The
Propriety of the Iran Deal:
Position
Paper For Colchester Synagogue Debate Of September 17, 2015
Israel’s
Nuclear Weapons Program
Why is
Iran – but not Israel -- suffering under international sanctions on account of
its nuclear weapons program? From the
perspective of International Law, the reason is that Israel’s nuclear weapons
program is legal, while Iran’s is illegal. That is because Israel (like India
and Pakistan) is not a signatory to -- and consequently has never violated --
the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the
Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT. In
other words, Israel’s nuclear weapons program is every bit as legal as are the
nuclear weapons programs of the US, Britain, France, Russia and China.
Past
Iranian Duplicity
Iran,
however, is a signatory to the
Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT permits a non-nuclear-weapon
signatory nation, like Iran, to obtain dual-use nuclear technology from one or
more nuclear-weapon signatory nations, like Russia, provided that the recipient
nation (a) does not use that technology to develop nuclear weapons and (b)
permits the International Atomic Energy Agency, commonly known as the IAEA, to
confirm, via inspection of the recipient’s nuclear facilities -- all of which
must be declared to the IAEA -- that the recipient is not attempting to develop
nuclear weapons. Iran violated the NPT
by building secret nuclear facilities, which it did not declare to the IAEA, in
order to enrich uranium and create plutonium for the development of nuclear
weapons.
Iran’s
punishment for violating the NPT has been the imposition of international
trade, banking and technology transfer sanctions, which took about 15 years to
assemble. These sanctions have crippled
Iran’s economy and have triggered domestic unrest, thereby forcing Iran to
enter into negotiations over its illegal nuclear weapons program.
Joint
Comprehensive Plan Of Action
In
October 2012, US President Barack Obama stated that the objective of the
negotiations with Iran was to terminate and dismantle its illicit nuclear
weapons program. Unfortunately, the
United States subsequently abandoned that strategic objective; for, in July 2015, European Union countries
Britain, France and Germany, plus the United States, Russia, and China
(collectively known internationally as the “E3/EU+3” and in the United States
as the “P5 & 1”) and Iran executed a Document entitled the “JOINT
COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OF ACTION”, commonly known as the “JCPOA”. The purpose of this Document was to (a)
return more than 100 billion dollars in Iranian assets frozen by the US
government after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, (b) remove sanctions on Iran’s
development of conventional weapons and ballistic missiles (including
intercontinental ballistic missiles) after, respectively, 5 and 8 years, and
(c) remove trade, banking and technology transfer sanctions (including dual-use
nuclear technology transfer sanctions), all in exchange for the suspension
and reduction – rather than the termination and dismantlement -- of
Iran’s nuclear weapons program. This
suspension and reduction period will expire in only 15 years – a mere
moment in time when one is playing the long game.
It is
noteworthy that this Document does not identify itself as an
Agreement; instead, it calls itself a
Plan Of Action, which implies that its provisions are voluntary rather than obligatory. In fact, the Plan Of Action repeatedly uses
the word “voluntary” to describe prospective Iranian conduct thereunder. For example, the first sentence of the Plan
Of Action’s Preamble, paragraph X, states:
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
will be requested to monitor and verify the voluntary nuclear-related
measures as detailed in this JCPOA.
Moreover,
the introductory statement to the operative portion of the Plan Of Action
states:
Iran and E3/EU+3 will take the following voluntary
measures within the timeframe as detailed in this JCPOA and its Annexes
Farcically, the Plan Of Action’s Preamble, paragraph VI,
states:
The E3/EU+3 and Iran
reaffirm their commitment to the purposes and principles of the United Nations
as set out in the UN Charter.
What are those
purposes and principles?
Article 1 of the UN
Charter begins:
The Purposes of the
United Nations are: To maintain
international peace and security …
Article 2, Paragraph
4, of the UN Charter states:
All Members shall refrain in their international
relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or
political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with
the Purposes of the United Nations.
However, since the Plan Of Action has come into existence, Iran has publicly and
repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel.
Iran is also continuing to employ its own or proxy forces to dominate
the governments of 4 other countries: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Consequently, Iran is already violating
that particular provision of the Plan Of Action.
Theological Basis
For Deceiving Non-Muslims
In light of Iran’s
decades’ long violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Iran’s immediate
disregard for the Plan Of Action, why should we trust Iran to honor any other
provisions of the Plan Of Action? --
especially since Iran’s clerical leadership believes that it is ethically
entitled to lie to the non-Muslim World.
This is due to the Islamic doctrine of “Tekeyah”, which permits a Muslim
to deceive a non-Muslim in pursuit of strategic objectives. The doctrine of “Tekeyah” is based upon the
unimpeachable conduct of Mohammed, who, in 628 CE, when his forces were too
weak to conquer Mecca, entered into a 10-year peace treaty, commonly known as
the “Treaty of Hudaibiya”, with the Quraish tribe, which was the dominant tribe
of the City -- only to breach the Treaty approximately 21 months later, when
his forces had finally become strong enough to conquer Mecca. Almost 1400 years later, the doctrine of
“Tekeyah” is still widely-accepted in the Muslim World. It is instructive to recall that, on May 10,
1994, after the Palestine Liberation Organization had already entered into the
Oslo Accords with Israel, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat declared to a questioning
Muslim audience in Johannesburg, South Africa that the PLO’s agreement with the
Zionist enemy was, in fact, Islamically permissible, because it was no
different than Mohammed’s Treaty of Hudaibiya.
More to the point, Hassan Rouhani, the current President of Iran and the
former chief nuclear negotiator for Iran during 2003 - 2005, boasted in an
interview conducted by Iran’s IRIB TV on May 27, 2013 that he had duplicitously
used those earlier nuclear suspension negotiations as a cover to, instead,
advance and expand Iran’s nuclear program, rhetorically asking his Iranian
interviewer: "Do you know when
heavy water was developed? Summer of 2004. Do you know when we developed
yellowcake? Winter 2004. Do you know when the number of centrifuges reached
3,000? Winter 2004."
Given that Iran has
violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty for decades, did not act in good faith
during the 2003 – 2005 nuclear suspension negotiations, and is already
violating the Plan Of Action’s pledge of allegiance to the UN Charter, it is a
certainty that Iran will continue to violate the Plan Of Action in pursuit of
nuclear weapons.
False Choice vs.
Real Choice
This proves that the
real choice confronting us was never -- as Obama has repeatedly claimed
-- between approval of the deal and the initiation of War. After all, if President Obama were to now
repudiate the Plan Of Action, who would go to War against Iran because of that
repudiation? Obama? Certainly not. Netanyahu?
Unlikely -- because it would be politically impossible, in the short
term, for Israel to attack Iran in the event that the US actually heeded
Israel’s pleas to repudiate the Plan Of Action.
In fact, if anything, the Plan Of Action’s approval, rather than
its repudiation, is much more likely to lead to an Israeli attack
against Iran in order to prevent the latter from completing a nuclear device
under cover of the Plan of Action.
So, what was the real
choice confronting us? It was between an
Iran continuing to pursue nuclear weapons under cover of the Plan of Action and
an Iran continuing to pursue nuclear weapons without the Plan of Action.
Without the Plan of
Action, Iran would have continued to pursue nuclear weapons while
simultaneously suffering devastating trade, banking and technology transfer
sanctions (at least those imposed by the United States and the UN Security
Council, in which the US has veto power).
With the Plan of
Action, Iran will continue to pursue nuclear weapons with more than 100 billion
dollars in its pocket, while enjoying all of the benefits of the Plan Of
Action, such as the ability to purchase dual-use nuclear technology, the
ability to have its citizens study nuclear engineering in Western universities
and the ability to purchase components for its conventional weapons program
after 5 years and its ballistic missile program after 8 years and (even if it
improbably adheres to the restrictions in the Plan of Action) the ability to
assemble a nuclear device after 15 years.
Collateral Damage
Caused By The Deal
But there is
more. That 100 billion dollars will be
used, in part, to fund Iran’s terror proxies around the World, thereby
accelerating chaos and death in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen – and, if Iran
has its way, also in Israel. In
particular, the wave of Syrian refugees now inundating an unprepared Western
Europe will exponentially increase once that money is used to further
fuel the killing machine of Iran’s client, Syrian dictator Bashar
al-Assad. And, of course, that money
will also be used to fund the murder of Israelis and Americans, wherever they
may be. That 100 billion dollar windfall
to Iran should never have been made part of the deal; and that aspect of the deal should have been
enough, in and of itself, to make the deal too toxic to approve.
