Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Good News: Obama's Iran "Deal" Had Secret Side Deals

by JASmius



And guess what?  The Obama Regime won't let Congress know anything about them, as they consider it to be none of our business, or even that of the other P5+1:

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Congressmen Mike Pompeo (R-KS) issued a press release yesterday on a startling discovery they made during a July 17th meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency officials in Vienna: There are two secret side deals to the nuclear agreement with Iran that will not be shared with other nations, with Congress, or with the U.S. public.

One of these side deals concerns inspection of the Parchin military base, where Iran reportedly has conducted explosive testing related to nuclear-warhead development. The Iranian government has refused to allow the IAEA to visit this site. Over the last several years, Iran has taken steps to clean up evidence of weapons-related activity at Parchin.

The other secret side deal concerns how the IAEA and Iran will resolve outstanding issues on possible military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran’s nuclear program. In late 2013, Iran agreed to resolve IAEA questions about nuclear weapons-related work in twelve areas. Iran only answered questions in one of these areas and rejected the rest as based on forgeries and fabrications.

Former [Commissariat] of [Anti-]Energy official William Tobey explained in a July 15th Wall Street Journal op-ed why it is crucial that Iran resolve the PMD issue. According to Tobey, “for inspections to be meaningful, Iran would have to completely and correctly declare all its relevant nuclear activities and procurement, past and present.”

According to the Cotton/Pompeo press release, there will be a secret, opaque procedure to verify Iran’s compliance with these side agreements. The press release says:

According to the IAEA, the Iran agreement negotiators, including the Obama administration, agreed that the IAEA and Iran would forge separate arrangements to govern the inspection of the Parchin military complex — one of the most secretive military facilities in Iran — and how Iran would satisfy the IAEA’s outstanding questions regarding past weaponization work. Both arrangements will not be vetted by any organization other than Iran and the IAEA, and will not be released even to the nations that negotiated the JCPOA [Iran nuclear agreement]. This means that the secret arrangements have not been released for public scrutiny and have not been submitted to Congress as part of its legislatively mandated review of the Iran deal.

This means that two crucial measures of Iranian compliance with the nuclear agreement will not be disclosed to Congress despite the requirements of the Corker-Cardin bill (the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act), which requires the Obama administration to provide the U.S. Congress with all documents associated with the agreement, including all “annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements [emphasis added], implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical, or other understandings and any related agreements, whether entered into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into or implemented in the future.”

It also means that Congress will have no way of knowing whether Iran complied with either side agreement. [emphases added]

So let's see if this can even be added up: The Obama Regime conceded every point of contention, the mullahs got everything they asked for and a bunch they didn't, there's no way to verify compliance that would never be forthcoming in any case, and Congress has no means of stopping the "deal's" implementation, and now there are "secret side deals" ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT that are being kept from us, Congress, AND even our negotiating partners, which suggests that this "deal" is an even bigger strategic disaster than even we suspected already.  And that doesn't include whatever other "secret deals" that were cut that we still don't know about.

Meanwhile, you know the twenty-four day heads-up the mullahs received in which to veto any outside inspection of their nuclear weapons facilities?  It's more like months:

Opportunities for delay abound. Iran will presumably want to know what prompted the IAEA’s concern. The suspect site identified by the IAEA is likely to be remote, and Iran will no doubt say that it must gather skilled people and equipment to responsibly allay IAEA concerns. Iran may offer explanations in stages, seeking IAEA clarifications before “completing” its response. That could take a while.

Only if Iran’s “explanations do not resolve the IAEA’s concerns” may the IAEA then “request access” to the suspect site. Oddly, the agreement doesn’t specify who judges whether the explanations resolve concerns. If Iran claims that it has a say in the matter, the process may stall here. Assuming Iran grants that the IAEA can be the judge, might Iran claim that the “great Satan” improperly influenced IAEA conclusions? Let’s assume that Tehran won’t do that…

Now the IAEA must provide written reasons for the request and “make available relevant information.” Let’s assume that even though the IAEA may resist revealing the secret sources or technical means that prompted its suspicions, Iran acknowledges that a proper request has been supplied.

Only then do the supposed twenty-four days begin to run.

In short, we'll never even be able to get to the point where the mullahs have twenty-four days in which to deny any inspection "request" at their leisure.

You know what I think the secret deals are?  The U.S. gifting fully armed and operational nuclear-tipped ICBMs to Iran, complete with construction of silos and/or launch vehicles and a twenty-four hour a day technical support line.

And all this time y'all thought I was kidding about that.



By the way, the U.N. Security Council approved the "deal" yesterday.  Or as much as they were allowed to know of it.  Just so you know.

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