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NYT: "Iran was actively designing a
nuclear weapon until 2009, more recently than the United States and other
Western intelligence agencies have publicly acknowledged, according to a
final report by the United Nations nuclear inspection agency. The report,
based on partial answers Iran provided after reaching its nuclear accord
with the West in July, concluded that Tehran conducted 'computer modeling
of a nuclear explosive device' before 2004. It then resumed the efforts
during President Bush's second term and continued them into President
Obama's first year in office. But while the International Atomic Energy
Agency detailed a long list of experiments Iran had conducted that were
'relevant to a nuclear explosive device,' it found no evidence that the
effort succeeded in developing a complete blueprint for a bomb. In part,
that may have been because Iran refused to answer several essential
questions, and appeared to have destroyed potential evidence in others...
Mr. Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, concluded this year
that it was more important to secure a deal that will, if carried out fully,
prevent Iran from gaining the material to build a bomb for at least 15
years than making it admit to past activities. So, the report's
publication allows the deal to go through, no matter how definitive or
inconclusive the final result. But Iran's refusal to cooperate on central
points could set a dangerous precedent as the United Nations agency tries
to convince other countries with nuclear technology that they must fully
answer queries to determine if they have a secret weapons program. The
agency's bottom-line assessment was that Iran had made a 'coordinated
effort' to design and conduct tests on nuclear weapon components before
2003 - echoing a United States national intelligence estimate published
in 2007 - and that it had conducted 'some activities' thereafter. 'These
activities did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies' and
the acquisition of technical capabilities, the agency concluded. The
efforts ended after 2009... Tehran gave no substantive answers to one
quarter of the dozen specific questions or documents it was asked about,
leaving open the question of how much progress it had made... Iran's
refusal to answer some of the questions also does not portend well for
transparency about its activities... 'Prior to 2003 they had a full-scale
Manhattan Project,' said Gary Samore, Mr. Obama's top nuclear
proliferation expert in the first term." http://t.uani.com/1lyvts2
WSJ: "The Obama administration said
it expects to start lifting sanctions on Iran as early as January after
the United Nations' nuclear watchdog found no credible evidence that
Tehran has recently engaged in atomic-weapons activity. But the agency
reported that the country had pursued a program in secret until 2009,
longer than previously believed. The mixed findings in the report, which
also indicated that Iran showed limited cooperation with investigators,
fueled critics who said the July nuclear deal between Iran and six world
powers, as well as the White House's move on Wednesday, were too easy on
Tehran. Nonetheless, senior U.S. officials said they expected the
International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors to vote
this month to formally close its decadelong probe of Iran's suspected
past weapons work. International sanctions on Iran could then be lifted
as early as January, U.S. officials said, once Tehran completes
additional steps required to constrain its broader nuclear program. 'Iran
has provided what [the IAEA] says was sufficient,' said a senior U.S.
official working on the implementation of the Iran deal. 'We had not
expected a full confession [by Iran], nor did we need one.' ... Current
and former officials said they believed Iran's nuclear-weapons program
was highly compartmentalized, making it essential to gain access to
officials throughout the overall process. But officials briefed on the
agency's probe said Tehran refused to grant access to Mr. Fakhrizadeh and
most of the other top scientists. Nuclear experts said the agency would
face difficulties implementing the nuclear agreement if it doesn't know
the full extent of Iran's past nuclear work. They stressed that Tehran's
unwillingness to fully cooperate with the agency raised serious doubts
about its commitment to respect the agreement in the long term... U.S.