And what about the
deal’s effect on the continuing viability of the Non-Proliferation Treaty? Egypt is already talking to Russia about
building a nuclear power facility, supposedly for electricity generation; and Saudi Arabia, which funded Pakistan’s
nuclear weapons program, is already talking to Pakistan, supposedly for
the same reason. After all, why shouldn’t these Sunni countries covertly
violate the NPT in order to obtain nuclear weapons – just like Shite
Iran has been doing? -- especially since they view Iran’s prospective
bomb to be an existential threat to the Sunni Arab World.
In fact, we have
actually seen this movie before. In
1993, North Korea, a non-nuclear-weapon member of the NPT, was caught violating
the Treaty. In 1994, North Korea
negotiated a cessation of its illicit nuclear weapons program with the United
States (in exchange for food, fuel and two light-water nuclear reactors). In 2003, North Korea violated the cessation
agreement and withdrew from the NPT. In
2006, North Korea tested its first illegal nuclear weapon. The time elapsed between North Korea’s
exposure as a violator of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty and its explosion of a nuclear bomb was only 13 years. Iran was paying attention, and it is
following the same path. And the major
players in the Sunni Arab World now feel that they have no choice but to do the
same.
The Plan Of Action’s
Preamble, paragraph XI, feebly attempts to address this issue, as follows:
All provisions and
measures contained in this JCPOA are only for the purpose of its implementation
between E3/EU+3 and Iran and should not be considered as setting precedents for
any other state or for fundamental principles of international law and the
rights and obligations under the NPT and other relevant instruments, as well as
for internationally recognised principles and practices.
The foregoing provision
is nothing less than an admission that the Plan Of Action provides Iran with
rights and benefits that violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty and fundamental
principles of international law.
Moreover, if International Law is sacrosanct, then how do six nations
(out of almost 200 in the World) have the power to excuse any country’s past
violations and to authorize any country’s future violations of the NPT? And, by the same token, how does the UN
Security Council, a supremely political agency, of whom five of Iran’s six
interlocutors are permanent members – which agency subsequently endorsed the
Plan of Action – similarly have the power to sanitize any country’s past and/or
future violations of the NPT? This deal
is, consequently, the death knell of the NPT.
What If Iran Cheats?
President Obama has
repeatedly assured us that the US will know if Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons
in violation of the Plan of Action. If
only that were true. Of the 5 secret Iranian
nuclear facilities that have, to date, been discovered (and there may be many
more as yet undeclared and undiscovered nuclear facilities), only one
undeclared facility was discovered by Western intelligence agencies – the
Fordow facility in 2009. The other 4
undeclared facilities were discovered and publicized by an Iranian opposition
organization, the Iranian National Council of Resistance – the Natanz and Arak
facilities in 2002, the Ardakan facility in 2003 and the Lavizan-3 facility in
February of this year. Consequently, it
is far more likely that, despite the provisions of the Plan of Action,
continuing Iranian duplicity will go undetected by either Western intelligence
agencies or the International Atomic Energy Agency.
And even if a
suspected undeclared nuclear facility comes to the attention of the IAEA,
paragraphs 75 - 78 of Annex I to the Plan of Action create a dispute resolution
procedure that delays any IAEA inspection of the suspected facility for 24
days. For those who dismiss the notion
that Iran will be able to use this period of delay to remove definitive
evidence of illicit nuclear activities prior to the IAEA’s inspection of the
site, the case of the former Lavizan-Shian facility is instructive. In 2004, Iran razed what it described as a
military research lab, located at Lavizan-Shian, in the process removing all of
the rubble and replacing a huge amount of topsoil with new topsoil. The US representative to the IAEA claimed
that Iran was thereby attempting to hide evidence of illicit nuclear activities
at the site. The subsequent IAEA
inspection of the site proved inconclusive.
And what about
Obama’s oft-repeated claim that if Iran violates the deal, all of the
international pre-deal sanctions will automatically (quoting Obama’s
phrase) “snap back” into place? If only
that were true. Paragraphs 36 – 37 of
the Plan Of Action create a convoluted framework for resolving disagreements
over Iran’s voluntary compliance with the Plan of Action, starting with a
referral to a committee called the “Joint Commission”. Absent resolution, the dispute would then be
referred to an appellate committee called the “Ministers of Foreign Affairs”,
with a simultaneous referral to a parallel appellate committee called the
“Advisory Board”. Absent resolution in
either appellate forum, the dispute would return to the Joint Commission for
resolution. Absent success, the dispute
would then be referred to the UN Security Council, where pre-deal sanctions
could be re-imposed prospectively.
This means that, with limited exceptions, contracts entered into with
Iran or Iranian individuals or Iranian entities prior to the so-called
“snapback” would not be terminated.
Consequently, there is nothing automatic or comprehensive about
the re-imposition of international pre-deal sanctions.
In the context of
hints by the United States that it might take military action against Iran for
violating the Plan Of Action, there is only one question to be asked: In light of the fact that the United States
has refused to bomb a sanction-weakened, non-nuclear Iran for illicitly
developing nuclear weapons, does anyone seriously believe that the US will ever
bomb an economically and militarily resurgent, nuclear Iran for that
crime?
Concession From A
Supporter Of The Deal
Even many supporters
of the deal are afraid that it will unleash death and destruction upon much of
the World. So, I want to leave you with
the formal statement issued on September 3, 2015 by U.S. Senator Cory
Booker of New Jersey, a prominent supporter of the deal, in which he
conceded the following serious flaws and risks:
“But this deal has
clear flaws and substantial risks, beyond the obvious and disturbing short
duration of its term. With this deal, we are legitimizing a vast and expanding
nuclear program in Iran. We are in effect rewarding years of their deception,
deceit and wanton disregard for international law by allowing them to
potentially have a domestic nuclear enrichment program at levels beyond what is
necessary for a peaceful civil nuclear program. ... Even under the deal, we
should expect that Iran will cheat when it can, particularly at the margins;
that it will continue or even ramp up its destabilizing activities and
sponsorship of terrorism with the additional resources provided by increased
sanctions relief; that it will seek to breakout if the opportunity presents
itself after 15 years when specialized inspections fade and many limits on its
nuclear program are lifted.”
© Mark Rosenblit
Note: Iran’s past malevolence includes its role in masterminding the mega terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 against New York City and the Pentagon plus the thwarted terror attack against the White House (commonly known as “9/11”). In fact Iran’s role, which was an active planning role, was much more integral to the success of 9/11 than was the Taliban’s role, which was a passive safe-haven role. Yet, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the United States overthrew the Taliban government on account of its minor involvement, but took no action against the Iranian government despite its major involvement. Moreover, the United States government has remained absolutely quiet about Iran’s involvement until this very Day, so much so that the American public has virtually no idea that Iran, and not only al-Qaeda, was responsible for 9/11. Otherwise, Iran’s prominent role in 9/11 would certainly have been highlighted during the recently-completed Congressional proceedings with respect to the propriety of the Iran nuclear deal, as well as in the related media coverage. Read on!
As I See It: Game-changer: Iran’s involvement with 9/11
By MELANIE PHILLIPS
The most remarkable aspect of this US surrender to Iran is that the Iranian regime is not some hypothetical threat.
(Jerusalem Post, September 17, 2015) Democrats in the US Senate this week
blocked a vote on the Iran deal for the third time.
The most remarkable aspect of this US surrender to Iran is that the Iranian
regime is not some hypothetical threat. It has been perpetrating acts of war
against Western interests for more than three decades – including playing a key
role in the 9/11 attacks on America.
That’s not just my opinion. It’s the view of the United States District Court
for the Southern District of New York. In a judgment that has received
virtually no attention, federal Judge George B. Daniels found in December 2011
that Iran, with the participation of its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
was directly and heavily involved in the 9/11 atrocities.
This was previously suspected. The 9/11 Commission, having been presented with
last-minute evidence from National Security Agency intercepts, found “strong
evidence” that Iran had enabled al-Qaida members, including some of the future
9/11 hijackers, to travel in and out of Afghanistan before 9/11. In its 2004
report, it concluded: “We believe this topic requires further investigation by
the US government.”
The US government didn’t take up the suggestion.
