Budapest: European leaders have hinted at financial incentives or compensation for Iran to persuade it to stay it in the nuclear deal that the US has rejected.
And they are likely to act to protect European companies trading with Iran despite the US re-imposing sanctions.
In a joint statement UK prime minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron greeted with “regret and concern” Donald Trump’s announcement that he would re-impose sanctions against Iran and withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
“Together, we emphasise our continuing commitment to the (agreement),” they said. “This agreement remains important for our shared security.”
They said Iran “continues to abide by the restrictions” in the deal preventing its development of nuclear weapons, and “the world is a safer place as a result”.
“Our governments remain committed to ensuring the agreement is upheld, and will work with all the remaining parties to the deal to ensure this remains the case including through ensuring the continuing economic benefits to the Iranian people that are linked to the agreement.”
They encouraged Iran to “show restraint in response to the decision by the US” and to continue to meet all its obligations including atomic agency inspections and monitoring.
“In turn, Iran should continue to receive the sanctions relief it is entitled to whilst it remains in compliance with the terms of the deal,” the leaders said.
The European Commission’s foreign affairs representative and vice president Federica Mogherini said the nuclear deal “is not a bilateral agreement and it is not in the hands of any single country to terminate it”.
“It is a key element of the global nuclear non-proliferation architecture,” Mogherini said, adding that it was “even more” relevant in the context of negotiations with North Korea.
“The nuclear deal with Iran is crucial for the security of the region, of Europe and of the entire world,” she said.
She said Europe “fully trusted” the work of the nuclear watchdog which had certified Iran had fully complied with it s commitments under the deal.
And she too suggested Europe would look to compensate Iran for the impact of renewed US sanctions.
“The EU has repeatedly stressed that the lifting of nuclear related sanctions has a positive impact on trade and economic relations with Iran, including crucial benefits for the Iranian people,” she said
“The EU is fully committed to ensuring that this continues to be delivered on. I am particularly worried by the announcement of new sanctions. I will consult with all our partners in the coming hours and days to assess their implications. The EU is determined to act in accordance with its security interests and to protect its economic investments.”
And she appealed to Iran to “stay true to your commitments, as we will stay true to ours. And together, with the rest of the international community, we will preserve the nuclear deal.”
May, Macron and Merkel said they wanted to build on the nuclear deal to address other issues including Iran’s ballistic missile programme and “its destabilising regional activities, especially in Syria, Iraq and Yemen”.
Macron Tweeted that the three countries would “work collectively on a broader framework” covering nuclear activity after the deal ends in 2025, ballistic activity and “stability in the Middle East”.
On Monday UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson travelled to the US to make a last-ditch appeal to save the deal, but didn’t get an audience with the president.
Instead he appeared on the cable news program Fox & Friends – which Trump regularly watches – and remarked that “Plan B does not seem, to me, to be particularly well developed at this stage”.
TOKYO — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wants to talk to President Trump about “phased and synchronous measures” to deal with the standoff over the North’s nuclear program, Chinese state media reported Tuesday after Kim made his second visit to China in as many months.
This wording, coupled with Kim’s desire to “eventually achieve denuclearization and lasting peace on the peninsula,” will ring alarm bells in Washington as it reinforces suspicions that the North Korean leader will ask Trump to take simultaneous steps to reduce tensions.
The U.S. president said Tuesday in Washington that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was en route to North Korea to finalize a date and location for a meeting between Trump and Kim. It would be the first such parley between a sitting American president and a North Korean leader.
“This wording about a ‘phased approach’ shows that this is going to be a process,” said Patrick McEachern, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center who previously worked on North Korea at the State Department.
“There are no home runs here. Success in diplomacy with North Korea is going to be a series of singles, with some strikeouts and errors along the way,” he said.
There is considerable skepticism among analysts that Kim, having tried so hard to get a credible nuclear weapons program, is about to give it all up — certainly not without extracting major concessions from the United States. That could include reducing the U.S. military footprint in South Korea.
Kim made the remarks during a two-day visit to the Chinese port city of Dalian, not far from the North Korean border, where he met with President Xi Jinping, Xinhua reported Tuesday night. His younger sister and close aide, Kim Yo Jong, also was seen at the meetings………
South Korea has repeatedly said that the North is willing to discuss its nuclear program in talks with the United States, although “denuclearization” has not been defined. The language in the April 27 agreement has many American analysts worried that Kim will insist on U.S. military drawdowns from South Korea as part of any deal.
Although there is considerable skepticism in the United States and Japan about whether North Korea is genuine in its detente efforts, analysts point out that Kim appears to want to move on from nuclear to economic development.
“I do think North Korea would have a very strong interest to pivot to economic development,” Zhao said. “In this regard, it would have a strong motivation to build much stronger economic ties with China, South Korea and Russia.”
The South Korean government is exploring ways to increase economic cooperation with North Korea without breaching international sanctions or earning the ire of Trump. Reports from the Chinese-North Korean border suggest that Chinese authorities have already lost much of their enthusiasm for enforcing existing sanctions.
But the announcement was short on specifics, including which sanctions – they cover industries ranging from petroleum to transportation to insurance – will be restored first. And it was not clear whether the decision will lead to a collapse of the agreement, which involves five other countries.
…….. the American withdrawal does not necessarily mean the Iran agreement collapses — at least not immediately. Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia are still parties to the agreement. If they all agree to maintain it, the effect of restored American sanctions on Iran may be softened.
