U.S. OFFICERS OPPOSE DISASTROUS NUCLEAR DEAL, HOLD IT MAY LEAD TO THE “UNTHINKABLE”

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Vital Points on the Iran Deal: Major Flaws and Positive Elements: Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser & Amb. Alan Baker, JCPA, Aug. 27, 2015 — In light of the centrality and vast importance of the debate around the July 14, 2015, agreement between Iran and the main world powers – “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA )1 – and with a view to analyzing in a straightforward manner the various aspects of this agreement, this analysis lists the major flaws of the agreement, as well as its positive elements.

Military Officers Come Out Strongly Against Nuclear Iran Deal: Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Jewish Press, Aug. 27, 2015— President Obama and fellow supporters of the Nuclear Iran Deal boasted that it must be the right deal because they were able to gather 36 military officers to endorse it.

If Iran’s Behavior Calls for Plan B: Shoshana Bryen, Breaking Israel News, Aug. 25, 2015 — In an interview on CNN, President Obama eschewed the notion of “Plan B” in case the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran failed to pass Congress. “I don’t plan to lose,” he said.

Thinking About the Unthinkable: An Israel-Iran Nuclear War: John Bosma, American Thinker, Aug. 23, 2015 — In an interview on CNN, President Obama eschewed the notion of “Plan B” in case the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran failed to pass Congress. “I don’t plan to lose,” he said.

On Topic Links

Surviving the Obama Presidency and the Iranian Bomb: Noah Beck, Breaking Israel News, Aug. 27, 2015

Former Intel Chief: US, Israel Should Reach Parallel Iran Agreement: Yaakov Lappin, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 30, 2015

Israel Keeps Wary Eye on Iranian Missile Buildup: Barbara Opall-Rome, Israel Defense, Aug. 29, 2015

My Position on the Iran Deal: Charles E. Schumer, Aug. 6, 2015

VITAL POINTS ON THE IRAN DEAL:

MAJOR FLAWS AND POSITIVE ELEMENTS                                                       

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser & Amb. Alan Baker                                                               

JCPA, Aug. 27, 2015

In light of the centrality and vast importance of the debate around the July 14, 2015, agreement between Iran and the main world powers – “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA ) – and with a view to analyzing in a straightforward manner the various aspects of this agreement, this analysis lists the major flaws of the agreement, as well as its positive elements. It concludes with a discussion of some of the dilemmas inherent in the agreement and its implications.

Flaws of the agreement: The agreement is set to enable Iran safely, legally, and without economic hardships or changes in its rogue policies, to overcome the main obstacles on its way to possessing a nuclear weapons arsenal and becoming a regional hegemonic power. The agreement will legally provide Iran with the capability to shorten the time required to produce such an arsenal within the next 10-15 years (including the production of fissile material, weaponization, acquiring delivery systems, and improved military capabilities to protect the military nuclear program), so that it would be practically impossible to stop it. This is in exchange for a questionable and barely verifiable Iranian commitment to avoid producing arms and some limited restrictions on its nuclear program for 10-15 years.

Reliance on Iran’s open reaffirmation in the agreement that it will not seek, develop, or acquire nuclear weapons is untrustworthy and even naïve, given Iran’s past record of concealing its nuclear activities, its periodic declarations of hostility vis-à-vis the U.S. and Israel, and its regime’s messianic aspirations.

The agreement fails to empower the international community with the means to prevent Iran’s crossing the line that keeps it from producing a nuclear weapon even during the 10-15 years in which there are restrictions on its enrichment. Iran could accomplish it via various paths: First, through a “break out” policy, since, unlike the main argument of the U.S. Administration that Iran will need a year to acquire enough fissile material for its first nuclear explosive device, in fact it is going to need only about six months to acquire the necessary amount. Second, Iran can adopt a “sneak out” policy since its nuclear activities outside the declared sites are not going to be effectively monitored, if at all, and since there is no real monitoring of its cooperation with other rogue countries such as North Korea.

