Posted tagged ‘Iranian miliary sites’

Clare Lopez: Trump Takes Aim at Iran’s ‘Clandestine Nuclear Weapons Program’

October 18, 2017

Clare Lopez: Trump Takes Aim at Iran’s ‘Clandestine Nuclear Weapons Program’, Breitbart,  Clare M. Lopez, October 17, 2017

AFP

Iran remains a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is obligated under the terms of that agreement to disclose all nuclear sites to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Of course, it never has. In fact, of all the facilities now known to be part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, not one was ever reported first by the Iranian regime itself.

Denying re-certification for the Iranian nuclear deal is an important first step as is the Treasury Department designation and sanctioning of the IRGC. Designating the IRGC to the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list and complete withdrawal from the JCPOA should follow. Seeking the support of our closest allies and partners to implement a follow-on set of measures, including sanctions and increasingly coercive commercial, diplomatic, legal, military, and political steps, is also critical if we are to ensure that this Tehran regime never has the ability to deploy deliverable nuclear weapons that threaten any of us.

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President Donald J. Trump put the Iranian regime on notice with his speech last week: the time when the United States (U.S.) government would turn a blind eye to its decades-long drive for deliverable nuclear weapons is over. Citing a long litany of destabilizing, rogue behavior on the part of Tehran, the president announced he would not re-certify Iranian compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Iran nuclear deal.

That is a necessary and first step, but must be followed up with a clear U.S. strategy for ending Iranian support to Islamic terror proxies and the criminal regime of Syrian Bashar al-Assad, its reckless regional aggression, human rights abuses against its own people, and above all, development of an entire range of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) – biological, chemical, and nuclear – as well as the ballistic missiles on which to deliver them.

By making explicit references to “Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program” and “illicit nuclear program,” President Trump acknowledged what many have known for a long time: there has never been a time since 1988, when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini first ordered his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to “get the bomb,” that Iran has not had a clandestine nuclear weapons program. The world first learned publicly about that illicit program in 2002, when the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) blew the lid off the program with revelations about places whose names are now well-known, including Natanz and Isfahan. Iran remains a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is obligated under the terms of that agreement to disclose all nuclear sites to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Of course, it never has. In fact, of all the facilities now known to be part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, not one was ever reported first by the Iranian regime itself.

One of the most glaring problems with the terms of the JCPOA is that there is no obligatory mechanism under which the Iranian regime is compelled to open facilities to IAEA inspection where it is suspected that nuclear weapons work is being done. Iran’s leadership has made quite clear in numerous public statements that it will never allow inspectors onto military sites it declares off-limits. Unfortunately, this means there is no chance under the terms of the JCPOA for IAEA inspectors ever to clear up the many unresolved “Possible Military Dimensions” of Iran’s nuclear program – involving nuclear warhead work, explosive charges to initiate the implosion sequence of a nuclear bomb, and more – that were enumerated in the November 2011 quarterly report on the Iranian nuclear program by the IAEA Board of Governors.

On 11 October 2017, the NCRI issued a new report, entitled “Iran’s Nuclear Core: Uninspected Military Sites,” which reveals four more of the clandestine sites where the Iranian military is conducting nuclear weapons R&D. While Iran’s alarming and destabilizing geo-strategic behavior certainly provides more than enough reason for the president to find the JCPOA not in America’s national security interests, it is the Iranian regime’s blatant violation of the nuclear NPT as well as material breaches of the JCPOA (especially section T, that deals with nuclear warhead work), that fully justify U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal entirely.

Denying re-certification for the Iranian nuclear deal is an important first step as is the Treasury Department designation and sanctioning of the IRGC. Designating the IRGC to the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list and complete withdrawal from the JCPOA should follow. Seeking the support of our closest allies and partners to implement a follow-on set of measures, including sanctions and increasingly coercive commercial, diplomatic, legal, military, and political steps, is also critical if we are to ensure that this Tehran regime never has the ability to deploy deliverable nuclear weapons that threaten any of us.

Clare M. Lopez is the Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy.

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.” 

All Nuke Inspectors Require Approval From Iran’s Intelligence Agency

August 17, 2015

All Nuke Inspectors Require Approval From Iran’s Intelligence Agency, Washington Free Beacon, , August 17, 2015

"AbbasAbbas Araqchi / AP

[W]e learned that no Americans are allowed on the inspection teams and that Iran will do its own soil sampling,” Rubin added. “Now the Iranians claim that all IAEA inspectors have to be vetted by Iranian intelligence? It really can’t get any worse than this.”

