The Fatal Wound Is Healed (Rev 13:3)

  

Republicans beware of Bush nostalgia
BY: W. James Antle III June 4, 2015 | 12:01 am

The polls are starting to look good for Bush. No, not Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who is all but running for president. That’s former President George W. Bush.

In case you missed this news as much as you miss the 43rd president of the United States, a CNN poll found that he is viewed more favorably than either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. It is the first time in years a majority of Americans has held such a favorable view of “Dubya.”

Specifically, 52 percent held a favorable opinion of Bush to just 43 percent whose views were unfavorable. On President Obama, respondents were deadlocked at 49 percent apiece.

Half the country viewed Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, unfavorably. Only 46 percent were favorable. Clinton’s favorability numbers were the worst they had been since 2001.

That’s not all. A Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll found that 57 percent of Iowa Republicans thought it would be a good thing if the former president advised his brother Jeb in the White House, suggesting Bush 43 might actually be an asset to his White House-seeking sibling.

Why not cut out the middle man, repeal the 22nd amendment and just go with the original article? George W. Bush, tanned, rested and ready. At least we can erect some more “Miss me yet?” billboards.

Let’s not get carried away. Bush nostalgia is the surest way for Republicans to throw away what should be a winnable election against a thoroughly unappealing candidate.

First, this Bush renaissance should be kept in perspective. The former president has mostly kept quiet since leaving office, popping up to give charming interviews or to show off the occasional painting. Obama is in office pursuing unpopular policies right now, while Clinton is vying for the right to do so.

Even though Team Hillary has engaged in a virtual media blackout, making Orwellian statements about speeches now counting as interviews, her scandals and controversies remain in the public spotlight each day. The elder Bush brother is mostly out of the headlines.

When it comes to former presidents and old flames, absence makes the heart grow fonder. In the CNN/ORC poll, family patriarch George H.W. Bush is viewed favorably by 64 percent and unfavorably by just 30 percent.

This is a fellow who raised taxes, presided over a recession and received just 37.5 percent of the vote in his reelection bid, the Republicans’ lowest percentage of the popular vote since Alf Landon in 1936 and the worst showing by an incumbent president since William Howard Taft in 1912. Yet he’s still more popular than his son.

Another one-term ex-president with better poll numbers is Jimmy Carter. Still considered the epitome of White House failure, Carter is viewed favorably by 56 percent to 30 percent. Surprisingly, 6 percent say they have never heard of him.

Bill Clinton is viewed most favorably of all, which could prove more relevant to the 2016 presidential election. Fully 64 percent have a favorable view of him. And in the Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll, 83 percent of Iowa Democrats think he’d be a good adviser to Hillary.

To put it another way, 33 percent of Iowa Republicans don’t want Dubya to darken a President Jeb Bush’s door. Only 9 percent of Iowa Democrats feel that way about Bill advising Hillary.

The quickest way for George W. Bush to lose the popularity he has recently reacquired would be for him to come out of the woodwork and remind voters why they turned against him in the first place. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that Americans voters thought the Iraq war was a mistake by 59 percent to 32 percent. Only Republicans disagreed, not a very good way to head into the election season.

Re-litigating past Bush and Clinton presidencies won’t do the GOP any favors. Voters may contrast the 1990s Internet boom with the 2007-08 financial crisis, the $128 billion surplus that turned into a $455 billion deficit, welfare reform versus No Child Left Behind. Conservatives may even recall that discretionary spending grew faster under Bush than Clinton, and the former creating the biggest new entitlement since the Great Society.

More to the point, why look back at all? For the first time in years, Republicans have the chance to nominate a younger and fresher candidate than the Democrats. Harkening back to the Bushes is a good way to blow it.

The polling — CNN/ORC, again — bears this out. Sixty-four percent view Jeb Bush, to say nothing of George W., as representing the past. Majorities say Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Scott Walker represent the future.

George W. Bush could perhaps teach Republicans a thing or two about reaching out to Hispanic voters or presenting social conservatism in an attractive, nonjudgmental way (at least until he became a culture war symbol in his own right).

But sometimes, it’s better to let sleeping Bushes lie.