In short, the agreement unilaterally and unconditionally grants Iran everything it has been seeking without any viable quid-pro-quo from Iran to the international community. Inasmuch as the agreement paves the way for Iran to produce an arsenal of nuclear weapons through the enrichment of uranium before the 10-15 year period, after the period, and certainly later through the production and processing of plutonium, the agreement is clearly a danger to the world order and to the future of the Middle East, as well as to U.S. interests and to the security of Israel…

In order to obtain a nuclear arsenal, Iran has to acquire sufficient quantities of fissile material (uranium enriched to around 90 percent or processed plutonium), gain the ability to turn this material into a weapon (“weaponization”), and produce delivery systems, with an emphasis on long-range missiles. In addition, it has to be able to protect its nuclear facilities from attack so that it may safely cross the sensitive period in which it is trying to produce a nuclear arsenal but it has not yet completed a nuclear bomb (the “threshold”).

The deal solves all of Iran’s problems, if it is ready to wait 10-15 years, by shortening the threshold that separates it from a nuclear arsenal to practically no time. It does not effectively prevent Iran from breaching the agreement and achieving its goal even earlier, if it decides that the conditions justify it…

Three paths are open for Iran to secure the enriched uranium for a nuclear weapons arsenal: break out, sneak out, or wait out patiently until the sunset of the restrictions on its (military) nuclear program in 10 or 15 years which are included in the agreement. It has to be emphasized that Iran does not have any civilian justification for its vast nuclear program, a fact affirmed by the United States and the European Union. Therefore, the entire logic of the agreement is baseless and stands in striking contradiction to the November 24, 2013, Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), which states that the enrichment capabilities will be in line with Iran’s civilian needs.

Break out – Rather than blocking Iran’s ability to enrich uranium to a weapons-grade level to produce nuclear weapons, the agreement enables Iran, if/when it decides to breach the agreement and dismiss the inspectors, to do so within a six-month period and not in a year as the U.S. Administration repeatedly and falsely claims. By activating the 13,000 centrifuges and related equipment that are going to be uninstalled, rather than destroyed or sent out of Iran (the agreement requires Iran merely to store the equipment under IAEA monitoring), Iran will need only six months to produce enough fissile material for the first nuclear explosive device.

Moreover, the agreement imposes only very minor limitations on the continued development of highly sophisticated and advanced centrifuges and basically allows Iran to proceed with them. Part of these centrifuges may be installed in the deep underground facility in Fordow. Despite President Obama’s declaration that there is no justification for Iran’s Fordow military enrichment facility – the sole purpose of which is to create weapons-grade uranium – the agreement makes no requirement that Iran dismantle that military facility…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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MILITARY OFFICERS COME OUT STRONGLY

AGAINST NUCLEAR IRAN DEAL                                                                                       

Lori Lowenthal Marcus                                    

Jewish Press, Aug. 27, 2015

President Obama and fellow supporters of the Nuclear Iran Deal boasted that it must be the right deal because they were able to gather 36 military officers to endorse it. Well, a group of five volunteers in less than a week were able to gather more than 190 retired officers to sign on to a letter in opposition to the deal.

Those officers include 22 Admirals and 4 star generals, 46 vice admirals and lieutenant generals, 96 Rear admirals and Major Generals and 24 brigadier generals.

The letter they signed unequivocally states that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by the United States and its partners in the P5+1, rather than “‘cut[ting] off every pathway’ for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons,” instead actually “provides Iran with a legitimate path to doing that simply by abiding by the deal.” The letter, the full text of which appears below, was delivered on Wednesday, Aug. 26, to the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, the House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid…

The letter to the members of Congress, as delivered, reads as follows: Dear Representatives Boehner and Pelosi and Senators McConnell and Reid:

As you know, on July 14, 2015, the United States and five other nations announced that a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been reached with Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. In our judgment as former senior military officers, the agreement will not have that effect. Removing sanctions on Iran and releasing billions of dollars to its regime over the next ten years is inimical to the security of Israel and the Middle East. There is no credibility within JCPOA’s inspection process or the ability to snap back sanctions once lifted, should Iran violate the agreement. In this and other respects, the JCPOA would threaten the national security and vital interests of the United States and, therefore, should be disapproved by the Congress.

