Category Archives: NSA Spying

Global Roadway with Fraud in Trade Agreements

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Being a fully connected world has major implications for fraud, terror and collusion. It is already a major security threat to not control borders and vet travelers. When it comes to foreign transportation, control and inspections receive little control as well.

Plans for superhighway linking Britain and America

The Russian proposal would allow Britons to travel overland from Britain to the United States

Plans for an ambitious 12,400-mile superhighway linking the Atlantic and the Pacific are reportedly being considered by Russian authorities.

The Trans-Eurasian Belt Development would see the construction of a vast motorway across Russia. It would connect with existing networks in Europe, making road trips to eastern Russia a far easier proposition. While roads do currently run across most of Russia, the quality tends to deteriorate the further you travel from Moscow.

The proposal, outlined in the Siberian Times, would see the road follow a similar route to the Trans-Siberian railway, through cities including Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk and Vladivostok. A new high-speed train line would also be constructed, along with pipelines for gas and oil. The rail network may also be extended to the Chukotka region of Russia and across the Bering Strait to Alaska – making overland trips from Britain to the US – via the Channel Tunnel – a possibility.


Much of eastern Russia’s road network is of poor quality (Photo: AP/Fotolia)

The idea, which developers hope will help boost tourism and make Russia a global transportation hub, was presented at a meeting of the Russian Academy of Science. But he added: “It will solve many problems in the development of the vast region. It is connected with social programs, and new fields, new energy resources, and so on.

“The idea is that basing on the new technology of high-speed rail transport we can build a new railway near the Trans-Siberian Railway, with the opportunity to go to Chukotka and Bering Strait and then to the American continent.”


The Trans-Siberian (Photo: Alamy)

The Trans-Siberian Railway links Moscow and Vladivostok, covers 9,258km (6,152 miles) and takes seven days to complete.

According to Anthony Lambert, Telegraph Travel’s rail expert: “The principal attraction of the journey is, of course, the Russian landscape – the vast panoramas and sense of immensity so vividly captured by such artists as Isaac Levitan and Ivan Shishkin. The taiga is mesmerising.

“Looking out at the panorama of larch, silver fir, pine and birch induces the kind of reverie that is one of the pleasures of train travel, a random stream of thoughts and images that drifts on like the forest. In clearings, villages that could have come from a Levitan or Shishkin painting break the spell and make one wonder what life must be like in such a remote land.”

Beyond questionable financiers of a global highway, the elites and government investments with carve-outs lead to other implications and policy decisions.

Leaked Pacific trade pact draft shows investment carve-outs sought

(Reuters) – Australia’s medicine subsidies, Canadian films and culture, and capital controls in Chile would be carved out from investment protection rules being negotiated in a Pacific trade pact, according to a draft text released by Wikileaks on Wednesday.

An investment chapter, dated Jan. 20, from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal was released amid controversy over rules allowing companies to sue foreign governments, which critics say should be dropped from the pact.

The 55-page draft says countries cannot treat investors from a partner country differently from local investors, lays out compensation to be paid if property is expropriated or nationalized and sets out how to resolve disputes.

Consumer group Public Citizen said the definition of investment was too broad, covering even “failed attempts” to invest such as channeling resources to set up a business. But Center for Strategic and International Studies senior adviser Scott Miller said most treaties defined investment broadly and the draft was close to a publicly available U.S. model text.

Lise Johnson, head of investment law at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, said governments’ rights to regulate for environmental and public interest purposes seemed “very weak.” But Miller said they were not a big carve-out.

A footnote says that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules do not apply to Australia, although it notes: “deletion of footnote is subject to certain conditions.”

The exemptions sought would protect countries from being sued by foreign corporations that complain they do not get the same treatment as domestic firms because of government actions, such as sovereign debt defaults or government procurement.

Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and Australia want a free pass for foreign investments requiring special approval, often for sensitive local sectors such as banking or communications.

Australia wants to exclude medical programs and Canada to exempt cultural sectors, including films, music and books.

An annex states that Chile’s central bank can impose capital controls and maintains restrictions on foreign investors transferring sale proceeds offshore.

Chile and other emerging markets have seen large inflows of foreign investment, which can push up currencies and destabilize the local economy.

