We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication. Please address your response to: Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, PO Box 175, Station H, Montreal QC H3G 2K7 – Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284; E-mail: rob@isranet.wpsitie.com
Believing Obama on Iran: Caroline B. Glick, Jerusalem Post, May 13, 2014— Brig. Gen. (ret.) Uzi Eilam is an octogenarian who served as the director general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission from 1976 until 1985.
Iran's Plans: Jerusalem Post, May 8, 2014— Grudgingly, we must admit that Iran is doing quite well.
Israel Cannot Accept the Emerging Accord between the US and Iran: Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaacov Amidror, BESA Center, Apr. 24, 2014— Ostensibly, official US policy on Iran’s nuclear program is clear: The US will not allow Iran to produce a nuclear bomb.
Iran Doesn’t Want a Deal: Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, May, 13, 2014— John Kerry began the year trying to bring representatives of the Assad regime together with rebel leaders in Geneva to end the civil war in Syria.
Iranian Strategy Feeds Off Perceived Western Weakness: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, May 1, 2014
Will the World Ignore Iran's Execution Binge?: Irwin Cotler, Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2014
Holocaust Denial and the Iranian Regime: Reuel Marc Gerecht, Wall Street Journal, Apr. 25, 2014
He's Made It Worse: Obama's Middle East: Abe Greenwald, Commentary, May 1, 2014
U.S. Needs to Plan For the Day After an Iran Deal: David H. Petraeus & Vance Serchuk, Washington Post, Apr. 9, 2014
Caroline B. Glick
Jerusalem Post, May 13, 2014
Brig. Gen. (ret.) Uzi Eilam is an octogenarian who served as the director general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission from 1976 until 1985. Last Friday Eilam gave a head-scratching interview to Yediot Aharonot’s Ronen Bergman in which he claimed that Iran’s nuclear weapons program is a decade from completion. He said it is far from clear that the Iranians even want a nuclear arsenal. He accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of cynically exaggerating the threat from Iran in order to strengthen himself politically. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Eilam’s interview was his absolute certainty in his judgment. Eilam, who hasn’t had any inside knowledge of nuclear issues since 1985, would have us believe that he knows better than active duty Israeli intelligence chiefs and US intelligence directors about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He even thinks he knows better than the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Israel assesses that Iran already has sufficient quantities of enriched uranium to produce five atomic bombs. As Netanyahu has said, the interim nuclear deal the US and its allies signed with Iran last November only delays Iran’s bomb making capacity by six weeks. In January, James Clapper, the director of US national intelligence, agreed with Israel’s assessment. In testimony before the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence Clapper said that Iran is already a nuclear breakout state. In his words, “Tehran has made technical progress in a number of areas – including uranium enrichment, nuclear reactors and ballistic missiles – from which it could draw if it decided to build missile- deliverable nuclear weapons.” Clapper argued that this doesn’t matter because the US’s monitoring capabilities are so trustworthy and advanced that Iran wouldn’t be able to put nuclear weapons together without the US noticing.
Unfortunately there is no reason to believe Clapper is right. Indeed, Netanyahu said as much to US National Security Advisor Susan Rice when she repeated Clapper’s claim during her visit to Israel last week. And the UN agrees with Netanyahu. In two reports released in recent days, UN officials have stated that Iran has developed an advanced capacity to hide its importation of components of its nuclear program. According to a Reuters report, this includes hiding titanium tubs in steel pipes and using its petrochemical industry as a cover to obtain valves and other items for its heavy-water nuclear reactor. According to an AP report, the IAEA is also concerned because Iran is not cooperating with the watchdog group in revealing information about possible military applications of its nuclear program, or allowing the IAEA unfettered access to all nuclear sites.