Republicans Want You to Forget Bush (Rev 13:10)

 


Republicans Want You to Forget Why Sending Troops Back to Iraq Is a Terrible Idea

Bob Burnett Berkeley writer, retired Silicon Valley executive

As the Republican presidential demolition derby continues, the 2016 GOP candidates have settled on two central themes: hatred for President Barack Obama and desire to send U.S. troops back to Iraq to fight ISIS. While Republicans suffer from short-term memory loss, there’s no reason the rest of us should forget what actually happened in Iraq and why sending troops back there is a terrible idea.

1. The Iraq War was a ghastly mistake.

Most political observers now believe the March 20, 2003, invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history.

The Bush White House had three reasons for invading Iraq. First, the invasion diverted the public’s attention from the failed campaign in Afghanistan, where Dubya’s people hadn’t captured Osama bin Laden or any of the others responsible for 9/11. In a March 13, 2002, news conference, Bush blurted, “I don’t know where [Osama bin Laden] is… I truly am not that concerned about him.”

Because the 2002 mid-term elections were coming, Republicans needed positive momentum on their “war” on terror. They shifted America’s focus from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan to Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

During the first quarter of 2002 the Bush White House decided to invade Iraq. Then Vice President Dick Cheney began asserting that Iraq had nuclear weapons. In June, Karl Rove and other GOP political operatives said the Republican mid-term election strategy was “war and the economy.” Dubya and his pals hated Saddam Hussein because he had once attempted to kill George Bush Senior. As a consequence, the Bush Administration fed Americans a series of lies about Iraq: Saddam Hussein was connected to Al Qaeda, had helped plan the 9/11 attacks, and had “weapons of mass destruction.”

2. The Iraq War cost $4 trillion plus.

The Bush Administration vastly underestimated the cost of the invasion. On September 16, 2002, White House adviser Lawrence Lindsey estimated an Iraq War would cost $200 billion. (On July 2, 2002, White House adviser Richard Perle observed, “Iraq is a very wealthy country [with] enormous oil reserves. They can finance… reconstruction of their own country.”) On November 8, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld predicted the length of an Iraq War: “Five days or five weeks or five months. It certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.”

The Iraq War lasted more than eight years (from March 20, 2003, to December 18, 2011.) In March of 2008, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz released a study estimating war cost as more than $3 trillion. (In current estimates the war will cost “$4 trillion to $6 trillion.”) This includes not only the direct costs of the war but also the interest on the money borrowed to finance the war plus the “medical care and disability benefits to about 70,000 soldiers injured in the conflict.”

To put “$4 trillion to $6 trillion” in perspective, the U.S. debt is estimated at $18 trillion. Guaranteeing every American a basic income at the poverty level is estimated to cost $2.1 trillion annually. (The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost of Obamacare over ten years [2016-2025] to be $1.2 trillion.)

3. The Iraq war was mismanaged.

It’s no secret that George W. Bush was a failed businessman. In the 2000 campaign, Republicans attempted to shield Dubya by claiming he would be surrounded by seasoned managers, such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. But the reality is that Cheney and Rumsfeld were also failed managers, who made a series of awful decisions.

Not enough troops were sent into Iraq. As a result the immediate result of the fall of the Saddam Hussein government was widespread looting and unnecessary damage to the civil infrastructure. Instead of turning control of Iraqi civil society over to Iraqis, the Bush Administration formed the Coalition Provisional Authority. In May of 2003, L. Pail Bremer, CEO of the Provisional Authority disbanded the ruling Ba’ath Party (and banned members from future employment in the public sector — effectively firing all educated teachers) and the army. This alienated most Iraqis, particularly Sunnis.

4. A bad U.S. management team installed a bad Iraqi management team. 

Following the dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. installed a Shiite, Nouri al-Maliki, as prime minister (who served from 2006-2014). Al-Maliki, a Shiite, systematically repressed the already repressed Sunnis. He, in effect, spawned ISIS.

5. In 2011, the Iraqi management team we installed asked us to leave the country.

As Time magazine explained at the time: “ending the U.S. troop presence in Iraq was an overwhelmingly popular demand among Iraqis, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki appears to have been unwilling to take the political risk of extending it.” Obama wanted to leave troops in Iraq but al-Maliki fought this by insisting on an unacceptable State of Forces agreement.

