nuclear-news

Safest option for the world is a nuclear deal with Iran

A nuclear deal with Iran is the best option By Fareed Zakaria WP April 2 When making up their minds about the nuclear deal with Iran, people are properly focused on its details. But to figure out whether an agreement that limits and inspects Iran’s nuclear program is acceptable, one has to consider seriously the alternatives to it — and there are really only two.

First, a return to sanctions. Let’s say that the U.S. Congress rejects the final agreement reached by all in June. What then? The current sanctions regime against Iran is almost unprecedented in that all the world’s major powers, and Iran’s neighbors, support it. Usually sanctions wear thin over time.

If other countries believe that Iran made a reasonable offer that the United States turned down, they are unlikely to continue to support a tight sanctions regime. Most studies confirm that it is the multilateral aspect of the sanctions against Iran that has made them effective………

Would continued sanctions halt the nuclear program? That’s highly unlikely. Iran has expanded its nuclear program under sanctions for the last two decades. In 2003, Iran had under 200 centrifuges. Today it has 19,000. The restrictions are now tighter — if they last — but Iran’s nuclear establishment is also much larger. Keep in mind that Iran began showing active interest in a nuclear program as early as the 1950s. It now has thousands of nuclear scientists and technicians who work in the field.

That raises option two, a military attack. People speak of a strike on Iranlike Israel’s against an Iraqi reactor in 1981 and a Syrian facility in 2007. But those were single facilities. Iran, by contrast, has a vast nuclear industry, comprising many installations spread across the country, some close to population centers, others in mountainous terrain. The United States would effectively have to go to war with Iran, destroying its air defenses, then attacking its facilities in dozens — perhaps hundreds — of sorties. The bombers would be equipped with highly explosive weapons, demolishing buildings, reactors and laboratories, but also producing considerable collateral damage.

What would be the effect of such an attack? When any country is bombed by foreigners, its people tend to rally around the regime. The Islamic Republic would likely gain domestic support. It would also respond in various ways, through its allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere. The attacks might be directed at U.S. troops or allies.

An attack would also mean the splintering of the international coalition against Iran. Russia, China and many other countries would condemn it. Iran would be seen as the victim of an unprovoked invasion. The sanctions would crumble. Its nuclear program would be devastated, but Iran would begin to rebuild it. Even under the current sanctions regime, Iran makes tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues, more than enough to afford to rebuild its facilities.

Finally, once it had been attacked, Tehran would invoke the need for a deterrent against future attacks and would work directly and speedily not on a nuclear program but a nuclear weapon. In his op-ed advocating war with Iran, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton argues that military attacks “should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.” But bombing and then threatening the Islamic Republic’s existence would likely produce exactly the opposite effect — a government strengthened at home with a clear rationale to acquire a nuclear deterrent. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-nuclear-deal-with-iran-is-the-best-option/2015/04/02/bc8292d2-d978-11e4-8103-fa84725dbf9d_story.html

April 4, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Landmark agreement in nuclear deal between Iran and the West

World powers agree ‘historic’ nuclear deal  http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/04/03/eu–iran-hail-nuclear-talks-breakthrough.html Iran and world powers have agreed on the framework of a potentially historic deal aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear drive after marathon talks in Switzerland.

t marks a major breakthrough in a 12-year stand-off between Iran and the West, which has long feared Tehran wants to build a nuclear bomb. US President Barack Obama welcomed the ‘historic understanding’ with Iran but cautioned more work needed to be done. ‘If Iran cheats, the world will know it,’ he said in a televised address from the White House on Thursday.

After eight days of talks that sometimes went through the night, Iran agreed to curtail its nuclear program in return for the lifting of punishing sanctions, said EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

The main outlines agreed at the negotiations in the Swiss city of Lausanne now have to be finalised in a highly complex agreement by June 30.

-US Secretary of State John Kerry hailed a ‘big day’, saying on Twitter that the global powers and Iran ‘now have parameters to resolve major issues on nuclear program. Back to work soon on a final deal’.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the drafting of a full agreement would begin immediately with the aim of completing it by the June 30 deadline. Iranian media said the deal will include Iran slashing by two-thirds, to 6000 from 19,000, the number of centrifuges, which can make fuel for nuclear power but also the core of a nuclear bomb.

Mogherini said the United States and the EU will lift all nuclear-related sanctions on Iran once the UN atomic agency has verified that Tehran has stuck to the ground-breaking deal. Mogherini, in a joint press statement with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, also said that the design of a new reactor will be changed so that no weapons-grade plutonium can be produced.

The Fordo facility, built deep into a mountain, will remain open but will not be used for enrichment but for research and development.