Critics argue the rules give companies too much power to sue governments. But business groups say they are necessary to stop unscrupulous governments from discriminating against foreigners.

TPP countries hope to wrap up negotiations on the deal by midyear.

A U.S. Trade Representative spokesman said investment agreements sought to protect Americans doing business abroad and ensure the ability to regulate in the public interest at home.

 

Spying Explains Obama Against Israel

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Israel spying on the Iran talks is the only sensible and reasonable thing to do to protect a country when allies like the United States fail them.

 

When the leader of the United States has taken power with exclusivity bypassing all checks and balances the results are often nasty. Barack Obama has a history of exempting a doctrine of a cohesive government. The article below reminds me of when several selection members of both houses of Congress knew long in advance of the bin Ladin raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan. They originally received this information from Leon Panetta and never said a word. This operation was held closed for months.

Obama refuses to include Congress in the negotiations process on the Iranian nuclear program and this had led to several behind the curtain actions, meetings, phone calls, intercepts and just plain spying. What is worse is when other global leaders are brought into the growing disputes then sadly the United States under Barack Obama suffers additional hits to its reputation.

This matter between the White House and Israel is defining itself as THE legacy that is Barack Obama. This is getting more pathetic daily.

Israel Spied on Iran Talks

Ally’s snooping upset White House because information was used to lobby Congress to try to sink a deal

By Adam Entous

Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.

The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.

The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.

“It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the matter.

The U.S. and Israel, longtime allies who routinely swap information on security threats, sometimes operate behind the scenes like spy-versus-spy rivals. The White House has largely tolerated Israeli snooping on U.S. policy makers—a posture Israel takes when the tables are turned.

The White House discovered the operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said.

Israeli officials denied spying directly on U.S. negotiators and said they received their information through other means, including close surveillance of Iranian leaders receiving the latest U.S. and European offers. European officials, particularly the French, also have been more transparent with Israel about the closed-door discussions than the Americans, Israeli and U.S. officials said.

Mr. Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer early this year saw a rapidly closing window to increase pressure on Mr. Obama before a key deadline at the end of March, Israeli officials said.

Using levers of political influence unique to Israel, Messrs. Netanyahu and Dermer calculated that a lobbying campaign in Congress before an announcement was made would improve the chances of killing or reshaping any deal. They knew the intervention would damage relations with the White House, Israeli officials said, but decided that was an acceptable cost.

The campaign may not have worked as well as hoped, Israeli officials now say, because it ended up alienating many congressional Democrats whose support Israel was counting on to block a deal.

Obama administration officials, departing from their usual description of the unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Israel, have voiced sharp criticism of Messrs. Netanyahu and Dermer to describe how the relationship has changed.

“People feel personally sold out,” a senior administration official said. “That’s where the Israelis really better be careful because a lot of these people will not only be around for this administration but possibly the next one as well.”

This account of the Israeli campaign is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former U.S. and Israeli diplomats, intelligence officials, policy makers and lawmakers.

Weakened ties

Distrust between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama had been growing for years but worsened when Mr. Obama launched secret talks with Iran in 2012. The president didn’t tell Mr. Netanyahu because of concerns about leaks, helping set the stage for the current standoff, according to current and former U.S. and Israeli officials.

U.S. officials said Israel has long topped the list of countries that aggressively spy on the U.S., along with China, Russia and France. The U.S. expends more counterintelligence resources fending off Israeli spy operations than any other close ally, U.S. officials said.

A senior official in the prime minister’s office said Monday: “These allegations are utterly false. The state of Israel does not conduct espionage against the United States or Israel’s other allies. The false allegations are clearly intended to undermine the strong ties between the United States and Israel and the security and intelligence relationship we share.”

Current and former Israeli officials said their intelligence agencies scaled back their targeting of U.S. officials after the jailing nearly 30 years ago of American Jonathan Pollard for passing secrets to Israel.

While U.S. officials may not be direct targets, current and former officials said, Israeli intelligence agencies sweep up communications between U.S. officials and parties targeted by the Israelis, including Iran.

Americans shouldn’t be surprised, said a person familiar with the Israeli practice, since U.S. intelligence agencies helped the Israelis build a system to listen in on high-level Iranian communications.