In summary, Republicans, and their progeny, are responsible for every piece of the Iraq debacle. Now they are asking us to forget that.

Obama Administration Hits A New Low (Ezekiel 17)

OUTRAGEOUS: Obama releases TOP-SECRET document exposing Israel’s nuclear weapons program

Posted on March 25, 2015 by The Right Scoop

In an unprecedented move, our Muslim president and his administration declassified a top-secret document from 1987 that gives secret details on Israel’s nuclear weapon’s program, something Israel has tried to keep quiet to avoid a nuclear arms race in the region.

Obama’s defense department released the document around the timing of Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, making pretty clear that it has everything to do with his petulant fight with Netanyahu over the Iranian negotiations.

What a puke:

ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS – In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel’s nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent.

But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel’s nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth.

The timing of the revelation is highly suspect, given that it came as tensions spiraled out of control between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama ahead of Netanyahu’s March 3 address in Congress, in which he warned against the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and how the deal being formed on that program leaves the Islamic regime with nuclear breakout capabilities.

Another highly suspicious aspect of the document is that while the Pentagon saw fit to declassify sections on Israel’s sensitive nuclear program, it kept sections on Italy, France, West Germany and other NATO countries classified, with those sections blocked out in the document.

The 386-page report entitled “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations” gives a detailed description of how Israel advanced its military technology and developed its nuclear infrastructure and research in the 1970s and 1980s.

Israel is “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,” reveals the report, stating that in the 1980s Israelis were reaching the ability to create bombs considered a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.

The revelation marks a first in which the US published in a document a description of how Israel attained hydrogen bombs.

(h/t: Breitbart)

Bush Completed The Prophecy Of Revelation 13:1-10

This Declassified CIA Report Shows the Shaky Case for the Iraq War

—By Julia Lurie

Fri Mar. 20, 2015 1:31 PM EDT

Chuck Kennedy/TNS/ZUMA

 

The United States began its invasion of Iraq 12 years ago. Yesterday, a previously classified Central Intelligence Agency report containing supposed proof of the country’s weapons of mass destruction was published by Jason Leopold of Vice News. Put together nine months before the start of the war, the National Intelligence Estimate spells out what the CIA knew about Iraq’s ability to produce biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. It would become the backbone of the Bush administration’s mistaken assertions that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs and posed a direct threat to the post-9/11 world.

The report is rife with what now are obvious red flags that the Bush White House oversold the case for war. It asserts that Iraq had an active chemical weapons program at one point, though it admits that the CIA had found no evidence of the program’s continuation. It repeatedly includes caveats like “credible evidence is limited.” It gives little space to the doubts of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which found the CIA’s findings on Iraq’s nuclear program unconvincing and “at best ambiguous.”

This isn’t the first time the report’s been released in full: A version was made public in 2004, but nearly all the text was redacted. Last year, transparency advocate John Greenwald successfully petitioned the CIA for a more complete version. Greenwald shared the document with Leopold.

Dark Days Ahead For The White House (Ezekiel 17)

G.O.P. Senators’ Letter to Iran About Nuclear Deal Angers White House

By PETER BAKERMARCH 9, 2015

WASHINGTON — The fractious debate over a possible nuclear deal with Iran escalated on Monday as 47 Republican senators warned Iran about making an agreement with President Obama, and the White House accused them of undercutting foreign policy.

In a rare direct congressional intervention into diplomatic negotiations, the Republicans signed an open letter addressed to “leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” declaring that any agreement without legislative approval could be reversed by the next president “with the stroke of a pen.”
The letter appeared aimed at unraveling a framework agreement even as negotiators grew close to reaching it. Mr. Obama, working with leaders of five other world powers, argues that the pact would be the best way to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. But critics from both parties say that such a deal would be a dangerous charade that would leave Iran with the opportunity to eventually build weapons that could be used against Israel or other foes.

While the possible agreement has drawn bipartisan criticism, the letter, signed only by Republicans, underscored the increasingly party-line flavor of the clash. Just last week, the Republican House speaker, John A. Boehner, gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel the platform of a joint meeting of Congress to denounce the developing deal, and Senate Republicans briefly tried to advance legislation aimed at forcing Mr. Obama to submit it to Congress, alienating Democratic allies.