The so-called P5+1 group – the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia plus Germany – hope that the deal will make it virtually impossible for Iran to make nuclear weapons under the guise of its civilian program. France warned that the sanctions could be reimposed if Tehran does not fully keep its side of the bargain.The office of President Francois Hollande said in a statement that Paris would watch closely to ensure a ‘credible’ and ‘verifiable’ final agreement that prevents Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

April 3, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Imperative to complete nuclear deal with Iran

The agreement under discussion by the P5+1 with Iran is fundamentally to provide assurances that Iran’s nuclear program has purely civilian, peaceful uses. This is not an arms control treaty because it will not address weapons. While there is evidence to suggest that Iran engaged in nuclear weaponization activities, there is no evidence that Iran now has nuclear weapons. As a non-nuclear-weapon state, party to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Iran is obligated not to manufacture, acquire, or otherwise obtain nuclear weapons. The agreement under discussion will impose requirements on Iran in addition to those it has as an NPT party. [Iran hopes the deal will be endorsed by a Security Council resolution and not involve the U.S. Congress since the five members of the United Nations Security Council are involved.]

We Need To Get This Iranian Nuclear Deal Done, Forbes, James Conca, 26 Mar 15  By the sounds of the rhetoric going back and forth in the media, you’d think the Iranian Nuclear Deal we’re trying to put in place is a horrible loss for the United States, and that we’re being taken for a ride by the wily Ayatollahs.

Or that previous deals with Iran hadn’t ever worked.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Last year, the five members of the United Nations Security Council, the United States, Great Britain, France, China and Russia, plus Germany, called the P5+1 Group, reached an interim deal with Iran to stop their nuclear weapons program while a larger deal could be brokered. Four key provisions were obtained in this deal and all four have occurred:……… Continue reading →

March 27, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Iran nuclear talks don’t mention the factor of sabotage

Unstated Factor in Iran Talks: Threat of Nuclear Tampering, NYT,  By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROADMARCH 21, 2015 “………if negotiators succeed in reaching a deal with Iran, does the huge, covert sabotage effort by the United States, Israel and some European allies come to an end? “Probably not,” said one senior official with knowledge of the program. In fact, a number of officials make the case that surveillance of Iran will intensify and covert action may become more important than ever to ensure that Iran does not import the critical materials that would enable it to accelerate the development of advanced centrifuges or pursue a covert path to a bomb.

In the case of the covert effort to purchase the specialty aluminum, the Iranians actually discovered the switch before they installed the tubes, and now say they are racing ahead to develop a next-generation centrifuge that would produce nuclear fuel far faster, a prospect that has become a major sticking point in negotiations.

In public, the Obama administration says economic sanctions on oil exports and financial transactions drove Iran to negotiations — and the prospect of getting those restrictions lifted are the best chance of persuading Iran’s leadership to take a diplomatic deal limiting Iran’s production of nuclear fuel for a decade or more.

In private, officials say sabotage was the other big stick — a persistent effort to slow Iran’s progress, and a signal that the United States had other ways to deal with the nuclear program. On occasion they allude to it, as Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush’s national security adviser, did at a presentation on sanctions last year, when he talked about how the financial penalties were supplemented by “things directed at their program, which we can’t talk about.”

Although American officials remain suspicious of Iran operating a covert nuclear facility, they say they see no solid evidence of a hidden operation today.

It is entirely possible that if an accord is reached, President Obama could call a pause in what has been more than a decade of attacks, the most famous of which was a yearslong effort, code-named Olympic Games, which inserted into Iranian facilities the most sophisticated cyberweapons ever deployed. One of them was the Stuxnet worm that disabled about 1,000 centrifuges, but also spread around the world, revealing the program.

But reaching an accord is quite different than reaching a state of trust. Inside Iran, there will be pressure to keep making slow progress on a nuclear program that is central to the ambitions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and thousands of scientists who have labored for years. And in the uneasy alliance among Israel, the United States and Europe there will be continued debate about whether to supplement diplomatic pressure with covert action to keep Iran from getting to the threshold of being able to build a weapon.

For the past decade or so, the covert war to halt Iran’s nuclear program has included high-profile assassinations of their top scientists — widely attributed to Israel — and cyberattacks.

The assassinations suddenly stopped a few years ago, after they were publicly denounced by the United States. The cyberattack efforts may be continuing, probably at a lower level: a recently disclosed document from the National Security Agency, written in 2013, describes “NSA’s planned battle rhythm” to attack Iran’s systems in case of a crisis, and “Iran’s discovery of computer network exploitation tools on their networks in 2012 and 2013.” They make it clear that the N.S.A. has played a crucial role in the negotiations, in “support to policy makers” during negotiation on Iran’s nuclear program.

The ultimate goal of the covert program of industrial sabotage, according to intelligence and weapons specialists, is to produce damage obscure enough to evade easy detection, but extensive enough to result in random failures that seriously impede Iran’s nuclear drive………http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/world/middleeast/unstated-factor-in-iran-talks-threat-of-nuclear-tampering.html?_r=0

March 22, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment