'Secret' appendix to JCPOA cuts Iran's 'breakout' time to six months
If you thought President Obama and the P5+1 made a bad deal with Iran, it just got a bit worse.
An anonymous diplomat has shared with the Associated Press a secret appendix to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which removes many of the limitations on Iran's uranium enrichment activities about ten years from now. And the result cuts Iran's 'breakout' time from what's claimed to be a year to six months or less.
The confidential document is the only text linked to last year's deal
between Iran and six foreign powers that hasn't been made public,
although U.S. officials say members of Congress who expressed interest
were briefed on its substance. It was given to the AP by a diplomat
whose work has focused on Iran's nuclear program for more than a decade,
and its authenticity was confirmed by another diplomat who possesses
the same document.
Both demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to share or discuss the document.
The diplomat who shared the text with the AP described it as an
add-on agreement to the nuclear deal in the form of a document submitted
by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency outlining its plans
to expand its uranium enrichment program after the first 10 years of the
nuclear deal.
...
But although some of the constraints extend for 15 years, documents
in the public domain are short on details of what happens with Iran's
most proliferation-prone nuclear activity — its uranium enrichment —
beyond the first 10 years of the agreement.
The document obtained by the AP fills in the gap. It says that as of
January 2027 — 11 years after the deal was implemented — Iran will start
replacing its mainstay centrifuges with thousands of advanced machines.
Centrifuges churn out uranium to levels that can range from use as
reactor fuel and for medical and research purposes to much higher levels
for the core of a nuclear warhead. From year 11 to 13, says the
document, Iran will install centrifuges up to five times as efficient as
the 5,060 machines it is now restricted to using.
Those new models will number less than those being used now, ranging
between 2,500 and 3,500, depending on their efficiency, according to the
document. But because they are more effective, they will allow Iran to
enrich at more than twice the rate it is doing now.
Components other than centrifuge numbers and efficiency also go into
the mix of how quickly a nation can make a nuclear weapon. They include
how much enriched uranium it has to work with, and restrictions on
Iran's stockpile extend until the end of the deal, crimping its full
enrichment program.
But a comparison of outputs between the old and newer machines shows
the newer ones work at double the enrichment rate. That means they would
reduce the time Iran could make enough weapons grade uranium to six
months or less from present estimates of one year.
And that time frame could shrink even more. While the document
doesn't say what happens with centrifuge numbers and types past year 13,
U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told The AP that Iran will be free
to install any number of advanced centrifuges beyond that point, even
though the nuclear deal extends two additional years.
That will give Iran a huge potential boost in enrichment capacity,
including bomb making should it choose to do so. But it can be put to
use only after the deal expires.
Here in Israel, we'd like to thank President Obama for being an Islamophile and a sleazebag. We hope you live long enough to die - slowly and painfully - as a result of an Iranian nuclear explosion. We'd like to thank all the Senate Democrats who voted in favor of the deal for putting party loyalty above common sense, world safety and peace and tranquility. We'd like to thank all those former heads of our intelligence services who made Netanyahu look like a fool for opposing the Iranian sellout.
And we'd like to ask Prime Minister Netanyahu where he misplaced his junk in 2012.
As I am sure you are all aware, there is currently a meeting going on in Vienna, at the conclusion of which a deal will be announced that will make Iran a nuclear-armed state within ten years. How bad is this deal? Consider the following coming out of Vienna.
BREAKING NEWS - IRAN: All nuclear sites will continue activities and Uranium enrichment will continue.
Bret Stephens reports that Barack Hussein Obama learned how to lie from the Clintons, and that if Hillary Clinton is - God Forbid - elected President, she will continue the lying tradition.
Sometime in the 1990s I began to understand the
Clinton way of lying, and why it was so successful. To you and me, the Clinton
lies were statements demonstrably at variance with the truth, and therefore
wrong and shameful. But to the initiated they were an invitation to an
intoxicating secret knowledge.
What was this knowledge? That the lying was for
the greater good, usually to fend off some form of Republican malevolence. What
was so intoxicating? That the initiated were smart enough to see through it all.
Why be scandalized when they could be amused? Why moralize when they could
collude?
It always works.
...
Consider this column’s favorite subject: the
Iran deal. An honest president might sell the current deal roughly as
follows.
“My fellow Americans, the deal we have
negotiated will not, I am afraid, prevent Iran from getting a bomb, should its
leaders decide to build one. And eventually they will. Fatwa or no fatwa,
everything we know about their nuclear program tells us it is geared toward
building a bomb. And frankly, if you lived in a neighborhood like theirs—70
million Shiites surrounded by hundreds of millions of Sunnis—you’d want a bomb,
too.
“Yes, we could, in theory, stop Iran from
getting the bomb. Sanctions won’t do it. Extreme privation didn’t stop Maoist
China or Bhutto’s Pakistan or Kim’s North Korea from building a bomb. It won’t
stop Iran, either.
“Airstrikes? They would set Iran back by a few
years. But even in a best-case scenario, the Iranians would be back at it before
long, and they’d keep trying until they got a bomb or we got regime
change.
“Fellow Americans, how many of you want to raise
your hands for more Mideast regime change?
“So here’s the deal with my deal: It never was
about cutting off Iran’s pathways to a bomb. Let’s just say that was an
aspiration. It’s about managing, and maybe slowing, the process by which they
get one.
“I know that’s not what you thought I’ve been
saying these past few years—all that stuff about all options being on the table
and me not bluffing and no deal being better than a bad deal. I said this for
political expedience, or as a way of palliating restive Saudis and Israelis. You
feed the dogs their bone.
