Has Iran begun to take advantage of Obama's agreement and naivety?
Criticism abounds from all quarters.
Has Obama sold Israel, other Mid East Allies and America down the river? Time will tell and you decide.(See 1 , 1a, 1b, 1c,1d and 1e below..)
Criticism abounds from all quarters.
Has Obama sold Israel, other Mid East Allies and America down the river? Time will tell and you decide.(See 1 , 1a, 1b, 1c,1d and 1e below..)
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Then, lets hear from the dreamers and Obama himself!. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
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Dick
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Then, lets hear from the dreamers and Obama himself!. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
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Dick
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1) Iran to Build Two More Nuclear Plants
Announcement comes hours before U.S. inks agreement
BY:
Iranian officials announced the upcoming construction of two new nuclear plants on Saturday, just hours before the United States and Western nations signed a nuclear pact that will allow Iran to continue enriching uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon.
Senior Iranian officials said that they are ready to build a second and third nuclear reactor in addition to the one currently operated in tandem with Russia,according to state-run media reports.
The order to construct the new nuclear plants came from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, according to the deputy chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI).
“The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) has put construction of the second and third (nuclear) power stations on its agenda due to the government’s programs and the emphasis laid by the president,” AEOI Deputy Chief Hossein Khalfi was quoted as saying during an address at the opening ceremony of the “25th Exhibition of Iran’s Nuclear Industry Achievements.”
Iran is currently on pace to produce uranium via the Bushehr nuclear plant, which was engineered in part by the Russians.
“We have launched the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant and handed it over to the country’s experts in the past two months,” Khalfi reportedly said.
Russia recently signed an agreement with Tehran to help it build new nuclear power plants as early as 2014.
The nuclear announcement was made just before Secretary of State John Kerry and other Western leaders signed an interim nuclear deal with Iran that will provide it around $7 billion in relief from economic sanctions.
It is believed that Iran could still reach a critical nuclear breakout capacity within two months under the deal.
“As part of this initial step, the P5+1 [Western nations] will provide limited, temporary, targeted, and reversible relief to Iran,” the White House said in a background briefer sent to reporters Saturday evening.
“This relief is structured so that the overwhelming majority of the sanctions regime, including the key oil, banking, and financial sanctions architecture, remains in place,” according to the White House.
Iran will be permitted to enrich uranium up to 5 percent under the interim deal, which experts say does little to walk back Tehran’s nuclear know-how.
Additionally, Iran agreed to stop using advanced centrifuges that allow it to enrich uranium at much quicker speeds, the White House said.
The West agreed in exchange to “not impose new nuclear-related sanctions for six months,” the White House said.
The United States will also suspend “certain sanctions on gold and precious metals, Iran’s auto sector, and Iran’s petrochemical exports, potentially providing Iran approximately $1.5 billion in revenue.”
Iran could earn another $4.2 billion in oil revenue under the deal.
Another “$400 million in governmental tuition assistance” could also be “transferred from restricted Iranian funds directly to recognized educational institutions in third countries to defray the tuition costs of Iranian students,” according to the White House.
Iran’s critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere quickly panned the deal and criticized the Obama administration for offering major concessions in return for very little.
“I share the president’s goal of finding a diplomatic solution to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, but this deal appears to provide the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism with billions of dollars in exchange for cosmetic concessions that neither fully freeze nor significantly roll back its nuclear infrastructure,” Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) said in a statement issued shortly after the deal was finalized.
“Furthermore, the deal ignores Iran’s continued sponsorship of terrorism, its testing of long-range ballistic missiles, and its abuse of human rights,” Kirk said, adding that he will continue to work with lawmakers to “craft bipartisan legislation that will impose tough new economic sanctions” on Iran.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R., Calif.) warned that America is repeating the mistakes it made in the lead up to North Korea’s successful nuclear tests.
“Iran hasn’t given the world reason to be anything but deeply skeptical of any agreement that leaves their capacity to build nuclear weapons intact,” McKeon said in a statement. “The president sees wisdom in placing trust, however limited, in a regime that has repeatedly violated international norms and put America’s security at risk.”
“Apparently, America has not learned its lesson from 1994 when North Korea fooled the world. I am skeptical that this agreement will end differently,” he said.
The deal actually permits Iran to add to its nuclear arsenal, according to Josh Block, a onetime Clinton administration official who formerly served as spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
“During the six months, Iran will be adding to their stockpile of enriched material they could use to make nuclear weapons,” said Block, current head of the Israel Project (TIP). “Iran currently possesses enough material for six to eight bombs and none of it will be evacuated out of the country or rendered permanently inert for further nuclear weapons use.”
Pro-Israel advocacy groups such as the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) also expressed deep concerns about the deal.
“The Geneva Agreement is a defeat for the United States and the West,” said ECI executive director Noah Pollak in a statement. “It fails to uphold even the minimum demand of repeated U.N. Security Council resolutions that Iran must stop enriching uranium.”
“For the next six months, the centrifuges will not be dismantled and will continue to spin, uranium will be enriched, the 20 percent enriched uranium will stay in Iran, and a reactor designed to produce bomb-ready plutonium will remain just months away from completion,” Pollak warned.
“Congress should make clear that it does not support this deal,” Pollak said. “Congress should make clear that just because the Obama administration seems to have taken all our options off the table, our allies need not follow us down this futile path of accommodating the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions.”
