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Iran Super Thread- Merged

As if that fake Ikea store in China wasn't bad enough...we have this:

Yahoo News

Iran Haven’t Got McDonald’s But They Do Have Mash Donald’s and Pizza Hat

Mash%20Donalds%20Iran.png


Pizza%20Hat.png


Yahoo News – Wed, 5 Aug, 2015

Isolation from the international community has not only prevented Iran from creating his own homegrown versions of the West’s favourite fast food chains.

Who needs McDonalds when you can visit Mash Donalds, Pizza Hat and ZFC?

The owners of these copycat restaurants are careful not to use the original names not for copyright reasons but to avoid the wrath of hardliners.

Hassan, who owns a Mash Donald’s told the New York Times: ‘We are trying to get as close as we can get to the McDonald’s experience

(...SNIPPED)
 
Obama and Kerry are apparently so deep in self-denial about "peace in our time" that they wouldn't be able to see that Iran is trying to CHEAT on the new deal as we speak:

Reuters

Iran rejects accusations about military site as 'lies'
Sat Aug 8, 2015 1:06pm EDT

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's foreign minister said on Saturday that accusations about activity at its Parchin military site were "lies" spread by opponents of its landmark nuclear deal with world powers clinched last month.

A U.S. think-tank on Friday questioned Tehran's explanation that activity at its Parchin military site visible in satellite imagery was related to road work, and suggested it was a clean-up operation before IAEA inspectors arrive at the site.

"We said that the activities in Parchin are related to road construction," Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying by the IRNA state news agency.

"They (opponents of the deal) have spread these lies before. Their goal is to damage the agreement," he added.

(...SNIPPED)
 
More and more significant endorsements coming forward for the the nuclear deal.

Dozens of retired generals, admirals back Iran nuclear deal

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/retired-generals-and-admirals-back-iran-nuclear-deal/2015/08/11/bd26f6ae-4045-11e5-bfe3-ff1d8549bfd2_story.html?hpid=z1

Three dozen retired generals and admirals released an open letter Tuesday supporting the Iran nuclear deal and urging Congress to do the same.

Calling the agreement “the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” the letter said that gaining international support for military action against Iran, should that ever become necessary, “would only be possible if we have first given the diplomatic path a chance.”

The release came as Secretary of State John F. Kerry said U.S. allies were “going to look at us and laugh” if the United States were to abandon the deal and then ask them to back a more aggressive posture against Iran.

Not only would U.S. global credibility be undermined, Kerry said, but the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency would be threatened.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” Kerry said in a public question-and-answer session at the Reuters headquarters in New York . “But I’m telling you, there’s a huge antipathy out there” to U.S. leadership. Pointing to efforts by Russia and China to join forces with rising, non-aligned powers, he said that “there’s a big bloc out there, folks, that isn’t just sitting around waiting for the United States to tell them what to do.”

Kerry and President Obama, who is vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard, are using the August congressional recess to counter claims made by opponents of the deal during a series of recent hearings.

Those who believe negotiators can go back to the drawing board and improve on what has been agreed are unrealistic, Kerry said.

“When I hear a senator, a congressman stand up and say ‘We should get a better deal’ — That is not going to happen,” he said. “If everybody thinks ‘Oh, no, we’re just tough . . . we can force people . . . America is strong enough, our banks are tough enough, we can just bring the hammer down and force people to do what we want to do.’

“Are you kidding me?” Kerry said.

Instead, he painted a harsh picture of the results of U.S. rejection. Allies would refuse to retain sanctions or impose new ones, or join in possible military action, he said.

The letter from the retired military officers followed the release this past weekend of a letter to Obama by 29 of the nation’s leading scientists, who called the Iran deal “technically sound, stringent and innovative,” and said it would “provide the necessary assurance in the coming decade and more that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.”

The letters provide the White House with additional backing as it wages an increasingly uphill fight to protect the agreement from congressional destruction. Lawmakers will decide next month whether to “disapprove” the deal, a vote that currently appears sure to win near universal Republican support and a significant number of Democratic defections.

The administration’s fight now is to persuade enough Democrats to vote to sustain an Obama veto of the disapproval. Some Democratic lawmakers have already said they favor the deal while others, including Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), in line to be the next Democratic leader in the Senate, have voiced opposition. Under a deal negotiated between the White House and Congress, if a disapproval resolution stands, Obama will be barred from waiving U.S. sanctions as part of U.S. responsibility under the agreement.

Signers of the military letter include retired general and flag officers from every branch of service. They include four-star Marine Gens. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Joseph P. Hoar, former head of the U.S. Central Command; and Gens. Merrill McPeak and Lloyd W. Newton of the Air Force.

“There is no better option to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon,” the letter said. “Military action would be less effective than the deal, assuming it is fully implemented. If the Iranians cheat, our advanced technology, intelligence and the inspections will reveal it, and U.S. military options remain on the table.”

“And if the deal is rejected by America,” it said, “the Iranians could have a nuclear weapon within a year. The choice is that stark.”

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Harold L. Robinson, a rabbi and former naval chaplain who chairs the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces, also signed.

“As a lifelong Zionist, devoted to Israel, and a retired general officer and a rabbi for over 40 years, and operating without institutional encumbrances, I have a unique perspective,” Robinson said in an interview.

He said he decided to speak out to demonstrate that “those of us who love Israel in the United States are not of one mind and one voice on this matter. I thought it was important to represent some of the diversity within the American Jewish community.”

The Israeli government is adamantly opposed to the agreement, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been in the forefront of a campaign to build public opposition in this country.

PDF of the letter below.
 