As secret talks with Iran progressed into 2013, U.S. intelligence agencies monitored Israel’s communications to see if the country knew of the negotiations. Mr. Obama didn’t tell Mr. Netanyahu until September 2013.

Israeli officials, who said they had already learned about the talks through their own channels, told their U.S. counterparts they were upset about being excluded. “ ‘Did the administration really believe we wouldn’t find out?’ ” Israeli officials said, according to a former U.S. official.

The episode cemented Mr. Netanyahu’s concern that Mr. Obama was bent on clinching a deal with Iran whether or not it served Israel’s best interests, Israeli officials said. Obama administration officials said the president was committed to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Mr. Dermer started lobbying U.S. lawmakers just before the U.S. and other powers signed an interim agreement with Iran in November 2013. Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Dermer went to Congress after seeing they had little influence on the White House.

Before the interim deal was made public, Mr. Dermer gave lawmakers Israel’s analysis: The U.S. offer would dramatically undermine economic sanctions on Iran, according to congressional officials who took part.

After learning about the briefings, the White House dispatched senior officials to counter Mr. Dermer. The officials told lawmakers that Israel’s analysis exaggerated the sanctions relief by as much as 10 times, meeting participants said.

When the next round of negotiations with Iran started in Switzerland last year, U.S. counterintelligence agents told members of the U.S. negotiating team that Israel would likely try to penetrate their communications, a senior Obama administration official said.

The U.S. routinely shares information with its European counterparts and others to coordinate negotiating positions. While U.S. intelligence officials believe secured U.S. communications are relatively safe from the Israelis, they say European communications are vulnerable.

Mr. Netanyahu and his top advisers received confidential updates on the Geneva talks from Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and other U.S. officials, who knew at the time that Israeli intelligence was working to fill in any gaps.

The White House eventually curtailed the briefings, U.S. officials said, withholding sensitive information for fear of leaks.

Current and former Israeli officials said their intelligence agencies can get much of the information they seek by targeting Iranians and others in the region who are communicating with countries in the talks.

In November, the Israelis learned the contents of a proposed deal offered by the U.S. but ultimately rejected by Iran, U.S. and Israeli officials said. Israeli officials told their U.S. counterparts the terms offered insufficient protections.

U.S. officials urged the Israelis to give the negotiations a chance. But Mr. Netanyahu’s top advisers concluded the emerging deal was unacceptable. The White House was making too many concessions, Israeli officials said, while the Iranians were holding firm.

Obama administration officials reject that view, saying Israel was making impossible demands that Iran would never accept. “The president has made clear time and again that no deal is better than a bad deal,” a senior administration official said.

In January, Mr. Netanyahu told the White House his government intended to oppose the Iran deal but didn’t explain how, U.S. and Israeli officials said.

On Jan. 21, House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) announced Mr. Netanyahu would address a joint meeting of Congress. That same day, Mr. Dermer and other Israeli officials visited Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers and aides, seeking a bipartisan coalition large enough to block or amend any deal.

Most Republicans were already prepared to challenge the White House on the negotiations, so Mr. Dermer focused on Democrats. “This deal is bad,” he said in one briefing, according to participants.

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Washington, Aaron Sagui, said Mr. Dermer didn’t launch a special campaign on Jan 21. Mr. Dermer, the spokesperson said, has “consistently briefed both Republican and Democrats, senators and congressmen, on Israel’s concerns regarding the Iran negotiations for over a year.”

Mr. Dermer and other Israeli officials over the following weeks gave lawmakers and their aides information the White House was trying to keep secret, including how the emerging deal could allow Iran to operate around 6,500 centrifuges, devices used to process nuclear material, said congressional officials who attended the briefings.

The Israeli officials told lawmakers that Iran would also be permitted to deploy advanced IR-4 centrifuges that could process fuel on a larger scale, meeting participants and administration officials said. Israeli officials said such fuel, which under the emerging deal would be intended for energy plants, could be used to one day build nuclear bombs.

The information in the briefings, Israeli officials said, was widely known among the countries participating in the negotiations.

When asked in February during one briefing where Israel got its inside information, the Israeli officials said their sources included the French and British governments, as well as their own intelligence, according to people there.