officials said the priority now is implementing the July nuclear
agreement, which is designed to allow the agency much greater access to
Iran's nuclear sites and procurement networks. They said this would
insure the U.S. and the IAEA are aware of any future attempts to pursuing
nuclear weapons once the agreement, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action, goes into effect. 'The JCPOA is, by definition, a forward-looking
document,' said a second U.S. official. 'We do know what they were doing'
in the past." http://t.uani.com/1TA8Y1q
TASS
(Russia): "Russia
has begun the supplies of S-300 air defense systems to Iran, Russian
presidential aide for military-technical cooperation Vladimir Kozhin has
told TASS. 'The contract is in action. They've begun,' Kozhin said in
reply to a question. Iranian ambassador to Russia Mehdi Sanai late last
month said his country had received the first S-300 systems. The head of
the Rostec corporation (to which the Rosoboronexport company is
affiliated) Sergey Chemezov said earlier the new contract for selling
S-300 to Iran had taken effect at the beginning of November. The contract
was concluded after Russian President Vladimir Putin had lifted the ban
from selling this air defense system to Iran. Iran will get the
S-300PMU-2 configuration." http://t.uani.com/1lZzgir
Nuclear
Program & Agreement
The Hill: "An official determination that
Iran formerly worked to build a nuclear weapon - despite Tehran's ardent
claims to the contrary - is just the latest bad omen for the prospects of
the nuclear deal involving the country, critics of the agreement said
Wednesday. Hours after an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
assessment leaked to the press, key opponents of the nuclear deal warned
that it was proof Iran was getting a light sentence from the rest of the
globe. 'I think we're getting off to a very, very poor start,' Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters
after a roughly two-hour top-secret committee hearing. 'These are exactly
the things that we talked about during the hearing process that raised
concerns and they're being validated right now,' he added. 'It just sets
a very bad precedent that if Iran thinks it can violate the world's will,
as expressed by Security Council resolutions, and in essence face no
consequence for it,' said Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), one of the four
Democrats who voted against the deal in September... Wednesday's report
is 'dangerously incomplete,' said Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), who helped
lead the House's criticism of the Iran deal. 'The IAEA must not close the
book on Iran's past nuclear weapons related activities until a thorough
and conclusive report has been completed,' he said in a statement. 'This
document doesn't even come close to accomplishing that basic task.'"
http://t.uani.com/1Qhfx92
WT: "Iran is deliberately trying to
deceive U.N. inspectors in charge of implementing last summer's nuclear
deal, according to a prominent Iranian dissident group, which claims that
Tehran has created a 'top secret committee' to provide false information
to the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to the National
Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the secret committee is comprised
of top officials from the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and
Ministry of Defense Armed Forces Logistics, who are 'working to cover up'
the potential military dimensions of the ongoing Iranian nuclear
program... According to the NCRI's claim Wednesday, Iran subsequently set
up a secret committee specifically to address lingering disputes over its
PMD with the IAEA.In such, the committee is actively 'forging suitable
scenarios for non-military usage of the [nuclear ]program, which would
seem plausible to the IAEA, and to falsely convince the international
community that Iran has never been after the nuclear bomb,' the NCRI said
in a statement. 'This committee prepared the PMD answers delivered to the
IAEA on August 15, 2015.'" http://t.uani.com/1TAal0e
WSJ: "The gloves have come off in
the normally staid community of nuclear weapons experts, fueled by a new
United Nations report on Iran. On Wednesday, the International Atomic
Energy Agency announced it had concluded after a months-long probe that
Tehran pursued nuclear bomb technologies until 2009, longer than the U.S.
intelligence agencies originally forecast... The IAEA report sparked an
online Twitter brawl between think tanks and nuclear wonks divided over
the Iran nuclear accord and the necessity for Tehran to come clean on its
past work. Some argued Iran stonewalled the IAEA and needed to do much
more to answer the agency's questions. Others said Washington and Tehran
largely needed to move on. Particularly critical was the Institute for
Science and International Security, a Washington think tank, which
accused others of shirking their commitment to fighting nuclear
proliferation. The Institute targeted the Ploughshares Fund, a San
Francisco-based foundation that has been among the Obama White House's
closest allies in selling the Iran nuclear deal over the past year.
