Category Archives: Veterans

Obama’s Stand-down Order on Crimea/Ukraine

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Putin put 150,ooo troops on ready status during the Olympics for a military confrontation against Ukraine, but none was to come. The White House only responded with the usual condemnation. Russia continued to test the will of the West and there was no response. Russia already had military facilities in Crimea as the Russian Black Fleet is based there.

The United Nations issued their own warning to Russia over Ukraine, yet to date, almost 7000 are dead. Sanctions are the weapon of choice and there has been some impact on the Russian economy.

Russia will accept any compliant Russian government in Ukraine, beyond that or if threatened, Putin will increase his aggressions.

The shades of the Orange Revolution and the hostilities between Russia and Georgia in 2008 are at the core of the United States lack of will, strategy and response.

The back story here is the Minsk Agreement has no value and to date is not deliverable as the standing with Ukraine remains in an incubation condition at the hand of General Breedlove and NATO.

The U.S. has looked to support the Baltics under the building threat of Putin’s aggressions there.

Secretary of Defense is working the NATO operations and is European Command under Operation Atlantic Resolve.

U.S. Told Ukraine to Stand Down as Putin Invaded

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As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces took over Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in early 2014, the interim Ukrainian government was debating whether or not to fight back against the “little green men” Russia had deployed. But the message from the Barack Obama administration was clear: avoid military confrontation with Moscow.

The White House’s message to Kiev was advice, not an order, U.S. and Ukrainian officials have recently told us, and was based on a variety of factors. There was a lack of clarity about what Russia was really doing on the ground. The Ukrainian military was in no shape to confront the Russian Spetsnaz (special operations) forces that were swarming on the Crimean peninsula. Moreover, the Ukrainian government in Kiev was only an interim administration until the country would vote in elections a few months later. Ukrainian officials told us that other European governments sent Kiev a similar message.

But the main concern was Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As U.S. officials told us recently, the White House feared that if the Ukrainian military fought in Crimea, it would give Putin justification to launch greater military intervention in Ukraine, using similar logic to what Moscow employed in 2008 when Putin invaded large parts of Georgia in response to a pre-emptive attack by the Tbilisi government. Russian forces occupy two Georgian provinces to this day.

Looking back today, many experts and officials point to the decision not to stand and fight in Crimea as the beginning of a Ukraine policy based on the assumption that avoiding conflict with Moscow would temper Putin’s aggression. But that was a miscalculation. Almost two years later, Crimea is all but forgotten, Russian-backed separatist forces are in control of two large Ukrainian provinces, and the shaky cease-fire between the two sides is in danger of collapsing.

“Part of the pattern we see in Russian behavior is to test and probe when not faced with pushback or opposition,” said Damon Wilson, the vice president for programming at the Atlantic Council. “Russia’s ambitions grow when they are not initially challenged. The way Crimea played out, Putin had a policy of deniability, there could have been a chance for Russia to walk away.”

When Russian special operations forces, military units and intelligence officers seized Crimea, it surprised the U.S. government. Intelligence analysts had briefed Congress 24 hours before the stealth invasion, saying the Russian troop buildup on Ukraine’s border was a bluff. Ukraine’s government — pieced together after President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev for Russia following civil unrest — was in a state of crisis. The country was preparing for elections and its military was largely dilapidated and unprepared for war.

There was a debate inside the Kiev government as well. Some argued the nation should scramble its forces to Crimea to respond. As part of that process, the Ukrainian government asked Washington what military support the U.S. would provide. Without quick and substantial American assistance, Ukrainians knew, a military operation to defend Crimea could not have had much chance for success.

“I don’t think the Ukrainian military was well prepared to manage the significant challenge of the major Russian military and stealth incursion on its territory,” said Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, told us. This was also the view of many in the U.S. military and intelligence community at the time.

There was also the Putin factor. In the weeks and months before the Crimea operation, Russia’s president was stirring up his own population about the threat Russian-speakers faced in Ukraine and other former Soviet Republics.

