It's been less than a week since I reported that Barack Hussein Obama covered up a shipment of missile components from North Korea to Iran during the P 5+1 nuclear talks. Now, it turns out that wasn't the only thing Obama was covering up. Eli Lake reports that Obama has known for years that Iran is three months from breakout. And he never told anyone.
Speaking to reporters and editors at our Washington bureau on Monday, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz acknowledged that
the U.S. has assessed for several years that Iran has been two to three
months away from producing enough fissile material for a nuclear
weapon. When asked how long the administration has held this assessment,
Moniz said: "Oh quite some time." He added: "They are now, they are
right now spinning, I mean enriching with 9,400 centrifuges out of their
roughly 19,000. Plus all the . . . . R&D work. If you put that
together it's very, very little time to go forward. That's the 2-3
months."
Brian Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, confirmed to me Monday that the two-to-three-month
estimate for fissile material was declassified on April 1.
Speaking to reporters and editors at our Washington bureau on Monday, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz acknowledged that
the U.S. has assessed for several years that Iran has been two to three
months away from producing enough fissile material for a nuclear
weapon. When asked how long the administration has held this assessment,
Moniz said: "Oh quite some time."
He added: "They are now, they are
right now spinning, I mean enriching with 9,400 centrifuges out of their
roughly 19,000. Plus all the . . . . R&D work. If you put that
together it's very, very little time to go forward. That's the 2-3
months."
Brian Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, confirmed to me Monday that the two-to-three-month
estimate for fissile material was declassified on April 1.
On Oct. 5 of that year, Obama contrasted the U.S. view of an Iranian
breakout with that of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who
at the time said Iran was only six months away from nuclear capability.
Obama told the
Associated Press, "Our assessment continues to be a year or more away.
And in fact, actually, our estimate is probably more conservative than
the estimates of Israeli intelligence services."
Ben Caspit, an Israeli journalist and columnist for Al-Monitor, reported last year that Israel's breakout estimate was also two to three months away.
...
David Albright, a former weapons inspector and president of the
Institute for Science and International Security, told me administration
officials appeared to be intentionally unspecific in 2013, when the
talking points used the 12-months-plus timeline. "They weren't clear at
all about what this one-year estimate meant, but people like me who said
let's break it down to the constituent pieces in terms of time to build
a bomb were rebuffed," he said. Albright's group released its own
breakout timetable that
focused solely on the production of highly enriched uranium, not the
weapon itself. It concluded Iran was potentially less than a month away.
And again: AP's Matt Lee PWN's State Department's Marie Harf
You will recall that Wednesday's Wall Street Journal had an article by former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz that called President Obama's Iran deal a disaster. As you might imagine, the article came up during Wednesday's State Department briefing. The questioner was the always entertaining Matt Lee, and he once again made Marie Harf look like a birdbrain, with Harf dismissing the article as 'lots of big words and big thoughts.'
Let's go to the videotape.
Harf has become a symbol of blind, clueless support for this administration's policies. More here.
They didn’t sign a bad framework deal in
Lausanne, Switzerland, last week. They just agreed on one in principle,
and left it unsigned, allowing for multiple conflicting interpretations.
It was immediately plain that the US-led
negotiators had mislaid their moral compass, and indeed any clear sight
of their own self-interest, when they agreed to conduct the negotiations
as scheduled even as Iran’s ruthless, arrogant leader Ali Khamenei was
intoning his “Death to America” mantra, and one of his military chiefs
was declaring that Israel’s destruction is “nonnegotiable.”
What is becoming increasingly plain is the
extent to which the Obama team and their colleagues were played for
fools by the Iranians in the talks themselves.
Iran was dragged to the negotiating table by
the accumulated impact of a painstakingly constructed sanctions regime.
It was allowed to leave the table with much of its nuclear weapons
program intact, and with the promise of those sanctions being removed.
Unsurprisingly, Iran was not required to
acknowledge its nuclear weaponization efforts to date.
