Iran prepares for a big nuclear leap

The head of MI6, Great Britain’s intelligence service, met in Israel last week with his Israeli counterpart over concerns that Iran may be gearing up to develop a nuclear weapon, i24 news and Israel’s Channel 13 reported.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party voted to demand that the US reenter the flawed JCPOA.

Although Israel has been warning the world that Tehran would find ways to cheat on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the UK and other EU countries have continued to support the JCPOA agreement and have opposed the American re-imposition of sanctions in August and November 2018.

Britain, France, and Germany established a barter-type system known as INSTEX that is designed to allow their businesses to skirt direct financial transactions with Iran and thereby make an end around the US sanctions. 

Per i24, Iran is doing everything it can within the framework of the agreement:

“According to the report, Israeli intelligence assesses Tehran is making preparations and getting ready for nuclear capabilities within the bounds of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or Iran nuclear deal), but has purposefully avoided an official decision on furthering the process toward producing an actual bomb.

 “Iran is gearing up for the renewal of uranium enrichment within the provisions of the deal, as indicated by its resumption of centrifuge production, according to the report’s citing of Western intelligence sources.

“The report further claimed that Tehran is preparing the infrastructure for nuclear activity in an accelerated fashion.”

Some of the information about Iran’s status may have come from a nuclear scientist whose escape from the regime was aided by the Mossad, MI6 and the CIA.

According to Britain’s Daily Mail, the scientist was smuggled to France and reached the UK on an inflatable boat at the beginning of this year, camouflaged by a group of fellow Iranian migrants traveling to the southern British town of Lydd. He couldn’t simply fly in because Britain is still part of the JCPOA, and Iran would get upset. MI6 interviewed the nuclear technician on Iran’s nuclear plans before he was flown to America.

Additional information on the status of Iran’s nuclear program came from a half-ton cache of files that the Mossad retrieved from a secret storage building in Tehran. The grab, announced by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in April, proved that after the deal was made, “Iran continued to preserve and expand its nuclear know-how for use at a later date.”

The JCPOA states, “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” To be compliant, they should have gotten rid of the files. But the data was kept for future use.

According to a paper published by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) four months ago, “the documents recovered by Israeli intelligence from Iran’s hidden nuclear archive and revealed by premier Netanyahu show Iran conducted significantly more high explosive tests at the Parchin nuclear site than previously understood.”

ISIS believes Iran has already overcome some obstacles to building a bomb that experts thought it had not yet mastered, that Iran was a lot closer to a nuclear weapon than we thought, and that work at Parchin may still be going on.

The Obama administration had promised lawmakers that the IAEA would be able to inspect Parchin and resolve all possible military dimension issues before inking a final deal. But that didn’t happen. Instead, US negotiators allowed Iran to sign a secret side deal permitting them to self-inspect the facility rather than grant IAEA inspectors access.

The IAEA continues to issue reports stating Iran has not violated the nuclear deal. But how would they know? Parchin is self-inspected, and despite the JCPOA, Iranian authorities claim military sites are off-limits to the IAEA. The IAEA refuses to push the point because they don’t want Iran to seem non-compliant, despite the fact that they are. The refusal to allow military access renders Section T of the JCPOA meaningless. (“Section T,” which contains the meat of the agreement, outlines “activities which could contribute to the design and development of a nuclear explosive device.”)

According to Netanyahu, the IAEA ignored intelligence Israel shared with them, including the evidence of a second warehouse of documents.

The IAEA is a joke, as is the JCPOA. The lack of inspections, even with the new information in Iran’s own files, may lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, not just in Israel but throughout the Sunni Muslim world — and here in the United States, the country that Iran calls “the great Satan.”

The JCPOA also allows Iran to develop a nuclear delivery system, lifting the ban on its ballistic missile program. Before the deal, UN Security Council Resolution 1929 used mandatory language about ballistic missiles: “Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.”

But the P5+1 resolution later passed by the UNSC changed the language. On page 119, it does not prohibit Iran from carrying out ballistic missile work, but simply asks them not to. It merely says, “Iran is called upon not to undertake such activity.” Some reports say that John Kerry begged Iran not to talk about the changes.

Despite this evidence, including recent satellite pictures showing that Iran was expanding their Fordo nuclear facilities, the Democratic Party passed a resolution two weeks ago demanding that the US reenter the flawed deal.

“The United States should return to its obligations under the JCPOA and utilize multilateral and bilateral diplomacy to achieve political solutions to remaining challenges regarding Iran,” the document says.

This is the same party that has embraced anti-Semitism in recent years, and refused to allow a barrier built to secure our border with Mexico. Democrats’ desire to return to the JCPOA is an indication that the rank-and-file don’t care about the security of Israel, or the United States.