You can draft, and approve your own immediate promotion PER and self mark your own exam papers.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a9f4e40803924a8ab4c61cb65b2b2bb3/ap-exclusive-un-let-iran-inspect-alleged-nuke-work-site

AP Exclusive: UN to let Iran inspect alleged nuke work site

By GEORGE JAHN - Aug. 19, 2015


VIENNA (AP) — Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms, operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.

The revelation on Wednesday newly riled Republican lawmakers in the U.S. who have been severely critical of a broader agreement to limit Iran's future nuclear programs, signed by the Obama administration, Iran and five world powers in July. Those critics have complained that the wider deal is unwisely built on trust of the Iranians, while the administration has insisted it depends on reliable inspections.

A skeptical House Speaker John Boehner said, "President Obama boasts his deal includes 'unprecedented verification.' He claims it's not built on trust. But the administration's briefings on these side deals have been totally insufficient - and it still isn't clear whether anyone at the White House has seen the final documents."

Said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce: "International inspections should be done by international inspectors. Period."

But House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi shrugged off the revelation, saying, "I truly believe in this agreement."

The newly disclosed side agreement, for an investigation of the Parchin nuclear site by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, is linked to persistent allegations that Iran has worked on atomic weapons. That investigation is part of the overarching nuclear-limits deal.

Evidence of the inspections concession is sure to increase pressure from U.S. congressional opponents before a Senate vote of disapproval on the overall agreement in early September. If the resolution passes and President Barack Obama vetoes it, opponents would need a two-thirds majority to override it. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has suggested opponents will likely lose a veto fight, though that was before Wednesday's disclosure.

John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican senator, said, "Trusting Iran to inspect its own nuclear site and report to the U.N. in an open and transparent way is remarkably naive and incredibly reckless. This revelation only reinforces the deep-seated concerns the American people have about the agreement."

The Parchin agreement was worked out between the IAEA and Iran. The United States and the five other world powers were not party to it but were briefed by the IAEA and endorsed it as part of the larger package.

On Wednesday, White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the Obama administration was "confident in the agency's technical plans for investigating the possible military dimensions of Iran's former program. ... The IAEA has separately developed the most robust inspection regime ever peacefully negotiated."

All IAEA member countries must give the agency some insight into their nuclear programs. Some are required to do no more than give a yearly accounting of the nuclear material they possess. But nations— like Iran — suspected of possible proliferation are under greater scrutiny that can include stringent inspections.

The agreement in question diverges from normal procedures by allowing Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence of activities it has consistently denied — trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Olli Heinonen, who was in charge of the Iran probe as deputy IAEA director general from 2005 to 2010, said he could think of no similar concession with any other country.

The White House has repeatedly denied claims of a secret side deal favorable to Tehran.
IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told Republican senators last week that he was obligated to keep the document confidential.

Iran has refused access to Parchin for years and has denied any interest in — or work on — nuclear weapons. Based on U.S., Israeli and other intelligence and its own research, the IAEA suspects that the Islamic Republic may have experimented with high-explosive detonators for nuclear arms.


The IAEA has cited evidence, based on satellite images, of possible attempts to sanitize the site since the alleged work stopped more than a decade ago.

The document seen by the AP is a draft that one official familiar with its contents said doesn't differ substantially from the final version. He demanded anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue in public.

The document is labeled "separate arrangement II," indicating there is another confidential agreement between Iran and the IAEA governing the agency's probe of the nuclear weapons allegations.

Iran is to provide agency experts with photos and videos of locations the IAEA says are linked to the alleged weapons work, "taking into account military concerns."

That wording suggests that — beyond being barred from physically visiting the site — the agency won't get photo or video information from areas Iran says are off-limits because they have military significance.

While the document says the IAEA "will ensure the technical authenticity" of Iran's inspection, it does not say how.

The draft is unsigned but the proposed signatory for Iran is listed as Ali Hoseini Tash, deputy secretary of the Supreme National Security Council for Strategic Affairs. That reflects the significance Tehran attaches to the agreement.

Iranian diplomats in Vienna were unavailable for comment, Wednesday while IAEA spokesman Serge Gas said the agency had no immediate comment.

The main focus of the July 14 deal between Iran and six world powers is curbing Iran's present nuclear program that could be used to make weapons. But a subsidiary element obligates Tehran to cooperate with the IAEA in its probe of the past allegations.

The investigation has been essentially deadlocked for years, with Tehran asserting the allegations are based on false intelligence from the U.S., Israel and other adversaries. But Iran and the U.N. agency agreed last month to wrap up the investigation by December, when the IAEA plans to issue a final assessment.

That assessment is unlikely to be unequivocal. Still, it is expected to be approved by the IAEA's board, which includes the United States and the other nations that negotiated the July 14 agreement. They do not want to upend their broader deal, and will see the December report as closing the books on the issue.
 
Because the election cycle is only in its early stages, they need something else to fill the airwaves. So far this evening I've seen 5 commercials both pro and con. :facepalm:

Iran Lobbying Battle Heats Up On The Airwaves

http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/20/433253554/iran-lobbying-battle-heats-up-on-the-airwaves

A lobbying battle is ratcheting up as members of Congress prepare to vote on President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran.

The lobbying followed lawmakers home for the August recess, as advocacy groups run TV ads, telephone congressional offices, use social media and attend legislators' public meetings.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., says she'll support the deal when Republican leaders in Congress bring up a resolution to disapprove it next month.

Her announcement brings President Obama one vote closer to blocking the resolution. If Congress were to pass the measure, it would still need a two-thirds majority in each chamber to override a presidential veto.