Unsurprisingly,
it was not required to halt its missile development program.
Unsurprisingly, sanctions removal was not conditioned on its abandonment
of terrorism, a halt to its financing and arming of Hezbollah, Hamas
and other Islamic extremist groups, or an end to its relentless
incitement against Israel. Nobody who had followed the Obama
administration’s abject handling of the negotiations prior to Lausanne
had expected anything in these areas.
But the deal is far worse than even our
relentlessly lowered expectations had given us reason to anticipate. The
Arak heavy water plant is not to be dismantled. Why not? Because this
was the best deal we could get. The Fordo enrichment facility, built
secretly into a mountain, is not to be shuttered. Why not? Because this
was the best deal we could get. Thousands of centrifuges are to be
allowed to keep on spinning. Thousands more will remain intact. For
heaven’s sake, why? Because this was the best deal we could get.
All this according to the — so far — undisputed elements of the unsigned agreement.
Less than a week after those sickening scenes
of back-slapping in Lausanne, however, more and more of the central
elements of the framework are being disputed.
And to bring this back to Israel, am I the only one who can envision such a vague, unsigned agreement with the 'Palestinians' if this administration gets its way?
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and US President Barack Hussein Obama have finally found something on which they can agree. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Netanyahu told reporters trailing him on his Passover vacation that he agrees with President Obama's assertion that Iran will have a zero breakout time to nuclear weapons at the end of the interim period in last week's 'agreement.'
"Israel shares the view that upon the expiration of the nuclear
agreement with Iran [or after the first decade] the latter's breakout
time to achieve nuclear weapons will be zero,” Netanyahu said.
“This
will be the inevitable result of the automatic lifting of the
restrictions [on its nuclear program], which would enable Iran to
achieve an industrial-grade production capability,” he said.
Since
the details of the framework agreement became clear to him, he has
spoken out against it repeatedly and urged the six world powers to
continue with its sanctions on the regime until it can reach a better
agreement with Iran.
“The alternative to this bad agreement is
not war, but a good agreement, which can be achieved, but to do this we
have to stand firm, and insist on the terms that will secure the safety
of Israel, the region and the world,” he said in a statement that he
issued while touring the Negev during the Passover holiday.
The
US State Department and Israel believe Iran now has a break out time of
two to three months, which is the amount of time it would take for it to
be ready to produce a nuclear weapon.
At least Obama can't complain that Netanyahu is always a contrarian.
Oh my... Henry Kissinger and George Schultz blast Obama's Iran deal
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, two prominent former Secretaries of State - Henry Kissinger and George Schultz - blast President Hussein Obama's Iranian nuclear framework agreement. Curiously, Kissinger and Schultz don't even mention Israel. They find plenty of other reasons to oppose the deal.
Debate regarding technical details of the deal has thus far inhibited
the soul-searching necessary regarding its deeper implications. For 20
years, three presidents of both major parties proclaimed that an Iranian
nuclear weapon was contrary to American and global interests—and that
they were prepared to use force to prevent it. Yet negotiations that
began 12 years ago as an international effort to prevent an Iranian
capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an agreement
that concedes this very capability, albeit short of its full capacity in
the first 10 years.
Mixing shrewd diplomacy with open defiance of U.N. resolutions, Iran has
gradually turned the negotiation on its head. Iran’s centrifuges have
multiplied from about 100 at the beginning of the negotiation to almost
20,000 today. The threat of war now constrains the West more than Iran.
While Iran treated the mere fact of its willingness to negotiate as a
concession, the West has felt compelled to break every deadlock with a
new proposal. In the process, the Iranian program has reached a point
officially described as being within two to three months of building a
nuclear weapon. Under the proposed agreement, for 10 years Iran will
never be further than one year from a nuclear weapon and, after a
decade, will be significantly closer.
...
Negotiating the final agreement will be extremely challenging. For
one thing, no official text has yet been published. The so-called
framework represents a unilateral American interpretation. Some of its
clauses have been dismissed by the principal Iranian negotiator as
“spin.” A joint EU-Iran statement differs in important respects,
especially with regard to the lifting of sanctions and permitted
research and development.