“But if you’d been listening attentively, you
would have heard the qualifier ‘on my watch’ added to my promises that Iran
would not get the bomb. And what happens after I leave office?
Hopefully, the
Supreme Leader will be replaced by a new leader cut from better cloth.
Hopefully, too, this marathon diplomacy will open new patterns of U.S.-Iranian
cooperation. But if neither thing happens we’d be no worse off than we are
today.
“That’s why getting a deal, any deal, is more
important than the deal’s particulars when it comes to sanctions relief,
inspections protocols and so on. The details only matter insofar as they make
the political medicine go down. What counts is that we’re sitting at the table
together, speaking.”
...
Question for Mrs. Clinton: Does she think the
U.S. should gently midwife Iran’s nuclear birth or violently abort it? If she
wants to be president, our former top diplomat could honor us with a detailed
answer.
In the meantime, let’s simply note what the
liberal way of lying has achieved. We are on the cusp of reaching the most
consequential foreign-policy decision of our generation. We have a deal whose
basic terms neither side can agree on. We have a president whose goals aren’t
what he said they were, and whose motives he has kept veiled from the
public.
Maybe the ayatollah will give him his deal, and
those with the secret knowledge will cheer. As for the rest of us: Haven’t we
learned that we’re too stupid to know what’s for our own good?
US 'fact sheet' on Iran omits uranium enriched between 3.67% and 20%
The non-partisan Institute for Science and International Security reports that the United States' 'fact sheet' on the recently concluded 'deal' with Iran undercounts Iran's stock of low enriched uranium.
With about 6,000 IR-1 centrifuges and a stock of 300 kilograms of 3.5 percent LEU hexafluoride and no available near 20 percent LEU hexafluoride, our breakout estimate would have a mean of about 15 months, where the minimum breakout time would be 12 months. We have used the mean as the best indicator of breakout time and interpret the minimum time as a worst case. Thus, our estimate of breakout would confirm the United States’ assessment that these limitations satisfy a 12 month breakout criterion.
However, breakout estimates depend critically on Iran’s usable stock of near 20 percent LEU. For example, if Iran also has an inventory of about 50 kilograms of near 20 percent LEU hexafluoride that it can start inserting into the cascades within the first six months of breaking out, and we assume the same conditions as above, the mean breakout time becomes somewhat more than ten months, with a minimal time of nine months. As a result, minimizing or ensuring that the near 20 percent LEU stock is unusable in a breakout is a high priority. How these goals would be achieved in a deal is not explained in the Fact Sheet, nor was it discussed in detail in the briefings.
In fact, it appears from the Fact Sheets and briefings that Iran’s stock of near 20 percent LEU is not included in the 300 kilogram limit on LEU mentioned above. This limit appears to be applied only to the 3.67 percent LEU. Given the size of Iran’s stock of near 20 percent LEU, the lack of discussion about the fate of the near 20 percent LEU is problematic in determining breakout estimates. The near 20 percent LEU stock, unless largely eliminated or rendered unusable in a breakout, could be an important reserve in reducing the time to produce the first significant quantity of weapon-grade uranium (WGU) and rapidly producing a second significant quantity of WGU.
Despite the fact that Iran no longer has a stock of near 20 percent LEU in hexafluoride form (UF6), it continues to retain a significant portion of this material in the form of oxide (U3O8) and in scrap and waste. In total, Iran has a stock of about 228 kilograms (uranium mass) of near 20 percent LEU in various forms. If all of this material were converted back to hexafluoride form, it would possess the equivalent of about 337 kilograms of near 20 percent LEU hexafluoride. All of this LEU has been fed into the conversion lines to produce oxide. Of this original amount, about 162 kilograms (uranium mass) ended up as pure LEU oxide powder. The rest, or about 65 kilograms (uranium mass) of this LEU, ended up in scrap and waste.
As of February 2015, of the 162 kilograms of near 20 percent LEU oxide (uranium mass), only 42 kilograms of this enriched material were actually present in Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) fuel plates. About 72 kilograms near 20 percent LEU (uranium mass) were still in oxide form and slated for production of TRR fuel elements.
The amount in scrap, waste, and in-process was in total as of February 2015 about 113 kilograms of near 20 percent LEU. Much of this material is in forms where the LEU could be recovered in a straightforward manner. .
One point is clear, if left in Iran, these near 20 percent LEU stocks could significantly affect breakout times, lowering them substantially below 12 months. To help understand its importance, a rule of thumb is that 50 kilograms of near 20 percent LEU hexafluoride (or about 33 kilograms uranium mass) is equivalent in terms of shortening breakout time to 500 kilograms of 3.5 percent LEU hexafluoride. So, instead of having just 300 kilograms of 3.5 percent LEU, the additional 50 kilograms of near 20 percent would be equivalent to having a total of 800 kilograms of 3.5 percent LEU hexafluoride.
Based on the briefings, the United States removes the near 20 percent LEU from its breakout estimates once this material is mixed with aluminum and put into TRR fuel elements. Its assessment is apparently that recovery of the near 20 percent LEU at that point and its subsequent conversion to uranium hexafluoride would take so long that this LEU could not contribute significantly to a breakout, or at least not to the first significant quantity of weapon-grade uranium. However, recovery of near 20 percent LEU from fresh fuel can be straightforward and the U.S. evaluation requires greater scrutiny.
In Iraq’s crash program to a nuclear weapon in 1990-1991, it put in place a capability to recover about 33 kilograms (uranium mass) of safeguarded unirradiated and slightly irradiated highly enriched uranium (HEU) from research reactor fuel. Based on Iraqi declarations and IAEA Action Team evaluations, which we possess, Iraq covertly installed the necessary equipment at the Tuwaitha nuclear site in four months. It would have needed about a month to test the equipment with dummy fuel and another five months to recover the HEU from the fuel. This effort was stopped at the point of testing dummy fuel elements by the Gulf War bombing campaign which started in January 1991.