Congress should also affirm that the United States “will support Israel” if it decides to take military action against Tehran, according to Pollak.
The RJC made a similar plea to Congress.
“President Obama’s diplomacy is giving cheer to Tehran’s rogue regime and causing alarm among our friends in the region—including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and most the other Gulf states,” RJC executive director Matt Brooks said in a statement. “Congress and the American people need to speak out against this flawed deal.”
1a) Gen. Michael Hayden Criticizes Iranian Agreement
Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden on Sunday criticized the Obama administration's deal with Iran saying it will only delay, not derail the country's nuclear program.
Hayden told CNN's "State of the Union" that Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry "hit the pause button, rather than delete button."
"Practically the worst of all possible outcomes, because now what you have here is a nuclear capable state," Hayden said.
"I think frankly that is Iran's bottom line, so what we're negotiating on is how much time we're putting between their nuclear capability and a nuclear weapon, a nuclear reality," Hayden said.
"And my fear is, this interim agreement, which doesn't roll back much of anything at all, becomes a permanent agreement," Hayden said.
The six-month agreement between the U.S. and other nations requires Iran to limit its nuclear activities in exchange for some relief on sanctions.
Hayden said the agreement contradicts the U.S. alignment with Sunnis Muslim and Israelis in the region, and that it will take "an awful lot of hand holding" to convince our allies this is the correct course of action.
Former Secretary of State John Negroponte also appeared on CNN and said that the U.S. should not consider lifting sanctions until after all of the demands to roll back the nuclear program have been met.
"I think what worries a number of people is that we might get salami-sliced and that the Iranians will engage in dilatory tactics and then seek some more momentary relief from sanctions," Negroponte said.
Hayden told CNN's "State of the Union" that Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry "hit the pause button, rather than delete button."
"Practically the worst of all possible outcomes, because now what you have here is a nuclear capable state," Hayden said.
"I think frankly that is Iran's bottom line, so what we're negotiating on is how much time we're putting between their nuclear capability and a nuclear weapon, a nuclear reality," Hayden said.
"And my fear is, this interim agreement, which doesn't roll back much of anything at all, becomes a permanent agreement," Hayden said.
The six-month agreement between the U.S. and other nations requires Iran to limit its nuclear activities in exchange for some relief on sanctions.
Hayden said the agreement contradicts the U.S. alignment with Sunnis Muslim and Israelis in the region, and that it will take "an awful lot of hand holding" to convince our allies this is the correct course of action.
Former Secretary of State John Negroponte also appeared on CNN and said that the U.S. should not consider lifting sanctions until after all of the demands to roll back the nuclear program have been met.
"I think what worries a number of people is that we might get salami-sliced and that the Iranians will engage in dilatory tactics and then seek some more momentary relief from sanctions," Negroponte said.
1b) Iran Pact Faces Stiff Opposition
By Jay Solomon
Israel and Some U.S. Lawmakers Blast Interim Deal to Curb Nuclear Program, Ease Sanctions
—A groundbreaking deal to curb Iran's nuclear program faces towering obstacles at home and abroad to becoming a permanent agreement, starting with the U.S. Congress and two of America's closest allies.
The leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties are threatening to break with President Barack Obama's policy and enact new punitive sanctions on Iran, arguing that the interim deal reached in Geneva on Sunday yields too much to the Islamist regime while asking too little.
"The disproportionality of this agreement makes it more likely that Democrats and Republicans will join together and pass additional sanctions when we return in December," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), an influential member of the Senate Democratic leadership.
Such a move could kill the nascent nuclear accord, U.S. and Iranian officials agree, and add to more recent political embarrassments for the White House.
Reaching a comprehensive deal with Iran also faces formidable diplomatic and technical challenges, said U.S. and European officials. Washington wants to eventually dismantle much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, including a heavy water reactor and enrichment facilities, steps Tehran has so far refused to take.
Israeli leaders, watching with trepidation over Iran's interim nuclear agreement, are wrangling over how to ensure the next rounds of diplomacy yield the best possible result for their country. Washington Institute senior fellow Andrew Tabler discusses. Photo: Getty Images.
The White House has signaled it would defend the agreement by directly appealing to lawmakers and to foreign leaders. Mr. Obama on Sunday spoke by telephone to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has campaigned against the pact. The U.S. leader said he wanted to consult with Israelis on talks, and agreed Mr. Netanyahu "has good reason to be skeptical about Iran's intentions."
Iran celebrated the deal on Sunday as a political victory for President Hasan Rouhani and a step toward economic relief.
A final agreement could underpin broader American efforts to stabilize the Middle East and end conflicts in Syria and between Israel and the Palestinians, where Tehran actively supports militant groups, these officials said.
Senior U.S. officials said Sunday that a successful conclusion of an Iran accord could redefine the U.S.-Iran relationship, which has been marked by open hostilities since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Tehran.
"I think this is potentially a significant moment, but I'm not going to stand here in some triumphal moment and suggest to you that this is an end unto itself," Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday, following two days of exhaustive negotiations.
As a side benefit, experts expect to see the easing of tensions with Iran lead to a reduction in world oil prices, although the effects will depend in part on how much Iranian oil returns to the market.
Despite the lures of a permanent deal, the Obama administration's outreach to Tehran carries great risks, said U.S. and Mideast officials. Key American allies, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, are publicly challenging the U.S. policy, claiming it directly threatens their security.
