Category Archives: Whistleblower

Iran PMD (Possible/Probable Military Dimensions)

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In 2014:

Iran Fact File

Fact Sheet

The Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s

Nuclear Program

The United States and a number of other countries have provided evidence to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran secretly sought to develop the materials and technology to produce nuclear weapons over the past several decades. There is substantial evidence that Iran acquired expertise, information and technology from the nuclear black market run out of Pakistan by nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. The IAEA is trying to determine whether this evidence is accurate and how far Iran has progressed in developing nuclear weapons. There is no evidence that Iran has or has ever built a nuclear weapon or that it has enough nuclear material to do so now. The IAEA’s investigation is based on information provided by other countries and its own work. This information suggests that Iran has previously pursued development of a nuclear implosion device, a design similar to that used in the arsenals of most nuclear weapon states. (See figure one below.)

An implosion device – in simplistic terms – involves compressing a sphere of uranium or plutonium into a smaller but symmetrical sphere through the use of shaped explosive lenses.

The concept is similar to trying to compress a soccer ball into a baseball with dynamite. Each step in designing, testing, producing and delivering this kind of device requires highly specialized materials, equipment and expertise. Over the past decade, the IAEA has investigated the extent to which Tehran has pursued, developed and perfected many of the steps associated with the production of such a device.

Figure 1. Implosion Weapon Design Concept

Source: 2011 Nuclear Weapons Handbook, DOD

The bulk of what the IAEA has learned is referred to by the Agency as the “possible military dimension” of Iran’s nuclear program. A detailed summary of the issues being assessed by the IAEA was reported by IAEA Director General Yukia Amano to the IAEA Board of Governors in November 20111 and is summarized below.

The Joint Plan of Action and the IAEA

The political negotiations taking place between Iran on the one hand and the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Germany (known as the P-5+1) and the European Union on the other seek to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that will limit Iran’s nuclear program while enabling it to enjoy the peaceful benefits of nuclear technology. To do so, Iran must enable full and effective safeguards as implemented by the IAEA. To date, the Agency has reported that Iran is in full compliance with its obligations for special monitoring under the terms of the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA).

Iran has, however, been found in non-compliance with its safeguard agreement obligations2 required under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. For over a decade, the IAEA has been seeking to clarify a number of outstanding issues related to Iran’s past nuclear activities, catalogued below. It remains unclear whether a comprehensive settlement of the remaining issues with Iran can be achieved without Iran also satisfying all of the IAEA’s outstanding concerns about its nuclear past. At the very least, states will continue to have 1 IAEA Report, “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” November 8, 2011 doubts about Iran’s peaceful intentions as long as the IAEA is not satisfied that its investigations are complete.

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2011/gov2011-65.pdf

2 September 24, 2005 IAEA Board of Governors Resolution GOV/2005/77

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2005/gov2005-77.pdf

The JPOA agreed to by Iran and the P-5+1 on November 24, 2013 states that a “Joint Commission of E3/EU+3 and Iran will be established to monitor the implementation of the nearterm measures [under the JPOA] and address issues that may arise, with the IAEA responsible for verification of nuclear-related measures. The Joint Commission will work with the IAEA to facilitate resolution of past and present issues of concern.” However, the State Department has recently clarified that the issue of past weapon-related activities is a matter for the IAEA to investigate and is not a matter for the special commission3.

IAEA and Iranian officials have continued to meet since the JPOA was completed and implemented. As yet, these discussions have not resolve the issues listed below. At some point the IAEA will likely be asked to judge whether its concerns have been addressed, and how any remaining unresolved issues might affect the IAEA’s ability to carry out its inspection mandate to verify that Iran’s nuclear activities are of an exclusively peaceful nature.

Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s Nuclear Program

Much of the evidence that Iran pursued a secret nuclear weapons development program comes from the United States and other IAEA member states. IAEA reports indicate that at least ten member states have provided evidence to the IAEA related to Iran’s past nuclear activities. In addition, IAEA documents suggest that some of the evidence about Iran’s past activities come from interviews with Pakistani sources, including possibly A.Q. Khan. None of the publicly available evidence in and of itself proves that Iran had a nuclear weapon program. It is also not clear that Iran has continued any of these activities, and it is not publicly known how far this alleged work progressed before it was reportedly stopped in 20034.

