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Can Corker and Cardin Face the Truth about Iran this Time?

January 13, 2018

Can Corker and Cardin Face the Truth about Iran this Time? PJ Media, Roger L Simon, January 12, 2018

Nowhere in all this does anyone have any real idea if the deal’s putative intention, seriously delaying Iran’s nuclear ambitions, was achieved even partly. It’s impossible to know because Iran (per the IAEA) does not permit inspection of its military sites and, even if it did, they refused to reveal the state of their nuclear development before the agreement was made in the first place, so no comparison can be made. (Incomprehensibly, the deal allowed them to do this.) Beyond that, the Iranians are buddies with the North Koreans. How much of the NORK’s technology, or nuclear material for that matter, has already changed hands we don’t know.

In other words, this is an agreement only a fascist ayatollah and or some politician lusting for a fake peace prize could love.

Now the challenge is with Congress. Not surprisingly, the House is ahead of the Senate on this, with Rep. Peter Roskam working on a bill that is closer to what is required.

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The Trump administration has allowed the Iran Deal to continue with only minor sanctions added  — but with an important caveat. This is the last time.

As with immigration, the president has thrown the proverbial ball back into Congress’s lap, hoping to obtain from the legislators a bill requiring a rewrite of the deal before he must certify again. Trump has made his bottom line clear on this new bill in a statement published Friday:

First, it must demand that Iran allow immediate inspections at all sites requested by international inspectors.

Second, it must ensure that Iran never even comes close to possessing a nuclear weapon.

Third, unlike the nuclear deal, these provisions must have no expiration date. My policy is to deny Iran all paths to a nuclear weapon—not just for ten years, but forever.

If Iran does not comply with any of these provisions, American nuclear sanctions would automatically resume.

Fourth, the legislation must explicitly state in United States law—for the first time—that long-range missile and nuclear weapons programs are inseparable, and that Iran’s development and testing of missiles should be subject to severe sanctions.

Will Congress have the courage to pass such a bill? The last time around, at the instigation of Sens. Bob Corker and Ben  Cardin, they enacted a proposal that allowed Obama’s widely criticized (let’s be honest and say absurd) agreement to circumvent the normal requirement of ratification by the legislature as a treaty.

The result: chaos and death. Iran, enriched to the tune of a hundred billion or so, almost two billion in untraceable cash, was able to run rampant across the Middle East through its drug-dealing terrorist client Hezbollah, the equally homicidal Hamas, the Houthis and its own Revolutionary Guard Corps of bloodthirsty fanatics.

It’s also clear — as we have seen recently via the protests in 80 or so Iranian cities — that little or none of these billions were spent on the Iranian people themselves. They all went into the accounts of the corrupt mullahs or to manufacture weapons to kill more people, extending the Syrian civil war and changing the character of Europe forever via the unprecedented refugee crisis.

This was so predictable it’s hard to believe someone with an IQ in triple digits would have believed it could have been otherwise — yet Corker, Cardin and almost the entire Democratic Party did. They all fell in line with Obama’s monstrous deal, believing, despite decades of evidence to the contrary, that people like Iranian officials Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif were actually “moderates.” To put it bluntly — how stupid can you get.

Nowhere in all this does anyone have any real idea if the deal’s putative intention, seriously delaying Iran’s nuclear ambitions, was achieved even partly. It’s impossible to know because Iran (per the IAEA) does not permit inspection of its military sites and, even if it did, they refused to reveal the state of their nuclear development before the agreement was made in the first place, so no comparison can be made. (Incomprehensibly, the deal allowed them to do this.) Beyond that, the Iranians are buddies with the North Koreans. How much of the NORK’s technology, or nuclear material for that matter, has already changed hands we don’t know.

In other words, this is an agreement only a fascist ayatollah and or some politician lusting for a fake peace prize could love.

Now the challenge is with Congress. Not surprisingly, the House is ahead of the Senate on this, with Rep. Peter Roskam working on a bill that is closer to what is required.

Whatever happens, the Europeans — particularly the Western Europeans — will be difficult. They are loathe to admit that Donald Trump, of all people, might be right about a crucial point of foreign policy, making them, once again, the weak appeasers of fascism. Also, they’re greedy and want to keep their business with the Iranians going.

And so, Sens. Corker and Cardin, our nation, indeed the world, turns its eyes to you. Are you ready to rescue your reputations with history?

