Iran, US diplomats to meet ahead of fresh nuclear talks
Press TV – June 7, 2014
Officials from Iran and the US will meet in Geneva next week ahead of the next round of talks between the Islamic Republic and the six world powers over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry says the meeting between the Iranian and US delegations will be held in Geneva on the 9th and 10th of June. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will be heading the Iranian delegation in the talks. Other reports say the US delegation will be headed by US Under-Secretary for State Wendy Sherman.
The talks will come ahead of the next round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear energy program scheduled for June 16-20 in the Austrian city of Vienna, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
Iranian officials will later sit down with Russian diplomats in the Italian capital, Rome, on June 11-12.
Representatives from Iran will probably hold further meetings with other delegations from the six powers – the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany.
On Saturday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Iran has already held bilateral deputy-level meetings with some delegations from the six world powers.
Iran and the six countries have been holding talks to iron out their differences and reach a final deal to end the standoff over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program.
The two sides held the latest round of nuclear negotiations in Vienna in May.
Iran dismisses WSJ nuclear report as unfounded
Press TV – May 28, 2014
Iran has rejected as unfounded a report by The Wall Street Journal on its nuclear energy program.
On Tuesday, the US newspaper cited a report by the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) as saying that Iran “has kept active and intact its core team of weaponization researchers.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Iran’s diplomatic mission at the United Nations condemned the report as a fabrication.
It said The Wall Street Journal is repeating the claims of a terrorist group whose previous allegations proved untrue.
The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community and is notorious for committing numerous terrorist acts against Iranians and Iraqis.
The statement also said that Tehran has lived up to its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It added that Tehran expects the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the United States, China, Russia, France and Britain — plus Germany to abide by their commitments concerning Iran’s nuclear rights, regardless of the “uproar” by anti-Iran lobby groups.
Iran and the six world powers have been discussing ways to iron out differences and start drafting a final nuclear deal that would end the West’s dispute with Iran over the country’s nuclear energy program.
Iran and the world powers reached an interim accord in the Swiss city of Geneva on November 24 last year that took effect on January 20 this year.
Under the deal, the six countries undertook to provide Iran with some sanctions relief in exchange for Iran agreeing to limit certain aspects of its nuclear activities during a six-month period. It was also agreed that no nuclear-related sanctions will be imposed on Iran within the same time-frame.
Iran DM Hits back at Hagel: Our Missile Program Not for Negotiation
Al-Manar | May 26, 2014
Iranian Defense Minister hit back at his US counterpart Chuck Hagel’s demand that Iran’s missile program should come under negotiation in talks between Tehran and the world powers, stressing that the Islamic Republic’s missile program is not for negotiations.
“Iran’s missile capability is defensive, conventional and deterrent and not negotiable,” Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said.
He noted that if any issue is due to be discussed after the nuclear talks, it should be the full annihilation of the Zionist regime’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to create a Middle-East free from the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) followed by the destruction of the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of the United States as the first country which has used these “dreadful weapons”.
“We ask our nuclear negotiators to focus their utmost efforts on the complete annihilation of the Zionist regime’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as the biggest danger posed to the region and world security as well as the US nuclear disarmament based on paragraph 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) alongside their negotiations with the Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany),” Dehqan said, according to Fars news agency.
Moreover, the Iranian DM expressed pleasure that the Zionist regime is concerned about Iran’s deterrent power, and said if such deterrence didn’t exist, the usurper regime would seize control of the Middle-East through war and bloodshed.
Dehqan underlined that it is a shame for the US which claims to be a superpower that its defense secretary announces “Israelis have allowed us to find a way to exit from (the deadlock over) Iran’s nuclear issue”.
Earlier, Hagel said that the negotiations between Iran and the world powers should focus on the country’s missile program after the settlement of the disputes over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Iran confirms its program is for peaceful ends only insisting that is its right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) while Israel, which is believed to be the sole nuclear power in the Middle East with more than 200 nuclear heads, is not a signatory for this treaty.
What Brought the West to the Table
By Kaveh L. Afrasiabi | Iran Review | May 20, 2014
There is a widespread Western fallacy that “sanctions brought Iran to the table,” which serves to legitimize the unjust regime of sanctions imposed by the Western governments, who rationalize their action by claiming to be the “injured parties” under international law, with respect to Iran’s alleged “non-compliance” with its international obligations.