TV ads both for and against the deal are plentiful with new ones appearing regularly, and almost all of them are meant to scare viewers.

Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, a group with ties to the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, released an ad Thursday with what lobbyists call a "validator" — in this case, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, a former deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

"Let's not forget that Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world," Deptula says in the ad. "The deal will increase the likelihood of terrorists getting ahold of a nuclear weapon."

Americans United for Change, a liberal group in the coalition supporting the deal, also released a new ad. Over photos of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton and former Vice President Dick Cheney — all proponents of the 2003 assault on Iraq — an announcer said: "They're back. The same people that rushed us into war in Iraq want to sink the new agreement that would help stop war with Iran."

Measured in raw numbers of lobbyists and dollars, this lobbying battle doesn't match the big domestic issues — the Affordable Care Act, for instance, or international trade agreements — where corporations have big stakes.

That may explain the absence of one regular lobbying activity, as noted by former Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn.: "The difference in process is you're not holding fundraisers for members. There's not a money connection here. This is an education connection. I mean it's not, you know, we're going to have a fundraiser and please support this."

But it makes the fight over the Iran deal no less intense.

"This battle over the Iran agreement rises to that kind of a level because it really is a once-in-a-decade fight between two competing world views," said Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at J Street, a pro-Israel group helping to lead the pro-deal coalition.

"I think that saturation point has been reached," he said of the ad campaigns. "And that's why the dollar advantage that opponents of this deal have is not materializing into a vote advantage."

J Street uses validators in its messages, too. According to its current spot, "Israeli security experts say this agreement is the best existing option, the best possible alternative. It must not be rejected."

The anti-deal coalition counters J Street's validators with veterans.

Coleman is co-founder of a bipartisan group, the American Security Initiative, that has produced an ad featuring a retired Army staff sergeant. The ad was co-produced with another group, Veterans Against the Deal.

The sergeant, Robert Bartlett, was wounded in Iraq in 2005, the period when Iran reportedly began supplying explosives to Shiite militia.

"I was blown up by an Iranian bomb. It cut me in half from the left corner of my temple down through my jaw," he says in the ad, the scars clearly visible. "Total devastation. Every politician who's involved in this will be held accountable."

Williams, at J Street, said his coalition is being outspent on advertising. Coleman said his groups may have money for lobbying, but they're up against the entire Obama administration.

"Everything else pales in comparison," Coleman said. "All the relationships that are entwined with a sitting administration, there's no balance there."

The ranks of undecided lawmakers are starting to dwindle. Coleman said the anti-deal coalition is reaching out even to some of the Democratic lawmakers who have already endorsed the deal.
 
Rifleman62 said:
You can draft, and approve your own immediate promotion PER and self mark your own exam papers.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a9f4e40803924a8ab4c61cb65b2b2bb3/ap-exclusive-un-let-iran-inspect-alleged-nuke-work-site

AP Exclusive: UN to let Iran inspect alleged nuke work site

There is some questionable issues with the story:

The AP's controversial and badly flawed Iran inspections story, explained

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/20/9182185/ap-iran-inspections-parchin

On Wednesday afternoon, the Associated Press published an exclusive report on the Iran nuclear program so shocking that many political pundits declared the nuclear deal dead in the water. But the article turned out to be a lot less damning that it looked — and the AP, which scrubbed many of the most damning details, is now itself part of this increasingly bizarre story.

To get a handle on all this, I spoke to Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at Middlebury College's Monterey Institute of International Studies. What follows is a primer on what happened, what the AP story said and how it changed, the nuclear issues involved — a place called Parchin and something known as PMD — and what they mean for the nuclear deal.

The bottom line here is that this is all over a mild and widely anticipated compromise on a single set of inspections to a single, long-dormant site. The AP, deliberately or not, has distorted that into something that sounds much worse, but actually isn't. The whole incident is a fascinating, if disturbing, example of how misleading reporting on technical issues can play into the politics of foreign policy.

The AP ran an alarming headline with a more modest story

This all started when the Associated Press published a story with an alarming headline: "AP Exclusive: UN to let Iran inspect alleged nuke work site."

The headline made it sound like Iran would get to self-inspect, which would indeed be appalling. Readers were given the impression that President Obama had made a catastrophically foolish concession to the Iranians; that our much-touted inspections regime was a big joke. And indeed, a number of prominent political journalists tweeted out the story with exactly this alarmed interpretation.

"If true" turns out to be a major issue here, as upon closer examination the inflammatory headline, as it has been widely interpreted, appears to largely not be true.

In fact, the text of the article said something much more modest. It said that in a one-time set of inspections at one military facility known as Parchin, Iranians, rather than nuclear inspectors, would take "environmental samples" (such as soil samples). It said that nuclear inspectors would not be permitted to visit, and that Iran would not provide photos or videos of the site. But still, it was concerning.

"The story was the Iranians would take the samples under some kind of IAEA monitoring," Jeffrey Lewis, the arms control expert, told me. "The details of that monitoring were not provided, so it's hard to say how weird that is. Some IAEA officials say that it's not unusual to let a country physically take the samples if there's an IAEA inspector present."

The sourcing in the story, though, seemed to water it down a bit more. The report was not based not on an actual agreement, but rather on a copy of a draft agreement. The anonymous source who showed AP the document said there was a final version that is similar, but conspicuously refused to show AP the final version or go into specifics.

"The oldest Washington game is being played in Vienna," Lewis said. "And that is leaking what appears to be a prejudicial and one-sided account of a confidential document to a friendly reporter, and using that to advance a particular policy agenda."

