Selected Israeli Intelligence Items Revealed on Iran Talks

Posted on July 29, 2015July 29, 2015 by Denise Simon

The deal is just too dangerous, even some Democrats are expressing that dynamic.

On Nov. 26, 2013, three days after the signing of the interim agreement (JPOA) between the powers and Iran, the Iranian delegation returned home to report to their government. According to information obtained by Israeli intelligence, there was a sense of great satisfaction in Tehran then over the agreement and confidence that ultimately Iran would be able to persuade the West to accede to a final deal favorable to Iran. That final deal, signed in Vienna last week, seems to justify that confidence. The intelligence—a swath of which I was given access to in the past month—reveals that the Iranian delegates told their superiors, including one from the office of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, that “our most significant achievement” in the negotiations was America’s consent to the continued enrichment of uranium on Iranian territory.

That makes sense. The West’s recognition of Iran’s right to perform the full nuclear fuel cycle—or enrichment of uranium—was a complete about-face from America’s declared position prior to and during the talks. Senior U.S. and European officials who visited Israel immediately after the negotiations with Iran began in mid 2013 declared, according to the protocols of these meetings, that because of Iran’s repeated violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, “Our aim is that in the final agreement [with Iran] there will be no enrichment at all” on Iranian territory. Later on, in a speech at the Saban Forum in December 2013, President Barack Obama reiterated that in view of Iran’s behavior, the United States did not acknowledge that Iran had any right to enrich fissile material on its soil.

In February 2014, the first crumbling of this commitment was evident, when the head of the U.S. delegation to the talks with Iran, Wendy Sherman, told Israeli officials that while the United States would like Iran to stop enriching uranium altogether, this was “not a realistic” expectation. Iranian foreign ministry officials, during meetings the Tehran following the JPOA, reckoned that from the moment the principle of an Iranian right to enrich uranium was established, it would serve as the basis for the final agreement. And indeed, the final agreement, signed earlier this month, confirmed that assessment.

The sources who granted me access to the information collected by Israel about the Iran talks stressed that it was not obtained through espionage against the United States. It comes, they said, through Israeli spying on Iran, or routine contacts between Israeli officials and representatives of the P5+1 in the talks. The sources showed me only what they wanted me to see, and in these cases there’s always a danger of fraud and fabrication. This said, these sources have proved reliable in the past, and based on my experience with this type of material it appears to be quite credible. No less important, what emerges from the classified material obtained by Israel in the course of the negotiations is largely corroborated by details that have become public since.

In early 2013, the material indicates, Israel learned from its intelligence sources in Iran that the United States held a secret dialogue with senior Iranian representatives in Muscat, Oman. Only toward the end of these talks, in which the Americans persuaded Iran to enter into diplomatic negotiations regarding its nuclear program, did Israel receive an official report about them from the U.S. government. Shortly afterward, the CIA and NSA drastically curtailed its cooperation with Israel on operations aimed at disrupting the Iranian nuclear project, operations that had racked up significant successes over the past decade.

On Nov. 8, 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry visited Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw him off at Ben Gurion Airport and told him that Israel had received intelligence that indicated the United States was ready to sign “a very bad deal” and that the West’s representatives were gradually retreating from the same lines in the sand that they had drawn themselves.

Perusal of the material Netanyahu was basing himself on, and more that has come in since that angry exchange on the tarmac, makes two conclusions fairly clear: The Western delegates gave up on almost every one of the critical issues they had themselves resolved not to give in on, and also that they had distinctly promised Israel they would not do so.

One of the promises made to Israel was that Iran would not be permitted to stockpile uranium. Later it was said that only a small amount would be left in Iran and that anything in excess of that amount would be transferred to Russia for processing that would render it unusable for military purposes. In the final agreement, Iran was permitted to keep 300kgs of enriched uranium; the conversion process would take place in an Iranian plant (nicknamed “The Junk Factory” by Israel intelligence). Iran would also be responsible for processing or selling the huge amount of enriched uranium that is has stockpiled up until today, some 8 tons.

