Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi / YJC
Iran has threatened to withdraw from the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers if there is no economic benefit from it and major banks continue to fail to do business with Tehran. Continue reading
Iranian parliament. / IRNA
As some lawmakers chanted “Death to America,” Iran’s parliament on Aug. 13 granted its initial approval for increased funding of Teheran’s missile program and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force.
Parliament overwhelmingly approved the outlines of the bill to “counter America’s terrorist and adventurist actions,” state broadcaster IRIB reported. Continue reading
The U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, will buy 32 metric tonnes of heavy water from Iran worth $8.6 million, a department spokeswoman said. Heavy water is a component of making nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, that is not radioactive.
Under last year’s landmark nuclear deal between Iran, the United States and five other world powers, Tehran is responsible for reducing its stock of heavy water, which it can sell, dilute or dispose of, under conditions. Continue reading
Deputy FM Abbas Araqchi indicates differences remain but ‘major part’ have been worked through
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tuesday that major portions of a draft nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 worlds powers have been agreed on, while acknowledging that some small differences remained.
“We have now a text that a major part of it, even all its phrases, has been agreed but a part of it is still a source of difference,” Araqchi said in an interview upon arrival in Vienna on Tuesday, ahead of a next round of negotiations. Continue reading
NICOSIA — Iran has reported missile exports to neighboring Iraq, a leading defense client of the United States.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has cited Iranian missile deliveries to neighboring Iraq, Middle East Newsline reported. IRGC Air Force commander Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh said his force was exporting missiles for Baghdad’s war against Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. Continue reading
NICOSIA — Iran has asserted that the West accepted the use of Teheran’s latest gas centrifuge for the nation’s nuclear program.
Officials said the P5+1 approved Iran’s enhancement of its nuclear energy and research program. They said this included the testing and installation of advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
“The [use of] new generation of centrifuges for research purposes was the most important remaining issue in the talks between Iran and the P5+1 in recent months,” Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said. Continue reading
The current US administration, as predicted, has conceded everything and received nothing in return. Restraining ‘nuclear ambitions’ by continuing to allow them further enrichment is not restraint in the least bit. In the end, whatever gives Israel the proverbial short end of the stick is what will prevail. DEBKAfile had previously reported secret negotiations were already in the making last year (October and November) and has since been vindicated. (Additional sources: Source 1, Source 2)
This is how the West is (going to be) lost.
WASHINGTON – Key elements of a new nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers are contained in an informal, 30-page text not yet publicly acknowledged by Western officials, Iran’s chief negotiator said Monday.
Abbas Araqchi disclosed the existence of the document in a Persian-language interview with the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency.
The new agreement, announced over the weekend, sets out a timetable for how Iran and the six nations, led by the United States, will implement a deal reached in November that is aimed at restraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Continue reading
Iran vowed to maintain its nuclear infrastructure and threatened to boost its uranium enrichment capabilities just hours after announcing that it had agreed to a deal to halt some aspects of its contested nuclear program.
Iran and Western nations announced on Sunday that they had agreed to an interim deal to halt portions of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for some $7 billion in sanctions relief.
Secretary of State John Kerry celebrated the interim agreement, which will officially begin on Jan. 20.
However, Iranian officials threatened to ramp up nuclear activities should they feel the West is violating the accord.
“We will in no way, never, dismantle our [nuclear] centrifuges,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the country’s state-run television station on Sunday, according to New York Times reporter Thomas Erdbrink. Continue reading
In short, what Iran is seemingly looking to do is be able to up the production capability to where it can build nuclear weapons within two weeks. A two week time period would be too short of a period of time for most nations to react, especially as nations today are forming ‘coalitions’ in order to mitigate political backlash. Throw in the usual stalling/delay tactics as well as Russia and China blocking all efforts in the UN, combined with a United States that is slowly bringing resources to the Asian “pivot” and we might have a perfect recipe for disaster. Once again, Israel will find itself mostly alone with its back against the wall and left no choice but to strike preemptively or in reaction to an attack — neither make a difference now.
Iran’s utilization of advanced IR-2m centrifuges for enriching uranium, in violation of the interim Geneva accord, was presented by the US and the five powers Wednesday, Jan. 8, as the main difficulty in its implementation. This claim allowed the follow-up meeting to take place in Geneva on Thursday, Jan. 9.DEBKAfile’s Iranian and intelligence sources report that this was a lame excuse to account for the real situation, which is that Iran has not even started implementing any part of the Geneva accord it signed last November 24. The follow-up talks this week are not expected to break out of this impasse, any more than the first round did on Dec. 19-20.
This is because the obstacles are far from technical; they arise from Iranian domestic politics. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has fenced in President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Jawad Zarif with hard-line objectors to the tactics employed till now by the Iranian team, led by Iranian deputy foreign minister Abbas Araqchi. In future, negotiators will be required to refer all the conclusions reached with the powers to the policy-making levels in Tehran for approval and abide by their guidelines. Continue reading
This is a followup from a previous DEBKAfile article, which can be found here:
Mystery of missing ayatollah: Ali Khamenei’s three-week seclusion for work on nuclear deal with US
Israel’s high command, working on the assumption that an American-Iranian nuclear accord is near its final stage, plans to keep in place advanced preparations for a unilateral military strike on Iran’s nuclear program into 2014 – hence the IDF’s request for a supplemental NIS3.5bn (app. $1bn) defense budget this week.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report exclusively that the main body of the accord is essentially complete. All the same, President Barack Obama plans to announce before Christmas that only partial agreement has been achieved and negotiations will continue.
He will be cagey in public – partly because not all parts of the accord have been finalized, although the pace of US-Iranian negotiations have been accelerated, and partly to avoid coming clean on the full scope of the deal with Tehran. Continue reading
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