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

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Kerry tries desperately to force deal of century on Iran

 

Chasing Iran around the planet.

Objectively, the deal being offered to Iran in the talks in Geneva is a very good one, for Iran.  Iran already, preemptively, has either announced delays in disputed activities like starting up new centrifuge arrays and continuing construction at the Arak plutonium reactor, or has actually suspended them.  As regards those points of negotiation, Iran wouldn’t even have to change her reported plans over the next six months to comply with the six-month interim deal on offer.

Obama’s Iran policy: The definition of insanity?

A few days ago, there were shouts of “Vive la France!” as la France Surcouf stepped in to stop the Obama administration from concluding a bad nuclear deal with Iran.  French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France wouldn’t be party to a “con game.”

But darned if the Obama administration isn’t back in the truffle hunt, rooting around for a deal with Iran.  You thought Team Obama was determined, against all signals from reality, to force a deal on Israel and the Palestinian Arabs?  That seems to be nothing, compared to Obama’s determination to sign a deal with Iran.

The smoke signals from last week suggested that the current round of P5+1 talks with Iran would break up

Get real: With Obama and Iran, It’s Deal AND No Deal

Those TV commercials emphasizing the word “and” rather than “or” are the key to understanding the basic proposition in the current P5+1 negotiations with Iran.

In the commercials, ecstatic consumers prefer to get x and y, as opposed to getting x or y.  If it costs the same, who wouldn’t?  Certainly, it’s what Iran would prefer, in the current series of humorously named “negotiations”: relief from sanctions, and the opportunity to continue preparing for a nuclear breakout, with as few concessions to the P5+1 or a UN monitoring program as possible.  Ideally, there would be another “and” in the mix:

Yet another reminder: Iran still closing in on bomb

So, who’s up for another round of graphs showing that Western diplomacy, sanctions, and technology have yet to out-maneuver Iran in the mullahs’ push for a bomb?

A long-time IAEA expert, Olli Heinonen, predicted this past week that, using her newer, advanced centrifuges, Iran could produce enough high-enriched uranium (HEU) for a first nuclear warhead in as little as two weeks from making the decision to go for the “breakout.”  (See here also.)

For clarity, this does not mean Iran is “two weeks from a bomb.”  It means that once Iran decides to take the final enrichment step, it could take as little as two weeks