And Mr. Trump held out the possibility of negotiating a new agreement with Iran, though its leaders have said that won’t happen.
All restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities under the agreement remain in place. Continue reading →
JORDAN’S FOREIGN MINISTER SEES ARMS RACE IF IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL ENDS
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi says an end of the Iran deal could have grave consequences across the Middle East, BY REUTERS JERUSALEM POST MAY 8, 2018 MURNAU– Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi on Tuesday warned of “dangerous repercussions” and a possible arms race in the Middle East unless a political solution was found to free the region of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
Al-Safadi spoke in Germany before an expected announcement by US President Donald Trump on whether he will pull out of the Iran nuclear deal or work with European allies who say it has successfully halted Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Al-Sadadi said he did not know what the US president would do, but urged continued conversation and dialog with Iran, despite what he called widespread concerns among Arab countries about Iran’s “interventionism” in the region.
“We all need to work together in making sure that we solve the conflicts of the region … and strive for a Middle East that is free of all weapons of mass destruction,” he told reporters after a meeting with leaders of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s right-left “grand coalition” government.
“If we do not look at the political picture and … find a way to ensure that the whole region is free of (these weapons), we’ll be looking at a lot of dangerous repercussions that will affect the region in terms of an arms race,” he said.
In March, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told CBS news that his kingdom would “without a doubt” develop nuclear weapons if Iran, Riyadh’s arch foe, did so.
BARACK Obama has warned of serious consequences over Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from a nuclear accord with Iran.Emma Reynolds and wires. news.com.au– 9 May 18
President Trump announces decision on Iran nuclear deal
BARACK Obama has slammed Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from a landmark nuclear accord with Iran.
In a statement, the former president said the announcement was “so misguided” and would see the US “turning our back on America’s closest allies, and an agreement that our country’s leading diplomats, scientists and intelligence professionals negotiated”.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, was negotiated and implemented during Mr Obama’s presidency.
“I believe that the decision to put the JCPOA at risk without any Iranian violation of the deal is a serious mistake,” warned Mr Obama. “Without the JCPOA, the United States could eventually be left with a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East.
“We all know the dangers of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. It could embolden an already dangerous regime; threaten our friends with destruction; pose unacceptable dangers to America’s own security; and trigger an arms race in the world’s most dangerous region.”
Mr Trump will withdraw the US from a landmark nuclear accord with Iran, in a move that is already triggering global panic.
The President warned that “at the heart of the Iran deal is a giant fiction” — that the regime wanted peace.
He said the nation had continued to develop nuclear capabilities, and if he allowed the “defective” accord to remain in place, it would lead to an arms race in the Middle East.
Mr Trump vowed he would reimpose the highest level of economic sanctions, which were lifted under the 2015 deal, warning that any nation helping Iran “in its quest for nuclear weapons” could also be strongly penalised by the US.
“We will not allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America’ to gain access to the most deadly weapons on Earth,” he said.
His decision raised fears Iran could mount an attack on Israel, which pushed for an end to the deal. The announcement also saw oil prices plummet by 1.2 per cent.
Mr Obama, who brokered the deal, said the decision weakened America’s ability to confront Iran’s “destabilising” behaviour.
In a rare public criticism of Mr Trump, the former president said the deal had accomplished the very outcome that is being pursued with North Korea.
“The consistent flouting of agreements that our country is a party to risks eroding America’s credibility, and puts us at odds with the world’s major powers,” he said.
“Every aspect of Iranian behaviour that is troubling is far more dangerous if their nuclear program is unconstrained.”
Mr Trump’s choice had become known as the “nuclear option”, because it is almost certain to signal an end to the multination agreement. Iran will now have to decide whether to follow the US and exit the deal, or try to retain the agreement with other countries.
Mr Trump insisted the US “no longer makes empty threats”, in a televised address from the White House. He also noted that secretary of state Mike Pompeo was on his way to North Korea to discuss the upcoming summit between the US President and Kim Jong-un.
The 2015 deal between multiple world powers lifted most sanctions against the Iran, provided it agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program that would prevent it producing a bomb, and regular inspections.
Now, sanctions on Iran’s central bank — intended to target oil exports — will kick back in on Saturday, the next deadline for renewal, rather than being waived again.
The administration will give those who are doing business with Iran between three and six months to wind down business and avoid breaching those sanctions.
But it is still possible that a new agreement could be reached. Administration officials briefing congressional leaders about Mr Trump’s plans reportedly emphasised that just as with the ditched Trans-Pacific Partnership and Paris climate agreement, he remains open to renegotiating a better deal.
European nations have in recent days given in to many of Mr Trump’s demands in the hope he would choose a more gradual approach, which might have allowed the deal to survive.
But they failed to prevent his decision to reimpose sanctions and walk away from the signature Obama agreement, which Mr Trump has attacked since the election campaign.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Mr Trump’s “historic move”, while while the military said forces were on high alert near its border with Syria after spotting Iranian activity.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who strongly supports the deal and tried to persuade Mr Trump to stay in it during a visit to Washington last month, said he was “disappointed” by the announcement.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said: “Together with the rest of the international community, we will preserve this nuclear deal.”
France, the UK and Germany have previously vowed to maintain the deal without the US, but that could potentially put them at risk of sanction.
