An Object Lesson: Iranians Are Already Lying

Satellite Imagery Reveals Iran Lying, Covering Up Nuclear Activity at Parchin

By Ahuva Balofsky August 10, 2015 , 8:30 am

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“Then I desired to know the truth concerning the fourth beast, which was diverse from all of them, exceeding terrible, whose teeth were of iron, and its nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet…” (Daniel 7:19)

image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/parchin-nuclear-site-iran-2.jpg

Satellite image of the Iranian Parchin nuclear site, September 2004. (Photo: Space Imaging Middle East)

Iran’s claim that it is performing road work at its Parchin military site came under question Friday by a prominent US think tank, which noted independent satellite imagery did not support the explanation, Israel Hayom reported. Instead, the Institute for Science and International Security said it appears the Islamic Republic is trying to sanitize the site ahead of announced international inspections.

The Parchin site has faced the suspicions of many countries as being used for nuclear experimentation, a claim Iran flatly denies. Recent vehicle movement at the site was explained away as road work near the Mamloo Dam.

The Institute for Science and International Security, however, issued a fresh analysis of the situation, saying in a statement, “Commercial satellite imagery does not support the Iranian explanation. [The Institute] analyzed commercially available satellite imagery taken on July 12, 19, and 26, 2015 but did not find any visible signatures related to road work on the road near the dam.”

The group also found it suspicious for Iran to “park vehicles three kilometers south of the dam and at the one site that would create intense concern and suspicion about Iran’s intentions to comply with the recently negotiated [deal].

“There is no support in the imagery for the Iranian explanation,” the Institute’s new analysis said. “Iran’s explanation appears to be that the vehicles at the suspect site were there inadvertently, but this explanation strains believability.”

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The Islamic Republic rejected the Institute’s conclusions.  Representatives of the Iranian UN mission had nothing to add in response, while Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif Saturday called the Institute’s statement “lies” spread by opponents of the nuclear deal.

“We said that the activities in Parchin are related to road construction,” Zarif was quoted as saying by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. “They [opponents of the deal] have spread these lies before. Their goal is to damage the agreement.”

The Institute was quick to point out on Twitter that it was not one of the deal’s opponents. “We are neutral,” the think tank posted.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) requested access to the Parchin military site as part of the nuclear deal signed on July 14. The Institute believes Iran is trying to clean up the site ahead of any IAEA inspection.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker rejected the Institute’s explanation. “This is an artificial dispute to distract the world,” Ali Larijani was quoted on Saturday by the Fars News agency as saying. He accused Israel, which has publicly decried the accord reached between Iran and the P5+1 powers, of trying to stop it from being implemented.

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/46606/satellite-imagery-reveals-iran-lying-covering-up-nuclear-activity-parchin-middle-east/#AT3G5WfWJtyB36uD.99

More Concessions By Obama Administration. What Will They Do To Get An Agreement With Iran?

Is the Obama Administration Forfeiting IAEA Inspections of Iranian Military Sites?

 June 26, 2015   0 Comment

Author(s):  Yaakov Lappin
Source:  Special to IPT News.     Article date: June 25th, 2015

The coming days represent a fateful stage in U.S.-led attempts to reach a diplomatic solution with Iran over its nuclear program, and disturbing signs are emerging that the Obama Administration is prepared to relinquish demands by the international community for Iranian transparency.

Negotiators from the five permanent United Nations Security Council countries, plus Germany (known as the P5+1 countries) had hoped for a smooth final round of talks leading to a comprehensive agreement.

Instead, they find themselves facing a firm Iranian refusal to allow international inspectors to visit military installations in Iran where suspected work had been carried out on a military nuclear weapons program.

Iran is also refusing to back down from its refusal to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to question Iranian nuclear scientists about possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran's nuclear program.

As crunch time looms ahead of the June 30 deadline, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has clearly signaled that he will not budge on his refusal to let the IAEA gain access to suspicious sites and to key nuclear research personnel. If negotiators cave to these demands, the damage to global arms control efforts, and to international security as a whole, will be significant.