But some of the families of the 9/11 victims sought to enforce a measure of
justice in the New York court against the atrocities’ perpetrators.
In 2011, Daniels agreed that Iran, Khamenei, former Iranian president Ali
Rafsanjani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Iranian Ministry of
Information and Security (MOIS), Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah and various
Iranian government departments, government-owned companies and the central
bank, had all provided direct and material aid and support to al-Qaida in
carrying out the 9/11 attacks.
The judge ruled that these should all pay the 47 plaintiffs more than $7
billion in damages.
None paid up, causing another judge last year to order the seizure of a $500
million Manhattan tower block owned by Iran in order to distribute the
property’s assets to the plaintiffs.
The ruling by Daniels upheld evidence from 10 experts, including three former
9/11 commission staff members, and sworn testimony from three Iranian defectors
who had been operatives of the Revolutionary Guards and the MOIS.
One of these three, Abolghasem Mesbahi, who had been in charge of spying
operations in western Europe, was said in the ruling to have testified in
numerous prosecutions of Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists and to be “highly
reliable and credible.”
Mesbahi’s evidence was incendiary. He had been part of a Revolutionary
Guards-MOIS task force that designed contingency plans for unconventional
warfare against the US.
These were aimed at breaking the American economy, crippling or disheartening
the US, and disrupting the American social, military and political order – all
without the risk of a head-to-head confrontation which Iran knew it would lose.
This group devised a scheme to crash hijacked Boeing 747s into the World Trade
Center, the White House and the Pentagon.
The plan’s code name was “Shaitan dar Atash” (“Satan in flames”).
The four aircraft hijacked by the 9/11 terrorists were Boeing 757 and 767s. Due
to US trade sanctions, Iran has never possessed Boeing 757 or 767 aircraft. In
2000, said Mesbahi, Iran used front companies to obtain a Boeing 757-767-777
flight simulator which it hid at a secret site and where Mesbahi believed the
9/11 terrorists were trained.
Falling out of favor with regime hardliners, Mesbahi went into hiding in
Germany where he was placed on a witness protection program. He remained in
touch with trusted Iranian friends who were helping protect his life. During
the weeks before 9/11, Mesbahi received three coded messages from a source
inside Iran’s government, indicating that Shaitan dar Atash had been activated.
He tried repeatedly to alert German security officials. They didn’t believe
him.
The Daniels ruling also directly implicated Khamenei in the 9/11 plot. It
stated that he formed a special intelligence apparatus under his direct control
engaged in the planning, support and direction of terrorism. A May 14, 2001
memorandum from the overseer of this apparatus directly connected Iran to an
impending major attack on the US.
To ensure Iran’s involvement was concealed, Khamenei instructed intelligence
operatives that, while expanding collaboration between Hezbollah and al-Qaida,
they must restrict communications to existing contacts with al-Qaida’s
second-in-command Ayman al Zawahiri and Imad Mughniyeh – Hezbollah’s terrorism
chief and agent of Iran, arguably the most formidable terrorist the world has
ever seen until his 2008 assassination, and now revealed in this court ruling
as a key organizer of the 9/11 attacks.
Despite the divide between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, the ruling notes that
they are ruthlessly pragmatic in making short term alliances against common
enemies. In the early 1990s, the Iranian regime and Sudan’s Sunni leader Hassan
al Turabi opened a united Shi’ite-Sunni front against the US and the west. In
1993, Osama bin Laden and al Zawahiri met Mughniyeh and Iranian officials in
Khartoum. It was Mughniyeh, the ruling agrees, who turned bin Laden into an
accomplished terrorist.
Extensive cooperation in major global terrorist activities continued, including
the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia and the
1998 East Africa US embassy bombings. In 2000, the year in which al-Qaida was
bombing the USS Cole, a US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst was alerting his
superiors to a web of connections he had uncovered between al-Qaida, the
Iranian intelligence agencies controlled by Khamenei and other terrorist groups.
And around that very same time, Iran was facilitating the movement of the 9/11
hijackers in and out of Afghanistan – described in the ruling as “a specific
terrorist travel operation” with unstamped passports and safe passage to
Hezbollah contacts.
Evidence to the court revealed that a “senior” Hezbollah operative who was
known to have visited Saudi Arabia to coordinate activities there – and who was
on the same November 2000 flight to Beirut as one of the 9/11 hijackers – was
none other than Mughniyeh. It was he who organized the hijackers’ travel,
obtained their passports and visas and oversaw the 9/11 operation’s security.
The ruling handed down in December 2011 should have been a game-changer. It is
on the website of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York
under “rulings of special interest.” Read it for yourself, and then wonder why
no one in the US government has acknowledged it.
Every Democrat who is either supporting the Iran deal or refusing to allow
Congress to even discuss it should publicly be held responsible by name for
gifting $150 billion in unblocked revenue to the regime which played a key role
in the 9/11 attacks on their country – and now threatens it openly with repeat
attacks. And that includes the president of the United States.
Melanie Phillips is a columnist for The Times (UK).
Copyright © 2015 Jpost Inc. All rights reserved
Note: The court decision referenced in the foregoing article is entitled “In Re Terrorist Attacks On September 11, 2001” and was rendered in the lawsuit known as “Havlish vs. Bin Laden”, the text of which decision can be found here.
Note: In rank violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, Iran has been trying to illegally obtain nuclear technology from German companies. The fact that these attempts were (mostly) thwarted does not render Iran compliant with the Plan of Action. Read on!
|
|
(Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2016) BERLIN – Iran’s proliferation
activities span eight German states and involve a range of activities to
advance its chemical and biological warfare capabilities, as well as its
nuclear and missile programs. |
Copyright © 2016 Jpost Inc. All rights
reserved
A Year After the JCPoA: An Interim Report on the Nuclear Deal with Iran
By Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 350, July 14, 2016
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: A year after it was finalized, the nuclear deal with Iran
has clearly made the region and the world more dangerous, notwithstanding
the temporary respite won in Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon. The Obama
administration's advocacy of warmer relations with Tehran appears totally
removed from realities on the ground. Iran is using its new legal position
to obscure, rather than clarify, past activities and present inventories;
work on ballistic missiles and on the acquisition of materials for Iran's
non-conventional weapons arsenal continues apace; repression has worsened;
regional subversion is at its peak; and exterminatory positions towards
Israel are openly put forward. The JCPoA has in no way moderated Iran's
stance, nor made it a legitimate member of the community of nations.
A year to the day after the "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action"
(JCPoA),
better known as the Iran nuclear deal, was finalized in Vienna (and nearly
six months after "implementation day", 18 January 2016), the argument
over
the deal’s value and utility remains far from settled. Vocal supporters –
such as editorial writers at The New York Times, and, presumably, the
administration sources who helped feed them their lines – now advocate for
further conciliatory gestures, the drastic removal of sanctions, and
normalized relations (exemplified by the Boeing sales). Their object is to
strengthen Iranian "moderates" against their rivals and keep the
promise of
the JCPoA alive. The alleged views of former Israeli officials are even
produced to make this case.
Recent indicators belie these advocates’ rosy view. Take, for example, the
brutal and exterminatory speech by Deputy Commander of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, on 1 July, excitedly informing
his massed audience that 100,000 rockets and missiles in Lebanon (and tens
of thousands elsewhere) are ready to wipe out the "accursed black
dot",
Israel. Consider, too, the revelations in Germany about illicit Iranian
acquisition efforts for their non-conventional weapons arsenal.
One might be excused for believing that some in New York and Washington live
in a parallel universe, populated by moderate and well-meaning Iranians,
whose only wish is to fly about comfortably as they seek their place in the
community of nations. For many in our region, and Israel is far from alone
in this respect, such delusional interpretations of reality are downright
dangerous.
Silence can be misleading. The absence of ongoing overt opposition to the
deal by Israeli government officials should not be misconstrued as a sign of
complacency. Nor should the points raised by former officials and leaders –
challenging Prime Minister Netanyahu's priorities and decrying what they
describe as his alarmist style – be read as signs of acceptance of Obama's
arguments in favor of the deal. The government has simply shifted gears,
because there is no point in fighting a lost battle – at least until January
2017.
