Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Nothing to See, Move Along

How can Iran fail to believe that God is on their side?

I was dismayed enough that Iran isn't actually prohibited from testing missiles that could be used for nuclear warheads after all the missile aspects are ironed out.

And I was dismayed that the looming Iran deal appeared to enshrine the concept of deliberately not seeing whether Iran violates any deal.

But little did I know how thoroughly that Schultz Doctrine of knowing nothing and seeing nothing would be embedded in the whole astonishingly stupid deal with Iran:

Because of the JCPOA, 17 IAEA resolutions have been rescinded. Many of them contained mandates for IAEA inspections of Iran’s nuclear program. They have been replaced by a new mandate to only inspect Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA. Moreover, since the IAEA voted in December to close the file on unresolved questions of nuclear weapons-related work by Iran, the IAEA will no longer be allowed to investigate these questions.

It also appears that even when the IAEA issues reports addressing issues on which it is allowed to report, the agency will provide less data and some issues will be excluded, including Iran’s efforts to develop advanced uranium centrifuges.

Olli Heinonen, a former senior IAEA official, said in a recent analysis “for years, Tehran has advocated for less-detailed IAEA safeguards reports, citing concerns ranging from confidentiality matters to IAEA inspection authorities under the comprehensive safeguards agreement.” To convince Iran to agree to the JCPOA, Western states probably conceded this issue to Iran as part of another secret side deal that was withheld from the U.S. Congress.

Do you still believe the outlandish claims about how rigorous the inspections regime that John Kerry--of all people--negotiated?

There are none so blind as those who will not see.