Because of its far greater experience with uranium conversion, Iran is likely able to recover unirradiated near 20 percent LEU at a similar or faster rate from TRR fuel elements than Iraq. If Iran were to break out, it would undoubtedly secretly install and test the recovery equipment prior to breakout. Thus, the Iraqi experience suggests that Iran could be recovering near 20 percent LEU from fresh TRR fuel soon after starting its breakout and recover tens of kilograms within several months. This recovered LEU could be converted quickly into hexafluoride form in facilities also prepared in secret prior to breakout.
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?
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.
When I made aliya (immigrated to Israel), I used to tell people that the difference between the media in the US and the media in Israel was that in the US you could tell the difference between the news pages and the op-ed pages.
Those days are long since gone. As further proof, I present this unthinking editorial from the New York Times, which dismisses Israeli concerns over being turned into 1938's Czechoslovakia (Hat Tip: Eli Tabori).
As outlined on Monday by Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of
intelligence and strategic affairs, the Israelis are now insisting that
Iran end all research and development on advanced centrifuges, which are
used to enrich uranium; reduce the number of operating centrifuges at
its Natanz plant beyond what was agreed to in the framework; and close
its underground enrichment facility at Fordo. Also, Israel has demanded
that Iran allow inspections “anywhere, anytime” by international
monitors, ship its stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country and
disclose past nuclear-related activities that might involve military
uses.
Funny, but every one of those demands, which the Times now calls 'unreasonable,' was part of the original Western negotiating position at the beginning of the JCPOA talks.
In any negotiation, there could never be a deal without compromise. It
would be preferable if every vestige of Iran’s nuclear program were
eradicated. But that was never going to happen, not least because Iran’s
know-how could never be erased.
What a load of bunk. The know-how may always exist but if you can't fire up a centrifuge, you can't enrich uranium. It's that simple.
Iran’s leaders would not accept a deal in which they did not maintain
some elements of a nuclear program tailored for energy and medical
purposes — not weapons.
But Iran's program is not 'tailored for energy and medical purposes.' For example, consider this regarding Fordo:
Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, a clandestine underground site near the
city of Qom, is “unnecessary for its civilian nuclear program” and
unneeded unless Iran wants nuclear weapons, according to the Institute
for Science and International Security (ISIS).
“Iran’s decision
to build a relatively small, deeply buried enrichment facility without
first informing the IAEA suggests that Fordow was intended to be used to
make weapon-grade uranium (enriched to over 90 percent) for nuclear
weapons, or to provide Iran with that option,” the Fordow report said,
citing International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) evidence.
Since
the plant was discovered in 2009, Iran has changed its stated purpose
multiple times in official IAEA documents and correspondence, adding
“credence to the assessment that after realizing it was caught in 2009
building the facility in secret, Iran rushed to proclaim a civilian
purpose for it with the IAEA.”
Now, how exactly is that tailored for 'energy and medical purposes'?
While the deal does not grant international monitors the right to go
anywhere, anytime, it does impose a tough inspection regime and
establishes a commission to resolve disputes if Iran blocks access to a
suspected site.
Given Iran's history of hiding its nuclear activities, how 'tough' could any inspection regime that requires giving notice to Iran be?
It allows research on advanced centrifuges, but the machines can’t be used for enrichment for 10 years.
Why would they 'research' them if they weren't planning to use them? 10 years is not a long time - it's less than the age of Iran's nuclear program and less than the amount of time since the IAEA caught on to it. Do you have a reasonable expectation of being alive in ten years? All this deal does is kick the can down the road and leave us to face a much stronger Iran with a more advanced nuclear weapons program ten years hence. Some accomplishment.
There is confusion about how the deal addresses Iran’s willingness to
come clean on its past military activities, but experts have said that a
final agreement would require Iran to answer all questions before
sanctions are lifted.
Who are those 'experts' and what is the basis for their opinion?
The Times had made up its editorial mind to support whatever deal Obama presented before the deal was ever presented. It will only read the fine print after its opinion is out there. That's not the job of a critical media in a Western country. It's no longer 'all the news that's fit to print.' But then, that slogan was always a sham anyway.
Defending an emerging nuclear deal, President Barack
Obama said Iran would be kept a year away from obtaining a nuclear
weapon for more than a decade, but conceded Tuesday that the buffer
period could shrink to almost nothing after 13 or more years.
Obama, whose top priority at the moment is to sell the framework deal
to critics, was pushing back on the charge that the deal fails to
eliminate the risk because it allows Iran to keep enriching uranium. He
told NPR News that Iran will be capped for a decade at 300 kilograms —
not enough to convert to a stockpile of weapons-grade material.
“What is a more relevant fear would be that in Year 13, 14, 15, they
have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at
that point, the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero,”
Obama said.
Iraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Congress on
Tuesday that a potential nuclear deal being negotiated by major powers
including the United States “paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”
Netanyahu, who vehemently opposes the Obama administration’s ongoing
negotiations with Iran, said that world leaders must instead work to
“stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”
“It doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb,” he said of the potential
deal as he appeared at the Capitol in front of hundreds of American
lawmakers. “It paves Iran’s path to the bomb. ”
“For over a year we’ve been told that no deal is better than a bad
deal,” he added. “Well, this is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. We are
better off without it.”
Quizzed on Obama's interview later Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf was saved by a power outage. Start watching at the 9:05 mark of that video.
