Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

A Better Deal with Iran Possible? YES

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Why we need a better deal with Iran

BusinessInsider: Here’s the real problem for the Iran deal moving forward: Parchin raises questions about how the implementation of the deal will be carried out and how effective it will be.

The AP’s Parchin report is based on one of two documents related to the implementation of the IAEA road map. Because the road map was signed between Iran and the IAEA, these implementation documents are not in the possession of US diplomats.

As US Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged in congressional testimony, US nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman has seen these side agreements, though he personally has not.

iran nuclearREUTERS

There’s already doubt as to whether the road map gives the IAEA enough time to fully investigate the scope of Iran’s weaponization program. The IAEA has until December to get answers to questions about the program that the agency has been asking for nearly a decade.

And determining the actual state of Iran’s nuclear-weaponization efforts is a crucial part of establishing an inspection baseline for the nuclear deal. The IAEA needs to be able to identify key personnel, facilities, supply chains, and past activities to establish exactly how far along Iran’s weaponization activities really are and to recognize whether those activities have been restarted.

As Stein told Vox, the IAEA was “using Iranian language” in framing how these disclosure issues would be settled in the road map. Certainly the document pertaining to Parchin suggests that the road map is on somewhat favorable terms for the Iranians. But what about the second side agreement — the one that may govern whom IAEA inspectors can talk to and what facilities they can visit as part of their road-map investigation?

The AP story isn’t necessarily important because of Parchin, which wasn’t going to be much of an information bonanza for inspectors anyway.

But it is important for what it suggests about the overall inspection terms under the road map — and what it may say about the overall effectiveness of the international effort to investigate the extent of Iran’s nuclear-weaponization work.

 

How to Get a Better Deal With Iran

Mark Dubowitz

Don’t listen to the naysayers. Congress can still force Iran back to the negotiating table — and the world will be a safer place for it.

Three possible scenarios:

1. Iran could decide to implement its commitments in good faith despite congressional disapproval in order to trigger substantial and automatic U.N. and EU sanctions relief.

2. The Iranians abandon their commitments under the agreement, but don’t rush to break out toward a nuclear weapon.

3.The Iranians exploit the temporary confusion of a congressional disapproval to divide the P5+1.

The Iran nuclear deal is a ticking time bomb. Its key provisions sunset too quickly, and it grants Iran too much leverage to engage in nuclear blackmail. Its key provisions sunset too quickly, and it grants Iran too much leverage to engage in nuclear blackmail. To defuse it, Congress needs to do what it has done dozens of times in the past including during the Cold War in requiring changes to key U.S.-Soviet arms control agreements:

Demand a better deal.

And contrary to the President Barack Obama’s threats, this doesn’t have to lead to war.

First, let’s review why this deal is so dangerous. The sunset clauses — the fatal flaw of the agreement — permit critical nuclear, arms, and ballistic missile restrictions to disappear over a five- to 15-year period. Tehran must simply abide by the agreement to soon emerge as a threshold nuclear power with an industrial-size enrichment program. Similarly, it must only hang tight to reach near-zero breakout time; find a clandestine sneak-out pathway powered by easier-to-hide advanced centrifuges; build an arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles; gain access to heavy weaponry like more sophisticated combat aircraft, attack helicopters, and battle tanks after the lifting of the U.N. conventional arms embargo after five years; and develop an economy increasingly immunized against future sanctions pressure. Iran can achieve all this without even cheating by simply waiting for the sunset dates to be reached; but cheating will only get Tehran there faster, for example, if it refuses physical access by the International Atomic Energy Agency to suspicious sites and Washington can’t get European support to punish Iranian stonewalling.

And it gets worse. If world powers reimpose sanctions in response to Iranian noncompliance, Tehran can void the deal. The nuclear agreement explicitly contemplates in paragraphs 26 and 37 of the main text that Iran will walk away from the deal if sanctions are reimposed in response to an Iranian violation. It also contains an explicit requirement in paragraph 29 of the main text for the United States and the EU to do nothing to interfere with the “normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran.” Let’s call these Iran’s “nuclear snap backs,” wherein Tehran will threaten nuclear escalation if the world powers try to force it back into compliance with the agreement.

But even without this arrow in their quiver, the Iranians over time will be immunized from economic shocks. Once European companies are sufficiently invested in Iran’s lucrative markets, any Iranian violations of the deal are likely to provoke disagreements between Washington and its European allies. Indeed, why would Europe agree to new sanctions when they have big money on the line? Their arguments against new nuclear sanctions will include questions about the credibility of evidence, the seriousness of the nuclear infractions, the appropriate level of response, and likely Iranian retaliation.

This dynamic undeniably threatens the effectiveness of the agreement’s Joint Commission — an eight-member body comprised of the United States, France, Britain, Germany, a representative from the EU, as well as Russia, China, and Iran — established to monitor the implementation of the deal. While an even more difficult-to-achieve unanimous decision is required for most decisions, a simple 5-to-3 majority is needed to get approval should Iran object for all-important IAEA access to suspect Iranian sites. The administration designed this scheme to bypass Russia and China if they take Iran’s side in a dispute. Washington assumes it can always count on European votes. But this is a mistake. Europe will have strong economic incentives to demure, particularly as pressure from European business lobbies grows, and good reason to buck the United States if Iran threatens a nuclear snap back.

