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Post by Admin on Jan 13, 2014 23:27:53 GMT
January 20th is the official start time for the interim deal Iran made to reduce its stockpile of weapons-grade uranium.
Iran's interim nuclear deal with the world's major powers is scheduled to begin on January 20, officials with Iran and the European Union said Sunday. Capitals have confirmed the result of the talks in Geneva ... the Geneva deal will be implemented from January 20," Marzieh Afkham, a spokeswoman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry told reporters in Tehran, the semi-official Mehr news agency said.
The EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton also confirmed the news in a statement on Sunday. Ashton represents the six nations — the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany — in diplomatic contacts with Iran related to the nuclear standoff. She said the sides would now ask the United Nations' nuclear watchdog to verify the deal's implementation. "We will ask the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to undertake the necessary nuclear-related monitoring and verification activities," she said.
Under the November 24 agreement, Iran has promised to curb its most sensitive nuclear activities in return for some relief from Western economic sanctions. In a statement from the White House after the announcement Sunday, U.S. President Barack Obama cheered the news. "With today's agreement, we have made concrete progress," he said, "I welcome this important step forward, and we will now focus on the critical work of pursuing a comprehensive resolution that addresses our concerns over Iran's nuclear program." Obama added, "I have no illusions about how hard it will be to achieve this objective, but for the sake of our national security and the peace and security of the world, now is the time to give diplomacy a chance to succeed."
Iran's nuclear program isn't the only matter deserving of international scrutiny. AEI Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Danielle Pletka argues that Iran has other interests in the Middle East that potentially threaten the United States and its allies.
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Post by Admin on Jan 14, 2014 21:53:25 GMT
An unusual fear is gripping the Arab world, namely that nuclear diplomacy may yet bring Iran and the United States into a close regional embrace. This may seem comical given the legacy of mistrust separating the two nations. Yet this concern among Arab rulers, fueled by progress toward a final agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program, may have some justification in history. The United States has never been able to pursue arms control without delusion and has always insisted on sanctifying its negotiating partners, conjuring up moderates and searching for common ground. The challenge for Washington today is to defy its history and reach a nuclear agreement with Iran while negating the Islamic Republic’s regional ambitions. During the heydays of detente in the 1970s, nuclear accords between the United States and Soviet Union were inevitably followed by commerce and diplomatic recognition. Successive U.S. administrations were seduced by the notion that a nuclear agreement could pave the way for grander geopolitical convergence. If the thorny nuclear issues could be resolved through cool-headed dialogue, the thinking went, then why not other areas of superpower contention? This proved a fools’ errand, as the Kremlin saw no contradiction between negotiating a treaty on arms limitation and invading Afghanistan. U.S. adversaries have always been more practical about arms control and have seldom forfeited their ideological claims for the sake of trade and reconciliation. On the surface, the chimera of bringing Iran in from the cold could prove equally alluring. After all, the resurgence of al-Qaeda, a radical Sunni movement, argues for cooperation with an alarmed Shiite state. The United States is seeking to leave its war-torn charge in Afghanistan and may yet need Tehran’s assistance for such a withdrawal. Perhaps once the two sides have agreed on the nuclear file, they could move toward a larger canvass of cooperation. These sober strategic arguments are seemingly buttressed by the rise of pragmatists led by President Hassan Rouhani. As such, a concerted U.S. effort at engagement might foster Iranian moderation in its foreign policy as well as strengthen the forces of progressive change domestically. Like their Soviet predecessors, the guardians of Iranian theocracy are far less sentimental than Americans about their diplomacy. Whatever confidence-building measures Iranian diplomats may be negotiating in Geneva, supreme leader Ali Khamenei insisted as recently as late November that Iran is “challenging the influence of America in the region and is extending its own influence.” In Khamenei’s telling, the United States is a crestfallen imperial power unable to impose discipline on a recalcitrant Middle East. It is not his burden to salvage the wreckage of the United States but merely to fill the vacuums left by its abdication. The key actors defining Iran’s regional policy are not its urbane diplomats mingling with their Western counterparts in Geneva but the Revolutionary Guard Corps, particularly the famed Quds Force. For the force’s commander, Qassem Suleimani, the struggle to evict the United States from the Middle East began in Iraq, as Suleimani proclaimed in September. The struggle has moved on to Syria. The survival and success of the Assad dynasty is now a central element of Iran’s foreign policy. The U.S. task remains imposing stringent limits on Iran’s nuclear program through negotiations while restraining