Categories: JCPOA - renegotiation, JCPOA compliance certification, Trump and Iran scam, U.S. Congress and Iran scam
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Decision Time on Iran

December 15, 2017

Decision Time on Iran, Washinton Free Beacon, , December 15, 2017

(Please see also, Congress ignores Trump’s deadline on Iran nuclear deal. — DM)

President Hassan Rouhani in front of a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei / Getty Images

Very soon, President Trump will have to decide whether America should remain a bystander to Iranian expansionism or take steps to confront this menace to international security and sponsor of global terrorism.

In October, when the president failed to certify Iranian compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aka the Iran nuclear deal, he began a process that is almost certain to force him to make controversial decisions in the coming months.

The Congress has had 60 days to propose measures that would punish Iran for its misbehavior and strengthen the JCPOA. It has not done so. The issue will therefore wind up once again in the Oval Office in January, when President Trump will choose between maintaining an agreement with a noncompliant signatory and re-imposing sanctions on Iran.

The pressure will be great from Democrats, Europeans, realists, and the remnants of the Obama echo chamber to persist in the fiction that a bad deal is better than no deal at all. Relenting to such pressure would signal to Iran that America is comfortable with a terrible status quo, and would bolster the impression among our allies that we are willing to cede the region to the Russian-Turkish-Iranian axis. Which would be a mistake.

To date, President Trump’s Iran policy has been mostly rhetorical. Other than decertification and shooting down two Iranian drones over Syria, the United States, writes Middle East analyst Tony Badran, “has relied on an indirect approach, premised on avoiding direct confrontation with Iran and its instruments,” such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq, and Houthi rebels in Yemen. But, adds Badran, “this indirect, long-term approach has proven futile and counterproductive.” Iranian proxies have used the opportunity to consolidate their positions and expand their reach.

That has led to an Iranian presence on the border of Israel, inflamed sectarian tensions in Iraq, and missiles fired at Riyadh from the portions of Yemen under Houthi control. And all the while the mullahs in Tehran and their Revolutionary Guard Corps continue to benefit from the economic opportunities realized in the JCPOA.

The Trump administration seems to have recognized that Iran has the upper hand and started to resist. In recent days H.R. McMaster and Mike Pompeo have warned against Iranian influence in Syria, the administration has said that American forces will remain in Syria in the aftermath of the ISIS campaign, and Nikki Haley has denounced Iran’s illegal transfer of weaponry and technology to the Houthis. Monday brings the release of the president’s national security strategy, which is sure to have similar harsh language.

What has been missing is direct action against either Iran or its proxies. Instead we have a patchwork policy of containment that does not contain. Reuel Marc Gerecht describes it this way: “The White House annoys Tehran with minor sanctions, sells more weaponry to Gulf Arabs, occasionally has a second-tier official—the secretary of state—give a speech on Iranian oppression, leaves some troops in Syria and Iraq, and calls it progress.” Gerecht’s language is illustrative of the limits on American power that we have imposed on ourselves. A gnat annoys. A superpower overwhelms.

Having already to deal with tensions on the Korean peninsula, war in Afghanistan, and a global counterterrorism campaign, the temptation must be strong for the president to use the Sunni powers as U.S. subcontractors in the fight against Iran. He of all people should know that subcontractors are sometimes unreliable. But the cost of enhanced Iranian power in the Middle East and Persian Gulf is not printed on an invoice that the United States can refuse to pay.

Last week the president ignored received opinion and acted on the common sense notion that reality is indeed as it seems, that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and that willful ignorance is no escape from that fact. The conflagration that his internal and external critics predicted would follow this assertion of truth failed to materialize. Is it too much to hope that in 2018 he will follow his instincts once more, and act upon a concrete appraisal of the situation despite the insistence of elite opinion to the contrary?

For the JCPOA really is, as the president has said, a terrible deal. Iran does not have the interests of either the United States or our allies in mind. And speeches are no substitute for the unapologetic assertion of might in the right.

Categories: JCPOA decertification, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam, U.S. Congress and Iran, U.S. Congress and Iran scam
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70% of U.S. Voters Think Iran Deal Should Be Reworked, Require Senate Ratification

October 24, 2017

70% of U.S. Voters Think Iran Deal Should Be Reworked, Require Senate Ratification, CNS News, Patrick Goodenough, October 24, 2017

(CNSNews.com) – Seven in ten American voters believe the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration should be renegotiated, and an even larger majority, 81 percent, think any new deal should require Senate ratification, a new poll has found.

