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Kerry on Edge as Legacy Crumbles

October 17, 2017

Kerry on Edge as Legacy Crumbles, FrontPage Magazine, Joseph Klein, October 17, 2017

Former Secretary of State John Kerry wasted no time condemning President Trump’s decision not to recertify, and to possibly withdraw from, the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran that Kerry negotiated on behalf of his boss Barack Obama. President Trump insisted on significant improvements to the Joint Plan of Comprehensive Action (JCPOA), as the deal is formally known. The JCPOA’s fundamental flaws that President Trump wants fixed include Iran’s ability to block unfettered international inspections, the wiggle room that Iran is exploiting to continue developing and testing ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and the sunset clause on nuclear enrichment that would provide Iran a clear path to becoming a nuclear armed state after the current restrictions are lifted. Obama and Kerry had promised that these issues would be dealt with satisfactorily before agreeing to the final terms of the JCPOA. Instead they caved to Iranian pressure in order to get the deal done.

Now that President Trump is trying to clean up the mess Obama and Kerry left him, Kerry has the gall to label President Trump’s decision a “reckless abandonment of facts in favor of ego and ideology” and to accuse the Trump administration of “lying to the American people.” It was the Obama administration that recklessly abandoned the facts in pressing ahead with the deal. The Obama administration lied to the American people, abandoning its own promises to ensure that the deal contained ironclad protections. Moreover, all that President Trump has done so far is to return the JCPOA to Congress for review. Had Obama followed the Constitution and submitted the JCPOA to the Senate as a treaty in the first place, the JCPOA in its present form almost certainly would not have been approved. Congress should now have the opportunity to revisit the JCPOA to determine whether the protections that the Obama administration promised are working as advertised. Congress should also consider whether time limits on Iran’s commitments continue to make sense in light of what we are now experiencing with Iran’s nuclear technology collaborator, North Korea. It bought time to turn into a full-fledged nuclear power under our noses.

Kerry had promised that the Iranian regime would be prohibited from testing ballistic missiles. This turned out to be a lie. After the JCPOA was finalized, with no such prohibition included, Iran continued to test such missiles. The Obama administration’s response was that the missiles had become a separate issue, to be dealt with under a new United Nations Security Council resolution endorsing the JCPOA.  The new resolution replaced clear prohibitions imposed on Iran’s ballistic missile program with a weak declaration in an annex that simply “calls upon” Iran not to undertake any activity such as development and test launches related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons for eight years.

Iran has tested several ballistic missiles during the last two years, including two Qadr H missiles with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” emblazoned on the sides. The commander of Iran’s Army, Major General Ataollah Salehi, had told reporters just a month before the launch of those missiles that Iran was “neither paying any attention to the resolutions against Iran, nor implementing them. This is not a breach of the JCPOA.”

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin, spurning requests from Obama administration officials to impose sanctions against Iran under the Security Council resolution, asserted that the Iranian missile test did not violate the resolution. “A call is different from a ban so legally you cannot violate a call, you can comply with a call or you can ignore the call, but you cannot violate a call,” the Russian ambassador said. In short, the JCPOA did not cover the missile tests and the replacement UN Security Council resolution that did mention the missiles is toothless.

Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told CNN, during an interview aired on April 6, 2015,  that under the deal’s terms then still being negotiated, “you will have anywhere, anytime, 24/7 access as it relates to the nuclear facilities that Iran has.” Rhodes claimed that “if we see a site that we need to inspect on a military facility, we can get access to that site and inspect it. So if it’s a suspicious site that we believe is related to its nuclear efforts, we can get access and inspect that site through the IAEA.” This was another lie. After the JCPOA was finalized in July 2015, Rhodes shamelessly denied that anytime, anywhere inspections were ever considered as part of the negotiations. “We never sought in this negotiation the capacity for so-called anytime, anywhere,” Rhodes said on July 14, 2015.

The JCPOA’s supporters, including Kerry, have made much of the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has on several occasions verified Iran’s compliance with its commitments under the JCPOA, keeping its stock of low-enriched uranium below the limit set forth in the JCPOA and not pursuing further construction of the Arak reactor. Iran was found to have slightly exceeded the limit on its stock of heavy water, but has remedied the problem to the IAEA’s satisfaction. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano reiterated in a statement he issued on October 9th that Iran has remained in compliance with its JCPOA commitments.

The problem, as any clear-eyed observer of the process recognizes, is that the IAEA relies on Iran for self-inspection of certain sites that the regime does not want the IAEA to inspect freely on its own. IAEA inspectors have avoided examining military sites it knows exists and has no reliable way of tracking undeclared sites. The IAEA’s explanation for not visiting any of Iran’s known military sites is that it had “no reason to ask” for access. Evidently, the IAEA is supposed to block out the fact that Iran had conducted tests relevant to nuclear bomb detonations at a military site before the JCPOA’s finalization in 2015. The IAEA should just pretend that such tests could not possibly happen again.

“Nobody is allowed to visit Iran’s military sites,” said Iran’s Head of Strategic Research Center at the Expediency Council and adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati. Intimidation works. The IAEA knows not to ask.

As to the JCPOA’s sunset provisions, the Obama administration lied about that too. Kerry claimed on September 2, 2015 that the JCPOA “never sunsets. There’s no sunset in this agreement.”

This month Kerry has resorted to parsing words. He claims the phrase ‘sunset provisions’ is a “misnomer,” before then defending the JCPOA’s time limits. “We were comfortable because the cap on Iran’s low-enriched uranium stockpile remains in place until 2030,” Kerry wrote in an article published in the Washington Post late last month. In other words, let’s just kick the can down the road and hope for a more reasonable Iranian regime in 13 years that would agree to extend the time limits. In the meantime, Kerry advises us not to worry. Kerry declared, “15 or 25 years from now, we still have the same military options we have today.”

John Kerry has obviously learned nothing from the North Korean fiasco, which resulted from years of phony agreements with the rogue regime and so-called “strategic patience.” The United States clearly does not have the same military options today to deal with a nuclear armed North Korea as it did 23 years ago when former President Bill Clinton decided not to use military force to stamp out North Korea’s nuclear program at its inception. Instead, Clinton started us down the primrose path of naïve diplomacy with a duplicitous regime that now is on the verge of being able to strike the U.S. mainland with nuclear warheads delivered by intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is precisely because North Korea’s actions over the last 23 years have proven that making concessions to a rogue regime in order to obtain denuclearization commitments is so dangerous that President Trump does not want to make the same mistake with Iran.

America’s European allies are also upset with President Trump for refusing to recertify the deal and threatening to pull out if certain conditions are not met. British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a joint statement last Friday praising the JCPOA and its implementation. They said that the nuclear deal with Iran was “the culmination of 13 years of diplomacy and was a major step towards ensuring that Iran’s nuclear programme is not diverted for military purposes. Therefore, we encourage the US Administration and Congress to consider the implications to the security of the US and its allies before taking any steps that might undermine the JCPOA, such as re-imposing sanctions on Iran lifted under the agreement.”

Perhaps these European leaders should remember their own history. Appeasement through phony deals with a rogue dictatorship does not work, as proven by the infamous Munich Pact signed by British and French Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler seventy-nine years ago.