The case of the secret enrichment facility at Qom (known in Israel as the Fordo Facility) is another example of concessions to Iran. The facility was erected in blatant violation of the Non Proliferation Treaty, and P5+1 delegates solemnly promised Israel at a series of meetings in late 2013 that it was to be dismantled and its contents destroyed. In the final agreement, the Iranians were allowed to leave 1,044 centrifuges in place (there are 3,000 now) and to engage in research and in enrichment of radioisotopes.

At the main enrichment facility at Natanz (or Kashan, the name used by the Mossad in its reports) the Iranians are to continue operating 5,060 centrifuges of the 19,000 there at present. Early in the negotiations, the Western representatives demanded that the remaining centrifuges be destroyed. Later on they retreated from this demand, and now the Iranians have had to commit only to mothball them. This way, they will be able to reinstall them at very short notice.

Israeli intelligence points to two plants in Iran’s military industry that are currently engaged in the development of two new types of centrifuge: the Teba and Tesa plants, which are working on the IR6 and the IR8 respectively. The new centrifuges will allow the Iranians to set up smaller enrichment facilities that are much more difficult to detect and that shorten the break-out time to a bomb if and when they decide to dump the agreement.

The Iranians see continued work on advanced centrifuges as very important. On the other hand they doubt their ability to do so covertly, without risking exposure and being accused of breaching the agreement. Thus, Iran’s delegates were instructed to insist on this point. President Obama said at the Saban Forum that Iran has no need for advanced centrifuges and his representatives promised Israel several times that further R&D on them would not be permitted. In the final agreement Iran is permitted to continue developing the advanced centrifuges, albeit with certain restrictions which experts of the Israeli Atomic Energy Committee believe to have only marginal efficacy.

As for the break-out time for the bomb, at the outset of the negotiations, the Western delegates decided that it would be “at least a number of years.” Under the final agreement this has been cut down to one year according to the Americans, and even less than that according to Israeli nuclear experts.

As the signing of the agreement drew nearer, sets of discussions took place in Iran, following which its delegates were instructed to insist on not revealing how far the country had advanced on the military aspects of its nuclear project. Over the past 15 years, a great deal of material has been amassed by the International Atomic Energy Agency—some filed by its own inspectors and some submitted by intelligence agencies—about Iran’s secret effort to develop the military aspects of its nuclear program (which the Iranians call by the codenames PHRC, AMAD, and SPND). The IAEA divides this activity into 12 different areas (metallurgy, timers, fuses, neutron source, hydrodynamic testing, warhead adaptation for the Shihab 3 missile, high explosives, and others) all of which deal with the R&D work that must be done in order to be able to convert enriched material into an actual atom bomb.

The IAEA demanded concrete answers to a number of questions regarding Iran’s activities in these spheres. The agency also asked Iran to allow it to interview 15 Iranian scientists, a list headed by Prof. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whom Mossad nicknamed “The Brain” behind the military nuclear program. This list has become shorter because six of the 15 have died as a result of assassinations that the Iranians attribute to Israel, but access to the other nine has not been given. Neither have the IAEA’s inspectors been allowed to visit the facilities where the suspected activities take place. The West originally insisted on these points, only to retreat and leave them unsolved in the agreement.

In mid-2015 a new idea was brought up in one of the discussions in Tehran: Iran would agree not to import missiles as long as its own development and production is not limited. This idea is reflected in the final agreement as well, in which Iran is allowed to develop and produce missiles, the means of delivery for nuclear weapons. The longer the negotiations went on, the longer the list of concession made by the United States to Iran kept growing, including the right to leave the heavy water reactor and the heavy water plant at Arak in place and accepting Iran’s refusal of access to the suspect site.

It is possible to argue about the manner in which Netanyahu chose to conduct the dispute about the nuclear agreement with Iran, by clashing head-on and bluntly with the American president. That said, the intelligence material that he was relying on gives rise to fairly unambiguous conclusions: that the Western delegates crossed all of the red lines that they drew themselves and conceded most of what was termed critical at the outset; and that the Iranians have achieved almost all of their goals.