Procurement Activities

The IAEA has evidence that from the 1980s until the early 2000s, Iran acquired nuclear  expertise and related materials outside of normal procurement channels, including through a black market network run by A. Q. Khan. Iranian officials claim they were forced to seek nuclear items on the black market because it was blocked from pursuing “legitimate” nuclear efforts by the United States and other western powers. However, the fact that much of the procurement efforts were run by military organizations, including the Ministry of Defense, has suggests that the nuclear efforts being pursued by Iran were military in nature. Moreover, the links between procurement and other military application programs, including ballistic missile programs, undermines but does not disprove Iran’s argument that its program is entirely 3 February 17, 2014 Background Briefing, Senior Administration Official, Vienna, Austria peaceful. The IAEA continues to try to understand the full nature of Iran’s procurement activities.

http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2014/02/20140218293187.html#axzz2tmkRefbb

4 “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities”, National Intelligence Estimate, National Intelligence Council,

November 2007,

http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/20071203_release.pdf

Nuclear Material Acquisition Activities

The IAEA has evidence that during the 1990s and early 2000s, Iran pursued the development of clandestine nuclear facilities for the processing and enrichment of uranium. The Natanz and Fordow uranium enrichment sites were only declared after they were uncovered by western intelligence or outside sources. Iran also had an active program to acquire uranium outside of IAEA safeguards, for possible use in these previously clandestine facilities. The IAEA has evidence that Iran planned to secretly acquire and enrich uranium at non-declared nuclear facilities and this evidence remains under investigation by the IAEA.

Detonator Development

The IAEA has evidence that Iran pursued studies and received documentation for the development of fast-functioning devices known as “exploding bridgewire detonators.” These devices have limited uses outside of detonating explosive charges associated with nuclear weapons. Iran acknowledges that it has developed EBW for civilian and conventional military applications, but has not explained to the IAEA what these applications are. As such, the IAEA continues to consider this effort a “matter of concern.” Moreover, as noted below, the IAEA has information that Iran has considered the reliability of EBW in the possible testing of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Components for an Explosive Device

Key to the IAEA’s investigation is a document reportedly provided to Iran by the Pakistani black marketers related to the conversion of uranium into metallic form and the shaping of uranium metal into hemispheres. It also appears likely that Iran acquired designs for nuclear weapons, as did other customers of the Pakistani network, including Libya. The IAEA also has evidence that Iran did work preparing to produce components for such a device. This matter remains of high interest to the IAEA.

Initiation of High Explosives

IAEA member states have provided information that Iran had access to information about multipoint initiation systems. Such systems are necessary for the operation of an implosion device, such as the one Iran may have pursued. Iran has acknowledged access to the information, but claims the document was “not understandable” to their experts and has not conducted activities referred to in the information. This stance is contradicted by information provide to the IAEA by member states and appears to be related to a possible experiment carried out by Iran in 20035.

5 Joby Warrick, “Russian scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko’s aid to Iran offers peek at nuclear program” The

Washington Post November 13, 2011 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russianHydrodynamic

Experiments

Hydrodynamic experiments are full-scale model tests of nuclear implosion devices that substitute non-fissile materials to uranium or plutonium. Member states have provided information to the IAEA indicating Iran has manufactured “simulated nuclear explosive components using high density materials” – presumably to simulate uranium metal. This, together with Iran’s activities related to the use of high-speed diagnostic equipment, including flash x-ray technology, raise concerns about nuclear weapons-related work.

This area of investigation has spawned one of the most contentious6 areas of the IAEA’s work – that related to the facility at Parchin. The IAEA has received information from member states that Iran acquired information about, and may have built, a large explosives containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments. There is some evidence that Iran built and installed such a device at Parchin. Two visits to Parchin by the IAEA in 2005 failed to identify this site, but not all facilities were visited by the Agency at the time. Iran has since made large scale changes to the site, a move that could be related to concealment efforts of its past activities.

Aside from site access, Iran has yet to fully explain or effectively refute the evidence that has been made available to the IAEA on this matter and it remains of concern to the IAEA. The Agency states that it has had direct access to the source of some of this expertise for Iran, believed to be a former Soviet weapons-scientist7.

