There is Video of the $400 Million to Iran

Posted on August 5, 2016August 5, 2016 by Denise Simon

But Trump was telling a fib when he said he saw it…he has not had any intelligence briefings yet and likely will not until the end of August. Meanwhile, the Iranians are going at the United States with all propaganda they can muster. John Kerry and the White House not only look like fools, they ARE fools.

Another question for those investigative journalist: Were the 7 Iranian spies that also included in this transaction on that same plane as the money?

Other facts:

The United States is buying 32 metric tons of Iranian heavy water, a key component for one kind of nuclear reactor, The Associated Press reported.

The purpose of the transaction is to help Iran meet the terms of last year’s nuclear deal under which it agreed to curb its atomic program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief, according to the news agency.

The State and Energy departments said a sales agreement would be signed Friday in Vienna by officials from the six countries that negotiated the nuclear deal.

The agreement calls for the Energy Department’s Isotope Program to purchase the heavy water from a subsidiary of the UN atomic watchdog, for about $8.6 million, officials said. They added the heavy water will be stored at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and then resold on the commercial market for research purposes. More here.

Another nefarious fact:

In late May, Russian Envoy to International Organizations Vladimir Voronkov said that Russian nuclear agency Rosatom was considering the possibility of buying Iranian heavy water.

“Steps are to be finalized for sale of 40 tons of heavy-water reactor to Russia and the deal will be signed in the very near future,” Salehi said, as quoted by the IRNA news agency.

According to Salehi, deputy head of the organization Behrouz Kamalvandi may in the near future visit Moscow to discuss concluding the issue with the Russian side. There is also an option that a Russian delegation will arrive in Iran, he said.

According to the nuclear deal agreed last year, Iran must store no more than 130 tons of heavy water during the first year after signing the agreement. More here.

*****

The footage, which could not be independently verified, shows images of large stacks of hard currency and features claims that the Obama administration sent this money over as part of an effort to free several U.S. hostages. The White House vehemently denied these claims this week following new reports about the cash exchange.

BBC Persian reporter Hadi Nili posted the footage on Twitter, describing it as showing the “pallets of cash” and quoting officials as saying “this was just part of the ‘expensive price’ to release Americans.” More here from FreeBeacon.

Could Trump have been right? Propaganda film suggests Iran DID videotape cash-drop plane and photograph shipment of cash during January prisoner swap

February documentary that aired on Iranian state-run TV shows nighttime flight, pallet of cash matching prisoner-swap scenario reported this week
Donald Trump claimed three times this week that he had seen similar footage and that Iran had filmed the cash transfer to embarrass America
He walked back that claim Friday morning, saying he had only seen archival footage of a different plane delivering hostages safely to Geneva
He may have been right without knowing it: Propaganda broadcast shows the images and boasts the deal was great for Iran but terrible for the U.S.

DailyMail: Iranian state-run media in Tehran did indeed videotape the arrival of a January 17 flight carrying $400 million in cash from the United States – and the money itself – judging from a documentary that aired the following month in the Islamic republic.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been in a firestorm of controversy since first claiming on Wednesday to have seen ‘secret’ footage of money being offloaded from an aircraft.

He admitted Friday morning on Twitter what his campaign had said more than a day earlier, that he had seen ordinary archival footage of a different plane, carrying American hostages freed from Iran arriving in Geneva Switzerland after the money changed hands.

But it turns out he may have been right without knowing it.

Iranian state television broadcast this image of a shipping pallet stacked with cash in February as part of a propaganda film framing a January U.S. prisoner swap as a victory for Tehran

The documentary described this plane as arriving in the dead of night with the money, exactly the scenario that Donald Trump was criticized for describing three times this week

The Iranian video was aired February 15 on the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting television network, as part of a documentary called ‘Rules of the Game.’

