Monday, April 6, 2015

Verifying Iran Nuclear Deal Not Possible, Experts Say

Past Iranian cheating to be codified by future accord

Despite promises by President Obama that Iranian cheating on a new treaty will be detected, verifying Tehran’s compliance with a future nuclear accord will be very difficult if not impossible, arms experts say.

...Past cheating by Iran, confirmed as recently as July 2014 raised questions about why there are negotiations with Tehran, Sullivan said.

“Why are we negotiating for a new agreement, when existing Iranian NPT violations remain in effect, ongoing, and unresolved, suggesting that Iran is unlikely to comply with any new agreement?” Sullivan said.

“Iran alarmingly is officially within three months of having nuclear warheads, according to the international negotiators, and is therefore about to become another nuclear-armed North Korea,” he said, noting that Pyongyang also cheated on the NPT and now has nuclear-tipped missiles.

By not requiring Iran to correct past violations of the NPT, the new agreement will in effect codify its current cheating. “The negotiations started as an attempt to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but now they have legitimized it,” Sullivan said.

Interesting statement about Obama and the Iran deal from Netanyahu. - CNS

Netanyahu listed three reasons why the Iran deal is not good for his country:

"It doesn't roll back Iran's nuclear program," he told CNN. "It keeps a vast nuclear infrastructure in place. Not a single centrifuge is destroyed. Not a single nuclear facility is shut down, including the underground facilities that they built illicitly. Thousands of centrifuges will kept -- will keep spinning, enriching uranium. That's a very bad deal.

"Secondly, Iran is going to have sanctions lifted, including crippling sanctions, pretty much up front. And that's going to have billions and billions of dollars flow into the Iranian coffers, not for schools or hospitals or roads, but to pump up Iran's terror machine throughout the world."

And third, Netanyahu said the restrictions imposed on Iran "are only temporary, which means Iran will have "unlimited capacity to build unlimited nuclear infrastructure" in just a few years.

He also noted that the deal omits the elimination of Iran's intercontinental ballistic missiles, and it does not require Iran to "stop its aggression in the region" or to recognize Israel.

"This deal will both threaten us and threaten our neighbors," Netanyahu insisted. "There's still time to get a better deal and apply pressures on Iran to abandon, to roll back its nuclear program, and to stop its vast aggression in the region."

Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Netanyahu said he "trying to kill a bad deal."

"Don't give the preeminent terror state of our time the access to a nuclear program that could help them make nuclear weapons. It is very bad for all of us."