“We will never yield to pressure … We will not accept unreasonable demands … Iran will not give access to its (nuclear) scientists. We will not allow the privacy of our nuclear scientists or any other important issue to be violated,” Khamenei recently told Iranian state TV.

“I will not let foreigners talk to our scientists and to interrogate our dear children … who brought us this extensive (nuclear) knowledge,” he said.

Massoud Jazzayeri, deputy chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, echoed the Supreme Leader's position, saying that that permission “will definitely never be issued for any kind of access to the military centers, even if it runs counter to the acceptance of the additional protocol (to the NPT) … Foreigners' visits to defense and military centers as well as obtaining information about the related equipment and tactics are against the orders (of the commander-in-chief Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei) and also the demands of the entire Iranian nation.”

“Everyone should know that in our view, visiting the military centers is completely impossible since it is among our redlines and we will not allow anyone to opine on such issues,” the deputy Iranian chief of staff added.

If the international community accepts Khamenei's stance, it means it will effectively force the IAEA to close the case on previous Iranian attempts to gain information on how to build a nuclear warhead.

The signs from Washington indicate that the Obama administration may be prepared to acquiesce.

“We're not fixated on Iran accounting for what they did at some point. We know what they did. We're concerned about going forward,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in recent remarks, revealing just show just how far the administration is prepared to go to reach a deal.

The State Department then tried to walk back Kerry's remarks, insisting that the U.S. has not shifted its stance and continues to demand that Iran addresses IAEA concerns. But these efforts to play down a shift in the White House's stance are not particularly convincing.

Today, the New York Times reported on a letter sent to President Obama by five former advisers expressing their concern that administration concessions put it on a path toward a deal that “may fall short of meeting the administration's own standard of a 'good' agreement” and laying out a series of minimum requirements that Iran must agree to in coming days for them to support a final deal.

Others who remain skeptical include the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. General (ret.) Michael T. Flynn, who on June 10 told the Joint House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Subcommittees that the would-be agreement “suffers from severe deficiencies.”

The deficiencies, Flynn, said, included “the matter of incomplete verification. Iran's leaders made it clear the furthest they will go is to allow international inspectors (IAEA) only 'managed access' to nuclear facilities, and only with significant prior notification. This makes it nearly impossible, as a matter of full transparency, to have real 'eyes on' the state of Iranian nuclear development to include their missile program….Iran's nuclear program has significant – and not fully disclosed – military dimensions. The P5+1 dialogue with Iran has glossed over a number of such programs (including warhead miniaturization blueprints) in pursuit of an agreement.”

The former DIA director warned that “it is prudent to conclude that there are elements of Iran's nuclear program that still remain hidden from view… Giving Iran a pass on these issues would send a deeply troubling signal to the nuclear Non-Proliferations of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT).”

Such a willingness to forgo any semblance of Iranian transparency will surely set off alarm bells in Middle Eastern capitals threatened by Iran, from Jerusalem to Riyadh to Cairo. In fact, the European Union has reportedly indicated that it would reject any proposal for a deal that omits IAEA inspections of Iranian sites and the questioning of nuclear scientists.

The EU has pressed Iran on the need to cooperate with IAEA monitoring. It publicly voiced its disappointment last year when an IAEA report said Tehran refused to answer questions about PMDs, and called on Iran to cooperate with the UN agency.

Although the U.S. is by far the most influential member of the P5+1, and is the lead negotiator within the group, Washington would still require a consensus agreement from the other members in order to conclude any deal.

In order to try to allay concerns, CIA Director John Brennan came to Israel this month with a message, saying that the IAEA's supervision would have been symbolic, and that monitoring by state intelligence agencies provides the real guarantee against future Iranian attempts to break out to the bomb, not IAEA inspections.

According to a report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Brennan had hoped to convince Israel – and through it, the EU – of the adequacy of intelligence monitoring for keeping tabs on Iran's nuclear program, and the lack of any real need for IAEA inspections at military sites.

Whether or not that claim is true, it still fails to deal with the fallout such an arrangement would trigger in the region, with its casual abandonment of past breaches of the NPT, and the ease with which arms control enforcement is dropped.

