It’s official: on October 10, Iran tested an Emad ballistic missile that can carry a nuclear warhead. A panel of experts commissioned by the UN Security Council reported that the launch violated Security Council Resolution 1929, which says “Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons…”
Iran is also known to have tested yet another nuclear-capable missile on November 21.
That’s one development on the Iran front — continuing to develop potential nuke-carrying missiles in blatant breach of U.N. resolutions.
And the other development is that the board of directors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has voted to close the books on ten years of Iran’s illegal nuclear-weapons work, thereby helping open the path — as the Obama administration and its allies devoutly hope — to the lifting of sanctions on Iran in January.
The IAEA’s board of directors gave Iran a clean bill of health even though, earlier this month, the agency’s own investigators released a report that in no way confirmed that Iran hadn’t already been working on nuclear weapons or had stopped working on them. As the Chicago Tribune noted in an editorial, the report — based on the meager information Iran did provide — established that Iran had “secretly worked on weapons design, testing and components needed for a bomb until 2009.” Iran was otherwise brazenly evasive, simply not answering 3 of the 12 questions that the investigators asked, and giving only partial answers to some of the others.
The Institute for Science and International Security concluded about this farce of a report: “Overall, Iran provided little real cooperation. Denials and lack of truthfulness should not be confused with cooperation… The truth of Iran’s work on nuclear weapons is probably far more extensive than outlined by the IAEA.”
But Iran’s “denials and lack of truthfulness” were good enough for the IAEA’s board of directors, which — with this move of giving Iran’s nuke program a wholly undeserved kosher certificate — reveals the IAEA to be essentially a pathetic rubber-stamping body for the P5+1 countries (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany).
They, for their part, are eager to get the nuke deal rolling in complete disregard of Iran’s blatant flouting of its supposed obligations.
As the Tribune points out, back in the dim mists of time — last April — Secretary of State John Kerry said Iran would “have to” come clean on its past nuclear work. “It will be done. If there’s going to be a deal, it will be done.”
Kerry, though, after the deal was (purportedly) signed on July 14, walked that back, claiming the U.S. already “knew enough” about Iran’s past efforts. In other words, the IAEA’s latest investigatory work was nothing but a charade aimed at getting Iran off the hook with no connection to anything happening on the ground.
Meanwhile Iran, the Tribune‘s editorial points out, “get[s] the signal that it can stonewall inspectors who seek to enforce the deal over the next decade.” This is despite the fact that, without the information Iran was supposed to provide and patently did not provide, “the West can’t accurately gauge Iran’s breakout capability — that is, how fast Iran could build a bomb if it decided to scrap the deal.”
Why are Obama and his allies so gung-ho to get the deal moving, and the sanctions lifted, at any conceivable price?
One answer lies in Obama’s overall policy on Iran, which, from the beginning, can be termed sinister — from his refusal to help the domestic protest that erupted after Iran’s fraudulent June 2009 elections; to his heavy pressure on Israel not to attack Iran despite a steady stream of threats to annihilate Israel from Iran’s leaders; to his staunch refusal to enact sanctions until forced to do so by Congress; to his July 14, 2015, nuke deal that is full of holes and includes ludicrous terms of enforcement; to his current blithe acceptance of Iran’s ongoing human rights abuses, openly expressed hatred and aggression toward America, and nuclear-related testing.
And for the other answer, you have to follow the money. The lifting of sanctions will mean Iran gets its hands on up to $150 billion in unfrozen assets. That’s a huge infusion for doing business with eager European and Russian entities that have already been trooping to Tehran, intoxicated by the smell of ink — that is, the inking of business deals — in the air.
Won’t Iran also use its restored riches to further build up its nuclear and other weapons programs; give huge boosts to terrorist proxies like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizballah, and the Houthis in Yemen; and keep working to create a Shiite arc stretching from Iran to Lebanon while further destabilizing the Gulf states? Won’t it put big funds into its ballistic missiles, which, now at various stages of development, already have Europe and the U.S. in their ranges?
Iran will, of course, do all of that. Its continued appeasement by the Obama administration, with European leaders including “conservatives” like Cameron of Britain and Merkel of Germany at his side, is a severe and dangerous case of malfeasance by those who are supposed to look out for us.
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