No Intention to Quit JCPOA Despite Nuclear Rollbacks Financial Tribune, 29 June 19, Europe should take further measures to ensure that the special trade channel set up to keep trade with Iran afloat satisfies Tehran’s demands, a senior diplomat said on Saturday, while stressing that the country does not intend to leave the nuclear agreement.
“I personally believe that INSTEX, in its current condition, isn’t enough. This mechanism without money is like a beautiful car without fuel,” Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, told the media in New York, IRNA reported.
In early May, a year after US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, Tehran announced a decision to abandon some of its commitments under the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Iran would resume higher uranium enrichment in 60 days if the remaining signatories fail to make good on promises to shield its oil and banking sectors from the reimposed and tightened US sanctions.
On Friday, the European Union announced in a statement that the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges or INSTEX, the financial mechanism set up by France, Britain and Germany to facilitate some trade with Iran, is now operational and the first transactions are being processed. ….. (subscribers only) https://financialtribune.com/articles/national/98697/no-intention-to-quit-jcpoa-despite-nuclear-rollbacks
July 1, 2019
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Nuclear talks progress ‘not enough’ for Iran to change course, INSTEX payment system now operational, but Iran says needs to be used for oil purchases to be useful. Aljazeera, 29 June 19
Diplomats meeting in Vienna in a bid to save a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers made progress but it was “not enough” to stop Tehran scaling back compliance with the accord, according to the Iranian deputy foreign minister.
Officials from the deal’s remaining signatories – China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Iran – as well as the European Union, held talks in the Austrian capital on Friday after Tehran warned that it would soon breach a limit on the amount of enriched uranium set out in the agreement.
“It was a step forward, but it is still not enough and not meeting Iran’s expectations,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told reporters. “I don’t think the progress made today will be enough to stop our process but the decision will be made in Tehran.”…….https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/nuclear-talks-progress-iran-change-190628160308104.html
June 29, 2019
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Iran Is About To Exceed Uranium Limits. Is The Nuclear Deal Dying? NPR, 26, 2019 , Heard on All Things Considered, GEOFF BRUMFIEL
Iran is on the verge of crossing a key line included in the nuclear deal it reached with the U.S. and other powers in 2015. As soon as Thursday, it’s expected to announce that its uranium stockpiles have exceeded limits set by the deal.
“I think it’s a major bridge for them to go across,” says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which monitors Iran’s nuclear program. Albright and other experts believe that breaching the limit could spell the beginning of the end for the nuclear agreement, which the U.S. exited in May 2018.
The nuclear deal is full of numbers and figures, but its purpose is simple: to slow down Iran’s nuclear program. Before the deal, Iran was within a few weeks of getting enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb if it chose to. The deal pushed that timeline back from weeks to about a year.
Under the multilateral Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran was forced to get rid of lots of low-enriched uranium. Low-enriched uranium is kept at levels far below the 90% level considered suitable for building nuclear weapons. But large quantities of low-enriched uranium can be refined to bomb-grade relatively quickly. So the deal capped Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched material to just 300 kilograms, or 661 lbs.
But that was then. Last year, President Trump pulled out of the deal. Without the economic benefits Iran was promised in exchange for limiting its nuclear program, it has begun going back on the agreement. In May, it announced it would begin accumulating more low-enriched uranium. ……..
European companies had hoped to do business with Iran. But in the face of U.S. sanctions, “We’ve seen those companies have to step back and say, ‘We can’t afford to lose the U.S. market,’ ” Hinderstein says.
Iran is now stepping across one line in the deal at a time, in an effort to pressure European nations to provide promised economic relief. European negotiators are racing to complete a package of humanitarian aid by early July, says Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi with Great Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.
“They are working towards that end goal, to showcase to the Iranians that they are actually working in practical terms to address some of these issues,” Tabrizi says.
If that aid — which includes things like medical supplies — can be delivered without U.S. objection, then it may open the possibility of more economic benefits flowing to Iran. But Tabrizi says it remains to be seen whether it will be enough.