Hours before the announcement, European members of the agreement met to underline their support for it. Officials from Britain, France and Germany met in Brussels with Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, Abbas Araghchi.
If the deal collapses, Iran will be free to resume prohibited enrichment activities, while businesses and banks doing business with Iran will have to rush to extricate themselves or run afoul of the US.
American officials have been making plans to sell the pullout to the public and explain its complex financial ramifications, said US officials and others, who weren’t authorised to speak and requested anonymity.
Mr Trump built up anticipation for his announcement by tweeting that he would reveal his decision at 2pm at the White House.
In Iran, many are deeply concerned about how his decision could affect the already struggling economy.
President Hassan Rouhani sought to calm nerves during a speech on Tehran, smiling as he appeared at a petroleum expo in the capital. He didn’t name Mr Trump, but emphasised that Iran continued to seek “engagement with the world.”
“It is possible that we will face some problems for two or three months, but we will pass through this,” Mr Rouhani said.
The first 15 months of the Trump presidency have been filled with many “last chances” for the Iran deal in which he’s repeatedly postponed the decision.
An immense web of sanctions, written agreements and staggered deadlines make up the accord. Sanctions on specific Iranian businesses, sectors and individuals will snap back into place in July unless Mr Trump signs another waiver.
Even the secretary of state and the UN agency that monitors nuclear compliance agree that Iran, so far, has lived up to its side of the deal. But the deal’s critics, such as Israel, the Gulf Arab states and many Republicans, say it’s a giveaway to Tehran that ultimately paves the path to a nuclear-armed Iran several years in the future.
ran has been coy in predicting its response to a US withdrawal. For weeks, Iran’s foreign minister had been saying that a reimposition of US sanctions would render the deal null and void, leaving Tehran little choice but to abandon it as well.
But on Monday, Mr Rouhani said Iran could stick with it if the European Union, whose economies do far more business with Iran than the US, offers guarantees Iran would keep benefiting. For the Europeans, a Trump withdrawal would also constitute dispiriting proof that trying to appease him is futile.
The three EU members of the deal — Britain, France and Germany — were insistent from the start that it could not be reopened. But they agreed to discuss an “add-on” agreement that would not change the underlying nuclear deal, but would add new restrictions on Iran to address what Mr Trump had identified as its shortcomings.
The President wanted to deter Iran’s ballistic missile program and other destabilising actions in the region. He also wanted more rigorous nuclear inspections and an extension of restrictions on Iranian enrichment and reprocessing rather than letting them phase out after about a decade.
Negotiating an add-on agreement, rather than revising the existing deal, had the added benefit of not requiring the formal consent of Iran or the other remaining members: Russia and China. The idea was that even if they baulked at the West’s impositions, Iran would be likely to comply anyway so as to keep enjoying lucrative sanctions relief.
Although the US and Europeans made progress on ballistic missiles and inspections, there were disagreements over extending the life of the deal and how to trigger additional penalties if Iran were found violating the new restrictions, officials revealed.
Le Monde 5th May 2018 , Nuclear: EDF launches negotiations for two new EPRs in the United Kingdom.
According to our information, the French group is discussing with the British government to find a new way of financing to build reactors in Sizewell.
The possibility of sharing the cost of construction with British consumers on their electricity bills is thus under consideration. It would not necessarily be a direct payment, but rather a kind of bond that remains to be defined. For the time being, the British Ministry of Industry is simply saying that “new nuclear power plants have an important role to play
in the future of our low-carbon electricity production”.
To understand the current discussions, we have to go back to Hinkley Point. The two EPRs, whose construction in the West of England began at the end of 2016, must cost 19.6 billion pounds (22.2 billion euros), and that of the first must
start in 2025.
Trump warns that ‘weakness gets you nuclear war’ ahead of Kim Jong Un summit
The president earlier announced the U.S. and North Korea had settled on a time and place for the historic meeting. Politico, By QUINT FORGEY, 05/04/2018
Yes, Iran Lied About Its Nuclear Capabilities. But So Did Israel
Netanyahu’s arrogant theatricals exposed Israel’s lack of current incriminating evidence on Iran – and Israel’s hypocrisy about its own nuclear capabilities, Haaretz, Avner Cohen and Ben McIntosh
If anything, the fact that Iran preserved, archived and sealed away its early work on nuclear weapons development is compelling evidence that Iran is following both the spirit and the letter of the agreement. Indeed, the International Atomic Energy Agency has consistently certified Iran’s full compliance with its provisions. Under the deal, Iran treats its past weapons work as something to be preserved in a historical repository.
On the other hand, one should realize that Iran did not, and will not, “forget” its existing nuclear knowledge. If the deal is to be abandoned, Iran almost certainly will try to resume that work.
The plain truth is that while the nuclear deal, like any deal, is admittedly imperfect in some areas, it is far better than the situation we were in when it was signed, arguably six months from a first Iranian nuclear weapon.
Furthermore, none of Netanyahu’s specific “archival” items are dated. He presented no single item dated later than 2003. He presented no “proof” of any current Iranian incriminating nuclear activities; all the archival evidence is rooted in pre-2003 weaponization activities.
As far back as 2007, the United States issued a National Intelligence Estimate that drew a similar conclusion: Iran had run a dedicated nuclear weapons program, but that program was dismantled or halted in 2003 and Iran was no longer in pursuit of those weaponization activities in a centralized and methodic fashion…..
