That Parchin side deal: what’s it about?
Even for those of us long inured to the multiple betrayals and lies of the Obama administration, the news yesterday was shocking: the AP story that they had seen documents attesting to an alleged “side deal” in which the UN’s IAEA will allow Iran to do its own inspections of the Parchin nuclear site. This is an agreement the US signed off on but to which it was not party:
The agreement in question diverges from normal procedures by allowing Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence of activities it has consistently denied ”” trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Olli Heinonen, who was in charge of the Iran probe as deputy IAEA director general from 2005 to 2010, said he could think of no similar concession with any other country. and then report to the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
The White House has repeatedly denied claims of a secret side deal favorable to Tehran. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told Republican senators last week that he was obligated to keep the document confidential…
…wording suggests that ”” beyond being barred from physically visiting the site ”” the agency won’t get photo or video information from areas Iran says are off-limits because they have military significance.
But Reuters reports that the IAEA chief Amano has denied it. Or, sort of denied it. See what you think of this careful language:
“I am disturbed by statements suggesting that the IAEA has given responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. Such statements misrepresent the way in which we will undertake this important verification work,” IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said in an unusually strongly worded statement on Thursday…
“I can state that the arrangements are technically sound and consistent with our long-established practices. They do not compromise our safeguards standards in any way,” Amano said.
The U.S. State Department said on Thursday the IAEA would “in no way” hand over responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. “That is not how the IAEA does business,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.
“The U.S. government’s nuclear experts are confident in the Agency’s technical plans for investigating the possible military dimensions of Iran’s former program,” he said.
So, Amano is denying that the IAEA “has given responsibility” to Iran for inspections. State Department spokesman Kirby echoes that “responsibility” wording. They all say they are bound to keep the agreement confidential. And the head of the IAEA says to trust the IAEA and that everything’s great. John Kerry has already said in his testimony that he has not even seen the side agreement, which was negotiated between Iran and the IAEA. And Senators have been complaining for quite some time that they have not been given enough information on it.
One of the things that’s frustrating about all these articles is their incompleteness. For example, why should we care about inspections at Parchin in particular? Why would the arrangements there for inspections be secret and separate from the other sites? In other words, what’s Parchin about?
Business Insider reports that Aaron Stein, an expert on nuclear proliferation, has said that Parchin is an old site, a “red herring,” and “They won’t find anything there [anyway]”” it’s completely stripped of anything of value.”
In addition, ten days ago this piece appeared in the WaPo from another nuclear expert, David Albright, who said:
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said over the weekend that my organization, the Institute for Science and International Security, was spreading lies when we published satellite imagery that showed renewed, concerning activity at the Parchin military site near Tehran…But…the Iranians chose to deny the visible evidence in commercial satellite imagery. Iran’s comments would be mirthful if the topic were not so serious.
Here’s a related report from a few days earlier, indicating the same thing. This renewed “activity” may be an effort to cover up evidence of past activity there, but the effort to sort it all out is headache-inducing. This article in Haaretz, a leftist Israeli paper, is actually quite informative, including a long quote from the Obama administration by Ned Price, National Security Council spokesperson, who points out that the inspections of Parchin deal solely with past activities. Haaretz reports on what it sees as the most troublesome aspects:
The Iranians would supply the UN inspectors with still photographs and video footage of several locations within the Parchin compound where components for the production of nuclear weapons are suspected to have been tested. The Iranians may use their own equipment, which will be examined by UN inspectors only to make sure it is in working order.
Even though Iran has been given widespread authority to inspect the site, they are still resisting an inspecting of the entire Parchin compound, terming several locations in it “out of bounds” – meaning no photographs or any other information about them would be handed over to UN inspectors.
Another troubling clause in the draft determines that even though Iranian scientists would be those who sample the soil and the air in Parchin, this activity would be limited, and UN inspectors would receive only seven soil and air samples from the building in which Iran is suspected of having tested the nuclear weapons components.
That quote goes a long way, I think, towards explaining Amano’s language re “responsibility.” As best I can piece it together, IAEA officials will have final “responsibility” but in many cases Iranians will give them the data and the evidence.
