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Likud MK slams Barak for tapes discussing Israeli plans to attack Iran

August 22, 2015

Likud MK slams Barak for tapes discussing Israeli plans to attack Iran

Knesset Defense Committee member says Israel’s security hurt by disclosure of debates on aborted strikes in 2010, 2011 and 2012

By Times of Israel staff August 22, 2015, 2:55 pm

via Likud MK slams Barak for tapes discussing Israeli plans to attack Iran | The Times of Israel.

Likud MK Yoav Kish (screen capture: YouTube)

Likud MK Yoav Kish (screen capture: YouTube)

Likud MK Yoav Kish on Saturday lambasted former defense minister Ehud Barak for making recordings in which he details Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unsuccessful attempts to win approval for a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Kish, a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, questioned Barak’s motives for making the recordings, saying he was uncertain what “political gain” Barak hoped to achieve, Israel’s Maariv newspaper reported.

Channel 2 television on Friday night broadcast the recordings, which relate to a new biography of Barak being written by Danny Dor and Ilan Kfir. The former defense minister, who was also previously prime minister and chief of staff, attempted to prevent the recordings being played, but Israel’s military censors allowed Channel 2 to play them.

In the recordings, Barak said he and Netanyahu on more than one occasion sought to order an Israeli Air Force attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, but were scuppered first by chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi in 2010, who said the IDF was not ready for the operation, and then by fellow cabinet ministers Moshe “Bogey” Ya’alon and Yuval Steinitz, who did not support the idea. He also said a 2012 strike was aborted because it coincided with a joint Israel-US military exercise.

Gantz, then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot during a February 15, 2011 tour of the northern border (photo credit: Ministry of Defense/ Flash 90)

“On Friday we were exposed to cabinet deliberations of a preemptive attack on Iran via the story of Ehud Barak, the defense minister at the time. Publishing the discussions is the responsibility of the IDF censor and of Ehud Barak. The censor was wrong to approve the publication of the book on this issue,” said Kish, a freshman MK and former Israeli Air Force fighter pilot.

“The reports from the forum [of senior ministers] are the most sensitive in the state and disclosure of information on the issue, which is still a major threat to Israel, harms state security,” Kish continued. “I do not know what political gain Ehud Barak sought to achieve with these reports, but we would do well to cease the online chatter.”

Kish is one of the leaders of the “New Likud” movement, which calls for Likud to return to its liberal roots, and the lion’s share of its agenda, as published on its website, deals with social justice issues like the cost of living and ultra-Orthodox military service.

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Inspector Clouseau was unavailable (4)

August 22, 2015

Inspector Clouseau was unavailable (4), Power Line, Scott Johnson, August 21, 2015

Amano’s defense of the Parchin side deal comes amid speculation that the IAEA is being subject to overwhelming pressure by the Americans and the Iranians. On the American side, the leverage is straightforward: Amano is up for reelection next year, and he perennially relies on Western nations to provide him with slim majorities [r].

************************

Omri Ceren emails an update on the IAEA side deal with Iran on Parchin. I think that readers who have followed this important story so far will find this of interest as well. Omri writes:

As was more or less inevitable, today was all about the AP scoop describing the secret IAEA-Iran side deal on Parchin, the military base where Iran conducted hydrodynamic experiments relevant to the detonation of nuclear warheads. The IAEA has been trying to get access to the facility for years to figure out how far the Iranians got, as a prerequisite to setting up a verification regime preventing them from going further. The Obama administration told lawmakers throughout the Iran talks there could be no deal without the Iranians providing that access, but the AP yesterday published the text of a side deal between the IAEA and Iran indicating that the West had caved on that demand.

The document, titled “Separate arrangement II” – which was referenced in a Wednesday AP story and published Thursday – indicates that Iranians will be allowed to inspect themselves for evidence of the nuclear work they conducted at Parchin [a][b]. Instead of allowing IAEA inspectors to collect evidence from the facility, samples will be collected by the Iranians using Iranian equipment. Instead of allowing the IAEA to collect everything it wants, only seven samples will be handed over from mutually agreed upon areas. Instead of giving inspectors access to facilities, photos and videos will be taken by the Iranians themselves, again only from mutually agreed upon areas.