“They did face a trap,” said the Atlantic Council’s Wilson, who was the senior director for Europe at the National Security Council when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. “Any Ukrainian violent reaction to any of these unknown Russian speakers would have played into the narrative that Putin already created, that Ukraine’s actions threaten Russian lives and he would have pretext to say he was sending Russian forces to save threatened Russians.”

The White House declined to comment on any internal communications with the Ukrainian government. A senior administration official told us that the U.S. does not recognize Russia’s occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea, and pointed to a series of sanctions the U.S. and Europe have placed on Russia since the Ukraine crisis began.

“We remain committed to maintaining pressure on Russia to fulfill its commitments under the Minsk agreements and restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity, including Crimea,” the senior administration official said.

Ever since the annexation of Crimea in March, 2014, there have been a group of senior officials inside the administration who have been advocating unsuccessfully for Obama to approve lethal aid to the Ukrainian military. These officials have reportedly included Secretary of State John Kerry, his top Europe official, Victoria Nuland, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and General Philip Breedlove, the supreme allied commander for NATO.

Obama has told lawmakers in private meetings that his decision not to arm the Ukrainians was in part due to a desire to avoid direct military confrontation with Russia, one Republican lawmaker who met with Obama on the subject told us. The U.S. has pledged a significant amount of non-lethal aid to the Ukrainian military, but delivery of that aid has often been delayed. Meanwhile, Russian direct military involvement in Eastern Ukraine has continued at a high level.

Even former Obama administration Russia officials acknowledge that Ukraine’s decision last year to cede Crimea to Moscow, while making sense at the time, has also resulted in more aggression by Putin.

“Would a devastating defeat in Crimea serve the interest of the interim government? Probably not,” said Michael McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia under Obama and is now a scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. But nonetheless, McFaul said, the ease with which Putin was able to take Crimea likely influenced his decision to expand Russia’s campaign in eastern Ukraine: “I think Putin was surprised at how easy Crimea went and therefore when somebody said let’s see what else we can do, he decided to gamble.”

The Obama administration, led on this issue by Kerry, is still pursuing a reboot of U.S.-Russia relations. After a long period of coolness, Kerry’s visit to Putin in Sochi in May was the start of a broad effort to seek U.S.-Russian cooperation on a range of issues including the Syrian civil war. For the White House, the Ukraine crisis is one problem in a broader strategic relationship between two world powers.

But for the Ukrainians, Russia’s continued military intervention in their country is an existential issue, and they are pleading for more help. While many Ukrainians agreed in early 2014 that fighting back against Russia was too risky, that calculation has now changed. The Ukrainian military is fighting Russian forces elsewhere, and Putin is again using the threat of further intervention to scare off more support from the West. If help doesn’t come, Putin may conclude he won’t pay a price for meddling even further.

Interview With Ambassador Wallace on the Iran Deal

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Sadly, not only is Iran cheating, it is proven by the side deal they will cheat with White House and United Nations approval. The text of the side deal signed by Iran and the IAEA is here.

Further, Barack Obama has signed waivers on sanctions which allows the existing sanctions to be overlooked and violated by foreign countries where the United States will not apply any punishment.

It is proven that Barack Obama, John Kerry and the other members of the P5+1 don’t have any red-lines with regard to Iran’s actions or violations. Contact your senators and demand they vote no.

Meanwhile, United Against Nuclear Iran is a private group leading the charge to stop the Iran deal. It is led by former Senator Joe Lieberman. The radio interview with UANI CEO Ambassador Mark Wallace is here.

Obama Allowing Yemen Leaders to Betray Strategy

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It was in March of 2015 conditions in Yemen exploded at the orders of Iran to deploy the Houthi against Saudi Arabia.

In 2010 the Obama administration used Yemen as the core operational hub for killer drones against militant terror cells and for the policy of his counter-terrorism campaign. This was all authorized by Obama’s signature known as ‘presidential findings’. Yemen is actually the birthplace of Osama bin Ladin’s father and is also known as the location of the death of Anwar Awlaki and the concocted bombing operation of the Detroit bound airline.

