Nothing else matters to the White House or to John Kerry than that of coming away with a nuclear deal with Iran as summarized here.
As November 24, the deal expiration dates gets closer, Iran continues to enjoy more red-carpet treatment rolled out by John Kerry and his hand-selected team.
Meanwhile, it is important to know what Iran is really doing while all these talks go on and get extended.
Iran began installing two cascades of advanced centrifuges at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz. As of August 28, 2011, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran had installed 136 IR-2m centrifuges in cascade 5 and 27 IR-4 centrifuges in cascade 4. Iran started feeding 54 of the 136 IR-2m centrifuges with natural uranium hexafluoride.1 Each of these cascades is designed to contain 164 centrifuges. Iran first told the IAEA in January 2011 that it intended to install these two cascades, and it is unclear why Iran waited nearly eight months before starting to install them.
Installation of the IR-2m centrifuges is now complete. Installation of the IR-4 centrifuges could finish anytime.
The IR-2m and the IR-4 centrifuges have the same length and diameter. They are derived from the Pakistani P2 centrifuge design that A.Q. Khan sold Iran in the 1990s. Iran subsequently modified this design (see figures 1 and 2). The IR-2m rotor is made of two carbon fiber rotor sections or tubes and a maraging steel bellows. The IR-4 has two carbon fiber tubes connected by a carbon fiber bellows, an unusual choice likely reflecting a shortage of maraging steel. Both centrifuge designs use a top and bottom bearing and a motor taken from the P2 design.
Khan found that the P2 design worked considerably better than the P1 centrifuge, suffering far fewer failures. Similarly, the IR-2m and IR-4 centrifuges are expected to have fewer breakdowns than the IR-1 centrifuges currently at the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant that are copies of the P1 centrifuge. However, as is discussed below, these centrifuges may not perform as expected.
It must also be understood, however that the talks with Iran should such an agreement be reach, will not be under the title of treaty or agreement such that it would go to Congress to be approved and members of Congress already know this. They are worried to the point that several have introduced legislation to prevent advancement of the Iranian nuclear program and are poised to re-install many sanctions that the Obama administration has suspended. The White House and the State Department are looking for methods to completely excluded allies but most of all our own Congress from the comprehensive details of the nuclear deal and from subsequently voting on accepting or opposing the deal completely. This speaks to the Obama administration having its own exclusive authority. In fact it is so disturbing, even the New York Times spells it out with concerns.
WASHINGTON — No one knows if the Obama administration will manage in the next five weeks to strike what many in the White House consider the most important foreign policy deal of his presidency: an accord with Iran that would forestall its ability to make a nuclear weapon. But the White House has made one significant decision: If agreement is reached, President Obama will do everything in his power to avoid letting Congress vote on it.
But Mr. Obama cannot permanently terminate those sanctions. Only Congress can take that step. And even if Democrats held on to the Senate next month, Mr. Obama’s advisers have concluded they would probably lose such a vote.
“We wouldn’t seek congressional legislation in any comprehensive agreement for years,” one senior official said.
White House officials say Congress should not be surprised by this plan. They point to testimony earlier this year when top negotiators argued that the best way to assure that Iran complies with its obligations is a step-by-step suspension of sanctions — with the implicit understanding that the president could turn them back on as fast as he turned them off.
Nothing on the other side of the horizon is more dangerous than Kerry and his army right now leading the charge to get a pen in the hands of Iran.
