WarSclerotic

There’s symbolism aplenty in the gathering of regional ministers at the home of Israel’s founding prime minister — and an urgent practical agenda

By DAVID HOROVITZ 26 March 2022, 10:10 pm  

Logo for the Negev Summit, March 27-28, 2022. (Courtesy)

The speed with which the Sunday-Monday “Negev Summit” has been pulled together, the storied location, and the expanding list of participants, combine to underline the significance of this unprecedented get-together of foreign ministers in Israel.

Being hosted by Foreign Minister Yair Lapid at Sde Boker, the Negev home and burial place of Israel’s founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion, the gathering at so resonant a locale constitutes further dramatic symbolic confirmation of Israel’s legitimacy and regional importance by Abraham Accords partners Morocco, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates.

Their foreign ministers will, simply by their presence, be upgrading relations with the country Ben-Gurion was so central to establishing. There is even talk of a photo opportunity at Ben-Gurion’s grave.

Joined by visiting United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Israel’s new regional allies will also be gathering along with the foreign minister of the country’s first peace partner, Egypt, for formal and less formal meetings, consultations, and meals. These talks come just a week after Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi hosted Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the UAE’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan for a markedly warm and well-publicized summit of his own. Efforts have been ongoing to add Jordan’s foreign minister to the list — in vain, as of Saturday night.

In fact, the Negev Summit coincides with a planned visit to Ramallah by Jordan’s King Abdullah, designed to help find ways to alleviate Israeli-Palestinian tensions in the run-up to the fraught Ramadan period. Blinken, who will be holding talks with Israeli leaders and with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Sunday before he heads south to Sde Boker, would doubtless have been pleased to see not only Jordan but also Abbas at the Negev Summit.

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But Bennett, opposed to negotiating with the PA president, would have resisted this. Abbas’ standing among the Palestinians, already low, would hardly have been strengthened by his attending a diplomatic festival somewhat honoring Israel’s founding premier. And, in any case, the Palestinian leader is largely irrelevant to the agenda that is bringing these ministers together.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at the grave of former prime minister David Ben-Gurion, in Sde Boker, on November 10, 2021. (Haim Zach/GPO)

For Israel’s boosted regional legitimacy is central not merely to the location of this summit, but to its core focus — the effort to muster an effective alliance against the common threat, Iran.

As with the Abraham Accords themselves, regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia will be absent from the Sunday-Monday proceedings but present in spirit, and potent behind-the-scenes. Jerusalem and Riyadh, though not formally allied, are working to bolster regional unity against Tehran — not rhetorically but practically, via intelligence sharing, the development of regional missile alert and defense systems, and more.

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (R), Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi (C), and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett meet in Sharm el-Sheikh, March 22, 2022. (Spokesman of the Egyptian Presidency)

Behind the handshakes and the smiles, it is the US secretary who may find himself something of the awkward guest at this extraordinary gathering. He will be bringing news of the progress toward a revived P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, designed to rein in the ayatollahs’ rogue nuclear weapons program in return for the lifting of sanctions and, possibly, the delisting of Iran’s global-troublemaking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity.

Bennett is a strident opponent of a revived deal; Lapid has said he would rather the US walk away from the talks than strike a bad deal. The other participants in the Negev Summit, and the Saudis watching from home, share a deep concern that Iran will be both empowered, emboldened, and enriched by the deal that is taking shape, and a realization that the US has all-too-many other global challenges to grapple with.

It was, of course, the US, and specifically the Trump administration, that brought the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco together with Israel in the Abraham Accords, a process that has helped modern Israel gain greater recognition than ever before in this region.

The Negev Summit signals that these new partners are now working together more closely than ever, simply because they have to — in part because they know that the US now has other preoccupations and priorities, and fear that it underestimates the dangers posed by Iran.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)
Ben Gurion International Airport, Israel
+972-3-9358509
www.iai.co.il 

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) recently unveiled the Scorpius family of electronic warfare (EW) systems. Scorpius is the first electronic warfare (EW) system in the world capable of simultaneously targeting multiple threats, across frequencies, and in different directions.

Scorpius is based on the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) technology, which provides a breakthrough in EW performance – enabling a new generation of electronic warfare capabilities.

With AESA’s multi-beam capability, Scorpius can simultaneously scan the entire surrounding region for targets and deploy narrowly focused beams to interfere with multiple threats across the electromagnetic spectrum. The system is able to target a range of threats, including: UAVs, ships, missiles, communication links, low probability of interception (LPOI) radars, and more. Scorpius effectively disrupts the operation of their electromagnetic systems, including radar and electronic sensors, navigation, and data communications.

Scorpius’ technological breakthrough is characterized by unprecedented receiver sensitivity and transmission power (ERP), far exceeding those of legacy EW systems. This allows Scorpius to detect multiple threats, of different kinds, simultaneously, from dramatically increased distances, and to address each threat with a customized response.

Scorpius is capable of operating across multiple domains including:

Ground: Scorpius G (ground) is a ground-based EW system designed to detect and disrupt ground- and airborne threats. Scorpius-G is a mobile system that can be quickly deployed by vehicle. Scorpius G represents a new category of air defense systems: “Soft-kill” air defense, which creates an electronic dome of protection above a wide geographic sector to neutralize a broad range of modern threats.

Naval: Scorpius N (naval) is an EW system dedicated to defending ships against advanced threats in the marine arena, including over-the-horizon anti-ship cruise missiles, unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), and airborne imaging radars. Scorpius’ extremely high range provides early detection and targeting of threats, which is essential for effective protection in the naval domain.

Air: Scorpius SP – a self-protection pod for combat aircraft, and the Scorpius SJ, a standoff jammer that disrupts enemy aerial and ground-based electromagnetic operations across a vast sector.