“Iran has made it clear that it needs also to be able to continue to export its oil, to see the incentive of remaining a party of the nuclear deal,” she says.
For now, Hinderstein says, Iran is still about a year away from getting material together for a bomb — should it decide to do so. “We still have some time to work with,” she says.
But with each line that Iran crosses, the timeline shrinks, and the nuclear deal fades further. https://www.npr.org/2019/06/26/736008919/iran-is-about-to-exceed-uranium-limits-is-the-nuclear-deal-dying
June 27, 2019
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Iran says it will never build a nuclear weapon, Minister says Islam forbids such a move as country prepares to breach nuclear deal, Guardian Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor, 26 June 2019
Iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon, its foreign minister has claimed, saying Islam prevented the country from doing so.
Iran has previously said it is ideologically opposed to acquiring nuclear weapons and seeks nuclear power only for civilian purposes. But in the current unpredictable climate it is possible Donald Trump could pick up Javad Zarif’s remarks as a signal to talk.
The White House is pursuing a twin-track strategy of seeking talks while trying to throttle the Iranian economy through sanctions that block trade with Europe and oil sales, and freeze the assets of political and diplomatic leaders.
Iran has said it will breach the uranium enrichment limits set out in the 2015 nuclear deal on Thursday, but that does not imply the country is on the path to building a nuclear weapon…….
The US president again threatened Iran with “obliteration” in a Twitter tirade in which he also accused the country’s leaders of killing 2,000 Americans. …..
The angry tweets came after Iran said the US’s decision to impose sanctionson its supreme leader and other top officials was “idiotic” and had permanently closed the path to diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.
Trump imposed fresh sanctions on Monday against the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and military chiefs, in an unprecedented step designed to increase pressure on Iran after Tehran’s downing of an unmanned American drone. Khamenei is Iran’s utmost authority, who has the last say on all state matters.
Washington said it would also impose sanctions this week on Zarif, who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with the US and other major powers and has spearheaded Iranian diplomacy since.
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, described the White House as “afflicted by a mental disability” and said the sanctions against Khamenei were “outrageous and idiotic”, especially as the 80-year-old cleric has no overseas assets and no plans to ever travel to the US.
Tehran said the US had spent weeks demanding that Iran match America’s diplomacy with its own diplomacy, rather than military responses, but was now trying to immobilise its chief diplomat.
“Imposing useless sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader and the commander of Iran’s diplomacy is the permanent closure of the path of diplomacy,” the foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a tweet on Tuesday. “Trump’s desperate administration is destroying the established international mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security.”…….. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/25/iran-says-us-sanctions-on-supreme-leader-means-permanent-closure-of-diplomacy
June 27, 2019
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With ‘Chernobyl,’ Iranians talk other people’s nuclear problems, for a change, Al-Monitor, Rohollah Faghihi June 26, 2019 Iranians, who have been under pressure from the United States over the country’s nuclear program, are enjoying discussing someone else’s nuclear problems for a change. The recently released HBO miniseries “Chernobyl,” focusing on the catastrophic nuclear accident in 1986, has proved to be wildly popular in Iran.
June 27, 2019
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Israel will do ‘everything’ to stop Iran going nuclear: Netanyahu https://news.yahoo.com/israel-everything-stop-iran-going-nuclear-netanyahu-161040494.html, 24 June 19 Jerusalem (AFP) – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday his country will do “everything” to prevent arch-rival Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, during a visit by a senior Russian security official. “Israel will not allow Iran, which calls for our destruction, to entrench on our border; we will do everything to prevent it from attaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said.
He was speaking alongside Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Moscow’s powerful security council, whose visit followed weeks of simmering tensions between Tehran and Washington in the Gulf.
Israel has carried out repeated strikes to prevent Iranian forces becoming embedded in neighbouring Syria, where both Iran and Moscow back the government of President Bashar al-Assad.The Israeli government has vowed never to let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon, believing Israel would be the target.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is entirely for civilian purposes.
Netanyahu has long campaigned against a 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, from which the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew last year.