Categories: Ben Rhodes, Iran - North Korea, Iran - self-inspection, Iran scam, Iran scam lies, Iran secret deals, Iran's undeclared nuke sites, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, JCPOA - renegotiation, JCPOA decertification, John Kerry and Iran, John Kerry and Iran scam, Obama and Iran, Obama and Iran scam, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam, U.S. Congress and Iran, U.S. Congress and Iran scam
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Iran Follows In North Korea’s Footsteps: Nuclearization, Missile Development Alongside Agreements With The Superpowers; EU3, IAEA Director-General Submitted To Obama Administration Pressure, Agreed To JCPOA With No Real Inspection, No Response To Iran’s Missile Program; French President: ‘Absolutely Necessary’ That JCPOA Be ‘Supplemented’

September 9, 2017

Iran Follows In North Korea’s Footsteps: Nuclearization, Missile Development Alongside Agreements With The Superpowers; EU3, IAEA Director-General Submitted To Obama Administration Pressure, Agreed To JCPOA With No Real Inspection, No Response To Iran’s Missile Program; French President: ‘Absolutely Necessary’ That JCPOA Be ‘Supplemented’, MEMRI, September 8, 2017

(Please see also, Powers may end up with Iranian model for NKorea. Obama would be very proud. –DM)

Introduction

Top Iranian officials have stated in the past that Tehran is learning from the experience of North Korea in attempting to actualize aspirations for regional supremacy and gaining the status of a global nuclear power.

Iran has achieved both of these under the cover of an agreement with the superpowers that protects it from both attack and inspection, and allows it to proceed, legitimately and with the help of the superpowers, to develop its nuclear capabilities. These include detonation of a nuclear device “for research purposes” as well as the continued development of its missile program, without any restrictions whatsoever under the agreement.

Iran Follows In North Korea’s Footsteps

Like North Korea, which came to several agreements with U.S. administrations, i.e. the Clinton and Obama administrations, as well as with other superpowers, yet continued with its military nuclear program without allowing real inspection of its sites, and also continued to develop long-range ballistic missiles, Tehran is utilizing the JCPOA to develop its nuclear capabilities without allowing real inspection, while continuing to develop and freely test long-range missiles.

It was President Obama who pressured the EU3 – the UK, France, and Germany – and the International Nuclear Energy Agency (IAEA) to agree to no inspection of military and other suspect sites, and to keep the issue of missiles separate from the JCPOA, thus enabling Iran to do as North Korea has done, without any significant response from the West. Iran, which monitored the West’s reaction to North Korea’s activity, concluded that it could do the same, and this lesson has been expressed in statements by top Iranian officials.

For example, Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Larijani said in a September 2005 speech: “I recommend once again that you pay attention to the conduct of North Korea. After two years of dealings with North Korea, what have you got? You have accepted North Korea ‘s nuclear technology in the field of uranium enrichment. So accept ours now.”[1]

The Kayhan daily, which is affiliated with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, wrote in an October 12, 2006 editorial titled “Lessons from North Korea”: ” “[North] Korea has built a [nuclear] bomb before the American’s eyes, despite the great pressure it was under, and [despite] years of harsh international sanctions – and no one has managed to do anything [against it]. What this means precisely is that if any country, such as North Korea, concludes, for political or security reasons, that it must have nuclear weapons, it will ultimately succeed in implementing its wish – even if the whole world doesn’t want it to. The superpowers may manage to slow down [its] path [in going] nuclear, or may apply economic and psychological pressures on it and on its citizens – but   in the end the wish that arises from among the people is what prevails and determines the policy.”[2]

An article in Sobh-e Sadeq, the weekly of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), published in June 2008, called North Korea’s decision to destroy the cooling tower of the reactor at Yongbyon that month “a strategic deception” aimed at alleviating the pressure from the superpowers that oppose its nuclear activity. It added that the destruction of this facility could be a step towards another nuclear test. Also according to the article, the destruction of the tower, the use of which had long been suspended, did not prevent North Korea from being able to revive its activity, thanks to its knowhow, and with its stock of plutonium it could conduct at least another eight nuclear tests.[3]

The Iran Diplomacy research center, which is close to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, called, in April 2009, for careful study of the U.S. reaction to North Korea’s launch that month of a long-range missile, saying that the North Korean model could be applied to the Middle East.[4]

The conservative Iranian daily Resalat stated, following the North Korean missile launch, that the U.S. was weak and could not force its position on North Korea, which, it said, benefits from Russian and Chinese support. It added that the Obama administration was facing a difficult dilemma. If it adopted the harsh position of the preceding Bush administration, Obama’s conciliatory image would be harmed. If it gave in to North Korea, it would strengthen North Korea’s position in southeast Asia.[5]

Iran acted based on North Korea’s experience, but with greater sophistication, as manifested in the following aspects:

1. Instead of rejecting inspections out of hand like North Korea, Tehran created a framework under which only declared nuclear sites could be inspected, along with a different framework in which there would be no inspections of military and other sites, and gained full Western cooperation for this, in addition to tremendous benefits for itself. The West agreed to this Iranian scheme, and the President of the United States himself even explained on July 14, 2015, the day this agreement was announced, that “[t]he IAEA will have access where necessary, when necessary.”[6]Today, the U.S. is obligated to reconfirm every quarter that Iran is meeting the terms of the agreement even though inspection is limited to certain sites only.

2. Tehran took the issue of long-range ballistic missile development out of the negotiations for the JCPOA, and in the absence of an international treaty regulating the issue of long-term missiles, the Obama administration allowed Iran to continue to develop its missile capability to the point where it threatens the Middle East and the West. It should be noted that Iran calls its long-range missiles “defensive missiles” but that by any accepted standard they are offensive missiles; it also threatens the countries of the region with them.


On missile, in Hebrew and Farsi: Israel Should Be Wiped Off the Face of the Earth.” Photo: Fars, Iran, March 9, 2016. See also MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6349, Iran Launches Long-Range Missiles Emblazoned With Slogan: ‘Israel Should Be Wiped Off The Face Of The Earth,’ March 16, 2016.

3. The JCPOA was written in such a way that it expires after a certain time period, as do the restrictions and certain qualifications to which Tehran agreed.

4. The U.S. administration acquiesced to Tehran’s demand that its heavy water be stored in nearby Oman, its proxy, where it will be in immediate reach of Iran. The administration also acquiesced to Iran’s demand that it be allowed to continue developing advanced-generation centrifuges, such that after the JCPOA expires in 2025 it will be able to skip significant stages in its nuclearization process.<

What Inspection Did The EU3 And IAEA Agree To Under Pressure From The Obama Administration?