Training: Scorpius T (training) provides EW training for pilots. Scorpius-T can emulate a variety of modern air-defense systems, simultaneously, from a single platform. Its advanced emulation capabilities support training for fifth-generation aircraft. Scorpius T officially made its debut during the international air force exercise Blue Flag 2021.

According to Adi Dulberg, General Manager, Intelligence Division, IAI: “The modern battlefield depends on the electromagnetic domain for sensing, communications, and navigation. Protecting the use of the electromagnetic domain for our forces, while denying its use by the enemy, have become mission-critical for success in combat and for ensuring the superiority of our forces in the field.”

Whoa, worse than Obama. This doesn’t sound good.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/this-isnt-obamas-iran-deal-its-much-much-worse

The last thing the world needs is another nuclear-armed dictatorship flush with cash and attacking its neighbors. But that’s what President Biden and his Iran envoy Robert Malley are creating in the deal they are about to close in Vienna, according to career State Department sources.

Anyone seeking to gauge the imminent outcome of the international talks over Iran’s nuclear program being held in Vienna should take a look at reports from late January that three top U.S. diplomats had quit—largely in protest over the direction set by U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley, who serves as the U.S. government’s chief negotiator.

Having served for two years in former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Iran Action Group, I knew that this development was tantamount to a public cry for an intervention. Such resignations—not of conservative dissenters, but of career staff and President Joe Biden’s own political appointees—should have been cause for Biden or Secretary Antony Blinken to recall Malley and investigate. Their failure to do so is a sign either of a troubling lack of attention to the talks, or else the possibility that Malley—who served in the same capacity under President Barack Obama when the first Iran deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was originally negotiated and signed—has been given a free hand to negotiate whatever he wants, as long as he gets Iran to sign.

Evidence for the latter view can be gleaned from the fact that Blinken has reneged on his pledge that his Iran negotiating team would have “a diversity of views.” Instead, he has let Malley continue to concede issue after issue in Vienna. Multiple career officials view these capitulations as so detrimental to U.S. national security that they contacted me requesting that I rapidly share details of these concessions with Congress and the public in an effort to stop them.

Reports out of Vienna indicate that a deal could occur within the next few days. While some issues are still being ironed out—such as whether the United States will grant Russia immunity from any economic sanctions relating to Iran, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has publicly demanded—the details that follow have been conveyed to me as finalized. My subsequent discussions with foreign diplomats—including those directly involved and those outside but close to the negotiations—confirmed their claims. Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov, who led negotiations on behalf of Russia, has crowed that “Iran got much more than it could expect. Much more,” and bragged about how Russia teamed up with China and Iran to get dozens of wins over the United States and European negotiating positions.

The list of concessions that follows is long, detailed, disturbing, but also somewhat technical. But this much is clear to me: The deal being negotiated in Vienna is dangerous to U.S. national security, to the stability of the Middle East, and to the Iranian people who suffer most under that brutal regime. The lack of evidence to justify a removal of U.S. sanctions is illegal, and the deal that will be foisted upon the world without the support of Congress will be illegitimate. This deal will not serve U.S. interests in either the short or long term.

With Robert Malley in the lead, the United States has promised to lift sanctions on some of the regime’s worst terrorists and torturers, on leading officials who have developed Iran’s WMD infrastructure, and has agreed to lift sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) itself. In exchange, Iran will receive fewer limitations than those imposed under the JCPOA, and the restrictions on its nuclear program will expire six years sooner than under the terms of the old deal. And that’s just the beginning.

The Biden administration is preparing to end sanctions under Executive Order (E.O.) 13876, known as the Supreme Leader’s Office E.O., as soon as the deal is finalized. This would lift sanctions on nearly all of the 112 people and entities sanctioned under that authority, even if they were sanctioned under other legal authorities as well. This move is significant because the United States has used this authority to sanction some of the most evil people you can possibly imagine. Malley and his Russian go-betweens in Vienna have agreed that these people should now be free to roam around the world despite their murderous pasts, unshackled from any restraints on their financing, and plotting new terror attacks.

If that sounds like an exaggeration, believe me: It isn’t. Let’s start with the terrorists, like Mohsen Rezaei, who was involved in the AMIA bombing in Argentina in 1994 that killed 85 people when he was commander-in-chief of the IRGC. Argentine authorities issued international warrants for his arrest, and he remains on Interpol’s Red Notice. Equally culpable in the AMIA bombing is Ali Akbar Velayati, who today serves as a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He was charged as being one of the “ideological masterminds” behind the attack. He also committed acts of terror in Syria, where he helped the Iranian regime extend credit lines to the brutal Assad regime. Under the nuclear impending deal, both Rezaei and Velayati would be removed from U.S. sanctions lists.

The victims of the Iranian regime span every single continent, but the terror suspects being desanctioned by the United States in particular have American blood on their hands—particularly IRGC Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, who led IRGC forces in Lebanon and Syria when Hezbollah bombed the Marines compound in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. service members, 58 French soldiers, and left hundreds more wounded.

Then there are the men like Ebrahim Raisi, who now reports to Supreme Leader Khamenei with the misleading title of president. Raisi participated in and ordered the execution of around 5,000 Iranians in the 1988 “Death Commissions” as a judge overseeing sham trials—including of young children—that typically lasted only a few minutes before guilty verdicts and death sentences were delivered. Raisi’s victims were loaded by forklifts in groups of six onto cranes and hanged every 30 minutes.

One of the few survivors “spared” was a woman who was taken to a torture chamber instead of to the crane on account of her pregnancy. She was repeatedly lashed and tortured by several men, and later said she remembered each of their faces, which were etched in her mind. She could not forget that of one young and callous man in particular: Ebrahim Raisi. Under the new nuclear deal, U.S. sanctions imposed against Raisi will be lifted.