This may actually be the most informative article of all, because it describes the history of Parchin and why it matters to the Iran deal. The summary paragraph is this:
Knowing what happened at Parchin more than a decade ago remains key to ending the nuclear crisis because the accord reached last month in Vienna stipulates that sanctions can only be lifted if Tehran resolves all of the IAEA’s concerns over the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program — both past and present.
But it actually was the speech the other day by Senator Menendez (text here) that was most helpful to me in explaining the significance of Parchin. It’s a long speech, but well worth reading in its entirety. Here’s the most relevant excerpt:
The goal that we have long sought, along with the international community, is to know what Iran accomplished at Parchin — not necessarily to get Iran to declare culpability — but to determine how far along they were in their nuclear weaponization program so that we know what signatures to look for in the future…it makes a difference if you are 90 percent down the road in your weaponization efforts or only ten percent advanced. How far advanced Iran’s weaponizing abilities are has a significant impact on what Iran’s breakout time to an actual deliverable weapon will be…
With so much at stake, the IAEA — after waiting over ten years to inspect Parchin, speak to Iranian nuclear scientists, and review additional materials and documents — are now told they will not have direct access to Parchin…
For me, the administration’s willingness to forgo a critical element of Iran’s weaponization — past and present — is inexplicable.
And here’s another excellent point he makes about our own track record in monitoring nuclear development:
The U.S. track record in detecting and stopping countries from going nuclear should make Kerry more modest in his claims and assumptions. The U.S. missed the Soviet Union, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. Washington underestimated Saddam’s program in 1990. Then it overestimated his program in 2003 and went to war to stop a nonexistent WMD program.’…
It is precisely because of this track record that permitting Iran to have the size and scope of an industrialized nuclear program, permitted under the JCPOA is one of the great flaws of the agreement.
It’s also well worth reading this WSJ piece on what’s wrong with the inspections that are supposed to be so foolproof and rigorous according to the administration—the ones about future activity, not past ones at Parchin.
In summary, I’ll just add this quote from Menendez about the entire deal (not just Parchin):
The deal enshrines for Iran, and in fact commits the international community to assisting Iran in developing an industrial-scale nuclear power program, complete with industrial scale enrichment. While I understand that this program will be subject to Iran’s obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, I think it fails to appreciate Iran’s history of deception in its nuclear program and its violations of the NPT.
Its “history of deception” is exactly what the American public has been reacting to. And not just Iran’s history of deception; that of the Obama administration, too.
And then there’s the relationship between Iran and the IAEA:
Should a nuclear accord be signed this time [this was written July 1, not long before the accord was announced], it will aim to primarily constrain, not permanently roll back or “dismantle,” Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure. In that case””in which Iran is still left with significant nuclear capacity””an accurate and comprehensive Iranian declaration of all its nuclear undertakings to the IAEA is essential for reliable monitoring and verification. Absent this complete declaration, including the oft-cited “Possible Military Dimensions” (PMD), IAEA inspectors can neither assemble a clear picture of Iran’s nuclear program, nor set a reference point against which to monitor it and verify there is no violation or diversion.
Iran has a long history of failing to report critical elements of its nuclear activities.
Please read the whole thing.
It’s now obvious that Kerry, Sherman, Zubin, and all those other administration toadies were lying when they said this is the toughest inspection regime in history, since, by their own admission, THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS! (Except Sherman, possibly, who testified that she had at least seen a draft — but was not allowed to copy it. Of course, drafts can be changed. Maybe our crack negotiators didn’t know that.)
Lying to Congress is a crime. Don’t hold your breath until we see indictments, though.
It rends my heart that I have lost trust in our government. I can not see a way to a free and civil society with what has become.
It’s like Hillary investigating herself.
Please do not think the IAEA is a pristine, always-virtuous entity. It is an arm of the UN, for heaven’s sake. 164 of the 193 UN member states are IAEA members.
Neo- I do not think we here are “long inured” to hardly anything. We are impotent but not inured.