A narrator, speaking in Persian, describes a money-for-hostages transaction over video clips of a plane on an airport tarmac in the dead of night and a photo of a giant shipping pallet stacked with what appear to be banknotes.

The federal government shipped what many are calling a ransom payment in Euros and other non-U.S. currencies.

The copy of the documentary footage DailyMail.com obtained is not of high enough quality to determine which nation’s banknotes are depicted.

None of the footage is stamped with a date or time, making it impossible to know when it was shot.

And the broadcaster blurred out one portion of the screen, covering up something resting on top of the mountain of money.

But the documentary begins with a narration saying: ‘In the early morning hours of January 17, 2016 at Mehrabad Airport, $400 million in cash was transported to Iran on an airplane.’

The film describes the Obama administration’s prisoner swap and Iran’s cash windfall from Tehran’s point of view as ‘a win-lose deal that benefits the Islamic Republic of Iran and hurts the United States,’ according to two English-language translations DailyMail.com obtained.

Trump fell on his sword Friday on Twitter, conceding that he was describing a different plan when he said there was footage of the cash drop – an assertion that turned out to be right

It outlines what Iran’s mullahs promoted at the time as a one-sided transaction loaded with perks for Tehran.

‘The Islamic republic made an expensive offer to the equation: the release of seven Iranian prisoners in the United States, $1.7 billion, and the lifting of sanctions against 16 Iranians who were prosecuted by the U.S. legal system with the unjust excuse of sanctions violations,’ the narrator intones.

‘But this was not all the Iranians’ demands. Lifting sanctions against Sepah Bank was added to Iran’s list. All of this, in return for the release of only four American citizens: a win-lose deal that benefits the Islamic Republic of Iran and hurts the United States.’

Among the four freed Americans were Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, pastor Saeed Abedini and U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The White House was quick to insist on Thursday that the Obama administration had not paid for their release.

‘Let me be clear: The United States does not pay ransom, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, questioning the motives of Republican who were ‘falsely accusing us of paying a ransom.

The propaganda film was shown a month after the January prisoner release in Iran but was unknown in the West until Friday. It described the swap as ‘a win-lose deal that benefits the Islamic Republic of Iran and hurts the United States’

Passionatepolka, TreasureMap and FLATLIQUID?

Posted on August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

I read one of his books several years ago….

The summary below is not classified material. The Intelligence Community including the NSA has declassified a lot of material such as:

Chinese Cyber Espionage in the U.S.

August 10, 2015

China Read Emails of Top U.S. Officials – NBC News

Commentary: The world’s best cyber army doesn’t belong to Russia

by: Bamford

Reuters: National attention is focused on Russian eavesdroppers’ possible targeting of U.S. presidential candidates and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Yet, leaked top-secret National Security Agency documents show that the Obama administration has long been involved in major bugging operations against the election campaigns — and the presidents — of even its closest allies.

The United States is, by far, the world’s most aggressive nation when it comes to cyberspying and cyberwarfare. The National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on foreign cities, politicians, elections and entire countries since it first turned on its receivers in 1952. Just as other countries, including Russia, attempt to do to the United States. What is new is a country leaking the intercepts back to the public of the target nation through a middleperson.

There is a strange irony in this. Russia, if it is actually involved in the hacking of the computers of the Democratic National Committee, could be attempting to influence a U.S. election by leaking to the American public the falsehoods of its leaders. This is a tactic Washington used against the Soviet Union and other countries during the Cold War.

In the 1950s, for example, President Harry S Truman created the Campaign of Truth to reveal to the Russian people the “Big Lies” of their government. Washington had often discovered these lies through eavesdropping and other espionage.

Today, the United States has morphed from a Cold War, and in some cases a hot war, into a cyberwar, with computer coding replacing bullets and bombs. Yet the American public manages to be “shocked, shocked” that a foreign country would attempt to conduct cyberespionage on the United States.