The deal also lifts sanctions (which I was personally involved in imposing) against Ahmad Jannati, one of the regime’s most powerful and brutal clerics. Jannati is primarily responsible for rigging the country’s elections as chairman of the Guardian Council and Assembly of Experts. But in his spare time, he leads massive rallies in “Death to America/England/Israel” chants. Jannati routinely pushes for the regime to kill protesters. “I thank the judiciary chief for executing two protesters,” he said in 2010 in the aftermath of the Green Movement, “and urge him to execute others if they do not give up such protests.” That fervor has not changed since the early days of the regime. When Jannati was told a prison in Khuzestan province was filling up with dissidents, he volunteered to go serve there as a “judge.” He proudly recounted: “I got busy working … for there was some doubt whether we should execute them all or not.”

Then there is their master, Khamenei himself, who is ultimately responsible for every act of terror and murder committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. We know that Khamenei has personally ordered the massacre of Iranians by his security forces. In November 2019, as brave Iranians took to the streets to protest the 40 years of corruption and oppression at the hands of the clerics, Khamenei assembled his top security team together and told them: “The Islamic Republic is in danger. Do whatever it takes to end it. You have my order.” In the ensuing days, about 1,500 Iranians were killed by the regime’s brute squads, including dozens of children and hundreds of women. This mass murderer will also be free of sanctions.

One of the most challenging responsibilities I had in the State Department was directing the human rights portfolio. For two years, I was in charge of documenting massacres like the one that Khamenei ordered, combing through biographies and photos of torture victims, including children, with bullet holes in their heads. I hope to never see such things again, but I fear that because of this deal, we all will.

Sometimes, in the day or two after the United States placed sanctions on such men, I would get a phone call or email from an Iranian who lost a loved one because of them. Many said it was the first time in years that they felt they had received a modicum of justice—that their pain had been heard in Washington—and they profusely thanked the United States. Sanctions are not merely economic, political, or diplomatic tools—they speak truth to evil.

If you hadn’t heard of such crimes before, it’s mostly thanks to a man named Javad Zarif, who served as the regime’s chief propagandist from 2013-2021. He had the misleading title of foreign minister, but that wasn’t his role in the regime. Zarif had little power to negotiate deals or set the foreign policy of the regime—that’s the IRGC’s job—so he was tasked with fluffing reporters and think tankers in Europe and the United States in the hopes of deceiving them about the regime’s true nature and radical intentions.

He also readily defended the regime’s executions of gay people. In 2019, Zarif was asked by a brave German reporter, “Why are homosexuals executed in Iran because of their sexual orientation?” “Our society has moral principles,” Zarif responded, “and we live according to these principles. These are moral principles concerning the behavior of people in general. And that means that the law is respected and the law is obeyed.” In plain language, Zarif was covering up for the fact that his regime has executed thousands of gay Iranians—between 4,000 and 6,000 according to some estimates. Zarif’s involvement in the regime’s international terror apparatus earned him U.S. sanctions in 2019. Those will be gone, too.

But the pending nuclear deal doesn’t just lift sanctions on people who come and go from power. This deal lifts sanctions on the various economic entities that fuel the regime’s machinery of repression. Most notably, it would lift sanctions on Khamenei’s personal slush funds known as “bonyads,” including Astan Quds Razavi and the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, which confiscated houses and billions of dollars from political dissidents and religious minorities to enrich Khamenei and his goons. Also free from restrictions will be the Bonyad Mostazafan, a massive conglomerate that systematically confiscated property from Jews and Bahai’s after 1979. Bonyad Mostazafan is enmeshed with the IRGC and served as a corruption network used to enrich top Iranian terrorists. All these groups and men have been sanctioned under E.O. 13876, the Supreme Leader’s Office sanctions authority, which the White House is preparing to end.

It’s important to note here that the Supreme Leader’s Office EO is in no way related to Iran’s nuclear program, and the removal of these sanctions under a so-called “nuclear deal” is a farce. The Trump administration lawyers who drafted this executive order were quite clear when we released it in 2019: It was a response to actions taken by Iran and its proxies to destabilize the Middle East, promote international terrorism, and advance Iran’s ballistic missile program. It was issued in response to Iran’s attack against U.S. military assets and civilian vessels.

The EO’s impending repeal makes clear that what Biden and Malley have in mind is not merely, or even mainly, a “nuclear deal” with Iran—it is an appeasement agreement that unshackles the Islamic Republic from any significant economic restrictions, regardless of whether it will enrich the regime’s apparatuses of terror.

Sanctions will be lifted on huge swaths of the regime’s economic and financial arms—close to 40 major entities—that support Iran’s terror, repression, and WMD infrastructure. These sanctions have not been “inconsistent with the JCPOA,” which is the justification that Blinken and Malley have claimed as justification for their repeal. The administration is lifting sanctions on economic arms of the Mehr Eqtesad network and Bonyad Taavon Basij, for example, which directly funds the Basij Resistance Force that recruits and trains child soldiers forced into combat.

The U.S. is not lifting sanctions on the Basij itself (which was the security entity responsible for killing most of the 1,500 Iranians in November 2019) because Iranian negotiators didn’t particularly care—they just wanted sanctions on the funding mechanisms lifted because that’s what actually matters. And Malley obliged. While serving as the mailed fist of the regime’s repression and brutalization of its own people, the Basij play no role whatsoever in Iran’s nuclear program.

Sanctions will also be lifted on the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and the National Development Fund (NDF), which were sanctioned under counterterrorism authorities for providing billions of dollars to the IRGC, the Quds Force, and Hezbollah. The CBI and NDF were sanctioned after Iran brazenly attacked energy infrastructure in eastern Saudi Arabia in September 2019, an act of war. These organizations still fund terrorism.

The deal will also lift sanctions on the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) that fund the Quds Force, which under Qassem Soleimani’s leadership was directly responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis and for the death of at least 603 Americans in Iraq from 2003-2011.

