Jack Kingston should know by now anything he says to the liberal media and press will be reported in a 'gotcha ' distorted mode. Even our local cartoonist and editorial staff seem hell bent on elevating Michelle Nunn , the female equivalent of another community organizer seeking higher public office,so Georgia will enjoy a closer Senate horse race and more money will be spent on advertising etc.
What Jack said is our Republic is far better served if our nation's youth are raised with an attitude of gratitude than entitlement and working for a helping hand teaches positive lessons not demeaning ones.
Our synagogue is engaged in the Back Pack Buddy Program and recipients can either be taught dependency and entitlement or undertake something appropriate for their age and ability to earn their just rewards.
Our nation has become so PC oriented we seem more concerned indoctrinating feelings of false self worth than promoting head high experiences. Soft racism is inelegant, it creates false hope , has been used to buy votes and it's consequences have proven disastrous.
Thank God, Jack Kingston had the guts to remind us work and responsibility are noble acts which go hand in hand and result in a far better lesson learned than the liberal solution of dependency, entitlement and
emotional crippling.
When did responsibility, when did doing chores become anti American? It did when misguided liberals decided our society was better served by raising generations of supplicants than those capable of standing on their own two feet, independent of a government hell bent on teaching dependency and feelings of helplessness,
America is fast becoming a spiritually impoverished nation and that is one liberal call I urge we duck
Jack Kingston has been an outstanding Representative and I dare say will make an even better Senator and his message of work, achievement and responsibility may be old fashioned but these values are what made America a nation of great, decent and compassionate people. His prescription is the right one but the left must twist it so he becomes another Grinch who stole Christmas. The liberal grave yard of distortions is full of these efforts. Ask Newt Gingrich, Dr. Carson, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and the many others who have suffered the slings and arrows of gross distortions in the service of defending the lies of Obama , Reid, Hillary, Pelosi etc.
The Merriest of Christmases and Happiest and Healthiest of New Years to those who work, who struggle who are grateful for the American opportunity of freedom and Bah Humbug to the distorters and defenders of dependency!
2a)
Hollywood’s War on Israel
Radical chic in the entertainment biz
Saving Mr. Banks, the new film chronicling Walt Disney’s bid to secure movie rights to Mary Poppins, was released on Friday. Although an incredibly talented and innovative animator, director and producer, Disney’s reputation will be forever tarnished by his well-known anti-Semitism and support for racist causes. Disney participated in several racist initiatives, including the pro-Nazi German American Bund and was a close friend of the Nazi propagandist and Hitler confidante Leni Riefenstahl. He was also allied with the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, another anti-Semitic organization.
Emma Thompson. (Photo by Getty Images)
But the irony of this unfortunate history is that Emma Thompson, who plays the role of author P. L. Travers in the new film, seems aligned with Disney and his ambivalence toward the Jewish people. Since she signed a libelous protest of an Israeli theater group’s participation in last year’s Shakespeare festival in England, I don’t know if her reputation will ever be the same.
The 2012 letter of protest, published in The Guardian, signed by Ms. Thompson and more than three dozen other artists, states, “We notice with dismay and regret that Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London has invited Israel’s National Theatre, Habima, to perform The Merchant of Venice in its Globe to Globe festival this coming May.” It seems that the irony of an Israeli theater performing The Merchant of Venice was lost on Ms. Thompson, who appears to have taken Shakespeare’s caricature of Jews a little too literally.
The six-week long festival also hosted China’s National Theater, but their participation was met without protest from Ms. Thompson and the other artists. If Ms. Thompson was sincerely concerned about her complicity in supporting a government that she claims violates human rights, then China, which regularly jails dissenters for lengthy sentences and has brutally occupied Tibet since 1950, should have been at the top of her list.
But China was allowed to participate in the Shakespeare festival without Ms. Thompson demanding a pound of flesh.
Here lies the troubling prejudice of Israel’s enemies who hold utterly hypocritical standards when it comes to the Jewish state. For Jews, the standards are superhuman and often impossible to satisfy. Ms. Thompson’s boycott of Habima is only a small part of an unsettling trend in the community of celebrities and Hollywood stars to hold Israel to an unachievably higher standard than other nations.
Sometimes the uneven judgment comes from Jewish celebrities themselves.
Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, in his series Parts Unknown, seems never to miss an opportunity to slam Israel’s treatment of its Palestinian population when he visits the Jewish state. Although he put tefillin on for the first time in his life, having a perfunctory “bar mitzvah,” he is no more immune than anyone else to being blinded by a superficial evaluation of the conflict. While Mr. Bourdain goes to great lengths to break stereotypes about Palestinians—documenting an all-female Palestinian racing team, for instance—he sadly reinforces an inaccurate impression of the Israeli presence in the West Bank.
He does not reveal that Israel conquered the West Bank in a war of annihilation against the Jewish State provoked by Nasser of Egypt and joined by King Hussein of Jordan. He does not reveal that the West Bank consists of Judea and Samaria, the two oldest Biblical settlements of the ancient Jewish nation. He does not reveal that Israel has returned 97% of the West Bank to Palestinian control, amid incessant terror attacks launched against Israelis and Jews from those areas.
When Mr. Bourdain visits Gaza, he speaks with a young Palestinian woman who tells him about the challenges of fishing—that Palestinians are shot at by Israelis if they travel too far from the coast and risk having their boats, and livelihoods, destroyed. He does not reveal that Gaza is ruled by Hamas, with its genocidal charter against Israel, its honor killings against young Palestinian women, and its murder of homosexuals who are falsely accused of collaborating with Israel. He also fails to reveal that bombs and bullets are regularly smuggled into Gaza and are employed to terrorize the Israeli population.
In narrating a visit to Israeli settlement Eli, Mr. Bourdain remarks that “half a million [Jewish] settlers have moved here, all in contravention of international law … Though, in effect, it seems to make little difference.” Mr. Bourdain also states that “Eighty-five percent of [the separation wall] is in Palestinian territory.” One of his guests on the special tells Mr. Bourdain that “No, [it’s not a fence,] it’s a big wall. It’s ugly. It’s really ugly. You can see it, it’s not far away from here.”
But Mr. Bourdain does not reveal that 95 percent of the security barrier’s length is fence,
not wall. Not to mention that the barrier was erected only after more than 1,000 Israelis were blown to smithereens on buses and in coffee houses. Mr. Bourdain also does not reveal that the wall portions of the barrier are located primarily in residential areas to block snipers from firing on Israelis from the upper floors of buildings. More importantly, since the construction of the security barrier, suicide bombings have virtually ended.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hatred has reached the music industry as well. In 2010, singer-songwriter Elvis Costello cancelled two summer performances in Israel because, as he said, it was “a matter of instinct and conscience” to protest Israel’s treatment of its Palestinian population.
Stevie Wonder, too, decided not to perform in Los Angeles at the gala benefit for Friends of the Israel Defense in December 2012. ”I am and have always been against war, any war, anywhere,” he said.
But worst of all among the anti-Israel mouthpieces celebrities is Roger Waters, former front man of Pink Floyd, who branded Israel a “racist apartheid” regime in an interview with CounterPunch two weeks ago. He went on to accuse Israel of practicing “ethnic cleansing,” even going so far as to compare Israel to the Nazi regime, claiming the “…parallels with what went on in the ’30s in Germany are so crushingly obvious,” only “this time it’s the Palestinian People being murdered.”
Last week I responded to Waters’s incendiary statements here in The New York Observer. Waters’s response to me was that the onus was actually on me to refute such statements, stating in The Guardian that, “If Rabbi Boteach can make a case for the Israel government’s policies, I look forward to hearing it.”
I would welcome the opportunity to debate not only Waters, but all of the anti-Israel celebrities who hold Israel to an impossible standard, who believe it has no right to self-defense, and use their prominence as an opportunity to denigrate the sole democracy in the Middle East.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom The Washington Post calls “the most famous Rabbi in America,” will shortly publish Kosher Lust: Love is Not the Answer. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley. Like Rabbi Shmuley’s Facebook page.
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3) The following Geopolitical Wee ekly originally ran in January 2013. We repost it as recent turmoil in North Korea returns it to the spotlight.
By George Friedman
North Korea's state-run media reported Sunday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered the country's top security officials to take "substantial and high-profile important state measures," which has been widely interpreted to mean that North Korea is planning its third nuclear test. Kim said the orders were retaliation for the U.S.-led push to tighten U.N. sanctions on Pyongyang following North Korea's missile test in October. A few days before Kim's statement emerged, the North Koreans said future tests would target the United States, which North Korea regards as its key adversary along with Washington's tool, South Korea.