Comparable ambiguities apply to the
one-year window for a presumed Iranian breakout. Emerging at a
relatively late stage in the negotiation, this concept replaced the
previous baseline—that Iran might be permitted a technical capacity
compatible with a plausible civilian nuclear program. The new approach
complicates verification and makes it more political because of the
vagueness of the criteria.
Under the new approach, Iran
permanently gives up none of its equipment, facilities or fissile
product to achieve the proposed constraints. It only places them under
temporary restriction and safeguard—amounting in many cases to a seal at
the door of a depot or periodic visits by inspectors to declared sites.
The physical magnitude of the effort is daunting. Is the International
Atomic Energy Agency technically, and in terms of human resources, up to
so complex and vast an assignment?
In a large country with
multiple facilities and ample experience in nuclear concealment,
violations will be inherently difficult to detect. Devising theoretical
models of inspection is one thing. Enforcing compliance, week after
week, despite competing international crises and domestic distractions,
is another. Any report of a violation is likely to prompt debate over
its significance—or even calls for new talks with Tehran to explore the
issue. The experience of Iran’s work on a heavy-water reactor during the
“interim agreement” period—when suspect activity was identified but
played down in the interest of a positive negotiating atmosphere—is not
encouraging.
Compounding the difficulty is the unlikelihood that
breakout will be a clear-cut event. More likely it will occur, if it
does, via the gradual accumulation of ambiguous evasions.
When
inevitable disagreements arise over the scope and intrusiveness of
inspections, on what criteria are we prepared to insist and up to what
point? If evidence is imperfect, who bears the burden of proof? What
process will be followed to resolve the matter swiftly?
The
agreement’s primary enforcement mechanism, the threat of renewed
sanctions, emphasizes a broad-based asymmetry, which provides Iran
permanent relief from sanctions in exchange for temporary restraints on
Iranian conduct. Undertaking the “snap-back” of sanctions is unlikely to
be as clear or as automatic as the phrase implies. Iran is in a
position to violate the agreement by executive decision. Restoring the
most effective sanctions will require coordinated international action.
In countries that had reluctantly joined in previous rounds, the demands
of public and commercial opinion will militate against automatic or
even prompt “snap-back.” If the follow-on process does not unambiguously
define the term, an attempt to reimpose sanctions risks primarily
isolating America, not Iran.
The gradual expiration of the
framework agreement, beginning in a decade, will enable Iran to become a
significant nuclear, industrial and military power after that time—in
the scope and sophistication of its nuclear program and its latent
capacity to weaponize at a time of its choosing. Limits on Iran’s
research and development have not been publicly disclosed (or perhaps
agreed). Therefore Iran will be in a position to bolster its advanced
nuclear technology during the period of the agreement and rapidly deploy
more advanced centrifuges—of at least five times the capacity of the
current model—after the agreement expires or is broken.
...
Even when these issues are resolved, another set of problems emerges
because the negotiating process has created its own realities. The
interim agreement accepted Iranian enrichment; the new agreement makes
it an integral part of the architecture. For the U.S., a decade-long
restriction on Iran’s nuclear capacity is a possibly hopeful interlude.
For Iran’s neighbors—who perceive their imperatives in terms of
millennial rivalries—it is a dangerous prelude to an even more dangerous
permanent fact of life. Some of the chief actors in the Middle East are
likely to view the U.S. as willing to concede a nuclear military
capability to the country they consider their principal threat. Several
will insist on at least an equivalent capability. Saudi Arabia has
signaled that it will enter the lists; others are likely to follow. In
that sense, the implications of the negotiation are irreversible.
If
the Middle East is “proliferated” and becomes host to a plethora of
nuclear-threshold states, several in mortal rivalry with each other, on
what concept of nuclear deterrence or strategic stability will
international security be based? Traditional theories of deterrence
assumed a series of bilateral equations. Do we now envision an
interlocking series of rivalries, with each new nuclear program
counterbalancing others in the region?
