Negotiating With Iran

"Any comprehensive agreement regarding Iran's nuclear program must require resolution of the outstanding questions regarding its suspected military dimensions."
Mark Bailey, Canada's permanent representative to the IAEA

"The core message is the same: a deal is the only way to prevent an Iranian bomb and keep the U.S. out of another war."
Truman National Security Project

"Iran may have violated [the interim deal] by starting to feed [natural uranium gas] into one of its advanced centrifuges, namely the IR-5 centrifuge. Under the interim deal, this centrifuge should not have been fed with [gas] as reported in this safeguards report."
"Because enrichment in these centrifuges is intermittent and not continuous, questions arise whether any of the advanced centrifuges work well."
Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security

"It should be stated categorically that limiting Iran’s centrifuge program to between 2,000 and 4,000 IR-1 centrifuges is consistent with Iran’s actual needs for enriched uranium for many years. Even 2,000 IR-1 centrifuges would provide Iran with sufficient enriched uranium for its existing and foreseen research reactor needs." 
"It is important to have in this verification scheme an agreement that the IAEA can also verify all the centrifuges… when I say all, I mean all the things that have been manufactured there — whether it's in a warehouse, whether it's in storage, whether it's installed somewhere else."
Dr. Olli Heinonen, former Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 

IAEA inspectors at Iran's nuclear power plant in Natanz, on January, 20, 2014 (photo credit: IRNA/AFP Kazem Ghane) 

 

The Islamic Republic of Iran's Grand Ayatollah Khomeini promised to provide the IAEA with explosive-tests data and the regime's notations on activities related to its research on atomic bombs. The data was to have been released to the IAEA by August 25, and that has not occurred. Since it was a commitment allied with the current and yet-ongoing negotiations between Tehran and the P5+1 any conclusion would be voided with its omission by November 24.

The Republic of Iran is honed toward its diplomatic rehabilitation and international normalization which can only be achieved with a nuclear deal whereby the sanctions will be ended enabling the country to get on with its nuclear 'research' and development and the installation of the additional nuclear plants it plans for its near future, in collaboration with Russia. Without the sanctions coming to an end, restoring normalcy as Iran sees it, and with it the country's financial stability, enmity and a stalemate continue.

Because of the Obama administration's intent eagerness to come to a palatable agreement useful to both the U.S. and Iran, focus has only glanced on Tehran's mobilization of Hezbollah in defence of Syria's Bashar al-Assad's conflict with Syria's Sunni majority leaving Assad free to continue directing his military to commit its bloody atrocities on his civilian population, along with the Shia death squads visiting death and destruction among Iraqi Sunni tribes, a regional maelstrom that birthed Islamic State.

Should success be realized in the negotiations with Iran, it would represent a triumphant foreign relations prop for a president whose international relations have been widely criticized and with good reason. That would represent his foreign policy success legacy, the shining jewel in his presidential library shining on the horizon of the near future. The problem is Messrs. Obama and Kerry are dealing with minds far cleverer and more devious than their own.

From a culture long accustomed to obfuscation, deferrals and denials whose sincerity and diplomacy succeeds time and again in persuading adversaries of the Republic's reliability and trustworthiness in whom faith can be placed and the results assured. Canada, for its part a stern critic of Iran's human rights record expressed skepticism in the U.S. plan for negotiating with a regime for which prevarication and falsehoods represent an advantage over truth and reality.

Canada's deputy permanent representative to the IAEA, Shawn Caza, filed a report with the agency's 35-member governing board  excoriating Iran's "abject failure" in cooperation with the IAEA, along with its "flagrant disregard" of the directives given it by the IAEA. Iran' consistent pattern of deception and noncompliance, its "shell game of posturing and platitudes" denounced as hugely unreliable.

 

On Tuesday in New York, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi informed reporters that the Iranian regime's repression hadn't decreased with the election to the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, he of the smiling face and cheerful moderation. In her experienced opinion the oppression and human rights abuses have accelerated, with 624 prisoners put to death in 2013 some for crimes described as "corruption of the earth" and "enmity against God".

Tehran's envoy to the United Nations airily dismisses all accusations against the Iranian Republic as "Iranophobia and Islamophobia". And the promise by President Rouhani on his inauguration of "equality for all citizens without discrimination based on race, gender or religion" has been as true to reality as the Republic's insistence that it has no intention of acquiring nuclear warheads.