The agreement as constructed does not “cut off every pathway” for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. To the contrary, it actually provides Iran with a legitimate path to doing that simply by abiding by the deal. JCPOA allows all the infrastructure the Iranians need for a nuclear bomb to be preserved and enhanced.Notably, Iran is allowed to: continue to enrich uranium; develop and test advanced centrifuges; and continue work on its Arak heavy-water plutonium reactor. Collectively, these concessions afford the Iranians, at worst, a ready breakout option and, at best, an incipient nuclear weapons capability a decade from now.

The agreement is unverifiable. Under the terms of the JCPOA and a secret side deal (to which the United States is not privy), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be responsible for inspections under such severe limitations as to prevent them from reliably detecting Iranian cheating. For example, if Iran and the inspectors are unable to reach an accommodation with respect to a given site, the result could be at least a 24-day delay in IAEA access.The agreement also requires inspectors to inform Iran in writing as to the basis for its concerns about an undeclared site, thus further delaying access. Most importantly, these inspections do not allow access to Iranian military facilities, the most likely location of their nuclear weapons development efforts. In the JCPOA process, there is substantial risk of U.S. intelligence being compromised, since the IAEA often relies on our sensitive data with respect to suspicious and/or prohibited activity.

While failing to assure prevention of Iran’s nuclear weapons development capabilities, the agreement provides by some estimates $150 billion dollars or more to Iran in the form of sanctions relief. As military officers, we find it unconscionable that such a windfall could be given to a regime that even the Obama administration has acknowledged will use a portion of such funds to continue to support terrorism in Israel, throughout the Middle East and globally, whether directly or through proxies. These actions will be made all the more deadly since the JCPOA will lift international embargoes on Iran’s access to advanced conventional weapons and ballistic missile technology.

In summary, this agreement will enable Iran to become far more dangerous, render the Mideast still more unstable and introduce new threats to American interests as well as our allies. In our professional opinion, far from being an alternative to war, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action makes it likely that the war the Iranian regime has waged against us since 1979 will continue, with far higher risks to our national security interests. Accordingly, we urge the Congress to reject this defective accord…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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IF IRAN’S BEHAVIOR CALLS FOR PLAN B

Shoshana Bryen                                                                                                  

Breaking Israel News, Aug. 25, 2015

In an interview on CNN, President Obama eschewed the notion of “Plan B” in case the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran failed to pass Congress. “I don’t plan to lose,” he said. No one “plans” to lose, and Mr. Obama may be headed to a win over Congress, meaning the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will become operational. However, it’s far from apparent that the White House has a Plan B thought out for either the vote or for the day after, an essential tool for ensuring the safety and security of the United States and its interests abroad.

What if the Iranians cheat or there is at least mounting evidence of malfeasance? What if President Hassan Rouhani is overthrown and his successor is even more anti-American? Well, what if? What if the next crisis isn’t even in the Persian Gulf? Regardless of the fate of the Iran agreement, America needs Plan B to reverse the most egregious effects of military decline, restore America’s global capabilities, and assure both allies and adversaries that the United States has not gone on permanent hiatus. Sequestration, Congress‘ option for restraining spending, was enacted in 2011. As Congress prepares the 2016 defense spending bill, the services have spent five years deferring training and maintenance, and watching troop levels decline. Long-term planning in the absence of a long-term spending plan has become almost impossible.

In a recent hearing, Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, Air Force chief of staff, said it would take “eight to 10 years to return the Air Force to full readiness.” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said it would be 2018 before the delayed maintenance on ships is complete, and an additional two years is needed to perform all deferred maintenance on aircraft. During that time and beyond, said Republican Rep. Michael Turner of Ohio, “We can lose, people will die, and people will be injured,” as a result of decreased readiness.

It isn’t just money. “Our requirements have been more unexpected, our enemies more unpredictable, and our ability to handle multiple simultaneous situations more uncertain,” said Army Secretary John McHugh.