The Central Bank, NDF, NIOC, and NITC were all sanctioned under counterterrorism authorities approved by career interagency lawyers, including from the Department of Justice and Department of the Treasury. These sanctions came from a rigorous interagency process that ensured we would not impose them haphazardly; but once such a determination is made, they are not supposed to be lifted until it can be proven the sanctioned entities longer support terrorism. To be clear: They are. But Malley apparently found a way to badger and bully the career lawyers into submission so that these terror financiers will now be free from sanctions, too.

Perhaps most troubling is Malley’s persistent attempt to remove sanctions on the IRGC, which has plotted and carried out terrorist attacks in 35 countries around the world. As Pompeo disclosed last year, the IRGC is currently providing safe haven and logistical support for al-Qaida inside Iran. When Malley initially made an interagency request to remove the IRGC from the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list, he met severe resistance from startled career officials across government. Nevertheless, he persisted.

Instead of demanding that the Iranians cease conducting and supporting terrorism, Malley obliged repeated Iranian entreaties to remove the IRGC’s terror designation. At first, he proposed that it could be exchanged for an Iranian commitment to future talks on the terrorism and “regional issues” files. The Iranian negotiators and their Russian facilitators couldn’t believe their luck, and asked for more. They demanded that the concession must be unconditional, and that no future talks would be acceptable. Of course, a promise of future talks is all but meaningless given the American capitulation in Vienna. Either way, a foreign diplomat recently confirmed to me that the IRGC Foreign Terrorist Organization delisting has indeed been finalized.

So what have we received in exchange for all these concessions to the most vile men and institutions in Iran? Has the regime come clean about its clandestine nuclear activities or committed to stop nuclear enrichment? Has the regime committed to stop supporting terror and taking American hostages? The short answer on all counts is no.

The JCPOA’s sunset clauses have not been extended at all. Some JCPOA restrictions, like the United Nations arms embargo on Iran for importing or exporting conventional weapons, have already expired. All meaningful restrictions will expire over the next nine years. Iran will not make any concessions on its ballistic missile activity, its terrorist activity, its support for proxy groups, or its hostage-taking from the United States and other countries. But it will get money anyways—lots of it.

Iran is set to get access to a massive windfall of cash: My latest estimate (derived from figures declassified during my tenure at the State Department) is $90 billion in access to foreign exchange reserves, and then a further $50-$55 billion in extra revenue each year from higher oil and petrochemical exports, with no restrictions on how or where the money can be spent.

Personally, the most troubling transfer of funds will be the $7 billion ransom payment the United States is preparing to pay for the release of four Americans from an Iranian jail. Now, let me be clear: I would be extremely glad to bring these Americans back home safely as quickly as possible. They are innocent victims who, along with their families, have suffered unjustly for far too long. But make no mistake: Biden’s payment will only supercharge Iran’s hostage-taking industry.

After Obama paid Iran $1.7 billion for four Americans back in 2016 (including $400 million in literal pallets of cash), Iranian clerics and generals bragged about it for years—and some suggested that taking hostages could henceforth serve as a sound method for balancing Iran’s budget. Sadly, if Biden goes through with this deal, that could well be the case again. Seven billion dollars would amount to around one-third of Iran’s annual terror and security budget, fueling even more violence around the world and against Iranians. At prices like these, more Americans are sure to land in Evin Prison.

Each day, I learn more about the terrible deal coming out of Vienna. The degree of capitulation happening there is staggering, especially for those of us who worked in the technical trenches to impose these sanctions and monitor Iran’s nuclear program for years. That’s why nonpartisan career staffers are desperately asking for more oversight from Congress, even though Malley and the administration designed the negotiation process to take place without any congressional (and thus democratic representative) input. Administration officials have tried to make the case to lawyers internally that they are merely going back to the original JCPOA, and therefore do not need to submit the deal to Congress under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) signed into law by the president.

That is not true. The Biden administration is not going back to the JCPOA. It has negotiated an entirely different agreement. And I can assure you it is much, much worse than the original.

Attack said to destroy hundreds of drones near Kermanshah, prompting this week’s revenge missile fire at, on site alleged to have launched UAV-destroying mission

By TOI STAFFToday, 8:45 am  

In this photo released on May 21, 2021, by Sepahnews, the website of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a new drone, called Gaza, is displayed in an undisclosed location in Iran. (Sepahnews via AP)

A UAV attack in the middle of February reportedly caused major damage to Iran’s drone fleet, prompting Iran to fire missiles this week at a site in Iraq that it claims was an Israeli intelligence base.

Hundreds of drones are assessed to have been destroyed in the attack on an airbase near Kermanshah, in Western Iran, Haaretz reported Tuesday, without citing sources for the extent of the damage.

While Israel has acknowledged it targets the bases of Iranian forces and allied terror groups in Syria, as well as arms shipments believed to be bound for Iran-backed groups in the region — and is believed to have carried out covert actions inside Iran — an airstrike on Iranian territory would be very unusual.

Tehran officials have blamed Israel for the attack, though neither country had made any mention of the incident until this week. Israel has not commented at all on the alleged strike.

On Sunday night, the Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen, which is linked to the Iran-back Hezbollah terror group, reported on the Kermanshah attack for the first time.

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Citing “reliable sources,” it said there were six drones that took part in the raid and claimed they were launched from Iraqi Kurdistan.

The station said it was because of the drone attack that Iran fired missiles at a site near the US consulate in Erbil overnight Saturday. Iran has said the target of the missiles was a location being used by Israeli intelligence and, according to Al Mayadeen, it was from there that the February drone attack was launched.

The Lebanese report also claimed that as a result of the missile attack on Erbil, four Israeli officers were killed and seven more injured, four of whom were in a critical condition.

The US State Department has condemned the strike, which hit near a sprawling American consulate, and Kurdish authorities have denied the area was being used by Israel.