Neutron Initiation

Iran may, according to evidence provided to the IAEA, have undertaken work to build neutron initiators for use in nuclear weapons. In an implosion device, a small source of additional neutrons can be inserted inside the sphere to be compressed, releasing a boost of neutrons at the exact moment of implosion. This can help ensure that fission takes place and also increase the yield of a nuclear device.

Modeling and Calculations

The design of nuclear weapons can be achieved by using advanced calculations and computerbased modeling. Iran has reportedly sought access to calculation and nuclear modeling training.

The IAEA has evidence that representatives from Iran “met with officials from an institute in a nuclear-weapon state to request training courses in the fields of neutron cross section calculations using computer codes.” Such models can be used in civil as well military nuclear applications. Iran has denied these allegations in writing to the IAEA.

scientist-vyacheslav-danilenkos-aid-to-iran-offers-peek-at-nuclearprogram/

2011/11/12/gIQAeuiCJN_story.html

6 http://www.sipri.org/media/expert-comments/the-iaea-and-parchin-do-the-claims-add-up

7 Ibid

Nuclear Test Planning

Iran may have made plans to test a nuclear device. There is evidence that Iran may have “conducted a number of practical tests to see whether its EBW firing equipment could function” over long distances between a firing point and a deep test shaft – commonly used in underground nuclear tests. The IAEA has also received documents from member states in Farsi discussing possible logistics associated with such a test.

Work to Modify a Missile Payload Area

The IAEA has information that Iran conducted engineering studies on how to integrate a “new spherical payload into the existing payload chamber which would be mounted in the re-entry vehicle of the Shahab-3 missile.” The Shahab-3 missile is an Iranian version of the North Korean No-Dong system with a reported range of almost 1,300 kilometers or 800 miles. The work allegedly includes the production of component prototypes as well as modeling work on at least 14 different progressive design iterations. Iran has told the IAEA it believes the information it has received are forgeries, but the IAEA has stated the “quantity of the documentation, and the scope and contents of the work covered in the documentation, are sufficiently comprehensive and complex that in the Agency’s view, it is not likely to have been the result of forgery or fabrication.”

Fusing, Arming and Firing

The alleged studies and documents noted above also indicate that Iran pursued design work on developing a prototype firing system to enable both air and ground detonation of the payload.

Iran dismissed the information as an “animation game.” The Agency has worked with member state experts to determine that the most likely application of the designed air burst system would be for a nuclear system and that the alternative possible use (for chemical weapons-use) could be ruled out.

Taken together, this information and analysis does not prove that Iran had a nuclear weapon program. However, US and other foreign officials are convinced of Iran’s past illegal activities.

Regardless, if a final comprehensive settlement is to be reached, Iran and the IAEA will have to find a politically acceptable way to resolve the outstanding matters under investigation.

Iran Fact File is a project of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

© 2014 Iran Fact File

All rights reserved.

***

IAEA Director General to Punt the Iran PMD Issue to the Board of Governors

 

Have you seen this new Bloomberg article by Jonathan Tirone? I’m almost dumbstruck by it.  In it he reports:

Investigators probing Iran will let national officials from places including the U.S., China and Russia decide if the Persian Gulf country hid a nuclear weapons program, according to two officials familiar with their work.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspection team will likely have to make an assessment based on incomplete information and let its board of nationally-appointed governors draw definitive conclusion about the country’s past nuclear work, said the two senior international officials, who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public. . .

It isn’t realistic to expect the IAEA to provide a black-and-white assessment showing that Iran either did or did not have a nuclear-weapons program, the officials said. The IAEA will set a time to end the investigation and submit its findings to the 35-member board of governors to make a ruling, they said.

I almost don’t know where to begin on this. As readers will know, I’ve long been critical of the IAEA’s decision to investigate allegations, mostly originating from third party states, of past possible military dimensions (PMD) to Iran’s nuclear program, and the November 2011 IAEA DG report that most comprehensively laid out these allegations.  I published this commentary on the report the day after it was sent to the BOG.  Since then I’ve written on the issue several times, including here, and have tried to explain that the IAEA has absolutely no mandate or authority to investigate and assess whether safeguarded states have done research and development work on nuclear weaponization not involving fissile materials.

