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TOP STORIES
The United States and Iran on Thursday clashed openly
at the U.N. atomic watchdog for the first time since they signed a
landmark nuclear deal last year, differing over Tehran's repeated
testing of one of the deal's less strictly defined limits. The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is policing the
deal, said Iran's overstepping of the limit on its stock of a
sensitive material for the second time this year risked undermining
countries' support for the agreement... "Iran must strictly
adhere to all commitments and technical measures for their
duration," U.S. ambassador to the IAEA Laura Holgate said in a
statement to the agency's quarterly Board of Governors meeting...
"We note with concern Iran's accumulation of heavy water in
excess of the limit set forth in the JCPOA of 130 metric
tonnes," Holgate said, using the abbreviation for the deal's
full name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action... Iran said the
issue was not that clear-cut. "Where is (the) limit?"
Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, told reporters on the
sidelines of the board meeting, adding that the country was preparing
to export more than the 5 tonnes of heavy water it originally
informed the IAEA of. "The JCPOA is very clear," he added.
"It says that the needs of Iran are estimated (to be) 130
tonnes. Who is the native English speaker to tell me what estimated
means?"
European governments are launching a concerted appeal
to persuade President-elect Donald Trump to not abandon the Iran
nuclear deal or NATO's tough stance toward Russia, warning of dire
consequences that could raise the risk of war and weaken the
transatlantic alliance. In a closed-door meeting this week, Foreign
Policy has learned, diplomats from Europe, Canada, and other allied
nations raised their concerns about the course of Trump's
foreign-policy priorities with a key member of the president-elect's
transition team. The European delegates told Trump advisor James
Carafano that they hoped the new administration would continue to
embrace shared values, including upholding human rights and a shared
defense policy with NATO at its core. During the private meeting
Monday, the Europeans also asked Carafano about the new
administration's approach to the Iran nuclear deal, according to an
official with knowledge of details of the exchange and who summarized
it for FP. Foreign delegates emerged from the meeting with no idea of
Trump's plans for Iran, the official said... U.S. lawmakers say the
Trump team has yet to explain its plans on the Iran nuclear accord,
but Republicans expect the new administration to take a much tougher
line toward Tehran.
The Republican-led House has acted decisively to bar
the sale of commercial aircraft to Iran, a move that would scuttle
deals already authorized by the Obama administration and potentially
worth billions of dollars. By 243-174 vote on Thursday, lawmakers
passed legislation that would prohibit the Treasury Department from
issuing the licenses U.S. banks would need to complete the
transactions. The House bill seeks to counter the department's
decision in September to grant aviation giants Boeing and Airbus
permission to sell the passenger planes to Tehran. The bill must now
clear the Senate, where the measure would face stiff opposition from
Democrats. President Barack Obama would veto the bill if it reached
his desk, according to the White House... The Treasury Department
said the licenses granted to Boeing and Airbus contained "strict
conditions to ensure the planes will be used exclusively for
commercial passenger use and cannot be resold or transferred to a
designated entity." But Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., called the
aircraft sales a "scandal." He harshly criticized Boeing
and Airbus for seeking to do business with Iran. "We need to
make sure that the American financial system is not complicit in this
deal," Roskam said. "We need to make sure that American
taxpayers are not subsidizing this deal."
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working
to win from Donald Trump what he failed to wring from Barack Obama: a
harder line against Iran. Aides to Netanyahu say the two men plan to
meet in the first half of next year, probably by March, and the Israeli
leader is already huddling with national security advisers to
formulate a strategy. While the goal may stop short of trying to kill
the multilateral nuclear deal, Netanyahu is expected to tell Trump
that the U.S. needs to take a harder line against Iran's military
program and lead a more concerted global effort to keep the Islamic
Republic's regional aspirations in check, a senior Israeli official
said. That may include stronger retaliation and sanctions against
Iranian ballistic missile development and greater efforts to block
Iran's growing clout in the region via proxies in Syria, Lebanon and
the Gaza Strip, the official said. "The urgent task is to stop
Iran from becoming a superpower in the region, something that has
been occurring for some time now," said retired Major General
Yaakov Amidror, Netanyahu's former national security adviser.
"The prime minister will argue, first and foremost, that the
U.S. should work to diminish the partnership between Russia and Iran
in the region."
OPINION & ANALYSIS
President-elect Trump has been emphatic that
destroying ISIS must be an urgent priority, not Obama's slow-motion
approach that has simply allowed ISIS to continue recruiting adherents
and training and deploying terrorists throughout the West. In
addition, however, a Trump anti-ISIS strategy must also correct
Obama's misguided reliance on the Baghdad government, which has
become little more than an Iranian puppet. In this complex
multi-sided war, the defeat of any combatant inevitably advantages
all the others. The goal should be to destroy ISIS while benefiting
Iran to the least extent possible. Obama's approach, by contrast,
seems aimed at enhancing the benefits to Iran. Indeed, the hardest
question of all may be: What comes after ISIS is defeated? Sunni
Arabs who previously supported ISIS (or accepted it because they
could not resist) will not again be quietly relegated to the tender
mercies of an Iran-dominated Iraqi government or Bashar al-Assad's
regime in Syria... In the midst of this wasteland that has developed
over the past eight years, Israel and America's Arab friends are
desperately waiting for a strong American president who understands
who his friends are. President-elect Trump can change the regional
political dynamic quickly, signaling that US elections do truly have
consequences. One key step would be to abrogate the Iran nuclear deal
in his first days in office.
In a recent editorial on possible nominations for
secretary of state, National Review's editors repeated the notion
that by voting in favor of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of
2015 (INARA), Congress somehow "facilitated" the deal's
path through Congress. That notion is based on a fundamental
misunderstanding of our Constitution and the relative powers of
Congress and the president in foreign policy. And it's important for
conservatives to get this right. Many people think that Congress
ought to have "forced" the president to submit the Iran
deal as a treaty. In fact, Congress had no way to do that, because
the president was misusing waiver authorities granted in prior
sanctions and therefore didn't need Congress to implement the deal at
all. Without INARA, Congress might never even have seen the deal and
would certainly never have voted, by bipartisan majorities in both
houses, to reject it. The fact that 98 members of the U.S. Senate and
400 members of the House voted to force President Obama to submit the
Iran nuclear deal to congressional review was a significant defeat
for the Obama administration.
After years of negotiation brought the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) into being, the results of the
U.S. presidential election threw its future into question overnight.
Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump declared his
intent to dismantle the "disastrous" and
"catastrophic" deal, which limits Iran's nuclear weapons
program, for the greater good of the United States. Regional allies -
including a Saudi prince - have urged caution. Iranians, meanwhile,
are waiting to see how the next U.S. administration will change
relations between Washington and Tehran. Though Trump's aides have
since clarified that the president-elect will not necessarily follow
through on his campaign promises exactly, it remains unclear what
actions he will take. Legally, the president has the authority to
pull the United States out of the framework; the U.S. Congress did
not have to approve the executive order that put the deal in place,
nor would it have to approve a decision to withdraw from it. But any
change to the deal would directly affect the countries with which
Iran does business, including traditional U.S. allies in Europe, and
could jeopardize the delicate security situation in the Middle East.
With these factors in mind, the next administration will probably
take a more measured approach to the deal.
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