China Warns Of Rising Nuclear Threat From North Korea – Lou Dobbs, Fox News via You Tube, April 23, 2015
(The first four minutes is about the mess in Yemen and the last four minutes is about the North Korean nuclear threat. — DM)
Posted tagged ‘Nukes’
Empowering Iran
April 24, 2015Empowering Iran, Weekly Standard, Lee Smith, May 4, 2015 (print date)
Obama’s foreign policy legacy will be to have tied America’s fortunes to an imperial and nuclear Iran governed by an ambitious and ruthless anti-American regime.
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Last week, the Obama administration urged Saudi Arabia to halt its air campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who have wrested control of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The White House’s professed concern was that Riyadh’s Operation Decisive Storm was killing too many civilians. Unfortunately, that’s hardly surprising since Iranian proxies, like Hezbollah and Hamas, typically stash their missiles and rockets in civilian areas. Presumably, the Houthis have read from the same playbook. The effect of the administration’s diplomatic efforts, then, was to protect Iranian arms in Yemen. And this, in turn, the administration no doubt believes, protects Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran.
Houthis rally against Saudi Arabia, April 1. Newscom
In public, Obama is eager to show that the United States still stands by its traditional allies, like Riyadh. But behind the scenes, it’s clear that the White House’s real priority is partnering with Iran. Sure, the White House dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Arabian Sea, but this was not to stop Iran from shipping arms to the Houthis. As Obama himself explained, America’s blue-water Navy was present to ensure freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf. The notion that the White House really intended to interdict Iranian arms shipments beggars belief. For more than four years Obama has done nothing to stop Bashar al-Assad from killing nearly a quarter of a million people in Syria, lest he endanger his nuclear agreement with Iran. With a deal so close, Obama is certainly not going to risk what he sees as the capstone of his foreign policy legacy by disarming Iranian allies in Yemen.
The problem is that by protecting his nuclear agreement with Iran, the president has protected and empowered the Islamic Republic. Tehran may boast of controlling four Arab capitals, but the reality is that its regional position is a house of cards. Pull out one of those Arab capitals, or the nuclear program, and Iran’s burgeoning empire quickly collapses. It’s Obama who is propping it up.
It’s interesting to imagine how these last six years might have gone for the Islamic Republic had the White House not been so determined to have a nuclear deal. Perhaps the Tehran regime would have been toppled when the Green Movement took to the streets in June 2009 to protest a fraudulent election if the American government had decided to back the opposition early, openly, and resourcefully. Perhaps another administration would at least have seen that uprising as an opportunity to gain leverage over the Iranian regime. Not Obama. He wanted a nuclear deal with the existing regime.
Another White House might have backed the Syrian rebels in order to bring down Assad. Indeed, a good portion of Obama’s cabinet counseled as much. To topple Tehran’s key Arab ally would have been the biggest strategic setback to Iran in 20 years, said Gen. James Mattis. Obama chose to leave Assad alone, and even ignored his own red line against the use of chemical weapons. Instead of the airstrikes he threatened on Syrian regime targets, Obama made a deal to ostensibly remove the chemical weapons that Assad is still employing.
As Assad’s position became weaker, Hezbollah entered the Syrian war to prop him up. The Iranian-backed militia was stretched thin between Syria and Lebanon, but the Obama administration helped the terrorist organization cover its flank by sharing intelligence to keep Sunni car bombs out of Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut. Another administration might have understood this as an opportunity to weaken Iran’s position in Damascus and Beirut, but not Obama. He had his eyes on the prize.
In sum, over the last six years, almost all of Iran’s advances in the region, including its move into Iraq to fill the vacuum in Baghdad after the American withdrawal from that country, has taken place with either the overt or tacit assistance of Obama. The White House brags about it. Israel might have attacked Iranian nuclear facilities, as one administration official told the press, but we deterred Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from striking. If the Iranians strut with confidence these days, that’s because they understand who has their back.
The nuclear deal, as the president has explained, means that within a little more than a decade, Iran’s breakout time will be down to zero—which is a nice way of saying the clerical regime will have the bomb. The likely result is that the agreement will ensure Iran’s regional position long after Obama’s presidency is around to safeguard it. It will strengthen the hand of the hardliners. It is not Rouhani or Zarif or other so-called moderates who hold the nuclear file, but Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. And in the future, American policymakers will have a vital interest in ensuring there are no internal regime fights over who controls the bomb.
In other words, Obama’s foreign policy legacy will be to have tied America’s fortunes to an imperial and nuclear Iran governed by an ambitious and ruthless anti-American regime.
Progressives at the Poker Table
April 24, 2015Progressives at the Poker Table, Mishpacha Magazine, Jonathan Rosenblum, via Jewish Media Resources, April 24, 2015
A comparison of the progressive approach to the threat of climate warming and that of a nuclear-armed Iran offers interesting insights into the progressive mind.