The Harvard-Harris survey for The Hill found 70 percent support for renegotiating the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), including 85 percent of Republicans, 71 percent of independents and 57 percent of Democrats polled.

The strong opinions about the need for Senate approval are especially striking. The Obama administration chose to treat the JCPOA as a political agreement between governments rather than a treaty. Under the Constitution a treaty requires the support of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate before it can enter into force.

Then-Secretary of State John Kerry, a key JCPOA negotiator and among its most vocal defenders, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in July 2015 that the administration had not taken the treaty route with the nuclear deal because “you can’t pass a treaty anymore.”

Commenting on the poll results, Harvard-Harris co-director Mark Penn said, “Americans see Iran as a bad actor on all fronts and substantial majorities believe this agreement is being violated and never should have gone into effect without a Senate vote.”

In the absence of a Senate ratification requirement, Congress passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), which requires the president every 90 days to certify that Iran is meeting its commitments under the deal, and that the suspension of U.S. sanctions continues to be in U.S. national security interests.

On October 13, President Trump for the first time decertified Iran’s compliance, a step that does not do away with the agreement but does pave the way for congressional action, including possible reimposition of nuclear-related sanctions within 60 days.

The poll – a collaboration between The Harris Poll and the Harvard Center for American Political Studies – suggests American voters are divided over Trump’s decertification decision, with just 51 percent of respondents agreeing with the move.

Still, 60 percent of the voters surveyed said the nuclear agreement was a bad one for the U.S., and two-thirds – including half of the Democrats polled – said Iran has not complied with its obligations under the deal.

“Voters want it renegotiated but are split on whether Trump’s decertification was right, underscoring the need for Trump to keep explaining his policy and actions to an electorate that supports his aims,” said Penn.

In response to Trump’s decertification decision, Congress has several options it can pursue.

Reimposing nuclear-related sanctions that were lifted under the JCPOA would be the most contentious choice, since it would constitute a U.S. violation of the deal and could cause it to unravel. Iran has, however, indicated that it could in such circumstances stay in the agreement without the U.S., but with the other negotiating partners – Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

Congress could alternatively amend the INARA, building in new demands for a renegotiated, stronger version of the JCPOA.

The administration could then use the legislation to push Iran and the other negotiating partners in a bid towards achieving the “better” deal that Trump has called for. The president warned in his Oct. 13 announcement that “in the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated.”

Finally, Congress could do nothing, thereby lobbing the ball back into Trump’s court to deal with the next time the 90-day certification requirement comes round, in mid-January.

Categories: JCPOA - renegotiation, JCPOA decertification, Public opinion, U.S. Congress and Iran, U.S. Congress and Iran scam, U.S. Senate ratification
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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.

Categories: Iran compliance with JCPOA, Iran scam termination, Iran's undeclared nuke sites, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian resistance, Iranian Revolutionary Guard terrorist designation, JCPOA decertification, Non-Proliferation Treaty, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam, U.S. Congress and Iran, U.S. Congress and Iran scam
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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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A Slow Death for the Iran Deal

October 16, 2017

A Slow Death for the Iran Deal, Gatestone Institute, John R. Bolton, October 16, 2017

The JCPOA is also packed with provisions that have never received adequate scrutiny. Take Annex III, which envisages full-scale assistance to, and cooperation with, Iran’s “peaceful” civil nuclear efforts. Annex III contemplates facilitating Iran’s acquisition of “state of the art” light-water reactors, broader nuclear-research programs, and, stunningly, protection against “nuclear security threats” to Iran’s nuclear program.

It sounds suspiciously like the Clinton administration’s failed Agreed Framework with North Korea. Many Clinton alumni were part of Mr. Obama’s Iran negotiation team. In Washington, nothing succeeds like failure. Mr. Trump and his congressional supporters should expressly repudiate Annex III and insist that Europe, Russia and China do the same.

The Iran nuclear deal, which Mr. Trump has excoriated repeatedly, is hanging by an unraveling thread. Congress won’t improve it. American and European businesses proceed at their own peril on trade or investment with Iran. The deal should have died last week and will breathe its last shortly.

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As Abba Eban observed, “Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources.” So it goes with America and the Iran deal. President Trump announced Friday that the U.S. would stay in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), even while he refused to certify under U.S. law that the deal is in the national interest. “Decertification,” a bright, shiny object for many, obscures the real issue — whether the agreement should survive. Mr. Trump has “scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it.”