“Ambassador Dermer never shared confidential intelligence information with members of Congress,” Mr. Sagui said. “His briefings did not include specific details from the negotiations, including the length of the agreement or the number of centrifuges Iran would be able to keep.”

Current and former U.S. officials confirmed that the number and type of centrifuges cited in the briefings were part of the discussions. But they said the briefings were misleading because Israeli officials didn’t disclose concessions asked of Iran. Those included giving up stockpiles of nuclear material, as well as modifying the advanced centrifuges to slow output, these officials said.

The administration didn’t brief lawmakers on the centrifuge numbers and other details at the time because the information was classified and the details were still in flux, current and former U.S. officials said.

Unexpected reaction

The congressional briefings and Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to address a joint meeting of Congress on the emerging deal sparked a backlash among many Democratic lawmakers, congressional aides said.

On Feb. 3, Mr. Dermer huddled with Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, who said he told Mr. Dermer it was a breach of protocol for Mr. Netanyahu to accept an invitation from Mr. Boehner without going through the White House.

Mr. Manchin said he told Mr. Dermer he would attend the prime minister’s speech to Congress, but he was noncommittal about supporting any move by Congress to block a deal.

Mr. Dermer spent the following day doing damage control with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, congressional aides said.

Two days later, Mr. Dermer met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the SenateIntelligence Committee, at her Washington, D.C., home. He pressed for her support because he knew that she, too, was angry about Mr. Netanyahu’s planned appearance.

Ms. Feinstein said afterward she would oppose legislation allowing Congress to vote down an agreement.

Congressional aides and Israeli officials now say Israel’s coalition in Congress is short the votes needed to pass legislation that could overcome a presidential veto, although that could change. In response, Israeli officials said, Mr. Netanyahu was pursuing other ways to pressure the White House.

This week, Mr. Netanyahu sent a delegation to France, which has been more closely aligned with Israel on the nuclear talks and which could throw obstacles in Mr. Obama’s way before a deal is signed. The Obama administration, meanwhile, is stepping up its outreach to Paris to blunt the Israeli push.

“If you’re wondering whether something serious has shifted here, the answer is yes,” a senior U.S. official said. “These things leave scars.”

Veto Proof Position Against POTUS Iran Deal

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Of the P5+1 members that have been leading the talks on the Iranian nuclear deal, France appears to be one country that has demonstrated some real concerns on the trigger points inside the negotiations. Israel has many allies in the talks but France appears to be the only member of the P5+1 that Israel can influence.

In recent days, Israel has dispatched a delegation to France with an objective of a more honest dialogue on the implications if a Kerry deal is reached. Future implications of an approved Iran nuclear agreement being reached is a Middle East nuclear arms race. Saudi Arabia has been in talks with South Korea on  nuclear cooperation.

Meanwhile, the Iran Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei continues to call for ‘death to America’ even as these talks remain live, in progress.

Khamenei has cautioned against expectations that an agreement would amend the more than three-decade freeze between the two nations. Relations between the two nations soured after the Shah of Iran fled his nation during the Iranian revolution, which put the Ayatollah Khomeini in power. The following siege of the American Embassy, with Americans held hostage drove a wedge in U.S.-Iran relations.

It should also be noted that once a deal is reached, the Supreme leader does have to also approve it.

In an interview with The Associated Press in Paris, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said Monday that dialogue with France over Iran’s nuclear program “has proven in the past that it was productive” and makes this week’s last-minute diplomatic mission to Paris worthwhile.

France played a key role strengthening an interim agreement with Iran in late 2013 that froze key parts of the Islamic republic’s nuclear program in exchange for some relief from Western sanctions.

The so-called P5+1 group — Britain, China, France, Russia the United States and Germany — is attempting to reach a final nuclear deal with Iran before a deadline expires at the end of the month.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday “achieving a deal is possible” by the target date. A preliminary accord then is meant to lead to a final deal by the end of June that would permanently crimp Tehran’s nuclear programs in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Iran claims that its program is only aimed at generating power, but other nations fear it is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Back in the United States, a robust mission by Congress appears to be gaining success for a veto proof position if Barack Obama fully bypasses Congress to approve the Iran deal.

Washington (CNN)A veto-proof, bipartisan majority of House lawmakers have signed an open letter to President Barack Obama warning him that any nuclear deal with Iran will effectively require congressional approval for implementation.