Let’s start with climate warming, which according to the best measures, inconveniently stopped about 18 years ago. First, what is the magnitude of the threat? The most alarmist predictions of future catastrophe are based on computer-generated climate models that have been consistently refuted by events of the real world. According to the alarmists, there would be fifty million refugees from global warming by 2010. Never happened.
Those models are based on a variety of assumptions about “feedback mechanisms” generated by increased CO2 in the atmosphere trapping more heat. NASA satellite date from 2000-2011 showed far more heat escaping the earth’s atmosphere than predicted by the computer models, according to study in the peer-reviewed journal Remote Sensing.
Nor is clear to what extent the global warming of the 20th century was generated by anthropogenic forces – i.e., increased CO2 emissions. Many leading climate scientists now think that solar activity — about which we can do nothing — may be a larger contributor to temperature variation than carbon emissions. That would be consistent with the wide fluctuations between warm and cold periods over the last millennium, even prior to the onset of the Industrial Resolution.
Scientists at CERN, the European Organization of Nuclear Research, which involves 600 universities and national labs and 8,000 scientists, have shown that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that grow and seed clouds. And clouds trap heat in the atmosphere. The magnitude of cosmic rays emitted by the sun depends on variations in the sun’s magnetic field.
Finally, that which the alarmists consider an unmitigated disaster — higher levels of CO2in the atmosphere may have many beneficial effects. A 2012 statement signed by 16 distinguished scientists from universities like Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and the Hebrew University, pointed out that CO2 is “not a pollutant,” but rather a “key component of the biosphere’s life cycle.” Higher concentrations of CO2 spur plant growth.
In sum, the threat, if any, is one for the indeterminate future, of unknown magnitude and causation, and may not even be subject to ameliorative action. Yet climate alarmists propose a Global Green Carbon Treaty of such cost and intrusiveness that Yale’s Walter Russell Mead compares it to the 1928 Kellogg-Brand Pact outlawing war for sheer folly. He describes GGCT as less a treaty and more a constitution for world government regulating all economic production in every country on earth. That constitution would be for a “global welfare state with trillions of dollars ultimately sent by the taxpayers of rich countries to governments (however feckless, inept, corrupt or tyrannical) to poor ones.”
These proposals are put forward seemingly oblivious to the economic cost or loss of liberty involved. In his 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist, Danish statistician Bjorn Lonborg calculated that enforcement alone of the Kyoto Treaty would cost $150,000 billion a year, money which could save tens of thousands of lives annually.
The above-mentioned statement of the 16 scientists cited the work of Yale economist William Nordhaus, whos showed that the highest benefit-to-cost ratio would be achieved via a policy of fifty years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. The least developed countries would benefit most by being able to share some of the advantages of material well-being — i.e., health and life expectancy — with the more developed world.
NOW TO THE OTHER SIDE of the comparison. Even President Obama admits that under the unsigned understanding reached at Lausanne, Iran will have zero breakout time to a nuclear weapon thirteen years from now. (Today, he puts the breakout time at three months.)
That fact alone creates a world with as many tripwires leading to war as Europe on the eve of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in August 1914. Only this time the weapons of choice will be nuclear.
The proposed agreement with Iran means the end of nuclear non-proliferation. If the world’s leading rogue state and sponsor of terrorism can have its nuclear weapons program effectively endorsed by the members of the U.N. Security Council, every other nation that was dissuaded in the past by international pressure from expanding its civilian nuclear program to include enrichment to weapons level – e.g., South Korea, Brazil – will reconsider.
The most rapid nuclear proliferation will take place in the world’s most volatile region, the Middle East, in which the millennial hatred of Sunnis and Shiites still burns hot. Saudis have made it clear that they will purchase nuclear weapons off-the-shelf from Pakistan, as per a prior agreement, to counter Iran’s ability to obtain nuclear weapons. Egypt and Turkey will almost certainly follow suit.
An already aggressive Iran would become vastly more so with the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues from the lifting of sanctions and the ability to provide a nuclear umbrella for its regional proxies. As a consequence, the Middle East would become all the more volatile.
The nations most likely to acquire nuclear arms and unstable, which increases the possibility of terrorist groups acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran has long eyed the “holy cities” of Mecca and Medina, and is already stirring up the Shiite population in Saudi Arabia’s eastern, oil-producing provinces and in Yemen on its southern border. Egypt cannot feed its population.
And Iran might find it useful to supply some of its non-state allies, like Hezbollah or Hamas, with dirty nuclear weapons that do not require missiles to deliver. Non-state actors are far harder to deter or hold accountable.