NSA operations have, for example, recently delved into elections in Mexico, targeting its last presidential campaign. According to a top-secret PowerPoint presentation leaked by former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden, the operation involved a “surge effort against one of Mexico’s leading presidential candidates, Enrique Peña Nieto, and nine of his close associates.” Peña won that election and is now Mexico’s president.

The NSA identified Peña’s cellphone and those of his associates using advanced software that can filter out specific phones from the swarm around the candidate. These lines were then targeted. The technology, one NSA analyst noted, “might find a needle in a haystack.” The analyst described it as “a repeatable and efficient” process.

The eavesdroppers also succeeded in intercepting 85,489 text messages, a Der Spiegel article noted.

Another NSA operation, begun in May 2010 and codenamed FLATLIQUID, targeted Pena’s predecessor, President Felipe Calderon. The NSA, the documents revealed, was able “to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon’s public email account.”

At the same time, members of a highly secret joint NSA/CIA organization, called the Special Collection Service, are based in the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and other U.S. embassies around the world. It targets local government communications, as well as foreign embassies nearby. For Mexico, additional eavesdropping, and much of the analysis, is conducted by NSA Texas, a large listening post in San Antonio that focuses on the Caribbean, Central America and South America.

Unlike the Defense Department’s Pentagon, the headquarters of the cyberspies fills an entire secret city. Located in Fort Meade, Maryland, halfway between Washington and Baltimore, Maryland, NSA’s headquarters consists of scores of heavily guarded buildings. The site even boasts its own police force and post office.

And it is about to grow considerably bigger, now that the NSA cyberspies have merged with the cyberwarriors of U.S. Cyber Command, which controls its own Cyber Army, Cyber Navy, Cyber Air Force and Cyber Marine Corps, all armed with state-of-the-art cyberweapons. In charge of it all is a four-star admiral, Michael S. Rogers.

Now under construction inside NSA’s secret city, Cyber Command’s new $3.2- billion headquarters is to include 14 buildings, 11 parking garages and an enormous cyberbrain — a 600,000-square-foot, $896.5-million supercomputer facility that will eat up an enormous amount of power, about 60 megawatts. This is enough electricity to power a city of more than 40,000 homes.

In 2014, for a cover story in Wired and a PBS documentary, I spent three days in Moscow with Snowden, whose last NSA job was as a contract cyberwarrior. I was also granted rare access to his archive of documents. “Cyber Command itself has always been branded in a sort of misleading way from its very inception,” Snowden told me. “It’s an attack agency. … It’s all about computer-network attack and computer-network exploitation at Cyber Command.”

The idea is to turn the Internet from a worldwide web of information into a global battlefield for war. “The next major conflict will start in cyberspace,” says one of the secret NSA documents. One key phrase within Cyber Command documents is “Information Dominance.”

The Cyber Navy, for example, calls itself the Information Dominance Corps. The Cyber Army is providing frontline troops with the option of requesting “cyberfire support” from Cyber Command, in much the same way it requests air and artillery support. And the Cyber Air Force is pledged to “dominate cyberspace” just as “today we dominate air and space.”

Among the tools at their disposal is one called Passionatepolka, designed to “remotely brick network cards.” “Bricking” a computer means destroying it – turning it into a brick.

One such situation took place in war-torn Syria in 2012, according to Snowden, when the NSA attempted to remotely and secretly install an “exploit,” or bug, into the computer system of a major Internet provider. This was expected to provide access to email and other Internet traffic across much of Syria. But something went wrong. Instead, the computers were bricked. It took down the Internet across the country for a period of time.

While Cyber Command executes attacks, the National Security Agency seems more interested in tracking virtually everyone connected to the Internet, according to the documents.

One top-secret operation, code-named TreasureMap, is designed to have a “capability for building a near real-time interactive map of the global Internet. … Any device, anywhere, all the time.” Another operation, codenamed Turbine, involves secretly placing “millions of implants” — malware — in computer systems worldwide for either spying or cyberattacks.

