Complete unraveling: Top 5 reasons why the non-deal agreement with Iran is bad

These are the top five other than the fact that it’s not a deal; it’s a surrender.  The West has agreed to lift the sanctions on Iran.  Iran has not agreed to give up anything she needs to acquire a bomb, or cease any of her aggressive behavior (e.g., arming and training Hezbollah and Hamas, fighting wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen).  Not one of these things – not one – is a measure of performance Iran will actually have to demonstrate to get the sanctions lifted.

1. The agreement paves Iran’s path to the bomb. The only question about Iran and the bomb now is when Iran will get it. If Iran adheres to the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement (link to full text here), she will retain the means, and improve the expertise, to build nuclear weapons throughout the next 10 years.  She would wait for that 10 years to pass, however, before enriching enough uranium to test a warhead and stockpile weapons.

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The four basic reasons the framework ‘agreement’ with Iran is bad; with bonus new problem!

Arak plutonium reactor complex.

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

The deal that will launch a thousand attack sorties? (Part 1)

This is Part 1 of a two-part post.  Part 2 is here.

It’s hard to overstate the concern with which we should view the nuclear “deal” concluded with Iran on Saturday, 23 November.  Although everyone will wait, there is actually nothing to wait for with this deal: nothing to watch develop.  To say “We’ll see what happens,” in terms of Iran’s compliance, is to misunderstand.  As regards what matters to acquiring a nuclear weapon, Iran won’t change anything she’s been doing.*  She may (or may not) put off further some things she had already suspended, or had announced she was going to delay anyway.   But her program will not actually take a step backward.  It’s not even guaranteed

“Moderate” Rouhani misled West; sneaked in centrifuges?

There is a particularly interesting aspect to the video that has recently surfaced, in which Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, gloats over Iran’s success in coopting European negotiators to keep the Iranian nuclear program on track in the mid-2000s, in spite of pressure from the United States.

The video clip, from an Iranian news-program interview of Rouhani in Farsi, was published by Reza Khalili.  Ryan Mauro highlights it at the Clarion Project, tying it to a report from 31 July in which Mauro outlined Rouhani’s extensive history of using deception about the Iranian nuclear program back when he was the chief nuclear negotiator for Tehran.

The deception and Rouhani’s gloating are important (see especially his characterization of the top-cover he received from European negotiators); I will let readers visit the reports and soak in the information at your leisure.  What I want to focus on here is

Intel on Iran’s nuclear weapons program: An endless do-loop

Maybe we know more now about something that started 12 years go.  That would be nice.  The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which follows the Iran nuclear problem closely, believes it has identified a building where IAEA has information that explosive tests have been conducted for a nuclear warhead detonator.  ISIS issued a report on 13 March highlighting the building in imagery near the Parchin weapons facility southeast of Tehran.

An interesting aspect of the ISIS analysis is the fact that the building in question is located well outside the main area of the Parchin facility.  Basically, it is in an area the ISIS analysts had apparently not reviewed before,