Patrushev did not directly mention the Islamic republic in his comments to the press.“We pay great attention to Israel’s security,” he said.
“To resolve this issue in practice, it is necessary to bring peace and stability to the region, including on Syrian territory.”
Their meeting came a day after Netanyahu hosted US National Security Advisor John Bolton, who shares the Israeli premier’s tough stance on Iran.
Bolton is set to meet Patrushev on Tuesday along with their Israeli counterpart Meir Ben-Shabbat.
Tensions between Washington and Iran have flared after Iranian forces shot down a US drone Thursday, the latest in a series of incidents including attacks on tankers in sensitive Gulf waters that have raised fears of an unintended slide towards conflict.
Trump has tweeted that Washington would place “major additional sanctions on Iran on Monday”.
Russia on Monday denounced the new sanctions as “illegal”. Its President Vladimir Putin has warned of “disaster” if the US were to use force against Tehran.
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June 25, 2019
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Trump warns Iran of ’obliteration like you’ve never seen before’ https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/23/trump-obliteration-iran-nuclear-weapons-pursuit-1376744, By MARTIN MATISHAK, 06/23/2019
President Donald Trump warned the United States may launch a devastating military attack on Iran unless it comes to the negotiating table and drops its bid to develop nuclear weapons.
“I’m not looking for war, and if there is, it’ll be obliteration like you’ve never seen before. But I’m not looking to do that. But you can’t have a nuclear weapon. You want to talk? Good. Otherwise you can have a bad economy for the next three years,” Trump said during an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press” airing Sunday.
The president said he’d be willing to sit down with Iranian officials without preconditions.
The comments, made during an interview taped Friday, came the same day Trump confirmed on Twitter that he called off a retaliatory strike on Iran at the last minute Thursday night. He said he decided that the potential cost of human lives was “not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Thursday it had shot down an American drone, claiming it had entered Iranian airspace, a claim disputed by the U.S., which has maintained the drone was over international waters. Both countries have since produced what they say is evidence supporting their respective positions.
Trump said the U.S. had a “modest but pretty, pretty heavy attack schedule,” but planes were not in the air when he called off the attack.
The commander in chief said the response now should be increased sanctions on Iran’s economy.
“We’re increasing the sanctions now,” adding the country’s economy has already been “shattered.”
Trump said he believes Iranian officials want to negotiate and that any deal would have to be about nuclear weapons. He also claimed that Iran had violated the nuclear agreement struck by the Obama administration and other world powers. International inspectors have repeatedly declared that Iran has complied with the 2015 deal.
“They cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “They cannot have a nuclear weapon. They’d use it. And they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump also disputed that he sent a message to Iranian leaders through a third country, saying he did not want conflict, dubbing it “fake news.”
However, he also declined to send a message during the interview to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Wouldn’t be much different than that message,” Trump said.
June 24, 2019
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Dear Trump (and the US Media): Iran Doesn’t Have a Nuclear Weapons Program, Common Dreams, by Juan Cole, 23 June 19 “…….Trump is now citing Iran’s non-existent bomb-making as the reason for his breach of the treaty and not mentioning any of the things the hawks mind.
Iran isn’t making a bomb and gave up 80% of its civilian nuclear enrichment program in the JCPOA.
In fact, there have been no US intelligence assessments that Iran had decided to try to make a bomb since Tehran admitted in early 2003 that it had an enrichment program (it was supposed to report the program to the UN under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran had signed).
Uranium comes in nature in two isotopes, U-238 (very common and relatively inert) and U-235 (rarer and much more volatile). In order to use uranium to fuel a nuclear reactor, it has to be enriched to roughly 3.5% of U-235. If it is enriched to 95% U-235, it can be made to blow up in a thermonuclear explosion, as the US did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Iran knows how to enrich uranium, but has never enriched to levels above what is considered “Low Enriched Uranium.” The cut-off is above 20% U-235. It has a medical reactor that uses 19.5% enriched uranium.
Although the US CIA has not assessed that Iran has during the past decade and a half had a nuclear weapons program, its civilian enrichment capacities were potentially dual use, so that there was always a chance Tehran might decide to militarize.