An informal poll of priorities among experts in the services — most of whom preferred to remain anonymous — elicited the following:

For one retired Marine major general, it was funding the soon-to-be-selected new Amphibious Combat Vehicle. “We are at least a decade behind in ground vehicle modernization in general, and a new ACV in particular. Another priority should be new amphibious shipping. The joint USN-USMC power-projection requirement is for at least 38 amphibious ships; we have 29.”

For the Navy, a civilian analyst responded, “Congress should raise the number of carriers that the Navy is legally required to have from 11 to 12 and pay for Ohio-class replacement submarines over, above, separately and independently of the Navy’s [already insufficient] shipbuilding budget.” A retired Coast Guard admiral wanted accelerated ship replacement, specifically offshore patrol cutters and Polar-class icebreakers. “Funding has been limited so far resulting in loss of capability as old ships break and significant reduction in being able to take advantage of production efficiencies and savings.”

One Army answer focused on Iran: Special Forces “to go one-on-one against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps worldwide,” cybercapabilities to “make sure Iran needs to worry about our ability to completely turn off the grid in Iran,” and advanced upper-tier missile defense, “to ensure that if Iran develops a ballistic nuclear capability, it doesn’t get beyond Iranian territory before being shot down.”

Not everyone was service-specific. While noting problems with flying hours, aircraft maintenance and pilot retention, a retired Air Force general pointed to a comment by a Marine as the chief challenge for all the services. “The fundamental job of the military, ‘kill bad people and break things,’ has become critically hampered by ‘rules of engagement’ [and policies] whose guiding logic is political outcome, not successful combat.” A stronger American approach to NATO, including more forward-deployed troops would help the Baltic States and Poland, both increasingly unnerved by Russian cyber-attacks and adventurism in Ukraine. The United States should also revisit installation of the missile defense radars in Poland and the Czech Republic that were approved in the George W. Bush administration but canceled by President Obama.

In the Pacific, Australia has been increasing its defense budget in light of Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. The U.S. has allies and friends in the Pacific and should be leading an effort to better define boundaries and resource rights — with China, if China wants to be cooperative; without it, if necessary. With these priorities and others, it is time for the United States to embark on a serious program to find, fund and execute Plan B to defend America, its allies and its interests.

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THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE:

AN ISRAEL-IRAN NUCLEAR WAR                                                                                           

John Bosma                                                                                                        

American Thinker, Aug. 23, 2015

The signing of a Munich-class agreement with Iran that hands it more than it ever hoped to pull off represents a shocking, craven American capitulation to an apocalyptic crazy state: a North Korea with oil. Nothing in Western history remotely approaches it, not even Neville Chamberlain's storied appeasement of another antisemitic negotiating partner.

But it also augurs the possibility of a nuclear war coming far sooner than one could have imagined under conventional wisdom worst-case scenarios. Following the US's betrayal of Israel and its de facto detente with Iran, we cannot expect Israel to copy longstanding US doctrines of no-first-nuclear-use and preferences for conventional-weapons-only war plans. After all, both were premised (especially after the USSR's 1991 collapse) on decades of US nuclear and conventional supremacy. If there ever were an unassailable case for a small, frighteningly vulnerable nation to pre-emptively use nuclear weapons to shock, economically paralyze, and decapitate am enemy sworn to its destruction, Israel has arrived at that circumstance.

Why? Because Israel has no choice, given the radical new alignment against it that now includes the US, given reported Obama threats in 2014 to shoot down Israeli attack planes, his disclosure of Israel's nuclear secrets and its Central Asian strike-force recovery bases, and above all his agreement to help Iran protect its enrichment facilities from terrorists and cyberwarfare – i.e., from the very special-operations and cyber forces that Israel would use in desperate attempts to halt Iran's bomb. Thus Israel is being forced, more rapidly and irreversibly than we appreciate, into a bet-the-nation decision where it has only one forceful, game-changing choice — early nuclear pre-emption – to wrest back control of its survival and to dictate the aftermath of such a survival strike.