Meanwhile, a French fact sheet seen by the Times of Israel on Tuesday took a very different view of the agreement with Iran than the US view.
A French government fact sheet on the Iran framework deal, which has not
been made public by Paris but which has been seen by The Times of
Israel, provides for Iran to gradually introduce the use of advanced
centrifuges to enrich uranium after 12 years, in contrast to the US
official parameters, which make no such specific provision.
The use of the more advanced IR-2 and IR-4
centrifuges, as permitted according to the French fact sheet, would
enable Iran to more rapidly accumulate the highly enriched uranium
needed to build nuclear weapons, accelerating its breakout time to the
bomb.
The French fact sheet also specifies that Iran
will be allowed to continue R&D work on the advanced IR-4, IR-5,
IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges, the last of which can enrich uranium at
20-times the speed of Iran’s current IR-1 centrifuges, whereas the
American parameters are less specific.
Differences between the texts issued by Paris
and Washington also extend to the question of inspection and supervision
of Iran’s activities, with the French document indicating that the
IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will be able to visit any
suspect site in Iran — so-called “anywhere, anytime” access — whereas
the US document is less far-reaching.
The two documents also differ in their terminology as regards the scale and timing of sanctions relief as the deal takes effect.
I guess once they sign the deal, we can all read the deal. What could go wrong?
The
only joint document issued publicly was a statement from Mohammad Javad
Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, and Federica Mogherini, the European
Union foreign-policy chief, that was all of seven paragraphs.
The statement listed about a dozen “parameters” that are to guide the
next three months of talks, including the commitment that Iran’s Natanz
installation will be the only location at which uranium is enriched
during the life of the agreement.
But the United States and Iran have also made public more detailed
accounts of their agreements made in Lausanne, and those accounts
illustrate their expectations for what the final accord should say.
A review shows there is considerable overlap between the two
accounts, but also some noteworthy differences — which have raised the
question of whether the two sides are on the same page, especially on
the question of how quickly sanctions are to be removed.
The U.S. and Iranian statements do not clarify some critical issues,
such as precisely what sort of research Iran will be allowed to
undertake on advanced centrifuges during the first 10 years of the
accord.
“This is just a work in progress, and those differences in fact
sheets indicate the challenges ahead,” said Olli Heinonen, former deputy
director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Obama administration officials insist there is no dispute on what was
agreed behind closed doors. But to avoid time-consuming deliberations
on what would be said publicly, the two sides decided that each would
issue its own statement.
Sounds like yet another version of 'once we vote on the agreement, you can read the agreement.' But this one has potentially much more deadly consequences....
No sooner were the negotiations over Thursday than Zarif sent a tweet
that dismissed the five-page set of U.S. parameters as “spin.”
On
Iranian state television Saturday, Zarif kept up that refrain, saying
Iran had formally complained to Secretary of State John Kerry that the
measures listed in the U.S. statement were “in contradiction” to what
had been accepted in Lausanne.
Zarif, however, did not challenge any nuclear provisions in the U.S.
document. Instead, he complained that the paper had been drawn up under
Israeli and congressional pressure, and he restated Iran’s insistence on
fast sanctions relief, including the need to “terminate,” not just
suspend, European Union sanctions.
It gets worse....
A review of the dueling U.S. and Iranian statements show they differ
in some important respects. The U.S. statement says Iran has agreed to
shrink its stockpile of uranium to 300 kilograms, a commitment the
Iranian statement does not mention.
The Iranian statement emphasizes that nuclear cooperation between
Iran and the six world powers that negotiated the agreement will grow,
including in the construction of nuclear-power plants, research reactors
and the use of isotopes for medical research. That potential
cooperation is not mentioned in the U.S. statement.
The
U.S. statement says Iran will be barred from using its advanced
centrifuges to produce uranium for at least 10 years. Before those 10
years are up, Iran will be able to conduct some “limited” research on
the centrifuges. The Iranian version omits the word “limited.”
The starkest differences between the U.S. and Iranians accounts
concern the pace at which punishing economic sanctions against Iran are
to be removed. The Iranian text says that when the agreement is
implemented, the sanctions will “immediately” be canceled.
U.S. officials have described sanctions relief as more of a
step-by-step process tied to Iranian efforts to carry out the accord.
With three months of hard bargaining
ahead, some experts worry that the lack of an agreed-upon, detailed
public framework can only complicate the negotiations — and may invite
the Iranians to try to relitigate the terms of the Lausanne deal.
“I think it is a troubling development,” said Ray Takeyh, a senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has been critical of the
Obama administration’s handling of the talks. “They will exploit all
ambiguities with creative interpretations.”
And in any event, even assuming an agreement is reached and Iran actually keeps to it, ten years is not a long time.
The fact that the US has admitted that some of what it is saying is 'spin' (see the tweet above, which comes from a part of the article that I skipped) is probably most worrying of all. No one - other than those who were there - knows exactly what was agreed.
Hmm.
P5+1 foreign ministers meeting at #Iran talks in Lausanne has broken up - after only 18 minutes.
(Removes extraneous word)
— Matt Lee (@APDiploWriter) March 30, 2015
For months, Irantentatively agreed that it would send a large portion of its stockpile of uranium to Russia,
where it would not be accessible for use in any future weapons program.
But on Sunday Iran’s deputy foreign minister made a surprise comment to
Iranian reporters, ruling out an agreement that involved giving up a
stockpile that Iran has spent years and billions of dollars to amass.
“The
export of stocks of enriched uranium is not in our program, and we do
not intend sending them abroad,” the official, Abbas Araqchi, told the
Iranian media, according to Agence France-Presse. “There is no question
of sending the stocks abroad.”
