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Post by Admin on Apr 4, 2015 21:48:17 GMT
Back in 2010, I interviewed Gerard Araud, who is now the French ambassador in Washington, while he was still serving as France’s envoy to the United Nations in New York. We talked at length about Iran, and this was the first thing he told me: The Iranian nuclear program has no civilian explanation whatsoever. You don’t start a civilian nuclear program by enriching uranium. It’s like if you buy the gas before the car. Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China and Germany) world powers last week announced that a framework deal on Iran’s nuclear program has been reached. In the days prior, as I watched the Iran nuclear negotiations in the Swiss city of Lausanne slide past an agreed deadline of midnight on March 31 into, appropriately, April Fools’ Day, it struck me that nothing had changed since Araud—who remains a trenchant critic of American concessions to Iran—uttered those words five years ago. The Iranian nuclear program was never about the civilian use of nuclear energy. It was, and remains, geared towards the production of a nuclear weapon—hence all the lies and deceit practiced by the Iranian regime over more than a decade, and hence the succession of U.N. Security Council resolutions and anxious International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports underlining how Iran’s nuclear activities do not comport with those associated with a civilian program. In fact, the glaring unresolved issues that held up the negotiations in Lausanne reflect this fundamental state of affairs, reinforcing the perception that the Obama administration will concede on almost anything in order to secure a deal. Iran hasn’t disclosed the possible military dimensions (PMDs) of its program, and will have even less incentive to do so if sanctions relief is offered regardless. At the same time, Iran has been told that it can continue operating centrifuges at its underground Fordow facility, thus enabling it to further master the enrichment process. And as for their stockpile of enriched uranium, which the Iranians were supposed to be shipping to their Russian allies for safeguarding, well, apparently they won’t be doing that either. At best, then, what we have here is a weak deal. The main goal is to carry on talking, as it has been since the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) was agreed between Iran and the five members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany—the P5+1—in Geneva in November 2013. As the former George W. Bush administration official Michael Doran, arguably the most insightful Iran analyst in the United States, told me last year: The interim deal is for six months and can be rolled over by mutual consent for another six months and another six months, interminably. The Iranians are very good negotiators, so they will work to string this along for as long as possible. >>> Read the details of the agreement over Iran’s nuclear program: www.scribd.com/doc/260721110/Iran-Deal-Parameters
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Post by Admin on Apr 7, 2015 21:38:01 GMT
After a marathon negotiation session, Tehran and the world powers announced last week that an initial framework of a nuclear deal had been agreed upon. But things have quickly gotten complicated: there's considerable confusion as to what last week's initial understanding actually means. We still don't know what Iran would have to do, nor when the various sanctions on Iran would be removed in return. The White House released a factsheet on the agreement but Iran has not signed off on this factsheet – Iranian foreign minister Javid Zarif immediately took to twitter, disparaging the White House release: “...[t]here is no need to spin using ‘fact sheets’ so early on.” It's far from clear which “facts” in the White House factsheet will survive until July, the deadline for a final agreement. So what did Tehran and the world powers agree to last week? Depends who you ask. There are at least three different versions of what was allegedly decided. The most authoritative – the joint statement by the European Union and Iran – also happens to be the vaguest. For example it states, “Iran's enrichment capacity, enrichment level and stockpile will be limited for specified durations, and there will be no other enrichment facility than Natanz.” It also states that, “There will be no [Plutonium] reprocessing and the spent fuel will be exported.
..” and that Iran agrees to a “provisional application of the Additional Protocol.” In return, “The EU will terminate the implementation of all nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions and the US will cease the application of all nuclear-related secondary economic and financial sanctions, simultaneously with the IAEA-verified implementation by Iran of its key nuclear commitments.” For instance, the Iranian factsheet says that “…all of the sanctions will be immediately removed after reaching a comprehensive agreement” i.e. in July, if an agreement is reached – whereas the White House says “All past UN Security Council resolutions on the Iran nuclear issue will be lifted simultaneous with the completion, by Iran, of nuclear-related actions addressing all key concerns (enrichment, Fordow, Arak, PMD, and transparency).” [emphasis added]. Completing the actions on these key concerns could easily take months or years. It is unlikely that Iranian leaders would consent to such a long delay before sanctions are lifted. The PMD – for “Possible Military Dimensions” – issue quoted above is a particularly bright red-flag: the IAEA has been incapable of resolving these PMD issues with Iran for more than a decade, in part because some of them may be forgeries planted to implicate Iran, and also because the IAEA is not well-outfitted to examine weaponization issues to begin with. The IAEA maintains that Tehran is not providing sufficiently detailed answers on the PMD allegations which could raise suspicions about the nature of Iran's past – and possibly even its present – nuclear program. Iran, in response, says its reply is clear: that the allegations are fabricated or errorneous – essentially, that there is nothing substantiated regarding the PMD dossier that Tehran must answer to. Iranian officials also complain that they are not allowed to see some of the original documents they are supposed to answer to but only electronically re-formatted versions, which they say “could have been manipulated, and...would have been easy to fabricate.” Such Iranian complaints cannot be brushed off lightly: former directors of the IAEA, Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei have both been sceptical about some of the PMD documents passed to the IAEA. An initial assessment indicates that at least some of the PMD allegations – even if authentic – are less than compelling. Most of the PMD issues also relate to long-past issues, and do not involve nuclear materials. Other PMD concerns deal with dual-use activities for which Iran may have a legitimate need. While some of the concerns may be legitimate, evaluating e.g. nuclear weaponization issues or ballistic missile work lies far outside the core expertise of the IAEA which is nuclear materials accountancy. If the world powers are interested to pursue Iranian missile and fuzing issues they would be better served by forming an organization skilled in such niche military and WMD investigations, as was done in Iraq with the “Iraq Action Team”. The IAEA's mandate is strictly restricted to nuclear-materials related matters. The Agency itself clearly admitted that “absent some nexus to nuclear material the Agency’s legal authority to pursue the verification of possible nuclear weapons related activity is limited.”