A nuclear Iran should terrify not only Israel, which it has repeatedly threatened to obliterate. Iranian leaders have publicly speculated for years about the grim calculus of a nuclear exchange with Israel: one bomb wipes out Israel; Israeli retaliation still leaves us with tens of millions survivors. Former CIA Director James Woolsey and Peter Fry, a member of the congressional EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) Commission, stress the vulnerability of the United States. The recent “understanding” (the terms of which are unknown and perhaps unknowable given the wide divergence between American and Iranian descriptions of what has been concluded) makes no reference to any limitations on Iran’s ballistic missile program, on which it works closely with North Korea.
Iran may soon possess long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States or the capacity to launch a nuclear-armed satellite above the United States. Even one nuclear weapon detonated above the United States could potentially knock out much of the national power grid. The congressional EMP Commission estimated that a nationwide blackout lasting one year from such an EMP attack could result in the deaths of nine out of ten Americans, with ISIS-like gangs ruling the streets.
Nor are traditional doctrines of nuclear deterrence relevant to the Middle East, in general, and Shiite Iran, in particular. Former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Schultz ask in their devastating critique of the recent agreement how will traditional doctrines of deterrence based on stable state actors “translate into a region where sponsorship of non-state proxies is common, the state structure is under assault, and death on behalf of jihad is a kind of fulfillment?”
As the dean of Middle East scholars Bernard Lewis has pointed out, for Shiite fanatics awaiting the return of the “hidden Imam,” after a cataclysmic event, the destruction of nuclear war might be an inducement rather than a deterrent.
WHAT DOES PRESIDENT OBAMA offer as the response to this description of a nuclear tinderbox waiting to be lit? Pure fantasy.
He and Secretary of State Kerry have made repeated references to a fatwa of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini against the use of nuclear weapons, which does not exist and certainly is credited by none of Iran’s enemies.
And he speaks hopefully of a newly mellowed Iran after the conclusion of an agreement. What is it about the Supreme Leader’s repeated chants of “Death to America” and insistence that current negotiations have nothing to do with reconciliation that the President can’t hear?
One option that the President has completely excluded is an air campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and cut of the “head of snake,” as Woolsey once described the Revolutionary Guard to me. Obama has repeatedly accused the opponents of the Lausanne understanding as being advocates of war.
Clearly, then, all the tough talk about “all options are on the table,” “a bad deal is worse than no deal [followed by military attack],” “I will never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons,” had the same truth content as “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”
Yet no one doubts that the United States has the capability to destroy Iran’s enrichment infrastructure. (If Russia goes through with the delivery of advanced anti-aircraft batteries, as a consequence of the Lausanne understanding, the task will be complicated.) And there will be consequences that cannot be fully known in advance. Iran has terrorist sleeper cells around the world. But it also has lots of assets, besides its nuclear infrastructure, which would be subject to further attacks if it unleashes those cells.
Whatever the Iranian response, the price to be paid will certainly be less than consigning all humanity to live in a world perpetually poised on the cusp of nuclear war.
SO WHY in the case of global warming are progressives willing to incur unbearable costs to combat a future threat of unknown magnitude and immediacy, and against which their solutions may well prove futile, while with respect to the easily identified and imminent danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, they write off from the start a clear and known remedy?
For progressives the solution of worldwide government, run by the executive decree of “the best and the brightest,” is not a cost too great to be contemplated, but rather the fulfillment of the progressive dream. But they will never countenance military action, even to save millions of lives down the road. Churchill’s dictum, “If you want peace, prepare for war,” remains foreign to them.
Arab states snub Obama’s D.C. summit as Iran Mocks Obama
April 21, 2015Arab states snub Obama’s D.C. summit as Iran Mocks Obama, Breitbart, Joel B. Pollak, April 21, 2015
The Associated Press
As the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt heads to Yemen to confront a convoy of Iranian ships, including destroyers, it is worth asking why President Barack Obama is still talking to the Iranian regime about its nuclear program. The Iranians, who used the Houthi militia to knock over the American-aligned Yemeni government, clearly has no fear that Obama will suspend negotiations. If anything, Iranian tactics are winning more concessions.
When you strike a deal with an enemy who continues to attack you, that is not called “peace,” but “surrender.”
It is a wonder Obama is even bothering to send an aircraft carrier to the region at all. His hand has been forced by two factors: first, that Saudi Arabia has gone to war in Yemen without bothering to ask for American approval; second, Yemen is key to Obama’s drone policy against Al Qaeda, his only modest military success.
America has lost more than an ally in Yemen or a foothold in Iraq. It has lost the opportunity to defend hundreds of thousands of innocent lives from being murdered by Iran’s Syrian ally, which is using chemical weapons against civilians. It has lost the opportunity to demilitarize Lebanon—an achievement then-Sen. Joe Biden foolishly claimed in his debate with Sarah Palin in 2008. It may even have lost the chance to stop a nuclear Iran.
Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif made clear in his New York Times op-ed this week that the regime sees a nuclear deal as the key to regional domination. He offered—no, demanded—American cooperation on ISIS and other issues, not as a possible outcome of a deal but as a condition for a deal.
Yet the White House refuses to make its own regional demands—such as recognition of Israel, or an end to Iran’s global terrorism.
Israel has made clear that the Iran deal is an existential threat, and even that has not moved Obama to reconsider. The Arab nations are not waiting to be double-crossed, and are making their own plans, which likely include Saudi Arabia obtaining nuclear warheads from Pakistan.
In an attempt to save face, Obama has invited the Arab nations to a May 13 summit at the White House—long after final negotiations with Iran have begun
Already, some Arab states have indicated that they will not be attending (Oman), or will only send junior delegations (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates). Amir Taheri of theNew York Post quotes one Arab official: “He is going to give a Churchillian speech. But we know that you can’t be Chamberlain one day and Churchill the next.”
Meanwhile, Israel quietly signals that it is not going to wait for a Churchill to arrive in the Oval Office.
Obama says US open to talks with Iran on immediately lifting sanctions
April 17, 2015Obama says US open to talks with Iran on immediately lifting sanctions, Times of Israel, April 17, 2015
President Barack Obama listened as Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi speaks during their news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, April 17, 2015. (Photo credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Obama also said Friday that a bill introduced by Congress seeking a review and approval of a nuclear deal with Iran would not derail negotiations with Tehran, set to resume next week, and that the proposed legislation was a “reasonable compromise” he planned to sign off on.
The legislation would block Obama from waiving congressional sanctions against Iran for at least 30 days after any final agreement, which would give lawmakers time to weigh in. Obama said he still has concerns that some lawmakers are treading on his unilateral power as president to enter into a political agreement with another country, but the bill has language that makes it clear that lawmakers’ review will be limited to the sanctions imposed by Congress.
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U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday left open the door to “creative negotiations” in response to Iran’s demand that punishing sanctions be immediately lifted as part of a nuclear deal, even though the initial agreement calls for the penalties to be removed over time.
Asked whether he would definitively rule out lifting sanctions at once as part of a final deal aimed at keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, Obama said he didn’t want to get ahead of negotiators in how to work through the potential sticking point. He said his main concern is making sure that if Iran violates an agreement, sanctions can quickly be reinstated — the so-called “snap back” provision.
“How sanctions are lessened, how we snap back sanctions if there’s a violation, there are a lot of different mechanisms and ways to do that,” Obama said. He said part of the job for Secretary of State John Kerry and the representatives of five other nations working to reach a final deal with Iran by June 30 “is to sometimes find formulas that get to our main concerns while allowing the other side to make a presentation to their body politic that is more acceptable.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani insisted last week that they would not sign a deal unless all sanctions are lifted right after an agreement is signed. Obama initially portrayed their comments as a reflection of internal political pressure, while pointing out that the initial framework agreement reached earlier this month allows for sanctions to be phased out once international monitors verify that Tehran is abiding by the limitations.
Obama also said Friday that a bill introduced by Congress seeking a review and approval of a nuclear deal with Iran would not derail negotiations with Tehran, set to resume next week, and that the proposed legislation was a “reasonable compromise” he planned to sign off on.
The legislation would block Obama from waiving congressional sanctions against Iran for at least 30 days after any final agreement, which would give lawmakers time to weigh in. Obama said he still has concerns that some lawmakers are treading on his unilateral power as president to enter into a political agreement with another country, but the bill has language that makes it clear that lawmakers’ review will be limited to the sanctions imposed by Congress.
“That I think at least allows me to interpret the legislation in such a way that it is not sending a signal to future presidents that each and every time they’re negotiating a political agreement, that they have to get a congressional authorization,” Obama said. He said he takes lawmakers who have drafted the legislation at their word that they will not try to derail negotiations.
The president also weighed in on Russia’s announcement earlier this week that it would lift a five-year ban on delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, giving the Islamic republic’s military a strong deterrent against any air attack. The White House initially objected, but Obama said, “I’m frankly surprised that it held this long.”
Russia signed the $800 million contract to sell Iran the S-300 missile system in 2007, but suspended their delivery three years later because of strong objections from the United States and Israel. “Their economy is under strain and this was a substantial sale,” Obama said.
Russia, which also is party to the talks along with China, France, Britain and Germany, said the preliminary nuclear agreement made its 2010 ban on sending missiles to Iran no longer necessary.
