Monitoring Iran - 24 Days Too Long?

The Times finds experts on the Iran nuclear deal who question the 24 day devolution of the "anywhere, anytime" inspection requirement:

Provision in Iran Accord Is Challenged by Some Nuclear Experts

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s claim that the Iran nuclear accord provides for airtight verification procedures is coming under challenge from nuclear experts with long experience in monitoring Tehran’s program.

Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz has insisted that Iran would not be able to hide traces of illicit nuclear work before inspectors gained access to a suspicious site. But several experts, including a former high-ranking official at the International Atomic Energy Agency, said a provision that gives Iran up to 24 days to grant access to inspectors might enable it to escape detection.

Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director of the agency, said in an interview that while “it is clear that a facility of sizable scale cannot simply be erased in three weeks’ time without leaving traces,” the more likely risk is that the Iranians would pursue smaller-scale but still important nuclear work, such as manufacturing uranium components for a nuclear weapon.

“A 24-day adjudicated timeline reduces detection probabilities exactly where the system is weakest: detecting undeclared facilities and materials,” he said.

David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former weapons inspector in Iraq, also said that three weeks might be ample time for the Iranians to dispose of the evidence of prohibited nuclear work. Among the possibilities, he said, were experiments with high explosives that could be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, or the construction of a small plant to make centrifuges.

“If it is on a small scale, they may be able to clear it out in 24 days,” Mr. Albright said in a telephone interview. “They are practiced at cheating. You can’t count on them to make a mistake.”

This article does not address one point and fails to emphasize another.

First, the point seems to be that traces of radioactive material are hard to fully clean up. However, as a novice bystander, I wonder whether the Iranians could play a "hide in plain sight" game by doing prohibited research alongside declared research in a facility to which inspectors had 24 day access. In that case, detecting radioactive material might only confirm that the declared work had in fact been happening.

Which leads to the more important point - evidence of Iranian cheating will need to be unambiguous, because there are several voting members of the monitoring committee, starting with Iran, Russia, China, and Team Obama, who have powerful incentives to promote this deal as an ongoing success.

So the Iranians will be operating sort of like the Clinton Foundation - they don't need to be above reproach, just not so obviously guilty that an indictment is unavoidable. Does a 24 day clean up period leave room to create semi-plausible deniability? I don't know.

 

Comments

[henry]

Does one of Obama's side secret agreements provide for 24 day cleanup services?

[Just make it 24 months and be done with it.]

Meh, they find a violation, who is gonna do something about it? The UN? Obama? Congress?

[Jeff Dobbs]

TM:
So the Iranians will be operating sort of like the Clinton Foundation - they don't need to be above reproach, just not so obviously guilty that an indictment is unavoidable.

Well, the Clintons do have a trial date set for the Klayman RICO suit....

[The language changes. Heh, so does logic.]

Yikes, neither Pompeo nor Cotton know how to beg a question.

[Old Lurker]

No need to get lost in the weeds of the agreement.

We removed all roadblocks, restored their cash balances and restored their future income stream. North Korea turned far fewer assets into working bombs so why one would think a bunch of smart Persians who hate Jews and the West cannot do the same?

Obama has achieved his objective and the only mystery is where it goes boom.

[Old Lurker]

Scratch that.

Boehner is going to protect us "House Speaker John Boehner vows to do 'everything possible' to stop President Obama's newly struck Iran nuclear deal, as Congress formally begins consideration of the hard-fought pact."

The sad thing is he keeps saying things like that and somebody still believe him.

[sbw]

"House Speaker John Boehner vows to do 'everything possible'

Boehner just doesn’t think anything is possible.

[Old Lurker]

Bingo SBW

[henry]

Obama already got it through the UN. Congress duped itself* as usual.

*well, it duped the LIVs. Looking stupid itself while doing so is a short term problem with an ADHD electorate.

[Old Lurker]

Henry, the toothpaste is out of the tube and the tube has been thrown away.

[squaredance]

Yes, that is really the point: so let us say that they have anytime, anywhere inspections, indeed let us say they station a US inspector permanently in all facilities; what could possibly happen if they found something wrong?

Well, effectively nothing would happen.

The point is really that Obama has essentially surrendered the US positions in the ME, and in fact undone not just the work of GWB but undone that of the entire post war era, and opened the door for Russia and China to fill the vacuum.

These are, of course the major goals of the Obamaites in this deal and in all ME policy; shafting Israel is just the icing on the cake.

Everything that we hear out of this administration is a lie. These are not some naive musings we are hearing out of Obama and Kerry--they are lying right in our faces, and it is obvious not just to "The Right" but just about everyone outside the Democrat's core cadre of Useful Idiots.

But no matter what happens in congress these goals are already reached, as the rest of the nations involved are going to go ahead with it no matter what; certainly they will not hang on what the US congress is going to say, even if Congress had the manhood to "stop" it.

Who would have the USA for an ally now?Better to make deals with Russia, China, and a tame EU, than deal with the US.

I do not see where the USA has ever looked weaker or more feckless. The only time we came even close to this was under Carter, but the implications of this far eclipse those handed the world by him.

It took us really quite a while to recover internationally from Vietnam, and then we had such people as Reagan, Thatcher and Pope JP2 willing to fight for us.

It will be a long march out of the wasteland.

The only two bright lights we see thus far appears to be Walker's response to all of this, and what appears to be a broad rejection of this by the people.

Even should we somehow turn around this Iranian deal in the next administration--and it is doubtful that they can do this by attempting to reimpose international sanctions, as Walker clearly sees--the broader issue of the damage that Obama and Co. have wrought to our international standing will not go away, and will hamper and haunt us for quite some time.