The letter came as Secretary of State John Kerry’s office announced that he would return to Switzerland on Sunday in hopes of completing the framework agreement before an end-of-March deadline. Under the terms being discussed, Iran would pare back its nuclear program enough so that it would be unable to produce enough fuel for a bomb in less than a year if it tried to break out of the agreement. The pact would last at least 10 years; in exchange the world powers would lift sanctions.
Whether the Republican letter might undercut Iran’s willingness to strike a deal was not clear. Iran reacted with scorn. “In our view, this letter has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy,” Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, said in a statement. “It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history.”

A senior American official said the letter probably would not stop an agreement from being reached, but could make it harder to blame Iran if the talks fail. “The problem is if there is not an agreement, the perception of who is at fault is critically important to our ability to maintain pressure, and this type of thing would likely be used by the Iranians in that scenario,” said the official, who spoke anonymously to discuss the negotiations.

The White House and congressional Democrats expressed outrage, calling the letter an unprecedented violation of the tradition of leaving politics at the water’s edge. Republicans said that by styling it as an “open letter,” it was akin to a statement, not an overt intervention in the talks.

“It’s somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with the hard-liners in Iran,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “It’s an unusual coalition.”

Other Democrats were sharper. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, called it “just the latest in an ongoing strategy, a partisan strategy, to undermine the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy.” Senator Harry M. Reid of Nevada, the Democratic minority leader, said the “Republicans are undermining our commander in chief while empowering the ayatollahs.”

The letter, drafted by Senator Tom Cotton, a freshman from Arkansas, and signed by all but seven members of the Senate Republican majority, warned Iran that a deal with Mr. Obama might not stick. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen, and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time,” said the letter, whose existence was reported earlier by Bloomberg News.

Mr. Cotton said he drafted the letter because Iran’s leaders might not understand America’s constitutional system. He also said the terms of the emerging deal were dangerous because they would not be permanent and would leave Iran with nuclear infrastructure. He noted that four Republican senators who may run for president signed his letter and added that he tried without success to get Democrats to sign.

“The only thing unprecedented is an American president negotiating a nuclear deal with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism without submitting it to Congress,” he said on CNN.
The letter revived an old debate about what role Congress should have in diplomacy.

Jim Wright, the Democratic House speaker during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, was accused of interfering when he met with opposing leaders in Nicaragua’s contra war. Three House Democrats went to Iraq in 2002 before President George W. Bush’s invasion to try to head off war. And Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, went to Syria in 2007 to meet with President Bashar al-Assad against the wishes of the Bush administration, which was trying to isolate him.

An agreement with Iran would not require immediate congressional action because Mr. Obama has the power to lift sanctions he imposed under his executive authority and to suspend others imposed by Congress. But permanently lifting those imposed by Congress, as Iran has sought, would eventually require a vote.

Rather than wait, Republicans, joined by several Democrats, drafted legislation aimed at forcing Mr. Obama to submit the agreement to Congress. But when Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, moved to advance that legislation for a vote, Democrats who support it balked at taking action before the talks with Iran concluded. Mr. McConnell backed off, but the bill may be revived if a deal is reached.

Among the Republicans who declined to sign Mr. Cotton’s letter was Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, who has been working with Democrats on Iran legislation. “We’ve got a bipartisan effort that’s underway that has a chance of being successful, and while I understand all kinds of people want to weigh in,” he said, he concluded that it would not “be helpful in that effort for me to be involved in it.”

Some Democrats, like Representative Brad Sherman of California, said the letter and other moves risked making it a party-line issue, in which case it would be impossible to muster a two-thirds vote to override a presidential veto. “The number of Democrats not willing to follow the president’s lead is reduced when it becomes a personal or political issue,” he said.

Nebuchadnezzar Passes Buck To Next Administration

The US is reportedly willing to make another huge nuclear concession to Iran

Armin Rosen Tomorrow at 5:57 AM

They’re this close to a deal — if the US stomachs another big concession.

The outline of a landmark nuclear deal between a US-led group of countries and Iran is coming into focus.