A group of bipartisan senators have penned a bill mandating that any deal be reviewed and approved by Congress, but the House letter notes that lawmakers have another way to halt an agreement — by refusing to roll back sanctions.

“Should an agreement with Iran be reached, permanent sanctions relief from congressionally-mandated sanctions would require new legislation. In reviewing such an agreement, Congress must be convinced that its terms foreclose any pathway to a bomb, and only then will Congress be able to consider permanent sanctions relief,” they write.

The letter, which was signed by 367 members of the House and released Monday by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, follows a similar one, issued to Iran’s leaders and signed by 47 Republican senators, warning that any deal with Iran could be rolled back by a future president.

That letter sparked fierce criticism from Democrats, who said it was inappropriate meddling in delicate diplomatic talks and meant to undermine negotiations, and even some Republicans expressed reservations over the tactic.

The House letter lays out lawmakers’ concerns in more diplomatic terms, hitting on the potential time restraints as a key sticking point for a final deal. The emerging deal would lift some restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in a decade, which critics say could allow the country to resume its pursuit of a nuclear bomb at that point.

“A final comprehensive nuclear agreement must constrain Iran’s nuclear infrastructure so that Iran has no pathway to a bomb, and that agreement must be long-lasting,” the lawmakers write.

“Any inspection and verification regime must allow for short notice access to suspect locations, and verifiable constraints on Iran’s nuclear program must last for decades.”

Hillary Obstruction, Secrecy Called Out in Ad

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvHGDSCvi00&feature=player_detailpage#t=23

Exclusive: Despite Hillary Clinton promise, charity did not disclose donors

(Reuters) – In 2008, Hillary Clinton promised Barack Obama, the president-elect, there would be no mystery about who was giving money to her family’s globe-circling charities. She made a pledge to publish all the donors on an annual basis to ease concerns that as secretary of state she could be vulnerable to accusations of foreign influence.

At the outset, the Clinton Foundation did indeed publish what they said was a complete list of the names of more than 200,000 donors and has continued to update it. But in a breach of the pledge, the charity’s flagship health program, which spends more than all of the other foundation initiatives put together, stopped making the annual disclosure in 2010, Reuters has found.

In response to questions from Reuters, officials at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) and the foundation confirmed no complete list of donors to the Clintons’ charities has been published since 2010. CHAI was spun off as a separate legal entity that year, but the officials acknowledged it still remains subject to the same disclosure agreement as the foundation.

The finding could renew scrutiny of Clinton’s promises of transparency as she prepares to launch her widely expected bid for the White House in the coming weeks. Political opponents and transparency groups have criticized her in recent weeks for her decision first to use a private email address while she was secretary of state and then to delete thousands of emails she labeled private.

CHAI, which is best known for helping to reduce the cost of drugs for people with HIV in the developing world, published a partial donor list for the first time only this year.

CHAI should have published the names during 2010-2013, when Clinton was in office, CHAI spokeswoman Maura Daley acknowledged this week. “Not doing so was an oversight which we made up for this year,” she told Reuters in an email when asked why it had not published any donor lists until a few weeks ago.

A spokesman for Hillary Clinton declined to comment. Former President Bill Clinton, who also signed on to the agreement with the Obama administration, was traveling and could not be reached for comment, his spokesman said.

Because Hillary was a Federal government employee, the Department of Justice has stepped in to defend her on the email scandal.

DOJ defends Clinton from email subpoena

The Justice Department is defending former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from a motion to subpoena her private emails under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

“Such action is unnecessary and inappropriate under FOIA,” DOJ officials wrote in a legal briefing filed Thursday. Officials were responding to a case launched by Larry Klayman, the founder of the conservative watchdog group Freedom Watch. Klayman is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., to subpoena Clinton’s computer server where she housed the private email address she used while serving in the State Department.

Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of emails that she believed could be considered official government communications, but she deleted 30,000 emails that she considered to be personal.

The Justice Department describes Klayman’s call for a subpoena as “speculation” in its brief.

“Plaintiff provides no basis, beyond sheer speculation, to believe that former Secretary Clinton withheld any work-related emails from those provided to the Department of State,” the agency says.

What DOES Congress Know About the Iran Deal?