Other critics of the government, meanwhile, believe that because the JCPoA
(as almost everyone is willing to acknowledge) has given us a few years’
breathing space, Israel should turn her energies to other issues,
particularly those concerning the Palestinians. None of these views should
be interpreted, however, as having reversed the broadly held belief that the
JCPoA was, and is, a bad deal – and certainly far worse than what could have
been achieved, given the immense levers the P5+1 were in a position to use
at the time.
It is true that most of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium has been
shipped out, many of its centrifuges mothballed, and the Arak reactor
disabled. A genuine respite has been achieved, which can still be put to
good use with proper planning. But in almost every respect, the balance
sheet is worrying – not only in terms of realities on the ground, but in
terms of what we are retroactively learning about both the veracity and the
wisdom of confident American claims in support of the "new era" of
relations
with Tehran. The US administration made these claims a year ago and has
reiterated them in recent weeks.
To begin with, the first and second quarterly reports by the IAEA on Iranian
compliance have left serious questions unanswered, indicating (among other
things) gaps in interpretation on what needs to be disclosed about Iran's
existing stockpiles. As Director General Yukiya Amano explained in March,
after the first report came out, Security Council Resolution 2231 – which
endorsed the JCPoA – removed previous reporting requirements and reduced,
rather than increased, the level of transparency. That is hardly a promising
start towards "blocking all of Iran's paths" to the Bomb, as the US
administration has claimed the deal does.
Moreover, the Iranian regime – "moderates" and hardliners alike – has
now
insolently rejected all Security Council resolutions requiring an end to its
ballistic missile program, raising serious questions about the program’s
ultimate purpose. A long-range ballistic missile is a bizarre choice with
which to bring a conventional high explosives payload to a target. It is
likely that the Iranians are already laying the foundations for a military
nuclear arsenal, once they are free of their present limitations.
As for internal repression, even steadfast supporters of the JCPoA now admit
(as did the German Ambassador in Israel last month at the INSS) that things
have been going from bad to worse. Precisely because the deal gave rise to
hopes of liberalization, the Supreme Leader and the IRGC moved brutally to
suppress any sign of "cultural invasion" and any relaxation in the
patterns
of repression. Attacks on relative reformists like Rafsanjani grew sharper,
executions and arrests are on the rise, and the leader's line is being
strictly enforced.
Subversion across the region – with Iran already in control in Lebanon,
Syria (jointly with Russia), much of Yemen and parts of Iraq – continues to
be a major cause of concern. Iran's ambition to overthrow the existing
order, both locally and globally, have only become more pronounced, with
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain singled out for threats and abuse. The
humiliation meted out to US servicemen in the Gulf was more than simply an
arrogant act of defiance: it was a signal to the small Gulf countries that
their traditional reliance on the US may have been misplaced.
When it comes to Israel, the level of virulence is on the rise. This may be
a product of heated competition for regional hegemony; it may even be a
deliberate attempt to conceal the fact that neither Hezbollah nor Iran has
done anything active against Israel in years. But from an Israeli
perspective, given our history, exterminatory declarations cannot be
dismissed as irrelevant. The half-hearted international reaction to Salami's
words – and to the abomination of the "caricature competition on the theme
of the Holocaust" earlier this year – adds to the sense of anger and
dismay.
It is true that, as US Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes (the man
who masterminded the marketing of the deal to the American public) asserted
in mid-June, the JCPoA was never meant to resolve any issue other than the
nuclear program. But the administration is well aware of Iran's "support
for
terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, or its threats towards Israel".
One
might have expected that the president and his secretary of state would
maximize their remaining leverage on Iran to bring these practices to an
end. What they are doing instead – in looking for ways to enable Iran to
access dollars, among other things – is the opposite of what their own
language would have led us (or Iran) to believe.
Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman is a senior research associate at the BESA
Center, and former deputy for foreign policy and international affairs at
the National Security Council. He is also a member of the faculty at Shalem
College.
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the
Greg Rosshandler Family
________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations
Website: www.imra.org.il
Landau:
Secret Iran documents underline a ‘very serious’ problem
No
senior members of the Obama administration have challenged the veracity of the
report, or the existence of the secret document, seeking instead to promote
their own interpretation of it.
By
YAAKOV LAPPIN
(Jerusalem Post, July 20, 2016) A recent report on the Iran
nuclear deal sheds light on a highly problematic aspect of the agreement,
namely, that the Islamic Republic has been authorized to upgrade its uranium
enrichment abilities, a senior Israeli arms expert warned on Tuesday.
Emily Landau, head of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at the Tel
Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, told The Jerusalem
Post that a report by the Associated Press that was published on
Monday, underlined “a big concern – that Iran is allowed to work on research
and development of a full range of advanced centrifuge models.”
According to the report, a confidential add-on agreement linked to the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], spells out Iranian plans to develop and
install a range of new enrichment machines after the first ten years of the
agreement pass.
In 2027, according to the report, Iran will start replacing its older
centrifuges with thousands – between 2500 and 3000 – of advanced, faster
centrifuges, allowing it to enrich uranium at twice the current speed.
That would reduce Iran’s breakout time from a year to six months, even though
Iran will still be limited to possessing 300 kilograms of low enriched uranium
for the first 15 years of the JCPOA, the report said.
After the 15-year-mark, that limitation too will be lifted.
Landau said even before the report’s publication, it was clear that Iran could
work on developing and installing advanced centrifuges, including the IR-8 machine,
which is the most advanced type that the Iranians are working on. IR-8 systems
enrich uranium many times faster than the first-generation centrifuges in
Iran’s possession.
“The fact that the Iranians are allowed to work on research and development is
something I found to be a major source of concern. This did not get up played
in the debate over the deal, but the implications of this are very serious,”
Landau said.
“After testing, they can install these centrifuges once ten years pass,” she
added.
The AP report has filled in a blank on how many new centrifuges can be
installed by Iran.
“The difference between Iran saying that it plans to develop new centrifuges,
and the revelation of a document that says the P5+1 countries agreed to so many
centrifuges being installed, is substantial,” she added.
“The very fact that the JCPOA enables this, on a whole range of centrifuges, is
problematic. It just proves that Iran’s enrichment program has been totally
legitimized by this deal.”
Landau noted that no senior members of the Obama administration have challenged
the veracity of the report, or the existence of the secret document, seeking
instead to promote their own interpretation of it.
Copyright © 2016 Jpost Inc. All rights reserved
[Note: The United States and its negotiating partners were “forced” to grant Iran secret exemptions from the compliance requirements of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in order to save Iran from being in violation of the deal. Read on!]
Exclusive: U.S., others agreed to 'secret' exemptions for Iran after nuclear deal - report
By Jonathan Landay | WASHINGTON
(Reuters, September 1, 2016) The United States and its negotiating partners agreed "in secret" to allow Iran to evade some restrictions in last year's landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions, according to a report reviewed by Reuters.
The report is to be published on Thursday by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said the think tank’s president David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and co-author of the report. It is based on information provided by several officials of governments involved in the negotiations, who Albright declined to identify.
Reuters could not independently verify the report's assertions.
"The exemptions or loopholes are happening in secret, and it appears that they favor Iran," Albright said.
Among the exemptions were two that allowed Iran to exceed the deal's limits on how much low-enriched uranium (LEU) it can keep in its nuclear facilities, the report said. LEU can be purified into highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium.
The exemptions, the report said, were approved by the joint commission the deal created to oversee implementation of the accord. The commission is comprised of the United States and its negotiating partners -- called the P5+1 -- and Iran.
One senior "knowledgeable" official was cited by the report as saying that if the joint commission had not acted to create these exemptions, some of Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been in compliance with the deal by Jan. 16, the deadline for the beginning of the lifting of sanctions.
The U.S. administration has said that the world powers that negotiated the accord -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany -- made no secret arrangements.
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the joint commission and its role were "not secret." He did not address the report's assertions of exemptions.
Diplomats at the United Nations for the other P5+1 countries did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment on the report.
The report's assertions are likely to anger critics of the nuclear deal. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has vowed to renegotiate the agreement if he's elected, while Democrat Hillary Clinton supports the accord.
Albright said the exceptions risked setting precedents that Iran could use to seek additional waivers.
Albright served as an inspector with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team that investigated former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program.
While Albright has neither endorsed nor denounced the overall agreement, he has expressed concern over what he considers potential flaws in the nuclear deal, including the expiration of key limitations on Iran's nuclear work in 10-15 years.