According to the AP, Iran will be able to keep 6,500 uranium enrichment centrifuges under a final agreement. This would allow Iran to achieve one nuclear weapon’s worth of uranium enrichment in between six months and a year (depending on the amount and enrichment level of low-enriched uranium the country’s allowed to have hand), and to keep as many as 5,500 more centrifuges than the minimum needed to run a “demonstration cascade” that would allow Iranian scientists to maintain a basic mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Even before the AP article was published on February 22, the 6,500 number had been reported in Israeli media and partly corroborated by the New York Times. But the AP includes news of a second and equally significant US concession.

The nuclear deal will apparently include a 15-year sunset, with certain restrictions on Iranian uranium enrichment lifted after 10 years and Iran permitted to keep somewhere in the neighbourhood as 10,000 centrifuges at the moment the deal expires. As the AP explains, the US had initially wanted a 20-year deal going into the latest round of talks, which means that the full, as-yet unknown set of restrictions will be in place for anywhere between one quarter one half the amount of time American negotiators were aiming for.

Why are US negotiators willing to stomach this concession? While a 10-15 year sunset is far from ideal, it at least freezes the amount of uranium Iran can possess and produce for a decade or more. It would keep Iran under a strict inspection regime and give the US and its allies a long lead-time to build support for another round of sanctions if Tehran evinced plans to further develop its nuclear program or otherwise buck the international system.

There’s another reason for accepting a short deal. As David Ignatius explained in a February 19th column in the Washington Post, the Israelis believe that the US is willing to accept a shorter agreement because the administration “wants to tie Iran’s hands for a decade until a new generation takes power there.”
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been ill recently. The Islamic Republic’s founding generation is dying out, and US negotiators hope that Iran will be a much different place in 10-15 years, with a government willing to draw down the more threatening aspects of its program even after a nuclear deal has expired. It’s probably also hoped that a nuclear agreement and Iran’s resulting reintegration with the international mainstream may even push the country towards this more pragmatic course.
But justifications have one troubling thing in common: They both make huge assumptions about the future nature of Iran’s relationship with the US and the rest of the world.

A security official stands in front of the Bushehr nuclear reactor, 1,200 km (746 miles) south of Tehran, August 21, 2010.

Under a short deal, the international community must re-implement sanctions if Iran decides to pocket its concessions and restart its program once the deal expires — something Tehran will be able to easily do, since the deal the AP describes would allow it to keep significant aspects of its nuclear infrastructure.

But it might be a huge leap to think that in 2030 the world will have any appetite for a second Iranian nuclear standoff, especially after economic and diplomatic ties have been fully restored for a decade or more under the preceding deal.

The current round of sanctions took substantial time and US political capital to implement. The global leaders of the future may wonder whether it’s worth doing it all over again to resolve an issue that they may feel has already been settled.

A short deal might also transform Iran’s nuclear calculus. When a 15 year deal expires, Tehran would be justified in figuring that it had been able to lift the international sanctions regime while being able to keep as many as 10,000 centrifuges. With sanctions gone and much of the country’s nuclear infrastructure in place, the Iranian leaders of 2030 will have little incentive to negotiate a second deal, should the US consider such a deal necessary.

The sunset clause’s assumptions about the Iranian regime’s future moderation may be wishful as well. The Islamic Republic has vacillated between reform and retrenchment for much of the past two decades. In 1997, the reformist Mohammad Khatami was elected Iran’s president. But ten years ago, the newly-elected Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made headlines for denying the Holocaust and expounding on the importance of destroying the state of Israel.

A short deal gambles on an opaque and highly compartmentalized regime transforming itself by a specific future date. This is a strange basis for an epochal diplomatic agreement in the Middle East or any other part of the world.

A mural in Tehran

Finally, a short nuclear deal reflects a kind of short-term thinking that’s disconcertingly out of keeping with the actual challenges of nuclear proliferation. This is partly a structural problem. Presidential administrations last between four and eight years. Nuclear weapons, however, may be with humanity for the rest of the species’ existence, and once a country goes nuclear it seldom if ever crosses back over the threshold.

The ephemeral timetable of American political leadership at least makes it comprehensible that US political leaders wouldn’t be approaching the Iranian nuclear issue on a 50-or 100-year scale. But there was a 26-year lag between the inauguration of Pakistan’s nuclear program in 1972 and its first test of a nuclear weapon in 1998. North Korea attempted its first nuclear test in 2006, 12 years after signing the Agreed Framework with the US.