Any further rupture of the security ties with these countries threatens to undermine a U.S. defense system that has been in place in the Mideast for three decades, said regional observers.
"The U.S. diplomacy offers great opportunities but is also very dangerous," said Emile El-Hokayem, a Dubai-based Persian Gulf expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "Many American allies see Washington reorienting itself away from its traditional allies."
The interim deal announced Sunday between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N Security Council and Germany requires Iran to freeze its program and the world powers to ease some sanctions. A permanent accord would require each side to go much further, taking steps that Mr. Obama said "won't be easy."
The deal calls for Tehran to curb central parts of its nuclear program in exchange for a rollback of economic sanctions. Iran agreed to freeze its production of near-weapons grade fuel—which is uranium enriched to 20% purity—and to remove its stockpile of the fissile material.
Iran also committed to defer the startup of a heavy-water nuclear reactor in the city of Arak that could begin producing weapons-grade plutonium for potential use in making a nuclear bomb within 18 months.
The U.S. views the deal as a six-month confidence-building phase to allow for talks on a permanent agreement. Mr. Kerry and other U.S. officials said it provides U.N. monitors significantly more time and ability to detect if Iran is secretly preparing to "break out" and assemble an atomic weapon.
Israel and Arab states blasted the deal in part because for the first time the West has accepted that Iran will continue enriching uranium on its soil to use in power plants and for other civilian purposes. Successive U.S. administrations, as well as the U.N. Security Council, have called for Iran to suspend all its enrichment activities.
Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday said his nation wasn't bound to respect the new accord—a warning that the Jewish state might still consider military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Saudi officials have privately suggested in recent months that it could be forced to pursue nuclear weapons if Iran was seen benefiting from a weak deal with the global powers, which form a diplomatic bloc called the P5+1.
Proliferation experts said the new agreement contains no specific commitments to address evidence that Iran has clandestinely developed technologies used in creating a nuclear warhead. U.N. officials cite suspected tests in 2000 of implosion devices that are used in making atomic weapons.
"What happens if Iran is caught again procuring equipment for such tests?" said George Perkovich of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There's nothing in the agreement that addresses this."
Sanctions relief under the agreement is expected to provide Tehran between $6 billion and $7 billion in badly needed foreign-exchange earnings over the next half-year, U.S. officials said. Of this, $4.2 billion will be Iran's earnings from oil sales that have been trapped in overseas bank accounts due to the international sanctions.
The U.S. and Europe are also suspending bans on Iran's trade in petrochemicals, precious metals, automobiles and airplane spare parts.
Mr. Kerry and other American officials stressed that Western financial pressure wouldn't slacken during the six months and that all of the sanctions on Tehran could be reimposed if Iran didn't live up to its commitments.
U.S. officials estimated that Iran would still lose around $25 billion in oil revenue during this confidence-building phase and that $14 billion to $16 billion of its oil revenue will be locked up in overseas banks.
"We are committed to maintaining our commitment to vigorously enforcing the vast majority of the sanctions that are currently in place," Mr. Kerry said.
Israel and the Obama administration's critics on Capitol Hill challenge these numbers, and voiced fears that Washington was letting Tehran get off the financial hook.
Experts on Iran sanctions said it took nearly a decade to bring to bear the financial pressure Tehran is currently facing, and that removing just some of the penalties could weaken the global business community's commitment to their implementation.
Indeed, a number of European companies announced on Sunday that they were preparing to resume operations in Iran.
"Iran has broken the back of the Western sanctions regime," said Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that advises Congress on Iran. "It is an illusion to believe the sanctions will not be eroded significantly by this deal.
Many Iranians stayed up all night to follow the news from Geneva on Persian Satellite channels like BBC Persian and Iranian official news websites. Others woke up to the news of the historic deal, storming social media with messages of congratulations as a sense of euphoria and hope filled the capital Tehran. Commuters on their way to work in Tehran honked their horns and flashed their lights.
Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli officials say Iran will use this economic lifeline to stabilize their economy but still will be allowed to conduct nuclear work. At the end of the six months, they warned, Iran still will have the capacity to rapidly move toward an atomic weapon.
In Iran, markets immediately started responding to news that some sanctions—such as shipping insurance, petrochemical goods and auto and airplane parts—would be rolled back.
Iran's currency increased value against the dollar on Sunday by about 3%, according to money exchangers in Tehran's currency market. The currency had lost half of its value in the past two years because of the sanctions.
Tehran's stock market reported that investors were rushing to buy shares in industries benefiting from sanctions relief such as petrochemical and shipping. Iranian media reported long lines forming at the Tehran stock exchange.
—Siobhan Hughes, Farnaz Fassihi, Tatyana Shumsky and Laurence Norman contributed to this article.
1c) A Bad Agreement Likely to Get Worse
Tehran surrendered little on nuclear matters and gained much economically.
ByBy By
The Geneva deal agreed to Sunday by six major powers with Iran is a gamble on Western optimism. While slightly rolling back Iranian nuclear capability, the agreement greatly weakens Western economic sanctions. Iranian sanctions-busters will be in position to exploit the changing market psychology and newly created pathways to reap billions of additional dollars in economic relief beyond those projected by the Obama administration. The Geneva deal's provisions are too weak to prevent Iranian physicists from making further nuclear progress in several key areas.