Oddly, the AP then quietly deleted the most damning details from the story


Then things got weird: A couple of hours after first publishing, the AP added in a bunch of quotes from Republicans furiously condemning the revelations, but at the same time, the AP removed most of the actual revelations. The information in the article was substantially altered, with some of the most damning details scrubbed entirely. No explanation for this was given.

The new version of the story said nothing about environmental sampling. It said that Iran will provide photos and videos of the site, as well as mechanisms by which the IAEA can verify that these are authentic. But information about how the IAEA would verify this, which was in the original story, had also been removed.

"The original version of the story, before they edited out all of the interesting details, seemed to modestly advance a story that [AP reporter George Jahn] had published a few weeks ago," Lewis said. "But now we're so far down into the weeds of safeguards, it's really hard to know. The version that was originally published seemed to indicate that the level of access was lower than I would have thought, lower than I would have expected the IAEA to accept. But then those paragraphs disappeared."

The new version of the AP story was vague and confusingly worded. The actual information on inspections was buried under 700 words of Republicans condemning the deal (based, presumably, on information from the first draft of the story that has since been scrubbed).

On Thursday morning, shortly before this article went up, the AP reinstated most of the cut sections. (Lewis's quotes here reflect the scrubbed version of the story, though he had seen the original and so was aware of the information in it.)

The AP then published another story that reiterated much of the information but also added a strange new detail that seemed to water down its original claims even further: "IAEA staff will monitor Iranian personnel as they inspect the Parchin nuclear site." It's not clear what they mean by "monitor."

Paul Colford, AP's vice president for media relations, told me via email that the details had been cut to make room for reaction quotes. "As with many AP stories, indeed with wire stories generally, some details are later trimmed to make room for fresh info so that multiple so-called 'writethrus' of a story will move on the AP wire as the hours pass," he wrote.

When I asked Colford if the AP regretted cutting the news out of its own story, he responded, "It was unfortunate that some assumed (incorrectly) that AP was backing off." I pressed him on whether the cuts had been a mistake. He wrote: "As a former longtime New York newspaperman who's been AP's chief spokesman for eight years now, I would say there's always something to learn from such episodes."

So what we're ultimately left with is a story that at its most extreme possible interpretation suggests this: According to a draft IAEA agreement, Iran will pass verifiable photos and videos of the Parchin building on to inspectors, perhaps as well as physical samples, rather than letting inspectors physically visit.

Even that is dubious: Jonathan Alter, the "if true" political reporter, tweeted that the IAEA would indeed be "on the ground" at Parchin, according to the White House. The IAEA has since come out and said the final agreement on Parchin meets all its standards. The IAEA inspector general issued a statement saying he was "disturbed" by the AP story, which "misrepresents the way in which we will undertake this important verification work."

Still, the question remains: Is this story bad news for the Iran deal? That gets to yet another layer of confusion here. The current version of the story describes a situation that arms control experts have long anticipated, and that is not really as big of a deal as it initially sounded. It all comes down to a single, one-time set of inspections at a single, long-dormant facility.

Parchin and "PMD," which are at the center of this, briefly explained

The site in question is a building at an Iranian military facility called Parchin.

In the early 2000s, Iran conducted specialized explosive tests at a building in Parchin, with the help of a former Soviet nuclear scientist. It is widely believed that these tests were related to developing a nuclear bomb. This work appears to have ceased more than a decade ago (the building is under satellite monitoring), and it seems highly likely that Iran has since scrubbed it.

Under the nuclear deal, the UN-run International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is supposed to investigate what experts call "possible military dimensions" (PMD) of Iran's past nuclear work. The idea is just that the world should know what happened. That means looking into Parchin; it is meant to give the IAEA an opportunity to try to verify whether or not its suspicions are correct.

There is also a broader goal of examining PMD, Lewis said, so as to "have a decent understanding of who was involved [in any weaponization work in Iran] and what was the scope; of the administrative arrangements and the scope of any program's activities."

At Parchin, this was to be a one-time set of inspections. This issue is totally distinct from the 10 to 20 years of continuous inspections at active nuclear sites, which will be conducted by the IAEA and not by Iranians.

The world pretty much already knows what happened in Parchin. The best-case outcome of inspecting the facility is that we are happily surprised to learn that our suspicions about weaponization work were incorrect. The worst-case, and perhaps more likely, scenario is that inspections end up confirming what we already suspected, but we get a bit more detail on how it went down. To be clear, learning this would not violate or kill the nuclear deal.

A key point here: The Parchin inspection is not part of the Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated by the US and other world powers with Iran. Rather, this is something the IAEA negotiates directly with the country it's inspecting, in this case Iran.

It is still related to the larger nuclear deal. The IAEA has to give the official thumbs-up on the PMD issue — the deadline is this fall — in order for the nuclear deal to go forward. But neither the US nor Obama are involved in this part — that's just not how these negotiations works.

So why do Parchin and PMD matter? How important are they?

"There are a number of people, some of whom I do respect, who say that we need to get into this site," Lewis said. "I understand that for some people this has become an issue of principle, since at first the Iranians said no. But I'm just always leery when principle gets involved, because that pretty quickly gets turned into ego."

Still, Lewis emphasized that the stakes were low. Few people expect a Parchin inspection to find much of value.

"Work stopped in 2002," Lewis explained, "so Iran has had 13 years to clean that site. And there have been reports of vehicles and washing and renovations to the building, which I think are very uncertain. But I don't expect the IAEA to find much, although maybe they'd get lucky."

"No one should be willing to blow up this deal over access to this site," he said. "Because we know what they did there, and there's nothing we're going to find out that's going to change our view. But it's become, for lack of a better term, a bit of a pissing contest, so here we are."