While Congress considers how to respond — or, more likely, not respond — we should focus on the grave threats inherent in the deal. Peripheral issues have often dominated the debate; forests have been felled arguing over whether Iran has complied with the deal’s terms. Proposed “fixes” now abound, such as a suggestion to eliminate the sunset provisions on the deal’s core provisions.

The core provisions are the central danger. There are no real “fixes” to this intrinsically misconceived agreement. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a party, has never included sunset clauses, but the mullahs have been violating it for decades.

If the U.S. left the JCPOA, it would not need to justify the decision by showing that the Iranians have exceeded the deal’s limits on uranium enrichment (though they have). Many argued Russia was not violating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (though it likely was) when President Bush gave notice of withdrawal in 2001, but that was not the point. The issue was whether the ABM Treaty remained strategically wise for America. So too for the Iran deal. It is neither dishonorable nor unusual for countries to withdraw from international agreements that contravene their vital interests. As Charles de Gaulle put it, treaties “are like girls and roses; they last while they last.”

Pictured: A uranium conversion facility just outside the city of Isfahan, Iran, used as part of Iran’s uranium enrichment process. (Photo by Getty Images)

When Germany, Britain and France began nuclear negotiations with Iran in 2003, they insisted that their objective was to block the mullahs from the nuclear fuel cycle’s “front end” (uranium enrichment) as well as its “back end” (plutonium reprocessing from spent fuel). They assured Washington that Tehran would be limited to “peaceful” nuclear applications like medicine and electricity generation. Nuclear-fuel supplies and the timely removal of spent fuel from Iran’s “peaceful” reactors would be covered by international guaranties.

So firm were the Europeans that they would not even negotiate unless Iran agreed to suspend all enrichment-related activity. Under these conditions, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed their effort could proceed. Today, JCPOA advocates conveniently ignore how much Barack Obama and the Europeans conceded to Iran’s insistence that it would never give up uranium enrichment.

The West’s collapse was a grave error. Regardless of JCPOA limits, Iran benefits from continued enrichment, research and development by expanding the numbers of scientists and technicians it has with firsthand nuclear experience. All this will be invaluable to the ayatollahs come the day they disdain any longer to conceal their real nuclear strategy.

Congress’s ill-advised “fixes” would only make things worse. Sens. Bob Corker and Tom Cotton suggest automatically reimposing sanctions if Iran gets within a year of having nuclear weapons. That’s a naive and dangerous proposal: Iran is already within days of having nuclear weapons, given that it can buy them from North Korea. On the deal’s first anniversary, Mr. Obama said that “Iran’s breakout time has been extended from two to three months to about a year.” At best, Corker-Cotton would codify Mr. Obama’s ephemeral and inaccurate propaganda without constraining Iran.

Such triggering mechanisms assume the U.S. enjoys complete certainty and comprehensive knowledge of every aspect of Iran’s nuclear program. In reality, there is serious risk Tehran will evade the intelligence and inspection efforts, and we will find out too late Tehran already possesses nuclear weapons.

The unanswerable reality is that economic sanctions have never stopped a relentless regime from getting the bomb. That is the most frightening lesson of 25 years of failure in dealing with Iran and North Korea. Colin Powell told me he once advised British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw: “Jack, if you want to bring the Iranians around, you have to hold an ax over their heads.” The new proposals aren’t even a dull razor blade.

The JCPOA is also packed with provisions that have never received adequate scrutiny. Take Annex III, which envisages full-scale assistance to, and cooperation with, Iran’s “peaceful” civil nuclear efforts. Annex III contemplates facilitating Iran’s acquisition of “state of the art” light-water reactors, broader nuclear-research programs, and, stunningly, protection against “nuclear security threats” to Iran’s nuclear program.

It sounds suspiciously like the Clinton administration’s failed Agreed Framework with North Korea. Many Clinton alumni were part of Mr. Obama’s Iran negotiation team. In Washington, nothing succeeds like failure. Mr. Trump and his congressional supporters should expressly repudiate Annex III and insist that Europe, Russia and China do the same.

The Iran nuclear deal, which Mr. Trump has excoriated repeatedly, is hanging by an unraveling thread. Congress won’t improve it. American and European businesses proceed at their own peril on trade or investment with Iran. The deal should have died last week and will breathe its last shortly.