North Korea has been using the threat of tests and the tests themselves as weapons against its neighbors and the United States for years. On the surface, threatening to test weapons does not appear particularly sensible. If the test fails, you look weak. If it succeeds, you look dangerous without actually having a deliverable weapon. And the closer you come to having a weapon, the more likely someone is to attack you so you don't succeed in actually getting one. Developing a weapon in absolute secret would seem to make more sense. When the weapon is ready, you display it, and you have something solid to threaten enemies with.
North Korea, of course, has been doing this for years and doing it successfully, so what appears absurd on the surface quite obviously isn't. On the contrary, it has proved to be a very effective maneuver. North Korea is estimated to have a gross domestic product of about $28 billion, about the same as Latvia or Turkmenistan. Yet it has maneuvered itself into a situation where the United States, Japan, China, Russia and South Korea have sat down with it at the negotiating table in a bid to persuade it not to build weapons. Sometimes, the great powers give North Korea money and food to persuade it not to develop weapons. It sometimes agrees to a halt, but then resumes its nuclear activities. It never completes a weapon, but it frequently threatens to test one. And when it carries out such tests, it claims its tests are directed at the United States and South Korea, as if the test itself were a threat.
There is brilliance in North Korea's strategy. When the Soviet Union collapsed, North Korea was left in dire economic straits. There were reasonable expectations that its government would soon collapse, leading to the unification of the Korean Peninsula. Naturally, the goal of the North Korean government was regime survival, so it was terrified that outside powers would invade or support an uprising against it. It needed a strategy that would dissuade anyone from trying that. Being weak in every sense, this wasn't going to be easy, but the North Koreans developed a strategy that we described more than 10 years ago as ferocious, weak and crazy. North Korea has pursued this course since the 1990s, and the latest manifestation of this strategy was on display last week. The strategy has worked marvelously and is still working.
A Three-Part Strategy
First, the North Koreans positioned themselves as ferocious by appearing to have, or to be on the verge of having, devastating power. Second, they positioned themselves as being weak such that no matter how ferocious they are, there would be no point in pushing them because they are going to collapse anyway. And third, they positioned themselves as crazy, meaning pushing them would be dangerous since they were liable to engage in the greatest risks imaginable at the slightest provocation.
In the beginning, Pyongyang's ability to appear ferocious was limited to the North Korean army's power to shell Seoul. It had massed artillery along the border and could theoretically devastate the southern capital, assuming the North had enough ammunition, its artillery worked and air power didn't lay waste to its massed artillery. The point was not that it was going to level Seoul but that it had the ability to do so. There were benefits to outsiders in destabilizing the northern regime, but Pyongyang's ferocity -- uncertain though its capabilities were -- was enough to dissuade South Korea and its allies from trying to undermine the regime. Its later move to develop missiles and nuclear weapons followed from the strategy of ferocity -- since nothing was worth a nuclear war, enraging the regime by trying to undermine it wasn't worth the risk.
Many nations have tried to play the ferocity game, but the North Koreans added a brilliant and subtle twist to it: being weak. The North Koreans advertised the weakness of their economy, particularly its food insecurity, by various means. This was not done overtly, but by allowing glimpses of its weakness. Given the weakness of its economy and the difficulty of life in North Korea, there was no need to risk trying to undermine the North. It would collapse from its own defects.
This was a double inoculation. The North Koreans' ferocity with weapons whose effectiveness might be questionable, but still pose an unquantifiable threat, caused its enemies to tread carefully. Why risk unleashing its ferocity when its weakness would bring it down? Indeed, a constant debate among Western analysts over the North's power versus its weakness combines to paralyze policymakers.
The North Koreans added a third layer to perfect all of this. They portrayed themselves as crazy, working to appear unpredictable, given to extravagant threats and seeming to welcome a war. Sometimes, they reaffirmed they were crazy via steps like sinking South Korean ships for no apparent reason. As in poker, so with the North: You can play against many sorts of players, from those who truly understand the odds to those who are just playing for fun, but never, ever play poker against a nut. He is totally unpredictable, can't be gamed, and if you play with his head you don't know what will happen.
So long as the North Koreans remained ferocious, weak and crazy, the best thing to do was not irritate them too much and not to worry what kind of government they had. But being weak and crazy was the easy part for the North; maintaining its appearance of ferocity was more challenging. Not only did the North Koreans have to keep increasing their ferocity, they had to avoid increasing it so much that it overpowered the deterrent effect of their weakness and craziness.