IAEA director-general Yukia Amano recently announced that the IAEA could enter any site in Iran to inspect it. But his statements are misleading, because the JCPOA does not allow real inspection of any nuclear site except for those declared by Iran. The following are the terms agreed to in the JCPOA by Amano and the Europeans:[7]

  1. The JCPOA created a unique inspection framework for Iran that bypasses the Additional Protocol, which allows inspection of military sites, which Iran accepted as a voluntary and unilateral step, and from which it can drop out without violating the JCPOA.
  2. The JCPOA transferred the authority to make clear professional decisions from the IAEA to a political supreme forum whose authority supersedes that of the IAEA – with the agreement of IAEA director-general Yukia Amano, who relinquished his status under pressure from Obama.
  3. The JCPOA set out a series of restrictions for conducting inspections; for example, any claim by the IAEA must not be motivated by an intent to damage Iranian military or security activity. This wording hands Iran the tools to prevent any inspection of any security or other site, by arguing that such an inspection is motivated by an intent to damage its military activity. The procedure demands that the information that casts suspicion on any of these sites and that prompts a request for inspection be revealed to Iran, Russia, and China – and this demand, which cannot be met, is aimed at stopping the inspection process in its tracks.
  4. The JCPOA created a political precedent for a non-credible inspection process, through closing Iran’s PMD (Possible Military Dimensions) file by a predetermined political decision and while negotiating with Iran about writing the IAEA report on the PMD – i.e. the file was not closed independently by the IAEA. That is, IAEA inspectors did not visit the sites, and the samples from these sites were taken by the Iranians themselves and handed over to the IAEA inspectors without any way of ascertaining that the sample taken is what was handed over. IAEA director-general Yukia Amano submitted to the Obama administration’s pressure to agree to this unprofessional and non-credible procedure, violating the trust placed in him and in the IAEA as an independent, professional, and authoritative body. This is because the Iranians made their acceptance of the JCPOA conditional upon the closure of their PMD file in this exact way, so that there could be no entrance to suspect military sites. Additionally, he submitted to Iran’s refusal to allow the IAEAto question Iranian nuclear scientists, and agreed not to mention the term “PMD” in the report focusing on this issue, because Iran opposed this. Furthermore, the IAEA report on the PMD issue stated that there was indeed suspect activity in Iran, but refrained from stating that the Iranian regime was responsible for it.

These were also clarified by Iran’s representative in the IAEA, Reza Najafi, in a September 21, 2015  interview with the ISNA news agency. He said: “I deny the Reuters report that the samples from Parchin were taken in the presence of IAEA inspectors. We ourselves took the samples. This is the red line for us, and no inspector is authorized to enter a military site and conduct an inspection. The visit of Amano and his deputy was strictly a general protocol visit; they had no equipment, not even a cellphone, their visit did not last more than a few minutes, [and it was] only  in order for them to see that there is nothing suspicious and that the claims about [Parchin] were completely wrong.”[8]

See also the following MEMRI reports:

French President Macron: It Is “Absolutely Necessary” That The JCPOA “Be Supplemented… As Far As The Use Of Ballistic Missiles Is Concerned”

French President Emmanuel Macron, in an August 29, 2017 Paris speech to a conference of French ambassadors, spoke of the need to fortify the JCPOA as part of the nonproliferation regime, and proposed “absolutely necessary” supplementation of it “as far as the use of ballistic missiles is concerned” after 2025 when the JCPOA expires. He said: “[T]his agreement [JCPOA] was improved thanks to the intervention of France. There is no alternative to the nonproliferation regime and we will be extremely strict as to its implementation. The framework of this agreement is good. It can be supplemented by some work [on it] after 2025 – an absolutely necessary work as far as the use of ballistic missiles is concerned.”[9]

* A. Savyon is Director of the MEMRI Iran Studies Project; Y. Carmon is President of MEMRI.

Appendix: Additional MEMRI Reports On The Subject

 

[1] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 994, Iranian Nuclear Chief Ali Larijani: The West Should Learn the Lesson of North Korea, September 26, 2005.

[2] Kayhan (Iran), October 12, 2006. See also MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1321, Iranian Daily Close to Supreme Leader Khamenei: ‘If Any Country Such as North Korea, Concludes, for Political or Security Reasons, That It Must Have Nuclear Weapons, It Will Ultimately Succeed… Even if the Whole World Is Opposed…’ October 13, 2006.

[3] Sobh-e Sadeq (Iran), June 30, 2008.

[4] Iran Diplomacy (Iran), April 6, 2009.

[5] Resalat (Iran), April 6, 2009.

[6] Obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office, July 14, 2015.

[7] See Section Q of Annex of the JCPOA, pp 42-43, Apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/full-text-of-the-iran-nuclear-deal/1651. See also MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis Series No. 1325 – Discussion Of Iranian Violations Of JCPOA Is Futile; The Inspection Procedure Designed By The Obama Administration Precludes Actual Inspection And Proof Of Violations, August 18, 2017.

[8] ISNA (Iran), September 21, 2015.

[9] Elysee.fr, August 29, 2017.

Categories: IAEA, Iran - North Korea, Iran - secret agreements, Iran - self-inspection, Iran compliance with JCPOA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian diplomacy, Iranian long-term objectives, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama and Iran, Obama and Iran scam
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Ryan Mauro: Iran / North Korea Meetings After H-Bomb Test & EMP Threat

September 6, 2017

Ryan Mauro: Iran / North Korea Meetings After H-Bomb Test & EMP Threat, Clarion Project via YouTube, September 5, 2017

(Regime change in both Iran and North Korea could be good. But it would take more time than we can afford. — DM)

 

Categories: Iran - North Korea, Iran - regime change, Iranian EMP attack, North Korea - regime change, North korean EMP attack
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Nikki Haley: Trump Has Grounds to Declare Iran in Violation of Nuclear Deal

September 5, 2017

Nikki Haley: Trump Has Grounds to Declare Iran in Violation of Nuclear Deal, Washington Free Beacon, , September 5, 2017

Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley / Getty Images

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Tuesday said President Donald Trump would be justified if he denied Iranian compliance to the nuclear accord when it comes up for a quarterly review next month, though she said she does not know what Trump will decide.

In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., Haley detailed a strong case for Trump to declare Iran in violation of the agreement, warning the United States will be “dealing with the next North Korea” if the regime is left unchecked.

“We’re allowing them to have behavior that’s in violation of the resolution right in front of us,” she said. “We’re allowing them to sit there and actually tell the [International Atomic Energy Agency] that they’re not going to let them inspect military sites where we know they have had covert nuclear operations in the past. What I want the country to understand is we need to wake up.”

Haley said if Trump chooses to declare Iran in violation, it would not automatically trigger a U.S. withdrawal from the accord. Instead, she said the decision to leave the accord would be tossed to Congress, leaving room for lawmakers to keep in place U.S. sanctions relief.

The Trump administration has been weighing since April whether to scrap the deal, despite disagreement from U.S. allies in Europe who helped implement the agreement two years ago. Haley acknowledged European objections, but added: “This is about U.S. national security. This is not about European security.”

She said the international community’s unwillingness to challenge regime behavior “for fear of damaging the nuclear agreement” typifies the threat the deal poses to American national security, describing it as “too big to fail.”

U.S. law requires the president to notify Congress every 90 days on whether Iran is adhering to the accord, which aimed to limit Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of sanctions related to the program. The Trump administration has twice recertified the agreement, though Trump warnedin July he would not continue to do so indefinitely. The next recertification deadline is in October.