John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is Chairman of Gatestone Institute, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad”.

This article first appeared in The Wall Street Journal and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

Categories: Iran - North Korea axis, JCPOA - renegotiation, JCPOA decertification, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam, U.S. Congress and Iran, U.S. Congress and Iran scam
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Haley: Trump’s Goal Is to Stop Iran From Becoming ‘the Next North Korea’

October 15, 2017

Haley: Trump’s Goal Is to Stop Iran From Becoming ‘the Next North Korea’, Washington Free Beacon, , October 15,2017

 

 

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley defended President Donald Trump’s stance on the Iran nuclear deal by saying he is trying to keep Iran from becoming “the next North Korea.”

Trump announced Friday he would decertify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement, but he is not fully withdrawing from it. Haley argued that his toughness on Iran is a result of seeing how negotiations with North Korea failed to stop the Kim Jong Un regime from developing a nuclear program.

“Had this been done with North Korea over the past 25 years, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” Haley said on Sunday, referring to Kim’s recent missile tests. “What you see is the president is trying to make sure that Iran doesn’t become the next North Korea.”

ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked Haley if Trump’s decision sent the wrong message to North Korea because it might prevent them from negotiating with the U.S. in the future. Haley, however, said it sends the message that the U.S. will remain vigilant.

“It sends the perfect message to North Korea, which is we’re not going to engage in a bad deal,” she said. “And should we ever get into a deal, we’re going to hold you accountable.”

Haley said Iran’s technical compliance with the International Atomic Energy Agency does not mean it meets the expectations the U.S. has for national security. She cited Iran’s other violations and support for terrorism and advised against complacency in service of keeping the deal.

“What you’re seeing is, everybody is turning a blind eye to Iran and all of those violations out of trying to protect this agreement,” Haley said. “What we need to say is, we have to hold them accountable.”

In another interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Haley reiterated her point that the joint partners in the Iran deal should not treat it as “too big to fail.”

“When the international community gives Iran a pass for all these things—the ballistic missile testing, the arms sales, their support of terrorism—and they look the other way all in the name of keeping the deal, then you are looking at something that’s too big to fail,” Haley said. “That’s the problem.”

Categories: Iran and Middle East, Iran and North Korea, Iranian missiles, Iranian terror network, JCPOA compliance certification, Nikki Haley, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam, U.S. Congress and Iran, U.S. Congress and Iran scam
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Strategic decisiveness, tactical caution

October 15, 2017

Strategic decisiveness, tactical caution, Israel Hayom, Prof. Abraham Ben-Zvi, October 15, 2017

Iran is now facing a three-pronged American challenge: the steps that stem directly from the newly announced Trump Doctrine; new legislation against it; and unilateral action by Trump should Congress fail to enact new legislation, leading to the U.S. withdrawing from the pact.

In one fell swoop, through a single speech, Trump put the ball squarely in Iran’s court.

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When it comes to North Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump has adopted a policy of containment and deterrence, owing to the fact that it presents a general threat.

But when it comes to Iran, things are different. On Friday, Trump unveiled a new doctrine against this component of the Axis of Evil, a doctrine that is based more on red lines and clear thresholds that would trigger American action should they be crossed.

This approach represents a creative blend of strategic decisiveness and tactical caution. The strategic decisiveness rests on his pledge to counter Iran head-on, should the need arise, over its repeated violations of key parts of the 2015 nuclear deal, and over its conduct in the region (including its ongoing ballistic missile program and its continued support for terrorist groups and destabilization efforts).

The tactical caution part is based on his recognition that a potential Iranian-American clash is not necessarily immediate, forceful or even inevitable. In other words, the White House has articulated a gradual process that gives Iranian President Hassan Rouhani a way out by mending his ways before the moment of truth arrives.

Thus, even though the Trump Doctrine is a break from the way the nuclear deal has been implemented so far, Washington will stay in it in order to improve it, hoping that its threats will have a moderating effect on the ayatollah regime. Therefore, Trump’s decision to decertify the agreement doesn’t mean that he is bent on withdrawing from it. He is still going to play by the rules, but his new doctrine presents several powerful deterrent elements.

The first: He has sent a signal to Tehran of what’s to come. Through the newly announced sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which complement other steps the Pentagon has taken in the region to curtail Iran’s destabilizing activity, Iran now knows what’s at stake.