A general view shows a damaged mansion following an overnight attack in Erbil, the capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region, on March 13, 2022 (SAFIN HAMED / AFP)

Israel has repeatedly warned that Iranian drones are a significant threat to the region — especially as Tehran arms proxies stationed along Israel’s borders. Military officials said last week that Iran’s “UAV terror” is a new and global issue, accusing Tehran of directly attacking both military and civilian targets in the Middle East.

The IDF also published footage of what it said were intercepts of Iranian drones.

The timing of the IDF’s publication was thought to be related to the ongoing, and reportedly near-completed, nuclear talks in Vienna.

Negotiators on all sides have signaled in recent days that a potential agreement to revive the deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is close. Israel has highlighted the fact that the emerging nuclear deal does not address the drone issue.

The IDF believes Iran is attempting to arm all of its proxies in the region — in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen — with hundreds and even thousands of UAVs, in addition to providing military training.

In this image released by the military on February 17, 2022, a drone belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group is seen after being downed by troops on the border with Lebanon. (Israel Defense Forces)

Military officials say the IDF is always on full alert to protect Israel’s skies from drones. However, last month Israeli air defenses failed to down a small drone that entered the country from Lebanon, which Hezbollah claimed responsibility for launching.

A series of incidents over the past few months indicate an escalation in the shadow conflict between Israel and Iran.

A cyberattack on Monday took down Israeli government websites for over an hour on Monday evening. Israeli officials did not immediately say who was behind the attack, but some media reports were quick to point the finger at Iran.

It came as Iranian state television reported that the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard arrested members of a “network” working for Israel that planned to sabotage Iran’s major underground nuclear facility at Fordo

No casualties after several projectiles fired toward building in Iraqi Kurdistan; Iran media claims without evidence that Israel operating sites there and they were target

By AGENCIESToday, 2:52 amUpdated at 8:22 am  

Illustrative: US Marines guard the Baghdad Embassy Compound in Iraq, Jan. 5, 2020. (US Marine Corps/Sgt. Kyle C. Talbot)

As many as 12 missiles were fired Sunday toward the US consulate in Iraq’s northern city of Irbil, with several missiles hitting the building, Iraqi and US security officials said.

Iranian state media agency IRNA, citing local reports, claimed without evidence that “secret Israeli bases” were targeted in the attack.

A US official said the missiles were launched from neighboring Iran.

Officials gave different accounts of damage. A US official said missiles hit the consulate, but a second American official later said there was no damage and no casualties at any US government facility.

Iraqi authorities said several missiles had hit the US consulate. The consulate building is new and currently unoccupied.

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Later, Lawk Ghafari, the head of Kurdistan’s foreign media office, said none of the missiles hit the US facility but that areas around the compound had been hit by the missiles.

The area’s governor said it was not clear whether the intended target was the US consulate or the airport, where there is a base for the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group.

The airport said it had suffered no damage and flights had not been disrupted.

An AFP correspondent in the city heard three explosions.

Local television channel Kurdistan24, whose studios are not far from the US consulate, posted images on social networks of its damaged offices, with collapsed sections of false ceiling and broken glass.

Irbil is the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq.

“We condemn this terrorist attack launched against several sectors of Irbil, we call on the inhabitants to remain calm,” Kurdistan Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said in a statement.

One of the officials said the ballistic missiles were fired from Iran, without elaborating.

The attack comes several days after Syrian state media reported an Israeli strike near Damascus, Syria. The reports said the airstrike killed two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Iran’s foreign ministry strongly condemned the attack Wednesday and vowed revenge.

On Sunday, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted Iraqi media acknowledging the attacks in Irbil, without saying where they originated.

Satellite broadcast channel Kurdistan24, which is located near the US consulate, went on air from their studio shortly after the attack, showing shattered glass and debris on their studio floor.

A security statement said Irbil was targeted “with a number of missiles” early Sunday, adding that security forces were investigating the incident and would release more details later.

The attack comes as negotiations in Vienna over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal hit a “pause” over Russian demands about sanctions targeting Moscow over its war on Ukraine.

US interests and coalition troops in Iraq have regularly been targeted in rocket and armed drone attacks.

Western officials have blamed hardline pro-Iran factions for the attacks, which have never been claimed.

In late January, six rockets were fired at Baghdad International Airport, causing no casualties.

Iraq saw a surge in these sort of attacks at the beginning of the year as Iran and its allies commemorated the second anniversary of the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi lieutenant Abu Mehdi al-Mouhandis, killed by American drone fire in Iraq in January 2020.

Supreme National Security Council says negotiators in Vienna will seek ‘creative ways’ to proceed as Moscow links efforts to save 2015 pact to US sanctions over Ukraine invasion

By AMIR VAHDAT and JON GAMBRELLToday, 11:48 am  

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani sits in a meeting in Tehran, Iran on June, 12, 2021. (Vahid Salemi/AP)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A top Iranian official said Monday that his country is seeking “creative ways” to restore its nuclear deal with world powers after Russia’s foreign minister linked sanctions on Moscow over its war on Ukraine to the ongoing negotiations.

The tweet by Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council, offers the first high-level acknowledgment of the demands of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“Vienna participants act & react based on interests and it’s understandable,” Shamkhani wrote. “Our interactions … are also solely driven by our people’s interests. Thus, we’re assessing new elements that bear on the negotiations and will accordingly seek creative ways to expedite a solution.”

In recent days, negotiators on all sides in Vienna had signaled that a potential deal was close as the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agreed to a timetable with Iran for it to disclose answers to long-standing questions it had about Tehran’s program.

But Lavrov on Saturday said he wanted “guarantees at least at the level of the secretary of state” that the US sanctions would not affect Moscow’s relationship with Tehran. That threw into question the months of negotiations held so far on restoring the 2015 deal, which saw Iran agree to drastically limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

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On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Lavrov’s demand “irrelevant” as the nuclear deal and sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine war were “totally different.” The US under then-president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018, setting off years of tensions and attacks across the Mideast.