Haley said she would not predict the president’s decision, but suggested repercussions if Iran continues to deny the IAEA access to its military sites to ensure Tehran’s compliance to the accord.

“If the president finds that he cannot certify Iranian compliance, it would be a message to Congress that the administration believes either that Iran is in violation of the deal, or that the lifting of sanctions against Iran is not appropriate and proportional to the regime’s behavior, or that the lifting of sanctions is not in the U.S. national security interest, or any combination of the three,” she said.

Haley traveled to Vienna last week to pressure UN atomic watchdogs to check Iran’s undeclared military sites to verify it is not concealing activities barred by the deal.

Categories: IAEA, Iran - North Korea, Iran - self-inspection, Iran compliance with JCPOA, Iran nuke inspections, Iranian military sites, Nikki Haley, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam
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JCPOA Noncompliance — A Totalitarian Imperative

August 29, 2017

JCPOA Noncompliance — A Totalitarian Imperative, Center for Security Policy, Peter Pry, August 28, 2017

Originally published at Newsmax

Mr. President, don’t let Iran become another North Korea. Tear-up the JCPOA!

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Democracies have a blind faith that treaties can disarm totalitarian regimes. The notion that “peace in our time” is possible through a scrap of paper is an irrational addiction in Washington, D.C., the opioid of the U.S. State Department.

The free world is free because it has laws and contracts, and an ideological imperative to believe in the efficacy of negotiation and compromise. The totalitarian world is not free because its laws and contracts are lies, merely a propagandistic means to the end of tyranny, where the ideological imperative is to enslave.

Never the twain shall meet. But the free world never learns war cannot be outlawed by the Kellogg-Briand Pact of Aug. 27, 1928 or, just as absurdly, a world without nuclear weapons achieved by negotiating with North Korea an Agreed Framework (1994) or with Iran a Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA, 2015).

Perhaps the best warning against JCPOA is the long, failed history of arms control.

True believers in JCPOA should read two books, Barton Whaley’s “Covert German Rearmament 1919-1939: Deception and Misperception” and John Jordan’s “Warships After Washington.” Both books describe cheating by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan on the Versailles Treaty of June 28, 1919, the Washington Naval Treaty of  Feb. 6, 1922, the London Naval Treaty of April 22, 1930, and the Second London Naval Treaty of March 25, 1936.

Also read “The President’s Unclassified Report to the Congress on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements” (Released Feb. 1, 1985) wherein is described the USSR’s cheating on the major arms control agreements of the Cold War. The State Department is still sitting on the even more shocking classified version.

Now, Clare Lopez, a former CIA clandestine services officer who is vice president for research and analysis at the Center for Security Policy (CSP), one of the best Washington, D.C. think tanks, has written the definitive study titled “Why Trump Must Not Re-Certify Iranian JCPOA Compliance.” (Center for Security Policy, Aug. 23, 2017).

Lopez has deep expertise in the ideology of radical Islam that drives the Islamic Republic of Iran and their Islamic Revolutionary Guard to be the world’s leading sponsors of international terrorism — and why development of an Islamic Bomb is an ideological religious imperative for Iran.

The mullahs who run Iran, and the fanatical Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who run Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, will never betray Allah by surrendering their Islamic bomb — the most powerful weapon for material and spiritual victory in their global jihad.

Failure by the U.S. State Department to understand the ideological motives behind Iran’s nuclear missile program is repeating State’s catastrophic misunderstanding that the ideological imperatives of totalitarianism made inevitable North Korea’s cheating on former-President Bill Clinton’s Agreed Framework.

Totalitarian Iran and North Korea, despite profound ideological differences, are strategic partners in a nuclear missile “axis of evil” because the free world is even more abhorrent to Tehran and Pyongyang than each other.

Key Findings from Clare Lopez’s “Why Trump Must Not Re-Certify Iranian JCPOA Compliance”:

—”It is imperative that President Trump not recertify the Iranian regime as compliant with the provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) when the next deadline comes due in October 2017;”

— “Tehran is explicitly and demonstrably out of compliance with the JCPOA on numerous specific counts’”

— “The nature of the Iranian regime is self-avowedly jihadist per its own constitution, which   declares the objective of the regime is global conquest by an Islamic State under rule of Islamic Law (shariah) – thus, its nuclear weapons program is a means to achieve that objective;”

— “The Iranian regime is signatory to a host of international conventions and treaties but has a documented record of violations that lends little credence to its JCPOA pledges;”

— “The Iranian regime most notably violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for at least 14 years before getting caught and publicly revealed with a clandestine nuclear weapons program in 2002.”

— “The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) documented a long list of so-called Possible Military Dimensions (PMDs) related to the Iranian nuclear program in November 2011 that strongly suggest its assessment that Iran had an advanced nuclear weapons program and possibly nuclear warheads at that time;”

— “More recent revelations demonstrate that the Iranian regime continues to work on nuclear warheads and explosive charges to initiate the implosion sequence of a nuclear bomb at clandestine sites off-limits to IAEA inspections;”

— “Even after the July 2015 JCPOA, the Iranian regime has been confronted with credible information that it is operating more advanced centrifuges than permitted, exceeding limits on production of heavy water, and covertly procuring nuclear and missile technology outside of JCPOA-approved channels: these are all material breaches of the JCPOA;”

— “The Iranian regime’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile ‘Joint Venture’ with North Korea dates back at least to the 1990s and continues currently with especial concern about the sharing of expertise on warhead miniaturization and Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) technology;”

— “Denial of recertification of Iranian compliance with the JCPOA must be the first step in a complete review of the nuclear and ballistic missile threats from both Iran and North Korea.”

Mr. President, don’t let Iran become another North Korea. Tear-up the JCPOA!

READ GAC REPORT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY HERE (PDF)

Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He served in the Congressional EMP Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of “Blackout Wars.” 

Categories: IAEA, Iran - North Korea, Iran - self-inspection, Iran compliance with JCPOA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian ideology, Iranian military sites, Iranian nukes, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam
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The Audacity of Silence On Possible Iran-North Korea Nuclear Ties

December 16, 2016

The Audacity of Silence On Possible Iran-North Korea Nuclear Ties, Canada Free Press, , December 15, 2016

(Does the unwritten, never-produced or otherwise verified Khamenei “fatwa” against nukes — but not against missiles to deliver them —  upon which Obama, Kerry et al relied apply to North Korea? — DM)

If the silent officials of the Obama administration are confident that there has been no nuclear cooperation between Iran and North Korea, it’s time to put that assessment in writing and send it to Cruz. If, on the other hand, Clapper, Kerry, Lew or Obama himself have any information that points to nuclear collaboration, it’s past time to inform Cruz, the rest of Congress and the American public of the staggering extent of the radioactive debacle they are about to hand off to President-elect Donald Trump, under the heading of Obama’s legacy Iran nuclear deal.

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

It’s now more than eight weeks since Senator Ted Cruz sent a letter to three senior officials of the Obama administration, detailing his concerns that North Korea and Iran might be working together on developing nuclear missiles.

In particular, Cruz had a question for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Referring to the period since the Iran nuclear deal took effect on Jan. 16, Cruz asked: “Has the U.S. intelligence community observed any possible nuclear collaboration between Iran and North Korea…”?