The problem with this perspective that has acquired the status of a self-evident truth in the Western media is that it adopts the rhetoric of Western governments at face value, without the slightest inquiry on what caused the US and other Western governments involved in the nuclear negotiations with Iran to also ‘come to the table,’ that is, make reciprocal concessions?
The answer to the above question is three-fold. First, the idea that the Iran sanctions have caused little or no pressure on the Western countries is, of course, suspect and can be easily debunked. On the contrary, it can be shown that the whole edifice of sanctions regime was experiencing growing pressures and the Geneva agreement reflected a break not only for Iran but also the very sanctioning regimes, above all the US and European Union (EU).
To elaborate, given the fact that Iran’s nuclear progress had continued unabated despite the escalation of sanctions since 2006, the US was poised to pass new sanction laws targeting Iran’s oil sector, which if passed would have adversely affected US’s relations with some of its own trade partners such as India and China. In the absence of a deal in Geneva last November, the US lawmakers would have for sure enacted the new legislation, which would have instantly introduced new distortions in global trade, further violating the WTO norms on free trade. In other words, the Geneva agreement was a timely rescuer for the Western sanctioning states, avoiding a deterioration of their relations with Iran’s energy partners.
Second, by the time of Geneva agreement the unilateral European sanctions had come under increasing scrutiny by various courts in Europe, which had struck down a growing number of banks, trading companies, and individuals from the sanctions list. The significance of these adverse rulings, dreaded by the US officials who lobbied unsuccessfully to prevent them, was that it questioned the legality of some aspects of the EU sanctions that went far beyond the scope of UN sanctions on Iran, thus reflecting the irrefutable legal gap between UN and unilateral sanctions.
Third, in addition to the pressure of ‘market-distorting’ Western sanctions on the sanctioning powers, who deprived their own corporations from conducting profitable business with Iran, much to the delight of their Asian competitors, another important factor that ‘brought the West to the table’ was indeed the impressive pace of Iran’s nuclear progress. As a result of this steady progress, reflected in Iran’s ability to manufacture fuel rods for its medical reactor by enriching uranium up to 19.75%, i.e., the upper limit of low-enrichment, the West was suddenly jolted into the realization that Iran had reached a new nuclear milestone warranting serious negotiation.
Connected to this at the same time was the lessening value of the “military card” in West’s hands, in light of Iran’s construction of the underground facility known as Fordo, which is relatively immune from aerial bombardment, compared to the above-ground Natanz facility. This instantly jettisoned the “Osirak option,” that is the Israeli scenario of knocking down Iran’s facilities the way they did with ease against Iraq in 1981, thus adding to the futility of military threats against Iran. Needless to say, Iran’s counter-threat of closing the Hormuz and retaliating against any attacks throughout the region and beyond, i.e., the doctrine of extended deterrence, was an effective response that raised the potential cost of any military adventures against Iran. A good deal of this successful Iranian counter-strategy hinged on Iran’s extensive preparations for “asymmetrical warfare” and reliance on missile defense, given the impressive Iranian advances in missile technology.
Notwithstanding the above-said, it is hardly surprising that faced with Iran’s steady nuclear progress despite the sanctions that had harmful effects on the Western economy and entailed exorbitant monitoring costs, the West agreed to climb down its maximalist demands on “zero centrifuges” and to tacitly recognize Iran’s right to a civilian fuel cycle.
Of course, this explanation does not preclude the argument that the escalation of sanctions adversely affected Iran’s economy and spurred the new government of Hassan Rouhani to prioritize the lifting of sanctions through good-faith and principled negotiations. As an “injured party” whose inalienable nuclear rights have been abridged by Western discrimination and punitive actions, Iran’s anti-sanctions quest is in line with the nation’s national interests. But, while so much attention has been paid to Iran’s motivation to ‘make a deal’ unfortunately so far little attention has been paid to the underlying reasons for the West to reciprocate Iran’s action and thus explore the feasibility of a “win-win” scenario.
In terms of the regional and global geostrategic context, there are undeniably a host of relevant factors such as the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from the region after a decade of costly intervention and the related concerns for stability ‘the day after’ their planned departure, i.e., issues of direct link to Iran’s role in regional stability. Altogether, the net of Western interest to deal with Iran and search for ‘common grounds’ has been expanding and, naturally, one must probe the various economic, political, and geostrategic interests and concerns of the Western governments led by the US in determining why these powers consented to an interim deal with Iran, which has triggered the current negotiations for a long-term agreement? Suffice to say that the Western media’s failure to pay attention to this side of equation fuels a Western misperception that focuses on Iran’s purported weaknesses due to the sanctions, without bothering to present a comprehensive picture that, as outlined above, presents a vastly different, and more complex, picture before us, with clear policy connotations.