IRGC’s Penetrator Bomb Evidence Killed Americans, Iran Hearing

Posted on July 29, 2015July 29, 2015 by Denise Simon

Hoorah for Senator Tom Cotton vs. Secretary of State John Kerry at hearing dated July 29, 2015.

NYT ~ August 2007: Attacks on American-led forces using a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran reached a new high in July, according to the American military.

The devices, known as explosively formed penetrators, were used to carry out 99 attacks last month and accounted for a third of the combat deaths suffered by the American-led forces, according to American military officials.

“July was an all-time high,” Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, said in an interview, referring to strikes with such devices.

Such bombs, which fire a semi-molten copper slug that can penetrate the armor on a Humvee and are among the deadliest weapons used against American forces, are used almost exclusively by Shiite militants. American intelligence officials have presented evidence that the weapons come from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, although Tehran has repeatedly denied providing lethal assistance to Iraqi groups.

Iran killed Americans yet waved off by the White House and the P5+1 for the sake of the Iran deal.

CTC: In June 2011, 14 U.S. soldiers were killed by hostile fire, representing the largest monthly toll for U.S. forces since June 2008. Twelve of those fatalities were attributed to three extremist Shi`a groups: Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), Kataib Hizb Allah (KH), and the Promised Day Brigades (PDB). All three organizations are directly tied to the IRGC Qods Force, led under the direction of the enigmatic Brigadier General Qasem Soleimani. Their attacks and operations are “reflective of Iranian training,” said a U.S. military official under condition of anonymity. “Not amateurs, they’re professional.”

Rocket and mortar attacks on the International Zone and U.S. bases in central and southern Iraq are a frequent occurrence. This year, there were 162 attacks targeting U.S. forces in April, up from 128 in March, and 93 in February. Aside from the frequency of attacks, a concerning trend is that Shi`a militants trained by Iran have now learned how to effectively employ an improvised rocket-assisted mortar (IRAM), which has been responsible for many of the recent U.S. fatalities. “IRAMs are devastating,” said a U.S. military official. “They’re getting more sophisticated, more lethal, and more precise in targeting.”

Travels 6000′ per second

Among the three Shi`a groups, KH has demonstrated to be the most advanced and sophisticated. “They’re much more experienced,” asserted the same military official. “It’s a learning process. They have better facilities, more money and backing, more experienced fighters, and better recruiting.” On June 6, 2011, KH carried out multiple IRAM attacks on Camp Loyalty in eastern Baghdad that led to the deaths of five U.S. soldiers, the most in a single incident since April 2009.

Another major trend is the noticeable increase of attacks involving a roadside bomb known as an explosively-formed penetrator (EFP), a signature weapon used by Iranian-backed Shi`a insurgents. Of the types of roadside bombs used, EFPs represent a small fraction, but are one of the deadliest weapons in Iraq because of its ability to penetrate even the strongest armored vehicles used by the U.S. military. Most recently, on July 7, 2011, two U.S. soldiers were killed by an EFP-attack just outside Camp Victory near Baghdad International Airport. In the past, one or two EFPs would be used in a single attack; some of the recent attacks, however, have involved as many as 14 EFPs.

The frequency and type of operations by Iranian-sponsored Shi`a insurgents has demonstrated their higher level of confidence and freedom of movement in Baghdad and southern Iraq. This is partially the result of the elevated political influence of the Sadrist Trend in key southern provinces since the March 2010 parliamentary elections. Occupying 40 seats out of the 325-seat Council of Representatives, the Shi`a cleric Moqtada al-Sadr holds more representation in parliament than any individual party in Iraq. His political weight is heavily considered by al-Maliki, as the latter retained the premiership after finally securing al-Sadr’s support during last year’s government formation crisis. The Sadrist Trend has continuously threatened to take drastic measures, including armed resistance against U.S. personnel, in an effort to deter Iraqi politicians from accepting an extended U.S. presence. They have utilized high-profile visits by senior U.S. officials to their advantage by intensifying Iraqi nationalism on the street.