EXEMPTIONS ON URANIUM, "HOT CELLS"
The administration of President Barack Obama informed Congress of the exemptions on Jan. 16, said the report. Albright said the exemptions, which have not been made public, were detailed in confidential documents sent to Capitol Hill that day -- after the exemptions had already been granted.
The White House official said the administration had briefed Congress "frequently and comprehensively" on the joint commission's work.
Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, a leading critic of the Iran deal and a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters in an email: "I was not aware nor did I receive any briefing (on the exemptions).”
As part of the concessions that allowed Iran to exceed uranium limits, the joint commission agreed to exempt unknown quantities of 3.5 percent LEU contained in liquid, solid and sludge wastes stored at Iranian nuclear facilities, according to the report. The agreement restricts Iran to stockpiling only 300 kg of 3.5 percent LEU.
The commission approved a second exemption for an unknown quantity of near 20 percent LEU in "lab contaminant" that was determined to be unrecoverable, the report said. The nuclear agreement requires Iran to fabricate all such LEU into research reactor fuel.
If the total amount of excess LEU Iran possesses is unknown, it is impossible to know how much weapons-grade uranium it could yield, experts said.
The draft report said the joint commission also agreed to allow Iran to keep operating 19 radiation containment chambers larger than the accord set. These so-called "hot cells" are used for handling radioactive material but can be "misused for secret, mostly small-scale plutonium separation efforts," said the report. Plutonium is another nuclear weapons fuel.
The deal allowed Iran to meet a 130-tonne limit on heavy water produced at its Arak facility by selling its excess stock on the open market. But with no buyer available, the joint commission helped Tehran meet the sanctions relief deadline by allowing it to send 50 tonnes of the material -- which can be used in nuclear weapons production -- to Oman, where it was stored under Iranian control, the report said.
The shipment to Oman of the heavy water that can be used in nuclear weapons production has already been reported. Albright's report made the new assertion that the joint committee had approved this concession.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; editing by John Walcott and Stuart Grudgings)
© 2016 Reuters. All Rights Reserved.
Column
One: Obama’s greatest achievement
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
On August 4, during the course of a
press conference, Obama gave his interim assessment of his nuclear agreement
with Iran. “It worked,” he insisted.
(Jerusalem Post, September 1, 2016)
The time for complaining about President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran
has passed. The time has come to overcome the damage enormous damage his
signature foreign policy accomplishment has caused.
To understand why this is the case, it is important to understand the breadth
and depth of Obama’s failure.
On August 4, during the course of a press conference, Obama gave his interim
assessment of his nuclear agreement with Iran.
“It worked,” he insisted.
A year after the deal was signed, Obama argued, events have proven that he was
right and the deal’s critics were wrong.
“You’ll recall that there were all these horror stories about how Iran was
going to cheat and this wasn’t going to work and Iran was going to get $150
billion to finance terrorism and all these kinds of scenarios, and none of them
have come to pass,” he proclaimed.
Obama then snidely swiped at the deal’s opponents saying that it would be
“impressive” if the people who criticized the deal would own up to their
mistakes and admit that it worked.
As it works out, everything that Obama said about the deal with Iran during his
press conference was a lie.
Some of his lies became apparent within hours.
For instance, Obama falsely claimed that Israel now “acknowledges this has been
a game changer and Iran has abided by the deal and they no longer have the sort
of short-term breakout capacity that would allow them to develop nuclear
weapons.”
Hours later, the Defense Ministry issued a stinging rebuke of Obama’s claim,
parroted more diplomatically by the Prime Minister’s Office.
Obama’s press conference took place the day after The Wall Street Journal
reported that in January 2016, the US sent an unmarked plane to the Tehran
airport filled with $400 million in cash, on the same day Iran released four US
hostages.
Obama angrily rejected allegations that the cash payment was a ransom payment
for the hostages’ release. He insisted that the US had made the payment as the
first installment of a $1.7b. payment the administration made to settle an
Iranian government lawsuit against America.
Obama claimed that the administration agreed to the settlement at the urging of
the Justice Department.
He said his administration was able to settle the dispute only due to the
nuclear deal which placed US officials in direct contact with their Iranian
counterparts for the first time in decades.
Within a day, Obama’s claims were exposed as lies. It turns out that Justice
Department lawyers opposed the cash payout to Iran.
One of the hostages released in January told the media that the Iranians
refused to allow the hostages to leave Iran until the airplane with the cash
landed in the airport.
The Iranians, for their part, contemptuously mocked Obama, and stated openly
that the $400m.
was a ransom payment for the hostages.
Two weeks later, Obama’s State Department admitted that the $400m. was a
payment for the hostages.
Obama’s principle claim is that due to his deal, Iran no longer has a
short-term nuclear breakout capacity. He also says that in accordance with the
deal, Iran has shipped its nuclear materials out of the country. These claims
are both untrue and misleading.
On Thursday Reuters reported that Iran did not ship the quantities of
low-enriched uranium out of the country in the quantities the deal required.
Last January, when the deadline arrived for Iran to comply with the deal’s
clauses calling for it to move its uranium enriched to 3.5 percent and 20
percent out of the country and so enable the US and its European colleagues to
cancel UN sanctions against it, it worked out that Iran had failed to comply.
Rather than acknowledge Iran’s failure and maintain the sanctions in accordance
with their deal, the Americans and Europeans decided to move the goalpost
closer to Iran.
They secretly decreased the amount of uranium the Iranians were required to
part with. They then announced triumphantly that they were canceling UN
sanctions because Iran had complied with the agreement.
Reuters reported that much of the low-enriched uranium Iran did remove from its
territory wasn’t actually removed from its possession. Instead it was
transferred to neighboring Oman, where it is held under Iranian guard and
control.
Obama of course knows all of this. So his claims that the agreement “worked”
are nothing more than a card trick meant to trick the American public.
Obama’s assertion that Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear arsenal has been
slowed as a result of his deal is similarly a stretch of the imagination. The
Iranians have suspended much of their prior centrifuge spinning. But that is
only because they are now directing their efforts to developing and deploying
more advanced centrifuges that will be able to enrich uranium to bomb grade
material far more rapidly than the centrifuges they were required to retire.
Experts have already placed Iran’s post-deal nuclear breakout time at a mere
six months. And Iran can leave the agreement – which it never actually signed
or officially agreed to – anytime it wants.
While developing their next generation centrifuges, the Iranians are expanding
the range and precision of their ballistic missiles, deploying them and
increasing the size of their arsenals. Despite the fact that these actions are
prohibited under US law and breach what was initially claimed about the
ever-changing nuclear deal, the Obama administration has refused to impose sanctions
against Iran, insisting that its actions merely breach the spirit, rather than
substance, of the deal.
The administration has had a similar response to Iran’s recent deployment of
Russia’s S-300 missile defense battery around its military nuclear site at
Fordo. On Sunday Iranian television showed footage of the missiles being set up
around the formerly secret site.
As Omri Ceren of the Israel Project noted this week, Iran’s deployment of the
S-300 system places it in breach of three US sanctions laws. Despite this, the
White House announced on Wednesday that it has no intention of enforcing US law
and applying sanctions on Iran. The S-300 missiles can be used both as a
defensive system and as an offensive one.
On Tuesday, Tehran announced that it will be launching three satellites in the
coming months.
Satellite launches are widely viewed as a means through which Iran is covertly
developing a longrange ballistic missile capability. Rather than censure Iran
for its actions, the Obama administration insists that such actions, as well as
Iran’s recent longrange rocket tests, do not violate the nuclear deal or
warrant US action.
Taken separately and together, Iran’s actions since the nuclear deal was
officially concluded make clear that it continues to pursue its nuclear
program, and indeed, has become more brazen in its nuclear operations than it
was before the agreement was announced last year.
In other words, not only has the deal not worked, contrary to Obama’s claims,
it has been a colossal failure on every level. The deal’s opponents were
entirely right about the dangers it posed and Obama was entirely wrong.
This is true as well in relation to the administration’s qualified promises
that the deal would lead to better relations between the US and Iran. As
Shoshana and Stephen Bryen noted last week following the Iranian naval assault
on the USS Nitze in the Strait of Hormuz, with its repeated harassment of US
naval ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is clearly practicing its
tactic of swarming US naval craft as a preparation for a real strike against
them.