That’s one of the huge questions looming behind the Iran nuclear deal, officially titled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which President Obama has been urging President-elect Donald Trump to preserve.

It’s a question that deserves an immediate answer. If there has been any such nuclear teamwork between Tehran and rogue, nuclear-testing Pyongyang, that would be a violation by Iran that should immediately blow up the Iran deal — which the Obama White House currently touts on its web site as “The Historic Deal that Will Prevent Iran from Acquiring a Nuclear Weapon.”

Questions about possible Iran-North Korea teamwork on nuclear weapons are well-founded, as Cruz explained in his seven-page letter, referencing numerous open-source reports (including two of my own). North Korea and Iran have been strategic allies since just after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. They have a long history of weapons deals, in which the usual arrangement has been that North Korea works on the weapons, oil-rich Iran pays the bills, and technicians shuttle between both countries.

While there’s been no official U.S. confirmation that this Iran-North Korea partnership extends to nuclear collaboration, there’s plenty of official U.S. documentation that it includes cooperation on developing ballistic missiles. That has long raised questions about whether the two countries are also in nuclear cahoots, because ballistic missiles are basically cost-efficient only as vehicles for delivering nuclear warheads.

And though it could be mere coincidence, it is striking that during the past year, in which Iran — to multi-billion dollar emolument — has officially relinquished any interest in nuclear weapons, cash-hungry North Korea has never been busier. North Korea has carried out two nuclear tests this year alone, in January and September, bringing its total number of nuclear tests to five since 2006, four of them during Obama’s presidency.

Over many years, North Korea and Iran have both carried out numerous ballistic missile tests, including multiple tests by both countries since the Iran nuclear deal took effect this January. That raises the question of why Iran, having promised not to make nuclear weapons, continues to pour resources into testing ballistic missiles. If not for nuclear weapons, then for what? One obvious question is whether North Korea’s nuclear program might be secretly doubling as a nuclear backshop for Iran.

Cruz, in his letter, raised specific worries about North Korea’s test this September of a powerful new rocket booster, which according to North Korean state media had a thrust of 80 tons — enough power to carry “a heavier, or less-minaturized nuclear warhead to the United States.” That happens to be exactly the same amount of thrust referenced in a Jan. 17 Treasury press release that mentioned the excursions of “Iranian missile technicians,” who “within the past several years” have “traveled to North Korea to work on an 80-ton rocket booster being developed by the North Korean government.”

Cruz asked Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to confirm that the capability of North Korea’s new rocket engine, tested in September, was the same as that of the North Korean rocket on which Iranian technicians had been working in North Korea.

Cruz also had some questions for Secretary of State John Kerry, including “What penalties do you plan to announce against Iran in light of its JCPOA violations?” He also wanted to know, “What is the United States doing to ensure that the $1.7 billion paid to Iran in cash earlier this year is not used to finance nuclear weapons research in North Korea?”

From all these Administration officials, Cruz requested answers no later than Nov. 1. To date, according to his staff, he has received no answers at all.

State and Treasury have not even extended the courtesy of acknowledging the letter. From Clapper’s office, at National Intelligence, came a message in October, saying they had received the letter, and would respond. They have not.

That’s an alarming silence. For years, Obama administration officials have dodged questions about possible Iran-North Korea nuclear teamwork by reciting the talking point that any signs of such cooperation would be cause for serious concern. Now it seems Administration officials are skirting even that customary evasion. Why?

My own queries to State, Treasury and National Intelligence, asking why they had not answered Cruz, ran into the same blank walls. State and Treasury made no response. National Intelligence emailed back on Dec. 6 only to say that they had received Cruz’s letter, and “are working to respond as soon as possible.”

Obama’s administration has racked up a record that suggests silence on Iran-related issues is not a good sign. Back in January, when Obama celebrated a $1.7 billion settlement of an old financial dispute with Iran, a number of lawmakers wrote to the Administration asking for details of this transaction, and whether it was a ransom for Iran’s release of American prisoners.

The Administration took weeks to provide even partial replies, denied paying ransom and omitted entirely the manner in which the $1.7 billion had been dispatched to Iran. It took more than six months for Congress and the press to eke out of the Administration the information that the entire $1.7 billion, converted into European hard currency, had been paid to Iran in stacks of cash — hard to trace and convenient chiefly for illicit purposes — with the first installment of $400 million conveyed, ransom-style, on the same day as the prisoner release, and held in Geneva until the airplane carrying the released American prisoners was on its way out of Iran.

For the Obama administration, invested in the Iran nuclear deal as one of Obama’s signature legacies, there is tremendous temptation to ignore or bury any evidence that Iran is cheating. There is also enormous incentive to downplay another of Obama’s legacies: the dramatic enhancement, since he took office in 2009, of the nuclear arsenal and proficiency of North Korea, now honing its increasingly powerful missiles, beefing up its stockpile of nuclear fuel, and preparing for its sixth nuclear test.

If the silent officials of the Obama administration are confident that there has been no nuclear cooperation between Iran and North Korea, it’s time to put that assessment in writing and send it to Cruz. If, on the other hand, Clapper, Kerry, Lew or Obama himself have any information that points to nuclear collaboration, it’s past time to inform Cruz, the rest of Congress and the American public of the staggering extent of the radioactive debacle they are about to hand off to President-elect Donald Trump, under the heading of Obama’s legacy Iran nuclear deal.

Categories: Iran - North Korea, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, North Korean nukes, Obama and Iran scam, Obama and North Korea
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China to Obama: America Forced Norks to get Nukes and Must Negotiate a Deal

September 20, 2016

China to Obama: America Forced Norks to get Nukes and Must Negotiate a Deal, Dan Miller’s Blog, September 20, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

In an article titled North Korean Nukes, South Korea, Japan, China and Obama, posted the day after North Korea’s most recent nuke test, September 9th, I contended that China would not honor Obama’s request to make North Korea stop developing and testing nukes. China has remained a faithful ally of North Korea since the end stage of the Korean Conflict and “sees Obama, not as the representative of the world’s greatest power, but as a joke. He has no clout internationally and is a national embarrassment.”  NB: I had hoped to publish this article more than a week ago, but my internet was down or at best intermittent from September 13th until September 19th.)

I was right, but it’s a bit worse than I had thought.

On September 12th, an article was published by Xinhua titled China urges U.S. to take responsibility on Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. Xinhua is

the official press agency of the People’s Republic of China. Xinhua is the biggest and most influential media organization in China. Xinhua is a ministry-level institution subordinate to the Chinese central government. Its president is a member of theCentral Committee of China’s Communist Party.

According to Xinhua,

U.S. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter reportedly called for further pressure on the DPRK last Friday after the country carried out a new nuclear test and said China bears “responsibility” for tackling the problem. [Emphasis added.]

The essence of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue is the conflict between the DPRK and the United States, spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a press conference. [Emphasis added.]

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a close neighbor of the DPRK, China has made unremitting efforts to maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and safeguard the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, Hua said.

A statement released by the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK Sunday said the United States compelled the DPRK to develop nuclear warheads, and the nuclear threat it has constantly posed to the DPRK for decades is the engine that has pushed the DPRK to this point. [Emphasis added.]

Blindly increasing the pressure and the resulting bounce-back will only make the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula “a firm knot,” Hua said, calling for responsibility from all relevant parties.

Hua reiterated that China will remain committed to resolving issues concerning the Peninsula through dialogue to realize long-term peace and stability.

China strongly urges all parties to speak and act cautiously with the larger picture in mind, avoid provoking each other and make genuine efforts to achieve denuclearization, peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, Hua said.

. . . .

“We have seen the twists and turns in the situation on the Korean Peninsula since the six-party talks have stalled,” Hua said, noting that it proves that simple sanctions cannot solve the issue. [Emphasis added.]

Hua said the security concerns of parties on the Korean Peninsula must and can only be resolved in a way that serves the interests of all parties.

Any unilateral action based on one’s self-interest will lead to a dead end, and it will not help resolve one’s security concerns but will only aggravate the tension, complicate the issue, and make it more difficult to achieve relevant goals, Hua said. [Emphasis added.]

The six-party talks, involving China, the DPRK, the United States, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Russia and Japan, were a multilateral mechanism aimed at solving the Korean Peninusla nuclear issue. The talks began in 2003 and stalled in December 2008. The DPRK quit the talks in April 2009.

“Resuming the six-party talks is difficult, but we cannot give up easily ,” Hua said.

China will continue to keep close communication with relevant parties and call on them to return to the right track of solving issues related to the Korean Peninsula through dialogue and negotiation, the spokesperson said.

China clearly appears to be following the line of Kim Jong-un on why North Korea needs nukes:

The Obama administration cannot engage in successful negotiations with North Korea, for several reasons. They are, in no particular order: Obama will be gone in about four months; Kerry is Obama’s Secretary of State; The Obama-Clinton-Kerry Iran Scam gave the Islamic Republic everything it sought and, at best, left Iran on the highway to nukes. North Korea and Iran are different in at least one major respect: Iran claimed that it did not have nukes and had not tried to develop them; Supreme Leader Khamenei was claimed to have issued a fatwa against the acquisition, development and use of nukes — despite propaganda videos showing how Iran will use nukes against the “great and little Satan.” North Korea has and has tested five nukes. Kim brags about them and threatens to use them.

The nuke threat

38 North is a think tank largely devoted to obtaining and publishing reliable information about North Korea’s nuke and missile programs. An article there by , published on September 12th, concludes:

What are the greatest threats from the rapidly expanding North Korean nuclear program? Left unchecked, Pyongyang will likely develop the capability to reach the continental United States with a nuclear tipped missile in a decade or so. Much more troubling for now is that its recent nuclear and missile successes may give Pyongyang a false sense of confidence and dramatically change regional security dynamics. The likely ability of the DPRK to put nuclear weapons on target anywhere in South Korea and Japan and even on some US assets in the Pacific greatly complicates the regional military picture. That situation would be exacerbated if Pyongyang decides to field tactical nuclear weapons as its arsenal expands and its confidence in its nuclear arsenal grows.

More bombs and better bombs also increase the potential of accidents and miscalculations with greater consequences as the number and sophistication of bombs increase. Rendering the nuclear enterprise safe and secure in case of internal turmoil or a chaotic transition in the North becomes more difficult. We also cannot rule out that a financially desperate leadership may risk the sale of fissile materials or other nuclear assets, perhaps to non-state actors. [Emphasis added.]

So, what to do? The latest nuclear test demonstrates conclusively that attempting to sanction the DPRK into submission and waiting for China to exert leverage over Pyongyang’s nuclear program do not work. Increasing sanctions and adding missile defenses in South Korea to that mix will also not suffice and make China even less likely to cooperate. What’s missing is diplomacy as much as Washington may find it repugnant to deal with the Kim regime.

On September 20th, North Korea announced that it had tested a new long-range rocket engine, suggesting that it “can be used for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which is capable, in theory, of hitting targets on the U.S. mainland.” The September 9th nuke test is claimed to have involved “a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a ballistic missile.” How close in North Korea to being able to nuke the U.S. mainland? I don’t know and don’t want to find out by having it happen.

Can diplomacy, even if undertaken by a new administration after Obama leaves office, be successful? Continued sanctions got Iran to engage in negotiations; both Iran and Obama’s America very much wanted the sanctions lifted so that Iran would become an honorable member of the community of nations. There are few if any significant sanctions to lift on North Korea and China will not impose or enforce any; China’s role has been to help North Korea evade sanctions.

In China Won’t Stop Kim Jong-un. The U.S. Must Stand Up to Both of Them, published by Slate Magazine on September 13,  had some perhaps useful suggestions:

[T]he United States should rally the same sort of campaign that revved up the pressure against Iran before those nuclear talks got underway. In other words, the international community should apply sanctions not only against North Korea but also against all institutions that do business with North Korea—an action that would affect some major Chinese banks, which provide it with energy supplies, other goods, and hard currency. [Emphasis added.]

Yes, this would stir tensions in U.S.-China relations; but so do a lot of other actions, many of them instigated by China (for instance, the dodgy territorial claims in the South China Sea), and in this case, any perceptions of American aggression would be offset, to some degree, by a realization—at least by some Chinese officials—that it’s time for Beijing to face up to its problem and reassess its strategic priorities accordingly. (Longtime China-watchers say that some of Xi’s senior comrades have been advocating tougher action against Kim.)

He also suggests that if an end is put to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and work, America should agree to terminate its no longer necessary THAAD deployments in South Korea and Japan. Further, the next president

should take steps, especially with China, to prevent Pyongyang from deploying a nuclear missile; but if that proves fruitless, he or she should make very clear that North Korea’s use of nuclear weapons—or even a conventional invasion of South Korea (which might be accompanied by a brandishing of nukes to deter anyone from coming to Seoul’s aid)—will be regarded as an attack on the United States and will be dealt with accordingly. There should be no ambiguity about this. Kim Jong-un may be crazy, but his eccentricities have always been in the service of his survival—and he should understand that he’s putting his survival on the line. Daniel Sneider, associate director of Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, thinks we should deploy more nuclear-capable aircraft on U.S. bases in Asia to drive this point home fiercely.

It seems worth noting that among the reasons to expect that a Russian-assisted attack on South Korea would be successful, which Kim Il-sung suggested to Stalin in 1950, was that Secretary of State Dean Atcheson had delivered an important address in which he listed the nations to the defense of which America would come if attacked. South Korea was not on the list. As I observed here in November of 2010,

When Kim il-Sung secretly visited Moscow between March 30 and April 25, he assured Stalin that his attack would succeed in three days: there would be an uprising by some two hundred thousand party members and he was convinced that the United States would not intervene. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s January 12, 1950 speech was persuasive evidence. There, Secretary Acheson had omitted South Korea from a list of nations which the United States would defend if attacked. Stalin gave the go-ahead.