The interim agreement has glaring loopholes even as it addresses some areas of Iran's nuclear-weapons capacity. It includes several Iranian commitments that, if verifiably implemented, would extend Iran's nuclear breakout time from about a month to about two months, while making it easier to detect an Iranian breakout.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (R) shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif after a ceremony at the United Nations in Geneva November 24, 2013. Reuters
It places more constraints on Iran's nuclear program than was the case in the deal that the Obama administration reportedly was prepared to sign two weeks ago. The Senate's threat to pass additional sanctions, France's objections to the initial deal, and Israel's fierce resistance to the terms of the proposed agreement seem to have played a role in providing U.S. negotiators with leverage to extract a better deal from Iran.
Even with improvements, the interim agreement fails to bring Iran into compliance with its key international legal obligations as spelled out in United Nations Security Council resolutions. The agreement comes closest on compliance with the resolutions' requirement that Iran "suspend" work on "all heavy water-related projects" including "construction" of the Arak reactor. While the Geneva agreement commits Iran to refrain from the most significant activities at Arak, it does not preclude Iran from general construction work at the site. Iran will easily be able to restart or threaten to restart the more dangerous work at Arak when the six-month interim period ends.
On Iran's other legal obligations, the gap is much greater. The Security Council resolutions require Iran to verifiably "suspend . . . all enrichment-related activities." Yet the Geneva agreement fails to commit Iran to suspend enrichment of uranium to 3.5%. The preamble language even appears to position Iran to begin negotiations for a final deal with its domestic-enrichment program already pocketed as a concession.
The U.N. resolutions require Iran to "provide such access and cooperation as the IAEA requests" to resolve the International Atomic Energy Agency's concerns about Iran's research into nuclear-weapons design. Multiple IAEA reports, including from March 2011 and November 2011, have provided extensive descriptions of Iranian research involving activities related to the development of a nuclear explosive and noted that some of the research "may still be ongoing." Yet the interim agreement does almost nothing to gain such access and cooperation or to require Iran to come clean or provide access and cooperation to ensure that such research is not continuing.
Remarkably, not even the agreement's "elements of the final step of a comprehensive solution" make clear reference to Iran revealing its past nuclear-weapons research. Thus, Iran's affirmation, in the interim agreement preamble, that "under no circumstances will Iran ever seek or develop any nuclear weapons" is, with respect to weapons-design research, all trust and next to no verify.
The Security Council resolutions also explicitly require Iran to "not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons." However, the interim agreement includes no Iranian commitments related to its ballistic-missile program. Not even the agreement's "elements of the final step of a comprehensive solution" make any reference to Iran halting its activity related to ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear weapons.
In the absence of verifiable Iranian commitments not to proceed with nuclear-weapon and ballistic-missile research, there is nothing to stop Iran from having a designed bomb and ballistic missile ready to go. Once Iran completes a dash to weapons-grade uranium, it can insert the warhead and quickly have a deliverable nuclear weapon.
Thus, even if Iran faithfully implements each of its commitments under the interim agreement, it could find itself, in May 2014, a mere month further away than it is now from having weapons-grade uranium—but six months closer to having the rest of a deliverable nuclear weapon.
In exchange for these nuclear concessions, the Geneva deal provides significant relief to the Iranian government, which has been under severe pressure from financial sanctions. These sanctions cut Iran's currency and oil sales in half, and the sanctions restricted the regime's access to much of its estimated $80 billion to $100 billion in total foreign exchange reserves.
The Obama administration estimates that its sanctions-relief deal provides Iran with about $7 billion over six months in repatriated oil earnings, gold, petrochemical and auto sanctions, and some tuition assistance for Iranian students. Since Iran only has unrestricted access to an estimated $20 billion in overseas foreign-exchange reserves, even this $7 billion will increase Iran's unrestricted foreign reserves by over 30%. The interim agreement thus gives a rapid cash infusion to a regime that faced escalating sanctions and a potential full-blown balance-of-payments and currency crisis.
The Geneva deal, however, promises Iran potential sanctions relief of much more than $7 billion. Members of Congress, the Israeli government and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies have valued the potential sanctions relief over a six-month period at up to $20 billion. These calculations factor in how Iran could fully exploit the loopholes opened by the Geneva deal, and how an environment of sanctions relief and de-escalating sanctions could change the market psychology from fear to greed.
How could Iran do that? The impact of the Geneva deal on oil sanctions alone is instructive. First, despite administration promises not to touch the "core sanctions," the interim agreement does exactly that by suspending for six months a 2011 U.S. law that requires countries buying crude oil from Iran to significantly reduce those purchases. The deal also suspends the core European Union and U.S. insurance and transportation sanctions for these Iranian oil sales that have been a major barrier. This could be worth over $2 billion to Iran that it otherwise would have lost over the six-month period. In addition, sanctions relief on Iran's auto sector reverses the free-fall of an industry that, before sanctions, accounted for 10% of Iran's GDP and is the second-largest employer after the energy sector.
When it comes to sanctions, official loosening prompts more unofficial loosening as the market reads the trend lines. Ultimately, Iran may find that the Geneva deal gave it more than loopholes to exploit and cash to earn. The agreement has given Tehran a new environment of changing expectations for the trajectory of the Iranian economy and a major reprieve from a more severe economic crisis.
As American economic leverage diminishes and Iranian nuclear leverage increases over the next six months, a flawed interim deal may result in an even worse final agreement.