Yet, even as the U.S. government continues building robust eavesdropping and attack systems, it looks like there has been far less focus on security at home. One benefit of the cyber-theft of the Democratic National Committee emails might be that it helps open a public dialogue about the dangerous potential of cyberwarfare. This is long overdue. The possible security problems for the U.S. presidential election in November are already being discussed.

Yet there can never be a useful discussion on the topic if the Obama administration continues to point fingers at other countries without admitting that Washington is engaged heavily in cyberspying and cyberwarfare.

In fact, the United States is the only country ever to launch an actual cyberwar — when the Obama administration used a cyberattack to destroy thousands of centrifuges, used for nuclear enrichment, in Iran. This was an illegal act of war, according to the Defense Department’s own definition.

Given the news reports that many more DNC emails are waiting to be leaked as the presidential election draws closer, there will likely be many more reminders of the need for a public dialogue on cybersecurity and cyberwarfare before November.

(James Bamford is the author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. He is a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine.)

$400M is but One Payment to Iran, from a 1996 Legal Case

Posted on August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

It is not ransom, it is not ransom…okay…well let’s go further shall we?

Justice Department Officials Raised Objections on U.S. Cash Payment to Iran

Some officials worried about message being sent, but were overruled, WSJ

Then, Obama violated his own Executive Order as noted here and dated February 5, 2012.

Why did we convert to cash in various currencies and not just wire the money into designated Iranian banks? Well the excuse is sanctions. And Iran demanded cash such that later purchases or transactions could not be monitored, so John Kerry was cool with that. The result was smuggling $400 million on pallets on an unmarked cargo plane that landed in the middle of the night. Smuggling?

What is bulk cash smuggling?

Bulk Cash Smuggling is a reporting offense under the Bank Secrecy Act, and is part of the United States Code (U.S.C.). The code stipulates:

Whoever, with the intent to evade a currency reporting requirement, knowingly conceals more than $10,000 in currency or other monetary instruments on the person of such individual or in any conveyance, article of luggage, merchandise, or other container, and transports or transfers or attempts to transport or transfer such currency or monetary instruments from a place within the United States to a place outside of the United States, or from a place outside the United States to a place within the United States, shall be guilty of a currency smuggling offense.

What authorities govern bulk cash smuggling offenses?

Title 31 U.S.C. § 5332 (Bulk Cash Smuggling) makes it a crime to smuggle or attempt to smuggle more than $10,000 in currency or monetary instruments into or out of the United States, with the specific intent to evade the U.S. currency reporting requirements codified in Title 31 U.S.C. §§ 5316 and 5317.

ICE HSI relies on other financial authorities granted under Title 31 U.S.C. (Money and Finance), specifically those related to violations of reporting requirements and structuring financial transactions, as well as criminal authorities, such as Title 18 U.S.C. § 1960 (Unlicensed Money Transporter/Transmitter), Title 18 U.S.C. § 1952 (Interstate and Foreign Travel or Transportation in Aid of Racketeering Enterprises) and Title 18 U.S.C. § 1956 (Money Laundering). These authorities allow ICE HSI to disrupt and dismantle criminal networks that move bulk cash, wherever they may operate.

What are monetary instruments?

Monetary instruments are financial instruments that can be used similarly to cash. Specifically, monetary instruments are defined on the second or reverse side of the FinCEN Form 105:

Coin or currency of the United States or of any other country.
Traveler’s checks in any form.
Negotiable instruments (including checks, promissory notes, and money orders) in bearer form, endorsed without restriction, made out to a fictitious payee, or otherwise in such form that title thereto passes upon delivery.
Incomplete instruments (including checks, promissory notes, and money orders) that are signed but on which the name of the payee has been omitted.
Securities or stock in bearer form or otherwise in such form that title thereto passes upon delivery.