Iran deal supporters haven’t settled on just one response. As of last night administration liaisons were playing for time by telling lawmakers that the earlier AP story about the side deal was just a rumor. Then the AP published the actual draft. So this morning White House allies – including groups that have worked with the administration in lobbying Congress – tweeted around the theory that maybe the AP document was forged, at one point even referencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [c][d][e]. Other validators have been trying to argue that the IAEA can still do its work even without access [f]. The White House will end up taking that latter claim – the IAEA stuff, not the Parchin Truther insanity – and insulating it with the argument that past work doesn’t matter anyway because what matters is the verification regime for future inspections. State Department spokesman Kirby was already floating that claim at yesterday’s press briefing [g].

That talking point might work on a political level. Administration officials can simply assert that the side deal is adequate and then – when pressed for details – declare that they can’t reveal their reasoning because it’s classified. They’ll heavily leverage yesterday’s statement from IAEA chief Amano saying that, for all sorts of classified reasons, the IAEA can live with the arrangement [h]. The opacity might well get the White House through the next month and a half of Congressional review.

But on a policy level, the side deal guts the JCPOA’s verification regime for future violations, which the administration has put at the center of the Iran deal. Administration officials really had no choice: once they gave up on any demands that would physically preclude the Iranians from going nuclear – dismantling centrifuges, mothballing facilities, etc – verification was all they had left. But it’s difficult to see how the pretense of verification can be sustained now that the Parchin side deal has been detailed:

(1) The side deal will become the precedent for future inspections of military sites — The Parchin arrangement – no physical access, restricted sampling, restricted video surveillance, etc. – will likely be used at least in part as a precedent for inspections of future sites. There is at least one other secret side deal out there: the AP’s Parchin document describes itself as “Separate arrangement II,” so presumably there’s a ‘Separate arrangement I’ that isn’t public and that may describe the verification arrangements. The Iranians were already saying that the future verification regime will not include inspector access to military sites, which would track with the Parchin precedent [j][k][l]. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told CNN about the Parchin arrangement “you have to worry that this would set a bad precedent in the Iran context and in the context of other countries” [m]. Rep. Royce sent Kerry a letter a few weeks ago that was even more explicit: the “side deals of today will become central to the agreement’s verification provisions tomorrow” [n] [quote omitted].

(2) IAEA sign-off suggests the agency has bent to political pressure — The Parchin arrangement is a humiliation for the IAEA. Heinonen told CNN that “It is very unusual… I find it really hard to understand why you would let someone else take the samples and only see through the camera” while Albright said “It’s really not normal… I don’t know why they accepted it. I think the IAEA is probably getting a little desperate to settle this” [o]. Until very recently Amano was explicit that the agency required further access to Parchin to resolve PMD issues: last March he “what we don’t know [is] whether they have undeclared activities or something else. We don’t know what they did in the past… we cannot tell we know all their activities” and last June he reiterated “the Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran” [p][q].

Amano’s defense of the Parchin side deal comes amid speculation that the IAEA is being subject to overwhelming pressure by the Americans and the Iranians. On the American side, the leverage is straightforward: Amano is up for reelection next year, and he perennially relies on Western nations to provide him with slim majorities [r]. On the Iranian side, there are several mechanisms that are getting attention. Some are overt: this week Iran’s Fars News Agency published a boast that Amano knew he “would have been harmed” had he disobeyed Iranian wishes and revealed details of the side deal to Congress (the threat was scrubbed after it garnered international attention; some Iran defenders have suggested that Fars published the threat due to a mistranslation of a speech, though it’s unclear why having a state-controlled vehicle go out of its way to mistranslate and publish a threat is supposed to be reassuring [s][t]). Other Iranian pressure mechanisms are more subtle: for the first eight years of the JCPOA Iran is only bound to provisionally apply, rather than to ratify, the Additional. Even JCPOA supporters describe the concession as being “all about Iran keeping some leverage over the IAEA… it wants to be able to keep the option of revoking its provisional implementation, and not ratifying the AP, as leverage” [u].