I can’t get anybody to believe me on this, but Iran is a Shiite theocracy led by an Ayatollah, and Ali Khamenei has given several fatwas (fatwas or considered legal rulings can be oral) in which he has forbidden the making, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons. Khamenei rules according to Islamic law, which disallows the deliberate infliction of mass casualties on civilian noncombatants in war. Nuclear weapons obviously target the populations of whole cities and so the ayatollahs consider them tools of Satan.
On the other hand, having the world know that you could whip up a nuclear bomb in short order is a form of deterrence against invasion. Japan has that capability. Iran probably had that capability before 2015.
The 2015 agreement attempted to forestall any move by Iran to develop a nuclear weapons enrichment program (again, it has never done so and says it never would).
Still, for the suspicious, the JCPOA took away the option of quick militarization with four steps:
1. Regular UN inspections of sites for signatures of high-enriched uranium or for plutonium
2. Reduction of number of centrifuges to 6,000, which would take a year to make bomb-grade uranium even if they were turned to that purpose
3. The bricking in and abandonment of a proposed heavy water nuclear reactor at Arak. Heavy water reactors can accumulate fissile material for a bomb faster and easier than light water reactors, so Obama and the UN teamp insisted on this step for Iran.
4. The stockpiles of low-enriched-Uranium (LEU) built up for the medical reactor (and which had come to much exceed the actual needs of that reactor) were cast in a form that prevented further enrichment, and much of it was exported.
Under these circumstances, there is no way Iran can make a bomb without everybody knowing it is trying. It would have to kick out the UN inspectors, build thousands more centrifuges under the gaze of US satellites, etc., etc.
So if what Trump wanted was no Iranian nuke, he had that when he was sworn into office in 2017. By breaching the treaty and refusing to reward Iran’s good behavior by ceasing sanctions, Trump put the US on a war footing with Iran.
He has stopped Iran from selling its oil, a form of blockade that probably amounts to an act of war. He is also stopping European concerns from investing in Iran.
It is frustrating that Trump is dancing on the brink of a war for a purpose that had already been attained. This is why it is bad to elect people to high office who have mental health problems. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/06/23/dear-trump-and-us-media-iran-doesnt-have-nuclear-weapons-program
June 24, 2019
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/pre-emptive-nuclear-war-role-israel-attack-iran/5677025/amp, Global Research (contributed 
by Amel Polarte ) Prof Michel Chossudovsky 14 June 19
The text below is Chapter III of Michel Chossudovsky’s book entitled: The Globalization of War. America’s Long War against Humanity, Global Research Publishers, Montreal, 2015.
This chapter provides a historical perspective of US war plans directed against Iran, including the use of a preemptive nuclear attack, using low yield, “more usable” tactical nuclear weapons.
While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from present-day wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using “new technologies” and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality. The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of world peace. “Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.”
The stockpiling and deployment of advanced weapons systems directed against Iran started in the immediate wake of the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq. From the outset, these war plans were led by the U.S. in liaison with NATO and Israel.
Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration identified Iran and Syria as the next stage of “the road map to war”. U.S. military sources intimated at the time that an aerial attack on Iran could involve a large scale deployment comparable to the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing raids on Iraq in March 2003:
American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq nuclear center in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq.1
“Theater Iran Near Term” (TIRANNT)
Code named by U.S. military planners as TIRANNT, “Theater Iran Near Term”, simulations of an attack on Iran were initiated in May 2003 “when modelers and intelligence specialists pulled together the data needed for theater-level (meaning large-scale) scenario analysis for Iran.”2
The scenarios identified several thousand targets inside Iran as part of a “Shock and Awe” Blitzkrieg:
The analysis, called TIRANNT, for “Theater Iran Near Term,” was coupled with a mock scenario for a Marine Corps invasion and a simulation of the Iranian missile force. U.S. and British planners conducted a Caspian Sea war game around the same time. And Bush directed the U.S. Strategic Command to draw up a global strike war plan for an attack against Iranian weapons of mass destruction. All of this will ultimately feed into a new war plan for “major combat operations” against Iran that military sources confirm now [April 2006] exists in draft form.