Conclusions

China has encouraged North Korean nuclearization and wants America and her allies, principally South Korea, to cease their “provocations” against the Kim regime. Yet Kim thrives on, and encourages his supporters by, engaging in provocations far more serious and dramatic than anything thus far done by America and South Korea. It seems likely that the North Korean nuke – missile problem will continue until Kim is (a) taken out and (b) replaced with someone less narcissistic and more interested in feeding his people than his ego. Whether such a replacement will emerge is unknown. However, if a Kim clone emerges instead, he seems likely to be more concerned than Kim about his prospects for a long and happy life, even with protection from China.

Categories: China, Foreign policy, Iran - North Korea, Iran - sanctions relief, Iran scam, Japan, North Korea sanctions, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama and China, Obama and Iran scam, Obama and North Korea, South Korea
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Are North Koreans fighting in Syria? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

March 26, 2016

Are North Koreans fighting in Syria? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds, Stars and Stripes, Adam Taylor, The Washington Post, March 25, 2016

(North Korea and Iran also have long-standing ties, Iran has substantial funds due to the Iran Scam, and North Korea is desperate for money. — DM)

This week, representatives of Western-backed Syrian opposition delegation in Geneva told Russian state media that President Bashar Assad had a surprising new ally on the Syrian battlefield: militia units from North Korea.

“Two North Korean units are there, which are Chalma-1 and Chalma-7,” Asaad az-Zoubi, head of the High Negotiations Committee to Syrian peace talks in the Swiss city, reportedly told Tass news agency Tuesday.

In any other context, the presence of soldiers from the internationally isolated and geographically distant country North Korea might seem absurd. However, the civil war in Syria has emerged as a mini-world war over the past five years, with foreign fighters from at least 86 countries believed to be fighting there.

The Syrian regime headed by Assad is already known to have the support of a number of international partners, including Russia, Iran and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. And this isn’t the first time that there have been reports of soldiers from the Hermit Kingdom being involved in the conflict.

In 2013, Rami Abdulrahman, director of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Saudi-owned Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat that a small number of North Koreans were in Syria, to provide logistical and planning support.

“The exact number of the officers is not known, but there are definitely 11 to 15 North Korean officers, most of whom speak Arabic,” Abdulrahman said, according to a translation published by South Korean outlet Chosun Ilbo. Abdulrahman’s report was followed up the next year by another from Jane’s Defence Weekly, which reported that North Korea was assisting helping Syria improve its missile capabilities.

These reports are hard to confirm, but many experts believe they are credible: North Korea and Syria have had a military relationship for decades and there’s little sign it’s been shaken recently.

“The North Koreans have been involved with Syria since the late-1960s,” says Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., a contributor to 38 North, an analysis website affiliated with the U.S.-Korea Institute at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. That involvement included providing advisers and air defense troops immediately after the 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel, Bermudez says, and stretches to the modern era, when North Korea is believed to have provided technology used to help build the secret al-Kibar nuclear site in Syria, which was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in 2007.

“Syria is one of North Korea’s longest standing and deepest political and military relationships,” Andrea Berger of the Royal United Services Institute adds. In a report published last year, Berger had described how the relationship was originally based upon military training but eventually graduated to weapons sales, including ballistic missiles and chemical weapons. Remarkably, the relationship between North Korea and Syria does appear to have survived to the present day, Berger noted, despite U.N. sanctions on North Korea which should, in theory, curtail them: It may even have thrived, with state media in both countries loudly publicizing the regular high-level meetings between Syria and North Korea.

Bermudez says that since the Arab Spring began, there have been a number of reports that small teams of North Korean soldiers were providing logistical support to the Syrian regime. However, he notes that some more recent seem to suggest North Korean soldiers are actively playing a role in fighting in Syria. “While I can’t confirm these reports,” Bermudez says, “it would not be out of character for North Korea to do so, as they historically have provided small ‘regime support’ forces to countries in crisis in Africa.”

Berger agrees. “Military to military cooperation between the two countries, including on-the-ground presence of North Korean troops, would be in keeping with the history of their bilateral relationship,” she says.

(Bermudez also notes that the reference to North Korean units being named “Chalma” could be a reference to the Kalma airfield in North Korea.)

Not everyone is so sure. Philip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland who studies groups allied to the Syrian regime, says that he has also recently seen a number of vague reports about North Koreans fighting for Assad in Syrian news sources that are sympathetic to the regime. However, he wasn’t sure of their accuracy.

“Often, they would confuse Afghan Shia Hazara fighters for ‘Chinese’ or ‘Koreans,’ ” Smyth says, referring to an Afghan minority known to fight alongside the Syrian regime.

North Korean authorities have denied any military involvement in the past, with state news agency KCNA writing in 2013 that “foreign media” were “floating misinformation.”

But with North Korea increasingly cash-strapped, analysts have noted that it has increasingly sent citizens abroad to earn foreign money. These citizens often work in conditions that Marzuki Darusman, the special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, has referred to as “forced labor.” For Pyongyang, perhaps the Syrian war is a payday.

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When North Korea Tests a Nuke, Assume It’s Iran’s as Well

January 13, 2016

When North Korea Tests a Nuke, Assume It’s Iran’s as Well, Clarion Project, Ryan Mauro, January 13, 2016

North-Korean-Nuclear-Test-HPA previous nuclear Test made by North Korea (Photo: Video screenshot)

Given the spotty record of U.S. intelligence assessments (to say the least), the West must operate under the assumption that there isn’t an Iranian WMD problem and a North Korean WMD problem, but an Iranian-North Korean WMD problem.

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

North Korea briefly reclaimed the global press’ attention again by claiming to have tested a hydrogen bomb. While coverage focused on whether that was an exaggeration, the press missed a much more important question: Was this test only for Kim Jong-Un or was it also for the Iranian regime?

The North Korean and Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile programs should be seen as a single entity, as should be their shared cyber warfare programs. The advance of one is an advance of the other. Differences in their activity should be seen as a common-sense division of labor. Gordon Chang, a prominent expert on Asian affairs, has written about the likelihood that this is the case.

Last May, an Iranian opposition group that has accurately identified hidden nuclear sites in the past reported that it had specific intelligence about North Korean nuclear and missile experts secretly visiting Iran. Intelligence analyst Ilana Freedman said in January 2014 that her sources said a relocation of major parts of Iran’s nuclear program to North Korea began as early as December 2012.

For Iran, it is best to let the North Koreans put the finishing touches on the most provocative nuclear and missile work. Whereas the Iranian regime does suffer from sanctions and must always keep the 2009 Green Revolution in the back of its mind, North Korea thrives off isolation and international provocation.

North Korea has nothing to lose and can only gain by such an arrangement. Kim Jong-Un’s regime has already crossed the nuclear pariah threshold, so it might as well let its Iranian allies take the lucrative deal offered by the West. It has been content to spend $1.1-$3.2 billion each year on it. Plus, the deal puts Iran in a more advantageous position  and its economic improvements can help it invest more in North Korea’s activity.

The good news is that this latest test—North Korea’s fourth— does not appear to be more powerful than its last one, indicating no significant advance in technology. RAND Corporation analyst Bruce Bennett says North Korea is still working on the “basics” of a nuclear fission bomb.