…. Netanyahu repeatedly told his audience that Iran lied about its past activities and therefore the Iran deal must be abandoned.
Yes, Iranian leaders did lie. Yes, Iranian officials did not provide the IAEA with true and complete information on past “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program. This is well-known.
The world’s nuclear energy watchdogs: 4 questions answered, The Conversation, Scott L. Montgomery Lecturer, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, May 4, 2018
North Korea has promised to get rid of its nuclear weapons, but how will the world know if it actually follows through?
There is only one international agency in the world that could verify their compliance, the International Atomic Energy Agency. However, North Korea canceled its membership to the organization in 1994. When the IAEA demanded to inspect certain facilities in North Korea, they backed out and eventually expelled all nuclear inspectors in 2009.
Since then, North Korea has remained outside the IAEA’s jurisdiction. While it isn’t clear whether the agency will be called upon if a deal on denuclearization is reached, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano has said the agency is prepared to send a team of inspectors should a diplomatic agreement be reached.
So, with that possibility in mind, let’s look at how the agency operates and all the other nuclear energy challenges it faces beyond North Korea.
1. What is the International Atomic Energy Agency?
The IAEA was founded in 1957, inspired by U.S. President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech promoting the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. From the beginning, its task has been to spread and monitor the application of nuclear technology for non-military uses and make sure that such technology is not diverted to build weapons.
…..Headquartered in Vienna, Austria, the agency is a membership organization that reports annually to the United Nations, but is independent of it. Member nations must obey its rules and requirements in order to receive the knowledge and technology it provides.
The agency is best known for its work in two areas. The first is nuclear safety: protecting people and the environment from harmful radiation. The second is nuclear security, which focuses on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, including threats of nuclear terrorism.
This watchdog role requires determining whether any member country might be developing nuclear weapons – specifically nations that have signed international treaties. For example, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is the world’s most important legally binding agreement for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. At present, a total of 191 states have joined the treaty. Three nuclear weapons states – Israel, India and Pakistan – have not signed and North Korea withdrew from it in 2003.
The IAEA evaluates compliance with other treaties including those governing nuclear free zones and important safeguard agreements with as many as 181 nations……..
3. How does the agency verify how nuclear material is being used?
Among the more than 2,500 people who staff the IAEA, only about 385 are inspectors. They come from 80 nations and mainly hold backgrounds in physics, chemistry and engineering.
Routine inspections involve verifying whether a member’s report about its nuclear facilities and material is accurate. Depending on the size of the facility, this might take a few hours for one or two people or two weeks for 10 inspectors. They do this in a number of ways, including the collecting of samples of nuclear material, measuring levels of radioactivity, checking plans and blueprints against actual construction, and interviewing officials, engineers and others involved in nuclear work.
Over time, the agency has had to make changes in its inspection processes. For example, before 1997, inspectors were limited to examining only facilities that member states had declared. After discovering that Iraq had lied about the true extent of its nuclear program, the IAEA board of governors approved a protocol to allow inspectors to access undeclared sites that might be involved in nuclear work.
Inspectors have also found themselves in the line of political fire. For example, between 2002 and 2003, the Bush administration wanted evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program. U.S. attempts to pressure the agency did not alter IAEA findings that such evidence could not be found.
Similarly, the agency has stood its ground in favor of the Iran nuclear deal and Iran’s compliance in the face of President Trump’s continued criticism of the agreement.
4. What are the main challenges facing the agency?
There are myriad challenges facing the IAEA.
Expanding demands on the agency have come from developing nations with growing economies such as Thailand and Chile that want to use nuclear science in medicine, agriculture and industry. Growth of nuclear power into new areas of the world is bringing concern about the development of weapons and terrorist groups acquiring nuclear material.
North Korea, whose weapons program may or may not be halted by talks with the U.S., has plutonium and uranium that could be sold without international approval or safeguards.
Then there is the Trump administration’s threat to abandon the Iran nuclear deal, a move that would dismiss years of effort by the IAEA to head off an arms race in the region. At the same time, any future need to verify that Iran is not building a weapon would almost certainly rely on IAEA inspectors. Similarly, it seems likely that a deal between the U.S. and North Korea would require the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to rejoin the agency and have any denuclearization efforts confirmed by it as well.
Iran will not ‘renegotiate or add onto’ nuclear deal – Daily Mail
Iran says will not renegotiate nuclear deal, warns against changesANKARA (Reuters) 3 May 18– Iran’s foreign minister said on Thursday U.S. demands to change its 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers were unacceptable as a deadline set by President Donald Trump for Europeans to “fix” the deal loomed.
Trump has warned that unless European allies rectify the “terrible flaws” in the international accord by May 12, he will refuse to extend U.S. sanctions relief for the oil-producing Islamic Republic.
“Iran will not renegotiate what was agreed years ago and has been implemented,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a video message posted on YouTube.
Britain, France and Germany remain committed to the accord as is, but now, in efforts to keep Washington in it, want to open talks on Iran’s ballistic missile program, its nuclear activities beyond 2025 – when key provisions of the deal expire – and its role in Middle East crises such as Syria and Yemen.
A senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also warned Europeans on Thursday over “revising” the nuclear deal, under which Iran strictly limited its enrichment of uranium to help allay fears this could be put to producing atomic bomb material, and won major sanctions relief in return.