Iran cut enriched uranium stockpile by 80% – IAEA
RT | May 23, 2014
Iran is fulfilling its obligations under the nuclear deal with the six-world powers, having curbed its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium gas by more than 80 percent, a quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
Most of the 209 kilograms of Tehran’s enriched uranium were either converted or diluted to less proliferation-prone forms, the document said.
It leaves Iran with just 39 kilograms of the material, which is miles away from the 250 kilograms which, the experts say, are needed to create a single nuclear bomb.
The report also revealed that Iran managed to provide the IAEA with information proving that it tested the so-called Exploding Bridge Wire (EBW) detonators, commonly used in nuclear arms, for civilian purposes.
“The agency’s assessment of the information provided by Iran is ongoing,” the report by the UN’s nuclear watchdog is cited by Reuters.
The moves came under the interim deal that the Iranian authorities signed with the six world powers on January 20.
They agreed to halt some aspects of its controversial nuclear program in exchange for a limited relief of international sanctions against the country.
Under new president Hassan Rouhani, who was elected last year, Iran is making steps to counter Western concerns that it’s trying to develop the capability to produce nuclear weapons.
The IAEA report also outlined Tehran’s willingness to cooperate with the investigation into its nuclear related work.
“This is the first time that Iran has engaged in a technical exchange with the agency on this or any other of the outstanding issues related to possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program since 2008,” the document stressed.
However, the IAEA remains concerned that Iran may possibly have undeclared military activities in the nuclear sphere.
The agency continues to insist on the opportunity to visit Parchin military complex, located about 30 kilometers southeast of Tehran.
According to the report, satellite surveillance has revealed that there’s been construction underway at the facility for the last three months.
During talks in Tehran this week, Iran has promised the IAEA to comply with five new transparency measures concerning its nuclear program.
Despite having the same aim, Iran’s talks with the IAEA go on separately from its negotiations with the six world powers.
It’s planned that Tehran will reach a final deal with the UK, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the US by July 20.
However, there are doubts that the deadline would be met after the latest round of talks last week proved fruitless.
Russian Manipulation of Reactor Fuel Belies U.S. Iran Argument
By Gareth Porter | IPS | May 19 2014
WASHINGTON – In the stalemated talks between the six powers and Iran over the future of the latter’s nuclear programme, the central issue is not so much the technical aspects of the problem but the history of the Middle Eastern country’s relations with foreign suppliers – and especially with the Russians.
The Barack Obama administration has dismissed Iran’s claim that it can’t rely on the Russians or other past suppliers of enriched uranium for its future needs. But the U.S. position ignores a great deal of historical evidence that bolsters the Iranian case that it would be naïve to rely on promises by Russia and others on which it has depended in the past for nuclear fuel.
Both Iran and the P5+1 are citing the phrase “practical needs”, which was used in the Joint Plan of Action agreed to last November, in support of their conflicting positions on the issue of how much enrichment capability Iran should have. Limits on the Iranian programme are supposed to be consistent with such “practical needs”, according to the agreement.
Iran has argued that its “practical needs” include the capability to enrich uranium to make reactor fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant as well as future nuclear reactors. Iranian officials have indicated that Iran must be self-sufficient in the future with regard to nuclear fuel for Bushehr, which Russia now provides. It announced in 2008 that another reactor at Darkhovin, which is to be indigenously constructed, had entered the design stage.
Former senior State Department official on proliferation issues Robert Einhorn has transmitted the thinking of the Obama administration about the negotiations in recent months. In a long paper published in late March, he wrote that Iran had “sometimes made the argument that they need to produce enriched uranium indigenously because foreign suppliers could cut off supplies for political or other reasons.”
The Iranians had “even suggested,” Einhorn wrote, “that they could not depend on Russia to be a reliable supplier of enriched fuel.” This Iranian assertion ignores Russia’s defiance of the U.S. and is allies in having built Bushehr and insisting on exempting its completion and fuelling from U.N. Security Council sanctions, according to Einhorn.