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Breaking: Appears that the Iran deal now has a green light to continue with a caveat, get rid of some of the centrifuges. Now the question becomes, will Congress get a vote on this?

Chairman Royce of the House Foreign Affairs Committee made a stellar opening remark today opening the testimony and exchange with the witnesses that include Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Acting Under Secretary Adam Szubin. It seems that the items in the talks led by Secretary of State John Kerry and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman along with the rest of the P5+1 are worse than we know and in fact are quite chilling. Imagine what we don’t know.

From Chairman Royce: (video included)

We’ll hear the Administration’s case today. But it’s critical that the Administration hears our bipartisan concerns. Deputy Secretary Blinken, this is your first appearance before this Committee. I congratulate you on your position, and wish you well. After the hearing, I trust you will be in touch with Secretary Kerry, Under Secretary Sherman, and the others at the negotiating table to report the Committee’s views. This is important.
This Committee has been at the forefront of examining the threat of a nuclear Iran. Much of the pressure that brought Tehran to the table was put in place by Congress over the objections of the Executive Branch – whether Republican or Democrat. And we’d have more pressure on Iran today if the Administration hadn’t pressured the Senate to sit on the Royce-Engel sanctions bill this Committee produced and passed in 2013.
Congress is proud of this role. And we want to see the Administration get a lasting and meaningful agreement. But unfortunately, the Administration’s negotiating strategy has been more about managing proliferation than preventing it.
Case in point: Iran’s uranium enrichment program, the key technology needed to developing a nuclear bomb. Reportedly, the Administration would be agreeable to leaving much of Iran’s enrichment capacity in place for a decade. If Congress will be asked to “roll-back” its sanctions on Iran – which will certainly fund its terrorist activities – there must be a substantial “roll-back” of Iran’s nuclear program.
And consider that international inspectors report that Iran has still not revealed its past bomb work – despite its commitment to do so. The IAEA is still concerned about signs of Iran’s military-related activities; including designing a nuclear payload for a missile. Iran hasn’t even begun to address these concerns. Last fall, over 350 Members wrote to the Secretary of State expressing deep concerns about this lack of cooperation. How can we expect Iran to uphold an agreement when they are not meeting their current commitments? Indeed, we were not surprised to see Iran continue to illicitly procure nuclear technology during these negotiations. Or that Tehran was caught testing a more advanced centrifuge that would help produce bomb material quicker. This was certainly a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the interim agreement. Iran’s deception is all the more reason that the Administration should obtain zero-notice, anywhere, anytime inspections on Iran’s declared and undeclared facilities.
There is also the fact that limits placed on Iran’s nuclear program as part of the final agreement now being negotiated will expire. That means, the “final” agreement is just another interim step, with the real final step being Iran treated as “any other” non-nuclear weapon state under the Non- Proliferation Treaty – licensing it to pursue industrial scale enrichment.
With a deep history of deception, covert procurement, and clandestine facilities, Iran is not “any other” country, to be conceded an industrial scale nuclear program. Any meaningful agreement must keep restrictions in place for decades – as over 360 Members of Congress – including every Member of this Committee – are demanding in a letter to the President.
Meanwhile, Iran is intensifying its destructive role in the region. Tehran is propping up Assad in Syria, while its proxy Hezbollah threatens Israel. Iranian-backed Shia militia are killing hopes for a unified, stable Iraq. And last month, an Iranian-backed militia displaced the government in Yemen, a key counterterrorism partner. Many of our allies and partners see Iran pocketing an advantageous nuclear agreement and ramping up its aggression in the region.


This Committee is prepared to evaluate any agreement to determine if it is in the long-term national security interests of the United States and our allies. Indeed, as Secretary Kerry testified not long ago, any agreement will have to “pass muster with Congress.” Yet that commitment has been muddied by the Administration’s insistence in recent weeks that Congress not play a role. That’s not right. Congress built the sanctions structure that brought Iran to the table. And if the President moves to dismantle it, we will have a say.
I now turn to the Ranking Member.

Blinken’s remarks are here. Could the Iranian sanctions be lifted immediately? Seems that is part of the most recent talks.

Iran deal would reportedly ease sanctions immediately, allow nuclear enrichment

International sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy for years would be immediately eased and the Islamic Republic could continue to enrich uranium under the terms of a deal being hammered out in Geneva between Tehran and six world powers, according to a report Thursday.