… Under TIRANNT, Army and U.S. Central Command planners have been examining both near-term and out-year scenarios for war with Iran, including all aspects of a major combat operation, from mobilization and deployment of forces through postwar stability operations after regime change.3
Different “theater scenarios” for an all-out attack on Iran had been contemplated:
The U.S. army, navy, air force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for “Operation Iranian Freedom”. Admiral Fallon, the new head of U.S. Central Command, has inherited computerized plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).4
In 2004, drawing upon the initial war scenarios under TIRANNT, Vice President Dick Cheney instructed U.S. Strategic Command (U.S.STRATCOM) to draw up a “contingency plan” of a large scale military operation directed against Iran “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States” on the presumption that the government in Tehran would be behind the terrorist plot. The plan included the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state:
The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than four hundred fifty major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing –that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack– but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.
June 22, 2019
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Iran to further scale back compliance with nuclear deal, CNBC 17 June 19,
KEY POINTS Iran will announce further moves on Monday to scale back compliance with an international nuclear pact that the United States abandoned last year, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
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- The United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency believe Iran had a nuclear weapons program that it abandoned. Tehran denies ever having had one.
- Iran stopped complying in May with some commitments in the 2015 nuclear deal that was agreed with global powers, after the United States unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and re-introduced sanctions on Tehran……..
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/16/iran-to-scale-back-nuclear-deal-commitments.html
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June 17, 2019
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Iran has ‘no intentions’ to make or use nuclear weapons, Abe says, Aljazeera, 13 June 19
Japanese PM Shinzo Abe said Iran’s Supreme Leader made the comment during a meeting in Tehran.Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has assured Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe that Iran has no intention to make, hold or use nuclear weapons, while saying that the country will not negotiate with the
United States.
Abe met Khamenei – Iran’s top decision-maker – on Thursday during a trip to Iran in an attempt to ease tensions between the Islamic republic and the US.
Following the meeting, which Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appeared to have also attended, Abe told reporters that Khamenei had told him that Iran “will not and should not make, hold or use nuclear weapons, and that it has no such intentions”.
Shortly after, Iranian state news agency FARS confirmed the comment, but added that Khamenei had said Iran will not negotiate with the US and did not consider President Donald Trump “worthy” of a message from Tehran.
“I do not see Trump as worthy of any message exchange, and I do not have any reply for him now or in the future,” Khamenei was quoted as saying.
The supreme leader also reportedly said that he does not believe Trump’s offer of honest negotiations and that he thinks the US president’s promise not to seek regime change in Iran is a lie.
The comments likely came as a blow to Abe, who told reporters at a joint press conference with Rouhani on Wednesday, that helping to ease tension in the region was “the one single thought that brought me to Iran”.
Abe is completing a two-day visit to Iran, becoming the first sitting Japanese premier to visit the country since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. ………. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/iran-intentions-nuclear-weapons-abe-190613064055043.html
June 15, 2019
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German minister lands in Iran in bid to save nuclear pact, Sabine Siebold, TEHRAN (Reuters) 9 June 19, – Germany’s foreign minister has arrived in Tehran to hold talks with President Hassan Rouhani on Monday, as part of a concerted European effort to preserve Iran’s nuclear pact with world powers and defuse rising U.S.-Iranian tensions.A cautious thaw in relations between Tehran and Washington set in in 2015 when Iran struck a deal with six big powers limiting its nuclear activity. But tensions with the United States have mounted again since President Donald Trump withdrew Washington from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sweeping sanctions.
West European signatories, including Germany, want to try to keep the nuclear accord alive although they share the Trump administration’s disquiet about Iran’s ballistic missile program and its role in conflicts around in the Middle East.