The U.S. military asserts that members of the Iranian Qods Force are entering Iraq and working to re-arm their surrogate Shi`a groups. According to Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, the volume of weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran is considered the highest in years. In the last six months, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) have uncovered a higher quantity of weapons caches throughout the country, including EFP materiel, roadside bombs, and rockets, some with manufacturing dates as recent as 2010. One discovered stockpile contained 49 prepared EFPs.

A significant amount of the weapons and materiel is believed to be entering Iraq through legal “ports of entry,” including during religious pilgrimages. Others include decades-old smuggling routes that cross into Maysan Province, where the city of Amara serves as a distribution point. In late June 2011, after receiving pressure from the United States, the ISF carried out operations in southern Iraq to confront the Shi`a groups and disrupt their smuggling routes and networks.[17] The operation, however, was diluted in robustness and scope, and was largely superficial in results. Only low-profile Shi`a insurgents were arrested, while operations were suspended as Iraqi forces were diverted toward protecting Shi`a religious pilgrims traveling to Karbala.

The Iraqis had not met the expectations of the U.S. military, which desired simultaneous operations to occur in multiple provinces. “Without multiple locations, you lose a lot of surprise,” said a U.S. military official, “and the bad guys will walk across the border.”[18] The U.S. military cited a lack of both will and capability on the part of Baghdad to confront the Shi`a groups. According to a senior Iraqi military official, however, the decision to diminish the operation was political: “There are some targets, known targets. We have not been allowed to go after them.”

The China Hack of United Airlines, Electronic Insurgency

Posted on July 29, 2015July 29, 2015 by Denise Simon

Warning corporations, industry and government entities is one thing, action and protection and or declaration of a cyber war is yet another.

July 2015:

Aspen Institute: Cyber warfare is one of the most potent security threats the United States faces, National Security Agency Director and Commander of the US Cyber Command General Keith Alexander told the crowd at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, discussing in conversation with NBC News Correspondent Pete Williams the nature of the threat and how his department is working to address it.
With the Stuxnet, Duqu, and Flame viruses in the fore of the public consciousness, Alexander took pains to point out that nation-states were not the only potential cyber actors. Citing power and water grids as his chief concerns, he said, “Somebody who finds vulnerability in our infrastructure could cause tremendous problems. They could erase the Input/output of a system so it can’t boot, and would have to be replaced. And these capabilities are not only nation-state-only capabilities.”

Alexander assessed the US’ readiness to confront such an attack as a three on a scale of ten, calling lack of adequately trained cyber defense forces the critical impediment to greater preparedness. “Our issue isn’t [having the tools] to address the threat,” he said. “It’s having the capacity, and building and training cyber forces. We have a big requirement, and a small force that is growing steadily.”

China-Tied Hackers That Hit U.S. Said to Breach United Airlines

Bloomberg:

The hackers who stole data on tens of millions of U.S. insurance holders and government employees in recent months breached another big target at around the same time — United Airlines.

United, the world’s second-largest airline, detected an incursion into its computer systems in May or early June, said several people familiar with the probe. According to three of these people, investigators working with the carrier have linked the attack to a group of China-backed hackers they say are behind several other large heists — including the theft of security-clearance records from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and medical data from health insurer Anthem Inc.

The previously unreported United breach raises the possibility that the hackers now have data on the movements of millions of Americans, adding airlines to a growing list of strategic U.S. industries and institutions that have been compromised. Among the cache of data stolen from United are manifests — which include information on flights’ passengers, origins and destinations — according to one person familiar with the carrier’s investigation.

It’s increasingly clear, security experts say, that China’s intelligence apparatus is amassing a vast database. Files stolen from the federal personnel office by this one China-based group could allow the hackers to identify Americans who work in defense and intelligence, including those on the payrolls of contractors. U.S. officials believe the group has links to the Chinese government, people familiar with the matter have said.

That data could be cross-referenced with stolen medical and financial records, revealing possible avenues for blackmailing or recruiting people who have security clearances. In all, the China-backed team has hacked at least 10 companies and organizations, which include other travel providers and health insurers, says security firm FireEye Inc.