Such a development could easily be interpreted by Sunni Arab states, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as a green light to violate the NPT, too.

These states and others, which are not very stable and face challenges from radical Islamists, could begin work on their own nuclear program, to provide a counter to their threatening Shi'ite rival.

Should a nuclear arms race in the world's most unstable region break out, it would pose an enormous challenge to international security. It was supposed to be one of the things an agreement with Iran would avoid.

Yaakov Lappin is the Jerusalem Post's military and national security affairs correspondent, and author of The Virtual Caliphate (Potomac Books), which proposes that jihadis on the internet have established a virtual Islamist state.

If It's Tuesday, The Iranians Are Cheating! They Are Also Cheating The Other Six Days Of The Week. How Can One Do A Deal With A Country That Is Always Hiding Assets, Refusing Inspections And So On And So On!

IRAN'S CHEATING

BY | APRIL 20, 2015 · 12:00 AM

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Author(s):  Michael Makovsky
Source:  Weekly Standard, Vol. 20, No. 30.     Article date: April 20th, 2015

Is President Barack Obama right that the so-called framework nuclear agreement with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) announced on April 2, will “cut off every pathway Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon”? Some will assess the truth of his statement by crunching the centrifuge and uranium stockpile numbers. However vital such analysis will be, it is important not to lose sight of the nuke for the centrifuges. For integral to Obama’s argument is his claim that this deal “provides the best possible defense against Iran’s ability to pursue a nuclear weapon in secret. .  .  . If Iran cheats, the world will know,” and “If we see something suspicious, we will inspect it.” But the promised inspections regime will not be intrusive enough to detect Iranian cheating or to thwart any breakout attempts in time.

Iran has a long and proud history of cheating on its international nuclear agreements. Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who once monitored Iran’s nuclear program, observed in 2013: “If there is no undeclared installation today .  .  . it will be the first time in 20 years that Iran doesn’t have one.” Indeed, Iran’s main enrichment facility at Natanz was a covert facility that was only discovered in 2002, by the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian opposition group. A year later, the European Union struck a deal with Iran to prevent it from spinning its centrifuges and beginning to enrich uranium. Yet for much of the deal, Iran was busy mastering its uranium supply chain. “While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran,” wrote Iran’s nuclear negotiator and now president Hassan Rouhani, “we were installing equipment in parts of the [uranium conversion] facility at Isfahan. .  .  . In fact, by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Isfahan.” In 2009, the world learned of yet another clandestine enrichment plant, under a mountain at Fordow, that Iran was trying to construct.

Now, however, President Obama would have us believe that Iran is a changed country. Pushing back against “skeptics [who] argued that Iran would cheat, that we could not verify their compliance, and the interim agreement would fail,” the president insisted on April 2 that “Iran has met all of its obligations.” This is demonstrably false.

In the past year alone Iran has violated its international agreements at least three times. First, even though the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) prohibited Iran from enriching uranium in any centrifuges that were not in use at the time the deal went into effect in January 2014, last November the IAEA caught Iran operating a new centrifuge—worse still, it was an advanced IR-5 model. Second, the JPOA required Iran to process any low-enriched uranium it produced during the deal’s term from the gaseous form used for enrichment into a solid that can be used as reactor fuel, so that it would not be readily available for further enrichment and potential breakout. As of February 2015, Iran had an excess of some 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, in violation of the deal’s terms. Third, in parallel to the JPOA, the IAEA and Iran signed a Framework for Cooperation under which Iran agreed to answer outstanding IAEA concerns about the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program. Iran answered only one question to the IAEA’s satisfaction and, for the past six months, has been stonewalling on the rest. This recent record of cheating, while Iran was negotiating a comprehensive arrangement and thus incentivized to be good, bodes poorly for the future under a new accord.

Obama claims, “International inspectors will have unprecedented access not only to Iranian nuclear facilities, but to the entire supply chain that supports Iran’s nuclear program—from uranium mills that provide the raw materials, to the centrifuge production and storage facilities that support the program.” He added, “With this deal, Iran will face more inspections than any other country in the world.”

