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Deadline Looms to Fix the Iran Deal

(AIJAC-Australia) Ahron Shapiro - Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Vice President for Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told AIJAC in a briefing on Feb. 16: "The Trump Administration is now trying to get the international community to respond, to address the fatal flaws of the nuclear program, because they are literally a ticking time bomb. We have a deadline coming up in the United States on May 12. This is the date that Congress has to reassess and reissue the terms under which we are willing to work with the nuclear deal." "My sense is that we are likely to keep all of the entities that we delisted from the nuclear program...free of sanctions. But we are going to start to heap on non-nuclear sanctions. That means terrorism, human rights, cyber violations - all the things that Iran has been doing as a rogue state, that fall outside of the nuclear realm. We are going to be calling upon Australia and the British and the Canadians and everyone who will work with us to begin to throw new sanctions on Iran to try to hinder its economic advancement." "There are milestones which are coming due in the JCPOA, the Iran deal, which are highly problematic. In year four, which is 2019, it will be the end of the arms embargo, which means Iran is going to be able to buy and sell weapons on the open market. They are going to be able to give those weapons to Hizbullah, to Hamas, to the Assad regime, to the Houthis in Yemen, and there is going to be very little that we are going to be able to do about it, other than try to interdict." "In year eight, we are going to see the end of ballistic missile restrictions. What's amazing about the Iran deal is that it even allowed Iran to have this ballistic missile provision because, of course, what is the ideal delivery system for a nuclear weapon? It's an ICBM." "Then by years 10 through 12, we are going to have what is known as the sunset provisions. All of the major provisions of the nuclear deal will go away, which means that Iran will have a paved pathway to a nuclear weapon. It means that they will either be Japan, where they will be a turnkey away, or they will be Pakistan, or, even worse, they will be North Korea." Regarding Israeli-Palestinian peace moves, Schanzer told ABC Radio National's Patricia Karvelas on Feb. 19: "[When] one looks at the bilateral negotiations that have gone on for the last several decades involving the Palestinians, the Palestinians have typically called the shots. They have determined the contours of the debate, despite the fact that they are really the weakest actor. With the U.S. recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, I think there was a message sent to the Palestinians that they cannot dictate the terms."
2018-03-02 00:00:00
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