Another Deadline that Means Nothing, as the Obama Administration Capitulates to Iran

This evening, Sunday the 23rd at 7 p.m. East Coast time, the AP posted a dispatch stating that U.S.  negotiators have asked Iran to consider an extension of the nuclear talks. Another deadline — this one tomorrow, Nov.24th, which was supposed to be the final one — has been scrapped by the United States. It is clear that at all costs, the Obama administration wants to get any kind of a deal; it has continually backtracked on all the prerequisites that Iran supposedly had to meet and that the US. insisted upon when negotiations began one year ago. The AP story continues:

A senior U.S. official said that with the Monday evening cutoff date a little more than a day away, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry proposed to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Java Zarf that the two sides start discussing post-deadline talks in their latest meeting since Kerry arrived three days ago to add his diplomatic weight to the talks.

Yesterday, Reuters also broke another announcement. The P5+1 — the powers negotiating with Iran over their nuclear program — it reported, “will likely stop short of demanding full disclosure of any secret weapon work by Tehran.” Reporters Fredrik Dahl and Louis Charbonneau write that while the P5+1 powers will try to “press Iran to cease stonewalling a U.N. atomic bomb investigation as part of a wider nuclear accord,” they are willing to give in on what used to be a fundamental demand of the United States as necessary for any accord to be signed. What Iran is now refusing to do is to present to the nations negotiating with them full disclosure of any secret work they are carrying out at hidden facilities, which will enable them to develop a nuclear weapon.

At a Hudson Institute panel held last week, David Albright, a veteran of the IAEA and founder and head of the Institute for Science and International Security, told how verification of Iranian nuclear development cannot succeed without this full disclosure. Referring to Iran’s long history of secret work, Albright stated that “it’s a very big mistake…if you don’t deal with these past questions about Iran’s work on nuclear weapons.”

If you’re going to know the present, and know the risk…[that] if there are  undeclared facilities [and] activities, you have to know the history. (my emphasis)

Albright pointed out that an agreement seems to be heading in the direction of throwing “the IAEA under the bus.” If Iran succeeds in weakening the UN’s international atomic inspection forces, he pointed out, it would be difficult to gain verification of what Iran is working on. He also said that unless the IAEA could visit all military sites to examine their actual work, it would stifle any “concrete progress.” He noted that people in Washington were trying to argue that none of this really mattered and expected that somehow they would get solid verification in the future. As he put it, “the IAEA learned that’s a big mistake and a recipe for failure.”