Mr. Dubowitz is executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he leads projects on Iran sanctions and nonproliferation. Mr. Kittrie is a law professor at Arizona State University and a senior fellow at the foundation.
1dObama Chose Dishonor
By Shoula Romano Horing
President Obama had to choose between dishonor and war and he chose dishonor. Now we will have war. He has dishonored U.S. allies in the Middle East, including Israel and the Persian Gulf states, by abandoning their security concerns regarding a nuclear Iran by believing that appeasing Iran is the only way to avoid war.
These words are those of Churchill after the Munich Agreement was signed when Britain and France believed that handing Czechoslovakia to Hitler was the only way to save the world from another war. It is regarded as the shameful culmination of the Allies refusal to confront Nazi aggression and gave Hitler what he wanted in exchange for his verbal promise of "peace in our time" as Chamberlain called it.
After the Munich Agreement, Churchill gave a speech in the House of Commons on the future consequences to Europe and the world of the agreement which he called "total and unmitigated defeat". Following the Geneva Agreement, these warnings ring as true now as they did then.
We cannot consider the abandonment of U.S. allies only in the light of what happened the last few weeks. This agreement in Geneva is the culmination of five years of uninterrupted retreat of U.S. power in the Middle East under Obama. For five years the president has been betraying Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE while accommodating enemies and tyrants like Syria's Assad, Iran's Khamenei, and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Five years of eager searching for any perceived moderate leader in Iran, ending with Obama's naïve conviction that he has found one in the smiling new Iranian president Hassan Rouhani despite the fact that past evidence proves that Rouhani has been a liar and a cheat in previous negotiations with the West about suspending uranium enrichment.
Let us be clear. This agreement is a total U.S. defeat and Iranian victory. It is the first step toward a new U.S. policy of containment of Iran's nuclear program. Despite desperate propaganda by Obama, in reality the U.S. and the West have given the Iranians the implied right to contnue enrichment when it agreed to let Iran continue enriching its uranium to 3.5%. The Iranians will be able to maintain their nuclear program and continue to enrich uranium while the Americans and their allies loosen their economic noose around Iran and allow it to have access to at least 10 billion dollars of assets which can be used to continue financing terrorist activities in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq as well as to sustain the mullah's tyrannical regime. Moreover, once the sanctions are loosened and the Europeans and China resume making money from Iran, it is unrealistic to believe they will be reinstated.
Israel is not Czechoslovakia. Israel was abandoned by its ally but it is not broken and will never be silent. Israel is a nuclear power and can attack Iran on its own the way did the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear reactors. The only obstacle is that Obama has tied Israeli hands for the next six months of negotiations. By then Iran will be a month away from building a bomb.
Knowing that Obama will never attack Iran militarily and will do his best to delay Israel from attacking Iran in time will have disastrous consequences in the Middle East. Many countries in the Middle East like Qatar and Iraq will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Iran in the hope of protection from annihilation. Many others like Egypt and Turkey will gravitate to the Russians and the Chinese for military cooperation and nuclear reactors. Others like Saudi Arabia and the UAE will turn to the Pakistanis for a nuclear bomb. A new nuclear arms race has just begun. Rather than "peace in our time" Obama and his allies have given us a potential nuclear war in our time. The Middle East is not Europe and Iran is not the ex-Soviet Union. It is a suicidal Shiite state alongside suicidal Sunni states in the powder keg called the Middle East which is not susceptible to the cold war discipline of deterrence.
Meanwhile, Iranian influence and stature will grow while U.S. influence and stature as a reliable ally will diminish. Eventually under this president, the U.S. will retreat, leaving a mess behind. And even after Obama, the U.S. will not be trusted again.
Obama and the other nations at Geneva do not understand the dangers of accepting Iranian status as a threshold nuclear state. Having a nuclear Iran is not only disastrous to Israel but also to the U.S. and the world. Just imagine what would have happened if Hitler had acquired a nuclear weapon before Germany was defeated militarily. Iran, just as Hitler at the time, has a design not only to kill Jews, but also to rule the world by controlling the oil-rich Gulf nations which control 50 percent of the world's oil supply. The promise of "containing" a nuclear Iran by convincing them not to use the nuclear weapon will not work since the threat of nuclear attack will be enough for Iran to dictate oil prices, as well as controlling oil supplies to the U.S. and Europe.
Then, the only option available to the U.S. and the world will be to fight Iran, perhaps resulting in a nuclear war which could destroy the oil resources and many countries in the process.
Shoula Romano Horing is an Israeli born and raised; Her blog: www.shoularomanohoring.com
1e)
Sorry for the corny title of this article — I was going to call it “It’s the Centrifuges, Stupid!” — but as a Hollywood movie executive famously said in a script meeting, “Obviousness is your friend.” He was right about screenplays and he’s right here. No one believes Barack Obama about anything anymore. Why should they? The new Iran deal is Obamacare II, only worse, a thousand megatons worse.
So many things are wrong with the agreement coming out of Geneva, it’s hard to know where to begin (for an excellent overall go to The Israel Project’s Tower website or look right here with our resident expert Dr. Ledeen), but the most egregious part indeed comes down to centrifuges. Iran has some 19,000 of them — more than three times the amount of longtime nuclear-armed Pakistan. The agreement forbids the Iranians to build anymore, but, much more importantly, it allows the Iranians to fix any of their centrifuges that may be broken and get them working again..