What is forgotten is the CIA operated a drone base there and an air base while Yemen’s president, Abdu Rabu Mansour appeared to participate in the betrayal of stopping America’s war on terrorism with regard to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The hostilities began in such swift order that evacuations were immediate and by any means possible. The United States was forced to leave behind $500 million in military assets and gear much less the CIA’s entire intelligence platform was stolen and in the hands of the enemy.

But actually it is worse, simply put, the United States was thrown out.

From Defense-Aerospace: China is about to take over a military base from the United States in the small East African nation of Djibouti, according to the website of China’s nationalistic tabloid the Global Times.

Djibouti reportedly ordered the US to vacate the Obock military base so that it can be turned over the People’s Liberation Army. According to US-based magazine CounterPunch, the announcement was made in May, a day after US secretary of state John Kerry visited the country.

The move is said to be “deeply worrying” for Washington as it comes amid a wave of Chinese investment in Djibouti that includes a US$3 billion rail project to connect the country with the capital of neighboring Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, and US$400 million in investments to modernize the country’s undersized port.

The deals have had Djibouti’s president Ismail Omar Guelleh “openly talking about the importance of his new friends from Asia,” the CounterPunch article said.

Djibouti is currently home to Camp Lemmonnier, the largest permanent US military installation in Africa, which houses 4,000 troops and a fleet of drones. The US Defense Department pays Djibouti nearly US$63 million per year for use of the base.

Though the US is losing only a secondary military installation in Obock, Washington is likely more concerned with what the base will provide China, which is strategic positioning in the Horn of Africa at a key entry point from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and a gateway to the Suez Canal.

***

Today hostilities continue in Yemen and there is some interesting cooperation in the region with Saudi Arabia. It appears the Obama administration has approved playing both sides of the battlefield.

From USNews in part: The U.S. knows the Saudi government has employed cluster bombs in its ongoing war against Shiite Muslim rebels in neighboring Yemen, but has done little if anything to stop the use of the indiscriminate and deadly weapons during what has become a human rights catastrophe in one of the Arab world’s poorest countries.

With watchdog groups warning of war crimes and attacks striking civilians in Yemen, the Pentagon declined to comment publicly on whether it has discussed cluster bombs with Saudi Arabia or encouraged its military to cease using them, deferring all such questions to the State Department. But a Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, tells U.S. News “the U.S. is aware that Saudi Arabia has used cluster munitions in Yemen.”

Deferrals by the Pentagon on the topic are nothing new, though the use of the weapons by the Saudis – some of which were reportedly supplied by the U.S. – appears to be only a recent tactic. Former spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren told reporters in May the Defense Department was looking into claims the Saudis were using cluster munitions and called on all sides to “comply with international humanitarian law, including the obligation to take all feasible measures to minimize harm to civilians.” Warren’s successor, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, was asked about similar reports in July and did not at that time have any new information.

Multiple groups are fighting in Yemen, but the heart of the conflict lies between forces loyal to U.S.- and Saudi-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled from Yemen to Saudi Arabia earlier this year. They’re fighting against Shiite Houthi rebels aligned with, if not directly backed by, chief Saudi rival Iran. Deposed Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has also re-emerged and allied himself with the Houthis.

The U.S. supports the Saudi-led coalition of Arab nations battling the Houthis with an operations center in Saudi Arabia and another in Bahrain. Through them, the American military provides intelligence and logistics support as well as air tankers to help refuel the coalition’s jets.

That assistance, however, doesn’t grant the U.S. much sway over the way Saudi Arabia is waging its war.

“This is quite new for Saudi Arabia to be so assertive in their foreign policy and the use of their military, which is precisely why the Pentagon is bending over backward [for them],” says Charles Schmitz, a Towson University professor and expert on Yemen. “They want to reassure the Saudis that the U.S. is still on their side, so they’re letting them do whatever they want.”

Clashes have taken place throughout Yemen, but have been focused on recent weeks in and around the key port city of Aden, where Saudi-led forces established a beachhead against the Houthi stronghold earlier this month and have slowly expanded outward.