Tracking Travelers

The theft of airline records potentially offers another layer of information that would allow China to chart the travel patterns of specific government or military officials.

United is one of the biggest contractors with the U.S. government among the airlines, making it a rich depository of data on the travel of American officials, military personnel and contractors. The hackers could match international flights by Chinese officials or industrialists with trips taken by U.S. personnel to the same cities at the same time, said James Lewis, a senior fellow in cybersecurity at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“You’re suspicious of some guy; you happen to notice that he flew to Papua New Guinea on June 23 and now you can see that the Americans have flown there on June 22 or 23,” Lewis said. “If you’re China, you’re looking for those things that will give you a better picture of what the other side is up to.”

Computer Glitches

The timing of the United breach also raises questions about whether it’s linked to computer faults that stranded thousands of the airline’s passengers in two incidents over the past couple of months. Two additional people close to the probe, who like the others asked not to be identified when discussing the investigation, say the carrier has found no connection between the hack and a July 8 systems failure that halted flights for two hours. They didn’t rule out a possible, tangential connection to an outage on June 2.

Luke Punzenberger, a spokesman for Chicago-based United, a unit of United Continental Holdings Inc., declined to comment on the breach investigation.

Zhu Haiquan, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in a statement: “The Chinese government and the personnel in its institutions never engage in any form of cyberattack. We firmly oppose and combat any forms of cyberattacks.”

Embedded Names

United may have gotten help identifying the breach from U.S. investigators working on the OPM hack. The China-backed hackers that cybersecurity experts have linked to that attack have embedded the name of targets in web domains, phishing e-mails and other attack infrastructure, according to one of the people familiar with the investigation.

In May, the OPM investigators began drawing up a list of possible victims in the private sector and provided the companies with digital signatures that would indicate their systems had been breached. United Airlines was on that list.

Safety Concerns

In contrast to the theft of health records or financial data, the breach of airlines raises concerns of schedule disruptions or transportation gridlock. Mistakes by hackers or defenders could bring down sensitive systems that control the movement of millions of passengers annually in the U.S. and internationally.

Even if their main goal was data theft, state-sponsored hackers might seek to preserve access to airline computers for later use in more disruptive attacks, according to security experts. One of the chief tasks of the investigators in the United breach is ensuring that the hackers have no hidden backdoors that could be used to re-enter the carrier’s computer systems later, one of the people familiar with the probe said.

United spokesman Punzenberger said the company remains “vigilant in protecting against unauthorized access” and is focused on protecting its customers’ personal information.

There is evidence the hackers were in the carrier’s network for months. One web domain apparently set up for the attack — UNITED-AIRLINES.NET — was established in April 2014. The domain was registered by a James Rhodes, who provided an address in American Samoa.

James Rhodes is also the alias of the character War Machine in Marvel Comics’ Iron Man. Security companies tracking the OPM hackers say they often use Marvel comic book references as a way to “sign” their attack.

Targeting Pentagon

This isn’t the first time such an attack has been documented. Chinese military hackers have repeatedly targeted the U.S. Transportation Command, the Pentagon agency that coordinates defense logistics and travel.

A report last year from the Senate Armed Services Committee documented at least 50 successful hacks of the command’s contractors from June 2012 through May 2013. Hacks against the agency’s contractors have led to the theft of flight plans, shipping routes and other data from organizations working with the military, according to the report.

“The Chinese have been trying to get flight information from the government; now it looks as if they’re trying to do the same in the commercial sector,” said Tony Lawrence, a former Army sergeant and founder and chief executive officer of VOR Technology, a Columbia, Maryland-based cybersecurity firm.

It’s unclear whether United is considering notifying customers that data may have been compromised. Punzenberger said United “would abide by notification requirements if a situation warranted” it.

The airline is still trying to determine exactly which data was removed from the network, said two of the people familiar with the probe. That assessment took months in the OPM case, which was discovered in April and made public in June.