Tehran’s regional ambitions through pressure. This latter goal will require mending the United States’ battered alliances in the Middle East. Strategic dialogues and arms sales can go only so far. The United States cannot reclaim its allies’ confidence without being an active player in the Syria saga. To be sure, Syria’s opposition is fragmented and the rise of Islamist radicals is a troubling sign, but many are still committed to displacing Assad and taming Islamist militancy — and they are worthy of Western embrace and support. As long as the United States exempts itself from this conflict, its other pledges ring hollow to a skeptical Arab audience. Too often tensions between the United States and Iran have been attributed to technical disagreements over the scope of Tehran’s nuclear program. For decades, diplomats have struggled to define just the right balance between centrifuges and sanctions relief. Those negotiations have taken place while Iran’s presidency has changed hands from reformers to hard-liners and now, finally, to pragmatists. At the core this conflict is ideological: Iran does not want us to succeed, and we should not want Tehran to prevail. Iran’s assault on the Arab order will define the parameters of Middle East politics for some time to come. The first step toward a sensible Iran policy is to dispense with the illusion of detente that too often accompanies arms control diplomacy. Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Post by Admin on Jan 17, 2014 5:48:05 GMT
Thirty-five years ago, when the Iranian revolution overthrew the shah and our diplomats were taken hostage, I was in the White House. Many of those taken prisoner remain personal friends of mine. With this experience, it is difficult to watch the foreign policy calamity taking shape in Washington. A combination of domestic politics and misguided intrusion is on track to derail an enormous opportunity to halt Iran's nuclear program. At worst, it could be setting us on the path to a third major Middle East war. Last November, five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany — the so-called P5+1 — concluded a preliminary deal with Iran to resolve the long-standing dispute about Iran's nuclear program. This agreement, set to take effect Monday, was possible because the election in Iran last year brought a fresh face, Hasan Rouhani, to the presidency in Iran. He replaced the belligerent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose policies had isolated Iran as never before. The Rouhani factor A decade earlier, Rouhani had been the chief negotiator of the nuclear issue. At that time, he basically offered to maintain Iran's nuclear enrichment program at a low level in return for recognition of Iran's right to develop peaceful nuclear power. European negotiators, with the backing of the Bush administration, rejected the offer, insisting instead that no deal was possible unless Iran halted all enrichment of uranium. After the talks broke down, two things happened. First, Ahmadinejad replaced the Rouhani team, accusing it of being too generous to the West. Second, Iran accelerated its production and installation of centrifuges. To date, according to the U.S. intelligence community, Iran has taken no decision to build a nuclear weapon. However, Iran now has the technical know-how to produce a bomb. In short, we are still paying for our misjudgment of Iran and our own interests a decade ago. The agreement between the P5+1 and Iran on Nov. 23 basically freezes Iran's nuclear program in place while talks proceed on a permanent settlement. During that time, the U.S. and its allies agree not to introduce any new nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, while providing some modest relief from the sanctions that they have imposed on Iran over the past few years. Now, a group of senators — some Democrats, more Republicans — is sponsoring a bill that would impose new sanctions and urges the United States to provide military support if Israel decides to unilaterally attack Iran. A deal-breaker This misguided bill threatens to derail the negotiations and sabotage progress. Our negotiators do not want or need this extra sanctions threat. They already have a strong hand, and new sanctions will almost certainly be seen by Iran as evidence of bad faith. A new round of sanctions will also send a message to our allies that the U.S. is not serious about achieving a negotiated outcome, and allied support is critical. In addition, if further sanctions are needed, they can quickly be imposed later. If negotiations do collapse, it will be hard-liners in Iran who will be the biggest winners. The failure of another round of talks will prove their claim that negotiating with the U.S. is pointless and strengthen their argument that those seeking to open Iran to the West are weak and naive. President Obama has threatened to veto the bill, but that might not be enough. Anti-Iran legislation is politically popular and, with powerful lobbying behind it, such bills often pass by veto-proof majorities. Today we are at the most hopeful moment of the past three decades. A final agreement has yet to be negotiated, and there are certain to be ups and downs. Even so, we have a real chance to cap Iran's nuclear development and establish iron-clad measures to guarantee that it will not be used for military purposes. By contrast, the Senate bill attempts to inject the Congress into a delicate international negotiation. That only risks derailing efforts to find a peaceful solution, bringing us closer to another war in the Middle East. Gary Sick teaches Middle East politics at Columbia University. He was a member of the National Security Council staff during the Ford, Carter and Reagan presidencies.
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Post by Admin on Mar 26, 2014 16:10:56 GMT
Japan and the United States have co-signed an agreement to remove and dispose of hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and separated plutonium from the Asian nation. The fissile material will be transported from the Fast Critical Assembly (FCA) at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) in Japan to a "secure facility" in the United States, according to a statement released by the White House, and "fully converted into less sensitive forms." "This pledge complements the significant role that both Japan and the United States are playing in finding new ways to continue improving global nuclear security ... Japan has demonstrated its leadership by resolving to remove all special nuclear material from the FCA. Our two countries encourage others to consider what they can do to further HEU and plutonium minimization." The U.S. has a longstanding goal of reducing -- and safeguarding -- the world's stockpile of fissile material, in an effort to reduce access by terrorist groups, criminals and "unauthorized actors." The deal comes at a time when the U.S. hopes to persuade Iran to halt their enrichment program, and tensions on the Korean Peninsula are hightened by North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Barack Obama announced the deal this week at the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague. It allows for over 700 lb (315 kg) of weapons-grade nuclear material to be transported and "downblended" into safer material in the United States. The fuel, which was purchased from the U.S. in the 1960s, has been used by the JAEA for research purposes. The agreed-upon amount which will head to the United States is a fraction of Japan's overall plutonium holdings.
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Post by Admin on Apr 3, 2015 21:48:07 GMT
After 18 months of drawn-out negotiations, the U.S. and its partners on Thursday arrived at an agreement on a framework for curbing Iran’s nuclear capabilities. If that sounds tentative, that’s because it is. The two sides have until June 30 to hash out the details of a final agreement. As President Barack Obama warned following the announcement of the latest progress, “there will be no deal” if Iran backtracks. What does the U.S. and its partners want? The U.S. side consists of U.N. Security Council members Britain, China, France and Russia as well as Germany (dubbed the P5+1). They are pressing for restrictions that will extend the amount of time it will take Iran to build a nuclear weapon — the so-called “breakout time” — from the current 2-3 months to a year. To do that, the P5+1 are pushing to reduce the number of centrifuges Tehran can use to enrich uranium into fuel for a nuclear weapon, as well as cut its stockpiles of enriched uranium. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its partners are demanding monitors to continuously inspect Iran’s nuclear program. What does Iran want? Iran is keen to see the removal of sanctions to ease pressure on its struggling economy and gain access to the international market. But it insists that it has the right to nuclear capabilities for energy and medical purposes and is unwilling to scrap its nuclear resources altogether. So what does the framework agreement say? According to the framework agreement, Iran agreed to cut by two-thirds its supply of centrifuges, from roughly 19,000 to about 6,000, and retain only its earliest generation centrifuges. It said it would keep continuing enrichment far below levels necessary for a nuclear weapon and also agreed to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by 97%. But exactly how it plans to scrap its extra centrifuges and enriched uranium is the kind of question negotiators will be answering over the next three months. Finally, Tehran pledged to give the International Atomic Energy Agency access to all of its nuclear facilities and to its nuclear supply chain. “If Iran cheats, the world will know,” Obama said. The U.S., the United Nations and the European Union will lift nuclear-related sanctions once Iran is deemed to have complied with its side of the bargain; American sanctions related to terrorism, human rights abuses and non-nuclear weapons will remain in place. Meanwhile, the U.S. will be poised to “snap-back” nuclear sanctions if Iran backpedals. What do opponents of a deal say? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been a staunch critic of the negotiations, came out swinging after the framework agreement was reached. “The proposed agreement would constitute a real danger to the region and the world, and it would threaten the existence of Israel,” said Netanyahu, who was re-elected last month. An official close to his office went even further, saying the framework agreement “kowtows to Iranian dictates.” Opponents say in part that a one-year breakout time is insufficient, giving the U.S. and its allies too little time to react if Iran does race to build a nuclear weapon. They also raise concerns that no matter what access Iran gives IAEA inspectors, they could still attempt to build a weapon without inspectors or U.S. intelligence finding out. “We are all concerned that the Iranians will circumvent the deal,” said Israeli politician Yair Lapid, a leading Netanyahu opponent who still says the deal is troubling to all Israelis. In the U.S., Republicans, with some support from Democrats, have lined up a bill that will effectively require Congressional approval for a nuclear deal by giving legislators the power to reject lifting sanctions on Iran. The White House opposes the perceived interference from Congress and has said it would veto such a bill. “If Congress kills this deal, not based on expert analysis, and without offering any reasonable alternative, then it’s the United States that will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy, international unity will collapse, and the path to conflict will widen,” Obama said. What do the Iranians Say? In Iran, people took to the streets to celebrate news of the framework agreement. In a sign that the deal has the support of supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Friday prayer leaders throughout the country praised the negotiations, calling the talks a success. President Hassan Rouhani, who has spearheaded the talks since he took office in 2013, was scheduled to speak Friday afternoon.
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