WarSclerotic

White House Will Not Interfere With Rising Iranian Oil Sales, Washington Free Beacon,  Adam Kredo, February 18, 2014

White House promised to ‘pause efforts’ to reduce Iran’s output.

The White House says that it will not interfere with Iran’s rising oil sales, despite a recent uptick that experts say is providing Tehran with billions in revenue.

Exports of Iranian crude oil jumped to 1.32 million barrels in January, up from December’s high of 1.06 million barrels, according to data from the International Energy Agency.

While the increase caused concern among some experts who worry that economic sanctions on Iran are collapsing, the White House appeared unfazed by the latest export data and promised to continue pausing its efforts to reduce these sales.

The Obama administration has said that Iran would receive no more than $7 billion in sanctions relief under the recently signed interim nuclear deal. However, experts say that the rise in oil exports and other economic spikes will give Iran “well more than $20 billion.”

“Under the Joint Plan of Action, the United States will ‘pause efforts to further reduce Iran’s crude oil sales, enabling Iran’s current customers to purchase their current average amounts of crude oil,’” White House National Security Council (NSC) spokesman Caitlin Hayden told the Washington Free Beacon when asked about Iran’s growing exports.

The administration had initially promised that “Iran’s oil exports will remain steady at their current level of around 1 million barrels per day.”

Hayden said the recent spike in exports would even out during the next few months.

“The ‘current average amounts of crude oil’ is understood to be ‘average volume’ over a six-month period,” Hayden explained. “Month-to-month variability is normal in oil markets, but we expect Iran’s total exports will average out over the six-month period.”

“There are variations in national purchasing patterns because of seasonality and circumstances such as ships being delayed for docking, disruption to insurance, etc.,” she said. “So, monthly figures may shift for each.”

Nations such as Japan, China, and India have emerged as Iran’s top oil importers. Hayden said the administration is working with these nations to ensure they do not significantly boost their imports.

“We maintain close communication with China, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey (the significantly reducing countries) to help them maintain their current average level of crude oil imports from Iran during the period that the Joint Plan of Action is in effect,” Hayden said.

Iranian oil sales have risen since November, when the interim deal was struck, leading experts to warn that sanctions on Iran are becoming ineffective.

“These numbers … cast doubt on the accuracy of the administration’s estimates for sanctions relief,” former Ambassador Mark Wallace, CEO of the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, said in a statement last week. “The $6 or $7 billion estimate does not take into account the tens of billions of dollars Iran will reap from increased oil sales.”

“It is becoming more and more evident that the Geneva deal provided Iran with disproportionate sanctions relief, in exchange for far less significant concessions regarding its nuclear program,” Wallace said.

Iran is slated to receive around $4.2 billion in cash infusions from the Obama administration, which began unfreezing these cash assets last month. Iran will receive some $450 million on March 1 and another $550 million on March 7 under the deal.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Monday urged the country’s oil sector increase its output, according to regional reports.

Nuclear talks open with Iran with three unattainable US pledges to Israel re Fordo, Arak, enrichment.

Iran’s heavy water reactor under construction at Arak

The second round of talks between the six powers and Iran – this time for a final, comprehensive resolution of the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program – opened in Geneva Tuesday, Feb. 18. But first, the Obama administration gave the Israeli government three pledges, debkafile’s Washington and Jerusalem sources reveal. It must be said, however, that none of those pledges is realistic.

One was a commitment to insist on the absolute shutdown of Iran’s underground uranium enrichment plant at Fordo. The second was the conversion of the reactor under construction at Arak from a heavy to a light water plant, in order to preclude the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons; and the third, to place a cap on the low-grade 5-percent enrichment of uranium.

Our Iranian and military sources affirm that there is not the slightest chance of Iran’s negotiators acceding to any of these demands. Its leaders have made it clear that Fordo will not be shut down under any circumstances. They are willing to discuss aspects of production, such as the number of centrifuges used and the purity level of the enriched uranium. But closure is out of the question.

With regard to the Arak reactor, Tehran may consider imposing a ceiling on plutonium production, but no other commitment.
With regard to their stockpiles of enriched uranium, the Iranians are ready to negotiate a limit on quantities, but not the number or types of centrifuges they are allowed to operate. Tehran will thus retain the capacity to go back whenever it chooses to enriching any quantities of enriched uranium it likes.

To preserve this capacity, the Iranian negotiators will reject the Western demand to dismantle the 18,000 new centrifuges already in place in the enrichment chambers (not all of them functioning) and keep only 1,000 of the older IR1 machines.

In view of the long list of rebuffs the six-power negotiators (US, Russia, UK, France, China and Germany) expect from Iran, an aura of gloom enveloped both sides Tuesday as the talks got underway.  Western sources called them a “daunting challenge,” while Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei commented: “I have said before… I am not optimistic about the negotiations. It will not lead anywhere, but I am not opposed either.”

