Obama’s Policy Will Make Saudi Arabia A Nuclear Horn (Daniel 7)

John Kerry warns Saudi Arabia of consequences if they get nuclear weapons

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan against indulging in trade of nuclear weapons, saying there will be “all kinds of NPT consequences” if Riyadh went ahead with any such plan.

Such a strong warning from Kerry comes amidst media reports that Saudi Arabia is trying to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan.

Top Pakistani leaders have in recent weeks warned Iran of serious consequences if it attacked Saudi Arabia, which many analysts see a nuclear threat from Islamabad to Tehran.

“Sure we’ve heard those things. But you can’t just buy a bomb and transfer (a nuclear bomb),” Kerry told CNN.

“There’s all kinds of NPT consequences. I mean, there are huge implications of that,” Kerry said, referring to the strong nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

He was asked, “The Saudis (are) not even ruling out the possibility, given their concern about this nuclear deal with Iran, they could go forward and buy some — maybe buy a nuclear bomb, maybe from Pakistan, you’ve heard those concerns.”

Pakistan is already under the radar of the international community for its previous nuclear proliferation activities and leaking the nuclear weapons technology to countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea.

“Saudi Arabia knows, I believe, that that is not going to make them safer, nor is it going to be easy because the very things that Iran went through, they would then be subject to with respect to inspection, NPT and so forth,” Kerry said.

Playing Cards With Esau (Genesis 28)

Kerry and Iranian Policy

Why the Long-Term Fate of an Iran Nuclear Deal Rests With . . . Iran By STEPHEN SESTANOVICH

WSJ
May 29, 2015 3:59 PM

When 47 Republican senators wrote to Iran’s supreme leader in March, warning that future Congresses and presidents could reverse a deal between Iran and the Obama administration, many people criticized their letter. For some, it was bad taste; for others, bad politics. But was it bad analysis? Politico has published a related piece by two former George W. Bush administration officials, Eric Edelman and Robert Joseph, and my Council on Foreign Relations colleague (and fellow WSJ Think Tank contributor) Ray Takeyh. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should read what they say. With just a month left for negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, the long-term viability of any agreement could depend on it.

Mr. Edelman, Mr. Joseph, and Mr. Takeyh look to history to explore how and when U.S. presidents renounce arms-control deals that their predecessors negotiated. They find three relevant cases: the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (from which George W. Bush withdrew in 2001), the 1979 SALT-II treaty (which Ronald Reagan said in 1986 that he would stop observing), and the 1994 Agreed Framework With North Korea (which the U.S. repudiated in the face of Pyongyang’s cheating in 2002).

Clearly, the United States does rethink the pros and cons of existing agreements. But the real lesson for Ayatollah Khamenei is not that Washington is an unreliable partner. It’s that the fate of a deal depends primarily on Iran—and whether it is a reliable partner.

Look at what finally undid these agreements. Reagan didn’t like the SALT-II treaty but observed it for more than five years. Ultimately, Soviet cheating gave opponents of the treaty a trump card. Mr. Bush, too, would have stuck with a North Korea deal that he didn’t like, but Kim Jong Il made that impossible. In the late 1990s, Russian negotiators rejected a stream of U.S. ideas to adjust the ABM treaty to a world of new ballistic-missile threats. Had Moscow reacted differently, there might still be a treaty.

The message for Iran’s supreme leader? As he tells his diplomats how to handle the last phase of talks, he should know that the one factor most likely to trigger U.S. withdrawal, now or later, is doubt about the other side’s good faith. Washington can live for a long time with agreements it doesn’t like, but fears of cheating are hard to put to rest. (That’s why Saddam Hussein is no longer running Iraq.)

News reports suggest that Iranian negotiators have been instructed to haggle endlessly about what inspectors will be allowed to do and see. Tehran may well make it easier to keep some things hidden. But if it does, chances are that somewhere down the road an American president is going to reconsider the deal.