The main reason that Iran’s nuclear program is such a grave concern for Israel
and for other Middle Eastern states is that the Iranian regime has hegemonic
ambitions. It seeks to destroy Israel and dominate the entire region.
Since it concluded the deal with Washington, Iran has surged its forces and
massively expanded its power projection throughout the region.
On Thursday the Daily Mail reported that the commonly held belief that Iran
commands 16,000 troops in Syria is wrong. According to the National Council of
Resistance in Iran, the regime actually commands 60,000 forces in Syria,
deployed throughout the country. The entire Syrian army today numbers a mere
50,000 men.
On August 4, Obama mocked claims that Iran would spend its windfall profits of
$100b.-$150b.
from the sanctions relief the nuclear deal offered to fund terrorism. Yet,
according to the Daily Mail report, to date Iran has spent $100b. on the war in
Syria.
The implications of the report are blood curdling.
They mean that despite Obama’s denials, the funds Iran has received as a result
of the sanctions relief he brought about through his nuclear deal have paid for
Iran’s war in Syria. That war has caused the death of nearly half a million
people and forced more than 11 million people to flee their homes.
Obviously, it is important for Americans to know the truth about the Iran deal
and its consequences as they consider their votes for Obama’s replacement.
One of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s top candidates for secretary of
state is Wendy Sherman.
Sherman was the chief negotiator of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
For Israel, the question of what to do about Iran now is far more urgent than
it is for Americans.
Today more and more commentators are voicing concern over the prospect that
Obama will support an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council as a
parting shot at Israel.
But any such resolution will be small potatoes in comparison to the strategic
devastation his nuclear deal, which is his main foreign policy legacy, has
caused.
The rapidity of Iran’s advance makes clear that there is no justification for
waiting to act until Obama has left office. If it doesn’t act soon, Israel is
on the fast track to waking up one morning and discovering it has no means of
thwarting the threat.
Indeed, with each passing month, its options for action become more and more
limited.
After Israel’s security leadership undermined Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran’s nuclear installations in 2010 and 2012,
Netanyahu settled on a strategy of blocking Obama’s moves to appease Tehran.
That strategy of course failed last summer. Since then, Netanyahu has worked to
build an anti-Iranian alliance with the Sunni Arab states. His efforts in this
area have clearly met with some measure of success, as witnessed by public
statements from prominent Saudis and others.
Whatever that success may be, and whatever the status of that burgeoning
alliance of spurned US allies, the fact is that it’s time Israel and its new
allies do something more than send signals. Time is a-wasting.
Last spring Brig.-Gen. Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard Corps, said, “Today the grounds for the annihilation and
collapse of the Zionist regime are more present than ever before.”
Thanks to Obama, he may be right.
It is time for Israel to make him eat his words.
www.CarolineGlick.com
Copyright © 2016 Jpost Inc. All rights reserved
[Note: Under JCPOA, a nuclear Iran is inevitable. Read on!]
D Minus Seven Years, and Counting
INSS Insight No. 852, September 11, 2016
Ephraim Asculai
SUMMARY: The most important reservation regarding the JCPOA is the high
probability that after ten years, Iran will proceed with the production of
highly enriched uranium, and thus will have the capability to produce
nuclear weapons almost at will, with a breakout time reduced to two months,
if not less. Thus, the JCPOA is a setback for Iran, albeit probably
temporary. The deferment of the issue for ten years or less is minor in the
historical timescale. Iran knows how to be patient. There should be little
doubt that unless something dramatic changes in the Iranian regime or its
policies, it will seek this nuclear capability. Thus the euphoric greeting
of the JCPOA by at least some world leaders has eclipsed the fact that this
joy may be short-lived. The present atmosphere of focusing only on having
avoided the nuclear crisis is not conducive to almost any preventive action
regarding the potential scenario of an Iranian breakout after 10-15 years.
Under these circumstances, when the countdown ends we will most likely find
ourselves facing a nuclear Iran.
.
The general assumption that underlay the conclusion of the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between the P5+1 and Iran in July 2015
was that Iran would fulfill its part in the deal, at least for the first few
years. It was not easy to persuade the US political establishment on this
point, since the plan features loopholes and problems. However, the major
selling point was President Obama's insistence that the JCPOA extends the
Iranian "breakout time" – the time it would take for Iran to produce
the
first batch of fissile material, the essential component for a nuclear
explosive device -
from two months to one year. Yet despite this
achievement, the main problem with the JCPOA is its "sunset
provision,"
limiting its effectiveness to preset timelines.
The following discussion analyzes what could happen once this sunset period
is reached. It does not consider the Iranian plutonium production route,
since this is a long term project with present breakout times measurable in
years. It also does not deal with the research and development (R&D) of the
nuclear explosive mechanisms, which is prohibited but not monitored
regularly by the IAEA, or with the weapons' delivery systems that are not
part of the JCPOA - and both may well be continuing. The focus here is on
the uranium enrichment route to a nuclear weapons capability, which is the
critical path within Iran's nuclear project.
According to the JCPOA-imposed timelines for the enrichment project:
- R&D on two centrifuges of each type of the permitted
seven gas
centrifuge types can proceed immediately. The JCPOA does not stipulate that
the R&D must be carried out on the same machines. Thus, a centrifuge can be
tested and the design improved, and then be removed and scrapped, and a
newer version of the same type can then be installed and tested. Mechanical
testing of the machines, without the introduction of uranium, can proceed at
both Natanz and Tehran.
- During the eighth year following "implementation
day" (in January
2016), Iran will be permitted to install, test, and enrich, using 30 units
each of the more advanced IR-6 and IR-8 types.
- Iran will be required to revert the products of the
enrichment process
to a natural uranium status for an additional two years, thus nullifying the
enrichment process.
- Between years ten and fifteen, Iran will be permitted to
enrich as much
uranium as it wants, as long as the enrichment levels remain below 3.67
percent, suitable for use in power reactors.
- After fifteen years, there will be no limitations on the
amounts,
locations, and enrichment levels produced by Iran.
Consequently, there is ongoing Iranian R&D on seven advanced types of gas
centrifuge uranium enrichment machines, capable of much more efficient
enrichment than the present, almost obsolete, IR-1 model, which can go on
enriching, with limitations on the amounts of the enrichment production.
Thus, in the not too distant future, Iran will presumably have working
models of several designs, with a maximum enrichment efficiency ten-fold or
more than the present model. The installation of cascades (the setup and
interconnections of the many centrifuges necessary for the enrichment
process) is prohibited, and the machines cannot be installed at Natanz (the
large Iranian enrichment facility) for at least eight years, and then, at a
low rate, for two more years.
All these JCPOA timelines mean that if Iran abides by the agreement to the
letter, by the eighth year, if not before, Iran can have perfected one or
more centrifuge models capable of high rates of enrichment. Iran would be in
a situation in which it had already prepared the capacity to produce as many
centrifuges as it wants and at the rate of production it chooses, even if
not actually producing these before the eighth year. By year ten Iran's
breakout time will already have been reduced considerably; and by year
fifteen Iran is officially permitted to do all it wants, including
significant amounts of enrichment to military levels (around 90 percent).
The breakout times will then be measured by weeks, not months, assuming its
activities in R&D of the nuclear explosive mechanisms were not exposed.
Standing between Iran's capabilities and the application of these
capabilities are Iran's formal obligations under the NPT and the JCPOA, the
IAEA's verification mechanism, and the ability to make challenge inspections
to undeclared installations based on intelligence information.
The catch is the assumption that Iran will continue to abide by its
commitments to the JCPOA, and here the problem is twofold. The first issue
is that Iran has already sought technologies and technical procurement. The
second, more important issue is that preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons cannot be based only on trust. Iran has in the past disregarded its
obligations under the NPT; it has also disregarded Security Council demands
concerning R&D, including testing, of its missile program. Had there been
trust in Iran's abiding by its international commitments, there would have
been no need for the "unprecedented" verification mechanism embedded
in the
JCPOA. And while this verification system has been hailed as the best ever,
it is still not foolproof. Its two main faults are that it cannot search for
undeclared sites -
that depends on the availability of intelligence that is
never perfect -
and it has no power to inspect Iran's R&D work on the
delivery systems.