Notwithstanding this lack of legal authority and, as Bob Kelley and Tariq Rauf point out in their new article in Arms Control Today, a lack of technical expertise to assess nuclear weaponization R&D as well, the IAEA has proceeded over the past three years to gather what information they could about the PMD claims, and has tried to engage Iran on this issue, with little success.

It’s never been clear to me what DG Amano’s game plan was on the PMD issue – i.e. how he thought the investigation would realistically play out, and what he thought would be achieved through it.  Again, there is no legal source that lays out the IAEA’s authority and tools for investigating nuclear weaponization, so there are no standards for the agency to follow.

It now appears that the final chapter of the IAEA’s PMD inquiry in Iran will consist of the IAEA DG’s office handing over whatever technical information they have, however incomplete, to the national political representatives who constitute the 35 member Board of Governors of the IAEA, and asking them to determine whether Iran worked on nuclear weaponization in the past.

If that sounds kind of crazy to you, then you’re not alone.

Again, I don’t think the IAEA should have ever started down the path of investigation and assessment on this issue, but given that they have, surely it must be recognized that this is essentially a technical matter – i.e. whether there is sufficient evidence of a nuclear weaponization program in Iran in the past. It is not a political matter. How, then, are the political representative of 35 countries on the IAEA BOG qualified in any way to make this determination?

This seems to me to be a complete cop-out – a surrender by the IAEA DG’s office. Whether it’s a surrender to facts (i.e. the DG’s office doesn’t have, and knows it never will have, enough information to really make the call technically, and is afraid to admit it) or a surrender to politics (i.e. the US and others are pressuring Amano to get the PMD issue resolved, and this is the only way to face-savingly do it) or more likely a combination of both, this can’t be the way Amano hoped this PMD inquiry would be resolved. Although, again, I don’t know what his plan was to begin with.

This is a punt – a buck passing, plain and simple. And even though the IAEA should never have gotten involved in this issue in the first place, this sets a very bad precedent for the agency going forward. The IAEA DG’s office is basically admitting that they cannot do their job of making a technical determination here, and they are instead punting the issue over to the BOG for a politicized vote. What does that say to IAEA member states about the IAEA’s ability to objectively apply technical safeguards to their nuclear programs, and about the independence and apolitical nature of the agency?

If this vote does indeed go ahead in the IAEA BOG, no matter what the outcome I think it will be one of the darkest days in the agency’s history. And I think that DG Amano is solely responsible for the black eye the agency’s reputation will take from this ill conceived, and badly executed foray into weaponization investigation.

Impeach Jeh Johnson and Then Dis-Bar the Man

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And the 20 others including the lawyers !!!

There is even a Federal employee handbook, this matter begins on page 74. Let the Freedom of Information requests begin and call Judicial Watch, as the Inspector General refuses to comment.

Homeland Security Leaders Bent Rules on Private E-Mail

By

Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, and 28 of his senior staffers have been using private Web-based e-mail from their work computers for over a year, a practice criticized by cyber security experts and advocates of government transparency.

The department banned such private e-mail on DHS computers in April 2014. Top DHS officials were granted informal waivers, according to a top DHS official who said that he saw the practice as a national security risk. The official said the exempt staffers included Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, chief of staff Christian Marrone and general counsel Stevan Bunnell.

Asked about the exceptions on Monday, the DHS press secretary, Marsha Catron, confirmed that some officials had been exempted. “Going forward,” she said, “all access to personal webmail accounts has been suspended.”

Future exceptions are to be granted only by the chief of staff. Catron said that a “recent internal review” had found the chief of staff and some others were unaware that they had had access to webmail.

The DHS rule, articulated last year after hackers first breached the Office of Personnel Management, states: “The use of Internet Webmail (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL) or other personal email accounts is not authorized over DHS furnished equipment or network connections.” Johnson and the 28 other senior officials sought and received informal waivers at different times over the past year, the official said. Catron said exceptions were decided on a case-by-case basis by the chief information officer, Luke McCormack. DHS employees are permitted to use their government e-mail accounts for limited personal use.

Erica Paulson, a spokeswoman for the DHS Office of the Inspector General, said that the office does not confirm or deny the existence of any open investigations.