While Washington can unilaterally reimpose U.N. sanctions if the issue does not get resolved and it “deems the issue to constitute significant non-performance,” it is unlikely to do this in the face of European resistance.

The same dynamics apply to the reimposition of non-nuclear sanctions, such as terrorism or human rights sanctions. On July 20, Iran informed the U.N. Security Council, stating that it may “reconsider its commitments” under the agreement if “new sanctions” are imposed “irrespective of whether such new sanctions are introduced on nuclear related or other grounds.” Would Europe agree to a U.S. plan to reimpose terrorism sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran if it was found — once again — to be financing terrorism? This is doubtful given that Tehran would threaten to return to its nuclear activities including large-scale uranium enrichment, putting not just European investments but the entire nuclear deal in jeopardy.

In other words, Europe’s fear of a collapsed deal and lost billions would erode American leverage and diminish our ability to reapply snap back economic sanctions. And as Washington’s influence steadily weakens, its options become increasingly limited. Over time, with sanctions off the table, American or Israeli military force could become the only option to stop an Iranian nuclear weapon. If and when that war comes, Iran will be far stronger — economically and militarily — than it is today.

So, what’s the alternative?

The president says there is none. He’s wrong. Congress can and should require the administration to amend the agreement’s fatal flaws, such as the sunset clause and the nuclear snap back.

There is ample precedent to amend the deal. Congress has required amendments to more than 200 treaties before receiving Senate consent, including significant bilateral Cold War arms control agreements with the Soviets like the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty, as well as multilateral agreements like the Chemical Weapons Convention negotiated with 87 participating countries, including Iran, by President Bill Clinton. And it’s not just Republicans putting up obstacles. During the Cold War, Democratic senators like Henry Jackson withstood pressure from Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger who insisted that the deals they negotiated go unchanged. This all happened at a time when Moscow had thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at America.

Should Congress follow in this proud tradition and disapprove of the Iran deal, there are three possible scenarios. Each presents challenges. But each is preferable to this fatally flawed agreement.

In the first scenario, Iran could decide to implement its commitments in good faith despite congressional disapproval in order to trigger substantial and automatic U.N. and EU sanctions relief coming to them under the terms of the agreement. If President Obama wanted to move forward with the agreement, he could circumvent legislative attempts to block sanctions relief. He would do this by using his executive authority to de-designate all Iranian financial and other commercial entities that are targets of congressional sanctions, ignore the statutory designation of Iran’s central bank, which he has already declared as unconstitutional, use Treasury licenses to approve financial and commercial transactions, and refuse to reauthorize key energy sanctions in December 2016. Alternatively, the president could heed Congress and threaten to use secondary sanctions against European and other businesses looking to work with Iran, which would be a powerful deterrent to stop these firms from rushing into Iran and provide more diplomatic space for key P5+1 partners like France, Britain, and Germany to join the United States in demanding better terms.

In a second scenario, the Iranians abandon their commitments under the agreement, but don’t rush to break out toward a nuclear weapon. Iran would get none of the benefits of sanctions relief but would try to exploit the congressional disapproval domestically, claiming that it was wronged by the United States. As it did between the mid-1990s and 2013, Iran would then likely start to escalate its nuclear program incrementally. It would take gradual steps forward in its nuclear program to avoid unifying the major powers, not to mention even more crippling economic sanctions or even U.S. military strikes. In this case, Washington would be in a stronger position to use diplomatic and economic coercion to force the Iranians back to the table for a better deal that amends the agreement’s sunset clauses and nuclear snap back.

In a third scenario, the Iranians exploit the temporary confusion of a congressional disapproval to divide the P5+1. This is a messy diplomatic scenario — and probably the most likely one. In this scenario, Iran would implement certain nuclear commitments but not others. In the policy disagreements that would be sure to follow, Iran could then try to divide the Russians and Chinese from the West, and the Europeans from the United States in order to undermine the multilateral sanctions regime.

China and Russia might return to some Iranian business — they were busting U.S. sanctions even at the height of Obama’s sanctions enforcement. But they are also likely to stay at the negotiating table to achieve their original objective: Keeping Iran from getting nukes. Beijing doesn’t want a nuclear-armed Iran wreaking havoc with global energy prices; Moscow wouldn’t mind high energy prices but not a revolutionary Islamist regime with nukes stirring up trouble in its neighborhood, including with Russia’s large Muslim population.

Europe, however, is the key. Europe’s markets always have been Tehran’s big economic prize. The key for Congress and the White House will be to use diplomatic persuasion and U.S. financial sanctions to keep the Europeans out of Iran. America has that leverage now, before Europe rushes to reenter the Iranian market; relying on snap back sanctions to get the Europeans out again is a weak play. As former Treasury official Juan Zarate has noted, “We can’t argue in the same breath that ‘snapback’ sanctions as constructed offer a real Sword of Damocles to be wielded over the heads of the Iranians for years while arguing that there is no way now for the U.S. to maintain the crippling financial and economic isolation which helped bring the Iranians to the table.”

