US loses control of Iran nuke talks, Israel loses hope of a serious deal
By Ken Cohen
FLAME
March 15, 2022
President Biden last year called for a renewal of the Iran nuclear talks aimed at reaching a new, “longer and stronger” agreement to prevent the ayatollahs from going nuclear. By all accounts the negotiations are going poorly for the U.S. . . . and for all nations that wish to see Iran’s nuclear and terrorist ambitions reined in.
But since—outrageously—the Iranians refuse to speak directly with U.S. representatives, our role is greatly diminished. We’re now relying largely on a Russian diplomat who has assumed a leading role in the Vienna negotiations.
It appears that Israel—completely excluded from the Vienna parlay, but Iran’s number one proposed target for extermination—is going to be presented with a nuclear pact between Iran and a multinational group spearheaded by Mikhail Ulyanov, who is Vladimir Putin’s man in Vienna.
Biden appears to now be a tangential player, lacking even the leverage of uncrossable “red lines” that would pressure Iran or give him pretext to refuse signing any deal. Having spoken boldly of reaching a tougher deal, Biden now seems willing to ink any agreement that would reverse Donald Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from Barack Obama’s original pact.
In short, the U.S. has given up its negotiating authority, with Iran having relegated it to a subsidiary role in a humiliating game of charades.
At issue is a new version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 agreement with Iran, which was aimed at restraining their nuclear-arms program, even while setting a timetable of roughly a decade for them to go nuclear.
Since the Americans are sidelined, U.S. Special Envoy for Iran, Robert Malley speaks on behalf of the Biden administration to the Russian Ulyanov. He then weighs Malley’s position and speaks with the official negotiating “team”—the UK, France, Germany and China. Then, Ulyanov returns to the negotiating table with Iran, where he appears to capitulate to a large majority of Iran’s demands.
Whether 2022’s “JCPOA-2” will extend the calendar or place meaningful new limits on Iran is still secret—but insiders from the State Department and recently departed members of the U.S Vienna team say it doesn’t look good.
One of the team members who resigned, Richard Nephew, was Malley’s deputy in Vienna, and says he left over a “sincere difference of opinion concerning policy.”
Nephew is an expert on the use of sanctions, which may offer a clue to the reason for his and his team-members’ abrupt departure from Vienna.
Another critic, Gabriel Noronha, was Special Advisor for Iran in the Trump era. He has spoken with friends intimate with the Vienna talks and has made troubling allegations about the impending deal. According to Noronha, most sanctions on Iran’s institutions and terror-implicated agents are to be dropped at Iran’s insistence.
These include people and organizations not even related to Iran’s nuclear program. Among those apparently being absolved of sanctions are the mastermind of the 1983 AMIA Jewish Center bombing in Buenos Aires; key planners of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marines headquarters in Beirut—which killed 241 Americans and 58 Frenchmen; and the Iranian agents who performed the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.
The last bombing was the work of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is listed and sanctioned by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. According to Noronha, the IRGC, which has carried out terror attacks in over 40 countries around the world, is on the JCPOA-2 “forgiveness list.”
Sanctions relief isn’t petty business for Iran: It stands to benefit by $90 billion in access to foreign exchange reserves, and then reap a further $50-$55 billion in revenues each year from higher exports, chiefly oil. Reportedly, the deal currently includes no strictures on how the money can be used, which is good news for groups like Hizbullah and Hamas, long the beneficiaries of Iran’s terror largesse.
Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the emerging deal is that Iran will maintain access to its uranium enrichment facilities and its existing stash of 60%-enriched uranium, whose only use is in atomic bombs.
Grudgingly, Iran seems willing to live with an enrichment limit under JCPOA-2 of “just” 20% going forward—a level that is still five times higher than the 2015 JCPOA restriction.
President Biden has been invisible throughout this negotiating process. According to Noronha, Secretary of State Anton Blinken has acceded to Iran’s increasingly outrageous demands, with Russia’s Ulyanov hardly a tough negotiating adversary against Iran.
Indeed, Russia and Iran have collaborated for years militarily in Syria, with enormous loss of Syrian life. Putin’s air force turned vibrant and prosperous Aleppo, Syria into a bombed-out husk. Iranian troops and proxies finished off the job on the ground.
Ulyanov himself recently commented, "Realistically speaking, Iran got more than frankly I expected, others expected. This is a matter of fact."
The rumored terms of the new pact are a potential death sentence for Israel. Unless the Biden administration digs its heels in—which seems highly doubtful—Israel will need to take drastic actions to prevent Iran from joining the nuclear club in fairly short order. And it must brace itself for the likely torrent of terrorism that a wealthy Iran will unleash—especially on Israel and Jews around the world.
As the prime target of Iranian fanaticism, Israel—yet again—is being left to its own devices in the cruel world of geopolitics—by its “best friend,” the United States of America.
Adding insult to injury, it appears that the U.S. Congress will not be able to provide advice and consent on the new JCPOA-2 treaty, as the Constitution requires, due to a cynical legislative workaround being employed by Mr. Biden.
Indeed, Biden seems desperate to call the radically different agreement emerging from Vienna a “renewal” rather than a “replacement.” This would allow him to avoid going back to Congress for approval, as Obama also did in 2015—much less to secure the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate that is required under the Constitution to ratify a treaty.
This maneuver also of course gave Trump the unilateral withdrawal option a few years later and would do the same for the next Republican president—who is likely to be repulsed by the deal and outraged by Iran’s cheating on it.
1 comment:
I think my Golden Retriever could speak more eloquently on the subject than can Joe Biden, and my golden is neither particularly bright nor articulate, though she is really cute.
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