Lest you think Lewis is just saying this to defend the nuclear deal, another arms control expert told me the same exact thing more than a month ago, before any of this came out.

"This came down to a pissing contest about whether or not we could go walk into Parchin, which is irrelevant," Aaron Stein, an arms control and Middle East scholar, told me last month about the negotiations over PMD and Parchin. "In the deal they're going to give managed access to Parchin, and you know what? We're going to lose on this because they're not going to find anything at Parchin. All of this will come down to nothing."


Stein also predicted, it now seems accurately, how the IAEA would handle this: "I think what will happen is the IAEA will submit a detailed questionnaire and Iran will respond, and then the agency will review those responses and then draw a conclusion from them."

The revelations left in the AP story are neither surprising to experts nor that big of a deal

Still, it's natural to wonder how big of a deal it would be if, as the story suggests, the IAEA will let Iranian take verifiable imagery, possibly as well as samples, to pass on to inspectors. To a layperson, that sounds weird, right? But it turns out not to be.

Because the stakes are so low for the Parchin inspection, arms control experts have long suspected that the IAEA and Iran would work out a compromise that looks like what's reported in the AP story.

Arms control experts, as Stein told me last month, have long suspected that Iran would object to direct IAEA inspections of Parchin. No country likes foreign inspectors sniffing around a sensitive military complex, after all. The IAEA, he suggested, would get information through other means — interviews, documents, that sort of thing — and then find some tactful way to punt on the issue without getting direct access.

This is not new. The IAEA did this in 2007 in Iran, when it investigated a separate PMD issue, on Iran's acquisition of centrifuge technology. The IAEA ultimately issued a statement saying that "Iran's statements are consistent with the information available to the agency."

"I think they will say something like this about Parchin," Lewis said. "That's how they resolve these issues: 'It's consistent with what we know, the program isn't continuing, and we know what you were doing.'"

Based on this story, that potentially seems to mean allowing Iranians to collect the imagery, and maybe also the physical samples. For a layperson, this might sound scary and bad. That is not how it looks to the experts.

"There are precedents for just providing photos and videos," Lewis said. "When the South Africans [in deconstructing their nuclear program under international inspections] disabled their nuclear test shaft, they video-recorded it and sent the IAEA their video."

"I don't care who takes a swipe sample or who takes a photograph, so long as I know where and when it was taken, with very high confidence," Lewis explained. "And I know that it hasn't been tampered with."

To a layperson, it would seem like having inspectors physically present is crucial for this. But Lewis pointed out that any inspection can hypothetically be compromised, including one in which inspectors are physically present. The most important issue is whether the IAEA can get the samples it needs, and can verify that those samples are legitimate. (Arms control expert Cheryl Rofer has a good explainer on sampling and how it works here.)

Having the Iranians take the samples can hypothetically be okay — as long as the IAEA can still meet those conditions.

"It seems that the IAEA has some kind of plan for this — and I would expect them to have some kind of plan, I don't believe that they would take the Iranians at their word — but that's not included in the story," Lewis said, audibly frustrated.

"So it sounds really bad. And it's supposed to sound really bad," he went on. "The way that story is written, you have no capacity to assess either the veracity or the wisdom of whatever the IAEA has agreed to."

The leak certainly looks like a cynical ploy to damage the nuclear deal

Lewis suspects that the point of the leak was to make the IAEA agreement on Parchin sound as bad as possible, and to generate political attention in Washington, with the hopes that political types who do not actually understand normal verification and inspection procedures — much less the Parchin issue — will start making demands.

"Normally people don't care about this kind of thing," Lewis said. "Normally, if the IAEA is satisfied, everyone is satisfied. But now [with this story] the IAEA being satisfied is now no longer good enough; people are going to insist that they personally be satisfied."

This also lines with the overwhelming attention that nuclear deal opponents have placed on Parchin and the PMD issue generally.

"I think there are some people who really want an Iranian admission of guilt not because it helps to verify the deal, but because they will then use that on the front page of the New York Times to end support for the deal," Lewis said.

This time, though, it was in the Associated Press. This is certainly not the first time that someone has placed a strategic leak in order to achieve a political objective. But it is disturbing that the AP allowed itself to be used in this way, that it exaggerated the story in a way that have likely misled large numbers of people, and that, having now scrubbed many of the details, it has appended no note or correction explaining the changes. It is not a proud moment for journalism.


Vox Sentences: From Bombshell to Busted, the sad, strange saga of the AP’s Iran-deal story

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/20/9185331/ap-iran-inspection-sentences
 
And in the wake of the nuclear deal...Iran looks at another diplomatic undertaking next door.

Diplomat

Will the Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline Really Go Ahead?
The nuclear deal may be done, but not everyone is confident the project will proceed.


By Muhammad Akbar Notezai
August 21, 2015

Last month, Iran reached a landmark nuclear agreement with the P5+1. Speculation soon followed that the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline would benefit from the nuclear deal. The Economic Times meanwhile reported that India was “set to push for the proposed $7 billion gas pipeline from Iran via Pakistan,” now that restrictions were likely to ease in the wake of the nuclear deal.

However, the U.S. State Department said recently that sanctions on the Iran pipeline project still existed. A spokesperson also told reporters that, “We don’t consider Iran open for business yet, and there’s no new sanctions relief beyond the very limited relief under the joint plan of action that’s been in place since January 2014.” He added, “When Iran meets its key nuclear steps and we get to implementation day, then there will be commensurate relief of nuclear-related sanctions.”