It remains unclear whether Johnson and the other officials conducted DHS business on their private webmail accounts. (The DHS spokeswoman said “the use of personal email for official purposes is strictly prohibited.”) If even one work-related e-mail was sent or received, they could be in violation of regulations and laws governing the preservation of federal records, said Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

“I suppose it is remotely conceivable that in seeking a waiver, 20 or more government officials could all be wishing to talk to each other through a Web-based e-mail service about such matters as baseball games or retirement luncheons they might be attending,” he said. “But it is simply not reasonable to assume that in seeking a waiver that the officials involved were only contemplating using a commercial network for personal (that is, non-official) communications.”

In March, the New York Times reported that as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton had used a private e-mail server exclusively to conduct her State Department business. Clinton said she had not violated any transparency laws because the Federal Records Act states that officials are permitted to use private e-mail, so long as they forward on any government-related communications to their government accounts so they can be archived and used to respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

In November 2014, the Federal Records Act was amended to impose a 20-day limit on the time an official has to transfer records from private e-mail to government systems. Clinton transferred over 30,000 e-mails from her private server to the State Department in early 2015. She deleted another 30,000 e-mails on her private server, claiming they were all strictly personal.

It is unclear how Johnson and the other officials used their webmail accounts, and whether they forwarded any messages about government business to their official accounts.

Johnson has used his personal Gmail for government business at least once, before he was head of DHS; that was disclosed during the scandal that led to David Petraeus’s resignation as CIA director. The Justice Department is fighting to keep Johnson from having to give a video deposition in that case.

Anne Weismann, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability and a former Justice Department official dealing with FOIA litigation, said that even by seeking the waivers at DHS, Johnson and the other officials created at least an appearance and opportunity for impropriety.

“How could they possibly justify exempting the secretary and the most senior people from the policy? You are allowing the people who are most likely to create e-mails that are most worthy of preservation to bypass the system that would ensure their preservation,” she said.

The issue of top government officials using private e-mail is widespread and the rules barring such practices are rarely enforced, said Weismann. “What they really want is to have the ability to have off-the-record discussions,” she said. “It creates problems for record keeping and it puts it out of the reach of FOIA.”

Cyber security experts said that allowing the use of commercial webmail on otherwise secure computers increases the risk that those computers could be penetrated by hackers, foreign intelligence services or malware. Webmail messages are often stored without encryption, leaving them vulnerable to theft by anyone who gains access to the webmail server.

“The fundamental issue is that these commercial webmail systems were not designed with the threat in mind that is present when government officials are using consumer tools,” said Johannes B. Ullrich, dean of research for the SANS Technology Institute.

The threat is not just theoretical. In 2008, Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account was hacked by someone who used a password reset function to gain access, he said.

There’s also a moral hazard.

“If there are just certain individuals being exempted here, it’s setting a bad precedent for the rest of the department. If you say, ‘Hey, it doesn’t apply to everybody over a certain pay grade,’ the idea of these controls gets diminished and people look for workarounds,” said Ullrich.

Aside from the legal risk and the national security risk, exceptions to the department’s policies reinforce the narrative that the Obama administration lets senior officials skirt the rules, including by keeping their communications secret.  The pattern was present in the previous administration as well, but after the OPM hacks and the deletion of Clinton’s e-mails, it is widely criticized and hard to defend.

Obamacare, Where Fraudulent Enrollment is Common

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Sheesh, yet another federal program where fraud runs deep. What say you Democrats, the ONLY one’s that voted for this law?

The real question is, were some groups told to enroll fraudulently to peak the numbers for the sake of false success?

FreeBeacon:

A coalition of 10 organizations has filed an ethics complaint calling for an investigation into whether senators and their staff committed fraud when they submitted applications to the health insurance exchange in Washington, D.C.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, the lobbying arm of the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, led the coalition in filing the complaint to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics. The organizations involved are calling for an investigation into whether members of Congress and their staff violated laws by claiming to be a “small business” in order to buy their insurance and qualify for taxpayer-funded subsidies. Read more here.