The second: He announced what could be a new, comprehensive and structured mechanism to punish Iran. If and when Congress decides to adopt such a mechanism, it will include a host of steps against the regime, including sanctions that are automatically imposed if Iran violates certain provisions characterized as “red lines” (say, regarding its missile program).

The third: If Congress fails to pass new legislation to punish Iran over the next two months, this will lead to the termination of the agreement as far as he is concerned – with all the consequences that this may entail.

Iran is now facing a three-pronged American challenge: the steps that stem directly from the newly announced Trump Doctrine; new legislation against it; and unilateral action by Trump should Congress fail to enact new legislation, leading to the U.S. withdrawing from the pact.

In one fell swoop, through a single speech, Trump put the ball squarely in Iran’s court.

Categories: Iran - sanctions, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam termination, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian Revolutionary Guard terrorist designation, JCPOA - renegotiation, JCPOA compliance certification, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam, Trump strategy for Iran, U.S. Congress and Iran, U.S. Congress and Iran scam
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Initial Thoughts on Trump’s Iran Speech: Do All Roads Lead to a Pull-out?

October 13, 2017

Initial Thoughts on Trump’s Iran Speech: Do All Roads Lead to a Pull-out?, Power Line, Paul Mirengoff, October 13, 2017

If we take Trump’s speech at face value, it seems to me that all roads lead to terminating the deal. If Congress doesn’t act, Trump says he will terminate the deal.

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President Trump has just given an address that outlines how he plans to proceed against Iran. The two main points are: (1) he will impose new sanctions to punish Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and (2) he will not certify the Iran nuclear deal.

The refusal to certify means that Congress has 60 days to act. Trump is asking it to adopt legislation, apparently already formulated, that would remedy the flaws in the Iran deal.

This legislation would become the basis for attempting, if possible with the help of our allies, to renegotiate (in effect) key terms of the deal with Iran. In the negotiations we would, among other things, try to improve the inspection regime and eliminate the sunset provisions (the ones that allow Iran eventually develop nukes).

Crucially, it seems to me on first analysis, Trump said that if Congress doesn’t act along these lines in 60 days, he will “terminate” the deal. The president thus attempts to light a fire under a Congress which, absent his threat, almost certainly would not act. He also attempts to light a fire under our allies who seemingly have no real desire to renegotiate with Iran.

If we take Trump’s speech at face value, it seems to me that all roads lead to terminating the deal. If Congress doesn’t act, Trump says he will terminate the deal.

If Congress acts, it can’t rewrite the deal. All it can do is formulate demands that, if not met by Iran, will result in termination, assuming Trump follows the hard line he took today.

If faced with congressional action and presidential resolve, Iran might agree to certain minor fixes to the deal. But it’s difficult for me to imagine the regime agreeing, for example, to drop the sunset clause.

Only a restoration of the crippling sanctions once in place would have any hope of achieving this result. But that hope would be faint. In any event, it’s unlikely that we could ever rally our allies to impose the truly crippling sanctions that former president Obama lifted.

If my preliminary analysis is correct, then Trump has taken the first step towards pulling the U.S. out of the Iran deal. He has done more, in other words, than just “splitting the baby” — i.e, satisfying hawks by decertifying and satisfying moderates by not pulling out of the deal or enlisting Congress for that purpose. If we take the speech at face value, we are on the road to pulling out.

The “compromise,” is that we are doing so in a measured way — one that is less easy for Democrats and U.S. allies persuasively to denounce. Trump is enlisting their aid by asking them to participate in a process that, in theory, could improve the deal to the point where the U.S. would stay in it.

In practice, the likelihood of substantially improving the deal seems slight. However, it is reasonable for Trump to give it a try, and reasonable for Democrats and our allies to participate in the effort.

I’ll conclude by saying that Trump’s speech was outstanding. In 20 minutes or so, he laid out the history of Iran’s evil-doing; excoriated the Iran deal Obama agreed to; and laid out his course of action going forward.

Will the administration follow that course or will key members persuade Trump to employ off-ramps? It’s difficult to say, or even to guess who the key members of the administration will be down the road. I’m inclined, though, to think that Trump will follow the course he laid out so solemnly today.

These observations are preliminary ones. I’m sure we’ll have more to say upon further reflection.

Categories: Iran scam termination, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam, U.S. Congress and Iran, U.S. Congress and Iran scam
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