“Even if U.S. allies, especially the Europeans, try to revise the deal…, one of our options will be withdrawing from it,” state television quoted Ali Akbar Velayati as saying.
The European signatories to the deal have been trying to persuade Trump to save the pact, reached under his predecessor Barack Obama. They argue it is crucial to forestalling a destabilizing Middle East arms race and that Iran has been abiding by its terms, a position also taken by U.S. intelligence assessments and the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
Zarif said: “Let me make it absolutely clear and once and for all: we will neither outsource our security nor will we renegotiate or add onto a deal we have already implemented in good faith.”
Encouraged by Netanyahu, the US could soon withdraw from the agreement – which would spell the end of hopes for reform
Benjamin Netanyahu’s amateurish PowerPoint presentation in Tel Aviv this week – “Iran lied” flashed up behind him in huge letters – was in fairness a great improvement on the cartoonish diagram of an atomic bomb the Israeli prime minister held up at the UN general assembly in September 2012. But it served much the same purpose: to show that Iran can’t be trusted, and is poised to unleash nuclear havoc across the region. The “half-ton cache” of documents he presented as evidence that Iran hid a weapons programme predates the 2015 nuclear deal. John Kerry, one of its architects, tweeted that it represented “every reason the world came together to apply years of sanctions and negotiate the Iran nuclear agreement – because the threat was real and had to be stopped. It’s working!”
This is why, together with Kerry, European powers led by France, Germany and Britain made substantial efforts to push back against Netanyahu’s performance. In contrast, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, lauded it. In the words of Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard, “the Bush administration was better at inventing a phoney case for war with Iraq than the Trump team is at conjuring up a phoney case for war with Iran. But doesn’t mean they won’t eventually succeed.”
Others find it hard to take Netanyahu seriously: he has been warning that Iran is close to acquiring nuclear weapons for more than 20 years. In 1992, he said the country would have a nuclear bomb in three to five years. In 1993, he predicted it would happen by 1999. He made similar remarks in 1996, 2002, and many times since, as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has pointed out. Not only are his warnings repetitive, they are hypocritical. Ordinary people I talk to are shocked when they realise Iran does not have a single bomb and has been a party to the treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons since 1970. Israel, in contrast, has never signed it (meaning that the International Atomic Energy Agency has no inspection authority there) and is estimated to have more than 200 nuclear warheads. Let’s be clear: Netanyahu’s files did not show that Iran has violated the agreement. The IAEA has verified 10 times, most recently in February, that Tehran has fully complied with its terms.
Arguably, if anyone has the right to complain, it is Iran. It has unplugged two-thirds of its centrifuges and shipped out 98% of its enriched uranium, but has not seen the economic benefits it was promised. Nearly three years on, not a single tier-one European bank is prepared to do business with Iran. The country’s currency crisis last month showed the extent of its economic vulnerability. Trump’s controversial Muslim travel ban has targeted Iranians and hampered the growth of tourism.
Perhaps more importantly, the collapse of the deal would be seen by the Iranian people as a huge betrayal. In 2013, Iranians brought the era of Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (despised at home after a fraudulent re-election in 2009), to a close. They put their trust in the reform-minded Hassan Rouhani, who subsequently fulfilled his promise to them of resolving the nuclear dispute with the west. Iran’s tech-savvy young people are by and large more progressive than previous generations. Last year, 24 million Iranians re-elected Rouhani by a landslide in an endorsement of his work on the deal. Yet just as the agreement is beginning to deliver, and with Iran fully complying, a new US administration seems set on scuppering it.
Of course, the fact that Iran is fulfilling its nuclear obligations does not mean it has been a good actor elsewhere. But the agreement was not supposed to address Iran’s regional behaviour or its missile programme, and should not be junked on this basis. In Syria, Iran is arguably making its biggest foreign policy mistake since the revolution. It has long defined its foreign policy as defending the oppressed, but for the first time it is clearly supporting the oppressor.
Even with Syria, however, the situation isn’t entirely straighforward. Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC, argued in an essay in the latest issue of the Foreign Affairs that Tehran’s role in Syria could be understood as a form of “forward defence”, a way to survive the collapse of the old order in the Arab world following the US invasion of Iraq and widespread civil unrest. Washington’s efforts to roll back Iranian influence, he says, have failed to restore that order and may inadvertently have made Iran – worried that it has been outgunned by its traditional rivals – bolder: “The more menacing the Arab world looks, the more determined Iran is to stay involved there.”
The chances of a military conflict with Iran are not high for the moment, so long as Tehran has Russia’s backing. But the collapse of the deal would, even so, have terrible consequences. It would destroy the moderates and reformists in Iran for the foreseeable future. This is particularly important since the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 78, and there has been speculation over his health. The time may soon come when a successor takes his place – the biggest political change in decades. Rouhani has already been under intense pressure from his opponents. The failure of the deal will only embolden hardliners, who are resposible for outrageous human rights abuses, such as the ongoing detention of dual nationals like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
While the reformist president Mohammad Khatami was in office, George W Bush undermined him and shattered Iranians’ hopes of rapprochement by labelling the country part of the “axis of evil”. Trump could be about to make exactly the same mistake with Rouhani.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi backs plans announced by Kim Jong-un as China expresses wish for cooperation, despite its support of UN sanctions Laura Zhouhttps://twitter.com/laurachouSCMP, 03 May, 2018 Beijing will support North Korea’s efforts to rebuild its economy, China’s foreign minister has said as the North pledged to suspend nuclear testing and prioritise economic growth.