If Washington makes it clear that European banks will risk penalties or jeopardize their ability to transact in dollars if they do business with Iranian banks, those European energy, insurance, and industrial companies will find their financial pathways into Iran stymied.

The power of U.S. financial sanctions always depended on the private sector’s appetite for risk. In the event of a congressional disapproval, or a vote in which a simple majority of senators reject the deal, major European companies likely will hold off on investment until a new president comes into office in 2017. They will also be concerned about the legal and reputational risk of doing business with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (who dominate strategic sectors of Iran’s economy like finance, energy, construction, and automotive and will still be designated a proliferation sponsor by the United States). Treasury has already issued guidance that international companies should be very circumspect before reentering the Revolutionary Guards-dominated Iranian market.

This leverage can be used to get a better deal, one that would require that nuclear, arms, and ballistic missile restrictions don’t sunset until the U.N. Security Council (where America retains its veto) votes to lift them. It would remove the Iranian nuclear snap back language and include Tehran’s explicit acknowledgement that sanctions can be reimposed for terrorism, human rights abuses, ICBM development, and on other non-nuclear grounds. It also would include other changes like the requirement that IAEA weapons inspectors physically enter and thoroughly investigate any suspect military or non-military site, something U.S. lead negotiator Wendy Sherman said in a recent congressional hearing will not always be necessary because soil sampling carried out by Iran will be sufficient.

It won’t be easy getting changes to the deal as it now stands. It will require additional leverage. But the United States will never again have the kind of powerful secondary sanctions leverage that it does today. Congress now has an opportunity to ensure that we maintain and use that power. The aim should not be to torpedo diplomacy. Rather, it is to defuse that ticking time bomb by making critical amendments to this Iran deal that lower the risk of a future war.

Defund UNRWA and Terminate it Over Fraud

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The Best Way to Fix UNRWA’s Budget Crisis

Algemeiner: Out of UNRWA’s $100 million deficit that threatens to delay the school year, $28 million comes from Jordan.

That covers the costs for 120,000 students in 175 schools taught by 5,500 teachers throughout Jordan for four months.

This means that the annual budget for educating Jordan’s students of Palestinian origin is $70 million.

Nearly every one of these students is already a Jordanian citizen.

Jordan says that it cannot afford to educate these students, relying instead on UNRWA, even though this means that the kingdom has two separate school systems with two separate bureaucracies, two separate transportation systems, two separate administrations.

So why not just redirect the money earmarked for UNRWA to Jordanian schools directly?

Western nations should be happy to get rid of Jordanian apartheid where Palestinians are treated as second-class citizens. They can and should be mainstreamed into Jordanian society, something that should have happened decades ago.

By no definition can they be considered “refugees.” So why continue to treat them that way?

A five or seven year program to fund Jordan’s existing education (and medical) system to accommodate Palestinians, and phase out the current apartheid system for to million so-called “refugees,” is something that everyone who cares about equal rights should support.

And Canada could be in the forefront to kickstart such a program.

In 2007, Canada gave $32 million to UNRWA. As it soon realized that UNRWA is not aligned with Canadian values, the nation dropped its support to zero, redirecting some of it to various specific PA projects.

UNRWA is at a crossroads. It cannot continue to fund fund its ever-growing “refugee” population without a plan to reduce the number of people on its rolls, as it was originally intended to do. There is no rational reason for Jordanian citizens who happen to have Palestinian ancestry to be considered “refugees.” The only reason UNRWA exists in Jordan is as a crutch to help Jordan’s budget (besides the political reason of inflating the number of “refugees” to pressure Israel forever.)

It is past time to force UNRWA to change its working definition of “refugee” to be more aligned with that of the UNHCR and to phase out aid to the fake “refugees’ who are citizens of Jordan. This budget crisis gives the world a chance to do exactly that, by using limited aid funds smartly and at the same time to eliminate two million “refugees.”

The same can be done in the West Bank and Gaza, two other places that Palestinians cannot possibly be called “refugees” by any sane definition. Since most countries recognize “Palestine” as a state, pay the PA to take responsibility for their own people – with a deadline.

The money saved can help the stateless Arabs of Palestinian origin wasting away in Lebanon and Syria, where UNRWA aid is most urgently needed until a more permanent solution is found.

Enlightened nations like Canada and Australia and the U.S. would also be happy to replace the current UNRWA dinosaur with a real plan to reduce its budget while directing funds at those who need them most.

Now is the chance to accomplish something useful before UNRWA implodes and its current welfare recipients are left with nothing but anger.

