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STORIES
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.
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