Vox Sentences: The Iran nuclear deal, explained 5 different ways

The Iran deal, explained

(Pool/Getty Images)

• We have an Iran nuclear deal! Read the full text here.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• The very basic explanation: Iran gives up its enriched uranium and centrifuges and submits to extremely invasive inspections, and the US and the UN lift sanctions in return.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• Here's a "plain English" explanation of the deal's contents, including its crucial "snapback" provision, which makes it very easy to reimpose UN sanctions if any country that's party to the deal thinks Iran is cheating.

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• Congress could in theory kill the deal and reimpose US (but not UN) sanctions, but they'll need 13 Senate Democrats and 44 House Democrats, which is very unlikely.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Amanda Taub explains the worst-case scenario: Even if Iran cheats, the deal leaves the US better off than it would be without a deal and inspections.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

• Zack Beauchamp explains the best part of the deal: It eliminates the possibility of war with Iran, which would be an unmitigated catastrophe.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Obama talked to Tom Friedman to explain his reasoning behind the deal: "We’re not measuring this deal by whether we are solving every problem that can be traced back to Iran … We are measuring this deal [by if] Iran could not get a nuclear weapon."

  [NYT / Thomas Friedman]

• Most US discourse around the deal takes it as a given that Iran getting a nuke would be a bad thing. That makes this bracing piece by the late Kenneth Waltz arguing for an Iranian bomb essential reading.

  [Foreign Affairs / Kenneth Waltz]

This one's for you, Clyde Tombaugh

• NASA's New Horizons probe became the first spacecraft to fly by Pluto at 7:49 ET today.

  [Vox / Joseph Stromberg]

• As a result of New Horizons' mission, we now have a detailed picture of what the dwarf planet looks like. The picture on the left below was the best image we had of Pluto in 1993, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture on the right is from New Horizons.

  [Vox / Joseph Stromberg]

(NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI and Vox)

• Other findings from New Horizons: a precise estimate of Pluto's diameter, confirmation that there's nitrogen and methane ice in its polar regions, and a look at the landscape of its biggest moon, Charon.

  [NYT / Kenneth Chang]

• The children of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930, were at NASA during the flyby.

• The spacecraft has traveled more than 3 billion miles from Earth, moving at speeds as fast as 50,000 miles per hour.

  [Vox / Joseph Stromberg]

• It's about the size of a grand piano.

  [NYT / Kenneth Chang]

• The mission was the culmination of over a quarter century of lobbying from a group of astronomers named the Pluto Underground who urged a mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt; the Pluto Kuiper Express project almost happened but got canceled in 2000.

  [Business Insider / Kelly Dickerson]

• For more, see Joss Fong, Estelle Caswell, and Joseph Stromberg's excellent video explaining the mission.

  [YouTube]

Organ sales

(David McNew/Getty Images)

• An undercover video by an anti-abortion group shows a Planned Parenthood executive discussing its donations of aborted fetuses' tissue to scientists.

  [Washington Post / Sandhya Somashekhar and Danielle Paquette]

• At issue is whether the organization is actually selling the body parts, which is illegal, or negotiating a donation, which is totally legal. In a statement, the group said, "There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood."

  [Reuters / Jon Herskovitz]

• It's also legal for Planned Parenthood to receive reimbursement for expenses related to the donations (e.g., transporting the tissue to researchers), which it insists was being negotiated in this case.

  [The Hill / Sara Ferris]

• Some bioethicists argue for legal fetal tissue sales: "such a market might also bring solace to women who have already decided upon abortion, but desire that some additional social good come from the procedure."

  [Huffington Post / Jacob Appel]

• For more, see Sarah Kliff's excellent, comprehensive explainer.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

Misc.

• Alfred Postel graduated in John Roberts's class at Harvard Law. Now he's homeless in DC — because America totally fails at helping people with schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses.

  [Washington Post / Terrence McCoy]

• Jackie Fuchs, the bassist for the Runaways, has come forward after 40 years to say she was raped by the band's manager while her bandmates Joan Jett and Cherrie Curie stood by and did nothing. Here's Jason Cherkis's harrowing account of Fuchs's time in the band, and a period in rock history when teenage girls were treated like property.

  [Huffington Post / Jason Cherkis]

• Norman Finkelstein was, for years, the most influential anti-Zionist in the American academy. Then he came out against BDS.

  [New Republic / Jordan Michael Smith]

• The 21st Century Cures Act adds $9 billion in federal funding for medical research. It might still be a bad idea.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• This is definitely the most comprehensive history of pneumatic tube telegraphy in 19th-century London that you'll read today.

  [Lapsed Historian / Long Branch Mike]

Verbatim

• "There’s a kind of optimism specifically within Christianity about the world — about whose side God is on. Well, I didn’t have any of that in my background. I had physicality and chaos."

  [Ta-Nehisi Coates to NY Mag / Benjamin Wallace-Wells]

• "In this movie there are drag queens. There are women, referred to as queens. There are bodies of all sizes and races and ages, all getting properly turned on by men who tell them they deserve it and really mean it."

  [Business Insider / Shane Ferro]

• "It’s strange, how you go from a being person who is away from home to a person with no home at all."

  [Medium / Clemantine Wamariya]

• "Throughout his career, Kuznets argued that military armaments should be heavily discounted in GDP measures, because, by design, they destroy the world rather than build it up."

  [NYT / Adam Davidson]

• "All family communication with inmates at Hays County goes through Securus, which charges Jones about $10 for a phone call and about $8 for a video visit. In the year and a half that her son has been locked up, Jones says she has racked up over $1,000 in bills with Securus to keep in contact with her son."

  [IB Times / Eric Markowitz]

Video of the day

• Every Serena Williams win comes with a side of racism and sexism

  [YouTube]

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