M&A Strategy

Besides passenger lists and other flight-related data, the hackers may also have taken information related to United’s mergers and acquisitions strategy, one of the people familiar with the investigation said.

Flight manifests usually contain the names and birthdates of passengers, but even if those files were taken, experts say that would be unlikely to trigger disclosure requirements in any of the 47 states with breach-notification laws.

Those disclosure laws are widely seen as outdated. The theft by hackers of corporate secrets usually goes unreported, while the stealing of customer records such as Social Security numbers and credit cards is required in most states.

“In most states, this is not going to trigger a notification,” said Srini Subramanian, state government leader for Deloitte cyber risk services.

Taliban Leader Mullah Omar Dead Again?

Posted on July 29, 2015July 29, 2015 by Denise Simon

One or more of the Taliban 5 that Obama traded out from Gitmo for Bowe Bergdahl is likely taken control and replaced Mullah Omar, even from the feeble detention in Qatar.

Directly after the attacks of 9/11, the CIA contacted Mullah Omar and said turn over Usama bin Ladin and the United States will not invade Afghanistan, Omar refused, so the war began against the Taliban. (factoid).

As ISIS, Islamic State has moved into Afghanistan and has declared the region a target, Taliban fighters have defected to ISIS. Meanwhile, no one has seen Mullah Omar in at least two years, yet some Afghanistan officials have made some declarations that he is dead. The Taliban has recently made some aggressive and deadly advances in designated Afghanistan territory while there is chatter that the terror group could merge with ISIS.

Given this possibility, it is curious that Mullah Omar has been declared dead, again.

Taliban splinter group claims Mullah Omar was killed 2 yrs ago

In part:

The Afghanistan Islamic Movement Fidai Mahaz’s spokesperson Qari Hamza, said the reclusive Omar was killed by commanders Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansoor and Gull Agha in July 2013.

Hamza said his group has evidence to prove its claims, Khaama Press reported on Thursday.

Afghanistan’s spy agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), had said in November last year that Omar had possibly died. There are also reports that the Afghan Taliban has split into three factions.

NDS spokesperson Hasib Sediqi told the media in November last year that the two Taliban factions are led by Mullah Qayum Zakir and Mullah Agha, while the third comprises “neutral” militant leaders.

Reports last year had also suggested that Omar had given his old friend and deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, the authority to make decisions on his behalf regarding the peace process with the government.

Some officials in the presidential palace have claimed Omar is in custody of Pakistani security forces in the port city of Karachi.

Aimal Faizi, spokesperson for former president Hamid Karzai, said this information was shared by US secretary of state John Kerry. More of the story here.

Meanwhile, a document has been located, written in Urdu that spells out the plan ISIS has for targets in Afghanistan and even India. ISIS plans an end of the world operation.

Reported by Sara Carter via USAToday: The document was reviewed by three U.S. intelligence officials, who said they believe the document is authentic based on its unique markings and the fact that language used to describe leaders, the writing style and religious wording match other documents from the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS. They asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The undated document, titled “A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate (ISC), The Caliphate According to the Prophet,” seeks to unite dozens of factions of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror. It includes a never-before-seen history of the Islamic State, details chilling future battle plans, urges al-Qaeda to join the group and says the Islamic State’s leader should be recognized as the sole ruler of the world’s 1 billion Muslims under a religious empire called a “caliphate.”

“Accept the fact that this caliphate will survive and prosper until it takes over the entire world and beheads every last person that rebels against Allah,” it proclaims. “This is the bitter truth, swallow it.”

By Graeme Wood: Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime. His organization was flexible, operating as a geographically diffuse network of autonomous cells. The Islamic State, by contrast, requires territory to remain legitimate, and a top-down structure to rule it. (Its bureaucracy is divided into civil and military arms, and its territory into provinces.) Much more detail here.

Published by WaPo in part: The Afghan Taliban recently published a 5,000-word biography hailing its leader, whose whereabouts remain largely unknown. It maintains that Mullah Omar, who has a $10 million American bounty on his head, is alive, well, and in charge.

