The scandalous conduct of the Obama administration regarding the nuclear deal, the failure of the world Intelligence Agencies and other consequences of Israel’s amazing Intelligence coup against Iran
As President Trump indicates that the US is leaning toward withdrawing from the nuclear deal, a series of international experts are astonished by the new revelations Israel exposed last night regarding the Iranian nuclear program. “The new information reveals that Iran lied when it declared that it had never attempted to develop nuclear capabilities for military purposes,” says Mark Dubowitz, one of leading analysts of Iran’s nuclear program.
Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, was considered the driving force behind the economic sanctions imposed on Iran during President Obama’s tenure. He has, until recently, supported the amendment of the agreement though not its total cancellation.
As a result of the information revealed by Israel, he is reconsidering his position. “The new discoveries make it very difficult to support just the amendment of the agreement,” he admits. “Bibi revealed that Iran took all the instructions for making a nuclear bomb and buried them deep away from the prying eyes of the IAEA and Western intelligence”
Dubowitz also clarified that the information exposed yesterday had the power to thwart the nuclear deal at the time:
“If we knew in 2015 what we know today, that [the] Iran regime had hidden a massive atomic archive with the details of how to rebuild its military-nuke program at a time of their choosing, there wouldn’t have been a nuke deal.”
According to Dubowitz, Israel’s revelations requires the international community to wake up: “If the Iranians are lying now, who will guarantee that they will not lie in the future and develop nuclear weapons by the middle of the next decade, when the agreement allows them to increase activation of the centrifuges?”
The new revelations exposed yesterday, along with a visit to the region by the new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, could mean that Trump is expected to announce the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement and the resumption of sanctions on Iran. Pompeo has issued a statement hinting that the United States will soon withdraw.
“”Why exactly was Iran hiding half a ton of nuclear weaponization files while implementing the Iran deal?”” He asked. “It is time to revisit the question of whether Iran can be trusted to enrich or control any nuclear material.”
The date for the decision is May 12th and it now seems that Trump has been given added incentive for a position that supports a significant change of the agreement or a complete withdrawal from it.
The president himself responded to the disclosure of the nuclear documents and hinted that it could indicate a direction of withdrawal from the agreement with Iran. “In seven years the agreement will expire and then Iran will be free to produce nuclear weapons. It is unthinkable. The documents prove that a withdrawal from the agreement could be the right thing to do,” Trump said at a White House press conference yesterday.
The European response to the announcement has so far been disconsorted, but even they understand that the findings presented by Israel can not be ignored.
EU High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini issued a statement saying: “What I have seen from the first reports is that Prime Minister Netanyahu has not put into question Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] commitments, meaning post-2015 nuclear commitments. (…) in any case, if any party and if any country has information of non-compliance, of any kind, it can and should address and channel this information to the proper, legitimate, recognized mechanisms, the IAEA and the Joint Commission [of the JCPOA] for the monitoring of the nuclear deal…”
The reactions of other European leaders in recent days indicate that despite American pressure, Europe is still interested in maintaining the framework of the agreement in parallel to certain changes.
Failure of American Intelligence
Journalist Eli Lake, a columnist for Bloomberg, stated in a column that the information Israel uncovered is a smoking gun. “Israel exposed Iran’s nuclear lies and the limits of U.S. Intelligence,” claims Lake.
Lake makes it clear that Israel has exposed much more accurate information than was previously available to Western Intelligence Agencies on the Iranian nuclear program. “Netanyahu on Monday showed slides of warhead designs, a map of potential test sites and other details that had previously been inferred, but not verified by Western intelligence. Some intelligence analysts had assessed that Iran had done warhead design work, but the Israelis now claim to have the proof.”
These indicate that the Iranians violated the nuclear agreement. Under the agreement, Iran promised never to “seek, develop, or acquire nuclear weapons.”
Now, in light of the new revelations, it turns out that Iran has acted to conceal its plans for acquiring and developing nuclear weapons from the world, in contravention of its obligations in the nuclear deal, as well as the principles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory.
In the article, David Albright, the president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and an expert on nuclear weapons, stresses that “the new intelligence, if verified, would fill many of the holes in the West’s knowledge of Iran’s weapons program.”
Albright added that during the nuclear talks in 2015, the Iranians had an opportunity to confess their attempts to obtain nuclear weapons – but they did not. “They could have destroyed these documents. But these were being carefully protected and hidden with the intention to reuse them when they launch their weapons program.”
Even before Netanyahu’s press conference, Israeli sources presented various findings on the Iranian issue to researchers at the International Institute for Science and Security, most of whom were not presented to the public. The institute stresses that the claims that Netanyahu has not disclosed any new information, but has only recycled materials that were in the possession of the IAEA, are an outright lie – and that Israel has information that was not previously known to any intelligence body.
We received a background briefing about the Israeli intelligence tranche (JCPOA advocates’ claim that this is all previously known is just false). 👇 https://t.co/gidI3qtJnd
— Inst for Science (@TheGoodISIS) May 1, 2018
Obama’s Cover-up
The information revealed yesterday sheds light as well on the scandalous conduct of the Obama administration and the other powers that signed the nuclear agreement with Iran.
In June 2015, when the nuclear talks entered the final stretch, US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that US intelligence agencies had “definite information” about Iran’s past attempts to acquire nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, in December 2015, the IAEA issued a report according to which Iran had lied and that there were indications that it had tried to develop nuclear weapons in the past, in contravention of explicit statements by the rulers in Tehran. Iran also refused to cooperate with IAEA officials in preparing the report.
The Obama administration and the superpowers found an original way to resolve the contradiction between Kerry’s statements and the IAEA report: covering up the report and determining that the evaluation of Iran’s past attempts to obtain nuclear weapons will not continue. The reason for the cover-up: Iran set an ultimatum that as long as the issue remains on the agenda, the talks will be frozen. Obama and the superpowers wanted to reach an agreement quickly and within a month, on January 16, 2016, the agreement went into effect.
“The superpowers just wanted to ignore and eliminate the issue,” says Dr. Emily Landau, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). According to Landau, when asked by the representatives of the superpowers why they are covering up the issue, they answered with the following amazing answer: “What, do you want to humiliate Iran?” Landau found it hard to hide her astonishment.
Tehran is already reporting that international companies are preparing for an era of renewed sanctions and cutting off their business ties with the Iranians. The regime’s pressure already evident, and according to various reports, Iran has blocked the use of the encrypted message system Telegram, which is used mainly by social activists, some of whom are opposed to the regime.
The #Iranian regime is blocking Telegram as we speak, cutting off communications for millions of Iranians, including thousands of activists & freedom fighters. @durov https://t.co/G5mmBTXQOz
— Alireza Nader (@AlirezaNader) April 30, 2018
Bloomberg supports Trump’s hard line: “… Iran has systematically lied to weapons inspectors for nearly 20 years. If Iran doesn’t pay a price for its deception” asks Eli Lake in his column,” then what is to stop future rogues from following the Iran model?
The International Institute for Science and Security added that if the agreement is preserved in its current form and that in 2030 Iran will be granted global legitimacy to develop nuclear weapons, it would be a move that has tremendous potential for mass killing of the neighbors of Iran and the entire world. “The world must insist that Iran destroy all its nuclear facilities. “
*(Translated from Mida.org.il Hebrew)
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Gilad Zwick is a correspondent with Mida Hebrew edition
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