Heretofore, the largest and most intrusive monitoring effort ever set up was the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) created after that 1990-91 Gulf war to verify the dismantlement of Iraq’s WMD program. It had dedicated personnel based in Baghdad with their own helicopters and even a U-2 spy plane and with authority granted by the U.N. Security Council and backed by the U.S. military to go anywhere at any time to inspect anything. And yet it failed to gather an accurate understanding of the capabilities that Saddam Hussein did or did not have. As Charles Duelfer, who served as UNSCOM’s deputy executive chairman, recently wrote, “UNSCOM and the IAEA after more than seven years of operations inside Iraq could not verify that Saddam had completely disarmed.”

The inspections regime contemplated in the JCPOA seems woeful in comparison. Its central component is an understanding that Iran will “implement the Additional Protocol of the IAEA.” Every signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including Iran, is legally obligated to sign a safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Recognizing that the original agreement, which dates to the 1970s, was insufficient to monitor modern nuclear programs, the IAEA developed added measures in the 1990s, known as the Additional Protocol. Applying these to Iran would represent a major advance beyond the current, inadequate inspections regime. But there are problems.

First, there is no such thing as the Additional Protocol. There is a model Additional Protocol that the IAEA uses as a basis for negotiating a specific agreement with each individual country tailored to its situation. Indeed, this provision opens the door to yet another round of haggling with Iran, making it impossible to know what exact measures Iran will end up being bound by.

But we do know, and this is the second concern, that no Additional Protocol contains the sort of “anytime, anywhere” inspections that UNSCOM provided for and that experts agree is necessary to police Iran’s program. What an Additional Protocol would likely contain, according to the framework agreement, is an expansion of the number of facilities subject to inspections—to include Iran’s uranium mines and centrifuge factories—and stricter requirements for advance notice of any nuclear facilities Iran plans to construct.

If Iran decides to sprint for a nuke, however, it won’t do so in a uranium mine; it will do it at one of its enrichment plants, most likely a clandestine plant, potentially hidden on a military base. It is precisely such sites that the IAEA has been trying, unsuccessfully, to get access to for years. Of particular concern has been the Parchin military complex, where the IAEA suspects Iran tested high-explosives for a nuclear weapon. Yet inspectors have never been allowed to set foot on the site, watching instead as satellite imagery showed Iran demolishing the suspected site and paving it over to conceal any evidence of its cheating. The Additional Protocol will be no more successful in getting Iran to open up its facilities to inspectors. Obama claims that “Iran’s past efforts to weaponize its program will be addressed,” but that is so vague as to be meaningless. In fact, Iran claims the JCPOA does not require inspections of military facilities and such access will not be granted, with the defense minister calling it a “red line.” Without full knowledge about possible military dimensions of Iran’s program and access to all of its facilities, whether they are declared nuclear sites or not, it will be impossible to conduct proper verification.

Third, there is the ambiguity of the term “implement.” Iran has previously “implemented” an Additional Protocol. In 2003, about the same time it was cheating on its agreement with the Europeans, Iranian leaders signed an Additional Protocol with the IAEA. Indeed, for the next two years they actually observed it. But in early 2006, Iran announced that it would no longer abide by the Additional Protocol and curtailed inspectors’ access. They could well try to pull the same stunt again. And according to a “fact sheet” released by the Iranian foreign ministry, Iran believes it has only committed “to implement the Additional Protocol on a voluntary and temporary basis for the sake of transparency and confidence building.”

U.S. intelligence services have a dismal track record of detecting clandestine nuclear efforts and predicting breakout—in North Korea, Pakistan, and India, for example. Israeli security officials have admitted in private that they too have significant gaps in their knowledge about Iran’s facilities. This is not an indictment of American or Israeli intelligence capabilities; it is simply very challenging to detect covert nuclear activities. Permitting Iran to keep its vast nuclear infrastructure largely intact, as the JCPOA does, only compounds the challenges the United States and the world will have in detecting Iranian cheating.