Stephen Sestanovich, a professor at Columbia University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “Maximalist: America in the World From Truman to Obama.” He is on Twitter: @ssestanovich.

John Kerry’s Strange Love For Iran (Eze 17)

 
John Kerry ‘Wished US Had Leader’ Like Khamenei, Iranians Say

By Drew MacKenzie
Wednesday, 29 Apr 2015 07:58 AM

Secretary of State John Kerry allegedly told his Iranian counterpart that he wished the U.S. had a head of state more like Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
Citing remarks from a senior Iranian cleric that were broadcast in the country’s state-run media, Kerry reportedly told Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during nuclear negotiations between the two powers that he “wished the U.S. had a leader like Iran’s supreme leader.”

The claim came from senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Alam al-Hoda, according to a Persian-language report on the remarks published by the Asriran news site, which said that the comments were made during Friday prayer services.

“In the negotiations Kerry told Zarif that he wished the U.S. had a leader like Iran’s supreme leader,” according to al-Hoda, who is a senior member of the Iran’s powerful Assembly of Experts, the Beacon reported.

But a senior U.S. administration official told the Beacon that such a notion was utterly ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Saeed Ghasseminejad, an Iranian dissident at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has claimed that the U.S. “overtures” to Iran at the nuclear bargaining table have failed to win America any respect from the Islamic Republic’s leaders.

“President Obama thinks that by making more concessions he can gain the trust and respect of Iranian leaders,” Ghasseminejad said. “However, Iranian leaders neither trust him nor respect him.

“Seeing unprecedented weakness in the U.S. president, Iranian leaders do not fear the United States anymore. Partnership, trust, and alliance between the radical Islamist regime of Tehran and United States cannot and should not exist.”

According to the Fars News Agency, Zarif said over the weekend that fighting between the Obama administration and Congress over a potential final deal could not prevent the U.S. from carrying out any final agreement the White House signs.

“As we have stated since the beginning, we consider the U.S. administration responsible for implementing the agreement, and internal problems and conflicts in the U.S. are not related to us and to the implementation of the agreement,” Zarif said.

“Based on the international laws, the countries’ internal problems don’t exempt them from implementing their undertakings and this is the main framework that we attach importance to,” he said.

Kerry’s Misguided Love For Iran (Ezekiel 17)

 

John Kerry to Iran, reportedly: Barack Obama is great and all, but he’s no Ayatollah Khamenei

posted at 1:21 pm on April 29, 2015 by Noah Rothman

As backhanded compliments go, this latest via Secretary of State John Kerry is a remarkable achievement.

Despite the Islamic Republic of Iran’s destabilizing regional agenda — including its support for Houthi rebels in Iran, its backing of Hezbollah in Lebanon, its aid to Islamist militants in Syria, and its command of Shiite proxies in Iraq – the White House has bent over backwards to court the mullahs in order to advance the prospect of a legacy-saving nuclear accord.

If Iranian sources are to be believed, and there is every reason to be skeptical of Iranian sources, Islamic Republic officials are not merely targets of courting from Washington but also of obsequious flattery.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Kerry reportedly assured his Iranian counterparts that he wouldn’t mind if the president was more like Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei.
 

Ayatollah Alam al-Hoda claimed during Friday prayer services in Iran that in negotiations over Tehran’s contested nuclear program, Kerry told the country’s foreign minister that he “wished the U.S. had a leader like Iran’s supreme leader,” according to a Persian-language report on the remarks published by the Asriran news site.
“In the negotiations Kerry told [Iranian Foreign Minister Javad] Zarif that he [Kerry] wished U.S. had a leader like Iran’s supreme leader,” according to Alam al-Hoda, who is a senior member of the Iran’s powerful Assembly of Experts.

“A senior administration official told the Washington Free Beacon that such a contention is patently absurd,” the dispatch added.

Yes, it is absurd. And it’s unlikely to be an accurate reflection of Kerry’s remarks. Although, it is within the realm of possibility to believe that the secretary of state’s diplomatic courtesies might have gone a bit too far.