Wang Yi said in his meeting with North Korean counterpart Ri Yong-ho that the two allies would strengthen strategic communications and China would “continue to play a due and positive role in the political process for political settlement of the peninsula issues”, a statement by the Chinese foreign ministry said.
On the first day of his two-day visit to Pyongyang on Wednesday, Wang reaffirmed the pledge to deepen traditional relations between the neighbours, made by President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during Kim’s visit to Beijing in March.
“Traditional friendship between China and North Korea is the mutual good fortune of the two sides, and it is a strategic choice to inherit and develop the traditional friendly relations,” Wang was quoted as saying.
“China would work together with North Korea … to enhance communications and coordination between the political and diplomatic departments of the two sides, and push forward practical cooperation on economy and trade.”
Ri told Wang that Kim values the traditional friendship with China, and that North Korea would like to keep close communication with China on denuclearisation and the peace process on the peninsula, according to the statement by the Chinese foreign ministry.
The visit by Wang has come at a time when Beijing and Pyongyang have been working to repair the relations that were strained by Kim’s repeated nuclear tests and Beijing’s support for a series of stringent UN sanctions.
…….
Lu Chao, a Korean affairs expert at Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, said that China’s support of economic development in North Korea was in response to Kim’s pledge to give up nuclear weapons and shift to economic development.
“This is not contradicting the UN sanctions, because the support, as well as the recent improvement in the bilateral relations between China and North Korea, only came on condition that North Korea agrees to give up its nuclear weapon programme and move to develop its economy,” Lu said.
some skeptics think the whole energy argument coming out of Riyadh is merely a cover for its military ambitions.
Trump might be distracted by the prize of winning multibillion-dollar contracts for US nuclear construction companies in desperate need of business. The temptation to settle for a deal that gives the Saudis a path to the bomb might just be too great to overcome.
Saudi Arabia is an outstanding candidate for using solar energy to power much of the country. Its vast and extremely sunny deserts are naturally suited to providing electricity to the country during the day.
Given that Saudi Arabia can build solar power facilities and produce solar energy at incredibly low costs, Romm says, it “doesn’t make a lot of sense from an energy point of view” that Saudi is leaning so much toward the nuclear option, which is notoriously expensive.
The power play shows that the world’s most iconic oil giant is serious about reducing its near-total reliance on oil — and it’s also raising questions about whether the country intends to seek out nuclear weapons in the future.
Saudi Arabia says it’s looking to expand its energy portfolio. If it uses nuclear reactors to generate electricity, that will allow the Gulf country to export more of its oil rather than consume it at home. More exports mean more money for the country’s government.
Energy experts say that Saudi Arabia is trying to make money from its oil reservesas quickly as possible because global demand is expected to decline in the future, with breakthroughs in renewable energy technology and the eventual ubiquity of electric cars. In the long run, it’s aiming to diversify its economy away from oil to generate revenue from sectors like tech and entertainment services.
Currently, Riyadh is in talks with firms from more than 10 countries about buying nuclear technology to build its first two reactors — and American firms are top candidates. But before any US sale, the Trump administration needs to strike a nuclear cooperation pact, known as a “123 agreement,” with Saudi Arabia. In those agreements, countries make promises about how they will and won’t use the powerful nuclear equipment they could buy from the US in the future.
Talks between the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia about such a deal are already underway — US Energy Secretary Rick Perry met with Saudi officials in London earlier this month to discuss the matter, and President Trump almost certainly discussed it during his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week.
But nuclear proliferation experts and US lawmakers from both parties are deeply worried about the deal. They’re concerned that Riyadh could try to use the technology to start a nuclear weapons program and make one of most volatile regions in the world even more unstable. In fact, some skeptics think the whole energy argument coming out of Riyadh is merely a cover for its military ambitions.
It’s more than just a hunch. In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes on March 18, the Saudi crown prince, widely known as MBS, openly admitted it was a possibility: “Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”
The Trump administration can try to ensure that never happens. In the 123 agreement, it can get the Saudis to make a legally binding pledge that they won’t pursue uranium enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing down the road — the activities that would allow it to build nuclear weapons.
But the Trump administration is reportedly considering allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium in current negotiations. Experts say there are two main reasons the president may do this.
Second, Trump might be distracted by the prize of winning multibillion-dollar contracts for US nuclear construction companies in desperate need of business. The temptation to settle for a deal that gives the Saudis a path to the bomb might just be too great to overcome.
Saudi says it wants nuclear power for energy purposes. That may not be the whole story.
Saudi Arabia has generally described its ambitions for a civil nuclear energy program as a way to increase energy production and said it doesn’t want to use the program to build weapons.
“Not only are we not interested in any way to diverting nuclear technology to military use, we are very active in non-proliferation by others,” Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said at a joint press conference with Secretary Perry in December.
Energy experts say that it certainly makes sense for Saudi Arabia to look into new ways to generate energy so that it can export more of its oil before the value of oil plunges in the future. But they also say that it’s strange that the country is focusing so much on nuclear, rather than renewable, energy.