FNC:

Phony applicants that investigators signed up last year under President Obama’s health care law got automatically re-enrolled for 2015. Some were rewarded with even bigger taxpayer subsidies for their insurance premiums, a congressional probe has found.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says 11 counterfeit characters that its investigators created last year were automatically re-enrolled by HealthCare.gov. In Obama’s terms, they got to keep the coverage they had.

Six of those later were flagged and sent termination notices. But GAO said it was able to get five of them reinstated, by calling HealthCare.gov’s consumer service center. The five even got their monthly subsidies bumped up a bit, although GAO did not ask for it. The case of the sixth fake enrollee was under review.

HealthCare.gov does not appear to be set up to detect fraud, GAO audits and investigations chief Seto Bagdoyan said in prepared testimony for a Senate Finance Committee hearing Thursday. A copy was provided to The Associated Press.

HealthCare.gov’s document-processing contractor “is not required to seek to detect fraud,” said Bagdoyan. “The contractor personnel involved in the document-verification process are not trained as fraud experts and do not perform antifraud duties.”

Administration officials told GAO there has been “no indication of a meaningful level of fraud” in the program, Bagdoyan said.

Federal health care subsidies go directly to insurers, so the money does not end up in the bank accounts of individual enrollees. But health insurance is a valuable product in and of itself, with the cost of family coverage averaging close to $17,000 a year.

Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said the GAO’s investigation reveals “negligence” by the Obama administration, which “calls into question the legitimacy of the health law’s enrollment numbers and challenges the integrity of the website’s security checks.”

Last year, when GAO first disclosed that it had succeeded in signing up fake beneficiaries, the administration said it would work to strengthen HealthCare.gov’s verification checks. Administration officials had no initial comment Wednesday on GAO’s latest findings.

HealthCare.gov is an online insurance marketplace used by residents of 37 states to get subsidized private coverage under the health care law.

Although the administration has terminated coverage for more than 200,000 people who could not prove their citizenship or legal immigrant status, and some 300,000 have had their subsidies changed because of discrepancies over reported income, GAO’s bogus beneficiaries largely evaded that dragnet.

It’s unclear whether the fictitious enrollees would have been kicked out of the program eventually. For example, no tax returns were filed on behalf of any of them. Since health insurance subsidies are income-based, tax returns are one of the main ways the government checks applicants.

GAO’s investigation also uncovered a problem that bedevils millions of real people dealing with the program’s new bureaucracy: confusing and inaccurate communication.

Investigators said their bogus enrollees received unclear correspondence that failed to identify the problems with their applications.

“Rather than stating a message directly, correspondence instead was conditional or nonspecific, stating the applicant may be affected by something, and then leaving it to the applicant to parse through details to see if they were indeed affected,” said Bagdoyan.

The fake enrollees also got some perplexing instructions from HealthCare.gov. Eight of the 11 were asked to submit additional documentation to prove their citizenship and identity. But the list of suitable paperwork detailed documents for verifying income instead.

About 10 million are getting coverage this year through HealthCare.gov and state health insurance markets. GAO said the results of its undercover testing, while illustrative, cannot be generalized to the full population of applicants and enrollees.

UN Voted FOR the Iran Deal Before Congress

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Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter is on a 3 country tour in the Middle East, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. War gaming on some plan?

This cannot end well.

Israeli Defense Force:

The IDF is seeking government commitment to a multi-year defense spending plan – a commitment that has been absent for the past several years – as it prepares to deal with the possibility of a covert Iranian attempt to break through to nuclear weapons production, a senior defense source said on Sunday.

The source said the IDF needs to assume that its most severe “reference scenarios” regarding Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and ISIS will come true, in order to correctly use the coming years to reshape the military, improve training, and make cost cutting reforms that include the shedding of 100,000 reservists and 5000 career soldiers.

The multi-year budget commitment from the government –  absent for the past several years – will be necessary to reshape the military and improve training to meet those challenges while at the same time, implementing cutting reforms that include the shedding of 100,000 reservists and 5000 career soldiers.

Other proposed changes include military restructuring to create specialized war fighting and border security divisions that do not overlap one another.

 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council on Monday unanimously endorsed the landmark nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers and authorized a series of measures leading to the end of U.N. sanctions that have hurt Iran’s economy.