It is hard for some to accept that an Islamist theocracy like that in Iran would work with a cultish communist dictatorship like North Korea, but there is nothing in either one’s ideology that would prevent such cooperation. In fact, North Korea’s success in building a nuclear arsenal actually encourages Iran to see nuclear weapons as a key lesson for the Islamic Revolution.

“The entire world may well consider North Korea a failed state, but from the view point of [Iran], North Korea is a success story and a role model: A state which remains true to its revolutionary beliefs and defies the Global Arrogance,” Ali Alfoneh, an expert on the Iranian regime, told the Washington Free Beacon.

Given the spotty record of U.S. intelligence assessments (to say the least), the West must operate under the assumption that there isn’t an Iranian WMD problem and a North Korean WMD problem, but an Iranian-North Korean WMD problem.

Categories: Iran - North Korea, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, North Korean H Bomb test, North Korean nukes
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After Bomb Test, North Korea, Iran Continue Illicit Nuke Cooperation

January 8, 2016

After Bomb Test, North Korea, Iran Continue Illicit Nuke Cooperation, Washington Free Beacon, , January 7, 2016

(Please see also, North Korea and Iran: The Nuclear Duo. — DM)

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, right, shakes hands with a top North Korean leader, Kim Yong Nam, at the start of a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2013. Iran's supreme leader formally endorsed Hasan Rouhani as president Saturday, allowing the moderate cleric to take charge of a country weakened by economic sanctions over its nuclear program. Kim Yong Nam is in Tehran to attend a ceremony when Rouhani will take the oath of office in parliament Sunday. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, right, shakes hands with a top North Korean leader, Kim Yong Nam, at the start of a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2013.

Iran won’t even need to make any progress on its domestic nuclear program—once it perfects its ballistic missiles it could purchase a weapon from North Korea and all of the conditions and monitoring in the [nuclear deal] would be ineffective in detecting or stopping that. . . .

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

One day after North Korea claimed to have successfully tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb, lawmakers and regional experts are warning that Pyongyang and Tehran are continuing an illicit clandestine partnership enabling the rogue nations to master nuclear technology.

Loopholes in the nuclear pact recently reached between Iran and the international community have allowed the Islamic Republic and North Korea to boost their nuclear cooperation, which includes the exchange of information and technology, according to material provided to Congress over the past year.

Iran is believed to be housing some of its key nuclear weapons-related technology in North Korea in order to avoid detection by international inspectors. Iranian dissidents once tied to the regime have disclosed that both countries have consulted on a nuclear warhead.

Following the test, however, the White House publicly denied that Iran and North Korea are working together, according to multiple statements issued by the administration on Wednesday.

Still, the Iranian-North Korean nuclear axis is coming under renewed scrutiny by lawmakers in light of Pyongyang’s most recent detonation, which is the fourth of its kind in recent years.

Congressional critics now warn that the Obama administration cannot be trusted to clamp down on North Korea given its recent efforts to appease Iran by dropping a new set of sanctions that were meant to target its illicit ballistic weapons program.

Iran, on the other hand, thinks that the bomb test will give it “media breathing space” by drawing attention away from its own nuclear pursuits, according to Persian-language reports carried by state-controlled media outlets closely aligned with the country’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.

“The entire world may well consider North Korea a failed state, but from the view point of the [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps], North Korea is a success story and a role model: A state which remains true to its revolutionary beliefs and defies the Global Arrogance,” said Ali Alfoneh, an expert on the inner workings of the Iranian regime.

Prominent members of Congress are now warning that North Korea’s latest nuclear test is a sign of what could come from Iran, which they claim is closely following the North Korean nuclear playbook.

Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R, Fla.), chair of House’s foreign relations subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, described North Korea’s latest test as “a precursor to what we can expect from Iran in a few years.”

Iran, Ros-Lehtinen told the Washington Free Beacon, “is following the North Korea playbook” and “stands to be the main beneficiary of Pyongyang’s continued nuclear progress.”

“Iran and North Korea have a history of collaboration on military programs and have long been suspected of collaborating on nuclear related programs,” she said, noting that the Iran deal provides the Islamic Republic with the cash necessary to purchase advanced nuclear technology.

“Iran won’t even need to make any progress on its domestic nuclear program—once it perfects its ballistic missiles it could purchase a weapon from North Korea and all of the conditions and monitoring in the [nuclear deal] would be ineffective in detecting or stopping that,” she said.

“Let’s not forget, Iranians have reportedly been present at each of North Korea’s previous nuclear tests,” Sen. David Perdue (R., Ga.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “We cannot turn a blind eye to ongoing ties between North Korea and Iran. President Obama must act now to stop these rogue nations from supporting each other’s nuclear weapons efforts aimed at harming America and our allies.”

Rep. Patrick Meehan (R., Pa.) expressed concern that Iran is following in North Korea’s footsteps, and that the nuclear deal will collapse just as  Bill Clinton’s agreement with North Korea did in the mid-1990s.

“This test is just the latest sign that North Korea is a regime hell-bent on building and developing a sophisticated nuclear program,” Meehan said. “The passage of the 1995 nuclear deal with [North Korea] came with it promises from the Clinton administration of accountability and transparency for Kim’s regime.”

“Those same sort of assurances are echoed today by the Obama White House as it seeks to assure us that its own deal with Iran will be more successful,” Meehan said. “The Iran deal and the North Korean deal were sold with the same promises, the same assurances, to the American people, sometimes even word-for-word.”

“When you put the rhetoric of the 90’s and the North next to the rhetoric of today and Iran, it’s hard to tell the difference,” he added.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), a chief advocate for increased economic sanctions on Iran, highlighted what he called North Korea’s “alarming record” of “cooperating on missile development with Iran.”

With Iran set to receive billions of dollars in sanctions relief later this month, regional experts have informed Congress that the nuclear deal “creates conditions and incentives that are highly likely to result in the expansion” of Iran and North Korea’s illicit nuclear exchange, according to testimony submitted last year by Claudia Rossett, an expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The deal fails to “cut off the pathways between Iran and nuclear-proliferating North Korea” and even has made “it safer for Iran to cheat,” according to Rossett’s testimony.

Additionally, sanctions relief gives Iran a chance to “go shopping in North Korea,” she said.

The Obama administration denied the ties between Iran and North Korea, telling reporters on Wednesday that “they’re entirely two different issues altogether.”

“We consider the Iran deal as a completely separate issue handled in a completely different manner than were the—than was the Agreed Framework with North Korea,” said John Kirby, a State Department spokesman, echoing similar remarks issued by the White House.

The administration’s hesitance to link the two nuclear issues has angered some critics of the Iran deal.

“This is exactly the kind of dishonest incoherence that the Iran nuclear deal forces its advocates to defend,” said Omri Ceren, the managing director of press and strategy at The Israel Project, a D.C.-based organization that works with journalists on Middle East issues.

“The Obama administration can’t admit that the [deal] provided the Iranians with hundreds of billions of dollars, some of which they’re going to invest in nuclear research beyond their borders, allowing them to get sanctions relief while advancing their program anyway,” Ceren said. “So instead they have to deny that there are links between Iran and North Korea’s nuclear program, even though that’s laughable.”

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