Joe Romm, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Energy during the Clinton years, told me that Saudi Arabia is an outstanding candidate for using solar energy to power much of the country. Its vast and extremely sunny deserts are naturally suited to providing electricity to the country during the day.
Given that Saudi Arabia can build solar power facilities and produce solar energy at incredibly low costs, Romm says, it “doesn’t make a lot of sense from an energy point of view” that Saudi is leaning so much toward the nuclear option, which is notoriously expensive.
Comparing Saudi Arabia’s plans to invest in renewable energy versus its planned investments in nuclear energy, Romm estimated that Riyadh would be trying to generate at least three times more electricity from nuclear reactors than from renewable energy.
And American foreign policy and nuclear nonproliferation experts generally think that the motive behind emphasizing one program over the other is obvious: building weapons.
“I think a main driver, if not the main driver [of Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program], is its security competition with Iran,” Kingston Reif, a nonproliferation expert at the Arms Control Association, told me.
Iran is Saudi Arabia’s archrival in the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia is worried that Iran could use its civil nuclear program to make weapons in the future, and tip the balance of power in the region in its favor. The nuclear deal that Iran signed on to in 2015 heavily restricts Iran’s ability to make the materials required for a nuclear bomb, but crucial restrictions in the agreement begin to expire around 2030.
Since MBS has openly admitted that Saudi Arabia would feel compelled to chase after a bomb if Iran did, it’s clear that it must see a civil nuclear program as a potential military asset.
Can Trump actually make a strong deal with the Saudis?
The Trump administration is currently in ongoing talks with the Saudis about a nuclear cooperation agreement, and it probably came up when the crown prince met with Trump at the White House on March 20. (Neither Saudi Arabia nor the US’s official readouts of the meeting explicitly mention the nuclear cooperation agreement, but both allude to “new commercial deals.”)
Recent reports suggest that the White House may allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium as part of the arrangement. A country can enrich uranium to produce fuel for its nuclear reactors, but that same process can also be used to make an atomic bomb — and that has US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle very concerned.
“The Crown Prince’s interview just last week is reason enough to have the administration pump the breaks on the negotiations and insist that there will be no 123 agreement that includes enriching and reprocessing,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, from the little we do know from the administration, it is looking at this deal in terms of economics and commerce, and national security implications only register as a minor issue, if at all,” she said.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has told the administration that there’s bipartisan opposition in Congress to a 123 agreement that allows for enrichment.
The White House has to submit the agreement to Congress for review, and lawmakers have the option to pass a joint resolution of disapproval to block it.
But if that were to happen, it could ultimately backfire: The Saudis might turn to Russian or Chinese bidders for nuclear tech if they’re rebuffed by the US. And analysts say the Russians and Chinese are less likely to be stringent about restricting Saudi Arabia’s enrichment or reprocessing ambitions. For that reason, some analysts argue that Washington might have to consider a compromise with Riyadh.
“I would prefer to have America’s nuclear industry in Saudi Arabia than to have Russian or China’s, so I think it’s useful that we’re reengaging with the Saudis. We should try to get the best restraints on enrichment and reprocessing, including a ban for some significant length of time, say 20 or 25 years,” Robert Einhorn, a former State Department adviser for nonproliferation and arms control, told the Washington Post. “We should show some flexibility.”
Saudi Arabia considers the ability to enrich uranium its “sovereign” right, and it wasn’t able to settle on a 123 agreement with the Obama administration precisely because President Obama refused to grant them that capacity.
Alexandra Bell, an Obama-era State Department arms control expert, told me that the Saudis won’t budge “without high-level pressure from the White House.” That means sustained pressure from people like the president himself or top officials like Energy Secretary Perry are key to extracting any kind of concession on enrichment from Saudi Arabia.
But Trump might not be all that interested in staying focused on that goal. He looks at the issue through a different lens than his predecessor — the prospect of boosting American business could eclipse security concerns for him. Last year, when Trump struck his enormous $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis, he was eager to sell it to the public as a way to create “jobs, jobs, jobs” for the US.
In this case, a deal to build nuclear tech with the Saudiswould provide a boost to struggling US nuclear construction companies. Westinghouse, the most prominent US bidder,is currently going through bankruptcy proceedings and has shed thousands of US jobsbecause of it.
When the Saudis negotiate with the Trump administration in the coming weeks, they’ll probably consider Trump’s eagerness to claim another job-creating deal to be a source of leverage.
Israeli claims on Iran divide US, allies WP, By Associated PressMay 1 JERUSALEM— The Latest on the Israel’s allegations that Iran concealed a nuclear weapons program before signing a deal with world powers in 2015 (all times local):
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest accusations about Iran’s past nuclear activities have received a warm welcome in Washington but a far cooler reception in Europe.
The claims appear to have deepened divisions among Western allies ahead of President Donald Trump’s decision on whether to withdraw from the international nuclear deal later this month.
6:45 p.m.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas says the International Atomic Energy Agency should quickly follow up on allegations by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who claims that Iranian leaders covered up a nuclear weapons program before signing a deal with world powers in 2015.
Maas told the Bild daily on Tuesday that “the IAEA must as quickly as possible get access to Israeli information and clarify if there are indeed indications of a violation of the deal.”
…….. Netanyahu provided no direct evidence that Iran has violated the 2015 deal, which it signed with the U.S., Germany, Britain, France, China and Russia.3:55 p.m.