But the most important issue is the high probability that after ten years,
Iran will proceed with the production of highly enriched uranium, and thus
will have the capability to produce nuclear weapons almost at will, with a
breakout time reduced to two months, if not less. Thus, the JCPOA is a
setback for Iran, albeit probably temporary. The deferment of the issue for
ten years or less is minor in the historical timescale. Iran knows how to be
patient. There should be little doubt that unless something dramatic changes
in the Iranian regime or its policies, it will seek this nuclear capability.
The euphoric greeting of the JCPOA by at least some world leaders eclipsed
the fact that this joy may be short-lived. However, if the international
community truly wishes to prevent Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions,
the approach of the IAEA Board of Governors to the issue should change. At
the very least, Iran should be condemned for its past activities in the
nuclear realm. The present atmosphere of focusing only on having avoided the
nuclear crisis is not conducive to almost any preventive action regarding
the potential scenario of an Iranian breakout after 10-15 years. Under these
circumstances, when the countdown ends we will most likely find ourselves
facing a nuclear Iran.
________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations
Website: www.imra.org.il
[Note: As the below author persuasively argues, the Iran deal was merely a bribery mechanism by which Europe fecklessly attempted to purchase Iranian restraint for 15 years. Read on!]
Column One: Europe beats Iran’s war drums
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
(Jerusalem Post, November 29, 2018) Last Saturday, Iran’s
“moderate” President Hassan Rouhani called Israel “a cancerous tumor” in a
speech at the regime’s annual Islamic Unity Conference.
Rouhani’s fellow speakers included deputy Hezbollah chief
Naim Qassem and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh. Both terror bosses called for the
destruction of the “cancerous tumor.”
With the predictability of a Swiss clock, the Europeans
rushed to condemn Rouhani. The EU in Brussels condemned Rouhani. The German
Foreign Ministry condemned Rouhani. And so on and so forth.
We could have done without their statements.
Just two days after Rouhani’s Jewish cancer speech, his
representatives sat down with senior EU officials in Brussels to discuss
Iranian-EU nuclear cooperation in the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal [in
the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the deal]. Following
the talks, EU Foreign Affairs Chief Federica Mogherini’s office put out a
statement claiming that the sides “expressed their determination to preserve
the nuclear agreement as... a key pillar for European and regional security.”
As Mogherini and her colleagues were sitting with the
Iranians, the Wall Street Journal reported that the French and German
governments have agreed to set up a back channel, in the form of a joint
corporation, owned by European governments, whose job will be to arrange for payments
for Iranian exports in a manner that bypasses and so undermines [unilateral] US
financial and trade sanctions on Iran.
How are we to understand Europe’s behavior? What is
possessing Germany and France and Brussels and even Britain, (which is reportedly
considering joining the Germans and French in their sanctions-busting
operations) to stand with Iran against the US?
It isn’t because Iran has proved its good intentions to them.
To the contrary, over the past six months, Iran has plotted three terror
attacks in Europe. In June, Iranian operatives murdered a regime opponent in
Holland. In July, Belgian authorities prevented an Iranian plot to attack a
regime opposition rally in Paris. And in October, Danish authorities
intercepted an Iranian terror squad en route to assassinate the head of an
organization of Ahwaz Arabs, Iran’s Arab minority that suffers from harsh
repression at the hands of the regime.
These terror plots are not the only way that Iran is working
to threaten European security even as European leaders endanger their ties with
the US to enrich Tehran. Ahead of his meeting with the Europeans in Brussels on
Monday, Ali Akhbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s nuclear agency, warned that if
Europeans choose to comply with US sanctions and stop purchasing Iranian oil,
Iran will ditch the nuclear deal and restore its activities to enrich uranium
to 20% purity, something Iran purportedly suspended in the framework of the
2015 nuclear deal.
Salehi told Reuters, “It is very easy for us to go
back to what we were before – even to a better position. We can start the 20%
enrichment activity. We can increase the amount of enriched uranium.”
Maybe the Europeans are working to undermine US sanctions and
save the Iranian economy because they are afraid of the Iranians. But since
Europe’s intense efforts to appease Iran have been met with continued Iranian
terrorism, it is irrational to think that repeating this failed policy will
protect them in the future.
As Brian Hook, the US State Department’s Iran policy chief
put it to reporters when the Denmark terror plot was revealed, “It is very
strange to us to see this Iranian regime would spend so much time trying to
keep the Europeans on its side, while at the same time conducting bomb plots
and assassination attempts in Europe.”
It’s possible that the Europeans are motivated to work on
behalf of Iran against the US by an uncontrollable hatred of US President
Donald Trump. Speaking to Britain’s Independent, a senior European diplomat
said that the Europeans are empowering Iran so that Trump won’t be able to get
the satisfaction of seeing them agree with him that Iran is a threat.
In his words, “We want to play it smartly so that Trump
doesn’t say, ‘See, I told you these weak Europeans will eventually understand the
real nature of Iran.’”
In other words, according to the quoted diplomat, the
Europeans would rather shut their eyes to the reality of Iran’s aggression and
empower the terror sponsoring ayatollahs than acknowledge that Trump is right
and that Iran poses to danger to Europe that mustn’t be countenanced. And
indeed, while the Danes initially recalled their ambassador from Tehran and
called on the EU to impose sanctions against Iran in retaliation for the terror
plot in Copenhagen, within weeks, the Danish ambassador was back in Tehran and
the EU had opted not to impose any sanctions in response to Iran’s terrorist
operations in Europe.
Jew hatred is another possible explanation for Europe’s
embrace of a regime that calls daily for Israel’s destruction and works
directly and through its Hezbollah and Hamas proxies to achieve its murderous
goal. CNN’s survey of European Jew hatred, released this week showed yet again
that hatred of Jews remains a powerful force for political and social
mobilization in Europe today.
As for antisemitism, according to a senior administration
official, although Mogherini is the mouthpiece for the EU’s Iran policy, she is
not its author, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is.
Mogherini, like the Germans and French, insist that their
continued commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal stems from their conviction that
the deal is working to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Ahead of the
meeting with Salehi on Monday, EU Energy Commissioner Arias Canete said the
deal is “crucial for the security of Europe, of the region and the entire
world.”
He said the agreement is working to curb Iran’s nuclear
ambitions and that “we do not see any credible peaceful alternative.”
The mendacity of Canete’s statement, and similar ones by
Mogherini, is stunning. At least since April 30, when Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu exposed Iran’s nuclear archive, which Mossad officers seized from a
Tehran warehouse in late January, nothing Iran says about its nuclear program
or activities can be taken seriously. The very existence of the nuclear
archive, and the great efforts the regime took to preserve it made clear that
the Iranian regime has never had the slightest interest in curbing, let alone
abandoning its ambition to develop a nuclear arsenal. The archive preserved all
of the knowledge that Iran amassed since the early 1990s towards the
development, testing and deployment of nuclear warheads.
Salehi himself made clear that the nuclear sword of
Damocles is still dangling over the world’s throat. Salehi warned the Europeans
that if they fail to protect Iran from US sanctions, the consequences will be
“ominous.”
“The situation is very unpredictable,” he warned.
The Iranian nuclear archive, Europe’s willingness to provoke
an open breach with the Americans to continue transferring money to Iran, and
Iran’s own brinksmanship in the face of US sanctions tell us that much of the
discourse about the nuclear deal has been misplaced and the purpose of the deal
has been misconstrued.
Unlike what we have been told – and what we have been telling
ourselves, the deal isn’t a non-proliferation effort. It isn’t geared toward
blocking Iran’s nuclear operations.
The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is nothing
more than a payoff. Salehi admitted as much this week when he said, “If we
cannot sell our oil and we don’t enjoy financial transactions, then I don’t
think keeping the deal will benefit us anymore.”
The Obama administration, in conjunction with the EU,
concluded a deal which no one ever signed. It involved the US and Europe,
(along with Russia and China) transferring billions of dollars to Iran in cash,
providing Iran with billions of dollars of sanctions relief and agreeing to
business deals worth additional billions to the Iranian economy.
In exchange, Iran offered them nothing.
It is impossible to credit any of Iran’s purported actions to
contain or curtail its nuclear activities because the agreement contains no
effective inspections mechanism. Under the JCPOA, Iran can avoid UN inspections
of its nuclear installations by simply calling them military installations.
The purpose of the deal then wasn’t to prevent Iran from
acquiring nuclear weapons at all. This is why then-president Barack Obama,
then-secretary of state John Kerry, their underlings and their EU colleagues
couldn’t care less when, during the negotiations, Israel provided proof that
Iran couldn’t be trusted and that the agreement as concluded wouldn’t prevent
Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal. This is also why the Europeans responded
to Israel’s seizure of Iran’s nuclear archive with a shrug of their shoulders.