A Cautious Nuclear Program
Hence, we have North Korea's eternal nuclear program. It never quite produces a weapon, but no one can be sure whether a weapon might be produced. Due to widespread perceptions that the North Koreans are crazy, it is widely believed they might rush to complete their weapon and go to war at the slightest provocation. The result is the United States, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea holding meetings with North Korea to try to persuade it not to do something crazy.
Interestingly, North Korea never does anything significant and dangerous, or at least not dangerous enough to break the pattern. Since the Korean War, North Korea has carefully calculated its actions, timing them to avoid any move that could force a major reaction. We see this caution built into its nuclear program. After more than a decade of very public ferocity, the North Koreans have not come close to a deliverable weapon. But since if you upset them, they just might, the best bet has been to tread lightly and see if you can gently persuade them not to do something insane.
The North's positioning is superb: Minimal risky action sufficient to lend credibility to its ferocity and craziness plus endless rhetorical threats maneuvers North Korea into being a major global threat in the eyes of the great powers. Having won themselves this position, the North Koreans are not about to risk it, even if a 20-something leader is hurling threats.
The China Angle and the Iranian Pupil
There is, however, a somewhat more interesting dimension emerging. Over the years, the United States, Japan and South Korea have looked to the Chinese to intercede and persuade the North Koreans not to do anything rash. This diplomatic pattern has established itself so firmly that we wonder what the actual Chinese role is in all this. China is currently engaged in territorial disputes with U.S. allies in the South and East China seas. Whether anyone would or could go to war over islands in these waters is dubious, but the situation is still worth noting.
The Chinese and the Japanese have been particularly hostile toward one another in recent weeks in terms of rhetoric and moving their ships around. A crisis in North Korea, particularly one in which the North tested a nuclear weapon, would inevitably initiate the diplomatic dance whereby the Americans and Japanese ask the Chinese to intercede with the North Koreans. The Chinese would oblige. This is not a great effort for them, since having detonated a nuclear device, the North isn't interested in doing much more. In fact, Pyongyang will be drawing on the test's proverbial fallout for some time. The Chinese are calling in no chits with the North Koreans, and the Americans and Japanese -- terribly afraid of what the ferocious, weak, crazy North Koreans will do next -- will be grateful to China for defusing the "crisis." And who could be so churlish as to raise issues on trade or minor islands when China has used its power to force North Korea to step down?
It is impossible for us to know what the Chinese are thinking, and we have no overt basis for assuming the Chinese and North Koreans are collaborating, but we do note that China has taken an increasing interest in stabilizing North Korea. For its part, North Korea has tended to stage these crises -- and their subsequent Chinese interventions -- at quite useful times for Beijing.
It should also be noted that other countries have learned the ferocious, weak, crazy maneuver from North Korea. Iran is the best pupil. It has convincingly portrayed itself as ferocious via its nuclear program, endlessly and quite publicly pursuing its program without ever quite succeeding. It is also persistently seen as weak, perpetually facing economic crises and wrathful mobs of iPod-wielding youths. Whether Iran can play the weakness card as skillfully as North Korea remains unclear -- Iran just doesn't have the famines North Korea has.
Additionally, Iran's rhetoric at times can certainly be considered crazy: Tehran has carefully cultivated perceptions that it would wage nuclear war even if this meant the death of all Iranians. Like North Korea, Iran also has managed to retain its form of government and its national sovereignty. Endless predictions of the fall of the Islamic republic to a rising generation have proved false.
I do not mean to appear to be criticizing the "ferocious, weak and crazy" strategy. When you are playing a weak hand, such a strategy can yield demonstrable benefits. It preserves regimes, centers one as a major international player and can wring concessions out of major powers. It can be pushed too far, however, when the fear of ferocity and craziness undermines the solace your opponents find in your weakness.
Diplomacy is the art of nations achieving their ends without resorting to war. It is particularly important for small, isolated nations to survive without going to war. As in many things, the paradox of appearing willing to go to war in spite of all rational calculations can be the foundation for avoiding war. It is a sound strategy, and for North Korea and Iran, for the time being at least, it has worked.