PART II: Michael Rubin on Obama: ‘He is Constructing an Imaginary Iran’
April 17, 2015PART II: Michael Rubin on Obama: ‘He is Constructing an Imaginary Iran’ Breitbart, Adelle Nazarian, April 17, 2015
Obama doesn’t understand that the Middle East isn’t a neighborhood to organize. He doesn’t understand that he’s the leader of the free world and not a zoning commissioner. In effect, the bad guys are running all over him. And the problem is, he’s too naive or too arrogant to care.
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Breitbart’s Adelle Nazarian had the opportunity to speak with renowned Middle East expert and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Dr. Michael Rubin recently. Dr. Rubin provided his analysis on U.S.-Iran relations under the Obama Administration and provided a look into the future through the periscope of the past.
This is Part II of a two-part series. For the first installment, click here.
BREITBART: Why didn’t the Obama administration look back at Khomeini’s letter from 1988 calling for nuclear weapons and compare it to Khamenei’s supposed nuclear fatwa today when approaching the nuclear talks?
RUBIN: You’ve got a situation where the Obama Administration is cherry picking dishonestly. And frankly, if Obama acted this way as a university professor, he would be dismissed. He is constructing an imaginary Iran. Take the case of the fatwa.
Does the fatwa actually exist? According to open source center there was something delivered in 2014 that purports to be the text of the fatwa to the United Nations. But in that text — according to the open source center of the United States — it doesn’t use the word “never.”
Here’s another problem. It’s Diplomacy 101 to know that you don’t rely on anything that’s not written down. Even with North Korea, we got the North Koreans and the Americans to agree on a piece of paper.
I’m not sure John Kerry is even competent to negotiate with a 5-year-old over chocolate or vanilla ice cream. I mean how could you not get something in writing? It’s the same thing with Obama and the fatwa. Get it in writing. How come Obama can’t put this up on the White House website? He puts up everything else.
BREITBART: Is it true that a fatwa, either verbalized or written, can be changed at any time?
RUBIN: Yes. It can. And Obama is operating in a vacuum.
It’s like Groundhog Day. In 2003, Mohammaed Javad Zarif negotiated with the Americans with regard to non-interference in Iraq. According to the Iranian press, the Iranians proceeded to break that agreement and inserted 2,000 Revolutionary Guardsmen into Iraq.
Now the question is, did Zarif lie? Or was he sincere but he didn’t have the power to ensure that all aspects of the Iranian government would abide by the agreement? And why is it that, 12 years later, we’re having the same discussion about the same man? Either Zarif is a liar, in which case we never should have sat down with him again. Or he’s powerless and a conman, in which case we should have never sat down with him again.
There is a major misconception under the current administration– with Obama and Kerry– that it was due to a lack of diplomacy under the Bush Administration that the number of centrifuges skyrocketed in Iran.
#1: Between 2000-2005, the European Union almost tripled its trade with Iran and sat down with them regularly. That directly corresponds to the rapid increase in Iranian centrifuges. It was because of diplomacy, not because of coercion.
#2. During that same period, the price of oil almost quintupled and the bulk of hard-currency windfall went into Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. That was under the so-called “reformists,” and this is why the so-called reformists like to claim that they are responsible for the success of the nuclear program. But this raises questions about why Obama would again repeat the same issue.
The Iranian economy, according to Iran’s Central Bank, had declined 5.4% in the year before we sat down to negotiate the joint plan of action. Now, Iran’s economy is in the black because we’ve given them an infusion of cash. But if we hadn’t given them that infusion of cash in conjunction with the halving of the price of oil, then we could literally force Iran to drink from the chalice of poison.
Those were the words that Khomeini said when he ended the Iran-Iraq War after swearing he would never do it until Jerusalem was liberated.
Giving someone $12 billion is not forcing them to drink from a chalice of poison. What Obama did was the equivalent to giving a five-year-old dessert first and then asking him to eat his spinach.
BREITBART: What has to be done strategically to stop Iran from expansion?
RUBIN: It’s the same thing with Putin and any other expansionist dictators. The more you appease, the more you show that your red lines are drawn in pink crayon and the more they are going to test you. What we forget is when Iran tested the U.S. under Reagan, Reagan responded with Operation Praying Mantis. He sank the Iranian Navy which gave way to a joke from that time. “Why does the Iranian Navy have glass bottomed-boats? So they can see their air force as well.”
Operation Praying Mantis was the largest surface naval engagement since WWII and it taught the Iranians that you don’t mess with the United States. Obama doesn’t understand that the Middle East isn’t a neighborhood to organize. He doesn’t understand that he’s the leader of the free world and not a zoning commissioner. In effect, the bad guys are running all over him. And the problem is, he’s too naive or too arrogant to care.
BREITBART: Should the next President of the United States of America be an expert on Iranian issues?