Previous thinking on
nuclear strategy also assumed the existence of stable state actors.
Among the original nuclear powers, geographic distances and the
relatively large size of programs combined with moral revulsion to make
surprise attack all but inconceivable. How will these doctrines
translate into a region where sponsorship of nonstate proxies is common,
the state structure is under assault, and death on behalf of jihad is a
kind of fulfillment?
Some have suggested the U.S. can dissuade
Iran’s neighbors from developing individual deterrent capacities by
extending an American nuclear umbrella to them. But how will these
guarantees be defined? What factors will govern their implementation?
Are the guarantees extended against the use of nuclear weapons—or
against any military attack, conventional or nuclear? Is it the
domination by Iran that we oppose or the method for achieving it? What
if nuclear weapons are employed as psychological blackmail? And how will
such guarantees be expressed, or reconciled with public opinion and
constitutional practices?
There are many reasons to oppose a nuclear Iran without limiting the argument to Israel and Israel's interests. The Obama administration has managed to turn the Iranian nuclear debate into a question that solely relates to whether the US should be supporting Israel - something that Obama opposes but most Americans favor. The issues involving Iran are much broader.
Kissinger and Schultz make Obama and Kerry look like intellectual pigmies. The issues that Obama and Kerry never considered (or perhaps more likely did consider and subordinated to Obama's need for a legacy) are complex and daunting. This deal may yet go down in history as one of the worst ever made.
Iran could break out within a month; P 5+1 talks end in failure
Unsurprisingly, the P 5+1 talks with Iran in Istanbul on Friday and Saturday ended in failure.
Announcing the failure of two days of negotiations, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said no new date for another meeting had been set. She blamed what the six consider unrealistic demands by Iran — an end to UN sanctions and agreement that Iran could continue to enrich — for the disappointing results.
Should that really surprise anyone? Didn't we know from the outset those were Iran's demands?
Proposals by the six for improved UN monitoring of Iran's nuclear activities were rejected by Teheran, as were attempts to kickstart dialogue through reviving a subset of international talks focusing on Iran shipping out a limited amount of its enriched uranium in exchange for fuel for its research reactor, Ashton said.
"We had hoped to have a detailed and constructive discussion of those ideas," she said. "But it became clear that the Iranian side was not ready for this unless we agree to preconditions related to enrichment and sanctions.
"Both these preconditions are not the way to proceed," she told reporters.
While no new talks were planned, Ashton said "our proposals remain on the table.
"Our door remains open. Our telephone lines remain open.
"The process can go forward if Iran chooses to respond positively," she said. "We will now wait to see whether they do."
Do they seriously expect Iran to change its mind now? What a bunch of fools....
By the way, the Iranians profess to be prepared to continue to talk (of course they are - talking buys them time!) and blame the P 5+1 for setting pre-conditions.
Iranian chief negotiator Saeed Jalili said his negotiating team had gone “far and beyond what was expected of us” to reach agreement and accused the other side of pushing not “dialogue, but dictation.”
He also told the semiofficial news agency Press TV, “We are still prepared for further negotiations with the P5+1, based on common issues.
[We are] prepared for comprehensive talks.”
But Laura reports that at least one Obama administration official apparently still sees the Iranian position as a negotiating ploy.
We are "disappointed, but I would not honestly say it’s unexpected," a senior U.S. administration official told journalists Saturday. "The Iranians are notoriously tough negotiators. There was bound to be a serious test of international resolve."
"I think it remains to be seen whether the Iranians are serious about engaging in practical steps to get from where we are," the senior U.S. official continued. "And I don't think [we are going to figure that out} in one or two meetings. I think there is still time to test that."
Just how dangerously wrong is that administration official? Please consider this (Hat Tip: IMRA - 16-page pdf link). As you consider it, recall that Iran has already gone from 3.5% enriched uranium (low enriched uranium or LEU) and would need to get to 95% enriched uranium (high enriched uranium or HEU) to produce a nuclear weapon.