On Saturday, former IAEA chief inspector Ollie Heinonen published a paper that concluded that based upon leaks about what is in the current deal, Iran could have a nuclear breakout in 7-8 months.
What is Iran's current breakout time?
Natural uranium has only 0.7 percent of the isotope U-235, and the
effort required to enrich it to one SQ of WGU is about 5,000 Separative
Work Units (SWUs). Iran currently has about 9,000 functioning
first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, with another 9,000 not in operation.
The IR-1s installed in the Natanz and Fordow facilities have been
performing at an average per unit rate of 0.75 to 1 SWU per year. Using
the 1 SWU/year performance of the latest IR-1 model, the breakout time
with 9,000 machines using a natural uranium feed would be six to seven
months. However, Iran also has substantial stocks of 3.5 percent
enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF6) that can be used as an alternative
feed, shrinking the breakout time to three months.
If Iran brought online its other nearly 9,000 IR-1s, breakout time
would be about three months with natural uranium feedstock and four to
six weeks with 3.5 percent UF6 feedstock. Iran has also developed the
more advanced IR-2m centrifuge, rated at 5 SWU/year. If the 1,000 IR-2ms
installed at Natanz were used in conjunction with all 18,000 IR-1s, the
respective breakout times would be cut by a third.
According to media accounts, the proposed nuclear agreement
would lower the number of operating centrifuges to around 6,500. In that
circumstance, what would Iran's breakout time be?
Using IR-1s with natural uranium as a feed, the breakout time for 6,500
centrifuges would be about nine months. A crucial question will be how
much 3.5 percent enriched UF6 will remain in Iran. Yet even if UF6
stocks are reduced from their current 7.5-8 tons to 500 kg, a breakout
time of between seven and eight months would still be possible given the
program's enrichment capabilities with natural uranium feed. Since
these breakout times are less than the goals set by the U.S.
administration, it is important to know what parameters Washington used
for its estimates.
So everyone other than the Obama administration has figured out that this is a bad deal? What could go wrong?
If this story is true, Prime Minister Netanyahu has proven once again that he does not trust the Obama administration, and that he is willing to do whatever must be done to protect Israel, even at the cost of offending King Hussein. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Israel 'spied' on the nuclear talks with Iran (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). I'm going to post a lot of this article, because it's not freely available online and I got it by email from another source.
The
spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations
and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal,
current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping,
Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants
and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.
The
espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of
inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a
high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and
former officials said.
“It
is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is
another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to
U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” said a senior U.S.
official briefed on the matter.
The
U.S. and Israel, longtime allies who routinely swap information on
security threats, sometimes operate behind the scenes like
spy-versus-spy rivals. The White House has largely tolerated Israeli
snooping on U.S. policy makers—a posture Israel takes when the tables
are turned.
The
White House discovered the operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence
agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli
officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only
from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter
said.
Israeli
officials denied spying directly on U.S. negotiators and said they
received their information through other means, including close
surveillance of Iranian leaders receiving the latest U.S. and European
offers. European officials, particularly the French, also have been more
transparent with Israel about the closed-door discussions than the
Americans, Israeli and U.S. officials said.
Using
levers of political influence unique to Israel, Messrs. Netanyahu and
Dermer calculated that a lobbying campaign in Congress before an
announcement was made would improve the chances of killing or reshaping
any deal. They knew the intervention would damage relations with the
White House, Israeli officials said, but decided that was an acceptable
cost.
The
campaign may not have worked as well as hoped, Israeli officials now
say, because it ended up alienating many congressional Democrats whose
support Israel was counting on to block a deal.
Obama
administration officials, departing from their usual description of the
unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Israel, have voiced sharp
criticism of Messrs. Netanyahu and Dermer to describe how the relationship has changed.
“People
feel personally sold out,” a senior administration official said.
“That’s where the Israelis really better be careful because a lot of
these people will not only be around for this administration but
possibly the next one as well.”
THEY feel sold out? Well, BOO HOO. The Obama administration has done everything in its power over the last six years to weaken relations between the United States and Israel. They expect us to trust them? I'm thrilled that Netanyahu is capable of seeing and admitting that this administration is no friend of Israel, and last week's election results prove that most Israelis can see that there is a difference between our relations with the United States and the American people and our relations with this administration. Most Israelis didn't fall for the simplistic argument advanced by the Left that Netanyahu was ruining our relations with the United States.
As to the last sentence, that's yet another incentive for Israelis to work for a Republican candidate for President in 2016. Ted Cruz, who announced yesterday, would be excellent.
The article goes on to state that Israel might have spied because the Obama administration launched these talks in 2012 without telling us, and didn't tell us about them until September 2013 (gee, talk about creating mistrust). The article also says that Netanyahu's office denies that we spied on the US (we routinely spy on Iran, but the US knows that because they helped set up our system for doing so!).
Israeli officials, who said they had already learned about the talks
through their own channels, told their U.S. counterparts they were upset
about being excluded. “ ‘Did the administration really believe we
wouldn’t find out?’ ” Israeli officials said, according to a former U.S.
official.
The
episode cemented Mr. Netanyahu’s concern that Mr. Obama was bent on
clinching a deal with Iran whether or not it served Israel’s best
interests, Israeli officials said. Obama administration officials said
the president was committed to preventing Iran from developing nuclear
weapons.
Mr.
Dermer started lobbying U.S. lawmakers just before the U.S. and other
powers signed an interim agreement with Iran in November 2013. Mr.