According to one Islamabad-based analyst, who spoke with The Diplomat on condition of anonymity, Washington’s clarification reflects its opposition to the pipeline project. That is a position backed by recent media reports, which have Russia and China both interested in the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, with the U.S. opposed.

Those positions are part of broader regional trends, which have seen the U.S. and India draw closer, and Pakistan turn towards Russia. For example, when U.S. President Barack Obama visited New Delhi in January 2015, Indian defense analyst Ajai Shukla told Al Jazeera that, “The trip basically means that the post-Cold War situation has been re-ordered and crystallized, and given the emerging rivalry between America and China, the U.S. has decided that India is a crucial swing state that needs to be cultivated as a close security and economic partner, as a representative of U.S. interests in South Asia.”

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Should we have expected anything more from the current POTUS?

Diplomat

Obama’s Disingenuousness on Iran
For the Obama administration, was the “military option” ever really an option with Iran?


By David J. Karl
August 24, 2015


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Yet the Obama administration’s threat to pick up the cudgel of military action has always an air of unreality.  After all, a commander-in-chief who proudly trumpeted that he had extricated the country from George Bush’s wars in the Greater Middle East was quite unlikely to initiate a third one. Mr. Obama made clear his determination on this issue in his cautious approach toward the civil wars in Syria and Libya.  The “red line” he communicated numerous times regarding the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons turned out to be extremely equivocal.  And he later acknowledged that the 2011 limited intervention in Libya was a “51-49 decision” because he feared the political narrative of “how a president elected to extract us from a war in one Arab country got Americans killed in another.”

Further evidence of the disconnect between administration rhetoric and actual policy was the emphasis Obama placed on the overriding urgency of his domestic agenda.  During his re-election campaign, he justified the withdrawals from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan by saying that “I think we all recognize we got to do some nation building here at home.”  His regular declarations about how that “the tide of war is receding” – a theme trumpeted in the 2012 Democratic National Platform – also underscored this point.  Indeed, it seems reasonable to suspect that Obama’s tough talk at the time was more about restraining the prospect of Israeli military action than Iranian behavior.

Now that the Iranian nuclear agreement is complete, Mr. Obama’s lack of sincerity is equally apparent in his insistence that the deal’s rejection would put America on the path toward another major conflict in the Middle East.  In his AU remarks, he framed things this way: “Let’s not mince words.  The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war – maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.”  He made the same point via Twitter later in the day, saying “There’s no such thing as a ‘better deal.’  Walking away risks war.”  This argument has also been propagated by prominent supporters of the agreement.

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Bob Corker, the centrist Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has it right when he says, “Does anybody in America believe that if we turn down this deal, this president is going to engage in war with Iran?  That’s one of those straw men that demeans the debate.”

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Iran cheating on the deal?

Reuters

Iran may have built extension at disputed military site: U.N. nuclear watchdog
Thu Aug 27, 2015 9:09am

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran appears to have built an extension to part of its Parchin military site since May, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a report on Thursday delving into a major part of its inquiry into possible military dimensions to Tehran's past atomic activity.

A resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Parchin file, which includes a demand for IAEA access to the site, is a symbolically important issue that could help make or break Tehran's July 14 nuclear deal with six world powers.

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As of this posting, the need for one more vote is all that stands in the way of this Iran deal passing the US Senate:  :o

Reuters

Iran nuclear deal backers near votes to protect pact in U.S. Congress
Tue Sep 1, 2015 7:01pm EDT

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Supporters of the international nuclear agreement with Iran moved within one vote of mustering enough support to protect the deal in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday when two more Democratic senators said they would support the pact.

Senators Bob Casey and Chris Coons, known as Iran hard-liners, both said they backed the agreement announced on July 14 between the United States, five other world powers and Tehran.

Altogether 31 Senate Democrats and two independents who vote with them now support the deal, a potential legacy foreign policy achievement for Democratic President Barack Obama.

Backers will need 34 votes in the Senate or 146 in the House of Representatives to sustain Obama's veto if a Republican-sponsored resolution of disapproval passes both chambers.


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Israel takes practical steps:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-security-of-israel-fifth-nuclear-capable-submarine-cruise-missiles-with-nuclear-warheads-deterrent-against-iran/5473414

“The Security of Israel”: Fifth ‘Nuclear-Capable’ Submarine, Cruise Missiles with Nuclear Warheads, “Deterrent against Iran”

By RT
Global Research, September 03, 2015
RT 30 April 2013
Region: Middle East & North Africa

Israel has inaugurated its fifth Dolphin-class submarine, allegedly capable of launching cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. A German shipyard in Kiel has a contract to build a sixth sub “to ensure the security of Israel’s citizens,” the PM said.

The submarine has been baptized INS Rahav. Rahav is a demon, a cosmic sea monster, ‘Prince of the Sea’ according to the Talmud. It was also the name of a strange woman from Jericho who hid two Jewish scouts from the King of Jericho in the Book of Joshua, Old Testament.

After the submarine is fully equipped and passes all tests, it will cost $500 million and will enter service as possibly the most sophisticated and expensive weapon of Israeli Navy. Delivery to client is reportedly expected by the end of 2013.

The INS Rahav was built in northern Germany at the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft shipyard in Kiel. She is believed to be one of the most advanced and sophisticated diesel-electric submarines in the world.

“The INS Rahav is one of the most advanced submarines in the world,” said Israeli Defense Ministry in a statement on Monday, reported Jerusalem Post.

“It is a versatile platform which can adapt to many and varied missions. The fleet of submarines forms a long arm for the [Israel] Navy, the IDF, and the State of Israel,” the ministry said.