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1e)
Iran Will Not Have an Atomic Bomb. Perio
Sorry for the corny title of this article — I was going to call it “It’s the Centrifuges, Stupid!” — but as a Hollywood movie executive famously said in a script meeting, “Obviousness is your friend.” He was right about screenplays and he’s right here. No one believes Barack Obama about anything anymore. Why should they? The new Iran deal is Obamacare II, only worse, a thousand megatons worse.
So many things are wrong with the agreement coming out of Geneva, it’s hard to know where to begin (for an excellent overall go to The Israel Project’s Tower website or look right here with our resident expert Dr. Ledeen), but the most egregious part indeed comes down to centrifuges. Iran has some 19,000 of them — more than three times the amount of longtime nuclear-armed Pakistan. The agreement forbids the Iranians to build anymore, but, much more importantly, it allows the Iranians to fix any of their centrifuges that may be broken and get them working again..
How many of those 19,000 are broken? I’m not sure anyone outside Iran knows, but as will be recalled, the Stuxnet computer virus of 2010 was designed to bring these centrifuges to a halt and apparently did so quite successfully in many cases. But now — thanks to the deal that Obama and Kerry have put together — the Iranians will have six unmolested months to get as many of them up and running as they can, enriching uranium.
Speaking of which, Iran’s “right to enrich” is supposedly still under dispute, the Americans saying one thing about the language in the deal and the Iranians another. Some dispute. The prologue to the “interim” agreement states that the amount of enrichment will be decided in future negotiation, not (nota bene) whether enrichment will be allowed or not. (The specific language reads: “a mutually defined enrichment program with practical limits and transparency measures to ensure the peaceful nature of the program.” Uh-huh.) Meanwhile, Iran is able to enrich up to five percent, not the previous alleged maximum of 3.5%. Whatever happened to that other 1/5%? Confusing, no? Oh, well, that’s a long way from the 20% needed for weaponization.
No, it’s not. It’s not very much at all when you have 19,000 centrifuges. How much of a setback for the Iranian nuclear weapons program is this five percent permissible level then? According to the New York Times, about as pro-Obama a publication as you can get outside of a Chicago Democratic Party newsletter, the current agreement will retard the Iranian program only about one month.
One month? For this we give them oodles of desperately needed cash — seven billion on the face of it but some suggest that’s floating up to twenty — not to mention ending sanctions on such things as auto parts. This is great for Ayatollah Khamenei who, we have learned recently, owns the BMW distributorship in Iran.
Nevertheless, we are told by such wise men as Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski that this is a good deal and we should jump at it. More specifically, these realists attest, this is the best deal we can get now.
Really? The Iranians came to the table because of sanctions. We are now lifting them and, simultaneously, encouraging others to think proactively about doing business with Iran, a potential gold (or oil) mine. We are also ratifying the hellacious Islamic regime of the mullahs that oppresses women, murders homosexuals and imprisons and tortures all those who oppose it. Forget human rights. What are they? America (really Obama in this instance) just wants a deal.
It’s not surprising. Obama never did anything for the Green Movement. Why should he care now, especially with his post-Obamacare numbers imploding? Anything to move the ball and distract the news cycle. So what if Ayatollah Khamenei called Israel a “rabid dog” about three days ago while the throng before him yelled “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”? It’s just a little hyperbole, right? He’s not serious. This isn’t Munich. This is a respectful negotiation between peers.
“No, it’s not,” I repeat, again obviously. This is the desperate move of a president in free fall, only it’s a move being made with millions of lives at stake. If the sanctions in place brought Iran to the table, why wouldn’t ratcheting up the sanctions, as Congress sought to do, get Iran actually to agree to dismantle its program, to shrink back the extraordinary number of centrifuges we know them to have, a number vastly higher than any peaceful nation could possibly need?
Now we will never know.
So we have left it all to Israel and, incredible as it may seem, Saudi Arabia to put a stop to this madness. What will they do? I wouldn’t want to be them. It’s no fun at all Perhaps a new prayer should be added to the Jewish liturgy. “Thank G-d I wasn’t born Benjamin Netanyahu
2)Obama: Iran deal 'an important first step'
President Obama said Saturday that an interim agreement on Iran's nuclear program is "an important first step" and again vowed to prevent Tehran from obtaining the means to make nuclear weapons.
President Obama said Saturday that an interim agreement on Iran's nuclear program is "an important first step" and again vowed to prevent Tehran from obtaining the means to make nuclear weapons.
U.S. and allied diplomacy "opened up a new path toward a world that is more secure." Obama during a seven-minute statement at the White House. "Afuture in which we can verify that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful and that it cannot build a nuclear weapon."
The president spoke just after U.S. and international partners negotiated a six-month interim deal with Iran, which agreed to limit nuclear activities in return for relief from up to $7 billion in sanctions that have hurt its economy.
2a)Historic US-Iran Deal Is First Step Toward Peace
2a)Historic US-Iran Deal Is First Step Toward Peace
The United States and Iran, in conjunction with the P5+1 world powers, have struck a historic accord that paves the way for a final settlement of the long-running dispute over Iran’s nuclear program. On the fourth day of the most recent round of talks, in bargaining that lasted until 3 am, the P5+1 and Iran concluded an interim agreement, as widely expected, to freeze Iran’s nuclear program at roughly its current state. In exchange, the United States and the P5+1 have agreed on a modest but significant relaxation of economic sanctions on Iran. The next step, which the parties expect to take up to six months, is to complete a deal in which an end to sanctions is exchanged for a continued freeze and partial rollback of Iran’s program, in a way—guaranteed by more intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—that provides clear assurances that Iran is not on the path toward nuclear weapons.