Einhorn omits, however, the well-documented history of blatant Russian violations of its contract with Iran on Bushehr – including the provision of nuclear fuel – and its effort to use Iranian dependence on Russian reactor fuel to squeeze Iran on its nuclear policy as well as to obtain political-military concessions from the United States.
Rose Gottemoeller, now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, described the dynamics of that Russian policy when she was director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from early 2006 through late 2008. She recounted in a 2008 paper how the Russians began working intensively in 2002 to get Iran to end its uranium enrichment programme.
That brought Russia’s policy aim in regard to Iran’s nuclear programme into line with that of the George W. Bush administration (2001-2009).
Russia negotiated an agreement with Iran in February 2005 to supply enriched uranium fuel for the reactor and to take back all spent fuel. Later in 2005, Moscow offered Iran a joint uranium enrichment venture in Russia under which Iran would send uranium to Russia for enrichment and conversion into fuel elements for future reactors.
But Iran would not gain access to the fuel fabrication technology, which made it unacceptable to Tehran but was strongly supported by the Bush administration.
Bush administration officials then began to dangle the prospect of a bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation – a “123 Agreement” – before Russia as a means of leveraging a shift in Russian policy toward cutting off nuclear fuel for Bushehr. The Russians agreed to negotiate such a deal, which was understood to be conditional on Russia’s cooperation on the Iran nuclear issue, with particular emphasis on fuel supplies for Bushehr.
The Russians were already using their leverage over Iran’s nuclear programme by slowing down the work as the project approached completion.
A U.S. diplomatic cable dated Jul. 6, 2006 and released by WikiLeaks reported that Russ Clark, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear safety official who had spent time studying the Bushehr project, said in a conversation with a U.S. diplomat, “[H]e almost feels sorry for the Iranians because of the way the Russians are ‘jerking them around’.”
Clark said the Russians were “dragging their feet” about completing work on Bushehr and suggested it was for political reasons.
The IAEA official said it was obvious that the Russians were delaying the fuel shipments to Bushehr because of “political considerations,” calculating that, once they delivered the fuel, Russia would lose much of its leverage over Iran.
In late September 2006, the Russians changed the date on which they pledged to provide the reactor fuel to March 2007, in anticipation of completion of the reactor in September, in an agreement between the head of Russia’s state-run company Atomstroyexport, and the vice-president of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation.
But in March 2007, the Russians announced that the fuel delivery would be delayed again, claiming Iran had fallen behind on its payments. Iran, however, heatedly denied that claim and accused Moscow of “politicising” the issue.
In fact, Russia, with U.S. encouragement, was “slow rolling out the supply of enriched uranium fuel,” according to Gottemoeller. Moscow was making clear privately, she wrote, that it was holding back on the fuel to pressure Iran on its enrichment policy.
Moscow finally began delivering reactor fuel to Bushehr in December 2007, apparently in response to the Bush administration’s plan to put anti-missile systems into the Czech Republic and Poland. That decision crossed what Moscow had established as a “red line”.
Obama’s election in November 2008, however, opened a new dynamic in U.S.-Russia cooperation on squeezing Iran’s nuclear programme. Within days of Obama’s cancellation of the Bush administration decision to establish anti-missile sites in Central Europe in September 2009, Russian officials leaked to the Moscow newspaper Kommersant that it was withholding its delivery of S-300 surface-to-air missile systems for which it had already contracted with Iran.
Iran needed the missiles to deter U.S. and Israeli air attacks, so the threat to renege on the deal was again aimed at enhancing Russian leverage on Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment programme, while giving Moscow additional influence on U.S. Russian policy as well.
The Russian attempt to exploit Iran’s dependence on Moscow for its reactor fuel for political purposes was not the first time that Iran had learned the lesson that it could not rely on foreign sources of enriched uranium – even when they had legal commitments to provide the fuel for Iran’s nuclear reactor.
After the Islamic revolution against the Shah in 1979, all of the foreign suppliers on which Iran had expected to rely for nuclear fuel for Bushehr and its Tehran Research Reactor reneged on their commitments.
Iran’s permanent representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, sent an official communication to IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano on Mar. 1, 2010, stating that specific contracts with U.S., German, French and multinational companies for supply of nuclear fuel had been abruptly terminated under pressure from the U.S. government and its allies.
Soltanieh said they were “examples [of] the root cause of confidence deficit vis-à-vis some Western countries regarding the assurance of nuclear supply.”