According to SITE Intelligence group, the lengthy paean comes at a conspicuous moment, given both the political efforts being made to curtail the Taliban’s Afghan insurgency as well as the growing antagonism between the Taliban and the Islamic State, the leading extremist Islamist militants of the moment.

As an aside, negotiations by the new Afghan leadership is still in some peace talks with the Taliban.

NYT: An Afghan government delegation met with Taliban officials in the Pakistani capital for the first time on Tuesday, in a significant effort to open formal peace negotiations, according to Afghan, Pakistani and Western officials.

The Islamabad meeting, brokered by Pakistani officials after months of intense effort by President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan to get them more centrally involved in the peace process, was the most promising contact between the two warring sides in years. And it followed a series of less formal encounters between various Afghan officials and Taliban representatives in other countries in recent months.

Check Those Family Members: Iran and America

Posted on July 28, 2015July 28, 2015 by Denise Simon

With the names, relationships, dates and places listed below, a new picture emerges that this Iran deal with major U.S. concessions is a willful and purposeful deal of destruction. In fact so much that sedition comes to mind for all involved in the Obama administration including Barack Obama himself.

Who is Hassan Rouhani?

Several months after Rouhani resigned at top nuclear negotiator for Iran’s regime, he gave a speech on how he duped the west during nuclear negotiations, keeping Iran’s nuclear program on track while avoiding referral to the UN Security Council and possible sanctions.

Rouhani’s speech was published in the fall of 2005 by Rahbord, a magazine distributed by the Center for Strategic Research.

The regime had failed to disclose its nuclear enrichment and reprocessing activities and in September 2003 faced referral to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) demanded Iran fully disclose its nuclear program, agree to tougher inspections, and suspend enrichment of uranium.

Rouhani said as a meeting with Iran’s leaders that the regime faced a dilemma.

“The issue was whether providing a complete picture would alleviate the problem or not? he said. “The dilemma was if we offered a complete picture, the picture itself could lead us to the UN Security Council. And not providing a complete picture would also be a violation of the resolution and we could have been referred to the Security Council for not implementing the resolution.”

Rouhani said Iran agreed to the IAEA demands. But work was only suspended in areas where technical problems were not an issue and work continued in areas where technical problems persisted. By implementing this strategy, the regime was able to complete work on Isfahan, which converts yellow cake to UF4 and UB6.

Rouhani’s strategy was discussed in a news article by the Sunday Telegraph (March 5, 2006), titled, “How we duped the West, by Iran’s nuclear negotiator.”

“The man who for two years led Iran’s nuclear negotiations has laid out in unprecedented detail how the regime took advantage of talks with Britain, France and Germany to forge ahead with its secret atomic programme,” the Sunday Telegraph said. “In a speech to a closed meeting of leading Islamic clerics and academics, Hassan Rowhani, who headed talks with the so-called EU3 until last year, revealed how Teheran played for time and tried to dupe the West after its secret nuclear programme was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002.”

Rouhani completed his speech, stating “…I should tell you that we need some time to implement our capabilities. I mean if we could complete the fuel cycle and make it fait- accompli for the world, then the whole situation would be different.”

During his election campaign for president, Rouhani took credit for implementing the strategy that deceived Western powers on Iran’s intention to continue its nuclear program. He said that, at the time, the political environment was different but “we managed to prevent any action against us while not giving up our rights.”

In his first press conference following his election victory, Rowhani rejected the notion of halting uranium enrichment, noting “That era is over with.” (AFP, June 17, 2013)

Agents of the Enemy

Is John Kerry representing America or Iran?

Frontpage: If any further evidence was needed to show that the nuclear talks with Iran were a tragic farce, choreographed and orchestrated by Iran, the startling revelations from a former top aide to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ought to do the trick.

“The US negotiating team are mainly [in Lausanne] to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal,” he told an opposition television network in London.

Amir Hossein Motaghi was Rouhani’s image-maker during the 2013 presidential elections, the man in charge of promoting Rouhani to the nation’s youth through a vigorous social media campaign. Thanks in large part to his efforts, Rouhani captured an overwhelming majority of the youth vote and beat his nearest opponent by more than 30 points.