Israel's new Dolphin-class submarine surfaces in the Mediterrannean Sea near Haifa (Reuters)

The inauguration ceremony has been attended by an Israeli delegation headed by the director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Military Affairs, Major General Udi Shani, the commander of the Israeli Navy, Rear Admiral Ram Rothberg, and a number of Israeli and German officials.

In June 2012, Der Spiegel reported that Germany is actually strengthening Israel’s nuclear capabilities. The magazine claimed that Dolphin-class submarines are equipped with hydraulic ejection systems that enable the underwater launch of Israeli Popeye Turbo SLCM long-range cruise missiles, believed to have nuclear warheads.

Israel’s Popeye cruise missile is believed to have a range of up to 1500km and carry a 200kg payload, enough to fit in a nuclear warhead. The first launch of the missile was carried out in 2002 in the Indian Ocean.

Thus the German-built submarines are believed to be the backbone of the Israeli nuclear deterrent against Iran.

“The submarines are a strong, strategic tool for the IDF. The State of Israel is ready to act anytime, anywhere – on land, sea and air – in order to ensure the security of Israel’s citizens,” Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said according to Associated Press.

Israel’s coastline in total, including islands, is a mere 273km, and it is no exaggeration to say that there is no other country with so many submarines to protect so short a sea border.

Vladimir Kremlev for RT

Germany building up Israel’s ‘deterrence’ submarine fleet

Germany started to deliver its Type 800 Dolphin-class submarines to Israel after the first Persian Gulf War.

The first two submarines were donated to Tel Aviv for free while the third came with a 50-per-cent discount, informs International Defense News. Berlin also shared about a third of the costs for the fourth and fifth submarines.

The fourth, the INS Tannin, opened the new generation of Dolphin II class submarines, capable of remaining submerged for long periods using cutting edge ‘air independent propulsion’ technology, which allows the engines of diesel-electric submarines to run without atmospheric oxygen.

Israeli Navy submarine "Dolphin" sails along the Mediterranean coast of Tel Aviv (AFP Photo/Gali Tibbon)

In March 2012 Israel and Germany signed a contract for a sixth and the last Dolphin-II class submarine that will be delivered in several years. Berlin allocated about 135 million euro (US $175.8 million) of the overall 600-million-euro cost of the sub.

In December 2011 Jerusalem Post reported that Israel invested about $27 million in a comprehensive structural overhaul and upgrade of the Dolphine I submarines at a shipyard in Haifa.

Israeli Dolphin-class submarines:

INS Dolphin – commissioned 1999
INS Leviathan (Whale) – commissioned 2000
INS Tekumah (Revival) – commissioned 2000
INS Tannin (Crocodile) – delivered May 3, 2012, to be commissioned in 2013
INS Rahav (Demon) – delivery expected by the end 2013

The Germans can be proud to have secured the existence of Israel for many years,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Der Spiegel in June 2012.

According to Barak, the INS Tannin delivered May 3, 2012, became yet another “force multiplier in terms of the capabilities and strength of Israel’s defense forces.

Commenting the delivery of INS Tannin, Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz specified that in conditions of growing strategic challenges in the Middle East Israeli’s Navy and its submarine fleet in particular represents a “defensive and fighting arm of deterrence.”

The “force multiplier” and “fighting arm” remarks of Israeli officials might as well point out that the alleged nuclear missiles in the possession of the state of Israel could be regarded not only as a shield, but as a sword as well.

Officially, Germany has always maintained that it doesn’t have a slightest idea about Israel’s military nuclear program and possible deployment of nuclear missiles on German-built submarines. However, according to Der Spiegel’s research, several former high-ranking German officials have never doubted Israel was putting nuclear missiles on its subs.

Israeli Seamen atop a new Dolphin-class submarine lay 69 wreaths in Mediterrannean Sea between Cyprus and Crete (Reuters)

Former German State Secretary Lothar Ruhl told Der Spiegel last June that he had not only “always assumed that Israel would deploy nuclear weapons on the submarines,” but also discussed the issue with the Israeli military.

According to documents obtained by the newspaper, the German government was well aware of Israel’s nuclear program as early as in 1961. The latest evidence from German Foreign Ministry archives presented by the magazine last year dates back to 1977 and corresponds to a discussion on the nuclear issue between then-Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and then-German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

British MP and Vice-chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Jeremy Corbyn very much doubts that anyone who is willing to help Israel boost its nuclear capabilities is interested in reducing the risk of a nuclear catastrophe. He doubts that the supplies are even necessary.

“It’s very hard to see how these submarines that Germany is supplying to Israel can be solely for defensive purposes, because there is no sea-based threat to Israel and Israel needs to get on board with the rest of the region and talk peace and talk about the signature they’ve already given to the Mediterranean weapons of Mass Destruction free zone. The delivery of these submarines is yet one more ratcheting up of the danger”, he told RT.

Corbyn further believes that the weapons supplies are a badly concealed preamble to a wider European involvement in the world’s hottest crisis zones.

Germany prides itself as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and on its non-nuclear status… But they’re also paying a very large amount of money to Israel’s defense costs by subsidizing the development and delivery of these submarines, and one just wonders if this isn’t part of a wider European military involvement in North Africa and the Middle East region.

Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, despite continuing international pressure, claiming it would be against its national security interests. Though Israel is not officially recognized as a nuclear weapons state, it is believed to possess several hundred operational nuclear devices.

Some information about the Dolphin class here: http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/dolphin

 
Tough rhetoric on both sides despite the deal. Meanwhile, US opponents to the Iran deal are rallying to try to stop it from passing in Congress.