The substance of the accord reached in Geneva is a breakthrough, but the politics of the agreement is equally important. President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry signed the deal in explicit, full-frontal defiance of American hawks, neoconservatives and hardliners, the Israel lobby, and anti-Iran partisans in Congress. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his team, backed by President Hassan Rouhani—elected in June with a mandate to do exactly this—have similarly defied their own country’s hardliners and skeptics, led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and by what Zarif calls Iran’s own Tea Party. And the United States struck the deal despite outright hostility, bordering on hysteria, from its two chief allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
According to the terms of the agreement, Iran has agreed to halt all uranium enrichment above the range of 3.5 to 5 percent purity, which is low-enriched, fuel-grade uranium. Its stockpile of medium-enriched, 20 percent purity uranium will be neutralized by conversion into a product that cannot be used for weapons. It will not produce any new centrifuges except those needed to replace ones that break down, and it will not start spinning those now in place, including advanced centrifuges, that aren’t currently in use. It will not add to its current stockpile of low-enriched uranium, either, although it can continue to refine uranium to 5 percent purity as long as some of it is converted to fuel rods and other, nonmilitary product. Its heavy water reactor at Arak, which could produce material to process into plutonium, will be frozen. And Iran has agreed to far more intrusive IAEA inspections, including daily inspections at Natanz and at the underground facility at Fordow.
Both President Rouhani and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, have endorsed the accord, in part because for the first time the United States and the P5+1 have tacitly recognized Iran’s right to enrich uranium under the terms of the Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed, by agreeing to permit Iran’s continuing enrichment to 5 percent. Rouhani said that the deal seals Iran’s “nuclear rights,” and, according to Al Arabiya, Khamenei said: “The nuclear negotiating team should be thanked and appreciated for this achievement. God’s grace and the support of the Iranian nation were the reasons behind this success.”
Obama, speaking from the White House early Sunday, said:
While today’s announcement is just a first step, it achieves a great deal. For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back. Iran has committed to halting certain levels of enrichment, and neutralizing part of its stockpile. Iran cannot use its next-generation centrifuges—which are used for enriching uranium. Iran cannot install or start up new centrifuges, and its production of centrifuges will be limited. Iran will halt work at its plutonium reactor. And new inspections will provide extensive access to Iran’s nuclear facilities, and allow the international community to verify whether Iran is keeping its commitments.
Interestingly, a statement from the White House early today explicitly rules out the imposition of additional sanctions, which is a direct message to leaders of the US Senate, including majority leader Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who’d hinted that they’d move ahead with yet another round of sanctions in December. The accord, says the White House, commits the parties of the P5+1, including the United States, to “not impose new nuclear-related sanctions for six months, if Iran abides by its commitments under this deal, to the extent permissible within their political systems.”
But the White House, trying to sell the accord to domestic skeptics, including the hawks, risks sounding a little triumphant by touting the sanctions relief provided to Iran as “limited, temporary, targeted, and reversible.” That’s all true—but, of course, Iran’s commitments are equally “reversible.” In fact, the sanctions relief is important in its own right, but it also provides the first movement in the opposition direction in regard to economic sanctions on Iran since the mid-1990s. Under the terms of the accord, Iran will gain access to billions of dollars in frozen accounts over the next six months; it will gain specific relief for its suffering auto and aviation sectors; and the accord will “allow purchases of Iranian oil to remain at their currently significantly reduced levels.” That last phrase means that although the onerous oil and banking sanctions will remain in place, there will be no more pressure to reduce Iran’s oil exports further.
Israel’s reaction is, predictably, apoplectic. Naftali Bennett, Israel’s economic minister, said, “If five years from now a nuclear suitcase explodes in New York or Madrid, it will be because of the deal that was signed this morning.” But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have trouble playing that card for long, since Israel is drastically isolated from the rest of the world and risks an open break with Washington. Already, some Israel leaders, such as President Shimon Peres and the newly installed leader of the Israeli Labor Party, have issued mild to moderate statements that undermine Netanyahu’s bluster. And, ironically, though, the harsh reaction from Israel will help Rouhani and Zarif sell the deal in Iran, since they can point to Israel’s criticism of the deal as a sign that it was, indeed, a victory for Iran’s “nuclear rights.”