[a] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d8bfeff00c8341caab084841f44d9cde/what-secret-agreement-between-iran-and-un-says
[b] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/bedd428e26924eed95c5ceaeec72d3a4/text-draft-agreement-between-iaea-iran
[c] https://twitter.com/jstreetdotorg/status/634743999597801472
[d] https://twitter.com/tparsi/status/634743163467526144
[e] https://twitter.com/Max_Fisher/status/634726697263349761
[f] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/57764838/ns/msnbc-all_in_with_chris_hayes/#.VdeLL_mrT4Y
[g] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2015/08/246211.htm
[h] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/statement-iaea-director-general-yukiya-amano-1
[i] http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/07/speaking-of-iran-6.php
[j] http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940429001105
[k] http://en.mehrnews.com/news/108760/No-military-sites-inspections-Velayati
[l] http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-iran-deal-zarif-20150722-story.html
[m] http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/20/politics/iran-inspections-report-nuclear-deal-experts/index.html
[n] http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/sites/republicans.foreignaffairs.house.gov/files/Parchin%20side%20deal_0.pdf
[o] http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/20/politics/iran-inspections-report-nuclear-deal-experts/index.html
[p] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/iaea-monitoring-irans-nuclear-program/
[q] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/introductory-statement-board-governors-63
[r] http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/11/20/plan-for-iaea-safeguards
[s] http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-threatened-harm-to-top-nuke-inspector-to-prevent-disclosure-of-secret-deal/
[t] http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940526000960
[u] http://armscontrollaw.com/2015/07/15/much-much-more-on-the-jcpoa/

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian nukes, Iranian Threats, Israel, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Parchin, U.S. Congress, Yukiya Amano
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Train gunman: French intelligence fails again to distinguish between informer and Islamist terrorist

August 22, 2015

Train gunman: French intelligence fails again to distinguish between informer and Islamist terrorist.

DEBKAfile Special Report August 22, 2015, 9:18 AM (IDT)

Injured terror victim taken off train in France

Injured terror victim taken off train in France

The Moroccan gunman, Ayoub Qahzzani, 26, who injured three passengers on the Amsterdam-Paris fast train Friday, Aug. 21, before he was subdued, was one more Muslim extremist known to French intelligence who was nonetheless able to commit an act of terror.

He was heavily armed, yet two unarmed American servicemen and other passengers tackled him and so prevented a massacre on the packed Thalys train as it sped through Belgium.

Commended for bravery were Anthony Sadler, from Pittsburg, California, Alek Skarlatos from Roseburg, Oregon, and Chris Norman, a Briton living in France.

The terrorist was arrested when the train stopped at Arras in northern
debkafile’s counterterrorism sources: El-Qahzzani resided in Spain for some years before traveling to Syria in 2014 and then moving to France. It turns out that he was under the radar both of Spanish and French counterterrorism authorities. This was yet another case of a potential terrorist threat, suspected of contact with the Islamic State in Syria, who was nevertheless at large.

This selfsame scenario has been repeated time and again. Last month, another suspect under French surveillance beheaded the owner of a US-owned gas factory near Lyon and seriously injured two people. An intelligence file was opened on his case in 2006 and not renewed in 2008.
Three years ago, Mohamed Merah murdered a teacher and three pupils at a Jewish school in Toulouse after killing two French servicemen. Not only was he known to French security services, but they had sent him on trips to the Middle East and Israel.

The terrorist who attacked the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014 and murdered a Jewish couple and a museum guard was a familiar face to the French secret service. Its agents were indeed waiting for when he stepped off the bus from Belgium.
In the most dramatic attack, the Islamist terrorists who raided the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine for a massacre – and the killer who murdered four Jews at a Paris supermarket three days later – were likewise on the books of French security services.

Since the Charlie Hebdo attack, France has been on high security alert for terror.

The high-speed train is popular for travel between France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. It is used extensively by businesspeople, diplomats, European Union officials and tourists. Yet, unlike the Eurostar train between Paris and London, luggage does not pass through X-ray machines or other forms of screening.

President Francois Hollande is rightly outraged and stricken by these tragedies, but it is also his responsibility to prevent their systematic recurrence on his watch. Every one of those episodes has been characterized by the perpetrators being “known to French intelligence.”

It is therefore obvious that French anti-terror agencies are badly in need of an overhaul and a fresh approach to the recurrent terrorist attacks, that enables them to differentiate between inside informers and dangerous terrorists, otherwise the next outrage will not be long in coming.

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Inspector Clouseau was unavailable (3)

August 22, 2015

Inspector Clouseau was unavailable (3), Power Line, Scott Johnson, August 21, 2015

I think it is very likely the side-deal documents were drafted by the United States and given to the IAEA, which agreed to make them into secret agreements with Iran to finalize the main agreement.

***********************

The pushback against George Jahn’s AP scoop on the IAEA side deal with Iran now includes the allegation that the draft of the side deal posted by the AP is a forgery — perhaps an Israeli forgery. Fred Fleitz has reported the relevant details with links and evidence here at NR’s Corner. Fleitz’s knowledgeable assessment seems reasonable to me:

First, the errors and non-IAEA prose in the AP’s transcribed document appear to indicate a first draft written by a party other than Iran or the IAEA to resolve the Parchin issue. This is consistent with my assessment that the side deal documents were drafted by the United States and handed to the IAEA to finalize after U.S. diplomats were unable to resolve the issues of the Parchin military base and possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program during the talks. The AP says it was told by two anonymous officials that this document is a draft and “does not differ from the final, confidential agreement between the IAEA and Iran.” I believe it probably is a first draft written by a political appointee at the State Department or an NSC staffer.