Determined nuclear proliferates understand that even long delays are meaningless so long as a capability is eventually established. The only countries that have lost their nuclear weapons have either destroyed or exported them voluntarily; once you’ve got the bomb, you’ve got it for good. And Iran, which has built illicit plutonium and a uranium programs while laboring under strict international sanctions, has been incredibly determined.

A 10-15 year sunset clause seems oblivious to some of the dangers of approaching the Iranian nuclear issue as a short-term matter that can be solved in a single go — rather than an question that could dog successive US administrations for decades or even centuries to come.

Is Babylon the Great Ignorant Or Playing Politics?

Obama: Iran has not advanced nuclear ambitions since U.S. negotiations started

By Jon Greenberg on Sunday, December 21st, 2014 at 5:44 p.m.

President Barack Obama on CNN’s “State of the Union” Dec. 21, 2014.

When you close out the year by ditching America’s 50-year isolation of Cuba, you can expect a few broader questions about your style on the international stage.

President Barack Obama said in a year-end interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley that he has been “consistent in saying that where we can solve problems diplomatically, we should do so.”

Crowley pressed Obama to respond to the charge that he is too willing to cut deals that produce little in return for the United States.

“The gist of it is that you’re naive and they’re rolling you,” Crowley said, speaking of other world leaders.

Obama shot back that on a couple of major fronts, his track record is looking pretty good. Russia now has a crisis on its hands as its economy stalls and the value of the ruble tumbles. On Iran, the president said there have been real gains.

“Over the last year and a half, since we began negotiations with them, that’s probably the first year and a half in which Iran has not advanced its nuclear program in the last decade,” Obama said.
The fear that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a charge that Iran denies, has bedeviled the international community for over 15 years. We decided to take a closer look at whether Iran’s program has advanced or not.

We found general agreement that in terms of curtailing the means to produce enriched uranium and plutonium, the essential fuels needed for an atomic bomb, negotiations between the United States, Iran and other United Nations countries contributed to real progress. However, some analysts define Iran’s nuclear program more broadly to include suspected efforts to design nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The negotiations don’t address those elements, however, and what Iran is doing or has done in that area is subject to much debate.

By way of refresher, in November 2013, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, and Iran signed an agreement that temporarily stopped or rolled back Iran’s production of potentially weapons grade nuclear material. In November 2014, that agreement was extended by four months, with some additional restrictions on Iran. In exchange, Iran has been able to sell more of its oil and gain access to millions of dollars that had been frozen in overseas bank accounts.

The key elements in the agreements

Negotiators focused on nuclear fuel. This had three main aspects.

• Stopping the production and accumulation of uranium enriched to the 20 percent level of the isotope U-235 and converting a large fraction of what it had to a form harder to use in a weapon.
• Stop the installation of additional centrifuge machines at Iran’s two enrichment facilities. Centrifuges are essential to the enrichment process.
• Put the brakes on construction of Iran’s heavy water reactor in Arak. If it were operational, this reactor could produce enough plutonium in its spent fuel for one to two nuclear warheads.

Importantly, Iran agreed to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That agency has found that Iran complied with the terms of the original November 2013 agreement. In its November 2014 report, the agency said, “All of the enrichment related activities at Iran’s declared facilities are under Agency safeguards, and all of the nuclear material, installed cascades, and feed and withdrawal stations at those facilities are subject to Agency containment and surveillance.”

To be clear, Iran continues to enrich uranium, but only to the level of 5 percent of U-235, a form that falls well short of the needs of weapon makers.

Regarding heavy water facilities, the IAEA said that Iran had not stopped all work across all of its heavy water projects, but it had not installed any major components.

What the experts say

As far as nuclear material is concerned, the experts we reached said the agreements successfully, though perhaps only temporarily, curtailed production.

“When President Obama says that for the first time in the past decade Iran has not advanced its nuclear program he is correct,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a research group that advocates for arms control policies. “Leading up to the interim deal, Iran had nearly amassed enough 20 percent enriched uranium gas, which when further enriched to weapons grade is enough for one bomb.”

That material is no longer available, Kimball said.

