• Iran Nuke Talks Impeded by Disagreement on All Main Elements - George Jahn
  Iran and six powers are still apart on all main elements of a nuclear deal with less than two weeks to go to their June 30 target date and will likely have to extend their negotiations, two diplomats said. Negotiators have been meeting five days a week in Vienna over the past few weeks, but Russian chief delegate Sergey Ryabkov said Friday the "the rate of progress...is progressively slowing down." Diplomats described disagreement on up to 10 elements crucial to any deal. (AP)
      See also Key Senator Says Obama Shouldn't Rush to Meet Iran Deal Deadline - Indira Lakshmanan and David Lerman
  The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Corker - the author of legislation that gives Congress the right to review and potentially reject any Iran deal - said the Obama administration should take as much time as it needs to get the best deal to curb Iran's nuclear program, rather than rushing to meet the June 30 deadline. "I would not support pressuring the administration to try to make a bad deal just to make a deadline," he said. "I want them to take their time."
      Corker said he and other members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are shocked by reports suggesting that Iran might not be required to answer all the UN atomic energy agency's outstanding questions about its past work to develop a nuclear weapon, or that it may get relief from economic sanctions before those questions are resolved. (Bloomberg)
• Former CIA Chief Questions U.S. Knowledge of Iran's Nuclear Weaponization - Jennifer Rubin
  Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday discussed the issue of Iran's disclosure of the possible military dimensions (PMDs) of its nuclear program. In response, former CIA chief Michael Hayden said: "What he [Kerry] is saying is that we don't care how far they've gotten with weaponization." But the administration should not insist revelations of PMDs are unimportant. "He's pretending we have perfect knowledge about something that was an incredibly tough intelligence target while I was director and I see nothing that has made it any easier."
      Mark Dubowitz, from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, added, "For Secretary Kerry to claim we have absolute knowledge of Iran's weaponization activities is to assume a level of U.S. intelligence capability that defies historical experience."  (Washington Post)
      See also U.S. Seen "Moving the Goal Posts" on Iran's Past Military Nuclear Work - Michael Wilner
  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that the world already knows the nature of Iran's past military nuclear work - and that negotiators were not "fixated" on forcing Tehran to reveal its activities. The comment was widely interpreted as a departure from past statements and a consequential U.S. concession to Iran. Patrick Clawson, Director for Research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, called the development a "clear-cut case of moving the goal posts."
      "It is discouraging for the USG [U.S. government] to suggest that a political process, such as the Iran-P5+1 talks, will substitute for the judgment of the IAEA," Clawson said in an e-mail. "The IAEA should be allowed to do its work without diplomats undercutting its authority. Technical issues about verification should not be decided in a political venue."  (Jerusalem Post)
      See also Kerry Walks Back Comments Hinting at Iran Deal Concession - Elise Labott
  On Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Secretary of State John Kerry had reached out personally to assure him that he was not backing off requiring Iran to acknowledge past efforts to develop nuclear weapons as part of any overall nuclear agreement. (CNN)

• UNRWA Chief: Gaza Militants Hid Weapons in Our Facilities - Elior Levy
  Pierre Krahenbuhl, Commissioner General for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said in an interview, "We were the ones who found the weapons stockpiles in our facilities" during the 2014 Gaza war. "The reason the world found out was because we were the ones who told everyone....The publication of the incident should serve to show that we will not stand for it."  (Ynet News)
• EU Drive to Label West Bank Settlement Exports Unlikely to Harm Israel - Judy Maltz
  With the EU planning to require labeling of all goods produced in the West Bank, Golan Heights and east Jerusalem, how much are these goods actually sold in Europe? A high-ranking Israeli authority on foreign trade matters said the overwhelming majority of industrial exports from these areas are not finished goods, but rather components - pipes, tubes, spare parts - that rarely find their way onto supermarket or department store shelves. Agricultural exports to Europe from these areas total no more than "a few million dollars," mostly dates and grapes grown in the Jordan Valley. (Ha'aretz)

• How to Make Sure Iran's One-Year Nuclear Breakout Time Does Not Shrink - Olli Heinonen and Simon Henderson
  Iran's current timeframe for acquiring enough high-enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb - known as breakout time - is around two or three months, and the U.S. wants a deal that extends that period to at least one year.
      In Washington's view, a full year would provide enough time to detect noncompliance and take diplomatic or military action if Tehran seems poised to make an illegal dash for a nuclear weapon. Yet the use of more efficient centrifuges would shorten that time, so Iran's determination to develop more advanced machines is as much a concern as, for example, its continuing retention of large low-enriched uranium stockpiles despite a commitment in the parameters that they be converted into less contentious forms.
      Close attention to several technical factors is essential to the success of a nuclear deal, including the number and type of installed, operable centrifuges; Iran's inventories of enriched uranium; the dismantling of excess centrifuges; unfettered inspection access; and enhanced intelligence on and enforcement of compliance. Olli Heinonen is a senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center and a former deputy director-general for safeguards at the IAEA. Simon Henderson is director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at The Washington Institute. (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)
• Israel Sees Chaos on Its Borders - Ben Judah
  From Majdal al-Shams in the Golan Heights, the Israeli military watches over Syria. But there is no more Syria here: every village is for itself; some are starving, or cut off, and all are armed, run by the most violent who live among them, pledging often-notional allegiance to the warlords who can protect them. The villages loyal to Assad must more and more raise their own militias to defend themselves.
      What Israeli officials see replacing the states of the Middle East is an ethnic patchwork where the Jewish state is surrounded by Shiite, Druze, Sunni, and Kurdish enclave-states and they are no longer the only vulnerable ethnic-outsider. What was once considered a flight of fancy of 1948 war-hero Yigal Allon, that Israel needed to see the birth of Druze and Kurdish states to break the Arab hegemony in the Levant, is fast becoming a reality. (Politico)
• Even a Limited Boycott of Israel Is Problematic - Joseph S. Spoerl
  Even a limited boycott of Israel's West Bank settlements is problematic. The two-state solution envisioned by the Oslo accords was based on the assumption that the larger Jewish communities just east of the 1949 armistice line, such as the ancient Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Etzion Bloc, would be incorporated into Israel as part of any final peace treaty. Surely it is unfair to penalize Jews who wish to live in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.
      Moreover, Israel has legitimate security interests in keeping control of the Jordan River valley and its adjacent high ground to prevent movement of terrorists and weapons into the West Bank, especially since Hamas and its Iranian supporters have openly stated their goal of arming their cadres in the West Bank. The writer is a professor in the Philosophy Department at Saint Anselm College. (Concord [NH] Monitor)

Don't Take an Iran Bomb Deal for Granted - David Wolpe (TIME)

• Despite repeated denials, Iran wants a bomb badly. Nuclear weapons confer power, and the Iranian regime is hungry for hegemony. Even the negotiations themselves have provided Iran with an opportunity to advance its progress toward a bomb.
• The U.S. cannot afford to get this wrong, or to be lulled into complacency, or be grateful to get this problem off our plate. We succeeded in overcoming the Soviet threat because we never took it for granted, never tired, and always understood the gravity of a slave state as superpower. History has ratified that long, twilight struggle.
• If we sign an inadequate agreement, we won't have to wait for history to weigh in: The verdict will be clear very quickly that in a desire to be peaceable and wise, we were played for knaves and fools.
  
  The writer is the Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.