Monetary instruments do not include the following:

Checks or money orders made payable to the order of a named person which have not been endorsed or which bear restrictive endorsements.
Warehouse receipts
Bills of lading. More here.

****

Remember the plane was delayed for reasons no one was willing to declare but then John Kerry blamed it on a glitch with the passenger list.

There had been expectations that they would leave on Saturday, while the final round of talks on sanctions were taking place. But the Swiss plane carrying Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Saeed Abedini, a pastor from Idaho and Amir Hekmati, a former Marine from Flint, Michigan as well as some of their family members did not leave until Sunday morning.

It had been reported when the plane took off that Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, about whom little is known, was on board. But a senior U.S. official later said he was not traveling with the other released prisoners. More here.

It is also important to remember as Iran released 4 prisoners, the United States released 7. It is also important to remember that Obama had to issue a pardon for those 7 to be released.

Iran’s official state news agency, IRNA, named the Iranians set for release as Nader Modanlou, Bahram Mechanic, Khosrow Afghahi, Arash Ghahraman, Tooraj Faridi, Nima Golestaneh and Ali Saboonchi. Mechanic’s lawyer told Reuters that Mechanic, Faridi and Afghahi had been pardoned, but Mechanic and Faridi had not yet been freed from custody as their release was contingent on the four American prisoners leaving Iran. The U.S. government has yet to confirm the identities of the Iranians to be freed. All seven have the option of staying in the U.S. rather than returning to Iran. The U.S. State Department also dropped an international request to detain 14 Iranians on trade violations on Saturday, saying the extradition requests were unlikely to be successful. More here.

Okay, so with all of that, what about the rest of the money allegedly owed to Iran?

Well it seems someone needs to look at the lawsuit in clear detail as it was not filed until 1996. The U.S. response to the lawsuit is here in .pdf.

On August 12, 1996, the Islamic Republic of Iran filed aStatement of Claim (Doc . 1) in a new interpretive dispute againstthe United States, Case No . A/30, alleging that the United Stateshas violated its commitments under the Algiers Accords byinterfering in Iran’s internal affairs and implementing economicsanctions against Iran.

The Government of Iran, which has a long record of using terrorism and lethal force as an instrument of state policy, isseeking a ruling from the Tribunal that the United States hasviolated the Algiers Accords by intervening in Iran’s internalaffairs and enacting economic sanctions against it . Iran assertsthat the United States has violated two obligations under theAlgiers Accords : the pledge in Paragraph 1 of the GeneralDeclaration that it is and will be the policy of the UnitedStates not to intervene in Iran’s internal affairs, and therequirement in Paragraph 10 of the General Declaration to revokeall trade sanctions imposed in response to Iran’s seizing the

U.S . Embassy and taking 52 American hostages on November 4, 1979.

To hear the State Department spokesperson, Admiral Kirby (ret), John Kerry and the White House spokesperson Josh Earnest tell it, the U.S. was about to be rendered a decision by The Hague that we lost the case. Really when it began over kidnapping, hostages and terrorism? C’mon….

$400 Million for Iran is to Prop up Their Economy, ah Yeah, Sure

Posted on August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Press Statement John Kerry Secretary of State Washington, DC January 17, 2016

The United States and Iran today have settled a long outstanding claim at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in the Hague.

This specific claim was in the amount of a $400 million Trust Fund used by Iran to purchase military equipment from the United States prior to the break in diplomatic ties. In 1981, with the reaching of the Algiers Accords and the creation of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, Iran filed a claim for these funds, tying them up in litigation at the Tribunal.

This is the latest of a series of important settlements reached over the past 35 years at the Hague Tribunal. In constructive bilateral discussions, we arrived at a fair settlement to this claim, which due to litigation risk, remains in the best interests of the United States.

Iran will receive the balance of $400 million in the Trust Fund, as well as a roughly $1.3 billion compromise on the interest. Iran’s recovery was fixed at a reasonable rate of interest and therefore Iran is unable to pursue a bigger Tribunal award against us, preventing U.S. taxpayers from being obligated to a larger amount of money.