Matthew Bunn, a principal investigator with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, also said Obama basically has it right on Iran. “They don’t have any more equipment in place for producing bomb material than they had a year and a half ago,” Bunn said.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based group that aims to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, offered a more qualified view. Albright called progress on enrichment, centrifuges and the heavy water facilities in Arak, a “great accomplishment.”

But Albright noted that, “Iran continues to run almost 10,000 centrifuges, enriching and stockpiling 3.5 percent low enriched uranium.” And Iran’s research on advanced centrifuges, with limits, is ongoing.

Albright is also concerned that Iran has so far not allowed the international inspectors the access they need to learn more about any nuclear weapons research Iran had in the past.

Matthew Kroenig, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University, also focused on the weapons side of the equation. Kroenig noted that the agreements that limited and rolled back the production of nuclear-grade material were silent on this front.

“Iran’s missile production continues, and we are uncertain about the nuclear weapons design work, although many experts believe that continues as well,” Kroenig said.

But Kroenig also described curtailing the production of nuclear fuel as the “most important” piece of the nonproliferation effort with Iran.

Two notes on the time elements mentioned in Obama’s comments.

He said this is the first time in a decade that Iran’s nuclear program did not advance. Iran restarted its uranium enrichment program in 2005. That would mean it has been a bit over nine years.

Also, the president’s year and a half is a bit of a stretch. The first agreement with Iran was signed barely over a year ago, although the terms were announced earlier.

Our ruling

Obama said that we have seen “probably the first year and a half in which Iran has not advanced its nuclear program in the last decade.” The agreement signed in November 2013 has made it harder for Iran to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. International observers report that Iran complied with the terms of the temporary agreement. The amount of enriched uranium is less, and the country’s facilities to produce weapons-grade material has been curtailed.

But that does not mean the country has completely stopped all activities that could produce nuclear weapons material in the future. There is also concern about broader aspects of a nuclear weapons program, such as weapons design and missile development.

We rate Obama’s claim Mostly True.

Obama Relying On Khamenei’s Islamic Lies

Administration Relying on Purported Iranian Nuclear ‘Fatwa’ to Get Deal Done

November 14, 2014 – 4:50 AM

 

By Patrick Goodenough

 

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(CNSNews.com) – As the clock winds down on negotiations for a final nuclear deal with Iran, Obama administration officials again are citing a purported fatwa by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prohibiting nuclear weapons. “We respect it enormously,” Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday.Speaking in Amman, Jordan, Kerry spoke of the administration’s hopes to achieve a strong agreement over Iran’s nuclear programs, and its hope that “Iran will work in the same way that we are.”

“Obviously, the fatwa of the leader is a very important instrument, and we respect it enormously as a matter of religious edict,” he said. “But that has to be translated into a lay person’s regular document, a legal one, if you will, with all of the things that are necessary for an agreement regarding potential nuclear programs.”

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes also invoked the alleged religious ruling on Thursday, telling reporters traveling with President Obama in Asia that if the fatwa’s prohibition on developing nuclear weapons was “their stated policy, there should be an opening” to secure an agreement.

“I think with respect to our engagement with Iran, the supreme leader has said that there’s a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons inside of Iran, that their program is peaceful,” he said in Naypyidaw, Burma.

“The purpose of the nuclear negotiation is to arrive at a resolution which Iran can demonstrate to the confidence of the international community that that is the case. If that is their stated policy, there should be an opening to get this done,” Rhodes said. “That’s been our message in negotiations with the Iranians; that will continue to be our message going forward.”

Some skeptics, Muslims among them, have questioned whether the nuclear fatwa – as opposed to Iranian reports about it or other written references to it – actually exists, and if it does, whether it holds any weight.

Iranian officials have pointed to different documents, carrying different dates and using differing wording. A fatwa outlawing nuclear weapons cannot be found among those catalogued on Khamenei’s official website.

When Iran’s mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other international organizations in Vienna was asked to provide a copy of the fatwa, it sent CNSNews a transcript of an April 2010 speech by Khamenei to a nuclear disarmament conference in Iran, in which he said that the “use” of nuclear weapons was forbidden.

Other versions of the supposed fatwa, dated Nov. 2004 and Aug. 2005, refer to the “production, storage, and use” of nuclear weapons being prohibited, while another dated Feb. 2012 only mentions their “possession.”