But the measure also provides a mechanism for U.N. sanctions to “snap back” in place if Iran fails to meet its obligations.

The resolution had been agreed to by the five veto-wielding council members, who along with Germany negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran. It was co-sponsored by all 15 members of the Security Council.

Under the agreement, Iran’s nuclear program will be curbed for a decade in exchange for potentially hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of relief from international sanctions. Many key penalties on the Iranian economy, such as those related to the energy and financial sectors, could be lifted by the end of the year.

The document specifies that seven resolutions related to U.N. sanctions will be terminated when Iran has completed a series of major steps to curb its nuclear program and the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded that “all nuclear material in Iran remains in peaceful activities.”

All provisions of the U.N. resolution will terminate in 10 years, including the snap back provision.

But last week the six major powers — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — and the European Union sent a letter, seen by The Associated Press, informing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that they have agreed to extend the snap back mechanism for an additional five years. They asked Ban to send the letter to the Security Council.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the nuclear deal doesn’t change the United States’ “profound concern about human rights violations committed by the Iranian government or about the instability Iran fuels beyond its nuclear program, from its support for terrorist proxies to repeated threats against Israel to its other destabilizing activities in the region.”

She urged Iran to release three “unjustly imprisoned” Americans and to determine the whereabouts of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who vanished in 2007.

“But denying Iran a nuclear weapon is important not in spite of these other destabilizing actions but rather because of them,” Power said.

She quoted President Barack Obama saying the United States agreed to the deal because “an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be far more destabilizing and far more dangerous to our friends and to the world.”

Receiving Social Security Benefits Mentally Unfit for Guns

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There are a few databases that are mined for background checks for those applying to own a weapon, never before has the background check include being a Social Security beneficiary.

If Obama has his way and he often does, he considers receiving social security benefits as being a challenge to your mental capacity for failing to manage your own financial affairs.    LET THAT SINK IN

Obama is about attaching a new label to those who have protections under the 2nd Amendment to own a weapon, yet in his psyche, you are mentally unfit already. Next if you are receiving VA benefits, you are classified as unfit to own a weapon.  OH WAIT…

Yes, there are countless people out there that are mentally unfit and should not own a weapon and there are those that just steal weapons from others. But checking the social security database and then government makes the judgment?

Obama pushes to extend gun background checks to Social Security

LA Times:

Seeking tighter controls over firearm purchases, the Obama administration is pushing to ban Social Security beneficiaries from owning guns if they lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs, a move that could affect millions whose monthly disability payments are handled by others.

The push is intended to bring the Social Security Administration in line with laws regulating who gets reported to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, which is used to prevent gun sales to felons, drug addicts, immigrants in the country illegally and others.

A potentially large group within Social Security are people who, in the language of federal gun laws, are unable to manage their own affairs due to “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease.”

There is no simple way to identify that group, but a strategy used by the Department of Veterans Affairs since the creation of the background check system is reporting anyone who has been declared incompetent to manage pension or disability payments and assigned a fiduciary.

If Social Security, which has never participated in the background check system, uses the same standard as the VA, millions of its beneficiaries would be affected. About 4.2 million adults receive monthly benefits that are managed by “representative payees.”

The move is part of a concerted effort by the Obama administration after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., to strengthen gun control, including by plugging holes in the background check system.

But critics — including gun rights activists, mental health experts and advocates for the disabled — say that expanding the list of prohibited gun owners based on financial competence is wrongheaded.

Though such a ban would keep at least some people who pose a danger to themselves or others from owning guns, the strategy undoubtedly would also include numerous people who may just have a bad memory or difficulty balancing a checkbook, the critics argue.

“Someone can be incapable of managing their funds but not be dangerous, violent or unsafe,” said Dr. Marc Rosen, a Yale psychiatrist who has studied how veterans with mental health problems manage their money. “They are very different determinations.”

Steven Overman, a 30-year-old former Marine who lives in Virginia, said his case demonstrates the flaws of judging gun safety through financial competence.

After his Humvee hit a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2007, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury that weakened his memory and cognitive ability.

The VA eventually deemed him 100% disabled and after reviewing his case in 2012 declared him incompetent, making his wife his fiduciary.

Upon being notified that he was being reported to the background check system, he gave his guns to his mother and began working with a lawyer to get them back.