“Getting out of the deal was one of the worst mistakes that’s been made in recent years. It let the entire Iranian nuclear program that we put in a box out of the box,” Blinken told CBS’ “Face the Nation” talk show. “And so if there’s a way of getting back to reimplementing that deal effectively, it’s in our interest to do it and we’re working on that as we speak. It’s also in Russia’s interest.”

Meanwhile, the state-owned, English-language Tehran Times newspaper on Monday published an article suggesting the draft nuclear deal in Vienna would allow Iran to “keep its advanced centrifuges and nuclear materials inside the country.”

It’s “a form of inherent guarantee to make sure that its nuclear program is fully reversible if the US reneged on its commitments again,” the newspaper said, without providing a source for the information.

The 2015 nuclear deal saw Iran put advanced centrifuges into storage under the watch of the International Atomic Energy Agency, while keeping its enrichment at 3.67% purity and its stockpile at only 300 kilograms (661 pounds) of uranium.

As of February 19, the IAEA says Iran’s stockpile of all enriched uranium was nearly 3200 kilograms (7,055 pounds). Some has been enriched up to 60% purity — a short technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

The facility in Natanz is built deep under a massive mountain, making it extremely difficult for the IDF to ever bomb it.

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-696721

Iran is developing a new nuclear threat that could be a game-changer – and which will continue to proceed regardless of whether there is a nuclear deal or not.

It is a problem that almost no one is talking about, in an area called Natanz where the Mossad allegedly blew up two different nuclear facilities in July 2020 and April 2021 respectively.

The new enormous nuclear threat is a new underground facility Iran is digging and building in the Natanz area which goes so deep under a mountain so large that it will leave the Fordow facility in the dust in terms of how difficult it would be for the IDF to strike it.

In a report, Institute for Science and International Security president David Albright wrote, “Fordow is already viewed as so deeply buried that it would be difficult to destroy via aerial attack. The new Natanz site may be even harder to destroy.”

Why no one is talking about it – other than Albright – is probably a mix of it being an issue that may not fully mature until 2023 and that there are few good options for addressing it.

The main mountain harboring the new Natanz tunnel complex is called Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La and has a height of 1608 meters above sea level, he said.

In comparison, the mountain harboring the Fordow centrifuge enrichment plant, called Kūh-e Dāgh Ghū’ī, is about 960 meters tall.

The report said that this makes the Natanz mountain about 650 meters or well over 50% taller, potentially providing even greater protection to any facility built underneath it.

For around 13 years, military strategists have debated and pulled their hair out over whether Israel’s vaunted air force has weaponry that could go deep enough underground to destroy Fordow.

If Israel cannot destroy Fordow, then it substantially reduces the potential for success by any Israeli use of force against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Albright is saying in no uncertain terms that the new facility being built in the Natanz area will be 50% harder to destroy than Fordow, which Jerusalem might be unable to destroy.

According to the report, the underground facility is also huge.

This means that the largest segments of Tehran’s nuclear programs may eventually move to this site.

“A Western intelligence official recently stated that there is strong reason to believe that an enrichment plant is being built at the Natanz underground site, and reiterated the claim in a follow-up conversation,” wrote Albright.

Continuing, he said, “The Institute was not able to independently confirm this, but a small, advanced centrifuge enrichment plant is certainly the most worrisome possibility.”

Albright wrote that “a relatively small number of advanced IR-6 centrifuges, say 1,000, would be enough to create a more powerful enrichment plant, providing a doubling of the enrichment output compared to Fordow and requiring about one-third of the floor area of Fordow’s main hall.”

In turn, this could mean that the vast majority of Iran’s nuclear program could become untouchable by any airstrike.

The construction of the new underground complex has been an Iranian priority, following the two previous sabotage operations.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the then-head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) stated in April 2021, “We are working 24/7 to move all our sensitive halls into the heart of the mountain near Natanz.”

However, more than a year and a half after the July 2020 sabotage, the replacement facility remains undone. Salehi had also said they hoped the halls “will be ready by next year so we can move these facilities to them.”

However, even now it is unknown if the new site will be ready for operation before 2023.

Once the Islamic Republic does have it up and running though, the report suggested that Iran could jump back up from assembling hundreds of new advanced centrifuges per year to thousands.

Until the new facility is built, Albright said that Tehran is “depending on ad hoc above ground centrifuge capabilities limited to the assembly of hundreds of advanced centrifuges per year,” with the sabotage operations setting back “Iran’s centrifuge program significantly.”

ll of this is true despite Iran’s success at operating enough advanced centrifuges to enrich enough uranium for multiple potential nuclear weapons – if it decides to enrich up further to weaponized levels.

In terms of the status of the construction, satellite images throughout 2021 show extensive excavation activities, with spoil piles growing steadily, said the report.

As of November 2021, the report said that “the area remains a major construction zone, excavation appears ongoing, and the overall tunnel facility does not appear finished. Construction materials visibly stored along the graded roads may indicate ongoing tunnel lining efforts or that Iran has begun to outfit the interior in parts of the tunnel complex.”

“Two tunnel entrance areas, one west and one east of a large mountain, with three likely tunnel portals, have been identified in commercial satellite imagery, as well as a construction staging area and probable future above-ground support site,” said the report.

Albright wrote that, “near the Western tunnel portal, there is road grading, perhaps for a second Western portal, or the genesis of an access route to the top of the mountain to allow the construction of a ventilation shaft/system on the top of the mountain.”

He recommended that “efforts should be made to dissuade Iran from finishing this facility, or… to at least disrupt its procurements of needed equipment and raw materials,” since otherwise, the facility could “reconstitute Iran’s ability to deploy thousands of advanced centrifuges each year, once again complicating any effort to lengthen its breakout or sneak-out timelines in a nuclear agreement.”

