As the P5+1 nations and Iran have negotiated to reach a deal by the June 30 deadline (recently pushed to July 7), a number of news stories were published that showed Iran to be outmaneuvering the West in the negotiations. Iran has sought advantages in the negotiations by violating past agreements, and benefited from the West failing to take advantage of opportunities to push its interests.
1) The State Department blasts The New York Times for reporting that Iran had stockpiled enriched uranium in excess of the limits allowed by the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA).
New York Times reporters David Sanger and William Broad reported on June 2 that Iran had stockpiled Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) in excess of the cap it had agreed to meet by the June 30 deadline. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf disputed the Times‘ report, and even took to Twitter to call it “not true.” But Sanger and Broad were reporting based on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) own interim report. Iran was supposed to be converting the LEU into oxide, but hadn’t done so in months, and likely didn’t have the time to reduce its stockpile before the deadline.
2) Leading nuclear nonproliferation think tank argues that the administration’s attack on The New York Times raises questions about emerging deal
After the administration’s attacks on the Times story, the Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank devoted to nuclear nonproliferation, questioned the administration’s response. The administration’s attacks were based on accepting a weaker or lower level of compliance from Iran, they wrote, which “cannot be a good precedent for interpreting more important provisions in a final deal.”
3) A United Nations panel of experts reports that Western nations were routinely ignoring Iran’s violations of existing sanctions
Bloomberg News reported on June 9 that a UN panel of experts tasked with monitoring Iran’s compliance with existing sanctions reported that Western nations were not reporting on Iran’s violations of nuclear and terror-related sanctions, possibly as “a political decision by some member states to refrain from reporting to avoid a possible negative impact on ongoing negotiations.” Recent reports of the United States failing to block Iran’s acquisition of Airbus jets fits the pattern described by the UN report.
4) The U.S. reportedly looks to expand which sanctions can be classified as nuclear sanctions to expand the amount of sanctions relief it is extending to Iran
The Associated Press reported on June 10 that the United States was working on a plan to reclassify a greater number of United States-imposed sanctions on Iran as nuclear-related. This would expand the scope of sanctions relief that the U.S. would extend to Iran. The reclassification of sanctions is occurring, despite the fact that the administration said that as part of the Lausanne understandings, “U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place under the deal.”
5) Secretary of State John Kerry confirms that the U.S. is caving on the demand that Iran come clean about its past nuclear work
As he returned to the State Department following his release from the hospital on June 16, Secretary of State John Kerry said at a press conference that there was no reason to be “fixated” on the possible military dimension (PMD) of Iran’s past nuclear research. Although the administration said that Iran had abided by the JPOA, the JPOA had stated that Iran was to answer all questions about its past nuclear work. The IAEA has said that Iran has failed to answer eleven of the twelve outstanding questions about its past nuclear work. Last October, Omri Ceren, The Israel Project’s managing director for press and strategy, explained:
Full Iranian disclosure is considered a minimum to establishing a robust verification regime: The IAEA can’t verify that Iran has met its obligations to limit uranium work, for instance, unless it knows the full scope of the uranium work that’s being done. PMD-related transparency is seen as not just another issue – say, one that Iran could refuse to trade away by making concessions in other areas – but as a prerequisite to verifying Iranian compliance across all issues.
The Israel Project publishes The Tower.
6) The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that the administration was lagging in applying sanctions to Iran
In a report that echoed the findings of the UN panel of experts, Al-Monitor reported on June 18 that the GAO, the government’s internal watchdog, found that the State Department’s delayed enforcement of sanctions against Iran “may diminish the credibility of the threatened sanction.” House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R – Fla.) told Al-Monitor that the administration’s failure to apply sanctions sends “a signal to the international community that the United States is not serious about any of our sanctions.”
7) Leading Senators blast administration for its handling of nuclear negotiations with Iran
Sen. Bob Corker (R – Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to President Barack Obama on June 16, calling the capitulations made by the administration to Iran “breathtaking.” Corker asked the administration whether it was backing down from its demand that Iran come clean about its PMD, emphasizing that “[b]y not requiring Iran to explicitly disclose their previous weaponization efforts on the front end of any final agreement, we will likely never know, in a timely fashion, the full extent of Iranian capabilities.” On June 26, Sen. Robert Menendez (D – N.J.) wrote a letter to Kerry saying that the demands made last week by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were “unacceptable.” Menendez emphasized that there can be no lifting of sanctions before Iran complies with its obligations:
A deal that allows sanctions to be lifted before Iran’s government meets their obligations, without intrusive inspections to safeguard against a continued covert nuclear program, and that leaves Iran as a threshold nuclear state, is a bad deal that threatens the national security of America and our allies, and must be rejected.
Corker and Menendez co-sponsored a bill, which passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law, that forced the administration to submit any nuclear deal reached with Iran to Congress for legislative review.
8) Five former Obama administration officials call on White House to strengthen the deal
On June 25, a bipartisan group of 19 experts and former government officials, including Dennis Ross, who was in charge of Iran policy during President Barack Obama’s first term in office; David Petraeus, who served as Director of Central Intelligence; Robert Einhorn, a former State Department nonproliferation expert; Gary Samore, Obama’s former chief nuclear policy expert; and Gen. James Cartwright, who served as vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, released a letter calling on the White House to strengthen the terms of the nuclear deal with Iran. The letter called on the administration to put into place “a timely and effective mechanism to re-impose sanctions automatically,” in order to ensure Iranian compliance with a future deal. The letter also called on the administration to take stronger action “to check Iran and support our traditional friends and allies.”
9) State Department report names Iran as a leading state sponsor of terror
The U.S. State Department released its country-by-country reports on terror last week, once again finding Iran to be one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terror. An analysis of the report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs noted that “[t]he document states further that the Qods Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is the operative arm of Iran’s foreign policy and the mechanism for cultivating and sponsoring foreign terror elements, provides cover for intelligence operations and sows instability in the Middle East.”
10) Delayed State Department report finds Iran still one of top abusers of human rights
The Hill reported on June 25 that the report “accused Iran of ‘severe restrictions on civil liberties,’ ‘disregard’ for people’s physical safety and general abuse of human rights on Thursday, days before a deadline for reaching a nuclear deal. … Among other abuses, the State Department chided the Islamic nation for ‘disappearances,’ ‘unlawful killings’ and ‘judicially sanctioned amputation and flogging.’” According to The Washington Post, the release of the report was delayed four months, raising questions over whether it was delayed with the intention of trying to avoid offending Iran.
[Photo: Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äusseres / Flickr ]