The conflict has grown increasingly deadly, and the deployment of cluster bombs has only added to the carnage. Almost 4,000 people have been killed, with 19,000 injured and more than a million displaced from their homes, according to accountings by the Red Cross and other organizations.

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia are among 80 countries that have not signed The Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty banning the use of such weapons, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition. The Defense Department also has deemed the bombs “legitimate weapons with clear military utility.”

Indeed, from a pure military perspective, a cluster bomb is ideal. The ordnance – which breaks apart in flight to disperse multiple, smaller explosives – is an excellent “area denial weapon” in military-speak, with its ability to cause massive destruction over wide swathes of territory while using relatively few military personnel. In Yemen, a largely arid country that shares a long border with Saudi Arabia, such weapons can be used to great effect.

But cluster bombs are also very difficult to control and extraordinarily dangerous to noncombatants. The explosives disperse more widely than precision-guided weapons and may not detonate on impact, making them potentially deadly long after combatants have left a battlefield.

“These weapons should never be used under any circumstances,” Human Rights Watch arms director Steve Goose said in May, when his organization released a report alleging the use of cluster bombs in Yemen. “Saudi Arabia and other coalition members – and the supplier, the U.S. – are flouting the global standard that rejects cluster munitions because of their long-term threat to civilians.”

However, since the U.S. is not leading the current war in Yemen – and since it hasn’t sworn off such weapons itself – it is no position morally or militarily to dictate the actions of a partner like Saudi Arabia.

“Actual U.S. strategy in the Middle East right now is to try and get allies and proxies to take the lead on actual fighting, a variant of the ‘lead from behind’ approach [taken] in Libya,” says Chris Harmer, a 20-year Navy officer now with the Institute for the Study of War. “It is simply not possible for the U.S. to tell allies and proxies who are doing the fighting what weapons to use. If the U.S. wants to minimize the use of cluster munitions against terrorist-affiliated groups such as the Houthis in Yemen, then the U.S. needs to take the lead in the fight.

“Absent a willingness to do so, the U.S. has no standing to tell its allies how to conduct the fight.”

Like most in the Middle East, the Saudi military has dedicated itself largely to internal security, not external operations. That has changed during the tenure of President Barack Obama, who has encouraged allies in the region – the beneficiaries of expensive U.S.-developed military equipment – to fight neighborhood wars for themselves instead of expecting American intervention.

One of the main exceptions aside from Yemen was when Saudi Arabia quietly launched a ground campaign into neighboring Bahrain during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in an effort to rescue the ruling government’s fellow Sunni Muslims from bubbling discontent among the Shiite majority there. Saudi-backed government forces were accused of heavy-handedness, though those reports were largely drowned out by larger uprisings elsewhere at the time. Many believe the harsh response was meant also to send a signal to Iran, believed to have been involved in stirring the uprising in Bahrain.

In Yemen, reports from the ground indicate the violence has reached new heights in recent weeks, following the collapse of a humanitarian cease-fire in late July after less than a day.

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

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

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

Redstone Arsenal, Alabama

Further information noted here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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


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


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


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


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

Congress Seeking Secret Obama Letters on Iran

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

Senators: Obama Admin Hiding Secret Iran Deal Letters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIENNA (AP) — Iran, in an unusual arrangement, will be allowed to use its own experts to inspect a site it allegedly used to develop nuclear arms under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.

The revelation is sure to roil American and Israeli critics of the main Iran deal signed by the U.S., Iran and five world powers in July. Those critics have complained that the deal is built on trust of the Iranians, a claim the U.S. has denied.

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

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

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

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

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

Evidence of that concession, as outlined in the document, is sure to increase pressure from U.S. congressional opponents as they review the July 14 Iran nuclear deal and vote on a resolution of disapproval in early September. If the resolution passed and President Barack Obama vetoed it, opponents would need a two-thirds majority to override it. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has suggested opponents will likely lose.

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

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

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

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

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

It is labeled “separate arrangement II,” indicating there is another confidential agreement between Iran and the IAEA governing the agency’s probe of the nuclear weapons allegations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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