The earlier experiences led Iran to decide around 1985 to seek its own indigenous enrichment capability, according to Iranian officials.
The experience with Russia, especially after 2002, hardened Iran’s determination to be self-reliant in nuclear fuel fabrication. The IAEA’s Clark told the U.S. diplomat in mid-2006 that, if the Russians did cut off their supply of fuel for Bushehr, the Iranians were prepared to make the fuel themselves.
It is not clear whether the Obama administration actually believes the official line that Iran should and must rely on Russia for nuclear fuel. But the history surrounding the issue suggests that Iran will not accept the solution on which the U.S. and its allies are now insisting.
~~~
Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book “Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare”, was published Feb. 14.
How the Iran Nuclear Deal May Impact Iran’s Approach in OPEC
Going to Tehran | May 19th, 2014
How the Iran Nuclear Deal May Impact Iran’s Approach in OPEC
by Erfan Ghassempour
Iran is thinking seriously about how to put its crude oil back on the market, and—following the November 2013 Geneva interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear program—is planning for a future when sanctions no longer hamper its oil industry. The country is changing its contracts for the exploration, development, and production of its oil and gas resources to tempt major international oil companies to return to its petroleum sector. Iran’s Petroleum Minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, has expressly invited seven oil giants to invest in Iran after sanctions are lifted.
Iranian ambitions are also reflected in Tehran’s approach to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). At the most recent OPEC meeting, held in December 2013—in the wake of the Geneva nuclear deal—Zanganeh made a powerful impression, warning other members to make room for Iranian crude. One way or another, he declared, Iran plans to increase its oil output to four million barrels per day (bpd), even if prices decrease to twenty dollars per barrel. (Some analysts think that the highest output Iran could achieve in the near-to-medium term after the lifting of sanctions would be 3-3.5 million bpd—but even that would mean a significant increase in Iranian oil exports, which, according to Zanganeh, are now at 1.5 million bpd.)
Iran’s reemergence on the international oil scene comes at a time when developments in other OPEC member states are increasing the likelihood of an appreciable rise in Middle Eastern oil production—e.g., Iraq’s security is improving, and strikes and rebel attacks seem to be ebbing in Libya. Zanganeh argues that, even in this context, Iran’s return to the oil market should have no negative impact on prices. As he told the OPEC Bulletin, over the years other OPEC members had “gone out of the market” for some time, “but when they returned to the market, OPEC knew how to deal with the situation—to create room to maintain the extra capacity, so that these countries can have a good return and for it not to have a bad impact on prices.”
At least on the surface, other OPEC players responded positively to Zanganeh’s message. OPEC’s secretary general, Abdalla el-Badri, welcomed Iran’s return to the market, denying any concern at this prospect. Even Iran’s biggest political and oil rival, in the region, Saudi Arabia (the biggest oil producer in OPEC), welcomed an increase in Iranian production. Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister, Ali Naimi, told reporters that he did not see a price war on the horizon: “They are welcome, everyone is welcome to put in the market what they can; the market is big and has many variables—when one comes in, another comes out.” Mr. Naimi also stated, “I hope Iran comes back [and] produces all it can.”
Iran is also stepping up its cooperation with Iraq on oil issues. At the December 2013 OPEC meeting, Iraq vigorously defended Iran’s plans to raise oil production, while also making clear that Iraq would remain outside OPEC’s quota system and that other members should decrease their production, if necessary, to make room for both Iran and Iraq. (Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister for Energy, Hussein al-Shahristani, has announced that his country intends to increase its oil output to nine million bpd by 2020, partly through cooperation with Iran.) Recently, Iraq has been helping Iran to develop new contracts to attract more foreign investment to its oil sector. Baghdad and Tehran have also established a committee to oversee the joint exploitation of fields lying astride the Iranian-Iraqi border. Some analysts think that the two countries are drawing closer to maximize their relative power and influence—on oil-related issues as well as on strategic and political matters—vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia.
As the six-month deadline for the Geneva interim deal approaches, Iran’s determination to produce more crude becomes stronger. If a permanent nuclear deal is reached at the end of six months (that is, on or around July 20), it would mean that sanctions will be lifted and Iran will renew its upstream and downstream activities.