Overman grew up hunting in Wisconsin. After his return from Iraq, he found solace in target shooting. “It’s relaxing to me,” he said. “It’s a break from day-to-day life. It calms me down.”

Though his wife had managed their financial affairs since his deployment, Overman said he has never felt like he was a danger to himself or others.

“I didn’t know the VA could take away your guns,” he said.

The background check system was created in 1993 by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, named after White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was partially paralyzed after being shot in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan.

The law requires gun stores to run the names of prospective buyers through the computerized system before every sale.

The system’s databases contain more than 13 million records, which include the names of felons, immigrants in the U.S. illegally, fugitives, dishonorably discharged service members, drug addicts and domestic abusers.

State agencies, local police and federal agencies are required to enter names into the databases, but the system has been hampered by loopholes and inconsistent reporting since its launch.

The shortcomings became clear in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, in which Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people. Cho had been declared mentally ill by a court and ordered to undergo outpatient treatment, but at the time the law did not require that he be added to the databases.

Congress expanded the reporting requirements, but Social Security determined it was not required to submit records, according to LaVenia LaVelle, an agency spokeswoman.

After 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, 20 children and six school staffers in Newtown in 2012, President Obama vowed to make gun control a central issue of his second term.

The effort fell flat. Congress ultimately rejected his proposals for new gun control legislation.

But among 23 executive orders on the issue was one to the Department of Justice to ensure that federal agencies were complying with the existing law on reporting to the background check system.

One baseline for other agencies is the VA, which has been entering names into the system since the beginning. About 177,000 veterans and survivors of veterans are in the system, according to VA figures.

The VA reports names under a category in gun control regulations known as “adjudicated as a mental defective,” terminology that derives from decades-old laws. Its only criterion is whether somebody has been appointed a fiduciary.

More than half of the names on the VA list are of people 80 or older, often suffering from dementia, a reasonable criterion for prohibiting gun ownership.

But the category also includes anybody found by a “court, board, commission or other lawful authority” to be lacking “the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs” for a wide variety of reasons.

The agency’s efforts have been criticized by a variety of groups.

Rosen, the Yale psychiatrist, said some veterans may avoid seeking help for mental health problems out of fear that they would be required to give up their guns.

Conservative groups have denounced the policy as an excuse to strip veterans of their gun rights.

Republicans have introduced legislation in the last several sessions of Congress to change the policy. The Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act, now under consideration in the House, would require a court to determine that somebody poses a danger before being reported to the background check system.

Social Security would generally report names under the same “mental defective” category. The agency is still figuring out how that definition should be applied, LaVelle said.

About 2.7 million people are now receiving disability payments from Social Security for mental health problems, a potentially higher risk category for gun ownership. An addition 1.5 million have their finances handled by others for a variety of reasons.

The agency has been drafting its policy outside of public view. Even the National Rifle Assn. was unaware of it.

Told about the initiative, the NRA issued a statement from its chief lobbyist, Chris W. Cox, saying: “If the Obama administration attempts to deny millions of law-abiding citizens their constitutional rights by executive fiat, the NRA stands ready to pursue all available avenues to stop them in their tracks.”

Gun rights advocates are unlikely to be the only opponents.

Ari Ne’eman, a member of the National Council on Disability, said the independent federal agency would oppose any policy that used assignment of a representative payee as a basis to take any fundamental right from people with disabilities.

“The rep payee is an extraordinarily broad brush,” he said.

Since 2008, VA beneficiaries have been able to get off the list by filing an appeal and demonstrating that they pose no danger to themselves or others.

But as of April, just nine of 298 appeals have been granted, according to data provided by the VA. Thirteen others were pending, and 44 were withdrawn after the VA overturned its determination of financial incompetence.

Overman is one of the few who decided to appeal.

He is irritable and antisocial, he said, but not dangerous. “I’ve never been suicidal,” he said. “To me that solves nothing.”

More than a year and a half after Overman filed his challenge, the VA lifted its incompetence ruling, allowing his removal from the background check system before the VA ever had to determine whether he should be trusted with a gun.

Overman, who hasn’t worked since leaving the military, said he and a friend are now thinking of opening a gunsmith business.