Deeper Dive on UNRWA

The U.S. Senate received lately a precedent decision regarding refugees UNRWA and the Palestinian Arabs. To understand the change one should have mentioned that UNRWA’s beginning was appropriate.  A UN relief organization for the British Mandate Arabs, most of whom fled and some were deported, due to Arab aggression seeking to destroy Israel just as it has been established. But the treatment of refugees changed direction, and instead of a caretaker, UNRWA became a reproduction, exacerbation and perpetuation plant of tremendous size.

There are two UN bodies dealing with refugees. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that handles all the world’s refugees, and UNRWA, which deals only with the ones that became the Palestinian Arabs (at first they did not know that they are so. They were Arabs. Separate identity developed later). The Commissioner dealt with fifty million people. They won the first aid, and they are no longer refugees. UNRWA, however, started the way with 711 thousand, and miraculously has made them into more than five million. The Commissioner rehabilitates refugees. UNRWA fosters, multiplies and perpetuates the refugee problem.

This paradox is known to anyone who has eyes in his head. It comes from many reasons. One is the strange definition of UNRWA refugee: “They were in the territory of Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and lost both their homes and livelihoods as a result of the Arab – Israeli conflict.” But over time their descendants also came into the frame, and strangely enough, and contrary to the definition, also those who were not needed in the first place, and even those who became wealthy later – were still considered a refugee. Thus the number of “refugees” is rising over the years in somewhat vertiginous and strange manner.

Against this background, in recent months MK Dr. Einat Wilf worked, in cooperation with AIPAC, to influence the primary source of funding for UNRWA – the United States. The result is the “Kirk Amendment,” named after the Republican senator Mark Kirk. His amendment would require the State Department to report what is the actual number of original refugees, answering to the definition that appears in the original mandate of UNRWA. It is estimated at only 30,000.

There is something sophisticated in Kirk’s amendment, because the Amendment does not demand a cut in aid or a change in the criteria. These are reporting requirements only – A report on the number of original refugees, and a report on the number of descendants. But reports on the amendment made it clear that this entails a first step towards a more fundamental change. As following the report the question will rise – why should taxpayers pay for those who are not really refugees?

In fact, these questions have been popping up. U.S. Undersecretary of State, Thomas Nides, sent a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is urging them to vote against the amendment. He claims that the issue is particularly sensitive, the U.S. should not intervene in determining the number of refugees, and that this matter should be resolved in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Embassy of Jordan in Washington has put pressure against the adoption of the amendment, and Nides notes in his letter that the amendment might create “a negative reaction, especially in Jordan.”

Nides’s request was denied. The amendment passed. Meanwhile there are no strong blast waves. And it’s a shame. It’s time to blow up the bloated balloon, of ever-swelling Palestinian refugees numbers. On the day the Palestinian “refugees” will be treated similarly to the tens of millions of other refugees in the world – will be the day when the situation will begin to improve, along with prospects for peace. Because the “refugee problem,” as the Arab side stated over and over again, “is perpetuated in order to achieve the solution of the elimination of Israel.”

The treatment so far of the problem of refugees has become the biggest obstacle to peace. It’s time for a change. The U.S. Senate took a preliminary step, limited and uncertain – A step in the right direction. Hopefully, the next steps will follow.

International norms

And more points to the attention of the Congress: By official count of UNRWA, the number of refugees in Lebanon reached early last year to 425,000. However, according to a study published by the American University of Beirut, which UNRWA itself has helped finance; it is only 260 to 280 thousands. They are immigrating and fleeing from Arab countries, because they suffer from severe apartheid in the Arab world (also according to the report). So there is no connection between the number registered and funded and the number of those still there. So the United States, which is the primary contributor, should pose the obvious question: where exactly does the money go, when there is a 57% exaggeration in the number of refugees?

And yet another fraud: under the UN Refugee Convention, Article 1 (A) 2, those who received citizenship in any country, cannot be considered a refugee. And here, according to UNRWA’s official publication, Jordan has more than two million refugees, the vast majority of whom have Jordanian nationality. So you can decrease two millions in Jordan, and another 150 thousand in Lebanon and Syria is likely in a similar situation. There the number is also an inflated. Recommendation to this effect is also found in the report filed by James Lindsey. For seven years, Lindsey served as a senior UNRWA official. After his retirement, he was a research fellow in the “Washington Institute”, where he published a comprehensive study with deep reform proposals.

And the parade goes on. UNRWA has a staff of more than 29,000 people, only two hundred of whom are not Palestinians – a great mechanism that also deals with incitement through the education system held by the organization. This is the largest agency of the United Nations. Just for comparison, UNHCR, the Commission that handles all other refugees of the world, holds a much smaller team of 7,685 employees, and handles 34 million refugees.

UNRWA – has one employee per 172 patients. In UNHCR – one employee per 4,424 patients.

UNRWA per capita budget is also more than double than the UNHCR. Considering that many of those listed are already citizens of other countries, or that the lists are inflated, as in Lebanon, then it means that a Palestinian Arab “refugee” costs the international community, particularly the U.S., far more than any other refugee in the world.