TV network cites Israeli security officials warning that revived agreement won’t take into account the nuclear gains Tehran has made since Trump withdrew from the accord in 2018

By TOI STAFF18 February 2022, 11:23 pm  

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani leaves the Palais Coburg, venue of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) meeting that aims at reviving the Iran nuclear deal, in Vienna on December 27, 2021. (ALEX HALADA / AFP)

Israel is readying for world powers and Iran to reach an agreement next week to revive the deal aimed at curbing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, Israeli television reported Friday, despite Jerusalem’s efforts to lobby against a joint US-Iranian return to the multilateral accord.

Israel opposed the original agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, when it was signed in 2015, with then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu arguing that it actually paved the path to an Iranian nuclear arsenal. The Netanyahu government then backed former president Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the deal in 2018 and initiate a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which led Tehran to ramp up nuclear work in violation of the JCPOA.

US President Joe Biden is now seeking to revive the accord, conditioning doing so on Iran returning to compliance.

Quoting an unnamed Israeli security official, Channel 13 news reported that while Israel considered the original deal to have been bad, the revived accord taking shape is “spectacularly bad,” as it does not factor in the progress Iran has made since.

Referring to a leaked draft of the imminent accord, the source said Iran will not be required to destroy its advanced centrifuges under the revived agreement. Tehran will have to reduce its uranium enrichment levels, but it has already developed the capability to enrich at high levels. It will also be required to cease producing uranium metal, a crucial component of the bomb-making process. However, the source noted that Iran now has the knowledge to be able to manufacture such materials in the future.

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“In essence, it is an agreement that leaves Iran as a nuclear threshold state,” the network said, citing the security source.

Channel 13’s report asserted that Israel would plainly not be able to target Iranian enrichment facilities if and when a revived deal was signed. A key question, though, said its military analyst Alon Ben-David, was whether Israel would have a free hand, as far as the Americans are concerned, to take actions to thwart Iranian progress on weaponization and missile delivery systems for a bomb — areas not covered by the deal.

According to Channel 13, furthermore, the Biden administration has told Israel that Trump enabled Iran to become a “nuclear threshold state” in terms of uranium production and that a failure to revive the old agreement — as Jerusalem is hoping — would leave Tehran weeks away from accumulating enough nuclear material needed for a bomb, rather than months away from the bomb under the terms of the deal.

A diplomat familiar with the talks disputed that assessment, telling The Times of Israel that the deal being negotiated would likely leave Iran between six months to a year away from having enough nuclear material needed for a bomb (weaponization would take another year or two, according to most estimates).

A technician works at the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the city of Isfahan, Iran, 255 miles (410 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, Iran, Feb. 3, 2007. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, file)

Jerusalem appears to argue that is a price worth paying, rather than granting sanctions relief.

A small ray of hope for Israel is that the sanctions relief being proposed by negotiators in Vienna would only occur gradually and not all at once, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

Negotiators still have a number of issues to settle before a deal can be signed, but Israel believes that will still happen next week, according to Kan.

Accordingly, Jerusalem is preparing a number of actions it plans to take in the coming days, including holding briefings with ambassadors, a possible public address by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett responding to an announcement of a resurrected JCPOA, and private conversations that Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz will hold on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

Separately Friday, a senior European Union official told Reuters, “I expect an agreement in the coming week, the coming two weeks or so. I think we have now on the table text that is very, very close to what is going to be the final agreement.”

“Most of the issues are already agreed. But as a principle in this kind of negotiation, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. So we still have… some questions, some of them rather political and difficult to agree,” the official said.

The United States said Thursday that “substantial progress” during negotiations in Vienna to save the Iran nuclear deal had been made, deeming an agreement possible within days if Iran “shows seriousness” on the matter.

An eighth round of Vienna talks, which involve Iran as well as Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia directly, and the United States indirectly, resumed in late November.

Premier’s office says conversation also addresses US killing of Islamic State leader and Russia-Ukraine conflict; Biden likely to visit later this year

By JACOB MAGID 6 February 2022, 9:50 pm  

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, right, speaks as he meets with US President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House, on August 27, 2021, in Washington, DC. (GPO)

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and US President Joe Biden held a rare phone call Sunday evening, discussing the Iranian nuclear threat, the campaign against the Islamic State, the Russian-Ukraine conflict and other security challenges.

It was the third phone call between the leaders since Bennett took office in June 2021. Bennett used to opportunity to again extend an invitation to Biden to visit, and the US leader said he would likely do so later this year. No date has been set.

The prime minister praised Biden for the US operation last week that ended in the death of IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. “The world is a safer place thanks to the brave efforts of American forces,” the premier told the president according to the Israeli readout.

According to Hebrew media reports, the US had notified Israel ahead of Thursday’s raid in by US special forces, during which the terror leader blew himself up, killing his wife and children along with himself. Al-Qurayshi once held the “Israel file” in IS, likely putting Israel in a situation to offer intelligence to US counterparts on their target ahead of the mission.

Bennett’s office also said that the two discussed the threats posed by Iran in the region, as well as the “steps to block the Iranian nuclear program.”

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On Friday, the Biden administration restored some sanctions relief to Iran’s civilian atomic program, after world powers were believed to have made progress in negotiations in Vienna aimed at reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal. Washington clarified that the waivers were legally required to allow Iran to make modifications to its nuclear facilities to bring Tehran back into compliance with the JCPOA.

The house in which Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi died during an overnight raid by US special forces, in the town of Atme in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, on February 3, 2022. (Abdulaziz Ketaz/AFP)

Former president Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 — three years after it was signed — and implemented a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against Iran, which responded by increasingly violating the JCPOA and accelerating its effort toward acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Biden came into office pledging to return to the agreement while also negotiating a subsequent “longer and stronger” deal that would seek to curb Iran’s ballistic missile program along with its support for proxy militia groups throughout the region. But talk of the latter agreement has largely faded as the US has been faced with a new Iranian regime led by President Ebrahim Raisi who has shown less interest than his predecessor in reviving the JCPOA, let alone negotiating an additional deal with the US.