Citing a draft that would serve as a framework for a 10-year deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, The Associated Press reported that Iran would be allowed to operate 6,000 enrichment centrifuges it claims are for peaceful purposes — while getting immediate relief from international economic sanctions.

U.S. lawmakers skeptical of Iran’s true intentions raised fresh concerns about the deal in a letter Thursday to the White House.

“Iran’s role in fomenting instability in the region — not to mention Iran’s horrendous repression at home — demonstrates the risks of negotiating with a partner we cannot trust,” stated the letter, whose signatories included majorities of both parties.

“I wouldn’t trust these people with a spare electron.”- Former US Amassador to the UN John Bolton
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki denied that there is a draft report circulating among the parties holding talks. The U.S. and the five other world powers, who also include Great Britain, France, Russia and China, have been negotiating with Iranian officials under a self-imposed March 31 deadline, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif doing most of the heavy lifting. The deal would be aimed at unshackling Iran from United Nations economic sanctions put in place in 2006 while giving the international community the ability to ensure the hard-line regime is not building a nuclear weapons stockpile.

Any March framework agreement is unlikely to constrain Iran’s missile program, which the U.S. believes could ultimately be designed to deliver nuclear warheads. Diplomats say that as the talks move to deadline, the Iranians continue to insist that missile curbs are not up for discussion. The deal would likely leave in place a ban on other nations transferring missile technology to Iran, however.

Separate U.S. sanctions would be phased out as part of a deal, although U.S. lawmakers have vowed to block such a move and also dispute the White House’s ability to enter into a binding deal with Iran.

U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for a hearing with top Obama administration officials from the State and Treasury departments to hear testimony on the negotiations.

Following the March 31 deadline, the parties would have until sometime in June to agree on all of the details.

Iran’s nuclear program has been under international scrutiny for a dozen years, since the regime blocked UN inspectors from verifying Iran was abiding by international mandates regarding its alleged nuclear weapons program.

It is not clear how many centrifuges — the machines that enrich uranium for possible weaponization — Iran now operates. Estimates have been as high as 20,000. The U.S. believes reducing the number of centrifuges will forestall by a decade or more Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said simply regulating the number of centrifuges is not enough to restrict supply, because better technology can increase production from each machine. More importantly, Bolton said, there is no reason to trust the Iranian regime, which traces its rise to power to the 1979 attack on the U.S. Embassy and which routinely calls for attacks on Israel and America.

“When they sign the deal, that will be the beginning of new negotiations, because Iran will violate the agreement before the ink is dry and then we’ll be back at the table,” Bolton said. “I wouldn’t trust these people with a spare electron.”

In addition to reducing the number of centrifuges, the deal would commit Iran to accepting rigorous monitoring of its nuclear program. A planned heavy water reactor would be re-engineered to produce much less plutonium than originally envisioned, relieving concerns that it could be an alternative pathway to a bomb.

For Iran, any deal granting sanctions relief would immediately boost the economy, which is especially hurting due to the bottoming out of oil prices.

Frank Gaffney, of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, said the sanctions are the only leverage the West has against Iran, and surrendering it up-front makes what is being reported a bad deal.

“We cannot trust the Iranians to do anything other than to pursue what they have been pursuing for decades, a nuclear weapons program, secretly and in the open,” Gaffney said.

If Iran violates its end of the bargain, reinstating sanctions that resulted from arduous diplomatic wrangling will prove impossible, he said.

“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell you would get the Chinese and Russians back on board,” Gaffney said. “This is a permanent unraveling of the sanctions.”

Washington believes it can extend the time Tehran would need to produce a nuclear weapon to at least a year for the 10 years it is under the moratorium. Right now, Iran would require only two to three months to amass enough materiel if it covertly seeks to make a nuclear bomb. Among U.S. allies, France is the most adamant about stretching out the duration of the deal. A European official familiar with the French position told the AP it wants a 25-year time-span.

Any agreement faces fierce opposition from the U.S. Congress as well as close American allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, which believe the Obama administration has conceded too much. After the deal expires, Iran could theoretically ramp up enrichment to whatever level or volume it wants.