Britain’s foreign minister says the alleged new evidence presented by Israel about Iranian nuclear intentions shows why the international nuclear deal with Iran must remain in place.
…… British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, however, said the presentation “underlines the importance” of keeping the deal’s constraints on Iran in place. He says the deal is not based on trust about Iran’s intentions, but instead is based on verification and inspections.3:30 p.m.
The U.N. nuclear agency says it believes that Iran had a “coordinated” nuclear weapons program in place before 2003, but found “no credible indications” of such work after 2009.
The agency issued its assessment on Tuesday, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released what he said was a “half ton” of seized documents proving that Iran has lied about its nuclear intentions.
The documents focused on Iranian activities before 2003 and did not provide any explicit evidence that Iran has violated its 2015 nuclear deal with the international community.
Tuesday’s IAEA assessment, which repeated an earlier 2015 report, did not directly mention Netanyahu’s claims.
But it noted that in its 2015 report, its board of governors “declared that its consideration of this issue was closed.”
Trump should strengthen the Iran nuclear deal, not blow it up https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/05/01/trump-should-strengthen-the-iran-nuclear-deal-not-blow-it-up/?utm_term=.cbcfee8d797eBy Max BootMay 1 Credit Israeli intelligence for another coup: Its agents smuggled 100,000 pages of documents out of Iran about that country’s nuclear program. The mullahs will now have to patch a major security leak. But the revelations contained in those papers are not quite as newsworthy as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in a made-for-American-TV presentation on Monday. “I’m here to tell you one thing: Iran lied. Big time,” Netanyahu said. So what did Iranian leaders lie about? That they had a secret nuclear-development program called Project Amad … that was shelved in 2003.
No kidding. Iran’s nuclear-weapons development program was widely known — and it was, in fact, the justification for the United States, Russia, China, the European Union, Germany, Britain and France to conclude the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in 2015, imposing strict limitations on Iran’s ability to enrich and reprocess fissile material.
Netanyahu claims that Iran has violated the JCPOA, a.k.a. the “Iran nuclear deal.” But on that score his evidence is thin. “In 2017,” he said, “Iran moved its nuclear weapons files to a highly secret location in Tehran.” It’s possible that Iran did not come clean about its past nuclear activities, as it was supposed to do under the deal, but no one ever expected that the agreement would eradicate Iran’s nuclear know-how. It was only supposed to stop the actual development of nuclear weapons. Netanyahu is clearly eager to torpedo the nuclear deal, and if he had compelling evidence of Iranian violations he would have presented it — but he doesn’t and didn’t.
There is nothing in Israel’s revelations that contradicts that assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that Iran is complying with the terms of the nuclear deal. In February, Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, stated that “the JCPOA has extended the amount of time Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon from a few months to about one year” and that it “has also enhanced the transparency of Iran’s nuclear activities.” Just last week, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress that, after reading the entire text of the nuclear agreement three times, he was impressed that “the verification, what is in there, is actually pretty robust.”
These sober assessments hardly justify President Trump’s hyperbolic claims that the Iran nuclear agreement is the “worst deal ever.” It is, in fact, a successful deal that appears to be constricting Iran’s nuclear development — just as intended.
There were, of course, real limitations on the scope of the nuclear deal, which is why I and other critics argued that President Barack Obama should have held out for tougher terms. It doesn’t allow unfettered inspection of all Iranian military bases. It doesn’t ban Iranian nuclear development in perpetuity; the caps on centrifuges will begin expiring in 2026. It doesn’t ban ballistic missile testing. And it doesn’t prevent Iran from destabilizing its neighbors.
But that’s not an argument for blowing up the JCPOA, as Trump seems intent on doing as early as May 12 (the next deadline for reimposing sanctions lifted under the deal). That’s an argument for strengthening it. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in their visits to Washington last week, offered Trump a way to accomplish this goal by negotiating a side agreement with the Europeans. The United States and European Union could state their intent to apply sanctions on Iran if it tests ballistic missiles, continues destabilizing its neighbors, dramatically expands the number of working centrifuges, or attempts to weaponize its nuclear program at any point in the future. The United States could also declare that it will keep troops in eastern Syria to contain Iranian power — something Trump is loath to do.
The beauty of a side agreement is that it would not require the assent of Iran, Russia and China — which is unlikely — and it would give Trump the ability to boast, truthfully, that he had increased the pressure on Iran. But it would require him to cease his incessant denigration of the nuclear deal, which he seems to hate mainly because he wasn’t the one who negotiated it, and force him to admit that he failed to rewrite it.
That would be the grown-up thing to do, which is why our juvenile president is unlikely to do it. As Macron said, he is likely to “get rid of this deal on his own, for domestic reasons.” Netanyahu’s performance on Monday night, clearly coordinated with the Trump administration, is intended to give the president the excuse he needs to act on his impulse.
But has Trump thought about what comes next? Silly question, I know. If the United States reimposes nuclear sanctions on Iran, even though there is no evidence that Iran is cheating on the nuclear deal, Iran may continue abiding by its limitations — or it may not. The Europeans may go along under threat of secondary sanctions — or they may not. No one knows what will happen next, but the likelihood is that nuking the JCPOA will undermine, rather than strengthen, attempts to limit the Iranian threat.
Trump is already dealing with one nuclear crisis in North Korea. It is hard to know why he wants to start another one in the Middle East.