Iran is developing fuel cycle technology as part of what it asserts is a purely civilian nuclear program. Since 2007, it has been enriching uranium using gas centrifuges at Natanz. The greatest challenge for a potential nuclear weapons proliferator is acquiring the fissile material2 and any civilian fuel cycle program has the potential to power both nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs. Specifically, the same centrifuges that produce low-enriched uranium (LEU) for reactors could make highly-enriched uranium (HEU) for a bomb. There is, therefore, no question that Tehran has the technical capability to produce a nuclear weapon,3 if it chooses to do so, but there is still ambiguity regarding Iran’s intentions. Tehran could, at minimum, be interested in maintaining the option of developing nuclear weapons in the indefinite future.
How concerned should we be about the possibility of a nuclear Iran? When could Iran produce a bomb, if it decided to do so? How do we know when we are running out of time? Iran’s breakout potential, the time required to make a bomb, is an important measure of the Iranian threat and, as such, plays a significant factor in weighing policy options toward Tehran. Such estimates create a baseline for Iranian latent weapons capabilities, which provide a tangible measure of the relative imminence of the threat and are a touchstone for policy.
...
Calculations using IAEA data show that the total enrichment capacity at Iran’s commercial-scale enrichment facility at Natanz has grown during 2010 relative to previous years. The boost in capacity is due to an apparent increase in centrifuge performance. The effective separative power of the IR-1 during 2010 is estimated to be 0.77 kg-SWU/yr – a 60 percent increase from 2009. The observed increase in performance could be partially due to salvaged separative work lost as hold up, but a technological improvement in Iran’s centrifuges would not be surprising. Data from Iran’s pilot plant appear to corroborate an increase in centrifuge performance. An increase in IR-1 enrichment capacity would reduce Iran’s time to produce bomb-grade material. We cannot definitively conclude what caused the measured jump in performance, but only that such an increase is observed. Contrary to statements by U.S. officials and many experts, Iran clearly does not appear to be slowing down its nuclear drive.
...
Once Iran has enough LEU for one bomb, the amount of LEU stops being a limiting factor on the timing -- given a certain number of centrifuges, it would take exactly the same amount of time for Iran to enrich to HEU if it had enough stockpiled feedstock material for 1, 2 or 3 bombs. The amount of LEU is important for how many bombs Iran can make, not how quickly it can produce them. If LEU is shipped out of the country, as was the plan under the recent deal to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor, unless Iran is left below one bomb’s worth of LEU, this would not add time to the clock for the production of the first bomb.
Similarly, if Iran started with 20 percent enriched uranium as feedstock, this would substantially reduce its time to a bomb. Currently, Iran has produced about 40 kg UF6 (27 kg U)28 or roughly 20 percent of the amount needed to produce a SQ of HEU. At its current enrichment pace, it would take Iran about 3.5 years to produce the necessary 20 percent uranium. However, Iran could install more cascades for 20 percent enrichment (there is allocated space for a total of 6 cascades at PFEP). If all 6 cascades or 3 cascade systems are running, Iran could produce enough 20 percent material for bomb feedstock in about a year.
...
The quickest way for Iran to break out is to expel safeguards inspectors and use the entire enrichment capacity at current facilities to produce HEU. The approach considered below is simplified and assumes that Iran could repipe cascades to enrich from LEU concentrations to HEU and the IR-1 will maintain the same effective performance regardless of the cascade shape. The batch recycling option, or running the product through existing 164 machine cascades, would require more time and is not considered here.
...
If Iran started from 20 percent enriched uranium, it would take less than a month to enrich enough HEU for a bomb, if the tails are set at +3.5 percent U235. This would need about 146 kg U as feedstock. Alternatively, if material is scarce, Iran could set the tails to 0.7 percent. This scenario would require 129 kg U, and it would take a month and a half to produce the HEU.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