So far, the interim deal has been well implemented. The International Atomic Energy Agency affirms that Iran is fulfilling its commitments; the West has returned some of the Iranian funds that have been frozen in Western banks and has eased some sanctions. None of the parties has been motivated to breach the interim agreement. On the Iranian side, the political and economic atmosphere in Iran suggests that Iranian officials are willing to continue this approach; Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has publicly expressed his support for the ongoing nuclear negotiations. On the American side, while some political factions in the United States want President Obama to increase pressure on Iran, this seems more a matter of political posturing than serious action. At this point, there is little appetite in the United States for torpedoing nuclear diplomacy with Iran.
Iran knows that any improvement in its oil industry is dependent on the nuclear talks. As the negotiations progress, Iranian officials are playing a bolder role in the region and in international organizations to which Iran belongs. At the next OPEC meeting in June, Zanganeh is likely to take an even tougher approach than at the previous meeting in December. It seems that other OPEC states are progressively accepting the inevitability of Iran’s return to the international oil scene.
There are two ways in which OPEC can handle prospective increases in Iranian, Iraqi, and Libyan output: other members—especially Saudi Arabia—can decrease production to make room for increased production by others, or the organization can raise its current 30 million bpd production ceiling. Politically as well as economically, much will hinge on what OPEC decides.
Netanyahu to Hagel: Don’t let “terrorist” Iran win
Al-Akhbar | May 16, 2014
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Friday that world powers must deny “terrorist” Iran any possibility of developing a nuclear weapon as the search for a deal intensifies.
“I think that, while the talks with Iran are going on, there is one thing that must guide the international community and that is not to let the ayatollahs win,” Netanyahu’s office quoted him as saying at the beginning of their meeting in Jerusalem.
“We must not allow Iran, the foremost terrorist state of our time, to develop the ability to develop a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu said.
Hagel said that Washington had the same goal.
“I want to assure you prime minister, and the people of Israel, of the United States’ continued commitment to assuring Iran does not get a nuclear weapon,” he said in video distributed by the US embassy.
“America will do what we must to live up to that commitment,” he added.
(AFP)
Trying to Scuttle Iran Nuke Talks, Again
By Gareth Porter | IPS | May 15, 2014
As diplomats began drafting a comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear program and Western sanctions in Vienna on Tuesday, U.S. officials were poised to demand a drastic cut in Iran’s enrichment capabilities that is widely expected to deadlock the negotiations.
Iran is almost certain to reject the basic concept that it should reduce the number of its centrifuges to a fraction of its present total, and the resulting collapse of the talks could lead to a much higher level of tensions between the United States and Iran.
The Obama administration’s highly risky diplomatic gambit rests on the concept of “breakout time,” defined as the number of months it would take Iran to accumulate enough weapons grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon.
Both Secretary of State John Kerry and former U.S. proliferation official Robert Einhorn have explained the demand that Iran give up the vast majority of its centrifuges as necessary to increase Iran’s “breakout time” to at least six months, and perhaps even much longer.
Einhorn, who was the State Department’s special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control until June 2013, wrote in a report for the Brookings Institution that the number and type of centrifuges “will be limited to ensure that breakout times are … a minimum of 6 to 12 months at all times.”
In a separate article in The National Interest, Einhorn wrote that such a “breakout time” would entail a reduction from Iran’s present total of 19,000 centrifuges to “a few thousand first-generation centrifuges.”
Kerry suggested in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 8 that the administration would try to get a breakout time of more than one year but might settle for six to 12 months. He compared that with the two months he said was the current estimate of Iran’s breakout capabilities.
“Breakout” has been touted by hardline think tanks as a non-political technical measure of the threat to obtain the high-enriched uranium necessary for a bomb, but it is actually arbitrary and highly political.
Even proliferation specialists who support the demand to limit Iranian enrichment capabilities severely, however, including both Einhorn and Gary Samore, President Barack Obama’s former special assistant on weapons of mass destruction, believe that “breakout” is more about the politics surrounding the issue than the reality of the Iranian nuclear program.
In an interview with IPS, Samore said the breakout concept can only measure the capability to obtain the necessary amount of high-enriched uranium from acknowledged facilities – those that are under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
It does not deal with a scenario involving secret facilities, he said, because it is only possible to estimate rates of enrichment in facilities with known quantities and types of centrifuges.
The use of the breakout concept is based on the premise that Iran would make a political decision to begin enriching uranium to weapons grade levels in its Natanz and Fordow plants as rapidly as possible. That would mean that Iran would have to expel the IAEA inspectors and announce to the world, in effect, its intention to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Samore, who left the Obama administration in January 2013 and is now the executive director for research at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Security, told IPS, “It’s extremely unlikely that Iran would actually take the risk for single bomb,” calling it “an implausible scenario.”