Second, to believe this is a forgery one has to believe George Jahn and the Associated Press were deceived by two anonymous diplomats or U.S. officials. I doubt this could happen to a reporter as experienced as Jahn. (MSNBC believes otherwise and attacked Jahn as “not a real reporter” for his article.) The AP is standing by this story and I doubt it would put its reputation on the line if it did not believe Jahn’s article was rock solid.

Third, claims by backers of the Iran deal that this is an Israeli forgery are nonsense. If the Israelis wanted to do a forgery like this it would be perfect. An Israeli foreign ministry or intelligence officer would never use the wrong terminology for Iran.

My bottom line is that the side-deal document transcribed by the AP is not a forgery but a first draft written by a third party that is essentially the same as the final version agreed to by the IAEA and Iran. The outstanding question is who wrote this initial draft. Given Secretary Kerry’s efforts in May and June to drop the issues of the Parchin base and possible military dimensions, I think it is very likely the side-deal documents were drafted by the United States and given to the IAEA, which agreed to make them into secret agreements with Iran to finalize the main agreement.

Fleitz adds in the final paragraph of his post that “what [Jahn] reported apparently is consistent with classified briefings provided to Congress on the secret side deals[.]”

I trust that all will become clear in time. The relevant self-inspection provisions of the side deal are so absurd that they should be fraudulent. Consistent with Fleitz’s conclusion, however, I believe they will prove to be an integral part of the finalized side deal. Neither the administration nor the IAEA disputes the accuracy of Jahn’s reportage. I conclude that the terms of the side deal reported by Jahn are a joke, but not a forgery.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Israel, Kerry, Obama administration, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, State Department, U.S. Congress
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Cartoon of the day

August 22, 2015

H/t Conservative Tree House

 

Cong-Sign-600-LI

Categories: Humor, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Obama's legacy, P5+1
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Not Satire | White House Allies Suggest Israel Forged Iran-IAEA Agreement Document

August 22, 2015

White House Allies Suggest Israel Forged Iran-IAEA Agreement Document, Washington Free Beacon, , August 21, 2015

"Director

Trita Parsi, the head the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), another White House-allied group, hinted that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu might have forged the document himself. (Huh? — DM)

*********************

Top White House allies are mounting a campaign to discredit recent reports Iran will be responsible for investigating its own military facility for evidence of nuclear activities under an agreement between international inspectors and Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency will rely on Iran to collect its own environmental samples and turn over photos and videos from its suspected nuclear military site Parchin, according to a draft of a secret side-deal between the agency and the Iranian government published by the Associated Press on Thursday.

White House allies rushed to denounce the report, accusing the AP of publishing a phony document and suggesting that the Israeli government forged it to undermine the Obama administration’s Iran deal.

J Street, one of a number of groups that has been meeting with White House officials as part of a lobbying push to support the nuclear deal, questioned the accuracy of the document obtained by the AP on Friday and suggested that it was forged by Israel.

“The AP report should be thoroughly investigated and verified,” J Street tweeted. “Very worrying if there is any doubt of authenticity.”

Obama administration officials and the IAEA have not disputed the authenticity of the document. The existence of the Parchin side deal was first mentioned publicly by Sen. James Risch (R., Idaho) at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last month.

Trita Parsi, the head the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), another White House-allied group, hinted that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu might have forged the document himself.

Parsi noted that the draft document published by AP referred to the “Islamic State of Iran” in one instance, instead of the “Islamic Republic of Iran.”

“The only one who refers to Iran as ‘Islamic State of Iran’ is Netanyahu. And strangely, @AP‘s dubious ‘draft’ of the IAEA-Iran agreement…” wrote Parsi on Twitter.

Others also floated the idea that Israel fabricated the document and leaked it to the AP.

“Could it be that #Israel stands behind leaking this document to #AP?” tweeted Said Arikat, the Washington bureau chief for Al Quds daily newspaper.

Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) who tweets under the name ArmsControlWonk, also questioned the accuracy of the report on Twitter.