The US says that the coming weeks will be critical in determining whether the JCPOA can be salvaged, though the administration has been employing such a vague timeline for at least a month.

At a cabinet meeting earlier Sunday, Bennett implied that Israel could launch a military strike against Iran even if the Islamic Republic and world powers revive their 2015 nuclear deal.

“We are responsible for dealing with the Iranian nuclear program and, of course, we are monitoring the Vienna talks. “Our position is well-known and clear: an agreement – according to the apparent terms – will damage the ability to deal with the nuclear program. Anyone who thinks that an agreement will increase stability is mistaken.

“It will temporarily delay enrichment, but all of us in the region will pay a heavy, disproportionate price for it,” he said.

The Biden administration, by contrast, argues that the JCPOA is better than the current alternative where there are no curbs on Iran’s nuclear activity whatsoever. Jerusalem maintains that Iran will buckle if its feet are held to the fire through sanctions and a credible military threat.

FILE – Mohammad Eslami, new head of Iran’s nuclear agency (AEOI), left, and Iran’s Governor to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Kazem Gharib Abadi, leave the International Atomic Energy’s (IAEA) General Conference in Vienna, Austria, September 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Lisa Leutner, File)

Israel fears that reviving the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers may leave Tehran only a few months away from having enough fissile material for an atomic bomb, Israeli television reported Saturday.

The original agreement kept Iran a year from acquiring enough nuclear material to use for a bomb, but that breakout time has shrunk since Trump withdrew from the deal.

Also during the Sunday phone call, Biden and Bennett discussed the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Israel sought to avoid taking a stance in favor of either side due to its relatively good relations with both, whereas the US has stepped up its rhetoric against Moscow in recent weeks.

Bennett ended the call by inviting the president and First Lady Jill Biden to Israel. He first extended such an invitation during his visit to the White House last August. Biden told Bennett on Sunday that he looked forward to visiting Israel later this year, according to the US readout.

An Israeli official told the Walla news site that the call lasted about 30 minutes.

The US readout issued later Sunday night was relatively similar to the Israeli one, but did make mention of Biden’s commitment to expanding partnerships in the Middle East “as exemplified by the Abraham Accords, together with Israelis and Palestinians enjoying equal measures of security, freedom, and prosperity.”

‘Better to have a distance of a few months and not just weeks,’ US sources quoted as saying; 2015 pact envisioned Tehran would need a year to amass enough material for bomb

By TOI STAFF and AGENCIESToday, 2:09 am  

FILE — This Oct. 27, 2004 file photo, shows the interior of the Arak heavy water production facility in Arak, 360 kms southwest of Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/Fars News Agancy, File)

Israel fears that reviving the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers may leave Tehran only a few months away from having enough fissile material for an atomic bomb, Israeli television reported Saturday.

The Kan public broadcaster did not specify who in Israel was concerned by the possibility that Iran’s so-called breakout time would be significantly shorter under a restored nuclear agreement.

But American sources quoted in the report appeared to acknowledge such a prospect.

“It is better to have a distance of a few months and not just weeks, as would happen if no agreement is signed,” the sources said.

The original deal aimed to keep Iran at least a year away from amassing enough material for a nuclear weapon.

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The Kan report came days after US officials told The Wall Street Journal that a revived agreement would leave Iran with a breakout time well below a year, citing the advances in its nuclear program since then-president Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the accord in 2018.

The exact length of the breakout time will depend on the manner in which Iran agrees to return to compliance with the deal, be it by dismantling its stockpiles of enriched uranium and relevant pieces of equipment, destroying them or shipping them abroad.

A technician works at the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the city of Isfahan, Iran, 255 miles (410 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, Iran, Feb. 3, 2007. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, file)

However, enough nuclear material for a bomb is not the same as having the capabilities to build the core of the weapon and to attach it to the warhead of a missile, which Iran is not believed to possess and would likely take many more months to achieve.

Despite the JCPOA’s more limited impact, US negotiators are still committed to returning to the deal, guided by the belief that some restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program are better than none at all.

On Friday, the Biden administration restored some sanctions relief to Iran’s civilian atomic program as world powers and the Islamic Republic continue talks aimed at salvaging the languishing agreement.

As US negotiators head back to Vienna for what could be a make-or-break session, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed several sanctions waivers related to Iran’s civilian nuclear activities. The move reverses the Trump administration’s decision to rescind them.

The waivers are intended to entice Iran to return to compliance with the 2015 deal that it has been publicly violating since former US president Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions. Iran says it is not respecting the terms of the deal because the US pulled out of it first. Iran has demanded the restoration of all sanctions relief it was promised under the deal to return to compliance.

Friday’s move lifts the sanctions threat against foreign countries and companies from Russia, China and Europe that had been cooperating with non-military parts of Iran’s nuclear program under the terms of the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

The Trump administration had ended the so-called “civ-nuke” waivers in May 2020 as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran that began when Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018, complaining that it was the worst diplomatic agreement ever negotiated and gave Iran a pathway to developing the bomb.

As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden made a US return to the nuclear deal a priority, and his administration has pursued that goal but there has been little progress toward that end since he took office a year ago. Administration officials said the waivers were being restored to help push the Vienna negotiations forward.

Technicians work at the Iranian Arak heavy water reactor, 150 miles southwest of the capital Tehran, on December 23, 2019. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP)

The waivers permit foreign countries and companies to work on civilian projects at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power station, its Arak heavy water plant and the Tehran Research Reactor. Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo had revoked the waivers in May, 2020, accusing Iran of “nuclear extortion” for continuing and expanding work at the sites.

Iran’s foreign minister on Saturday welcomed the US sanctions relief, but said the move was “insufficient.”