All of the approximately 4,700 private U.S. claims filed against the Government of Iran at the Tribunal were resolved during the first 20 years of the Tribunal, resulting in payments of more than $2.5 billion in awards to U.S. nationals and companies through that process.

There are still outstanding Tribunal claims, mostly by Iran against the U.S. We will continue efforts to address these claims appropriately.

*****

Congress Probes White House-Linked Campaign to Deceive Media on Iran Nuclear Deal

Funder of pro-Iran ‘echo chamber’ met with White House nearly 30 times

FreeBeacon: A member of the House Intelligence Committee has launched a probe into whether a leading architect of the campaign to sell the Iran nuclear agreement last summer coordinated with the White House to mislead the media and the American public, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The inquiry is part of a larger effort by lawmakers to discern the origins of a shadow campaign that top White House officials admitted to running in order to enlist journalists and experts to boost support for the agreement.

The latest probe, launched by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Ill.), centers on Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a left-leaning foundation that quietly bankrolled a core part of the White House’s campaign to sell the nuclear agreement.

Cirincione visited the White House almost 30 times in the past few years during the administration’s diplomacy with Iran, prompting Pompeo to launch a wide-ranging probe into Ploughshares’ efforts to slant reporting on the Iran deal, according to a copy of that inquiry obtained by the Free Beacon.

Ploughshares has been engulfed in controversy since the Free Beacon and other media outlets exposed its efforts to fund media organizations that provided favorable coverage of the Iran deal, including National Public Radio. The organization also held strategy sessions with White House officials to force support for the deal in Congress.

New information from the Pompeo inquiry shows that Cirincione downplayed his ties to the White House’s pro-Iran efforts to create the impression that he was a neutral foreign policy observer. Cirincione did several interviews at NPR and other outlets boosting the nuclear deal, and billed himself as a top source for reporters seeking information about the administration’s diplomacy.

“After the Obama administration cited your organization, the Ploughshares Fund, as a key surrogate in its selling of the Iran nuclear deal, the attention of the media and the American public turned to your group,” Pompeo wrote in a Wednesday letter to Cirincione. “Ploughshares’ contributions, totaling $700,000 to National Public Radio (NPR) over the past several years, raised concerns of bias and journalistic ethics.”

“Specifically, your behavior as the leader of this organization during the Iran deal debate has left many with questions,” wrote Pompeo, who has been investigating these ties since the Free Beacon disclosed that NPR had cancelled an interview with the lawmaker, a deal critic, after receiving funds from Ploughshares.

Cirincione failed to disclose his organization’s close financial ties to the media outlet during multiple appearances on NPR, according to Pompeo.

“After news broke of Ploughshares’ significant financial contributions to NPR, it was also discovered that no disclosure of these gifts were made, either by you or by NPR, when you appeared on NPR on March 23, 2015,” the letter states. “This disclosure ‘breakdown’ prompted the NPR ombudsman to conduct a review of NPR’s processes.”

That internal review found that NPR violated journalistic ethics during its interviews with Cirincione.

“What is disturbing to outside observers is that NPR is ‘looking into why the Cirincione interview in particular did not raise any red flags’ at the time, though it obviously had to be corrected,” Pompeo writes.

“Your enthusiastic defense of Ploughshares’ conduct after these revelations did not acknowledge or apologize for any mistakes,” the lawmaker adds. “I do not yet know if your organization had similar problems with other news outlets. I am concerned that this NPR incident it is part of a broader pattern of deceit.”

Congressional insiders who spoke to the Free Beacon about the latest probe said Cirincionce has not come clean about why he failed to publicly disclose his close ties to the White House’s pro-Iran deal spin machine.