MIIS, J Street, and NIAC have all received funding from the Ploughshares Fund, one of the top financers of the lobbying campaign to support the Iran deal.

The pushback against the AP story, and insinuations about Israeli sabotage, follow a months-long campaign to discredit Jewish lawmakers and others who have announced their opposition to the deal.

These attacks include charges of “dual loyalty” against Jewish politicians, which pro-Israel groups said crossed the line into anti-Semitism.

Vox blogger Max Fisher also argued that the AP story was “badly flawed,” noting that an ex-IAEA official questioned its authenticity and that some details were removed from the story after it was posted. The AP later added those details back into the article and said it had been shorted for brevity and not due to accuracy issues.

“As with many AP stories, indeed with wire stories generally, some details are later trimmed to make room for fresh info so that multiple so-called ‘writethrus’ of a story will move on the AP wire as the hours pass,” AP spokesperson Paul Colford told Fisher. “It was unfortunate that some assumed (incorrectly) that AP was backing off.”

AP reporters noted that the Obama administration and the IAEA have not disputed the document’s authenticity.

“If you don’t want to believe the report, so be it. But I would look for someone to actually deny what’s in it,” said AP diplomatic reporter Matt Lee in a tweet to Fisher.

“I am curious if you have managed to find a current official anywhere to back up the fraud claim,” Lee later added. As of Friday afternoon, Fisher had not.

The original AP article was written by Vienna bureau chief George Jahn.

According to the report, a draft of a side deal between the IAEA and Iran would allow the Iranian government to police its own military site for nuclear activities.

Iran has been accused of conducting nuclear detonations testing at the Parchin military facility, and supporters of the nuclear agreement said the site would be opened to international inspectors under the deal.

But according to the AP, the IAEA side agreement would not allow independent inspections of Parchin. Instead the Iranian government would turn over photographs and videos of the military site to the IAEA.

Under the deal, Iran would collect its own environmental samples from the Parchin military facility, which international inspectors would then test for nuclear residue.

Iran has been accused of conducting nuclear detonations testing at Parchin, and supporters of the nuclear deal said the facility would be opened to international inspectors under the recently signed agreement.

Categories: Denial, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Parchin, U.S. Congress
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Contentions: Text of Iran-IAEA Agreement Proves Inspection is a Farce

August 21, 2015

Contentions: Text of Iran-IAEA Agreement Proves Inspection is a Farce, Commentary Magazine, , August 21, 2015

(The text of the draft is available here. According to an Associated Press preface to the agreement provided at the link,

Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to The Associated Press that this draft does not differ from the final, confidential agreement between the IAEA and Iran.

What other side deals are there and what facilities, if any, in addition to Parchin are thought to have worked on nuke weaponization? What facilities are thought to be doing so now?– DM)

 

If letting Iran inspect Parchin by itself is not enough to move undecided Democrats into the columns of those opposing the deal, then obviously nothing will. If we have learned nothing else from this debate, it’s that all of the lip service members of the president’s party have given to the danger from Iran and the need for tough inspections is just a lot of eyewash. The text that the AP has published shows that a vote for the deal now is clearly a vote not for postponing nuclear peril, as some Democrats say, but for indifference to it.

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On Wednesday when the Associated Press published a report claiming that the International Atomic Energy Agency had agreed to let Iran inspect the Parchin military site itself, critics of the nuclear deal were outraged. But the administration and its supporters weren’t rattled. They claimed there was nothing amiss and soon the IAEA itself issued a statement saying the story was “misleading,” though it wouldn’t say exactly what was misleading about it. The IAEA further asserted that it was obligated not to reveal the text of its agreement with Iran. That was enough to set media cheerleaders for President Obama, like those at the Vox website, into full spin mode, claiming that the AP’s reporting was flawed. They argued both that the claim about the Iranians being allowed to inspect their own site was unproven and that even if it were true it was no big deal. We’ll leave the latter claim aside for the moment, but the headline this morning is that doubts about the veracity of the original story are now gone. The AP has released the text of the draft agreement between the IAEA and Iran that is, according to all accounts, not different from the final version. One doesn’t need to be a nuclear expert to understand that the headline on the original story was entirely accurate, “UN to let Iran inspect nuke work site.” This is not only more damning evidence that the nuclear deal is a farce but that Democrats who are prepared to let it go through out of loyalty to President Obama are enabling a shocking betrayal of the nation’s security.

