22-Sep-15: If Iran's march to a nuclear arsenal leaves US officials comfortable and satisfied, how should the rest of us feel?

Before we drill down into what has just happened in Iran, and some astounding words of explanation from an official spokesperson for the US government, a few words of introduction.

The intentionally-unsigned nuclear weapons development deal that media reports keep wrongly calling a “signed” agreement, made in July between Iran and the United States (accompanied by a few other countries that also did not sign) is being widely hailed by those who support it as unprecedented in its rigor and of vast significance. Whatever people think of its merits, it's clearly one of the most weighty pacts to have happened in our lifetimes.

Over here in Israel where Iran's blood-curdling threats of murder and destruction ["25-Aug-15: Hard to ignore how much Iran believes its old goals are the right goals"] are not merely the stuff of headlines (or footnotes) but amount to a genuine, massive-scale physical threat, there's wall-to-wall opposition to it, along with fear, trepidation and incomprehension. 

We can't help but notice how most Americans, far less threatened than we are but no less capable of reading news reports, agree with us.

As the ultimate owner of the process, President Obama himself spared no superlatives in singing the praises of the framework that preceded the pact:

"This deal is not based on trust. It's based on unprecedented verification," he said. Part of that verification, Obama said, was "the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history.” [Public Radio International, April 8, 2015]

Then once the agreement was finally not signed, the praise from figures deep within the political process rose several notches, starting with the president himself who, speaking from the White House, said

We don't trust Iran... But this deal doesn't rely on trust. It relies on verification [and] The commitment to Israel is sacrosanct...

The amen choir rapidly chimed in, mainly along partisan party-political lines. Democratic senator from California Dianne Feinstein called it

historic. It offers a verifiable, diplomatic resolution to one of our most pressing national security challenges. This is a strong agreement that meets our national security needs and I believe will stand the test of time. I stand behind the U.S. negotiating team and will support this agreement in the Senate.. .Iran will be subject to unprecedented and highly intrusive inspections to verify it is living up to its commitments. The IAEA will have 24-hour access to all declared nuclear sites and this agreement provides a process for inspection of military bases. No sites are off limits to inspection... [Source, July 14, 2015]

California's second Democratic senator, Barbara Boxer, spoke of the “unprecedented inspections and verification regime” in endorsing it. Along similar lines, Bill Nelson, Florida's Democratic senator, reiterated that:

this agreement can't be built on trust. We must have a good enough mechanism in place to catch them when and if they cheat; in other words, don't trust but verify. [C-SPAN, August 4, 2015]

Large parts of the mainstream media joined in. For instance: "Iran nuke deal depends on most intrusive inspection system ever", McClatchey, July 14, 2015]

And there were the lobbyists:

That's why this deal is so important: by subjecting Iran to the most intrusive inspections regime in history, it leaves nothing to trust. Inspections at all nuclear sites. 24/7/365 monitoring. Tracking every ounce of uranium. It all adds up to unprecedented assurance that Iran cannot cheat their way to a weapon undetected. [From the Iran Deal Facts website, the work of a political group closely aligned with the White House]

In fact, there has been colossal amount of parroting going on as those on the side of this agreement provide reasons political or moral or logical for why it could hardly be better, and how trust doesn't come into it. Not at all. Not even a little.

This leaves those of us astounded at the unforgivable weakness being displayed by the US side, along with the ongoing unbalanced concessions, wondering what's really going on. And wondering whether the news of this past weekend has caused the holders of any of these utterly-certain viewpoints to undergo some self-doubt.

The wondering is still going on. Only now the contradictions between the case for the unsigned pact and reality are mounting.

The following somewhat bizarre exchange between the official spokesperson of the United States Department of State and a journalist we think is Matt Lee from Associated Press took place at yesterday’s (Monday’s) daily press briefing at the State Department. The text below is extracted without change from the official transcript and appears on the State Department website here.

The head of the IAEA found time in his weekend visit
to call on Rouhani, the Iranian president [Image Source]

The dueling between the two relates to what did and did not happen inside one of the most significant of the Iranian military/nuclear facilities ["06-Aug-15: Parchin: Keep the name in mind"] this past weekend when the head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, came visiting. 