“There’s a real disconnect between what Ploughshares’ president is saying and what he’s doing,” said one senior congressional aide familiar with the inquiry. “The Associated Press’s and NPR’s accusations against him and his group are serious—yet he continues using Obama administration talking points and refuses to recognize the clear errors in how he behaved.”

“You cannot give hundreds of thousands of dollars to public radio and then go on public radio many times without disclosing those contributions,” the source added. “And he is just one member of the organized ‘echo chamber’ promoting Obama’s agenda—imagine how many more like him there are.”

Pompeo seeks to obtain further information about Ploughshares’ efforts to boost the deal, including whether it obfuscated its financial ties to NPR and other organizations.

The probe also asks about potential coordination between Cirincione and the White House.

“Did the White House contact you about your NPR interviews and request you use any material or talking points?” Pompeo writes. “You have visited the White House almost 30 times in the last few years—years that were very critical for debate on the Iran deal.”

“Your official visit to the White House on March 15, 2015 is questionably close to your March 23, 2013 appearance on NPR to discuss the Iran nuclear deal. Similarly, your official White House visit on April 6, 2010 was right before your April 12, 2010 NPR appearance,” the inquiry states.

Cirincione has denied on multiple occasions that the White House had created a pro-Iran deal operation, despite the disclosure of such an operation by top officials.

He also has taken aim at critics of the Iran deal by alleging that they are part of a larger conspiracy to promote war with Iran. This has included criticism of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.), who Cirincione has referred to as “neocons.”

“Deeply disappointed [Senator Cardin] caved to the neocon, pro-war camp,” Cirincione tweeted in 2015 after Cardin expressed opposition to the deal. “Weak statement excusing his vote against the historic Iran Accord.”

Most recently, Cirincione appeared in a Ploughshares video about the deal titled, “How we won.”

****

What is Iran saying?

(AFP). Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday the United States had wasted the opportunity presented by the nuclear accord and prevented the two countries from working more closely on regional issues.

“As the supreme guide said, the nuclear agreement was a test,” Rouhani said in a televised address.

“If the United States had implemented the nuclear agreement with good faith and precision, and had reduced the obstacles and delays that we see today, we could have had more trust and engaged in negotiations on other subjects, which could have been in the interests of the region, the United States and us,” added the president, a moderate who pushed hard for the deal sealed in July 2015.

The agreement, which came into force in January, saw Iran accept curbs to its nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions by world powers.

While observers say Iran has met its commitments, Tehran accuses Washington of continuing to block the Islamic republic from the international banking system, limiting its ability to benefit from the end of sanctions.

“Sadly, (the United States) did not successfully pass the test and has not precisely respected its commitments,” said Rouhani.

Rouhani said the agreement had already led to a significant rise in oil exports, but “in other sectors, things have moved slowly” due to the ongoing concerns of international banks, who fear they are still liable for prosecution by the US Treasury if they do business with Iran.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Monday that negotiations with the West were like a “lethal poison”.

“Six months on (from the nuclear deal), do we see any effect on people’s lives?” he asked.

The Americans “ask to negotiate on regional questions, but the experience of the nuclear negotiations proves that this would be a lethal poison and that we can’t trust them on any subject”, he said.

North Korea Goes to War Footing

Posted on July 28, 2016July 28, 2016 by Denise Simon

North Korea is now developing BALLISTIC SUBMARINES to carry nuclear warheads

Madcap dictator Kim Jong-un has authorised a huge expansion of the country’s main military dockyards in preparation for the construction of a fleet on new submarines.

The move will raise fears that the mentally unstable dictator is attempting to construct an at sea nuclear deterrent to rival Britain’s Trident programme.

The mentally unstable dictator, who is attempting to develop viable nuclear missiles, has upped his rhetoric against the West in recent months and has persistently threatened to start World War Three.

Now analysis of the Sinpo South Shipyard, on the country’s eastern coast, shows that the North Korean navy is clearing a huge harbour and has put up a massive new construction hall.

