbitration board composed of Iran and the six world powers that negotiated with it would have to decide on the issue. Such an arrangement would still be a notable departure from assertions by top Iranian officials, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that their country would never allow the IAEA into such sites. Iran has argued that such visits by the IAEA would be a cover for spying on its military secrets.
The IAEA also wants the access to complete its long-stymied investigation of past weapons work by Iran, and the U.S. says Iranian cooperation is needed for all economic sanctions to be lifted. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said Tuesday his agency and Iran had signed a "roadmap" to resolve outstanding concerns.
"This is a significant step forward towards clarifying outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program," Amano said in a statement released Tuesday. "It sets out a clear sequence of activities over the coming months, including the provision by Iran of explanations regarding outstanding issues."
The economic benefits for Iran are potentially massive. It stands to receive more than $100 billion in assets frozen overseas, and an end to a European oil embargo and various financial restrictions on Iranian banks.
The overall nuclear deal comes after nearly a decade of international, intercontinental diplomacy that until recently was defined by failure. Breaks in the talks sometimes lasted for months, and Iran's nascent nuclear program expanded into one that Western intelligence agencies saw as only a couple of months away from weapons capacity. The U.S. and Israel both threatened possible military responses.
The United States joined the negotiations in 2008, and U.S. and Iranian officials met together secretly four years later in Oman to see if diplomatic progress was possible. But the process remained essentially stalemated until summer 2013, when Hassan Rouhani was elected president and declared his country ready for serious compromise.
More secret U.S.-Iranian discussions followed, culminating in a face-to-face meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the United Nations in September 2013 and a telephone conversation between Rouhani and President Barack Obama. That conversation marked the two countries' highest diplomatic exchange since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and the ensuing hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran.
Kerry and Zarif took the lead in the negotiations. Two months later, in Geneva, Iran and the six powers announced an interim agreement that temporarily curbed Tehran's nuclear program and unfroze some Iranian assets while setting the stage for Tuesday's comprehensive accord.
It took time to get the final deal, however. The talks missed deadlines for the pact in July 2014 and November 2014, leading to long extensions. Finally, in early April, negotiators reached framework deal in Lausanne, Switzerland, setting up the last push for the historic agreement.
Protracted negotiations still lie ahead to put the agreement into practice and deep suspicion reigns on all sides about violations that could unravel the accord. And spoilers abound.
In the United States, Congress has a 60-day review period during which Obama cannot make good on any concessions to the Iranians. U.S. lawmakers could hold a vote of disapproval and take further action.
Iranian hardliners oppose dismantling a nuclear program the country has spent hundreds of billions of dollars developing. Khamenei, while supportive of his negotiators thus far, has issued a series of defiant red lines that may be impossible to reconcile in a deal with the West.
And further afield, Israel will strongly oppose the outcome. It sees the acceptance of extensive Iranian nuclear infrastructure and continued nuclear activity as a mortal threat, and has warned that it could take military action on its own, if necessary.
The deal is a "bad mistake of historic proportions," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday, adding that it would enable Iran to "continue to pursue its aggression and terror in the region."
Sunni Arab rivals of Shiite Iran are none too happy, either, with Saudi Arabia in particularly issuing veiled threats to develop its own nuclear program.