The chain of absurdities and frauds must be stopped. Uniformity in definitions and norms is necessary. The anti-Israel side argues again and again that Israel should abide by international norms – Great and just demand. This is exactly what should happen, even with the refugees – the same definitions for “who is a refugee”, and the same treatment of rescuing the really needing rather than perpetuating them as “refugees.” This will be the greatest contribution of the international community to promote peace. Senator Kirk began. Hopefully he will continue.

Ben-Dror Yemini is a journalist, a researcher and a lecturer

 

 

The Argument for Terminating Passport/Visa Waiver Program

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Other countries are taking a hardline stance against immigration and those foreigners seeking refuge. Failed nations are to blame when advanced countries do little to control crime, terror insurgencies and financial tailspins. The United States is experiencing historic influxes of people seeking asylum, refuge and otherwise aliens from worldwide locations. However, the United States is not alone when it comes to failed international relations and policy but Europe is as well, where a larger debate on the matter is required.

Europe migrant crisis: Surge in numbers at EU borders

BBC: The number of migrants at the EU’s borders reached a record high of 107,500 in July, officials say, as a sharp surge in expected asylum requests was reported in Germany.

Germany has seen a wave of migration from Syria and the Balkans, and now says it could receive as many as 750,000 asylum seekers this year.

The EU has been struggling to cope with migrant arrivals in recent months.

France and the UK say they will sign a deal to tackle the crisis in Calais.

Over the summer, thousands of migrants have sought to get to the UK through the Channel Tunnel from makeshift camps around the northern French city.

 

France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and his British counterpart, Theresa May, say they will sign a deal there on Thursday to strengthen their countries’ co-operation on security, the fight against criminal smugglers, human traffickers, and clandestine immigration.

In early August, the UK pledged to add €10m (£7m) to a fund established in September 2014 to secure the port of Calais, and initially endowed with €15m over three years.

‘Third consecutive record’

EU border agency Frontex said the number of migrants surpassed the 100,000 mark in a single month for the first time since it had begun keeping records in 2008.

The Warsaw-based agency said in a statement that the figure of 107,500 migrants for July was the “third consecutive monthly record, jumping well past the previous high of more than 70,000 reached in June”.

The German government had earlier forecast that 450,000 asylum seekers could arrive in 2015, but is now set to increase that to 650,000 or higher.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said more countries in Europe should share the burden.

“It is unsustainable in the long run that only two EU countries, Germany and Sweden, take in the majority of refugees,” he told German daily Die Welt.

Hungary’s southern border marks the edge of the EU’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel and is thus a target for migrants seeking to enter the EU.

Its government has said it will send thousands of police officers to its southern border with Serbia in its latest step to stem the flow of migrants. More here.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Walking into Mexico at the nation’s busiest border crossing with the United States is no longer an uninterrupted stroll for foreigners.

Starting late Wednesday, pedestrians going to Tijuana from San Diego at the San Ysidro crossing must choose between a line for Mexicans who get waved through, and a line for foreigners who must show a passport, fill out a form and — if staying more than a week — pay 322 pesos, or roughly $20, for a six-month permit.

About a dozen foreigners stood in line Wednesday night, directed by English-speaking agents to six inspection booths where they got passports stamped. It took about 10 minutes from start to finish.

Travelers have long followed similar protocol at Mexican airports, but the new border procedure marks a big change at land crossings that weren’t designed to question everyone. Pedestrians and motorists have generally entered Mexico unencumbered along the 1,954-mile border with the United States.

“This is about putting our house in order,” said Rodulfo Figueroa, Mexico’s top immigration official in Baja California state, which includes Tijuana.

The changes, which have been in the works for years, come as Donald Trump has surged to the top of the Republican field in the U.S. presidential race. He has insisted that Mexico sends criminals to the U.S. and pledges to build a border wall at Mexico’s expense.

For Mexico, it is a step toward closing an escape route for American criminals who disappear in Mexico. Border inspectors will tap into international criminal databases. Motorists will see no change, and if lines get too long, officials will also wave pedestrians through.

More than 120 Americans expelled from Mexico this year while living in Baja California had arrest warrants in the U.S., according to Figueroa, delegate of the National Migration Institute. Some ordered to leave last year were on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

But authorities say benefits extend beyond stopping unwanted visitors. A recent hurricane stranded twice as many Americans in Cabo San Lucas than U.S. authorities thought were there, Figueroa said, and registering as a foreigner would have made it easier to identify those who needed help.

Figueroa said Mexico can initially process about 1,000 foreigners daily, up from about 50 currently.

“If the line becomes clogged up, we will just let everybody through,” Figueroa said. “If we can’t check everybody, we won’t.”

Figueroa said San Ysidro is believed to be the first U.S. land crossing to have a separate line for foreigners to show passports and that it will serve as a model for others as they are upgraded. Aurora Vega, a spokeswoman for the National Migration Institute, referred questions to other departments. Officials at the Foreign Relations Department and Mexican Embassy in Washington had no immediate comment.

About 25,000 pedestrians (and 50,000 motorists) cross daily at San Ysidro to work, shop and play but it is unclear how many are foreigners in Mexico. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says about one-third entering San Diego are U.S. citizens, one-third are U.S. legal residents and the rest are from other countries, largely Mexico. An unknown number have dual citizenship or residency in the U.S. and Mexico.