A journalist by trade, Motaghi says he traveled to Lausanne to cover the nuclear talks for the Iranian Student Correspondents Association (ISCA), but then quit his job and applied for political asylum.

That makes him the most recent defector from the upper reaches of Iran’s political establishment to flee the regime and seek refuge in the West.

In his interview with the opposition Iran-e Farda television in London, reported by the Daily Telegraph, Motaghi accused the regime of sending intelligence officers posing as journalists to the talks “to make sure that all the news fed back to Iran goes through their channels.

“My conscience would not allow me to carry out my profession in this manner any more,” he added.

But his revelation about U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his negotiating team is the real shocker. It should wipe away any shred of credibility left to a process that has aimed from the start at helping Iran to slip the deadly noose of the international economic and financial sanctions that have crippled its economy and exacerbated social unrest.

Essentially, what Motaghi said is that Secretary Kerry is working as an agent of Iran and has been arm-twisting reluctant allies, such as the French, into accepting what they know is a bad deal.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, for example, has long been insisting that Iran come clean on its previous military activities, something we are now told that the American delegation, led by Secretary Kerry, wants to leave out of the negotiation. Why? Because the Iranians have said they will not come clean.

That was too much even for the normally pro-Democrat Washington Post, which wrote in a column attributed to its Editorial Board last Friday that the deal was “a reward for Iran’s noncompliance.”

Some Iranian-Americans believe that Secretary Kerry should have recused himself from the negotiations at the very outset because of his long-standing relationship to his Iranian counter-part, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The two first met over a decade ago at a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse, according to a 2012 book by Hooman Majd, who frequently translates for Iranian officials.

Iranian-American sources in Los Angeles tell me that Javad Zarif’s son was the best man at the 2009 wedding between Kerry’s daughter Vanessa and Behrouz Vala Nahed, an Iranian-American medical doctor.

The newlyweds went to Iran shortly after their wedding to met Nahed’s family. Kerry ultimately revealed his daughter’s marriage to an Iranian-American once he had taken over as Secretary of State. But the subject never came up in his Senate confirmation hearing, either because Kerry never disclosed it, or because his former colleagues were too polite to bring it up.

John Kerry has long advocated nuclear negotiations with Iran. During his 2004 presidential bid, he said that if he were President, he would have “offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel” to Iran, to “test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes.”

He also has a long track record of taking money from Iranian-Americans connected to Tehran or lobbying to get U.S. sanctions on Iran removed, Tehran’s prime objective for many years, a subject I have chronicled repeatedly.

But Kerry wasn’t the only person not officially part of the Iranian delegation who was carrying Tehran’s water in Lausanne.

Also showing up was Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), hobnobbing with Western reporters while striding into meetings side by side with the Iranian delegation.

The irony of a Swedish-Iranian running an Iranian-American lobbying organization then showing up in Lausanne to play “let’s make a deal” was not lost on the Iranian American community.

For many years Parsi and NIAC tried to disguise their lobbying efforts on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At one point, they sued an Iranian journalist, Hassan Dai, who openly labeled them the “Iranian lobby” in Washington – only to lose the case, with a U.S. court ordering NIAC to pay damages of over $100,000.

“Now it seems that after losing the court case, NIAC is no longer trying to hide its cozy relationship with IRI and openly communicates with the regime,” Dr. Iman Foroutan, a California entrepreneur and Chairman of The New Iran, a pro-freedom forum, told me.

“Those Iranian American members of NIAC that until now have not been aware of NIAC’s direct relationship with the tyrannical regime in Iran will now have to make a choice of remaining a member of or cancelling their membership with NIAC,” Dr. Foroutan said.

While Parsi’s relationship to Tehran officials angers Iranian-Americans, Secretary of State John Kerry’s lobbying his fellow foreign ministers to accept Iranian negotiating positions – if true – should make Americans livid.

That is, if anyone is still paying attention to the facts.