The text of the agreement makes clear that international inspectors won’t get anywhere near Parchin. The Iranians will do all the inspecting and at the end of the process a UN official will be allowed to pay a courtesy visit followed by a “roundtable” discussion of the entire affair. In other words, Parchin and all that happened there will be swept under the rug along with U.S. and IAEA promises about exploring exactly how much progress Iran had made there.

The point of concern is that Parchin is where Iran did its work on the possible military dimensions (PMD) of its nuclear project. The work done there was not theoretical physics but on triggers for nuclear bombs. Supposedly, they stopped their work there a long time ago and the site has already been scrubbed. But that doesn’t mean its unimportant. As even Secretary of State John Kerry admitted, without knowing what was done there, we can’t understand how close Iran is to building a bomb. Any discussion about nuclear “breakout” times, which is crucial to the administration’s scenario for monitoring and preventing Iran from getting a bomb during the ten-year period when the deal is in effect, becomes pure speculation without this knowledge. And if Iran is doing the inspections, the IAEA and the U.S., and American allies won’t get it.

Let’s be clear about who the real culprits are here. The IAEA is a UN agency with a lot of responsibility but its power stems from the cooperation it gets from the nations it inspects. With the U.S. more interested in détente with Iran than in pressing the Iranians on difficult issues, the IAEA is in no position to push Tehran for more access to Parchin or any other military site. It should also be remembered, as we noted earlier this week, the Iranians have already threatened Yukio Amano, the director of the IAEA, and made clear to him that they will not tolerate his making public the details of the arrangements for inspections.

While the administration is telling us all to move along as there’s nothing to see here and their cheerleaders are assuring the country that this is a minor detail of no consequence, the story of the IAEA agreement on Parchin is deeply significant. By itself, it shows that the UN nuclear watchdog agency is being given the runaround by Iran and is forced to take it so long as the U.S. doesn’t pressure Iran to be more transparent.

But context is also everything here. The Parchin agreement provides the setting for the entire inspections process of Iran’s active nuclear facilities. Administration promises of “anytime, anywhere” inspections were as trustworthy as the president’s famous ObamaCare pledges about keeping your insurance and doctors if you liked them. As with the assurances about Parchin, we’re also told that the 24-day waiting period for inspections of active plants is not a big deal. But the message being sent to Iran is clear. It isn’t so much that the inspections regime is a farce as it is that the administration is demonstrating that it doesn’t consider these details to be a major concern. If you believe, as President Obama has repeatedly told us, that Iran is changing and that it is about to “get right with the world,” you don’t worry about inspections. You also don’t worry about Iran’s support for terrorism or its production of ballistic missiles (whose only purpose can be to attack the U.S. and Europe, not those recalcitrant and paranoid Israelis that the president falsely claims are the world’s only opponents of the deal).

That brings us back to the question of what members of the House and Senate are supposed to think about any of this. Democrats have been under a great deal of pressure to back the president on the Iran deal. He has made it clear that he regards this vote as a litmus test of their loyalty to both their party and to him personally. That seems to be enough for most of them, including those who have long professed to care deeply about stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But this sidebar to the general discussion about the merits of the pact with Iran is telling. It shows that when it is demonstrated that the terms of the deal are utterly inadequate even by the administration’s own standards, the bulk of the president’s party is unable or unwilling to draw the proper conclusions.

If letting Iran inspect Parchin by itself is not enough to move undecided Democrats into the columns of those opposing the deal, then obviously nothing will. If we have learned nothing else from this debate, it’s that all of the lip service members of the president’s party have given to the danger from Iran and the need for tough inspections is just a lot of eyewash. The text that the AP has published shows that a vote for the deal now is clearly a vote not for postponing nuclear peril, as some Democrats say, but for indifference to it.

Categories: Denial, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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Inspector Clouseau was unavailable (2)

August 21, 2015

Inspector Clouseau was unavailable (2), Power Line, Scott Johnson, August 21, 2015

Today the juicebox leftists at Vox and their fellow lefties elsewhere in the media took a stab at discrediting George Jahn’s August 19 AP story reporting the self-inspection provisions of the IAEA side deal with Iran applicable to the Parchin facility. The AP has now posted the text of the original draft of the side deal here. The side deal shows President Obama and administration officials to be voluble liars on critically important matters inherent in the deal with Iran. Omri Ceren emails to provide the relevant background and bring the story up to date as of tonight. Omri writes:

The Obama administration spent the last 2 years telling lawmakers and reporters that any deal with Iran would require the Iranians to provide IAEA inspectors robust access to the Parchin military base, where the Iranians conducted hydrodynamic experiments relevant to the detonation of nuclear warheads. The IAEA needs the access to determine how far the Iranians got as a prerequisite to establishing a verification regime. Sherman in 2013: the JPOA requires Iran to “address past and present practices… including Parchin” [a]; Sherman in 2014: “as part of any comprehensive agreement… we expect, indeed, Parchin to be resolved” [b]; Harf in 2015: “we would find it… very difficult to imagine a JCPA that did not require such [inspector] access at Parchin” [c]; etc.