Answering tough questions on Jan. 20 ahead of the final round ot nuclear talks, US senior negotiator Undersecretary Wendy Sherman assured the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that “there will be an additional step or steps between the Phase 1 deal and the final deal, to bring Iran into compliance with UN Security Council resolutions.”

In other words, the current round is not expected to fulfill its avowed purpose of reaching “a final and comprehensive accord.” The Obama administration is gearing up instead for more interim accords with Iran.

debkafile sees the Sherman comment as giving away Washington’s negotiating tactics with Tehran: The intention is to drag out a final resolution of this irreconcilable issue along the two years remaining of President Barack Obama’s term in office, i.e. up to 2016, and land the decision on how to handle it in the lap of his successor in the White House.

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has walked in step with Obama on the Iranian nuclear issue since the fall of 2012, when he turned away from his earlier determination to destroy Iran’s nuclear bomb capacity by military force. And of late, he no longer demands the total dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear capability either.

When Netanyahu sits down with Obama at the White House on March 3, he will likely be reduced to calling for a ceiling on the number of operational centrifuges allowed Iran, as a last-ditch effort to delay Iran’s nuclear weapons drive. But both are obviously reconciled to Iran’s rejection of any limitations on its military nuclear capacity, along with the inability of any Western power to impose its will on the Islamic Republic.

US sees Iran nuclear talks difficult, success uncertain, Ynet News, February 17, 2014

(More Plutonium? What difference does that make now, with the chances of a final deal at fifty percent or less? Iranian President Rouhani is a charming moderate so we have to do our best to be charming and moderate too. Right? — DM)

American official signals potential US willingness to compromise on modifications done to Arak heavy-water reactor.

VIENNA – The United States said on Monday that talks between Iran and six world powers on a long-term deal for Tehran to limit its nuclear program and see international sanctions lifted will be long and complicated with no guarantee of success.

The remarks came from a senior US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity on the eve of the first round of high-level negotiations since an interim deal struck on November 24 under which Tehran curbed some nuclear activities for limited sanctions relief.

“These next days this week are the beginning of what will be a complicated, difficult and lengthy process,” the administration official told reporters in the Austrian capital.

“When the stakes are this high and the devil is truly in the details, one has to take the time to ensure the confidence of the international community in the result,” the official said. “That can’t be done in a day, a week or even a month in this situation.”

Senior officials from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States will begin several days of talks in Vienna on Tuesday with an Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his deputy Abbas Araqchi.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will oversee the talks, which will be the first in what is expected to be a series of meetings in the coming months.

While cautioning the talks would take time, the official said Washington does not want them to run beyond a six-month deadline agreed in the November 24 deal. The late July deadline can be extended for another half year by mutual consent.

“Our intent is to use these six months to negotiate a comprehensive agreement,” the official said.

“I think we will certainly know in six months, in probably much sooner than that, whether the odds have increased or not to get a comprehensive agreement,” the official said.

“But our goal, our objective, is to use these six months … to get a comprehensive agreement.”

Willing to compromise? 

During a decade of on-and-off negotiations with Western powers, Iran has rejected their allegations that it is seeking a nuclear weapons capability, saying it needs atomic power plants for energy generation and medical purposes.

It has defied UN Security Council demands that it suspend uranium enrichment and other sensitive activities, leading to a crippling web of US, EU and UN sanctions that has severely damaged the oil-producing nation’s economy.

Since the June 2013 election of relative moderate Hassan Rouhani as president, Tehran has repeatedly reached out to Washington in a bid to ease more than three decades of mutual enmity and end Iran’s international isolation.

The US official said there was no guarantee the Vienna negotiations would yield an agreement.

“As President (Barack) Obama has said, and I quite agree, it’s probably as likely that we won’t get an agreement as it is that we will,” the official said.

But the official also signalled potential US willingness to compromise on one of the most divisive issues in the three rounds of negotiations in Geneva that led up the November 24 agreement with Iran – the heavy-water reactor at Arak that could one day produce arms-grade plutonium.

The official was responding to remarks from Iran’s atomic energy chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, who was quoted earlier this month as saying that Tehran might be willing to allay Western fears about Arak by modifying it.

“We were pleased to see the head of the (Iranian) atomic energy agency, Dr Salehi, say that they were open to discussions of whether there were modifications that would be viable,” the official said.

“I think we have a long way go in these discussions but I think that we all have to be open to ideas and ways to address our concerns,” the official said.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, however, said on Monday that he was not optimistic that the nuclear talks between Iran and the six powers would produce a viable agreement, predicting that the process “will not lead anywhere.”