In a background briefing, a senior US official laid out the sanctions relief that Iran will get via the accord. It’s an impressive list:
The components are as follows: We will pause efforts to further reduce Iran’s crude oil sales. This means Iran’s oil exports will remain steady at their current level of around 1 million barrels per day, which is down 60 percent since our oil sanctions took effect in late 2011. And with one exception, the revenue that Iran earns from these sales over the next six months will continue to be restricted by our sanctions, meaning that those funds will not be available to Iran for repatriation or cross-border transfer.The one exception is that we will allow Iran to transfer $4.2 billion in revenue from these sales in installments over the six-month period.We will suspend U.S. sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical exports. This could allow Iran to generate some revenue, which we estimate to be a maximum of a billion dollars in new revenue over the six-month period. We will suspend U.S. sanctions on Iran’s trade in gold and precious metals. There is no economic value to Iran from this provision because Iran will have to spend its limited unrestricted foreign currency for any gold purchases. Iran cannot use restricted oil earnings to buy gold.We will suspend U.S. sanctions on exports to Iran’s auto industry. This could provide Iran some marginal benefit on the order of about $500 million if Iran is able to resume its prior levels of production and revitalizes its auto exports. However, Iran’s auto industry suffers from many problems beyond sanctions, many of which would have to be solved for Iran to benefit from this provision. Moreover, Iran would need to use some of its limited foreign currency to pay for car kits it would import from abroad.We will allow $400 million in governmental tuition assistance to be transferred from restricted Iranian funds overseas directly to recognized educational institutions in third countries to defray the tuition costs of Iranian students. We will license safety-related repairs and inspections inside Iran for certain Iranian airlines, and we will establish a financial channel to facilitate humanitarian trade in food, agricultural commodities, medicines, and medical devices for Iran’s domestic needs. Humanitarian transactions have been explicitly exempted from sanctions by Congress, so this channel will not provide Iran access to any new source of funds.Finally, to the extent permissible within our political system, we have committed to refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions. That does not prevent us from implementing and enforcing our existing nuclear-related sanctions, which, of course, we will do, or from imposing new sanctions targeting Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism or its abysmal human rights record.
Greg Mitchell dissects the media's response to the historic Iran deal.
2b) In Iran, Obama Achieves 50 Percent of His Goals
U.S. President Barack Obama has had two overarching goals in the Iran crisis. The first was to stop the Iranian regime from gaining possession of a nuclear weapon. The second was to prevent Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
2b) In Iran, Obama Achieves 50 Percent of His Goals
U.S. President Barack Obama has had two overarching goals in the Iran crisis. The first was to stop the Iranian regime from gaining possession of a nuclear weapon. The second was to prevent Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
This weekend, the president achieved one of these goals. He boxed-in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu so comprehensively that it's unimaginable Israel will strike Iran in the foreseeable future. Netanyahu had his best chance to attack in 2010 and 2011, and he missed it. He came close but was swayed by Obama’s demand that he keep his planes parked. It would be a foolhardy act -- one that could turn Israel into a true pariah state, and bring about the collapse of sanctions and possible war in the Middle East -- if Israel were to attack Iran now, in the middle of negotiations.
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On the other matter -- actually preventing Iran from getting hold of a nuclear weapon -- Obama and his Great Power partners have at least slowed the regime’s march across the nuclear threshold. If they’re not careful they could wind up legitimizing Iran’s nuclear ambitions (never forget that Iran’s leaders are lying when they insist they've built their nuclear program exclusively for peaceful purposes). But Obama and his partners seem to have bought a bit of time here.
To echo my Bloomberg View colleague Al Hunt, the temporary deal struck in Geneva seems, in many ways, like the least-worst option at the moment. There are four ways to neutralize the Iranian regime’s nuclear program. The first is the military option, executed either by Israel or by the U.S. (The Arab states, which want a military solution very much, have never shown the desire to actually carry it out.) A bombing campaign is a bad idea: It could very well destroy many of Iran’s nuclear facilities, but it also could kill innocent people and legitimize the program. The sanctions regime would collapse following a strike, which still would not wipe out Iran’s nuclear knowledge base and could rally the country around the cause of full nuclearization.
Crushing sanctions, the second option, have been effective at forcing Iran to the negotiating table, but years of sanctions have not placed the Iranian regime’s survival in jeopardy. The regime is willing to let its citizens absorb a great deal of pain on its behalf, and when those citizens get ornery, it hasn’t been shy about killing them. It seems unlikely that sanctions, which are already hard enough to enforce, will bring about Iran’s total nuclear capitulation.
The third path is a campaign for a complete regime change, but the American experience in Iraq has removed this option from the table. The U.S. has neither the stomach nor the competence to bring about the collapse of the regime.
The fourth path is diplomacy, and this interim deal may be the best the U.S. was going to get. The deal has many dubious features. It comes perilously close to recognizing Iran’s so-called right-to-enrich. It makes it even less probable that the West will confront Iran for its nefarious behavior in Syria. It frees up billions of dollars for the regime to use in exchange for nuclear concessions that are reversible. It does not require a single centrifuge to be dismantled. Iran could still make a rush for nuclear breakout in eight weeks.
I’m fairly confident, however, that Iran won’t make such a precipitous move at the moment. I’m also reasonably confident that the Obama administration is still capable of walking away from the main show -- the upcoming, actually difficult, final negotiations -- if Iran refuses to dismantle those parts of its nuclear infrastructure that could be used to manufacture a bomb.
And the U.S. might just have to walk away because there isn’t much proof that Hassan Rouhani, the putatively reformist new Iranian president, or the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, are authorized by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to actually agree to a meaningful deconstruction of the nuclear program. Strategic pauses are fine, but actual dismantling? It seems hard to believe, for any number of reasons, the simplest one being that it is in the best long-term interest of the regime to have the means to quickly build a nuclear weapon. It’s certainly not in the interest of the regime to agree to be disarmed by the U.S., its arch-enemy and the country still often referred to as the Great Satan.
So everything that has happened over these past months may not amount to anything at all. Contra Netanyahu, who unrealistically seeks only total Iranian capitulation, it isn’t stupid for Obama to find out for sure what, if anything, the Iranians are willing to give up for good.
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