RUBIN: What you need in a presidential candidate is not someone that knows the Iran issue inside and out. What you need is someone that is true to their values, can provide moral leadership, is not afraid of moral clarity and understands the following:
#1. The importance of individual liberty, because individual liberty is a character which no dictatorship can withstand. You need someone who isn’t afraid of understanding that we should not live in a morally and culturally equivalent world.
#2. The United States is not the equal to countries like Iran or Russia. We are their moral superiors and as such it is important that we win and our adversaries lose. It’s important that freedom and liberty triumph.
You don’t need to be an expert in Iran to understand that. But you need to be someone who is not going to calibrate their foreign policy to the latest poll. Principles have to trump polls and I think that’s where Bush and Clinton are going to be disasters.
EXCLUSIVE: Iranian Parliament Releases “Factsheet” for Revision of Lausanne Statement
April 15, 2015EXCLUSIVE: Iranian Parliament Releases “Factsheet” for Revision of Lausanne Statement, FARS News Agency (Iranian), April 15, 2015
(Note: all bold print and italics are in the original. Iran now insists on a five year term for an agreement and the immediate lifting of all sanctions, among other things. — DM)
TEHRAN (FNA)- The Iranian parliament’s Nuclear Committee on Wednesday released a factsheet to declare the revisions needed to be made in the Lausanne statement that was issued by Tehran and the world powers as a framework understanding at the end of their nuclear talks in Switzerland earlier this month.
The factsheet which was presented by Head of the Nuclear Committee Ebrahim Karkhaneyee on Wednesday stresses the necessity for respecting the redlines and guidelines specified by Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, making Iran’s decisions and undertakings reversible to enable the country to resume its nuclear operations in case of the other side’s non-commitment to its undertakings, and immediate termination of all sanctions in a single step and on the first day of the implementation of the final agreement.
The factsheet also necessitates commitment of both sides to their undertakings based on the Geneva agreement, a fair and reasonable balance between the gives and takes, taking good care not to impair the country’s security and military boundaries and national interests, providing 190,000 SWUs (Separative Work Units) of nuclear fuel enrichment capability needed by Iran to produce fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant immediately after the end of contract with Russia, safeguarding the nuclear achievements, actual operation of all nuclear facilities of Iran not in words, but in action, continued Research and Development (R&D) works and scientific and technological progress in Iran and immediate application of R&D findings in the country’s industrial-scale uranium enrichment cycle.
The factsheet urges operation of 10,000 centrifuge machines at Natanz and Fordo, a maximum 5-year-long duration for the deal and for Iran’s nuclear limitations, replacement of the current centrifuges with the latest generation of home-made centrifuge machines at the end of the five-year period.
Enrichment Program:
The period for the Join Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) should be limited to five years, in which about 10,000 active centrifuges operating at Natanz and Fordo now will continue nuclear fuel production by enriching uranium below the 5% grade.
The UF6 enriched reserves which are under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should be kept at Fordo nuclear plant and will be turned into nuclear fuel complex based on the existing capabilities.
During the five-year period, the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue to keep the excess centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordo or will gradually dismantle them, and at the end of the 5-year period, it will replace all the existing centrifuges, including the active or inactive ones, with the new generation of (IR-N) centrifuge machines with the help of the new spaces and infrastructures which will have been already prepared and will use them without any limitation.
Justification:
Based on the Geneva agreement, the period for the final step should merely include a single period which has been considered as to be five years in the present factsheet. But in the Lausanne statement, different periods of 10, 20, 25 years and higher have been considered.
Given the Geneva agreement, the amount of enrichment should be specified based on the country’s practical needs and the number of 10,000 centrifuges has also been specified on this basis.
The 5-year period in this factsheet has been has been specified with respect to the date when Iran’s nuclear fuel contract with Russia for the Bushehr nuclear power plant will end; hence, the rules and limitations for the components of the enrichment cycle should be set in such a way that the Islamic Republic of Iran will be able to supply the fuel needed for the power plant after the end of the contract with Russia.
Operation of 10,000 centrifuges and developing and having a 10-ton enriched uranium stockpile will enable the Islamic Republic of Iran to supply the fuel needed for the Bushehr power plant in the year when the fuel supply contract with Russia (28-30 tons) ends.
Fordo installations:
Fordo nuclear facility will remain an enrichment and nuclear Research and Development (R&D) center. 4 enrichment cascades with 656 centrifuges will continue operation and production of fuel for purity levels lower than 5% by maintaining the current chain arrangements.
If the country would need 20%-degree (enriched) uranium, the nuclear fuel production line for purity levels lower than 5% will be altered to enrich uranium to the 20%-grade after connecting the centrifuge cascades to each other again.
Justification:
Based on the above, Fordo will remain an actual and active center, and the Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain its capability to reverse its decision and restore the 20%-grade enrichment.