Germany, France and Britain maintain that the nuclear pact remains the best way to limit Iran’s enrichment of uranium, a potential pathway to the development of nuclear weapons……. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iran-germany/german-minister-to-meet-irans-rouhani-in-bid-to-save-nuclear-pact-idUSKCN1TA0JW
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June 10, 2019
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Nuclear watchdog chief: no evidence that Russia is violating test ban, US general said Moscow had ‘probably’ violated moratorium, Guardian, Julian Borger 31 May 19
Lassina Zerbo contradicts claims of testing at remote island The head of the international watchdog that monitors signs of nuclear testing has said there is no evidence to support a US allegation that Russiahas conducted low-yield tests in violation of an international ban.Lassina Zerbo, the executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), said the agency had already investigated the claim made on Wednesday by the head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt Gen Robert Ashley, that Russia had “probably” violated the moratorium on tests of any yield.
In a public appearance in Washington, Ashley did not give details, and in response to follow-up questions, he said only that Russia had the “capability” to carry out such tests. The US has long voiced suspicions that Russia could be carrying out low-yield testing at a remote Arctic island base, Novaya Zemlya.
Zerbo said the agency had conducted a test of its global network of sensors on Wednesday to estimate what size of nuclear blast it would be able to detect at Novaya Zemlya.
The test found that its monitoring system would have picked up a blast of 3.1 on the Richter scale, which would be roughly equivalent, in that area, to a nuclear detonation of 100 tons – tiny in comparison to the yield of most nuclear warheads, which are normally measured in thousands of tons. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 and 20 kilotons, respectively………
It is unclear why Ashley chose to revive the allegation about Russian low-yield testing now, in the apparent absence of any new evidence. Some observers pointed to the fact that Ashley made the claim that testing had “probably” taken place only in his prepared remarks, but did not repeat the claim in a question and answer session, leading to speculation the claim could have been inserted into Ashley’s speech by the White House. The national security adviser, John Bolton, has a long record of hostility to arms control agreements.
On his watch, the US has pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement with Russia. He is believed to be opposed to the extension of the New Start agreement, signed in 2010 with Russia, limiting deployed strategic nuclear warheads and their delivery systems on both sides. It is due to expire in 2021.
Sarah Bidgood, Eurasia programme director at the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, suggested the issue had been rehashed “in order to support the narrative that Russia is an unreliable partner in arms control, with whom verification does not work”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/30/nuclear-watchdog-no-evidence-russia-violating-test-ban
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June 1, 2019
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Iran Sticking to Nuclear Deal as EU Vies to Prevent Its Collapse https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-31/iran-sticks-to-nuclear-limits-under-2015-deal-with-world-powers By Jonathan Tirone, June 1, 2019,
IAEA issues quarterly inspections report on Iran program
Tensions rising in region between Iran, U.S. and Gulf states
Nuclear inspectors reported Iran continued adhering to its 2015 accord with world powers, giving European nations room to pursue their troubled efforts to prevent a total collapse of a pact facing intensifying U.S. pressure.
International Atomic Energy Agency monitors said Iran’s inventories of enriched uranium and heavy water remained below the thresholds allowed under the 2015 agreement, according to a restricted report seen by Bloomberg News.
It’s the 15th consecutive quarterly report showing that Iran has observed its obligations, and comes amid growing concerns that the Trump administration’s campaign to counter Iranian influence in the Middle East could spill into war.
The IAEA conducted snap inspections “to all the sites and locations in Iran which it needed to visit,” read the 6-page IAEA report that was circulated Thursday among diplomats in Vienna. “Throughout the reporting period, Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile has not exceeded” the maximum permitted 300 kilograms, it said.
Iran’s president signaled May 8 that stockpiles of nuclear material would soon exceed limits after the U.S. revoked waivers permitting it to be shipped abroad. That declaration was made on the one-year anniversary of the U.S. decision to unilaterally exit the nuclear accord and reimpose sanctions, including on vital oil exports. With its economy plunging into recession, Iran said it will violate even more sensitive provisions of the deal unless European signatories deliver the financial relief offered in return for moderating its nuclear program.
Tensions have since spiked further after the U.S. accelerated the deployment of a carrier strike group to the Gulf to counter unspecified Iranian threats, suggested without providing proof that Iran and its proxies were to blame for attacks on ships in the crucial waterway as well as a Saudi oil pipeline, and sent more troops to the region.