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Post by Admin on Jul 14, 2015 20:30:53 GMT
The United States, the European Union and the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran to pressure it to stop its nuclear program. These include restrictions on trade, and the seizure in foreign bank accounts of $150 billion of Iranian oil revenue. The United States wanted sanctions to remain in place until Iran implements the deal, with a "snap back" mechanism to reimpose them if it cheats. It said weapons embargoes and sanctions targeting Iran's ballistic missile program and support for terrorism would remain. Iran wanted all sanctions removed immediately when the deal goes into effect. RESULT: Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday "relief of sanctions will only start when Tehran has met the commitments of this nuclear agreement," including the removal and destruction of the Arak nuclear reactor core, and shipping uranium stockpiles abroad. Then sanctions relief will begin in stages, Kerry said. Nuclear fuel is produced through a process called uranium enrichment, which can supply power plants or bombs. Iran has installed thousands of centrifuge machines to enrich uranium, despite U.N. Security Council resolutions that called for a halt to such activity. The U.S. goal was to close off all the pathways to a bomb, President Obama said. Kerry said in 2013 the goal of international sanctions was for "Iran to dismantle its nuclear program." Chief U.S. negotiator Wendy Sherman said a final agreement would involve "a lot of dismantling of their infrastructure." Obama had said Fordow's existence was not consistent with a peaceful nuclear program; and Kerry said the heavy water plant at Arak "is unacceptable." Iran said it would grow its enrichment infrastructure to 190,000 centrifuge machines to supply additional planned nuclear plants. RESULT: Iran's 20,000 installed enrichment machines, including 10,000 that were running in 2013, will be reduced to about 5,000 for 10 years, while research and development on more efficient machines will be limited. Iran agreed to dilute or convert its entire stockpile of medium-enriched uranium into another form that would be monitored by international inspectors, and to ship its stockpile of low enriched uranium to another country. Iran agreed to repurpose the Fordow facility to isotope production and nuclear research rather than uranium enrichment, Kerry said Tuesday. The same process can also be used to enrich uranium. Hundreds of uranium enrichment machines in Fordow will be idled but not dismantled. Iran agreed to remove and destroy the core of the Arak reactor, Kerry said. Iran also agreed not to build a plutonium reprocessing plant, and to convert Arak "so it could only be used for peaceful purposes." As long as Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is entitled to have access to nuclear technology — and required to refrain from developing nuclear weapons. Diplomats agreed, however, that elements of an agreement on ending sanctions imposed for Iran's failure to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions would have to have an expiration date.
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Post by Admin on Jul 16, 2015 20:30:40 GMT
What the Iran deal means for Israel is a matter of debate: Proponents of the deal say it will keep Israel safe from Iran ever getting a nuclear bomb, whereas critics worry that the deal could fail, and that even if it doesn't it will distract from Iran's non-nuclear aggression. It is, and will continue to be, a legitimate and important policy debate. But even if the deal does end up being good on net for Israel, there is just no debating that it is a complete disaster for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This deal is a huge policy failure for Netanyahu, who in recent years has staked ever more of his legacy and political reputation on stopping it — even at the cost of setting back Israel's relationship with the United States. Now he has nothing to show for it but a giant political embarrassment that his opponents on the right and left are already using against him. Netanyahu has made confronting Iran central to not just his agenda but his very political identity. He's been sounding the alarm about the threat to Israel from an Iranian bomb since at least 1992. His warnings have been beyond bombastic: Iran is a "genocidal" enemy akin to the Nazi regime, its leadership a "messianic apocalyptic cult" that wants to "take over the world." Everything we know about Netanyahu's beliefs and background suggests that even if his language is overstated, his fears about Iran are genuine. Obama's Iran deal, he worries, guarantees that these warnings will come to pass. "The concessions agreement Iran is about to receive from the world powers paves its way to acquiring nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said just a week before the deal. He was even blunter in February: "The agreement being formed between Iran and the powers can endanger our existence." (Israel's military brass and top intelligence officials disagree, according to the Economist). So Netanyahu pledged to do "everything I can" to stop a deal from being made. And indeed he did, most (in)famously by delivering an anti-deal speech in front of the US Congress — a speech orchestrated behind Obama's back, and at some cost to the US-Israel relationship.
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Post by Admin on Jul 19, 2015 20:21:24 GMT
Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in a round of interviews that aired Sunday defended the deal they negotiated with Iran, saying that it leaves the Middle East safer and that there is no viable alternative. “The real fear of that region should be that you don’t have the deal,” Kerry said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” The agreement finalized last week in Vienna faces heavy criticism from Republicans in Congress, which could vote to reject it. On Sunday, the administration officially presented the agreement to lawmakers, who will have 60 days to review it. Kerry’s remarks were taped Friday, part of five interviews he and Moniz did in tandem for the Sunday talk shows. The interviews were part of an aggressive campaign by the Obama administration to defend the deal announced last week, in which Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions being lifted. In several interviews, Kerry said that if opponents in Congress get enough votes to override a presidential veto, the consequences will be dire. He said that Iran will resume enriching uranium to levels prohibited under the deal and that the five nations that negotiated alongside the United States will blame Washington for the deal’s failure and lift their sanctions on Iran. “If Congress says no to this deal, then there will be no restraints on Iran, there will be no sanctions left,” Kerry said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Our friends in this effort will desert us. We will be viewed as having killed the opportunity to stop them from having weapons. [Iran] will begin to enrich again, and the greater likelihood is what the president said the other day — you will have a war."
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