Research and Development (R&D):
In a bid to use R&D findings in the country’s industrial-scale enrichment chain, R&D should be planned in a way that the necessary possibilities and infrastructures will be provided for replacing the first generation of centrifuges with the latest generation of centrifuge machines (IR-N) when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action comes to an end after 5 years.
The R&D program should undergo no limitation before it comes into use for industrial-scale operation.
Justification:
Accordingly, the advanced centrifuges will enter the chain of nuclear fuel production without any restriction at the end of the 5-year deal.
Arak Heavy Water Reactor:
Given the Group 5+1 countries’ mere concern about the plutonium existing in the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) of the Arak 40-MW heavy water reactor, the fuel used by the reactor will be sent abroad.
The G5+1 states will be committed to cooperate and take the necessary measures for relevant international licensing and permissions.
Justification:
Given the SNF export abroad, the insistence of the G5+1, specially the US, on redesigning the said reactor is merely a pretext and doesn’t have any scientific rationale.
What is more important than the heavy water nature of Arak reactor is the core of the reactor which is due to be taken out and then be redesigned and renovated. Such a move is irreversible in nature, and thus means crossing the specified redlines.
Supervision and Inspection:
Supervision and inspections of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program should be carried out within the framework of the the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards agreements.
Justification:
Once done, the principle stated by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution – that security and military sanctities and boundaries shouldn’t be violated and that the inspections should be carried out at conventional levels similar to all other countries – will be respected and materialized. Given the Islamic Republic of Iran’s opposition to the world arrogance, endorsing and implementing the Additional Protocol will provide the world arrogance (a term normally used for the US and its western allies) with legal grounds to stage their preplanned plots against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Sanctions:
Concurrently with the start of the JCPOA, all the US and EU sanctions will be terminated and Iran will start fulfilling its undertakings based on the verification of the IAEA.
The UN Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran will be annulled and all nuclear-related sanctions will be terminated and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s case will be normalized.
The G5+1 countries, the EU and the UNSC will avoid imposition of new nuclear-related sanctions against Iran.
Justification:
By terminating all sanctions in a single step right at the start of the implementation of the final comprehensive agreement, the Supreme Leader’s statement that termination of sanctions is part of the agreement and not its result will be materialized.
Based on the Geneva agreement, after the implementation of the JCPOA, all UNSC, US and EU sanctions should be terminated and no new (UNSC) resolution would be needed in this regard; Hence, terminating the UNSC sanctions will close the case and no new resolution which would pave the ground for new plots will be issued.
International cooperation:
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear cooperation with the world states, including the G5+1 members, in areas of building nuclear power plants, research reactors, nuclear fuel production, nuclear safety medicine and nuclear agriculture, etc. will be possible and will improve. Based on the JCPOA, Iran will be provided with access to the global market, trade and finance and technical know-how and energy.
Reversibility:
In case of the two sides’ non-commitment to their undertakings, there will be a possibility for reversing all measures.
Justification:
Based on the aforementioned proposal, the Islamic Republic of Iran will be provided with reversible measures at the lowest level of damage and, therefore, the G5+1’s commitment to its undertakings will be in fair balance (with those of Iran).
Duration of the JCPOA:
After the end of the five-year period and the JCPOA exercise, all restrictions will be lifted and based on the Geneva agreement, the case with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program will be similar to that of the other NPT member states.
The Iranian Parliament factsheet for a revision to the Lausanne agreement came after the US released a factsheet different from the joint statement issued by Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and head of the G5+1 in nuclear talks with Iran, at the end of the latest round of Iran-world powers nuclear talks in Switzerland on April 2, known as the Lausanne statement.
The US factsheet that was released only a few hours after the Lausanne framework understanding caused fury in Iran, encouraging many to raise deep doubt about the results of the talks and US accountability and trustworthiness.
In only a few weeks, a bipartisan bill was also presented to the Congress for vote that would give the US legislature oversight of a final deal, a move seen by many across the globe, including both Iran and the US, as furthering impediments to the endorsement of a final deal between Iran and the sextet.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator Bob Corker, who wrote the bill, said the White House had agreed to go along with the bill only after it was clear there was strong Democratic support. The legislation was passed unanimously by the committee and is expected to pass the full Senate and then the House of Representatives.
“That change occurred only when they saw how many senators were going to vote for this,” Corker said.
Bipartisan support for the bill had grown in recent weeks to near the 67 votes needed to override any presidential veto. But senators from Obama’s Democratic Party did succeed in adding amendments to water down the bill, making it more palatable to the White House.
Nuclear Iran’s “Spillover Effects”
April 14, 2015Nuclear Iran’s “Spillover Effects” Gatestone Institute, Vijeta Uniyal, April 13, 2015
As President Obama tries to sell the world his mysterious nuclear “framework agreement,” India’s defense establishment is just not buying it. The U.S. and Western commentators might be expecting “peace dividends” from Iran, but India cannot afford to harbor such illusions.