Samore is no dove on Iran’s nuclear issue. He is also president of United Against Nuclear Iran, an organization that puts out hardline propaganda aimed at convincing the world that Iran is a threat trying to get nuclear weapons.
Another problem with the specter of “breakout” is that, even if it took the risk of enriching the necessary weapons-grade uranium, Iran would still have to go through a series of steps to actually have a bomb that it could threaten to use.
A report released last week by the International Crisis Group (ICG) noted that calculations of breakout capability “are rough and purely theoretical estimates” and that they “omit inevitable technical hitches” and “an unpredictable and time-consuming weaponization process.”
According to the testimony by director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess before the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2010, that process, including integrating the weapon into a ballistic missile, would take three or four years.
The ICG report quoted a senior Iranian official as saying, “Serious people know that, even if Iran sought nuclear weapons, it will take years to manufacture one. What’s more, no state has ever invited opprobrium or a military strike just to produce a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium.”
In an interview, Jim Walsh of MIT’s Security Studies Program was scathing about the “breakout” scenario the administration is using to justify its diplomatic stance. “The idea of Iran kicking out inspectors to rush to get one bomb is silly,” he told IPS.
Samore believed that Iran would be far more likely to try what he calls a “sneakout” – the use of secret facilities to enrich uranium to weapons grade — than a “breakout.”
But as is generally acknowledged by proliferation specialists, such a covert route to a nuclear weapons capability would take much longer than trying to do so openly. Furthermore, it is almost certain to be detected, as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified in April 2013.
Despite his conviction that the breakout concept makes no sense as the basis for negotiations with Iran, Samore believes it will be “the test for any deal,” because it is the only way to measure it. “It’s a political fact of life,” Samore said. “It all gets boiled down to breakout time.”
The dominance that the breakout advocates have achieved in the lopsided political discourse about Iran has given opponents of an agreement a new form of pressure on the Obama administration to make unrealistic demands in the negotiations.
Einhorn admitted at a panel at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington D.C. on Tuesday that the decision on the length of breakout time and the level of centrifuges to be demanded “will come down to a political judgment.”
He clearly suggested, however, that the decision is primarily a response to political pressures from various unnamed parties and not a matter of finding a political compromise with Iran.
“Some say six months or less,” he said. “Others say you need a year. Some say a year and a half or two years.”
The former senior State Department official on proliferation issues insisted, moreover, that there was no possibility of accepting Iran’s explicit demand to be permitted to increase its enrichment capacity to as many as 30,000 centrifuges in order to support a nuclear power program.
“That amount would bring breakout time down to weeks or days,” he said. “That’s breakout.”
He did not discuss the possibility of agreement on gradually phasing in additional centrifuges as the practical need for them is demonstrated by progress on a new nuclear reactor.
The tough talk by Einhorn, who has clearly been given the green light to describe administration thinking publicly, makes it much less likely that the administration will back away from a breakout demand in the face of firm Iranian resistance.
Israeli Ex-Official: Netanyahu Fear-Mongering over Iran Nuclear Abilities
Al-Manar | May 9, 2014
An Israeli former official said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fear-mongering over Iran’s nuclear program, warning that a strike on the Islamic Republish will lead to an all-out war.
Brigadier General (res.) Uzi Eilam, who for a decade headed the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, said that Netanyahu is employing needless fear-mongering when it comes to Iran’s atomic aspirations, in order to further his own political aims, Israeli website Ynet reported on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Eilam does not believe that Tehran is even close to having a bomb, if that is even what it really aspires to.
“The main issues are still ahead of us, but it is definitely possible to be optimistic. I think we should give the diplomatic process a serious chance, alongside ongoing sanctions. And I’m not even sure that Iran would want the bomb – it could be enough for them to be a nuclear threshold state – so that it could become a regional power and intimidate its neighbors,” Eliam said.
“Besides, what good would bombing do? It would only unite the Iranian people behind its government, and provide it with an incentive to continue the project, with far more resources. Bombing would achieve the direct opposite of what we desired.”
Eilam was one of the central figures in the development of the Zionist entity’s nuclear and missile programs over the last half century.
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Book Review
The Voters’ Self-Induced Matrix
By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
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