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A senior Iranian official declared on Monday that international nuclear inspectors would only be permitted into the country once they receive approval from the Islamic Republic’s Intelligence Ministry, putting another roadblock between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran’s contested nuclear sites.

Sayyed Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister and one of the top negotiators in talks that led to the recently inked nuclear deal, told the country’s state-controlled press that Iran’s intelligence apparatus must approve of any inspector who is issued a visa to enter Iran.

This requirement could complicate efforts to prove to the world that Iran is being fully transparent and that nuclear inspectors inside the country are neutral.

Iran has already stated that no American inspector would be permitted into the country under the deal. The accord also grants Iran a 24-day notice period before inspectors enter any site suspected of being used for nuclear weapons work.

“Any individual, out of IAEA’s Inspection group, who is not approved by the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot enter the country as the agency’s inspector,” Araqchi was quoted as telling the Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency (ICANA), a government news outlet, according to a translation performed by the CIA’s Open Source Center (OSC).

This type of screening is fully permitted under the nuclear accord, Araqchi said.

The deal “has been set within the framework of the additional protocol and all limitations and supervisions are within the protocol and not beyond that,” he said.

Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and expert on rogue regimes, said that Obama administration’s promise of strict inspections is a fallacy.

“Administration claims that this was the best possible agreement are pathetic. First Kerry abandoned anytime, anywhere inspections,” Rubin said. “Then Obama claimed this was the most rigorous counter-proliferation regime ever, never mind that it failed to rise to the Libya and South Africa precedents.”

“Then we learned that no Americans are allowed on the inspection teams and that Iran will do its own soil sampling,” Rubin added. “Now the Iranians claim that all IAEA inspectors have to be vetted by Iranian intelligence? It really can’t get any worse than this.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei also affirmed on Monday that there is no way for the United States to “infiltrate” Iran under the deal.

The “Americans seek to make an excuse to infiltrate Iran through a [nuclear] deal whose fate and whether it will be rejected or approved is not yet certain either in Iran or the U.S.,” Khamenei was quoted as saying on Monday.

“With all our strong capabilities, we will not allow Americans’ economic, political or cultural infiltration or political presence in Iran,” he added.

While Obama administration officials have touted the agreement as a first step toward moderating Iran’s rogue behavior, Khamenei insisted that “Tehran’s policy toward the U.S. will remain unchanged regardless of the ultimate fate of the” nuclear deal, according to Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

Iran also will continue to back any country that seeks Israel’s destruction.

“Iran fully defends the [axis of anti-Israeli] resistance in the region, including the Palestinian resistance, and will support anyone who confronts Israel and hammers the Zionist regime,” the Supreme Leader said.

Meanwhile, further details of secret talks between the Obama administration and Iran in 2012 have come to light.

The White House purportedly made overtures to Iran, guaranteeing its right to enrich uranium, in 2012, while President Barack Obama was locked in an election with Republican challenger Mitt Romney, according to Iranian Vice President Akbar Salehi, who was a senior member of the negotiating team.

This message from the U.S. leadership was then brought to then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Salehi, whose remarks were translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

The Iranian official disclosed the U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz was appointed to the U.S. team per a request by Salahi, who knew him from his time as a doctoral student at MIT.

“Salehi added that Khamenei agreed to open a direct channel of negotiations between Iran and the U.S. on the condition that the talks would yield results from the start and would not deal with any other issue, especially not with U.S.-Iran relations,” according to MEMRI. “Following this, Salehi demanded, via the Omani mediator Sultan Qaboos, that the U.S. recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium, and received a letter from Qaboos expressing such American recognition, which he relayed to Ahmadinejad.”

Rubin said Congress should carefully consider the new details emerging about the deal and its ability to reign in Iran’s nuclear program

“There really is only one question before Congress now: Is Obama’s legacy and Kerry’s single-minded desire for a Nobel Prize worth sacrificing U.S. security and enabling Iran to maintain an industrial-strength nuclear program?” he asked. “Because this agreement is not about stopping Iran’s nuclear program or security; it is about ego and naiveté. “