Iran’s lack of transparency puts paid to the US’s claim that it can monitor all of Iran’s activities. It is far from clear that the US is even aware of all of Iran’s nuclear sites. So even if the US is capable of perfectly monitoring the known sites, it cannot know what it doesn’t know, and so may very well be monitoring the wrong sites. And yet, despite US’s acknowledgment that Iran already has breakout capacity, and despite the UN’s conclusion that the Iranians are cheating on their international commitments and bypassing sanctions through smuggling activities, Brig. Gen. Eilam, who left the nuclear business 28 years ago, feels comfortable accusing Netanyahu of deliberately misleading the public and the world community. What gives? It is hard to escape the feeling that there may be a connection between Eilam’s unhinged broadside against Netanyahu and the US’s assault on the credibility of Israel’s nuclear warnings.
On Sunday Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visited a Revolutionary Guards Corps base. There he was shown what the IRGC claims is a reverse-engineered clone of an advanced US espionage drone that Iran captured in 2011. According to Fox News, after the RAQ-170 Sentinel drone landed in Iran in 2011, the Pentagon presented US President Barack Obama with three different plans to destroy or retrieve the drone. Obama rejected all of them because “he didn’t want to do anything that could be perceived as an act of war.” During the same visit, to the IRGC base on Sunday, Khamenei told the commanders to begin mass producing ballistic missiles to use against the US. In his words, the Americans “expect us to limit our missile program while they constantly threaten Iran with military action. So this is a stupid, idiotic expectation. The Revolutionary Guards should definitely carry out their program and not be satisfied with the present level. They should mass produce. This is a main duty of all military officials.” In other words, on Sunday, a declared enemy of the US, that the director of national intelligence acknowledges already has the independent capability to produce nuclear weapons, humiliated and threatened the US.
At a minimum Iran’s capture of the US drone indicates that the US capacity to monitor Iran’s nuclear capabilities is vulnerable and imperfect. As for the ballistic missiles, they should be of utmost concern to the Europeans and the Americans. Iran doesn’t need ballistic missiles to attack Israel with nuclear weapons. It can use artillery, not to mention a human being playing the role of Enola Gay. But rather than condemn Iranian espionage and aggression, over the past week, Obama administration officials have launched a full court press againstIsrael… [To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link –Ed.]
Jerusalem Post, May 8, 2014
Grudgingly, we must admit that Iran is doing quite well. Tehran’s ayatollahs have effectively managed to hoodwink the US, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, whose representatives are now trying to reach a final deal in New York on Iran’s nuclear ambitions before the July 20 deadline. But in actual fact, more than Iran has managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the international coterie, the nations of the world desperately wish to be fooled. Iran’s interlocutors prefer to believe that by a miraculous happenstance the country has transformed itself overnight from a ruthless theocracy – whose agenda inter alia includes wiping Israel off the map – to an agreeable member of the international community.
Had self-bamboozlement not played a key role in the international attitude vis-à-vis Iran, there would be no difficulty seeing through the ruse and sweet talk. Thus, while International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors visited a uranium mine and a uranium- thickening facility in the central Iranian towns of Ardakan and Yazd, Iran banned access to the WhatsApp messaging site. It explained – without embarrassment or hesitation – that the move arose from the fact that WhatsApp is owned by a “Jewish American Zionist.”
This was a reference to the acquisition of WhatsApp two months ago by Facebook, whose founder is Mark Zuckerberg. According to Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, head of the regime’s Committee on Internet Crimes, the fact that Zuckerberg is Jewish legitimizes cracking down on a particularly popular social media site.
The astounding fact isn’t so much that Tehran’s Shi’ite rulers fear social networks and incite against Jews, but that the world’s democracies are so silent on any hate propaganda so long as its targets are Jews. Were Zuckerberg a passionately committed Zionist, it should not be held against him. Supporting Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, ought to be a source of pride and not treated as a crime. But the fact is that while Zuckerberg is Jewish by birth, he is hardly a committed Jew. If anything, this goes to the heart of contemporary Judeophobia. A Jew is hated not for what he does or what he espouses, but for his parentage. A Jew can be totally assimilated and fail to significantly identify with fellow Jews and Jewish causes, but to the eyes of the enemies of the Jewish people – even these days – he remains anathema for no other reason than his lineage. We can only express dismay that the world’s most liberal governments, among them the Obama administration, have chosen to not so much as notice the non-stop stifling of elementary freedoms in Iran and the vehement anti-Jewish pretext to which Ayatollah Khamenei’s cohorts resort for outlawing applications the regime intends to repress.
Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman of Iran’s Atomic Department, maintains that by allowing the visit to the uranium extraction and refinement sites, “Iran will be able to say that the seven-agreed measures between Iran and the Agency [IAEA] have been fulfilled. Already six steps have been taken.” This is the pose. Iran postures as an accommodating partner, oozing goodwill, and the international powers, seeking to strike a bargain, are only too happy to pretend right along that all is well on the Iranian front and that danger to the world can be avoided by easing the sanctions on Tehran. It’s easier to make believe that Iran is now ruled by a moderate regime, that it will indeed – as per its promises – redesign its Arak heavy-water reactor (to greatly limit the amount of plutonium it can produce) and that it will dilute half of its 20-percent-enriched uranium. Yet all these seeming Iranian concessions, if indeed made, are eminently reversible and will only delay the manufacture of an Iranian nuclear bomb. The true test for Iranian intentions shouldn’t be sought in the self-serving promises of its nuclear negotiators but in other spheres – including the denial of rudimentary liberties to the Iranian population and the ongoing unmitigated expressions of hate toward all Jews, no matter where and who they are.
ISRAEL CANNOT ACCEPT THE EMERGING
ACCORD BETWEEN THE US AND IRAN
Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaacov Amidror
BESA Center, April 24, 2014
Ostensibly, official US policy on Iran’s nuclear program is clear: The US will not allow Iran to produce a nuclear bomb. Moreover, President Obama has said that, for this purpose, “all options are on the table” – implying a military option as well. In addition, according to many report in American newspapers, President Obama has ordered the development of diversified US military capabilities with which to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, far beyond what existed in the previous administration – providing further evidence of the President’s seriousness. But many people do not understand the meaning behind the vague statement, “We will not allow Iran to manufacture a nuclear bomb.” When will this happen? Who will decide that ‘this’ is the time for action? How? What does “manufacture” mean?
Robert Einhorn seeks to answer these questions in a 56-page comprehensive paper just published by the Brookings Institution (Preventing a Nuclear-Armed Iran: Requirements for a Comprehensive Nuclear Agreement). This paper cannot be ignored, since until a few months ago Einhorn was one of the top officials on Iran in the Obama administration, and he is very knowledgeable on the topic. (Einhorn was the Secretary of State’s special advisor for nonproliferation and arms control. During the Clinton administration, he was assistant secretary for nonproliferation). In addition to analyzing Iran’s intentions toward nuclear weapons and discussing the principal issues in the negotiations, Einhorn outlines the key requirements for an acceptable comprehensive agreement that, in his view, “would prevent Iran from having a rapid nuclear breakout capability and deter a future Iranian decision to build nuclear weapons.”
According to Einhorn, the essence of an agreement between Iran and the P5+1 could be as follows: Iran will retain the capability to produce the material necessary for a bomb (full fuel cycle), so theoretically it will be able to produce a bomb should it decide to do so. But the agreement that the US should try to reach will include the most sophisticated and exacting controls and monitoring, which will immediately spot any breakthrough in Iran’s nuclear program. The capability that Iran will be permitted under the agreement will be greatly reduced compared with its current capability (for example, far fewer centrifuges), so that from the moment of the breach and its identification, the US will have enough time to respond with very severe sanctions, and with force too, if necessary. In order to dissuade the Iranians from advancing towards a bomb, it will be made clear to them by various means that Iran will pay a heavy price for violating the agreement, and that the US will respond quickly in the event of a violation to prevent any possibility of the Iranians from reaping the rewards of the violation.
Mr. Einhorn proposes a new world of “deterrence” – not against the use of nuclear weapons, but against producing nuclear weapons. This deterrence is needed because this approach would permit the Iranians to keep the capability to produce a nuclear weapon. The West (and Israel) will have to live with this Iranian production capability, because it is a fact which, Einhorn says, cannot be changed. In short, violating the agreement will be cause for penalizing Iran, not the fact that Iran will have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon.