They aren’t arms controllers. They are appeasers.
The purpose of the nuclear deal was to enrich and empower the
Iranian regime. And in this context, Iran’s determination to leave the deal if
the dollars and euros stop flowing is entirely reasonable. So, too, the
Europeans are right that to preserve the deal, they must do everything in their
power to continue enriching Iran.
Once we understand the actual nature of the deal, we can
recognize the true danger of Europe’s pro-Iranian, anti-American actions.
Israel and many Arab states have made clear that they will go
to war against Iran if that is the only way that Iran can be prevented from
acquiring nuclear weapons.
The purpose of the US economic sanctions is to achieve the
goal of blocking Iran’s nuclear efforts without war. If the Iranian economy
collapses, or if the regime is overthrown, or both, Iran will likely abandon
its nuclear weapons program without war. If Europe is successful in scuttling
US sanctions, the likelihood of a major war will rise tremendously.
In response to the Wall Street Journal report, US Ambassador
to Germany Richard Grenell told the Jerusalem Post’s Benjamin Weinthal that the
US will contemplate sanctions against French and German entities that seek to
evade sanctions against Iran.
In his words, “The US will consider sanctions on those
entities participating in these tactics.”
Maybe the Europeans are motivated to stand with Rouhani and
his fellow genocidal antisemites in the Iranian regime out of hatred for Trump
or for America as a whole. Maybe they’re motivated by Jew hatred.
Maybe they simply want to keep paying off the Iranians in the
hopes that Iranian regime terrorists will continue to focus their terror
efforts in Europe on Iranian dissidents and Jews and leave them alone.
Maybe they are motivated by old-fashioned greed.
Whatever is motivating them, the time has come to make them
pay a price for their hostile behavior. Because if they aren’t forced to back
down, by US sanctions and other means, then the world will pay a devastating
price later, in the form of a war that might have been prevented were it not
for European perfidy, prejudice and cowardice.
Copyright © 2018 Jpost Inc. All rights reserved
[Iran violated the JCPOA by maintaining secret nuclear facility; but IAEA is helping Iran conceal this violation. Read on!]
Mossad
led IAEA to radioactive material at Iran site, proving it broke deal - report
BY YONAH
JEREMY BOB
|
|
(Jerusalem Post, July 11, 2019) The IAEA has found
signs of radioactive material which would violate the 2015 nuclear deal at an
Iranian nuclear site identified to the agency by Israeli intelligence,
Channel 13 reported late Thursday. Copyright © 2019 Jpost Inc. All rights reserved [Iran violated the JCPOA by illegally attempting to acquire technology to develop nuclear weapons; but IAEA is helping Iran conceal this violation. Read on!] IAEA mum on Iran’s illicit nuclear activities in Germany By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL Iran was cited as a country linked to espionage targeting German universities. (Jerusalem Post, October 17, 2019) Material in a batch of German intelligence documents on Tehran’s illegal nuclear conduct in the federal republic as late as 2018 necessitate “confronting Iran with the intelligence and asking hard questions,” according to one of the leading international authorities on arms control. Emily B. Landau, director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Project at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told The Jerusalem Post that the documents prove that Iran has not kept to its commitment outlined in the 2015 nuclear deal. “First, it is important that this intel be widely published and that it become part of the public debate over Iran, as it indicates that Iran has not complied with its commitment not to work on military nuclear capability,” she said. “From my perspective, [the] most important thing at this point is to have it widely known that Iran did not stop everything in 2015 [when the nuclear deal was reached], because the debate in Europe ignores this,” she said, adding, “The point is that it [Iran] has continued these efforts well after the JCPOA [(Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) was reached].” Landau is the author of Arms Control in the Middle East: Cooperative Security Dialogue and Regional Constraints. She noted that the Iran deal “set up a special channel regarding procurement for checking issues of this sort,” which is of the sort detailed in the German intelligence documents. “The problem is that the deliberations there get close to zero attention.” The International Atomic Energy Agency, tasked with ensuring Iran’s regime is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, declined to comment on the documents. When asked whether the IAEA had reviewed the German intelligence documents, Fredrik Dahl, an IAEA spokesman, told the Post: “We have no comment.” Dahl also declined to answer follow-up questions about whether the IAEA will review the reports. According to a September intelligence report from the German state of Hesse, intelligence officials wrote that “against this background [of proliferation], weapons of mass destruction continued to be a powerful political instrument during the reporting period, which could shake the stability of the entire state structure in both regional and international crisis situations.” The report said “in particular, states such as Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Syria attempted to acquire and redistribute such weapons in the context of proliferation, for example by concealing transport routes via third countries.” Guest academics from these nuclear proliferation countries are linked to “proliferation conduct” that is coordinated by intelligence services from those countries, said the report. “An example of this is the field of electrical engineering combined with the use of centrifuges in the process of uranium enrichment,” the Hesse intelligence report said. “Here, again and again, there are suspicions that foreign intelligence services put pressure on their own visiting scientists to obtain the desired technical know-how.” When asked whether the Hesse state’s intelligence agency had forwarded its findings to the IAEA, the UN and the Security Council, Carsten Rauch, a spokesman for the Hesse domestic intelligence agency, told the Post: “Beyond the information contained in our annual report, the State Office for the protection of the Constitution of Hesse cannot provide you with information in the sense of your request.” Iran was cited as a country linked to espionage targeting German universities. “Another example of intelligence control is the exchange of research among university institutes in the chemical-biological process sector,” the report said. The findings in the Hesse report largely conform to other German intelligence data. For example, a Bavarian state intelligence report names Iran as a “country of risk” that is “making efforts to supplement its arsenal of conventional weapons with weapons of mass destruction.” Angela Pley, a spokeswoman for Germany’s federal intelligence agency, told the Post: “The constitutional protection authorities have no knowledge about actual violations by Iran of the JCPOA in Germany. In contrast, the federal and state constitutional protection authorities report in their annual reports on Iran’s proliferation-relevant procurement activities for its missile program, which is not covered by the JCPOA. Against this background, no information was provided to the IAEA, the UN Security Council or the UN.” The JCPOA is intended to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for economic sanctions relief. The US government withdrew from the agreement in 2018 because it claimed the nuclear deal did not stop Iran’s drive to build atomic weapons and missiles, as well as blunt Iranian regime terrorism. Writing in the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche in October, the prominent Swiss journalist Pierre Heumann reported on the German intelligence reports. In his article titled “The range of action of Iran extends all the way to Europe,” Heumann wrote, “In addition, several German intelligence reports warn that the Islamic Republic is pursuing a program for the production of weapons of mass destruction. This is documented by spies who are in the service of Bavaria, Hamburg, Hesse or North Rhine-Westphalia. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution also warned repeatedly that Tehran has not abandoned its illegal activities.” Heumann added that “The Iranian quest for weapons of mass destruction has so far not attracted the attention in the West that it would have deserved for the explosive revelations. Even though the [Iranian] attacks on the Saudi oil facilities show that Iran’s martial ambitions are to be taken seriously.” |
Copyright © 2019 Jpost Inc. All rights reserved
Observation: Critics of Leaving JCPOA Clueless What Iran Was Really Doing
Due Inherent Monitoring Limits
Dr. Aaron Lerner 30 May 2022
When talking heads and others argue that abandoning The Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action (JCPOA) brought Iran within days of being able to make a nuke rather
than close to a year they are assuming that JCPOA provided for effective
compliance monitoring.
But one of the terrible gaps in JCPOA was that it failed to provide for meaningful
monitoring of Iranian activities with the IAEA barred access to facilities
which Iran designated to be "military sites".
Simply put, critics of leaving JCPOA are clueless what Iran was really doing
when the US pulled out from the deal nor do they have the tools to predict what
Iran would have achieved if America had continued with JCPOA.
By the same token, since JCPOA does not actually provide for monitoring Iranian
nuclear activity in facilities which Iran designated to be "military sites",
a return to JCPOA in no way necessarily delays an Iranian nuke because we will
remain clueless what Iran is doing to reach the goal of having nukes in its
"military sites".
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Note: Clarifying comments in brackets [ ] were added by me and form no part of the above republished articles.