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4)
US plan said to include dismantling all Jordan Valley settlements
Times of Israel Staff - Times of Israel, December 24th, 2013
 US-drafted security proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord accept almost all of Israel’s demands, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Americans that he sees them as a good “basis for negotiation,” Israel’s Army Radio reported Tuesday.
While allowing for an Israeli military presence in the border area between Jordan and the West Bank, the plans would require the dismantling of all Israel’s settlements in the Jordan Valley, according to the report.
The proposals, discussed by US Secretary of State John Kerry with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on his recent visits here, infuriated Abbas, who last week went over Kerry’s head and wrote a letter of protest to US President Barack Obama about his concerns.
According to the Army Radio report, the Kerry plan provides for a massively upgraded border fence along the border between the West Bank and Jordan, with the IDF maintaining sole responsibility for the border for the first 10 years of a peace agreement. After that, border authority would be shared in some as-yet unfinalized constellation between Israel and the PA.
Netanyahu has insisted on retaining the IDF’s deployment at that border; Abbas has rejected it, while allowing for the possibility of an international force.
The Kerry plan, drawn up by retired US general John Allen, would see Israel’s Jordan Valley settlements dismantled, something that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon last week publicly opposed, saying that a civilian presence is critical to the maintenance of effective control.
Netanyahu, in responding to the Kerry plan, told the Americans to discuss the specifics with Ya’alon, in part because he knew that his defense minister would object to sections of it, the radio report said. Ya’alon is also reported to want the IDF to retain the right to enter any part of the West Bank if necessary to thwart terrorism.
The US, under the proposal, would provide an additional West Bank security “envelope,” which would utilize drones and other high-tech equipment to provide real-time intelligence on any terrorist threats and other unlawful border activity. Amos Gilad, a senior Defense Ministry official, stressed on Tuesday morning that such intelligence would have “no value” whatsoever if Israeli soldiers were not deployed in the area to act upon it.
The plan was drawn up by a large team of US officials, on the basis of numerous discussions with top current and former Israeli officials, including chiefs of staff, Mossad heads and Shin Bet intelligence chiefs, the report said.
The Americans’ thinking is that if they can get Netanyahu’s agreement to the security plan, he might prove to be more flexible on other core issues of a peace accord, such as border demarcation, Palestinian refugee claims and Jerusalem, the report said.
Reports last week in the Hebrew press said that a December 6 meeting between Kerry and Abbas on the security arrangements in the Jordan Valley left Abbas fuming, sparking a “real crisis of faith” with the senior US official and prompting his letter to Obama.
In the letter, Abbas reportedly wrote that the Palestinians and Israelis had come to agreement on a plan during Ehud Olmert’s term as prime minister that would place an international force, not the IDF, on the Israeli-Jordanian border. The Palestinians, he said, would be amenable to a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Jordan Valley, but would not countenance an indefinite Israeli presence.
After a meeting with Abbas last week, an Arab League official said the PA president would not agree to even one Israeli soldier on the Palestinian-Jordanian border. He also indicated that Abbas refuses to acquiesce to a completely demilitarized Palestinian state, or recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, both key Israeli demands. Abbas would consent to a three-year Israeli military withdrawal process from the territories, according to an agreed-upon timeline, the official said.
The PA president is demanding control of “all East Jerusalem,” which would become the Palestinian capital, and would be open to one-for-one land swaps to adjust the Green Line, provided the territory to be swapped was of equivalent value, the official added.
Concerned that a final status agreement may not be possible by the end of the nine-month period that the two sides accepted when they resumed talks in July, Kerry in his recent visits aimed to push forward a framework accord that would contain the principles of a comprehensive pact. If an outline were achieved, the negotiations could be extended beyond the nine-month timeline
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5)
Iran Plays Games with the Geneva Deal
Olli Heinonen and Orde Kittrie - middleeast-armscontrol.com, December 19th, 2013
Nearly a month since the six-month Joint Plan of Action with Iran was announced in Geneva on November 24, the deal has yet to go into effect. The two sides have not even agreed on a start date for implementing the deal. Meanwhile, Iran says it is continuing to advance its nuclear program.
Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Reza Najafi, says that Iran will not begin implementing its Joint Plan of Action commitments, including its pledge to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent, until the still-unspecified start date.