Experts at 38 North, a program at the US-Korea Institute, have examined satellite imagery which shows the true extent of the secretive country’s ambitious naval plans.

At the moment North Korea has a single small, outdated Gorae-class submarine which is neither large nor technologically advanced enough to launch nuclear missiles.

But the analysts warned: “The status of work inside the hall remains unclear, but when it is finished North Korea will be able

But the analysts warned: “The status of work inside the hall remains unclear, but when it is finished North Korea will be able to build and launch new submarines much larger than the existing Gorae-class, including a new class of ballistic missile submarines.” More here from ExpressUK.

NoKO sub base NoKo submarine base

North Korea: U.S. has crossed red line; relations on war footing

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington “crossed the red line” and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong-un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month.

Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S. affairs department at the North’s Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that recent U.S. actions have put the situation on the Korean Peninsula on a war footing.

The United States and South Korea regularly conduct joint military exercises south of the Demilitarized Zone, and Pyongyang typically responds to them with tough talk and threats of retaliation.

Han said North Korea believes the nature of the maneuvers has become openly aggressive because they reportedly now include training designed to prepare troops for the invasion of the North’s capital and “decapitation strikes” aimed at killing its top leadership.

Han says designating Kim himself for sanctions was the final straw. “The Obama administration went so far to have the impudence to challenge the supreme dignity of the DPRK in order to get rid of its unfavorable position during the political and military showdown with the DPRK,” Han said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“The United States has crossed the red-line in our showdown”, he said. “We regard this thrice cursed crime as a declaration of war.” declaration of war.”

Although North Korea had already been heavily sanctioned internationally for its nuclear weapons and long-range missile development programs, Washington’s announcement on July 6 was the first time Kim Jong Un has been personally sanctioned.

Less than a week later, Pyongyang cut off its final official means of communications with Washington — known as the New York channel. Han said Pyongyang has made it clear that everything between the two must now be dealt with under “war law.” More here from the WashingtonTimes.

*****

WASHINGTON – A US policy institute said it may have located a secret facility used by North Korea in the early stages of building its program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, which if confirmed would be critical to the success of any future nuclear deal, according to a report seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The report by the Institute for Science and International Security said there has always been doubt about whether North Korea has disclosed all of its nuclear facilities. Confirming their location would be critical to the success of any future agreement to freeze and dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, it said.

The site, 27 miles (43 km) from the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, may have played a key role in development of centrifuges that refine uranium hexafluoride gas into low-enriched and highly enriched uranium, the report said.

“It is necessary to identify where North Korea enriches uranium and part of that is understanding where it has done it in the past,” said David Albright, the institute’s president.

What may once have been the early centrifuge research and development facility is believed to have been inside an aircraft parts factory inside a mountain next to Panghyon Air Base. It was located using commercial satellite imagery, the report said.

It was unclear whether the aircraft parts factory was still operational but information from defectors indicates there may be three production-scale centrifuge manufacturing plants operating in the country although their locations have not been confirmed, said Albright.

Tensions have been escalating between North Korea and South Korea, the United States and Japan over Pyongyang’s fourth underground nuclear test in January and a series of missile launches.

North Korea’s nuclear program is based on highly enriched uranium and plutonium separated from spent reactor fuel rods.

The reclusive government, which for more than a decade denied having a gas centrifuge program, in November 2010 revealed the existence of a production-scale gas centrifuge plant at Yongbyon but insisted it had no other such facilities.

In June 2000, a Japanese newspaper quoted Chinese sources as saying a facility was located inside Mount Chonma, the report said. Information recently obtained from “knowledgeable government officials” suggested the undeclared facility was associated with an underground aircraft parts factory, it said.

Working with Allsource Analysis, which interprets satellite imagery, the institute determined it most likely was Panghyon Aircraft Plant, which made parts for Soviet-supplied fighters.

The report quoted an unidentified official as saying the site could have held between 200 and 300 centrifuges. More details here.