Last month Sen. Risch suggested in an open SFRC hearing that the West had collapsed on the requirement, and that instead the Iranians had worked out a secret side deal with Iran under which the Iranians would be trusted to collect their own samples for the IAEA [d]. Kerry refused to confirm the arrangement citing classification issues, but the AP’s Vienna reporter locked it down anyway [e].

White House officials and validators continued to declare that no way would the IAEA ever agree to that kind of arrangement, since it would preclude the agency from securing a chain of custody over the evidence. But the administration refused to transmit the side deal to Congress – which would have resolved the debate – and instead claimed that the U.S. couldn’t get the text because it was a confidential Iran-IAEA bilateral agreement. Business Insider confirmed that in fact U.S. diplomats can call for the agreement at any time because Washington sits on the IAEA’s Board of Governors [f]. Nonetheless Kerry told Congress that not only did the U.S. not have the text, but that he hadn’t even seen the final wording, though he added that maybe “Wendy Sherman may have” (she subsequently clarified she hadn’t either [g]).

Yesterday the AP revealed that its reporters had – in contrast – seen a draft reflecting the final language, and that they were in a position to confirm the concessions made to Iran [h]. Instead of allowing IAEA inspectors to collect evidence from Parchin, samples will be collected by the Iranians using Iranian equipment. Instead of allowing the IAEA to collect everything it wants, only seven samples will be handed over from mutually agreed upon areas. Instead of giving inspectors access to facilities, photos and videos will be taken by the Iranians themselves, again only from mutually agreed upon areas.

After yesterday’s article was published someone – presumably an overeager AP editor – tried to save some space by cutting several somewhat redundant paragraphs from the original draft. That triggered a flood of conspiracy theories about the AP retracting the story, and this morning there were a flood of snarky attacks on the outlet: “The AP’s controversial and badly flawed Iran inspections story, explained” (Vox [i]), “BREAKING: Nuclear Stuff Really Complicated” (TPM [k]), “Revised AP report… overwrites some of the more troubling aspects” (Haaretz [l]), “Potentially Deal-Shattering Report About Iran Inspections Has Some Issues” (HuffPo [j), etc.

As the news cycle unfolded today it became clear that the AP had the goods on the collapse to Iran. The AP restored the cut paragraphs and added a Washington angle [n]. AP reporters started listing specific concessions confirmed by the document [o][p][q][r] – and publicly daring critics to deny them [s]. Meanwhile IAEA chief Amano put out a statement that sought to defend the deal, but very much did not deny the AP report [m]. Then the afternoon press briefing happened, and again – as with Amano – State Department spokesman Kirby pointedly declined to back the White House validators who had attacked the AP’s report [t]:

QUESTION: … The points in the article that Iran would take the soil samples, Iran would take the videos; there would be seven points within Parchin, two points outside; that there wouldn’t necessarily be any IAEA inspectors in the facility… you don’t challenge those per se?
MR KIRBY: Well, as I said yesterday, Brad, I’m not going to comment about the contents of a draft document between the IAEA and Iran. Even the director general wouldn’t go so far as to reveal the details of what is a confidential agreement…
…
QUESTION: … was there any specific item in the story that – factual item in the story that was wrong? I don’t want to know which one it is, but there are times when you guys will say this was inaccurate without saying specifically what because you can’t comment on the specifics. So was there anything you can specifically say without identifying it that was inaccurate…
MR KIRBY: Well, as I said to Brad, I’m not going to get into speaking about the details of a draft document between —
QUESTION: I’m not asking about the details.
MR KIRBY: Arshad, I know, if you’d just let me finish.
QUESTION: Yep.
MR KIRBY: I’m not going to get into speaking about the details between – of a draft document between the IAEA and Iran or any other nation for that matter…

Then finally the AP just published the full text of the side deal, confirming the previous reporting [linked above].