Ploughshares has funded an array of non-governmental organizations that
lobbied publicly for the Iran agreement, including the Arms Control
Association, the National Iranian American Council and J Street, a
liberal Jewish organization. 'Several Ploughshares-funded NGOs not only
reduced to PR flacks on Iran deal but also do administration's dirty
work,' the Institute wrote on its Twitter account." http://t.uani.com/1MYuACk
U.S.-Iran
Relations
WashPost: "The Washington Post and other
supporters of journalist Jason Rezaian on Wednesday amplified demands for
his release from Iranian custody, a day before the reporter marks 500
days since his arrest and subsequent closed-door trial on charges that
included espionage. The new pressures, including updated filings by The
Post with a U.N. panel, seek to boost international leverage on Iran
after the reported conviction and sentencing of Rezaian, The Post's
correspondent in Tehran. The case has drawn widespread outrage from
media-freedom groups and sharp criticism from senior Obama administration
officials and U.S. lawmakers. The Post, meanwhile, has strongly denied
any wrongdoing by Rezaian and has called the detention 'cruel and arbitrary'
treatment of a journalist who never strayed beyond the normal work of
news gathering. 'This isn't a real case,' said David W. Bowker, an
attorney at the firm of WilmerHale who is representing The Post, 'but
rather a case of political theater.' ... Martin Baron, executive editor
of The Post, called the 500-day mark in Rezaian's detention 'the
grimmest' of milestones - 56 days longer than the hostages held at the
U.S. Embassy in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic revolution. 'Five hundred
days robbed of his life, 500 days deprived of his family, 500 days denied
any semblance of justice,' Baron said in a statement." http://t.uani.com/1NJtsWJ
Guardian: "An Iranian-American man has
been executed in Iran for a crime he allegedly committed in California
seven years ago - even though there is no judicial treaty between Iran
and the US, making it impossible for Iranian authorities to have gathered
information from their American counterparts. Hamid Sameie, also known as
Sam, was hanged last month in Rajaee Shahr prison in Karaj, west of the
capital Tehran, after being found guilty in an Iranian court of murdering
another dual national in Los Angeles in 2008. The government-run Iran
newspaper reported that the execution took place but provided few
details. According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group,
however, Sameie was sentenced to death for the murder of a man identified
as Behrouz Janmohammadi. His close associates have told IHR that it was
an act of self-defence... Sameie, who had a car sales business in Los
Angeles - home to a large population of Iranian exiles - was believed to
have been a friend and a former business partner of Janmohammadi before they
fell out... Sameie's body is believed to have been returned to his family
after his execution and he has been buried in a cemetery close to
Tehran... Amiry-Moghaddam said his organisation has documented the
execution of at least 850 convicts since the beginning of 2015, the
highest annual rate in at least 25 years." http://t.uani.com/21ycGOl
Congressional
Action
Al-Monitor: "A key panel of Congress is getting
closer to slapping new sanctions on Iran's revolutionary guards despite
warnings that doing so could undermine the nuclear deal with Tehran.
Individual lawmakers over the past few months have introduced several
bills encouraging the Obama administration to designate the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization,
with little traction so far. But now the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
which has jurisdiction over the issue, has begun to coalesce behind the
scenes around a similar effort. 'The issue is what's the best way to get
at those individuals, those entities that are essentially IRGC-controlled
but look for ways to suggest that they're not,' said Rep. Ted Deutch,
D-Fla., the top Democrat on the committee's Middle East panel. 'There are
a lot of us who would like to move in that direction ... especially
before there is sanctions relief granted under the JCPOA [Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action].' A committee aide confirmed that
staff-level discussions are ongoing but there's not yet draft
legislation." http://t.uani.com/1MYtdn3
The Hill: "Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) will
introduce legislation this week that would bar funding for the
International Atomic Energy Agency if it does not provide lawmakers
access to secret side deals signed with Iran. The resolution would be
attached it to the government funding measure known as the omnibus, and
has the support of several House committee chairs. The international
agency tasked with enforcing the nuclear deal signed with Iran earlier
this year has told the U.S. it needs an additional $10.6 million annually
in order to do so. Since the U.S. is obliged to fund 25 percent of the
agency's budget, Congress would need to approve that funding. Zinke's
resolution would make funding conditional on Congress receiving the side
deals. Zinke said in reality, the U.S. provides the IAEA with 42
percent of its yearly operating costs. 'It is apparent that the bulk, if
not all, of this increased funding will be paid for by the American
tax-payers,' he said in a statement. 'Congress has the Constitutional
responsibility to control the power of the purse. If we are expected to
foot the bill for these side deals, we should know what measures are
included in them.'" http://t.uani.com/1lZuYHS
Sanctions
Relief
Reuters: "Iran is taking steps to ramp
up oil exports ahead of an end to U.S.-led sanctions, extending crude
contracts with its top two Chinese buyers into 2016 and starting talks
with other potential buyers there, sources involved in the talks said...
Sinopec Corp, Asia's largest refiner, and Chinese state trader Zhuhai
Zhenrong Corp will together lift around 505,000 barrels per day (bpd) of
crude from Iran in 2016, the same as this year when they took roughly
half of the Islamic Republic's total exports, the sources said... Iranian
oil officials have met in the last two months with traders at PetroChina,
the country's second-largest state refiner, and state-run CNOOC, which
runs a petrochemical complex with Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L), three
sources involved in the talks said... PetroChina's parent company CNPC
started pumping oil at Iran's North Azadegan field around October with
estimated flow of 75,000 bpd. An easing of sanctions could allow the
company to start lifting its share of production, company sources said.