In the past, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has boasted repeatedly of how he used a 2003 set of nuclear negotiations with the West, for which he was Iran’s lead negotiator, to buy time to advance Iran’s program. History appears to be repeating itself. Rather than implementing the deal in good faith, Iran is playing games with it, manipulating the Joint Plan of Action to alter to Tehran’s advantage both the circumstances on the ground and the terms of the deal itself.
I. Increasing Iran’s Uranium Stockpile
The start date delay is particularly worrisome because the Joint Plan of Action text appears to commit Iran to freezing its program at its magnitude not on November 24, but rather on that still-unspecified date of implementation. This includes Iran’s commitments not to produce additional uranium enriched above 5 percent; not to “make any further advances of its activities at the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant, Fordow, or the Arak reactor;” and to convert to oxide any additional uranium enriched up to 5 percent.
As of November 24, the day the Joint Plan of Action was announced, Iran was estimated to be less than 6 months away from breakout capability, the point at which it could dash to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb so quickly that the International Atomic Energy Agency or a Western intelligence service would be unable to detect the dash until it is over.
European Union officials say that they hope negotiations over implementation of the Joint Plan of Action will be concluded in time for the deal to go into effect in late January. A start date of late January will apparently leave Iran’s uranium and plutonium production programs significantly closer to breakout capacity than if the Joint Plan of Action had been implemented on November 24.
At the rates at which Iran was enriching in September and October 2013 (the most recent months covered by the IAEA’s quarterly public reports), Tehran will, by December 24, have created at least an additional 230 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 5 percent and an additional 15 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent. By January 24, Iran will have created at least an aggregate additional 460 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 5 percent and an aggregate additional 30 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent. In addition, Iran is very likely continuing producing more centrifuges, and its uranium mines and milling facilities are almost certainly continuing to produce and process uranium ore. Iran may also be continuing to create fuel for the Arak reactor.
And what if the Joint Plan is never implemented? Then Iran will apparently have succeeded in significantly advancing its uranium and plutonium production programs while negotiating with the P-5 plus 1, and won’t have to roll any of it back.
Continued Iranian advancement of its uranium and plutonium programs is particularly striking because Iran has, since 2006, been legally obligated by various UN Security Council resolutions to “without further delay suspend . . . all enrichment-related” activities and “all heavy-water related projects,” including construction of the Arak reactor.
II. Advancing Iran’s Nuclear Warhead and Delivery System Research and Development
Any “comprehensive deal” curbs on Iran’s nuclear program are highly unlikely to go into effect before the Joint Plan of Action concludes its six month duration. A delayed start date for the Joint Plan of Action thus gives Iran more time to advance key parts of its nuclear weapons program that are not significantly addressed by the Joint Plan of Action, but rather would only be curbed as part of a later, “comprehensive deal.” This includes Iran’s nuclear warhead and ballistic missile research and development activities.
For example, the Joint Plan of Action does almost nothing to provide the IAEA with access and cooperation regarding Iran’s warhead-related activities. The same is true of the November 11 Joint Statement on a Framework for Cooperation Between the IAEA and Iran. Neither the Joint Plan of Action nor the Framework for Cooperation contains either an explicit requirement that Iran come clean about its past nuclear warhead work or a provision for short-notice “snap” inspections to ensure that such research is not ongoing.
Such transparency is crucial because nuclear warhead research, or even the manufacturing of nuclear warhead components, can be conducted in small, secret facilities. That’s why several UN Security Council resolutions since 2006 have legally obligated Iran to provide “access without delay to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the IAEA” in order to resolve IAEA concerns about Iran’s research into nuclear warhead research and development.
A significant delay in “comprehensive deal” curbs on Iran’s warhead-related activities is worrisome because IAEA reports have included extensive information about warhead-related research and development by Iran. In its May 2011 report, the IAEA described documentary evidence of Iranian “studies involving the removal of the conventional high explosive payload from the warhead of the Shahab-3 missile and replacing it with a spherical nuclear payload.” The November 2011 IAEA report annex provided a more detailed description of information it determined “indicates that Iran has carried out . . . activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device” and noted “indications that some activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device . . . may still be ongoing.”
The Joint Plan of Action also includes no Iranian commitment to refrain from ballistic missile activity. Iran is openly continuing such activity, despite a 2010 UN Security Council resolution legally obligating Iran to “not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.”