Soil samples were taken during the visit. And lo and behold, exactly what critics of the JCPOA said was going to happen (because of a secret side deal between Iran and IAEA), happened:

[A] top Iranian official said that IAEA inspectors had not taken part in the sampling procedure at Parchin. Iranian technicians took the samples and handed them to the IAEA, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behruz Kamalvandi was quoted in Iranian state media as saying. ["IAEA inspects Iran's Parchin military site for first time", CNN, September 21, 2015]

(Worth noting that when reports first emerged that Iran was going to be doing the soil sampling of its suspected nuclear facilities on its own and without anyone watching, supporters of the Iran deal said this was mere rumors, and that Israel was probably behind them. Turns out they weren't rumors at all.) Amano's own words after emerging from Parchin are enough to get ordinary worried people like us thinking:

This was the first time that the Agency had visited the location. We entered a building which the Agency had previously only been able to observe using satellite imagery. Inside the building, we saw indications of recent renovation work. There was no equipment in the building. Our experts will now analyse this information and we will have discussions with Iran in the coming weeks, as foreseen in the Road-map. ["IAEA Director General's Remarks to the Press on Visit to Iran", September 21, 2015]

State's John Kirby [Image Source]

It would be a pity to highlight some of the words, and not highlight others. The whole State Department media briefing exchange from yesterday is simply breathtaking. 