An intrusive inspections and verification regime is the sine qua non of any arms agreement, especially with a congenital cheater like the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unfortunately, the JCPOA fails on this crucial issue, by not demanding complete information about the extent of Iran’s past nuclear weapons research and eschewing “anytime, anywhere” inspections of all facilities. In other words, it is currently worth no more than the paper it might have been written on.

Michael Makovsky is chief executive officer of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and author of Churchill’s Promised Land (Yale University Press).

Arak Heavy Water Plant Construction Continues, Plutonium Enrichment Stops Below Nuke Weapon Grade But Easily Upgraded. Are We Being Played For Suckers? Yup!

Iran invites UN experts to Arak heavy water plant

(Vahid Salemi, File/ Associated Press ) - FILE - In this Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012, file photo, Iranians walk past shops in the old Bazaar of Tehran, Iran. The Iranian economy has been battered since 2011, when the U.S. and Europe broadened economic sanctions against Iran to include crucial oil and banking sectors. But the sanctions relief offered to Iran by the U.S. and five world powers in November 2013 has already begun to boost morale in the business community

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By Associated Press, Published: November 28

VIENNA — After keeping away inspectors for two years, Iran is inviting the U.N. nuclear agency to a facility linked to a still unfinished reactor that could produce enough plutonium for up to two warheads a year.

Announcing the invitation Thursday, Yukiya Amano, who heads the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said the IAEA will accept the offer to visit the heavy water plant in the central city of Arak. His announcement comes less than a week after a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers.

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He also said his agency first learned that it would be tasked with supervising Iranian compliance with that deal as an agreement was struck over the weekend. Amano didn’t give a date for when the IAEA would start implementing its role under the Geneva deal, but suggested that it would take some time, in part because his agency wasn’t informed earlier to prepare for the mission.

The invitation for Dec. 8 is not part of the six-power deal, which commits Iran to freeze its nuclear program for six months in return for limited relief from economic sanctions. But it shows Tehran is starting to comply with separate commitments to open previously off-limits sites to IAEA inspectors.

The status of the Arak plant had been one of the major issues during negotiations leading to last weekend’s agreement in Geneva.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Wednesday some construction will continue at Arak. When completed, Arak could produce plutonium which could be used for nuclear weapons, although Iran insists its program is entirely for peaceful purposes such as producing electricity, and for scientific and medical research.

Iran had scheduled completion for next year, a timetable described by experts as too ambitious.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Zarif’s comments didn’t constitute a violation of the agreement, even though Iran effectively pledged to freeze advancement at the facility.

Iran’s decision to allow inspectors to visit the Arak heavy water plant was announced by IAEA chief Yukiya Amano to the agency’s 35-nation board. It will enable inspectors to get a clearer picture of how much material the plant is producing and other technical details.

IAEA employees have had some access to the reactor, 250 kilometers (150 miles) southwest of Tehran. But they haven’t been able to inspect the plant on the same site since 2011. Heavy water helps control nuclear activity of the fuel rods used in some reactor types.

Beyond commitments on the Arak reactor under the Geneva nuclear deal, Iran also agreed to limit uranium enrichment. It pledged to stop enriching uranium to a stage that is only a technical step away from concentration needed to arm nuclear warheads and to keep its stockpile of lower enriched uranium from expanding.

A senior Iranian official said Thursday that Iran would increase its low-level uranium enrichment. Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akhbar Salehi told the IRNA news agency that centrifuges previously used for higher-level enrichment would now be turned to produce low-enriched uranium.

He didn’t elaborate. But the Geneva deal doesn’t prohibit Iran from making more enriched uranium. It stipulates only that all newly-produced material must be turned into oxide, which is difficult to reconvert.

Amano’s agency will expand its monitoring of Iran as part of the Geneva deal to make sure Tehran lives up to its commitments.

Diplomats told The Associated Press on Wednesday the agency probably won’t be in a position to start on that role until January. While giving no dates, Amano indirectly confirmed some delays, telling the meeting Thursday that implementation will “take some time.”

“I cannot tell you when we will be ready,” Amano later told reporters, saying his agency needed intensive preparation for a “quite complicated task” to do a proper job.

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