Because any “comprehensive deal” curbs on Iran’s nuclear warhead and ballistic missile activities are highly unlikely to go into effect before the Joint Plan of Action concludes its six month duration, a late January start date almost certainly means that Iran will have until at least July 2014 to continue advancing its nuclear warhead and delivery system research and development.
In addition, in light of Iranian activities such as its efforts to demolish and pave over the weaponization research site at Parchin, the passage of additional time is likely to make it more difficult for the IAEA to verify past Iranian nuclear warhead and delivery system research and development.
III. Mischaracterizing U.S. Commitments
At the same time Iran is declaring itself free of its actual Joint Plan of Action commitments until the start date is set and occurs, Iran is insisting that the U.S. must not take sanctions-related steps that clearly fall outside the U.S. commitments under the Joint Plan of Action, even if it were in effect.
For example, the Joint Plan of Action states that the U.S. “will refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions.” The Iranian Foreign Minister threatened that “the deal is dead” if there was movement on the Senate bill, discussed last week, that would not have imposed new sanctions but merely specified what sanctions would be imposed on Iran if the deal collapses. Then, Iran’s diplomats stormed out of the negotiations in protest of the December 12 action, by the U.S. Treasury and State Departments, to designate additional companies and individuals for evading existing international sanctions against Iran. Neither the Senate bill nor the designations would have violated the Joint Plan of Action, even if it were in effect, which it is not.
Ironically, the U.S. designations are in implementation of various Security Council resolutions which require UN member states to “take the necessary measures to prevent the provision to Iran” of assistance, services, or financial resources related to its illicit nuclear program. Thus, Iran was protesting Washington’s compliance with the U.S.’s international legal obligations while Iran continues to flagrantly violate its own international legal obligations, imposed by the Security Council, to suspend all enrichment-related and heavy water related activities.
This kind of gall is less surprising in light of one particularly remarkable flaw in the Joint Plan of Action. Article 25 of the UN Charter specifies that “The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council.” Since Iran is a member of the United Nations, it is explicitly required to abide by Security Council resolutions, including those which required it to suspend its enrichment-related and Arak construction activities, not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and “provide such access and cooperation as the IAEA requests” to resolve IAEA concerns about Iran’s nuclear warhead research and development.
Yet the Joint Plan of Action nowhere recognizes the Security Council’s authority to legally bind Iran. Iran’s steps to comply partially with its Security Council obligations to suspend enrichment and work at Arak are labeled “voluntary measures” in the Joint Plan of Action. Iran will use this to bolster its patently false argument that the Security Council has no legitimate legal uthority to restrict Iran’s nuclear program. Since Iran is quite clearly wrong on this point, it is unclear why the P-5 plus 1 were willing to agree to undercut the Council’s authority with such a formulation.
IV. Iran’s Economic Benefits Have Already Commenced
At the same time Iran is violating its legal obligations imposed by the Security Council, and postponing implementation of its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Plan of Action, its economy has already begun to reap the benefits of the Joint Plan of Action.
For example, the mere prospect of sanctions relief has already increased Iran’s oil exports by ten percent, lifted the market value of Iran’s petrochemical sector by some 40 percent, raised the value of the Tehran stock exchange by some 9 percent, and boosted Iran’s currency.
It remains unclear when the security of the U.S. and its allies will begin to gain from the Joint Plan of Action, and how much less their security will benefit than if the deal had gone into effect the day it was announced.
If the negotiations with Iran are to succeed in achieving U.S. national security objectives, both the first stage implementation agreement and any comprehensive final agreement must be legally binding, enter into force on a clearly specified date, reaffirm the authority of the UN Security Council, and contain far fewer gaps and ambiguities. In addition, both the Administration and Congress must quickly make clear to Iran that it cannot continue to buy time and space for its nuclear program by delaying and misinterpreting the Joint Plan of Action.
Olli Heinonen is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Before joining the Belfer Center, he was the Deputy Director General of the IAEA, and head of its Department of Safeguards.
Orde Kittrie is a professor of law at Arizona State University and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously served as the State Department’s lead attorney for nuclear affairs, in which capacity he participated in negotiating five U.S.-Russia nonproliferation agreements.
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five years ago with the media’s shameless aid on a high-school-style campaign pledge of “Hope and Change,” the former community organizer from Chicago spent his last press conference of the year apologizing for everything he’s done wrong — then announcing he’s “eager to skip town” to Hawaii for “a couple days of sleep and sun.” Well, 17, but who’s counting.
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