Would this involve many nuclear weapons? No – probably fewer than 10-15, although their yields must be sufficiently large to maximize ground shock. Would it produce Iranian civilian casualties? Yes but not as many as one might suppose, as it would avoid cities. Most casualties would be radiological, like Chernobyl, rather than thermal and blast casualties. Would it spur a larger catalytic nuclear war? No. Would it subsequently impel Russia, China and new proliferators to normalize nuclear weapons in their own war planning? Or would the massive global panic over the first nuclear use in anger in 70 years, one that would draw saturation media coverage, panic their publics into urgent demands for ballistic missile self-defense systems? Probably the latter.

The Iranian elite's ideology and controlling political psychology is inherently preferential towards nukes and direct population targeting as a way to implement Shi'ite messianism and end-times extremism. Iran is a newly nuclear apocalyptic Shi'ite regime that ranks as the most blatantly genocidal government since the Khmer Rouge's Sorbonne-educated leaders took over Cambodia in April, 1975. Senior Iranian officials have periodically tied nuclear war to the return of the Twelfth Imam or Mahdi, which Iran's previous president anticipated within several years. This reflects not just the triumphalist enthusiasm of a new arriviste nuclear power that just won more at the table than it dared to dream. It also reflects a self-amplifying, autarchic end-days theology that is immune to both reality testing and to Western liberal/progressive tenets about prim and proper nuclear behavior.

Admittedly, Iranian leaders have lately resorted to envisioning Israel's collapse in more restrained terms through Palestinian demographic takeover of the Israeli state and asymmetric warfare. Still there remains a lurid history of Iranian officials urging the elimination of Israel and its people, of allocating their nukes to Israeli territory to maximize Jewish fatalities, of Iranian officials leading crowds in chants of “Death to Israel!” Iran's government also released a video game allowing players to target various kinds of Iranian ballistic missiles against Israeli cities – this as part of intensive propaganda drumming up hatred of Jews. A more recent video game envisions a massive Iranian ground army marching to liberate Jerusalem. In all, Iran's official stoking of genocidal Jew hatred is far beyond what Hitler’s government dared to advocate before the 1939 outbreak of World War 2.

The deliberate American silence over Iran's genocidal intentionality sends an unmistakable signal to Israel that the US no longer recognizes a primordial, civilizational moral obligation to protect it from the most explicit threats imaginable. It is truly on its own, with the US in an all-but-overt alliance with its worst enemy. The shock to Israel's leaders of this abrupt American lurch into tacitly accepting this Iranian intentionality cannot be understated. Iran is violating the core tenets of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, a US initiative after the Tokyo and Nuremberg war-crimes trials to codify genocide as a crime against humanity. Now the US is silent…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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On Topic

Surviving the Obama Presidency and the Iranian Bomb: Noah Beck, Breaking Israel News, Aug. 27, 2015—When, in 2012, I authored a cautionary tale about the dangers of a nuclear Iran, I never imagined a U.S. president who would, just a few years later, actively try to strengthen Iran’s geopolitical and financial position while providing international legitimacy to the Iranian nuclear program. But sometimes truth is scarier than fiction.

Former Intel Chief: US, Israel Should Reach Parallel Iran Agreement: Yaakov Lappin, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 30, 2015 —The US and Israel should enter into a bilateral, parallel agreement in response to the highly problematic Iran nuclear agreement, former Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin said over the weekend.

Israel Keeps Wary Eye on Iranian Missile Buildup: Barbara Opall-Rome, Israel Defense, Aug. 29, 2015— Israel is keeping a “very sharp eye” on Iran’s modernized ballistic missile arsenal and will be “ready to respond” should the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) attempt to export the new Fateh 313 to Lebanon- or Syria-based proxies, a defense official says.

My Position on the Iran Deal: Charles E. Schumer, Aug. 6, 2015 —Every several years or so a legislator is called upon to cast a momentous vote in which the stakes are high and both sides of the issue are vociferous in their views.