Netanyahu and Mr. Dermer went to Congress after seeing they had little
influence on the White House.
Before
the interim deal was made public, Mr. Dermer gave lawmakers Israel’s
analysis: The U.S. offer would dramatically undermine economic sanctions
on Iran, according to congressional officials who took part.
After
learning about the briefings, the White House dispatched senior
officials to counter Mr. Dermer. The officials told lawmakers that
Israel’s analysis exaggerated the sanctions relief by as much as 10
times, meeting participants said.
When
the next round of negotiations with Iran started in Switzerland last
year, U.S. counterintelligence agents told members of the U.S.
negotiating team that Israel would likely try to penetrate their
communications, a senior Obama administration official said.
The
U.S. routinely shares information with its European counterparts and
others to coordinate negotiating positions. While U.S. intelligence
officials believe secured U.S. communications are relatively safe from
the Israelis, they say European communications are vulnerable.
So maybe we didn't spy on the US. Maybe we spied on the Europeans. Or maybe the Europeans - or at least France - decided to tell us about it. Hey Obama - you keep saying that you're our ally and that you have our back and your party chaircritter keeps saying that she wears her support to Israel to work on her sleeve every day. So how can you keep something like this from us for a year? How can you do this behind our backs? It's our existence at stake - not yours! What do you expect us to do in response?
Or maybe we spied on Iran.
Current and former Israeli officials said their intelligence agencies
can get much of the information they seek by targeting Iranians and
others in the region who are communicating with countries in the talks.
In November, the Israelis learned the contents of a proposed deal
offered by the U.S. but ultimately rejected by Iran, U.S. and Israeli
officials said. Israeli officials told their U.S. counterparts the terms
offered insufficient protections.
And this story is apparently how Netanyahu's address to a joint session of Congress came about too.
In January, Mr. Netanyahu told the White House his government intended
to oppose the Iran deal but didn’t explain how, U.S. and Israeli
officials said.
On Jan. 21, House Speaker John Boehner (R.,
Ohio) announced Mr. Netanyahu would address a joint meeting of
Congress. That same day, Mr. Dermer and other Israeli officials visited
Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers and aides, seeking a bipartisan
coalition large enough to block or amend any deal.
...
Mr. Dermer and other Israeli officials over the following weeks gave
lawmakers and their aides information the White House was trying to keep
secret, including how the emerging deal could allow Iran to operate
around 6,500 centrifuges, devices used to process nuclear material, said
congressional officials who attended the briefings.
The Israeli officials told lawmakers that Iran would also be permitted
to deploy advanced IR-4 centrifuges that could process fuel on a larger
scale, meeting participants and administration officials said. Israeli
officials said such fuel, which under the emerging deal would be
intended for energy plants, could be used to one day build nuclear
bombs.
...
When asked in February during one briefing where Israel got its inside
information, the Israeli officials said their sources included the
French and British governments, as well as their own intelligence,
according to people there.
“Ambassador Dermer never shared confidential intelligence information
with members of Congress,” Mr. Sagui said. “His briefings did not
include specific details from the negotiations, including the length of
the agreement or the number of centrifuges Iran would be able to keep.”
'Current and former US officials' claim that Dermer did tell Congress those details.
All of this has come at a cost, and Israel is seeking new ways to defeat a deal with Iran.
Congressional aides and Israeli officials now say Israel’s coalition in
Congress is short the votes needed to pass legislation that could
overcome a presidential veto, although that could change. In response,
Israeli officials said, Mr. Netanyahu was pursuing other ways to
pressure the White House.
This week, Mr. Netanyahu sent a delegation to France, which has been
more closely aligned with Israel on the nuclear talks and which could
throw obstacles in Mr. Obama’s way before a deal is signed. The Obama
administration, meanwhile, is stepping up its outreach to Paris to blunt
the Israeli push.
France has not been a better friend to Israel than the United States since the Eisenhower administration. Obama has 'succeeded' in turning back the clock.
One final comment. Obama is lucky this story didn't come out last Sunday or Monday. If it had, the Likud might have won 80 seats in last Tuesday's elections. This story doesn't make Obama into a victim (although I am sure that was the administration's intent in leaking it). This story makes Obama look petty, vindictive, and more than willing to abandon an ally that just happens to be the only democracy in a part of the world that is of critical interest to the United States.
Obama has won the title. He will go down in history as the worst President the United States has ever had.
The Iranians surprised the representatives of the six powers when
they presented their own alternative proposal, the diplomats said.
That proposal included, for the first time,
concessions regarding their stockpile of enriched uranium, as well as a
bid to cut the number of old-generation centrifuges by one third.
The Iranians proposed they keep 6,000 centrifuges
out of the 9,400 for the first 10 years of the agreement, and keep 500
kilograms of their low-enriched uranium, or, alternatively, to operate
6,500 centrifuges and only retain 300 kilograms of their low-enriched
uranium, the diplomats said. After 10 years, with only five years left
on the agreement, the Iranian proposal would gradually increase the
number of centrifuges to the number they have today, the diplomats
added.
But proponents of a deal should not be celebrating just yet.
However, among the unresolved issues is the Iranian demand that all
sanctions be lifted immediately upon signing the agreement, whereas the
United States and the other powers want the sanctions lifted gradually
if Iran is seen to be meeting its obligations.
Another stumbling block is Iran’s continuing
refusal of the world powers’ demand to fully open all aspects of its
military nuclear program to inspection by the International Atomic
Energy Commission.