Why the surprised shock? There is no natural limit to the perfidy of this administration because they are committed to the demise of America as a force for good in the world. A perfectly natural goal when you share George Soros’ belief that, “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.”
Obama’s motivation in this ‘deal’ is political cover, to gain the time he needs in order to do nothing.
Obama could care less if Iran has nukes, he could care less if it leads to nuclear proliferation. And when Israel and America suffer nuclear attacks, that will just be our “chickens coming home to roost”, perfect karma for an inherently racist and evil country. Whites must suffer for their sins and Obama’s mission is to make sure that we do.
But what will it take for more than two Dem Senators to vote against this?
Party over country.
Text of draft agreement between IAEA, Iran on inspections at Parchin military site:
“Then it overestimated his [Saddam’s] program in 2003”
“… and went to war to stop a nonexistent WMD program.”
The 1st part is correct.
Senator Menendez is incorrect on the 2nd part.
He really needs to stop highlighting his opposition to OIF when he argues for his opposition to Obama’s Iran deal. Menendez’s call for a UNSCR 687-type of disarmament for Iran is contradicted by his opposition to the enforcement of UNSCR 687 for Iraq.
The UNMOVIC finding of “about 100 unresolved disarmament issues” confirmed Iraq’s material breach and thereby triggered OIF. If Iraq had been subsequently found clean, the decision for OIF was still justified by Iraq’s failure to meet its burden of proof, ie, material breach of the terms of ceasefire, especially UNSCR 687.
He is correct that the US intelligence on Iraq was off the mark. But the intel was irrelevant to enforcement decisions like Operations Desert Fox and Iraqi Freedom because the “governing standard of Iraqi compliance” (UNSCR 1441) for disarmament was set to UNSCR 687, not the intelligence.
That being said, Menendez’s statement is also wrong on its face.
The ISG post hoc fact findings, while irrelevant to the President’s decision for OIF, are in fact rife with Iraqi violations of UNSCR 687. Although the post hoc findings poorly matched the pre-war intelligence estimates, ISG reported an active WMD program in violation of UNSCR 687 and confirmed Saddam intended to ramp it up fully once the US-led enforcement of UNSCR 687 was neutralized. The Iraqi Perspectives Project also reported findings that confirm Iraq violated UNSCR 687.
The point that Senator Menendez is trying to make, but undermines by endorsing the false narrative of OIF, is that there can be no baked in reliance on US intelligence to demonstrate Iran is in violation. For disarmament to be effective, the burden of proof must be fully on Iran – as it was on Iraq – to prove it is disarmed according to a strict standard of compliance.
Again, Menendez is calling for a UNSCR 687-type disarmament standard for Iran.
However, while he is ostensibly arguing for substantially the same standard of compliance for Iran that was applied to Iraq with UNSCR 687, Menendez implicitly justifies Obama’s Iran deal whenever he reiterates his opposition to the US-led enforcement of UNSCR 687.
Ann: I see that reading comprehension is another of John Kerry and his minions’ deficiencies:
“The U.S. State Department said on Thursday the IAEA would “in no way” hand over responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. “That is not how the IAEA does business,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.”
Parchin was NEVER discovered by Mossad, CIA, or any satellite imaging.
It was revealed by Iranian FINKS.
The fink aspect of Parchin caused the mullahs to entirely disband the crew there — as they knew that until they SHUT UP the fink(s) the joint was leaking taboo nuclear tech like a sieve.
THAT”S what ‘shut down’ Parchin.
Parchin was revealed as being the BOMB DESIGN LAB.
It was NOT dealing with radio active elements. Instead, it was performing all of the other tech development required to detonate a Fat Man style plutonium bomb — enhanced to 1959 tech standards.
The Iranians are NOT aiming at a bunch of Little Boys.
That’s a notion that the administration keeps running up the flagpole. It’s wholly false. Little Boys use too many neutrons — the limiting resource for any budding atomic power.
Neutron scarcity — it’s the bottleneck — that bedeviled both America and Russia during the first phase of the Cold War.