Both countries have long wrestled with logistical hurdles of stopping people going to Mexico by land. The U.S. occasionally stops motorists and pedestrians as they leave — mainly to check for guns and cash — but it doesn’t have a system to record exits like at airports, seen by many as a significant shortcoming in border security.

Previous efforts to question more foreigners entering Mexico met resistance in Tijuana, whose economy partly relies on Americans who visit restaurants, beaches, doctors and dentists. Lines to enter the United States at San Ysidro have exceeded four hours.

Roberto Arteaga, who has made tacos, shined shoes and sold tickets for private bus and van rides in Southern California during 28 years as a street vendor near the border crossing, says requiring passports and imposing a fee for longer stays sends the wrong message.

“We should be welcoming,” he said during a lull in business Tuesday. “This will hurt Tijuana’s economy.”

Other crossers said the move was overdue.

“Anything to keep the country safer is much better for everyone,” Cynthia Diaz of Oceanside, near San Diego, said as she stood in line to return to the U.S with her niece, who visited Tijuana for a root canal. “It’s safer for us on the other side too.”

Sunken Ordnance and Chemical Weapons, Re-think BP Oil Spill?

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It was April 2010, that the Horizon platform blew in the Gulf of Mexico where British Petroleum has been blamed resulting in one of the largest disasters in recent years, destroying much of the shoreline and salt water life.

BP took full responsibility for the disaster, but given the theories on the cause of the destruction of the pipeline and the drilling platform, was it really all BP’s fault? What did BP know, what did the oil producer not know and what was hidden that does reside on the sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico?

Redstone Arsenal, Alabama

Further information noted here.

In part from Maritime Executive: As time passes, more and more people are working on the seafloor and the chance of encounter with these bombs and other ordnance is becoming greater.”

With the ship traffic needed to support the 4,000 energy rigs, along with commercial fishing, cruise lines and other activities, the Gulf can be a sort of marine interstate highway system of its own. There are an estimated 30,000 workers on the oil and gas rigs at any given moment.

Bombs used in the military in the 1940s through the 1970s ranged from 250- to 500- and even 1,000-pound explosives, some of them the size of refrigerators. The military has a term for such unused bombs: UXO, or unexploded ordnance.

One huge problem is that record keeping of the military dump sites is incomplete and sketchy at best. It’s also believed that many of the munitions were “short dumped,” meaning they were discarded outside designated dumping areas by private contractors hired at the time.

“The real mystery is that no one knows what is down there, or where all of it is,” Slowey notes.

“Although most of these bombs do not  have triggers in them, some types of ordnance , such as torpedoes and mines, can become more unstable over time, so their case the chance of an accidental explosion is increasing.

 

“Because chemical weapons potentially pose environmental contamination risks, and because explosive material in many of the standard bombs and other ordnance  may still be viable, we need to determine exactly where they are and then have a plan for removing them or at least monitoring their condition,” Slowey says.

Forgotten hazards: Unexploded WW2 bombs and chemical weapons STILL pose serious threat to drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

  • After WW2 unexploded bombs were dumped in the ocean
  • 70 years later no one knows exactly how many were dumped and where
  • 500-pound bombs found 60 miles off Texas coast
  • At least one Gulf pipeline laid across a chemical weapon dump
  • Call for oil and gas industry to do more to address the problem

 

Millions of pounds of unexploded bombs dumped in the Gulf of Mexico by the U.S. government after World War Two pose a significant risk to offshore oil drilling, warn researchers.


It is no secret that the United States, along with other governments, dumped munitions and chemical weapons in oceans from 1946 until the practice was banned in the 1970s by U.S. law and international treaty, said William Bryant, a Texas A&M University professor of oceanography.
As technological advances allow oil companies to push deeper into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, these forgotten hazards pose a threat as the industry picks up the pace of drilling after BP’s deadly Macondo well blowout in 2010 that lead to the largest oil spill in U.S. history.  Unexploded ordnance has been found in the offshore zone known as Mississippi Canyon where the Macondo well was drilled.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will auction 38 million acres of oil and gas leases in the central gulf in March.
The U.S. government designated disposal areas for unexploded ordnance, known as UXO, off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico. But nearly 70 years after the areas were created, no one knows exactly how much was dumped, or where the weapons are, or whether they present a danger to humans or marine life.
‘These bombs are a threat today and no one knows how to deal with the situation,’ said Bryant.
‘If chemical agents are leaking from some of them, that’s a real problem. If many of them are still capable of exploding, that’s another big problem.’
Disposal zones were designated from Florida to Texas, said Bryant, who will discuss his research findings at the International Dialogue on Underwater Munitions conference that begins Monday in San Juan, Puerto Rico.