In my opinion, Israel should oppose such an agreement for three reasons. 1. The proposal assumes that it will be possible to build a control and monitoring system that the Iranians won’t be able to deceive. This system will be partly built on the basis of monitoring arrangements agreed to by the Iranians, stricter than what the International Atomic Energy Agency currently carries out; and partly based on covert intelligence efforts that have been in place for many years. However, the reality in other places as well as Iran itself indicates that there is no such thing as monitoring system that cannot be sidestepped. There is no way to guarantee that the world will spot Iran’s efforts to cheat. American intelligence officials have publicly admitted that they cannot guarantee identification in real time of an Iranian breakout move to produce a nuclear weapon…
2. Assuming that a violation of a nuclear agreement is identified, will the US respond immediately? Or might the US administration be likely and naturally begin a plodding process to clarify, verify, and confirm the alleged violation? Afterwards, won’t the US, with or without its P5+1 partners enter into negotiations with Iran about the situation? Would not the US, in line with international practice, compromise under the new circumstances? Such compromise can be expected to further facilitate slow but steady progress of the Iranian nuclear effort, to the point where it will be completely impossible to stop Iran’s program. Anyone who thinks that a US administration would respond immediately to an Iranian agreement violation, without negotiations, is deluding himself. This will be especially true of a US administration years down the road in the indeterminate future, which will undoubtedly be less committed to the dictates of the agreement than its predecessor. Israel cannot accept the existential threat caused by this delusion. Our experience in this matter in clear and unequivocal…
3. The third leg on which the conciliatory approach rests is this: The deterrence of Iran from going for a nuclear “breakout.” The deterrent is based on the assumption that Iran will understand that, if a breach is identified, the US will get into the thick of things and respond extremely harshly, up to and including the use of force against Iran. Is this assumption valid in the contemporary world? Does anyone believe that the use of force is a possible option for the US? What are the chances that the US would obtain the support of the Security Council for the use of force against Iran? What are the chances that Washington would act without UN support? Is there any reason to think that at the moment of truth Iran would truly fear American military action for violating the agreement in a way that does not include an act of war or violation of the sovereignty of a neighboring state? What if the circumstances that will be chosen for violating the agreement by the Iranians will be when the US is engaged in another international crisis? In that case, would the administration really have the necessary energy to apply military force?
Today, we more or less know that the Iranians assess the likelihood of an American military action against Iran’s nuclear program as very, very low; close to negligible – unless Iran precipitates hostilities in the Persian Gulf. Why should Iran think that the chances of this will increase in the future? If the past proves anything, it proves that the chances of American force in the future will only diminish. Finally, we cannot ignore the fact that the world is dealing with Iran, a murderous Shiite revolutionary regime that seeks regional and even global hegemony; that sponsors international terrorism and stands behind the slaughter in Syria on Bashar Assad’s side; and that has purposefully deceived the West time and time again regarding its nuclear program. Thus Iran can hardly be trusted to abide by any accord with the West…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link –Ed.]
Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2014
John Kerry began the year trying to bring representatives of the Assad regime together with rebel leaders in Geneva to end the civil war in Syria. It was bound to fail. It failed. Strike one. Next, the secretary of state worked tirelessly to create a framework agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, with a view to settling their differences once and for all. It was bound to fail. It failed. Strike two. This week, U.S. negotiators and their counterparts from the P5+1—the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany—will meet in Vienna with Iranian negotiators to work out the details of a final nuclear agreement. You know where this is going.
There's been a buzz about these negotiations, with Western diplomats extolling the unfussy way their Iranian counterparts have approached the talks. Positions are said to be converging; technical solutions on subjects like the plutonium reactor in Arak are being discussed. Last month Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif said there was "50 to 60 percent agreement." All this is supposed to bode well for a deal to be concluded by the July deadline. If the Iranians are wise, they'll take whatever is on the table and give Mr. Kerry the diplomatic win he so desperately wants. Time is on Tehran's side. It can sweeten the terms of the agreement later on—including the further lifting of sanctions—through the usual two-step of provocation and negotiation.