The diplomats say that, considering the issues
still in dispute, it is difficult to imagine the parties coming to an
agreement by March 30. If such an agreement does emerge, because of an
Iranian and American need to show progress, it will be a general
document of principles only and will not include details on the
outstanding bones of contention.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard on Friday
announced it has test fired a "new strategic weapon" in the final day of
a large-scale naval and air defense drill, saying the system would play
a key role in any future battle against the United States.
The claim was a new show of force by Iran just weeks ahead of a
deadline for reaching a deal over its nuclear program with the U.S. and
other global powers.
Iran announced the test on the final day of military drills it is
calling "Great Prophet 9." The exercises are being held near the Strait
of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which about a fifth of the
world's oil passes.
Iran often holds live-fire war games and frequently boasts of
advances in its weaponry that cannot be independently verified. The
latest drill, which included a simulated attack on an American aircraft
carrier, appears to be aimed at sending a message that Iran has no
intention of backing down to the U.S. in the nuclear talks.
Adm. Ali Fadavi, the Republican Guard's naval chief, said the new
weapon would be critical in any future naval war against the U.S.
Of course, strategic weapons aren't part of the P 5+1 negotiations.
I want to go back and address Barak Ravid's last line:
“The challenge is for those who oppose the agreement like Netanyahu.
They must present an alternative that will produce better results,” a
senior U.S. official said over the weekend.
IRAN could have five times more advanced centrifuges capable of producing
weapons-grade uranium than it has previously admitted, according to the
former deputy chief of the UN nuclear watchdog.
Olli Heinonen, who spent 27 years at the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), said Iran could have up to 5,000 IR-2m centrifuges rather than the
1,008 it has claimed. The IR-2m devices are up to five times more effective
in enriching uranium than older IR-1 types.
Heinonen was speaking on the eve of nuclear negotiations between Iran’s
Islamic regime and the P5+1 countries, which are America, Britain, Russia,
China, France and Germany.
Heinonen said Tehran “could have up to 4,000 to 5,000 [IR-2m] centrifuges or
raw materials for them” located outside two of its largest nuclear sites,
Natanz and Fordow.
The Tower cites a Wall Street Journal report that indicates that Western negotiators are so desperate for a deal with Iran that they are offering more significant sanctions relief for a deal that would not stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Iran has been pushing for a quick lifting of all Western
and United Nations Security Council sanctions, according to Western
diplomats. They have said some of Iran’s demands about the pace of
easing economic pressure are unrealistic.
However the diplomat said Iran would get “substantial” economic relief early on if they complete a deal.
“In return for the implementation by Iran of verifiable
nuclear-related actions which address our key concerns … we are ready to
offer a substantial relief of economic and financial sanctions at an
early stage,” the person said.
The Journal has also confirmed earlier reports that the West offered to let Iran 'unplug' its centrifuges rather than destroying them, a step that could be reversed in a matter of days.
Senator Robert Menendez called for new sanctions against Iran on Sunday, saying that the mullahcracy had showed its true intentions by developing a faster centrifuge.
So much for 'negotiations': As Obama pushes to delay sanctions, experts say Iran could build a nuke within a month
Greetings from 39,000 feet above the eastern seaboard of the United States. Isn't technology great?
I am currently flying from Miami (to which I drove at 5:00 am) to Newark, where I will be spending the Sabbath in the town in which I lived for my last eight years in the US....
USA Today reported on Thursday that the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) estimates that Iran could produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon within a month. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is pushing the US Senate to delay further sanctions against Iran in the hope of 'improving the atmosphere' for 'negotiations.'
"Shortening breakout times have implications for any negotiation with
Iran," stated the report by the Institute for Science and International
Security. "An essential finding is that they are currently too short
and shortening further."
David Albright, president of the
institute and a former inspector for the U.N. International Atomic
Energy Agency, said the estimate means that Iran would have to eliminate
more than half of its 19,000 centrifuges to extend the time it would
take to build a bomb to six months.
But the Obama administration - as usual - believes that it knows better than the experts.
The Obama administration has said Iran is probably a year away from having enough enriched uranium to make a bomb.
Bernadette
Meehan, an NSC spokeswoman for President Obama's National Security
Council, said the intelligence community maintains "a number of
assessments" regarding potential time frames for Iran to produce enough
weapons-grade uranium for one weapon or a testable nuclear device.
"We continue to closely monitor the Iranian nuclear program and its stockpile of enriched uranium," Meehan said.
Meanwhile, Iran continues to hide its activities from UN inspectors, refusing to grant them access to suspected nuclear facilities. Shouldn't that be a reason to assume the worst?
However, Iran has blocked international inspectors from some
suspected nuclear facilities to verify they are being used for peaceful
purposes, access required under international agreements it has signed.
United
Nations inspectors have found evidence of a weapons program in
violation of Iran's commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. The USA and the U.N. Security Council have implemented crippling
economic sanctions on Iran to sway it to take steps to assure the world
it is not developing a bomb.
And Iran doesn't really need a whole lot of centrifuges to produce a bomb either.
If Iran moves ahead with installation of its more efficient, second
generation centrifuges, it would be able to produce enough nuclear fuel
for a bomb with so few of them, between 2,000 and 3,300 centrifuges,
that they could fit in a small warehouse, Albright said.
Take your pick, either the Obama administration is complicit in Iran's efforts to produce nuclear weapons, or it's indifferent, or it's burying its head in the sand. And Israel is supposed to trust them?
The IAEA confirmed reports that Iran has begun installing more than 1,000 IR-2m centrifuges, which are more modern and quicker than older models used at the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant.
Iran is on pace to achieve what experts have called a “critical capability” by mid-2014 or even sooner, according to the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a nonpartisan nuclear research group.