It is not, however, beyond the pale to note that American nuclear negotiators have gone to great lengths to give the Ayatollah whatever he wanted and more. “The Ayatollah knows that Mr. Obama wants an agreement with Iran so much that there’s almost no concession the President won’t make,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board observed on April 19. “So why not keep asking for more?”

Keep in mind that the talks began with the U.S. and its European partners demanding that Iran dismantle its nuclear program. But to persuade the Ayatollah to accept the recent “framework” accord, Mr. Obama has already conceded that Iran can keep enriching uranium, that it can maintain 5,060 centrifuges to do the enriching, that its enriched-uranium stockpiles can stay inside Iran, that the once-concealed facilities at Fordow and Arak can stay open (albeit in altered form), and that Iran can continue doing research on advanced centrifuges.

All of these concessions are contrary to previous U.S. positions, and we’re no doubt missing a few. But none of that was enough for the Ayatollah, who quickly asserted two new deal-breaking objections: immediate sanctions relief, and no inspections under any circumstances of Iran’s military sites.

If Kerry did unfavorably compare Barack Obama to Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah did not return the favor. In reaction to the civil unrest in the city of Baltimore, Khamenei pressed the United States and the president to address America’s human rights abuses. No, really!

“It’s ridiculous that even though US President is black, still such crimes against US blacks continue to occur,” read a statement released on Khamenei’s Twitter account accompanied with the hashtags “#BlackLivesMatter” and “#FreddieGray.”

“On false pretexts US police shoots ppl on streets. This is a type of power which doesn’t ensure security but leads to insecurity. #MikeBrown,” read another tweet in what became a full-fledged rant.
“Power & tyranny are different. In some countries like US, police are seemingly powerful but they kill innocents. #FreddieGray #RekiaBoyd,” a third tweet in the storm read. “Even abolition of #slavery in #US wasn’t based on humanitarian intents but on North-South wars & conflict b/t landowners & industrialists.”

For a nation that summarily executes those suspected of homosexuality, forbids free association, routinely arrests journalists, holds Americans for ransom, and brutally represses dissent via the paramilitary Basij, these are some bold statements. Maybe John Kerry will have something to say about Iran’s human rights record. After a nuclear deal has been finalized, of course.

Kerry Wants An Iranian Deal More Than The Truth

Editorial: Iran’s big (nuclear) lie

Sunday, December 14, 2014

By: Herald Staff

 

The United States has accused Iran of shopping for components for a dangerous nuclear reactor whose construction was supposed to have been suspended while Iran and Western countries negotiate limits on what Iran may do to develop a nuclear industry. This ought to, but likely won’t, lead President Obama and U.S. allies to conclude that Iran can’t be trusted to keep its word on anything.

The accusation was reported in Foreign Policy magazine by staffer Colum Lynch, a former reporter for The Washington Post, who said U.S. officials passed the information to a panel of experts advising the United Nations Security Council. (The nature of the components was not stated.)

The Arak reactor is dangerous because it is a kind that makes plutonium production easier than in common civilian reactors. Plutonium can be used for bombs as well as uranium, which can be enriched to bomb grade by centrifuges of which Iran operates about 10,000.

Iran has granted inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency only limited access to Arak. Critical construction work there was said to be still suspended.

When negotiations were extended for a second time last month, Secretary of State John Kerry said, “Iran has held up its end of the bargain.” In light of Iran’s component-shopping, that amounts to hair-splitting of a particularly devious kind. There is no good reason for Kerry to hide Iran’s maneuvers from the American people.

Perhaps Kerry wants to keep Congress in the dark too. In the Senate particularly, sentiment is growing for tighter economic sanctions against Iran, perhaps deploying automatically if negotiations fail. This could be a most useful weapon for Kerry’s negotiating toolbox but it appears his ego prevents him from considering it — which he may greatly regret.