Under the main China contracts renewed for 2016, Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp is
expected to lift an average of 240,000 bpd and Sinopec 265,000 bpd, the
sources said. The Sinopec agreement was primarily for crude and a small
portion of condensate." http://t.uani.com/1OIzWlP
Syria
Conflict
Free
Beacon: "Iranian
militants have begun acting as Russia's de facto 'ground force' in Syria,
where they have begun waging 'an ethnic cleansing campaign' in order to
eradicate opposition to the embattled President Bashar al-Assad,
according to leading members of Congress, defense officials, and outside
experts. A Pentagon official who was not authorized to speak on the
record confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that the United States
'continue[s] to see Iranian-sponsored forces providing support to the
Syrian regime in their fight against Syrian opposition forces.' It is now
believed that Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps forces are acting as
Russia's 'ground force' in Syria, helping Moscow to clear out primarily
secular opposition forces battling to depose Assad, according to
lawmakers and regional experts. Both Russia and Iran have tried to avoid
battling Islamic State militants in the country despite repeated claims
otherwise, these sources said." http://t.uani.com/1YKFjp9
Reuters: "Iran said a meeting of Syrian
opposition figures in Riyadh will cause failure of Syrian peace talks
among major Western and Middle Eastern countries, the semi-official Fars
news agency quoted a senior official as saying on Thursday. 'The peace
talks are an opportunity to find a political solution to end the war in
Syria ... such meetings in Riyadh ... are aimed at harming the Vienna
talks,' deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told Fars. 'The
meeting in Riyadh ... will cause the failure of Vienna peace talks on
Syria and it is not part of Vienna agreement.' Iran's Sunni regional
rival, Saudi Arabia, has invited 65 Syrian opposition figures to gather
in Riyadh to try to bring together rival groups ahead of next round of
Syrian peace talks." http://t.uani.com/1lbjIYK
Human
Rights
Reuters: "Britain's foreign ministry has
said it is seeking the release of a British-Iranian citizen from jail in
Iran, where he has been held for four years on espionage charges. Kamal
Foroughi, 76, was arrested in 2011 while working in Tehran as a business
consultant, his son Kamran said. His arrest was first reported by the
Guardian newspaper in October this year, when Foroughi's family decided
to break their silence. The revelation came amid a renewed crackdown on
dissent in Iran, which analysts said has intensified since Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned in September of Western 'infiltration' in
the Islamic Republic. A British foreign ministry spokesman said on
Wednesday that Foreign Minister Philip Hammond had raised the case with
Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani, and that Britain
is seeking Foroughi's immediate release on medical grounds." http://t.uani.com/1OIA7h1
AP: "An Iranian news website is
reporting that authorities have detained poet and songwriter Yaghma
Golrouee. The Wednesday report by 7sobh.com said Golrouee was detained on
Monday. It said the reason for the detention is not clear... Golrouee's
work is mainly about love and sometimes social issues like poverty,
addiction and environmental problems. Last month, he criticized authorities
for blocking his books from being published because of pressure from
hardliners." http://t.uani.com/1OIDyUL
Opinion
& Analysis
David
Albright, Andrea Stricker & Serena Kelleher-Vergantini in ISIS:
- Despite obfuscation and stonewalling by
Iran, the IAEA confirmed that Iran had a coordinated nuclear weapons
development program until the end of 2003 and conducted some weapons
development activities after 2003.
- Overall, Iran provided little real
cooperation. Denials and lack of truthfulness should not be
confused with cooperation in the context of the JCPOA, any more than
such 'cooperation' by a defendant in a criminal investigation would
be construed as real cooperation.
- Faced with such outright Iranian efforts to
deceive the inspectors, the IAEA broke relatively little new ground.
- The truth of Iran's work on nuclear weapons
is probably far more extensive than outlined by the IAEA in this
report.
- The IAEA drew conclusions where it was able
to. The bottom line is that the IAEA's investigation into the
possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear programs cannot be
understood to be concluded, certainly it cannot be closed. http://t.uani.com/1IrooUD
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