Parchin is reputed to have an ultra-deep shaft that is a clone of America’s. ( Whoops, right there. )
They way it worked was that you’d set off a test detonation deep down in the ultra-well — with the blast energy permitted to shoot skyward. The fantastic depth meant that by the time the blast reached the surface — it was nothing much — and would never show up on satellite imagery.
The test detonations are needed to establish the perfect geometry for the implosion — which uses strictly non-nuclear chemistry.
This was what Los Alamos was working on all the way through from 1943 through 1945. NOTHING ELSE.
Los Alamos was not much concerned about manufacturing the explosive — that was Hanford’s job. It was not concerned with plutonium metallurgy — that was Chicago’s job. ( Met-lab )
In sum: Parchin was LOS ALAMOS.
DING DING DING DING.
It’s no surprise that the Iranian Los Alamos was but a jaunt down the road from Tehran. That permitted a bare-bones lab set up. Whereas Los Alamos ended up being a little city.
The Parchin = Los Alamos connection is still not appreciated by the outside world, as the average Joe knows diddly about how the Manhattan Project built the bomb.
The ENDLESS non-atomic implosion tests are NEVER emphasized in the film treatments of the A bomb. The viewing public is led to believe that the technicians couldn’t figure out the fundamentals.
ALL of the headaches revolved around the implosion — how to trigger it — perfectly. That’s where the money went. The basic physics of the implosion device were obvious from the outset. The puzzle was how to get a solid hunk of very dense and heavy metal (plutonium) to become even more dense // compressed.
The raw calculations showed that once the metal was past a certain density, it would flip into an exponential chain-reaction in less than the blink of an eye. So the reaction period would be EXTREMELY sharp — so much so that early atomic fissions would not cause the plutonium to blow out before a decent fraction had absorbed a thermal neutron.
Little Boy was known to work exactly the other way. It’d start cooking off at ordinary pressures// density — and ought to begin to blow out long before a high fraction absorbed a neutron.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved that Little Boy was ten times as expensive — if not more — than Fat Man.
Which is relevant when you turn the numbers over WRT Iran’s atomic stockpile.
Just multiply ALL estimates by ten when comparing bomb production of plutonium versus uranium.
8 uranium bombs == >> 80 plutonium bombs.
The mullahs don’t want Parchin ‘tossed’ as it would reveal that Iran has ALL of the technical results — and their implosion bomb design is deemed complete.
( Computer simulations in the 21st Century are so fast and cheap vs 1944 slide rules.)
All of the above is why Israel — and America — have concentrated on ruining the Iranian weapons grade explosive generation complex — that and their ICBM program.
The latter is solely needed to go after America. All other targets are within range of their IRBMs. (Russia, Europe, Israel, China, India, KSA, — only America remains too far away. BHO is making sure that America is as vulnerable as everybody else.)
Perfect.
The latest Dem talking point is that Obama is like Reagan since Reagan did a nuke deal with the Soviets. Uh huh, right.
Like saying that Chamberlain’s deal with Hitler was just like MacArthur’s deal with Japan since both of them purported to avoid further war.
In 17 months, when Obama is gone, Iran will have a new, advanced air defense system, a lot more arms, and will be supplying Hezbollah/Hamas with much better rockets to launch against Israel. That is what the new President will be facing. If it’s Hillary or some other prog, Israel will be in mortal danger for the entire time.
If it’s a Republican, the only way to stop the threat will be to partner with Israel to attack a much stronger, more dangerous Iran. This is the outcome of “smart” diplomacy. It is to weep.
GB has eyes on the ball. Nitpicking the details distracts from seeing the big picture. The hate America boychild wants to reduce our country to a third world, deeply indebted nation cowering on the world stage. Chickens coming home to roost indeed.
This has got to be the most stupid, outrageous, and despicable statement of support for the deal I’ve read thus far — it’s from Sen. Claire McCaskill:
“This deal isn’t perfect and no one trusts Iran, but it has become clear to me that the world is united behind this agreement with the exception of the government of Israel”.
Claire is dumb as a rock.