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Source: https://www.nipp.org/2020/01/13/ruhle-hans-the-great-self-deception/
The Nuclear Deal with Iran Was a Charade Right from the Start
(National Institute for Public Policy) Dr. Hans Ruhle - In response to the killing of Iranian General Soleimani by a U.S. airstrike, Iran announced that it would no longer adhere to the 2015 nuclear agreement. Now observers are lamenting that a major opportunity for curbing Iran's nuclear activities has been lost. Alas, this view gets it wrong. The nuclear deal never had the significance that many attributed to it. The agreement's portended goal of verifiably preventing Iran's military nuclearization for 10 to 15 years could never have been achieved. In the nuclear deal, Iran demanded that the parties agree that the two known enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow were the only ones actively operated by Iran. However, U.S. intelligence had known for quite some time that Iran was operating about a dozen secret facilities, with one or more of them enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels. Former CIA director Michael Hayden described how at a meeting of the National Security Council in spring 2009, President Obama asked how much fissile material Iran had stored in Natanz. Hayden replied: "Mr. President, I actually know that but let me offer you a different frame of reference. In one sense, it almost doesn't matter. There isn't an electron or a neutron at Natanz that's ever going to end up in a nuclear weapon. They'll spin that uranium at some secret military facility beyond the eyes of the IAEA." Against this background, it is clear that the nuclear agreement with Iran was a charade from the very beginning. U.S. intelligence had always assumed that enrichment for weapons-grade uranium was carried out in secret facilities. This means that the IAEA's regular statements that Iran was complying with the agreement were utterly worthless. The Obama Administration, together with its allies, concluded an agreement with Iran that centered on the long-term prevention of the production of weapons-grade uranium in Natanz, even though they knew that weapons-grade uranium was not produced there, but in secret facilities of the Revolutionary Guards. The writer headed the Policy Planning Staff of the German Ministry of Defense in 1982-1988.