After you read the side deal – which is short – you should also read another article the AP published this afternoon, which is an explainer on the substance of the Parchin debate now that the side deal is public. I wanted to make sure you caught the part about some of the policy and policy angles that are going to get reported out over the next few days:

The document on Parchin…will let the Iranians themselves look for signs of the very activity they deny — past work on nuclear weapons… Any indication that the IAEA is diverging from established inspection rules could weaken the agency… and feed suspicions that it is ready to overly compromise in hopes of winding up a probe that has essentially been stalemated for more than a decade. Politically, the arrangement has been grist for American opponents of the broader separate agreement to limit Iran’s future nuclear programs, signed by the Obama administration, Iran and five world powers in July. Critics have complained that the wider deal is built on trust of the Iranians, while the administration has insisted it depends on reliable inspections.

On a policy level, the side deal effectively trusts Iran to investigate its own violations, something that comes off as a bit absurd on its face (“will let the Iranians themselves look for signs of the very activity they deny”). On a political level, that absurdity will confirm suspicions that the IAEA has been pressured by parties who want to put aside substantive concerns over the viability of the nuclear deal in order to preserve it at all costs.

[a] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113shrg87828/html/CHRG-113shrg87828.htm
[b] http://www.shearman.com/~/media/Files/Services/Iran-Sanctions/US-Resources/Joint-Plan-of-Action/4-Feb-2014–Transcript-of-Senate-Foreign-Relations-Committee-Hearing-on-the-Iran-Nuclear-Negotiations-Panel-1.pdf
[c] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2015/04/240324.htm
[d] https://youtu.be/N4TK8hOLrNA?t=9m44s
[e] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e1ccf648e18a4788ac94861a3bc1b966/officials-iran-may-take-own-samples-alleged-nuclear-site
[f] http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-part-of-the-iran-agreement-2015-7#ixzz3hVReKYZ0
[g] http://thehill.com/policy/defense/250306-obama-iran-deal-negotiator-says-she-didnt-see-final-side-deals
[h] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a9f4e40803924a8ab4c61cb65b2b2bb3/ap-exclusive-un-let-iran-inspect-alleged-nuke-work-site8
[i] http://www.vox.com/2015/8/20/9182185/ap-iran-inspections-parchin
[j] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ap-story-iran-inspections_55d50eeee4b0ab468d9fce0c%5D
[k] http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/breaking-nuclear-stuff-really-complicated
[l] http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.672049
[m] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/statement-iaea-director-general-yukiya-amano-1
[n] https://twitter.com/wbenjaminson/status/634374928435970048
[o] https://twitter.com/bklapperAP/status/634386430542880770
[p] https://twitter.com/bklapperAP/status/634386158030594048
[q] https://twitter.com/bklapperAP/status/634385484232433664
[r] https://twitter.com/bklapperAP/status/634385265046487040
[s] https://twitter.com/bklapperAP/status/634405116859318272
[t] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2015/08/246211.htm#IRAN

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Parchin, U.S. Congress, Wendy Sherman
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Iran to Stage Ballistic Missile Maneuver Soon: Commander

August 21, 2015

Iran to Stage Ballistic Missile Maneuver Soon: Commander, Tasnim News Agency, August 21, 2015

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(Tasnim) – Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh announced on Friday that the country plans to hold a ballistic missile maneuver in the near future.

In a speech in the northern city of Qaem Shahr on Friday, Brigadier General Hajizadeh rejected as untrue some claims that the IRGC has halted the ballistic missile program over the past two years, saying that missile tests are on the agenda.

“Such measures (war games and ballistic missile tests) are on the agenda and huge successes have been achieved over the past two years,” the commander stressed.

He further pointed to the IRGC’s plan to stage a massive war game to test-fire ballistic missiles in the near future, adding that its details will be announced soon.

Earlier this month, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi underlined that the country’s missile tests will be carried out on schedule, according to plans endorsed by Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.

During the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, France, Britain and Germany), the United States and its allies exerted pressure on Iran over its military capabilities.

Iran, however, said it would only discuss its nuclear program as its missiles are solely employed as a deterrent against any potential foreign aggression.

Since the successful conclusion of the nuclear negotiations in Vienna on July 14, Iranian officials have time and again stressed that the country’s military capabilities would not be affected by the finalized text of the nuclear agreement- known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)- or a resolution that the United Nations Security Council passed later to endorse the JCPOA.

Categories: Foreign policy, Iran military, Iran nuke inspections, Iranian missiles, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1
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Cartoon of the day

August 21, 2015

H/t Israellycool

 

Kerry-on-Iran-Deal-Mike-Report-Cartoon-550x272

 

Categories: Humor, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iranian nukes, Kerry
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Comments: 3 Comments

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