The only thing Iran has to fear is an Israeli military strike. For that to happen, Jerusalem needs (or believes it needs) conditions that are both militarily and diplomatically permissive. By agreeing to a deal, the Iranians further restrict Israel's options without permanently restricting their own. But Iran is not wise. It is merely cunning. And fanatical. Also greedy, thanks to a long history of being deceitful and obstreperous and still getting its way without having to pay a serious price. So it will allow this round of negotiations to fail and bargain instead for an extension of the current interim agreement. It will get the extension and then play for time again. There will never be a final deal.
Why am I so confident? Listen to the man with the last word first: "They expect us to limit our missile program while they constantly threaten Iran with military action," Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Sunday. "So this is a stupid, idiotic expectation. The Revolutionary Guards should definitely carry out their program and not be satisfied with the present level. They should mass produce." Ballistic missiles are lousy weapons for anything except the rapid delivery of chemical or nuclear warheads. (The 39 Iraqi Scuds that hit Israel in 1991 killed two people.) But limiting the number and range of ballistic missiles is central to any agreement that aims to prevent Iran from having a rapid nuclear-breakout capability. Mr. Khamenei's public call to mass produce missiles is not exactly an indication of seriousness about a final deal.
Also a sign of non-seriousness was last month's call by Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, to add an additional 30,000 centrifuges to Iran's existing 19,000. "So far we have produced seven to eight tons of enriched uranium," he said. But he wants Iran to produce 30 tons, ostensibly to fuel the civilian nuclear plant at Bushehr. And that's 30 tons a year. A single ton of civilian-grade uranium suffices, with further enrichment, for a single atomic bomb. Still not getting the drift? "Iran will not retreat one step in the field of nuclear technology," said one prominent Iranian over the weekend. "We have nothing to put on the table and offer to them but transparency. That's it. Our nuclear technology is not up for negotiation." That's Iranian President Hasan Rouhani speaking. For good measure, he added that Iran would go back to producing 20% enriched uranium—which is close to weapon-grade—"whenever necessary." And he's the moderate. Even the Obama administration cannot accept a deal that allows Iran to expand its centrifuge capabilities or enrich uranium to 20%.
The hardening of Tehran's negotiating position is another reminder of the blunder the administration made when it agreed to the interim deal and then turned on Congress to prevent automatic sanctions in the event Iran failed to make a final deal. "Show that you are strong, and you will see results"—such was the advice Mr. Rouhani confidentially offered an Israeli agent posing as a U.S. official in 1986 on how to deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini. The advice is still sound. In the meantime, the administration needs to think about what it will do when Mr. Kerry strikes out. Is there a Plan B, other than the president's now trademark mix of hollow threats and soliloquies on the limits of presidential power? I doubt it. Goethe wrote that nothing is worse than aggressive stupidity, which is true. But pompous impotence surely comes in second place, and this administration combines aspects of both. The Israelis may sit still through all this. But Mr. Kerry shouldn't count on it.
Iranian Strategy Feeds Off Perceived Western Weakness: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, May 1, 2014—A further round of the nuclear talks between Iran and the West is supposed to be held in mid-May, apparently in New York (at the expert level) and Vienna (at the senior level on May 13).
Will the World Ignore Iran's Execution Binge?: Irwin Cotler, Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2014—Despite Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s repeated calls for “moderation” and “respect for human rights in his country,” executions in Iran continue at an alarming rate.
Holocaust Denial and the Iranian Regime: Reuel Marc Gerecht, Wall Street Journal, Apr. 25, 2014—Well, we know that there's at least one person who won't be marking Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday.
He's Made It Worse: Obama's Middle East: Abe Greenwald, Commentary, May 1, 2014—In the last days of George W. Bush’s presidency, the Economist delivered a damning assessment: “Abroad, George Bush has presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America’s reputation since the second world war.”
U.S. Needs to Plan For the Day After an Iran Deal: David H. Petraeus & Vance Serchuk, Washington Post, Apr. 9, 2014—Advocates of the effort to reach a negotiated settlement with Iran over its illicit nuclear activities have emphasized the benefits an agreement could bring by peacefully and verifiably barring Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.
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