Friday, September 2, 2016

Eye on Iran: Think Tank Says Iran Given 'Secret' Exemptions to Nuclear Deal


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A frequent critic of the Iran nuclear deal said Thursday that the United States and its negotiating partners have allowed Tehran to exceed agreed-upon caps for stockpiles of enriched uranium and other materials. David Albright, the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said key "exemptions" to the deal's limits were made in what he characterized as "secret" meetings of the Joint Commission. That is the body established to decide issues that arise in implementing the deal. Its members are Iran and the countries that negotiated the agreement - the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, as well as the European Union. "These decisions, which are written down, amount to additional secret or confidential documents linked to the JCPOA," said the report that Albright wrote with senior policy analyst Andrea Stricker, referring to the deal's official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. "Moreover, the Joint Commission's secretive decision making process risks advantaging Iran by allowing it to try to systematically weaken the JCPOA. It appears to be succeeding in several key areas." The White House and the State Department swiftly denied Albright's charges, saying Iran has not exceeded the cap of 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium... "The fundamental issue, there's a lot more happening in secret than we ever signed up for," Albright said in a telephone interview.


Hillary Clinton is siding with leading Senate Democrats in a looming fight over expiring sanctions on Iran. In a statement to The Hill, a spokesman for Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, called for Congress to renew the expiring Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) without adding additional measures to combat recent aggressive behavior in the wake of the international nuclear deal. "Hillary Clinton supports a clean reauthorization of the Iran Sanctions Act and believes Congress should get this done in short order when they return from recess," Jesse Lehrich said. "She has always made clear that while the historic deal passed last year represents a crucial step forward toward preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, we must proceed with a 'distrust and verify' approach," he said. "Maintaining the infrastructure to immediately snap back sanctions if Iran violates the terms of the deal is essential. "Congress should put partisanship aside and send the president a clean ISA reauthorization bill for his signature."


State-run Shipping Corp. of India Ltd., struggling for respite from an industry downturn, plans to revive a 40-year-old joint venture with an Iranian company. The recent easing of sanctions on Iran opened the way to resuscitating Irano Hind Shipping Co., which potentially offers access to Central Asian markets such as Kazakhstan, according to the Indian company's Chairman B. B. Sinha. "We don't want this company to just die out," Sinha said in an interview on Wednesday, referring to the joint venture. "The other partner, Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, has got great presence in the Caspian Sea."

OPINION & ANALYSIS


Socrates is rumored to have said that the only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing, and maybe we should adopt a version of the Greek philosopher's motto when it comes to the nuclear deal with Iran. To wit, we are learning again that what the Obama Administration says Iran can do under the agreement, and what Iran is allowed to do, are almost never the same. The latest discrepancy was revealed Thursday in a report by David Albright and Andrea Stricker of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a think tank in Washington D.C. that specializes in nuclear issues. The agreement specifies that Iran is to limit its stockpile of reactor-grade, low-enriched uranium (LEU) to no more than 300 kilograms for 15 years. Tehran shipped more than 11 tons of LEU to Russia last year, and the Administration has trumpeted the Islamic Republic's supposed compliance with the deal as a way of justifying wider sanctions relief. But as Mr. Albright and Ms. Stricker note, Iran's "compliance" came about thanks to a series of secretive exemptions and loopholes that the Administration and the deal's other signatories created for the mullahs sometime last year. Had those exemptions and loopholes not been created out of thin air, the authors report, "some of Iran's nuclear facilities would not have been in compliance" with the deal. Among the exemptions: Iran was allowed to keep more than 300 kilos of low-enriched uranium provided it was in various "waste forms." The deal was also supposed to cap Iran's production of heavy water at 130 tons, but another loophole now allows Iran to exceed that. In a third exemption, Iran was allowed to maintain 19 large radiation containment chambers, or hot cells, which are supposed to be used for producing medical isotopes but can be "misused for secret, mostly small-scale plutonium separation efforts." The White House has waved off the ISIS report by insisting it "did not and will not allow Iran to skirt" its commitments. The non-denial would be more credible if the Administration hadn't last year agreed to a secretive process in which Iran was allowed to inspect its own nuclear-related military facilities.


The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) placed detailed limitations on facets of Iran's nuclear program that needed to be met by Implementation Day, which took place on January 16, 2016.  Most of the conditions were met by Iran.  However, we have learned that some nuclear stocks and facilities were not in accordance with JCPOA limits on Implementation Day, but in anticipation the Joint Commission had earlier and secretly exempted them from the JCPOA limits.  The exemptions and in one case, a loophole, involved the low enriched uranium (LEU) cap of 300 kilograms (kg), some of the near 20 percent LEU, the heavy water cap, and the number of large hot cells allowed to remain in Iran.  One senior knowledgeable official stated that if the Joint Commission had not acted to create these exemptions, some of Iran's nuclear facilities would not have been in compliance with the JCPOA by Implementation Day. Recently the Joint Commission created a Technical Working Group to consider further exemptions to Iran's stock of 3.5 percent low enriched uranium.  This cap is set at 300 kg of LEU hexafluoride but Iran apparently has or could exceed the cap if no further exemptions are granted by the Joint Commission. The decisions of the Joint Commission have not been announced publicly.  The Obama administration informed Congress of key Joint Commission decisions on Implementation Day but in a confidential manner.  These decisions, which are written down, amount to additional secret or confidential documents linked to the JCPOA.  Since the JCPOA is public, any rationale for keeping these exemptions secret appears unjustified.  Moreover, the Joint Commission's secretive decision making process risks advantaging Iran by allowing it to try to systematically weaken the JCPOA.  It appears to be succeeding in several key areas. Given the technical complexity and public importance of the various JCPOA exemptions and loopholes, the administration's policy to maintain secrecy interferes in the process of establishing adequate Congressional and public oversight of the JCPOA.  This is particularly true concerning potentially agreement-weakening decisions by the Joint Commission.  As a matter of policy, the United States should agree to any exemptions or loopholes in the JCPOA only if the decisions are simultaneously made public.
  

The cold hand of Iran is more prevalent in this war than is generally understood, a perception that General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), would not wish changed. One rare admission by Tehran that it was involved in the conflict came in March when Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri said that Tehran was willing to help Houthi rebels "in any way it can, and to any level necessary" against the Saudi-led coalition. Tehran is also suspected of being behind the Houthis' recent rejection of a U.N. peace plan in favour of creating its own "supreme political council" to challenge the legitimate government. More alarming is the role Iran is suspected of playing in advising the Houthis on battlefield tactics... The support, therefore, that the Houthis enjoy from their northern neighbour Iran is very real, be it political, propaganda, psychological, hands-on training, specialist advisors, weaponry, sanctuary or financial support. Without it, the rebel cause would probably slump... Yemen might not take centre stage for the moment - that honour rests with Iraq and Syria. But the West needs to understand that Iran's involvement in Yemen is part of a wider regional conflict, one that Tehran hopes to win by overthrowing the old order and replacing it with one  where Iran is better placed to dominate the region.






Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email press@uani.com.

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.

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