The findings come on the heels of at least 10 failed rounds nuclear
talks between Iran and the West. The talks are scheduled to resume in
late September, after a likely military strike in Syria, where Tehran
has thrown its support behind embattled President Bashar al-Assad.
Nuclear experts say the IAEA’s findings provide proof that newly
elected Iranian President Hassan Rowhani has no intention of halting the
country’s nuclear program despite diplomatic overtures to the West.
The advanced centrifuges have allowed Iran to more swiftly enrich
uranium, the key component in a nuclear bomb, without being detected,
according to the IAEA and independent experts.
This means that Iran could “produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a
nuclear weapon before inspectors could detect the breakout,” according to ISIS.
Iran has also installed nearly 2,000 less advanced IR-1 centrifuges
at Natanz in addition to the 1,000 advanced centrifuges, significantly
increasing the nuclear plant’s output, according to the IAEA.
“Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities,” the IAEA concluded.
The installation of the new centrifuges,
including 1,000 upgraded models with enhanced uranium enrichment capabilities,
is proof , Netanyahu said during a tour of a cluster of new IDF bases to be
built at the Hanegev Junction south of Beersheba, that Iran has not changed
course.
“The Iranian president is trying to present a new face to the
West, but progress on the nuclear program continues,” he said.
Netanyahu
was blunter later in the afternoon before a meeting with a delegation led by US
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R–Wisconsin).
“I know that some [people] place
their hopes on Iran’s new president. He knows how to exploit this and yesterday
he called for more talks,” Netanyahu said.
“Of course he wants more talks. He
wants to talk and talk and talk. And while everybody is busy talking to him,
he'll be busy enriching uranium. The centrifuges will keep on spinning.
This isn’t a secret. The new Iranian president boasts that that is his
strategy. He says, ‘I talk and I smile and I enrich uranium.’”
In
addition to accelerating its enrichment capacities, Iran was also pursuing an
alternative route, “the plutonium route,” the prime minister
said.
“Unhappily, the situation is not getting any better; it’s actually
getting worse,” he stressed to his visitors. “Iran is determined to get the
bomb, and we must be even more determined to prevent them from getting
it.”
For the West to stop deluding itself that Rohani is a 'moderate' who is going to curb Iran's nuclear program, it needs to see interviews like this one, which I hope you will all tweet, post to Facebook and otherwise spread (along with the rest of this post, of course). It has had far too little exposure. In this videotape of a pre-election interview, Iran's new president,
Hassan Rowhani, bragged about deceiving the West over the Islamic
regime's illicit nuclear program and claimed credit for vastly expanding
it. Video courtesy of Nasim Online - Translation: Reza Kahlili
If he is telling the truth – and there is no obvious reason why he would lie about the timing
he refers to – the timeline he outlines for bringing Iranian centrifuge
cascades online in substantial numbers makes a poignant contrast with
the reporting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the
time.
The
contrast highlights just how in the dark IAEA was during this period,
at least about the centrifuges. (It’s also worth highlighting, in
general, the timeline of what was going on during the EU-brokered
negotiations Rouhani refers to in the video.) Certainly, many in the
West had an uneasy suspicion that, by the end of 2005, Iran may have
accomplished more than IAEA was officially aware of. But, as late as
February 2006, IAEA acknowledged the following decisive condition:
Due
to the fact that no centrifuge related raw materials and components are
under Agency seal, the Agency is unable effectively to monitor the
R&D activities being carried out by Iran except at the [Pilot Fuel
Enrichment Plant],* where containment and surveillance measures are
being applied to the enrichment process.
*
The Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant, or PFEP, is a facility located at
Natanz where Iran initiates new enrichment processes on a small scale.
The co-located main Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) houses the
industrial-scale enrichment cascades, where Western analysts have
assessed the bulk of the uranium enrichment to be done.
The IAEA was even more in the dark once Iran developed its own uranium mining capability and therefore did not have to report to the IAEA on how much uranium it had. And it gets worse. Iran has two underground facilities in Esfahan and Natanz which the IAEA has not visited since 2004 and ever, respectively.
In
its February 2006 report, linked above, IAEA regretted the lack of
transparency in the Iranian nuclear program, which made it difficult to
resolve questions about its nature (emphasis added):
Without
full transparency that extends beyond the formal legal requirements of
the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol — transparency that
could only be achieved through Iran’s active cooperation — the Agency’s
ability to reconstruct the history of Iran’s past programme and to
verify the correctness and completeness of the statements made by Iran,
particularly with regard to its centrifuge enrichment programme, will be
limited, and questions about the past and current direction of Iran’s nuclear programme will continue to be raised.
IAEA
basically had its November 2004 baseline for centrifuges at the PFEP to
work with during this period. It did not have a good handle on what
was going on in the larger FEP, nor did it have the slightest idea what
was going on in the underground facilities at Esfahan, where extensive tunneling activities were revealed in late 2004
IAEA visited an underground chamber at Esfahan in November 2004, but it
was empty at the time. IAEA has not visited Esfahan’s underground
complex since, nor has it ever been allowed to visit the vast underground network identified at Natanz by 2007.
Jennifer Dyer concludes:
Certainly,
if Rouhani referred in the video to operational centrifuges in 2005,
his totals are between 1,536 and 2,836 more than the baseline of
operational centrifuges known to IAEA in 2005. We may never know for
sure how many there were operational then. Among other things, that
means we may well not know how many there are operational today.(We
have other reasons for not being certain about that, of course.)
One thing we do know, however, in our little universe of known knowns about the Iranian nuclear problem, is that the uranium enrichment curve has continued to accelerate. It may have accelerated more than we know, but it has accelerated at least as much as we know.
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