QUESTION: Thank you. The two main areas of what I wanted to ask you about have already been asked at the White House and answered – well, kind of answered – but I’m going to give it a whirl anyway. Let’s start with Iran.
MR KIRBY: With what?
QUESTION: Iran --
MR KIRBY: Okay.
QUESTION: -- and the inspections of Parchin. And your colleague at the White House was asked whether the Administration is satisfied with the process that we saw unfold over the past couple of days. I just wanted to make sure that you’re on board with his answer; he said yes.
MR KIRBY: Yes, we are.
QUESTION: You are. And you don’t have any issue with fact that the inspectors were not allowed in, or that they were not there?
MR KIRBY: I would point you, Matt, to what the director general himself noted, which was that the verification activities at Parchin were conducted in the manner consistent with their standard safeguards practices. So the director general himself made it clear that he was comfortable with the verification process and that it was in keeping with the arrangement that they had made with Iran.
QUESTION: That’s great, but you – so you don’t have a problem with them not being physically present?
MR KIRBY: I’m not going to get into the details of the process itself. That resides inside this confidential arrangement between Iran and the IAEA, so I’m not going to confirm or deny whether inspectors were present here or there. What I am going to say is we’re comfortable that the process was conducted in accordance with the normal procedures and the agreement that the IAEA had already made with Iran.
QUESTION: And so it remains your position that the confidential agreement and whatever it contains is sufficient to investigate? Okay.
MR KIRBY: Absolutely. And again, I’d point you to the fact that Director General Amano made it clear before and I think certainly made the implication today that there’s no self-inspection by Iran in this process.
QUESTION: There – okay. The other thing, at the – that your colleague at the White House seemed to suggest was that the courtesy call that Director General Amano made to Parchin was somehow evidence that – or was evidence that the Iranian military facilities are open and available for IAEA access. Is that really – is that the position of the State Department?
MR KIRBY: Well, in a short answer: yes. I mean, it’s not insignificant that the IAEA and the director general himself – I mean, I don’t know that we would characterize it as a courtesy call –but the fact that he and his team had access to Parchin is not insignificant.
QUESTION: His team, meaning the one person that went with him.
MR KIRBY: Look, I don’t – I’m not going to --
QUESTION: A brief – a brief visit to an empty room at Parchin, you think counts – qualifies as an inspection? That – was that the –
MR KIRBY: It’s not insignificant that they had access to Parchin. The director general himself – and I’m not going to get into the details of his visit or what that – that’s for the IAEA to speak to. But it’s not insignificant that they got – that they were granted access to this.
QUESTION: Is it your understanding that the director general of the IAEA conducts inspections? Or would that normally be done by --
MR KIRBY: I’m not an expert on their --
QUESTION: -- lower-level people?
MR KIRBY: I’m not an expert on their protocols. I don’t think it’s our expectation that he has to personally inspect everything.
QUESTION: Do you think he got down on his hands and knees and --
MR KIRBY: I’d point you to the director general to speak to his personal involvement. I don’t know that that’s our expectation, that he has to, as you said, get down on his hands and knees. But certainly he had access to Parchin, and that’s not insignificant – the first time that that’s been done. If we had this --
QUESTION: Well, do you recall how big a site Parchin is?
MR KIRBY: I don’t. I’m not an expert on the site itself.
QUESTION: It’s rather large.
QUESTION: It’s pretty huge.
MR KIRBY: Okay.
QUESTION: So do you think that two people from the IAEA going into an empty room briefly --
MR KIRBY: Matt.
QUESTION: -- counts – I’m trying to find out whether you guys think or are trying to say that Amano’s courtesy call, his very brief visit – he even said that it was very brief – counts as some kind of an inspection. That’s all.
MR KIRBY: I would point you to what the IAEA has said about their --
QUESTION: Not even the IAEA said this was an inspection, but your colleague at the White House suggested that the fact that Director General Amano was able to briefly visit one room or one part of the site was evidence that the Iranians have opened up their military sites to IAEA access. And I just want to know if the State Department thinks that it’s – thinks the same.
MR KIRBY: We believe it’s significant that Iran granted access to this facility at Parchin for the first time in the history of this issue, both in his visit and the technical verification activities. What’s more important is we look forward to Iran’s fulling implementing its commitments under the roadmap. That’s what matters here.
QUESTION: Would you be confident in this being the standard of inspection going forward?
MR KIRBY: It’s not that that is – this is an issue between Iran and the IAEA, and as we said at the very outset, Brad, that having been briefed on the details of that confidential arrangement, the Secretary remains comfortable that it will allow for the IAEA to get the proper access it needs and the ability, through various techniques, of effectively monitoring.
QUESTION: But you don’t think there needs to be – you’re not saying that whatever the confidential arrangements are of future inspections going forward, that they will have necessarily more access than this?
MR KIRBY: That is between the IAEA and Iran to work out. What matters to us, we’re not going to micromanage the inspection activities of the IAEA. It’s an independent, international agency that can speak for itself about what it will or will not do. And as you know, many of those arrangements are confidential and they won’t speak to them. What matters to us, having been briefed on the protocols, is that we remain comfortable, should this – should Iran continue to meet its commitments in keeping with that arrangement, we believe they will get the access and will get the information they need.
But look, this is the first visit, so – at least to Parchin anyway. So we have a ways to go here. As I said, there’s a roadmap that has to be implemented, and we expect Iran to meet its commitments.QUESTION: Wait, are you saying that – are you saying this is the first visit? You’re expecting there will be more?
MR KIRBY: I don’t know. I’m saying it is a fact that it’s first visit. I’m not making prognostications about the future.
QUESTION: My last one and I’ll defer to anyone else that wants to ask. Are you – do you know if members of Congress in their confidential briefings with Administration officials, which would have included people from this building, including the Secretary, were told that IAEA inspectors would have direct access and be able to take their own samples at Parchin?
MR KIRBY: I do not know what specifics of the confidential arrangement were briefed to members of Congress.
QUESTION: Okay.
MR KIRBY: What we’ve said all along is that – and the director general himself had said – that reports that Iran would be self-inspecting were not accurate, and that he himself was comfortable in the protocols laid out in the arrangement.
QUESTION: That’s not my question. Were they --
MR KIRBY: Well, your question is do I know what Congress were briefed.
QUESTION: Do you know – several members of Congress came out and said that they had been told by the Administration that there would be inspections by IAEA personnel. Do you know if they were told that by the Administration or is that outside --
MR KIRBY: I’m not going to comment on specific communications about a confidential arrangement with members of Congress. What I will go back to say, though, is having been briefed on this arrangement, the Secretary remains comfortable that if Iran meets its side of it, that the IAEA will get the access and the information it needs to properly verify compliance.
QUESTION: Can I change subject?
MR KIRBY: Sure.