President Donald Trump has made confronting Iran a cornerstone of his foreign policy and is squeezing its economy to force it to roll back its ballistic missile program and support for groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which the U.S. deems a terrorist organization.
The White House is counting on Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies to form a united front to contain Iran, prompting a series of meetings involving regional leaders in the kingdom this week.
The stockpile of low-enriched uranium rose 7%, to 174 kilograms (384 pounds), the IAEA said. Its inventory of heavy-water was unchanged at 125 metric tons, less than the 130 metric tons permitted by the agreement.
Iran has been enriching uranium well below capacity and should be able to boost its rate of production, according to a senior diplomat with knowledge of Iran’s program. The country said May 22 it would ramp up the rate at which it produces the material by four times. That implies accumulating as much as 18 kilograms of new low-enriched uranium a month rather than some 4 to 4.5 kilograms previously, the person said.
The stored uranium is still well short of what would be needed to construct a bomb, were the material to be further enriched, and if Iran made the decision to pursue weapons. Iran had previously accumulated enough of the heavy metal to construct more than a dozen weapons before the agreement forced it to eliminate some 97% of its stockpile. Tehran says its nuclear program is solely for civilian energy and medical use.
Heavy water, so named because it contains extra hydrogen atoms, can moderate neutrons inside a nuclear reactor or act as a tracer in medical applications. Iran had been shipping excess inventory to Oman before the U.S. blocked that activity. IAEA inspectors continued to confirm Iran’s Arak reactor, for which the heavy water production was originally intended, remained disabled as agreed under the 2015 accord. Tehran says it could reconstitute that project in the third quarter without sanctions relief.
The IAEA report follows U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton’s statement on Wednesday in the United Arab Emirates that a violation of the deal would show Iranians haven’t “constrained their continuing desire to have nuclear weapons.” The Trump administration has threatened to sanction Europeans for trying to hold the atomic pact together via a non-dollar-denominated financial channel.
Critically, the IAEA report said Iran continued allowing access to sites under what its director general has called “the most robust verification system in existence anywhere.” Inspectors conducted a record number of surprise visits in Iran last year.
Iran has also stuck to the number of centrifuges — the supersonic spinning machines that separate uranium isotopes — allowed for enrichment. Iran is holding “technical discussions” about new generations of more powerful centrifuges that are undergoing testing.
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June 1, 2019
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National Security Adviser John Bolton Accuses Iran of Seeking Nuclear Weapons, TIME BY JON GAMBRELL / AP , MAY 29, 2019 (ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates) — President Donald Trump’s national security adviser warned Iran on Wednesday that any attacks in the Persian Gulf will draw a “very strong response” from the U.S., taking a hard-line approach with Tehran after his boss only two days earlier said America wasn’t “looking to hurt Iran at all.”
John Bolton’s comments are the latest amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran that have been playing out in the Middle East.
Bolton spoke to journalists in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, which only days earlier saw former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warn there that “unilateralism will not work” in confronting the Islamic Republic……..
A longtime Iran hawk, Bolton blamed Tehran for the recent incidents, at one point saying it was “almost certainly” Iran that planted explosives on the four oil tankers off the UAE coast. He declined to offer any evidence for his claims.
…….Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has repeatedly criticized Bolton as a warmonger. Abbas Mousavi, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said later Wednesday Bolton’s remarks were a “ridiculous accusation.”
Separately in Tehran, President Hassan Rouhani said that the “road is not closed” when it comes to talks with the U.S. — if America returns to the nuclear deal. However, the relatively moderate Rouhani faces increasing criticism from hard-liners and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the collapsing accord…….
Bolton also said the U.S. would boost American military installations and those of its allies in the region. …..
Bolton’s trip to the UAE comes just days after Trump in Tokyo appeared to welcome negotiations with Iran. http://time.com/5597424/john-bolton-iran-nuclear-weapons/
May 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Iran, politics international, USA |
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