While the practice of dumping bombs and chemical weapons, including mustard and nerve gas, in the ocean ended 40 years ago some effects are just beginning to be seen, said Terrance Long, founder of the underwater munitions conference.
‘You can find munitions in basically every ocean around the world, every major sea, lake and river,’ Long said. ‘They are a threat to human health and the environment.’
The oil industry is no stranger to leftovers from the World War Two.
Last year, BP shut its key Forties crude pipeline in the North Sea for five days while it removed a 13-foot (4-metre) unexploded German mine found resting cozily next to the pipeline that transports up to 40 percent of the UK’s oil production.
BP discovered the mine during a routine pipeline inspection, then spent several months devising a plan to lift the bomb and move it far enough from the pipeline to safely detonate it.
In the Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for 23 percent of U.S. oil production and seven percent of domestic natural gas output, the hazards are known, but generally ignored.
In 2001, BP and Shell found the wreckage of the U-166, a German World War II submarine, 45 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River during an underwater survey for a pipeline needed to transport natural gas to shore.


Bryant said he and colleague Neil Slowey have documented discarded bombs and leaking barrels over the past 20 years while conducting research for energy companies in the Gulf of Mexico.
Records of where these munitions were dumped are incomplete and experts believe many dangerous cargoes were ‘short-dumped,’ or discarded outside designated zones.


Bryant said he has come across 500-pound (227-kgs) bombs about 60 miles off the Texas coast and other ordnance 100 miles offshore, outside designated zones. At least one Gulf pipeline was laid across a chemical weapon dump site south of the mouth of the Mississippi River, he said.
While the risk of an underwater bomb exploding may be small, environmental damage from chemical weapons, such as mustard gas, is worrisome and needs to be researched, Bryant said.
‘We would like to do a survey to be able to say if (this material) is harmful or not,’ he said. ‘The condition of these barrels is deteriorating, so does it affect anything or not? We ought to know.’

Congress Seeking Secret Obama Letters on Iran

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Shameful that members of Congress have come to know the cunning and covert actions of the Obama White House, while the silver lining is that they DO know and are forced to take pro-active measures. It also appears that some in government are on the right side and are helping expose the nefarious actions on the parts of the White House and the State Department.

Senators: Obama Admin Hiding Secret Iran Deal Letters

White House promising to be soft on sanctions if Iran violates nuclear deal

Two leading U.S. senators are calling on the Obama administration to release secret letters to foreign governments assuring them that they will not be legally penalized for doing business with the Iranian government, according to a copy of a letter sent Wednesday to the State Department and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) disclosed in the letter to the State Department that U.S. lawmakers have been shown copies of several letters sent by the Obama administration to the Chinese, German, French, and British governments assuring them that companies doing business with Iran will not come under penalty.

The Obama administration is purportedly promising the foreign governments that if Iran violates the parameters of a recently inked nuclear accord, European companies will not be penalized, according to the secret letters.

Congress became aware of these promises during closed-door briefings with the Obama administration and through documents filed by the administration under a law requiring full disclosure of all information pertaining to the accord.

The issue of sanctions on Iran has become a major issue on Capitol Hill in the weeks since the Obama administration agreed to a deal that permits Iran to enter the international community in exchange for temporarily constraining its nuclear program.

Iran will receive more than $150 billion in sanctions relief as part of the deal and many of its military branches will be removed from international sanctions designations.

“The documents submitted by the Administration to Congress include non-public letters that you sent to the French, British, German, and Chinese governments on the consequences of sanctions snap-back,” Kirk and Rubio wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry.

“These letters appear to reassure these foreign governments that their companies may not be impacted if sanctions are re-imposed in response to Iranian violations of the agreement,” they claim. “While Administration officials have claimed that this is not the case, we think it is important for the American public to be able to read your assurances to foreign governments for themselves as their elected representatives review this deal in the coming weeks.”

Kirk and Rubio are demanding that the Obama administration release these letters to the public so that the full nature of the White House’s backroom dealings are made known.

“We therefore request the Administration to publicly release these letters, which are not classified, so that the full extent of the Administration’s non-public assurances to European and Chinese governments can be discussed openly by Congress and analyzed by impartial outside experts,” they write.

“Given the conflicting interpretations hinted at by the deal’s various stakeholders, it would also ease congressional review of the deal if you were to receive assurances from the other members of the P5+1 about the guidance they will provide to companies about the inherent risks of investing in Iran due to Iran’s ongoing support for terrorism and use of its financial system for illicit activities and the potential for sanctions to snap back if Iran violates the nuclear agreement,” the letter states.

As Iranian companies and government entities are removed from sanctions lists, they will be permitted to do business on the open market. A number of governments, including the Russia and Italy, have already expressed interest in partnering with Iran.

U.S. lawmakers remain concerned that if Iran violates the nuclear accord, sanctions will not be reimposed in a meaningful way.

“The conditions under which foreign investment in Iran would proceed under the nuclear agreement remain unclear,” Kirk and Rubio wrote. “On July 23, 2015, Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that companies that have invested in Iran would ‘not be able to continue doing things that are in violation of the sanctions’ if sanctions snap back.”