Worth recalling what comedian Jackie Mason said about this recently: that in New York City, the restaurants get more intensive inspections from health inspector than the US agreement with Iran calls for. Only the food officials get genuine anytime, anywhere access rights. Because, you know, a spoiled tuna sandwich can really ruin things. 

Incredible, in the literal sense of the word. 

And it's getting clearer that the ruling clique in Tehran do indeed pay attention to the American news media [see "24-Jul-15: If the Iranians read the Wall Street Journal, we're all in deep trouble"]

24-Jan-14: The funny side of the Iranian regime's nuclear threat

Rouhani and colleagues celebrate June 2013 election victory of
their "Voice of Moderation" [Image Source]

This is the second time today we're leaning on something written by Jonathan Tobin in Commentary Magazine. Bear with us - we think you will agree that what he says deserves exposure and analysis.

He asks a pretty timely question (the words are ours): Why are so many smart, educated people ready to buy into Iran’s current PR campaign?

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s speech [on Wednesday at the Davos Forum in Switzerland] sounded all the familiar Western-friendly themes that he has used throughout his charm offensive... Iran doesn’t want nuclear weapons and seeks only peaceful reconciliation with the West... Most of the foreign-policy wonks and government officials in attendance... were only too happy to buy into his talk of “prudent moderation” and “constructive engagement”... Israel was alone in pouring cold water on the festivities, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had the bad manners to note that Rouhani’s peaceful rhetoric was, in reality, belied by his country’s ongoing nuclear project, its ballistic missile program, its support for international terrorism, and its daily calls for Israel’s destruction. 

He points out that Americans seem to be falling for the "transparent deceptions" of the Iranian regime and wonders aloud how, given all we know about their sickening involvement in some truly appalling things, this can possibly be.

The answer doesn’t come from Davos but rather what preceded the international gathering last week in a segment on Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Stewart’s political comedy is a reliable barometer of what liberals are thinking... On Iran, Stewart has gone all out for the administration’s embrace of Rouhani. 

He illustrates his argument with a segment from a recent Stewart monologue entitled “Let’s Break a Deal”. All a person needs to know about why so many in the West refuse to give serious thought to the Iranian nuclear threat is there, says Tobin. Despite interweaving the analysis with some Justin Bieber references, he's pretty much right.

Click here to view the Jon Stewart "Let's Break a Deal" skit

In Tobin's words

Even if you strip away his vile slanders, the basic message of Stewart’s rant, like that of other defenders of the rush to rapprochement with Iran, is something much more basic: they genuinely don’t care about Iran’s lies or about the deadly nature of the Iranian nuclear threat. They just want the issue to go away and if that requires smearing the Israelis or fellow Americans who have given serious consideration to the terms of the deal, then that is exactly what they will do. Though Stewart pretended that it was the sanctions advocates who didn’t understand the situation, his unfunny tirade demonstrated his own ignorance and his lack of interest in the facts about what the Iranians have gained from the interim deal in terms of unraveling sanctions or how little they are giving up... People like Stewart and others who are buying Rouhani’s act aren’t doing so because they love Iran or even because they despise Israel and enjoy its discomfort at the prospect of a deadly enemy being embraced and empowered by the West, though some obviously do like that aspect. What they really like about Iran’s decision to create a new façade of cordiality to the West... is that it allows them to pretend that there is nothing to worry about. Rouhani allows them to live in denial as Ahmadinejad did not. As long as an open villain like Ahmadinejad was the front man for the regime, it was hard to ignore the truth about Iran’s bid for regional hegemony or its desire to annihilate Israel. But with Rouhani they can, like the Obama administration itself, treat the Middle East as a former problem from which they may now withdraw in comfort.

Iran's strategy was on display yesterday in Davos in all its glory. Here's how one of the news channels reported it:

Rouhani took the annual Davos forum by storm on Thursday, touting investment opportunities on the horizon as his country works to get sanctions lifted and hailing a new day in Tehran's relations with the West. He even deemed it "not impossible" that the U.S. Embassy could be reopened. It was Part II of the new president's global charm offensive that was launched at the U.N. General Assembly in September and produced the historic preliminary accord two months later curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions... Rouhani said he saw Iran's status in the future global economy as a country "pursuing policies of moderation, prudence and hope," and predicted that Iran could be among the world's top 10 economic powers in the next three decades. He expressed the hope of improving relations and cooperation with "all countries that Iran has recognized," a pointed exclusion of Israel. [LA Times, January 23, 2014]

Then there's the matter of the accelerating Iranian orgy of oppression-by-hanging [condemned in this UN report 6 days ago] from which, for some odd entertainment industry reason, The Daily Show's creators chose to avert their gaze.

Obviously, it's no laughing matter, but we think even comedy/satire shows - when they choose to editorialize to their audience, which they very clearly are doing in this - have an obligation to put their political agenda into a context that makes sense and respects the facts. To put it mildly, "Let's Break a Deal" is not Stewart and Co.'s wittiest or smartest hour.

24-Jan-14: Iranian regime reminds the rest of us how to talk to them and what not to expect

Working in the bowels of the Iranian nuclear effort [Image Source]

The so-called Joint Plan of Action was implemented, according to official reports, on January 20. In light of that, we offer a simple question: 

How confident should we be that the nuclear threat from the Iranian regime is being well managed?

CNN ran a startling article ["Hassan Rouhani: Sanctions against Iran are illegal"] yesterday which serves as a teaser for an interview they will run Sunday on the "Fareed Zakaria GPS" interview program. What caught our attention is the quoted comments of the smiling Iranian president. Hassan Rouhani clarifies when and how his government will agree to the destruction of its key nuclear-material fabrication capability. Answer: 

"Not under any circumstances... We have managed to secure very considerable prowess with regards to the fabrication of centrifuges... We are not afraid of threats... And the language of threats is ineffective when it comes to Iran. The language they need to choose should be a legal one, a respectful tone of voice when addressing the Iranian people. " [CNN]

Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, speaking separately, says in the same article that the Obama administration has "mischaracterized" Iran's concessions. 

"The White House version both underplays the concessions and overplays Iranian commitments..." Iran will not be dismantling its centrifuges. “We will not accept any limitations," Rouhani said Iran's need for medical isotopes necessitated a heavy water reactor.

(You can learn a surprising lot about people by the public events with which they choose to associate themselves. Zarif was in the news ten days ago paying homage at the grave of Imad Mughniyeh, a multi-murderer and master practitioner of the dark arts of terror and reputedly "the leader of Iran’s global terror network". This is not a man who is shy about declaring his positions.) 

Rouhani in Davos this week [Image Source]

Fareed Zakaria who hosts the interview program says - not so surprisingly - that Rouhani's statement is 

a diplomatic "train wreck... The Iranian conception of what the deal is going to look like and the American conception now look like they are miles apart. The Iranian conception seems to be they produce as much nuclear energy as they want, but it is a civilian program, and you can have as much monitoring as inspections as you want. The American position is that they have to very substantially scale back the enrichment of uranium and the production of centrifuges. Now, for the fist time you have the president of Iran unequivocally saying, there will be no destruction of centrifuges. He also make clear in the interview with me that the two heavy water reactors would continue in operation... I'm not even quite sure what they're going to talk about if these are the opening positions. And it's very hard to walk back from as absolute is a position as the president of Iran laid out." [CNN]

This Wall Street Journal article from earlier in the week does a good job of analyzing just how much "mischaracterization" about those Iranian concessions has been done by the US government.

It's always valuable to remind ourselves of the essential role the Iranian political leadership plays in the ongoing expansion of murderous terror around the world. A partial catalogue (via the Council on Foreign Relations) of what Iranian terrorism has wrought in the past is here. What it's going to do in the future is the deep concern of some of us. We have to hope the US leadership is among those who are worried.

18-Dec-13: Head of Iran's nuclear energy agency: "Iran's centrifuges are working at full capacity. You talk, we act."

Memories of a simpler, more optimistic epoch...
three weeks ago [Washington Post article]

An opinion piece entitled "Iran Nuke Deal Quietly Collapses" by Amir Taheri in the New York Post, December 16, 2013, presents a devastatingly different view of how the West's delicate dance with the ayatollahs is perceived over in Iran:

Less than a month after it was hailed as "a great diplomatic coup," the Geneva accord to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions seems to have come unstuck. The official narrative in Tehran is that Iran signed nothing. "There is no treaty and no pact," says Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham, "only a statement of intent." Originally, Iran's official media had presented the accord as a treaty (qarardad), but it now refers to a "letter of agreement" (tavafoq nameh). On Sunday, an editorial in the daily Kayhan, published by the office of Supreme Guide Ali Khameini, claimed that the six-month period of the accord was meaningless and that a final agreement might "even take 20 years to negotiate"... Translated into plain language, the new Iranian narrative is that talks about implementing an accord that is not legally binding have collapsed and that, in the words of the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency, Ali-Akbar Salehi, there is no change in the rhythm and tempo of Iran’s nuclear project. “Our centrifuges are working full capacity,” Salehi said last Thursday... If unable to impose its will on others, the Iranian regime will try to buy time through endless negotiations... Here is how Khamenei’s daily mouthpiece put it Sunday: “If our centrifuges do not continue to turn, no other wheel shall turn for our dignity, independence, power and security.” The message from Tehran to Washington is clear: You talk, we act.

What's worse? That the P5+1 leadership thought they had a deal?
Or that they knew they did not, but pretended
otherwise? [BBC page]

As ominous as this sounds (and it certainly should), there's an additional dimension that gets too little attention outside Iran:

The mullahs also use the prospect of normalization, especially with the United States, to divert attention from their increasingly repressive rule. While Iranians are bombarded with talk of President Hassan Rouhani’s “diplomatic miracle,” an average of 10 people are executed in Iran every day. [Taheri]

Translating that into body count terms, under "Smiling" Hassan Rouhani, its new, mild-and-moderate post-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad president, the number of state-instituted deaths by execution so far this year has soared to 529 as of the end of November [source], making it the world's new leader, on a per capita basis. 

Further proof that while the word talks, in Iran they act.

17-Jun-13: In Iran, who is moderate, why, and what does it mean?

Naharnet: Moderate not once, but twice. At least.

There are some mighty optimistic messages going out this weekend about political changes in Iran. See Reuters for instance: "Analysis: Iran moderate's poll triumph is mandate for change", and "Hasan Rowhani, moderate cleric, pulls off Iranian election win" from CBS News.

From a considerably more sober place, the Wall Street Journal carried an op ed yesterday called "Behind Iran's 'Moderate' New Leader | Hassan Rohani unleashed attacks on pro-democracy student protesters in 1999", written by Sohrab Ahmari, an Iranian-American who is the paper's assistant books editor. Key excerpt:

So this is what democracy looks like in a theocratic dictatorship. Iran's presidential campaign season kicked off last month when an unelected body of 12 Islamic jurists disqualified more than 600 candidates. Women were automatically out; so were Iranian Christians, Jews and even Sunni Muslims. The rest were purged for possessing insufficient revolutionary zeal. Regime loyalist Hassan Rowhani, 64, a former nuclear negotiator and security apparatchik, served for 16 years as secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. During his tenure, Rowhani led the crackdown on a 1999 student uprising and helped the regime evade Western scrutiny of its nuclear-weapons program. During the campaign, he boasted of how during his tenure as negotiator Iran didn't suspend enrichment - on the contrary, "we completed the program." 

Some moderate. Some reformer.

As to how much power we ought to credit to the new man, it's worth bearing in mind how the mainstream media worked hard these past few years telling us that the previous president (that would be Ahmadinejad) really had very little substantive power, and that control was actually with "supreme leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. See for instance "Ahmadinejad is noisy, but look behind him to find real power in Iran" from the NY Times in 2007. Note to editors: Khamenei continues to wield today no less power than he and his predecessors had then.

And here's a conundrum. A month ago, the only news outlet calling Rowhani moderate was Iran's own notorious state-controlled PressTV (here, for instance). What did they know that no one else does? And why is everyone now lined up behind their view? Stay tuned.