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Iran never intended to comply with the Iran Deal. Forty years to the day that Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy and took Americans hostage, Iran announced it will start injecting uranium gas into one thousand or more centrifuges.
“President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised address that 1,044 machines at the Fordow nuclear facility, which is built inside a mountain near the city of Qom, will be activated with the gas beginning on Wednesday.
Under the Obama-era accord, Iran can spin the centrifuges without gas.
But Rouhani, noting that this action like all others it has taken so far is reversible, said the Islamic Republic will follow the pact’s guidelines when the remaining signatories – France, Britain, Germany, the European Union, Russia and China – honor their commitments.
“We know their sensitivity with regard to Fordow. With regard to these centrifuges, we know. But at the same time when they uphold their commitments we will cut off the gas again … So it is possible to reverse this step,” Rouhani said. “We can’t unilaterally accept that we completely fulfill our commitments and they don’t follow up on their commitments.””
In other words, once everyone falls into line, then we’ll stop rebuilding our nuclear program. Do you believe that? You shouldn’t. I don’t.
Rouhani was very strategic with his announcement. He specifically chose November 4. Why? As noted above, forty years ago, our embassy was seized and fifty two Americans were held hostage for 444 days. His announcement, along with the protests yesterday, was a strategic slam against Trump for backing out of the deal.
Never mind all those chants of “Death to the USA,” and “Death to Israel.” Iran is just misunderstood. They had always intended to uphold their part of the bargain. That’s according to all the usual suspects from the Obama Administration who still believe the Iran Deal is Obama’s supreme legacy. Yes, Ben Rhodes, I’m looking at you.
Ben, the deal you continue to tout as “successful” has been falling apart since day one. A deal that needed to be funded by pallets of cash ferried into Iran in the dead of night. A deal that was never approved by Congress? A deal that Iran started breaking well before the ink was dry.
Tell me again how successful this deal was? Tell me again how trustworthy and super nice Iran is? Code Pink knows!
https://twitter.com/ArielElyseGold/status/1191378775818289153?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1191378775818289153&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fsarahd-313035%2F2019%2F11%2F04%2Fcode-pinks-national-co-director-explains-that-iranians-death-to-america-and-death-to-israel-chants-arent-calling-for-the-deaths-of-people%2F
Iran is the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism. Yet Ariel is here to tell us that those particular chants mean something innocuous? This is just like pretending the scorpion is actually an innocent little bunny rabbit.
A trial will start next February that involves Iranian nationals, Mehdi Hashemi and Feroz Khan.
“Between at least June 2015 and April 2018, Hashemi conspired with Khan and others who are not named in the indictment to evade and avoid U.S. trade controls and sanctions as well as the requirements for nuclear-related trade with Iran set forth in the JCPOA.”
The machine parts and other tools were purchased from suppliers across the US and Canada. All of the components procured were such that they could “make a major contribution to an unsafeguarded nuclear fuel cycle.” Hashemi never sought approval from the UN Security Council and in fact was found to have falsified freight forwarding and export documentation on numerous occasions. If found guilty, Hashemi faces 320 years in federal prison.
Yet here we have Iran calling for a return to the Iran Deal and threatening to build up its nuclear program even more, if the rest of the world doesn’t fall into line.
Iran’s new violations are another reason the catastrophic Obama-Iran nuclear deal must be ripped up. @LindseyGrahamSC & I are working on bill doing that by eliminating the civil-nuclear waivers that allow Iran to build up its nuclear program.https://t.co/fZPfkgee8i
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) November 4, 2019
That’s the key. Those waivers were built into the Iran Deal from the start. Yet the Obama Administration thought Iran would happily go along with the deal? For eight years our foreign policy was run by naive fools who believe that Iran is Peter Cottontail instead of the twisted scorpion it actually is.
Trump was correct. The Iran Deal put very few limits on Iran to comply. Iran, under the deal, was given an extraordinary amount of leeway, and cases such as the above involving Mehdi Hashemi is just one of the results.
Yet too many want us to jump back into the deal, naively believing the scorpion will never sting us. If you believe that, I have an iceberg in the desert to sell you.
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Feature Photo Credit: Pixabay, cropped and modified
Here’s an interesting fact. Iran is not a signatory to the JCPOA. The Iranian parliament found it too controversial and so developed their own version which included all sorts of exceptions and other provisions — that’s what they ratified. So not only did they not intend to comply, they didn’t really even sign on. Neither the United States nor Iran ratified the actual JCPOA, but the EU did. Amusingly, the EU agreed to the Iran nuclear deal, but the only countries that matter — United States and Iran — were never officially part of it. Another great moment in E.U. history.
Wikipedia’s summary: “On 13 October The New York Times and many other major U.S. news sources reported that the Iranian Parliament had approved the JPCOA with 161 votes in favor, 59 against and 13 abstentions. Major Iranian news sources including Fars News Agency and Press TV, called a semi-official government source by U.S. media, reported that what was actually approved was a document consisting of the text of the JPCOA supplemented by text unilaterally added by Iran and not agreed to by the P5+1.”
Sally says: Obama intends to write a strongly worded letter About his dissatisfaction that I ran and never intended to cooperate. Duh.
cthulhu says: I consider myself an amiable, pragmatic person. In my view, if Iran wants at atomic bomb at Fordow, we should give them one. In fact, we are a generous nation — we could give them an H-bomb at the site. They’d be free to make whatever observations they desired during the admittedly short period that our gift was other than a rapidly expanding plasma.
While their initial observations might fascinate their physicists, their long-term observations might inform their diplomats.
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