Left: Satellite image from 2012 of Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran, Iran. Credit: AP
One wonders how much longer President Obama and his minions can claim the deal with Iran is a good deal.
The President’s deceptive accounts of the Iran agreement have been exposed by the Associated Press today. It shows that the Obama administration not only supported the inspection regime that Iran dictated to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but also agreed to the Iranian veto on any foreign inspections at Parchin military base, where Iran has been developing nuclear weapons.
The AP expose proves how bad this deal is. More details can be found in Judy Woodruff’s PBS NEWSHOUR interview on August 18, with Dr. Ephraim Asculai, a Senior Research Fellow at INSS who worked more than four decades as a scientist at the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, and five years at the IAEA, as well as the Scientific Secretary of the International Chernobyl Project.
Below are excerpts from the transcript of the interview:
EPHRAIM ASCULAI: The issue is going to be the search for concealed facilities, the possible search for undeclared facilities, and these, as we know and we remember from the history of Iran, are very probable issues.
And looking for these sites, for these facilities will be a very, very difficult issue with the present agreement. The other issue is, let’s say that intelligence finds out about an undeclared concealed facility. What will the parties to the agreement do? Can they go and tell the IAEA? And this is written in the agreement. They tell the IAEA the exact source of their information. This is not always possible.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What about the argument of the proponents, that whatever the Iranians did to cheat would involve a significant amount of nuclear material that, by its very nature, would be indefinitely discoverable, that there’s — that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to hide radioactive nuclear material that they were working with?
EPHRAIM ASCULAI: Well, there are two answers to that.
The first one, that not all processes involve releases to the atmosphere or to the environment of nuclear radioactive material. Of course, reactors and processing plants are more prone to releases, but enrichment plants are less prone to that. But this is only one aspect.
The other aspect is development of the explosive mechanism, which doesn’t involve — many parts of it doesn’t involve radioactive material. And while doing that — and this is of course the INAUDIBLE issue and probably other sides — you cannot go and search for those. And even if facilities do emit radioactive materials, it is not always feasible for the inspectors to go there, because they’re not permitted to go and search for these facilities.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me ask you about another aspect of this.
We know that in — just in the last few days, the Israeli Defense Forces have put out a strategic paper talking about the major threats facing the nation of Israel, a 33-page report that barely mentions Iran or its nuclear program.
EPHRAIM ASCULAI: Well, I don’t know. I think this is only the unclassified program that was published in the press.
I think that there’s a much longer document, which is classified, and I think that Iran probably features there quite a lot.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I also want to ask you about something that the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote within the last week. He pointed out, he said, Israel has itself between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons. It has the ability to deliver them to Iran. And he said — and his point is that, knowing how outmatched it is, why in the world would Iran launch any kind of an attack on Israel, knowing what that would mean in return?
EPHRAIM ASCULAI: I want to ask why Iran is proclaiming that it wants to annihilate Israel.
I don’t think that Iran is afraid of Israel, if it denies the Holocaust, if it wants to destroy Israel. It probably is not vacantly saying. I think they really mean it. And if they mean it, Israel has to be prepared and take all precautions against it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you think the better alternative here is, Mr. Asculai? What other agreement do you think could be reached with Iran and the other five nations that would reach — that would achieve the kind of satisfactory arrangement that you think is necessary?
EPHRAIM ASCULAI: I think that the present agreement can be modified.
Okay, it’s going back to the drawing board, I know, I realize. And it probably is very difficult. But treaties have been modified over the years. Many treaties have been modified. And I think that if you modify this one, you could get a better result, perhaps not a perfect, but a much better result could be achieved.
Too many things were left out, too many things that were discussed during the last year or so within the international community, and they were left out. And that’s a pity.