The Iranians have already announced that they plan to sell “enriched uranium” in the international marketplace, and will be “hopefully making some money” from it. To whom will they sell?
A nuclear Iran would be able to hold the world hostage by blocking one-third of the world’s oil supply at the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian proxies have also been trying to seize control of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the maritime choke point of the Suez Canal.
The only question is whether the West would rather have an adversary such as Iran before it has nuclear weapons or after.
When the West and Iran agreed — or not, depending on whether one believes the U.S. version or Iran’s — on the parameters of a supposed nuclear “framework,” India’s foreign office hailed the agreement as a “significant step.”
India’s foreign office might have joined the international chorus welcoming the deal, but as U.S. President Barack Obama aggressively tries to sell the world his mysterious nuclear “framework,” India’s defense establishment is just not buying it.
India’s defense establishment seems to be having acute qualms about this “framework.”
One day after the P5+1’s mysterious “agreement” with Iran, India began gearing up for a more effective nuclear defense, and unveiled plans to equip the country’s capital, New Delhi, with a comprehensive missile defense shield to avert a nuclear attack.
Once in place, the shield could intercept missiles fired from a range of 5,000 km, roughly double the aerial distance between New Delhi and Tehran.
The first step would be to install the long-range “Swordfish” radars, developed with the help of Israel. They can track missiles from a range of 800 km.
India’s missile interceptor capability is expected to be functional by 2016. India also plans to set up a missile shield for its commercial capital, Mumbai.
At left, Indian defense contractors work on an Advanced Air Defence (AAD) interceptor missile. At right, an Indian AAD missile is test-launched.
On April 4, India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) also reiterated the country’s ability to hit targets well beyond its adjoining region.
India has always been seriously concerned about prospect of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. If Arab and Muslim countries decide to counter the Iranian nuclear threat with nuclear arsenal of their own, India’s hostile neighbor, Pakistan, is likely to want to play a crucial role.
India is not only vulnerable to nuclear threats from Pakistan. Both the Islamic State (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda have also openly declared hostility toward it. India has long been concerned about nuclear capabilities or materiel falling into the hands of Islamists in Pakistan. By now, it is no secret that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons capability, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East will increase exponentially. The Iranians have already announced that they plan to sell “enriched uranium” in the international marketplace and will be “hopefully making some money” from it. To whom will they sell?
President Obama and Western commentators might be expecting “peace dividends” from this “historic reconciliation” and be awaiting all sorts of positive “spillover effects” as a result of lifting sanctions — from changing Iran’s attitude towards Israel to democratizing the Iranian regime — but India cannot afford to harbor such illusions. Islamist terror has claimed more than 30,000 Indian lives in just the last two decades.
Indians are now bracing for the real spillover effects of a nuclear Iran.
Thanks to Washington’s indifference, Iran now controls four Arab capitals — Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut, and now Sana’a, while the U.S. has retreated from three: in Libya, Yemen and Iraq. If Iran can hold the Obama administration hostage without any leverage, a nuclear Iran would be able to hold the whole world hostage by blocking one-third of the world’s oil supply at the Strait of Hormuz — with impunity. Iranian proxies have also been trying to seize control of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the maritime choke point of the Suez Canal.
European leaders who failed to show any resoluteness in face of Russian aggression against Ukraine, and even failed to vote against a “framework” that threatens global security, can hardly be expected to stand up to Tehran. The only question is whether the West would rather have an adversary such as Iran before it has nuclear weapons or after.
Once major European powers such as Russia, France and Germany start investing in Iranian infrastructure and entangling themselves with Iran economically, one can forget about rolling back sanctions.
Western leaders can spin the “framework” agreement all they want to cover up their abysmal diplomatic failure, but as Tehran’s centrifuges keep spinning as a result of the deal, the region turns more and more volatile.
Regardless of the diplomatic chorus and the media circus, the defense planers in New Delhi are just not buying this agreement. Other countries that care about the free world would be wise not to buy it, too.
King Abdullah II: We’re War With “Outlaws Of Islam” – Special Report
April 14, 2015King Abdullah II: We’re War With “Outlaws Of Islam” – Special Report via You Tube, April 13, 2015
(He seems quite diplomatic, but what does he actually think? — DM)
Dr Andrew Bostom on Lisa Benson show 12.5.2015
April 13, 2015Dr Andrew Bostom on Lisa Benson show 12.5.2015, You Tube, April 13, 2015
(Dr. Bostom relates Islamic doctrine to Iran’s negotiating tactics. Please see also, Lt. Col Ralph Peters: “The Iranians Negotiate, We BEG!” — DM)
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