by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright February 26, 2015
All Rights Reserved.

                Secretary of State John Kerry tried to reassure all parties about the upcoming nuke deal with Iran, insisting it “forever” bans the Shiite Islamic Republic from developing nuclear weapons.  As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu gets closer to his March 3 address to a joint session of Congress, new reports circulated by Iranian exiles about unidentified military nuclear sites near Tehran.  Alleging that satellite telemetry shows Iran conducting atomic research as a secret facility just North of Tehran, the National Council of Resistance of Iran warned the U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China and Germany [P5+1] that the new deal would be a farce.  “It’s not true,” Kerry responded to NCRI’s charge.  “Iran is forever forbidden from building a nuclear weapons, that is the nature of membership in the Non-Proliferation Treaty which they are a member of,” said Kerry.

             Much speculation centered on A.Q. Khan’s work for years before Pakistan  detonated its first A-bomb April 30, 1998.  Kerry can offer all the assurances about Iran’s adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation-Treaty but it’s unlikely to ultimately stop Tehran from pursuing nuclear weapons.  U.S. and Israeli nuclear experts have warned for years that Tehran is dangerously close to generating enough fissile material to produce its first bomb.  Recent reports about how Bibi exaggerated Tehran’s timetable for developing weapons grade uranium matter little in the long run.  Iran’s growing number of centrifuges aims toward producing reactor fuel, medical isotopes and, yes, weapons grade fissile material.  When former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamadinejad declared Iran a “nuclear state” Feb. 11, 2010, he wasn’t referring to generating reactor fuel or medical isotopes.

             When Iran’s Atomic Energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi and U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz tried to move along the Geneva talks, there was new optimism that Kerry and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif could cut a deal before the March 31 deadline.  Kerry said Obama “is fully prepared to stop these talks if he feels that they’re not being met with the kind of productive decision-making necessary to prove that a program is in fact peaceful,” prompting Tehran to take the talks more seriously.  No matter how Iran has tried to skirt the U.N. sanctions, they continue to hurt the Iranian economy.  P5+1 wants Iran to submit to International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] inspections, stockpile enriched uranium in a neutral country like Russia and guarantee that whatever’s leftover, its not enriched beyond the 20% required limit to generate electricity and medical isotopes.

               Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei considers Iran’s nuclear program as source of national pride, reluctant to acquiesce to P5+1 demands.  White House officials ripped House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for inviting Netanyahu to speak to a joint session of Congress, fearing he’d persuade conservatives that the P5+1 deal was worthless.  While it’s well known that Bibi remains the P5+1’s biggest skeptic, U.S. agreeing Feb. 20 to a joint venture with Turkey to arm the Free Syrian Army also didn’t help the Geneva talks.  Khamenei’s acutely aware that any attempt to the U.S. and its Sunni partners to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assd puts the U.S. into a proxy war against Iran.   Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wants the sanctions to end but doesn’t want the U.S. battling its Lebanon-based Hezbollah Shiite militia.  Khamenei sees an attack against Hezbollah as an attack on Tehran.

             U.S. and EU officials know there’s only so much a nuclear deal can do in the absence of honesty and goodwill.  Whether or not Iran eventually gets the bomb, it’s no more of an “existential” threat to Israel or any other Sunni Gulf State.  U.S. officials worry that if powerhouse Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia would follow closely behind.  No one wants Iran to get the bomb but “nuclear states” usually complete the nuclear fuel cycle by doing more than generating reactor fuel and medical isotopes.  Kerry knows that no nuclear agreement fully stops atomic scientists from pushing the envelope like A.Q. Khan in Pakistan.  Where Netanyahu and U.S. conservatives err is over the fact that some nuclear deal is better than no nuclear deal.  Iran will either comply with deal or not.  If they don’t, then Tehran continues to face the consequences of collective action by the P5+1, including more sanctions.

             Working feverishly to put a nuke deal together with Tehran, Obama and Kerry believe that some deal is better than no deal.  When Netanyahu speaks to a joint session of Congress, he may be right that the deal is mostly a farce if Iran continues a covert nuclear weapons program.  What Netanyahu and conservative don’t get is that there’s little—including air strikes—that can stop a determined nuclear power from completing the nuclear fuel cycle, including making weapons grade uranium.  Only time will tell whether or not Iran violates the agreement, warranting the P5+1 to take the next step.  White House officials and Democrats need to stop fuming over Netanyahu’s speech before it drives more independent folks away from the Democratic Party.  White House actions arming Syrian rebels have far more impact on the Geneva talks than anything Bibi says in Congress.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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