“Foreign investment in Iran will involve long-term contracts in many cases, however, and some interpretations of the Iran agreement indicate these contracts might be protected from the snap-back of sanctions by a so-called ‘grandfather clause,’” they write.

Under the terms of the agreement, sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a paramilitary force known to commit acts of terrorism across the globe, will be lifted.

A multi-billion dollars financial empire belonging to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei also will be removed from sanctions lists, according to the parameters of the deal.

*** On the matter of Iran, the story goes on. Iran has job openings…

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

VIENNA (AP) — Iran, in an unusual arrangement, will be allowed to use its own experts to inspect a site it allegedly used to develop nuclear arms 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 is sure to roil American and Israeli critics of the main Iran deal signed by the U.S., Iran and five world powers in July. Those critics have complained that the deal is built on trust of the Iranians, a claim the U.S. has denied.

The investigation of the Parchin nuclear site by the International Atomic Energy Agency is linked to a broader probe of allegations that Iran has worked on atomic weapons. That investigation is part of the overarching nuclear deal.

The Parchin deal is a separate, side agreement worked out between the IAEA and Iran. The United States and the five other world powers that signed the Iran nuclear deal were not party to this agreement but were briefed on it by the IAEA and endorsed it as part of the larger package.

Without divulging its contents, the Obama administration has described the document as nothing more than a routine technical arrangement between Iran and the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency on the particulars of inspecting the site.

Any IAEA member country must give the agency some insight into its nuclear program. Some countries 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.

But the agreement diverges from normal inspection procedures between the IAEA and a member country by essentially ceding the agency’s investigative authority to Iran. It allows Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence for activities that it has consistently denied — trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Evidence of that concession, as outlined in the document, is sure to increase pressure from U.S. congressional opponents as they review the July 14 Iran nuclear deal and vote on a resolution of disapproval in early September. If the resolution passed and President Barack Obama vetoed 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.

The White House has denied claims by critics that a secret “side deal” favorable to Tehran exists. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said the Parchin document is like other routine arrangements between the agency and individual IAEA member nations, while IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told Republican senators last week that he is obligated to keep the document confidential.

But Republican critics are bound to harshly criticize any document that cedes to Iran the right to look for the very nuclear wrongdoing that it has denied committing. Olli Heinonen, who was in charge of the Iran probe as deputy IAEA director general from 2005 to 2010 ,said he can think of no instance where a country being probed was allowed to do its own investigation.

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 at that military facility and other weapons-related work elsewhere.

The IAEA has repeatedly 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 isn’t authorized to discuss the issue.

It 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.

The document suggests that instead of carrying out their own probe, IAEA staff will be reduced to monitoring Iranian personnel as these inspect the Parchin site.

Iran will 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 even get photo or video information from areas Iran says are off-limits because they have military significance.

IAEA experts would normally take environmental samples for evidence of any weapons development work, but the agreement stipulates that Iranian technicians will do the sampling.

The sampling is also limited to only seven samples inside the building where the experiments allegedly took place. Additional ones will be allowed only outside of the Parchin site, in an area still to be determined.

“Activities will be carried out using Iran’s authenticated equipment consistent with technical specifications provided by the agency,” the agreement says. While the document says that the IAEA “will ensure the technical authenticity” of Iran’s inspection, it does not say how.

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

Iranian diplomats in Vienna were unavailable for comment, 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 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 on the allegations.

Both Iran and the IAEA were upbeat when announcing the agreement last month. But Western diplomats from IAEA member nations who are familiar with the probe are doubtful that Tehran will diverge from claiming that all its nuclear activities are — and were — peaceful, despite what they say is evidence to the contrary.

They say the agency will be able to report in December. But that assessment is unlikely to be unequivocal because chances are slim that Iran will present all the evidence the agency wants or give it the total freedom of movement it needs to follow up the allegations.

Still, the report is expected to be approved by the IAEA’s board, which includes the United States and other powerful nations that negotiated the July 14 agreement. They do not want to upend their July 14 deal, and will see the December report as closing the books on the issue.

Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee chairman Lindsay Graham, a Republican presidential hopeful, last week asked for “any and all copies of side agreements between Iran and the IAEA associated with the Iran nuclear deal.” He threatened to cut off U.S. funding for the U.N. agency otherwise.

*** Last but never least, the Iran deal has triggered George Soros and his group MoveOn.org. Soros soldiers have been deployed.

WT: The effort to win congressional approval of the Iran nuclear agreement has brought a new intensity to peace advocates that hasn’t been seen since the Iraq War, including MoveOn.org, a group that helped President Obama win the White House but has seen its power wane in the last few years.

“We’ve been campaigning in support of diplomacy with Iran and against another war in the Middle East for years,” said Nick Berning, a spokesman for MoveOn.org.

When the 60-day clock for congressional review of the deal between six world powers and Tehran started ticking just ahead of lawmakers’ annual August recess, MoveOn.org launched a targeted campaign to deploy staff and grassroots activists to key states and districts to show up at town halls and demonstrate to their Democratic members of Congress that they support implementing the agreement. More details here.