Reuters

Clinton to vow tough enforcement of Iran nuclear deal
Wed Sep 9, 2015 8:11am EDT
By Alistair Bell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton will promise on Wednesday to strictly enforce the nuclear deal with Iran and curb the Islamic Republic's regional ambitions if she wins the November 2016 election.

In a speech to a Washington think tank, the former secretary of state will reiterate her support for the accord but caution that the United States needs to take an approach of distrust and verify toward Iran, a senior Clinton campaign official said.

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Reuters

Khamenei says Iran will not negotiate with U.S. beyond nuclear talks
Wed Sep 9, 2015 6:41am EDT

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader has said Tehran will not negotiate with the United States on any issue after the landmark nuclear deal with world powers in July, according to his official website on Wednesday.

The comments appeared to contradict more moderate president Hassan Rouhani, who said on Tuesday the Islamic Republic was ready to hold talks with the United States on ways to resolve Syria's civil war.

"We negotiated with the U.S. on the nuclear issue for specific reasons. (The Americans) behaved well in the talks, but we didn't and we won't allow negotiation with the Americans on other issues," Ayatollah Khamenei was quoted as saying.

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Plus a primer on the Iranian threat to US airbases in the region:

Diplomat

China or Iran: Who Is the Bigger Threat to U.S. Airpower?
A new comparative analysis sheds light on the threat Tehran’s ballistic missile force poses to U.S. airbases
.


L1001025
By Franz-Stefan Gady
September 08, 2015

China and Iran’s anti-access/anti-denial capabilities are often lumped together in public statements by senior U.S. defense officials and the American media. That frequently leads to a mischaracterization of Tehran’s A2/AD capabilities — particularly when discussing Iran’s conventional ballistic missile force.

A new operational analysis by Jacob L. Heim, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, published in the Air & Space Power Journal, offers a comparative perspective of the risk to U.S. air bases from Chinese and Iranian conventional theater ballistic missiles, key weapon systems in both countries’ A2/AD strategies.

Unsurprisingly, Heim concludes that the U.S. airpower faces a larger threat from China in East Asia than Iran in Southwest Asia. Indeed, he calls Iranian claims that its military has the ability to “obliterate all… (U.S.) bases” in Southwest Asia “bluster and bluff.”

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At this rate, perhaps they might not even need to smuggle in the material they need to make nuclear weapons, and thus cheat on the recent deal.

Reuters

Iran says finds unexpectedly high uranium reserve
Sat Sep 12, 2015 6:55am EDT

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran has discovered an unexpectedly high reserve of uranium and will soon begin extracting the radioactive element at a new mine, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation said on Saturday.

The comments cast doubt on previous assessments from some Western analysts who said the country had a low supply and would sooner or later would need to import uranium, the raw material needed for its nuclear program.

Any indication Iran could become more self-sufficient will be closely watched by world powers, which reached a landmark deal with Tehran in July over its program. They had feared the nuclear activities were aimed at acquiring the capability to produce atomic weapons - something denied by Tehran.

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An Iranian weapons shipment to Yemen is intercepted by the Saudis:

Reuters

Weapons bound for Yemen seized on Iranian boat: coalition

By William Maclean

DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi-led coalition forces said on Wednesday they had seized an Iranian fishing boat loaded with weapons on its way to deliver them to Houthi fighters in Yemen.

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A coalition statement said 14 Iranian sailors were detained on the boat, which was carrying 18 anti-armored Concourse shells, 54 anti-tank shells, shell-battery kits, firing guidance systems, launchers and batteries for binoculars.

"The Command of the Coalition ... foiled an attempt to smuggle weapons destined to the Houthi militias, on an Iranian fishing boat," the statement said, adding the vessel was seized on Saturday some 150 miles off Salalah in southern Oman.

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Apparently the Secretary of State and the US Ambassador to the UN where not in the audience when Prime Minister Netanyahu made his speech.

Shows Israel/Prime Minister Netanyahu/the world how much support Israel has from the US.

Too bad he didn't mentioned PM Harper's support.
 
More on the coordination between Tehran and Moscow in their campaigns against ISIS and other anti-Assad rebels:

Reuters

How Iranian general plotted out Syrian assault in Moscow
Tue Oct 6, 2015 1:28pm EDT
By Laila Bassam and Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) - At a meeting in Moscow in July, a top Iranian general unfurled a map of Syria to explain to his Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar al-Assad could be turned into victory - with Russia's help.

Major General Qassem Soleimani's visit to Moscow was the first step in planning for a Russian military intervention that has reshaped the Syrian war and forged a new Iranian-Russian alliance in support of Assad.

As Russian warplanes bomb rebels from above, the arrival of Iranian special forces for ground operations underscores several months of planning between Assad's two most important allies, driven by panic at rapid insurgent gains.

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The Iranians call it the Syrian Project which seeks to convert Syria into a province of Iran.Iraq is already pretty far down that road.Whether we like it or not a war with Iran might be in our future.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/syria-leader-assad-seeks-russian-protection-from-ally-iran-a-1056263.html

Fear of his enemies was the primary reason for Bashar Assad's call for help to Moscow. "But right after that came the fear of his friends," says a Russian official who long worked in his country's embassy in Damascus. The friend he refers to is Iran, the Syrian regime's most important protector.

"Assad and those around him are afraid of the Iranians," the Russian says. Anger over the arrogance of the Iranians, who treat Syria like a colony, is also part of it, the Russian continues. Most of all, though, the Syrians "mistrust Tehran's goals, for which Assad's position of power may no longer be decisive. That is why the Syrians absolutely want us in the country."
 
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