This was all intentional and planned, and you can take it to the bank that Obama is merely an agent in this agenda, not its architect.

It has absolutely nothing to do with limiting Irans power of any sort. Quite the contrary.

[Extraneus]

Maine brewer makes beer out of live lobsters, sea salt

[MarkO]

No doubt Obama surrendered. Perhaps worse, the great coalition builder squandered the one we had against Iran having a bomb. His justification for the weak and cowering deal is that the others, his "partners" the sovereign nations going to the UN, will no longer support sanctions.

Smart diplomacy. Wait, he's just not that smart.

[James D]

CH posted a link a couple of threads ago to a Politico article about Lizzie Warren.

Everyone in the GOP needs to read it, and start responding accordingly.

Warren is a sitting United States Senator. She's a figure of respect on the left, a cover story in Time Magazine this week, a regular guest anywhere there's a microphone, and a universally acknowldged spokesperson for the progressives. She's a mainstream voice in the Democratic Party.

And look at her comments: directly, eprsonally insulting Republicans by name, with belittling eprsonal insults. Calling out all Republicans as racists, bigots and so forth.

It is SO far past time for the R's to get it. The Dems can't be reasoned with. They do not have good intentions. They are not decent human beings. And pretending they are to not upset the muddle or scare the Lackwitz Sisters is not going to work anymore, not that it ever really did.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

We breathlessly await DavidM's sage counsel on these matters.

[squaredance]

Of course, he got exactly what he wanted, so in that sense he was "Smart", at least to the extent that he had anything to say about it at all. Most likely he is just a prop in this hideous theater.

Taken as a whole, the Administration's "positions", if one can call them that, do not even logically parse in the most basic sense. A lawyer that tried this sort of fraudulent "reasoning" would get laughed out of court; it would get one booted from a High School debate club. Yet here we are.

It all smacks of con-men playing a Mark, which of course is exactly what they are doing, and I think for once the Nation sees this more or less clearly. It may be just the stench of the lies here rather than an understanding of the ME or Iran in particular that opens people's eyes.

As most over 50 know, the whole post war era was one of dragging recalcitrant "partners", in the UN or elsewhere, into the light of day. It may well be that the Obamites may not know how to do this, but that is beside the point for they had no intention of doing this in the first place. The Administration drove this effort, not our "partners", and if they would not have driven it odds are that we would still be where we were before they started.

Lies upon lies upon lies. That is all we get. They cannot hold long, but this time the price will be steep beyond reckoning.

The tragic and deadly outcome that surely must come is precisely what they want.

[squaredance]

Again, the GOP does not understand who and what the Democrats actually are.

They seem to think that this is a football game or something. They think that they can keep riding the Marxist tiger. This is because the GOP Establishment, or at least those who are not Democrat infiltrators, is concerned more about money and power rather than saving the country from the Left.

Boy, are they in for a shock somewhere down the road.

[Captain Hate]

We breathlessly await DavidM's sage counsel on these matters.

Nobody ever thought _____________________ was a reasonable expectation.

[Captain Hate]

Boy, are they in for a shock somewhere down the road.

I hope that refers to the electric chair for all of them.

[MarkO]

Only naïve adults and children believe in fair play.

[squaredance]

Well I think the actually mode of execution depends on which camp they finally get assigned to--up to the commissar in charge in their district..er, ah...soviet...no doubt.

[Frau Edith Steingehirn]

squaredance- During the 2000 election, I made a sign for my front yard that read "Kerry-the mark of Soros." I feel the same about Hillary! and Obama. Soros is rapidly checking off the items on his political bucket list.

kim - in our house we have sworn to avoid the term "begs the question" since using it correctly leads to confusion!

[squaredance]

Absolutely, but I will point out that Soros is not alone--there is quite a thicket of "check lists". Soros is more obvious because his ego forces him more out into the open.

Still, it amazes that we can be undone by such characters.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

We are certainly living in prophetic times; China & Russia re Iran are playing their parts, and somehow, apparently, America had to elect a 'Barack Obama' to help kick start the action.

This article was written 18 months ago - ponder on how things have accelerated since then:

http://destination-yisrael.biblesearchers.com/destination-yisrael/2013/12/china-russia-and-iran-prepare-for-daniels-prophetic-war-against-america-and-nato-europe.html

[sbw]

Only naïve adults and children believe in fair play.

If you mean believing the other side will play far, of course not. Machiavelli rules until you discover that by playing these rules to win, a win is only temporary.

If you mean because the other side will break rules that our side should, that is not the case. We should play fair despite cheating on the other side because it is in our long term best interest to do so.

[Captain Hate]

Just like in 1992, the GOPe has nobody to blame but itself if a third party run happens.

[James D]

sbw, I disagree.

Playing by the rules, when the other side has thrown them out, when there's nobody to call fouls or penalties anyway, and when the people on the sidelines watching don't even know there ever were rules in the first place...is a recipe for defeat.

The progs have told us what kind of contest they want. We can play accordingly, or we can lose. There really isn't a third choice.

[narciso]

Il Macchia worked for a mafia don in today's parlance, Cesare Borgia, allied with the supreme ecclesiastical authority, his father Pope Alexander V1, if memory serves, you see the analogy I'm going for with this,

[Frau Edith Steingehirn]

Privileged classes of US citizens on the rise:

"Under the clarified guidance from USCIS, certain immigrant candidates for citizenship do not need to declare that they will “bear arms on behalf of the United States” and “perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States.”
LUN

Pfui! What next?

[Frau Edith Steingehirn]

"Only naïve adults and children believe in fair play. "

Besides them, there's BHO's Free Carp Army that doesn't give a consarn about methods and means.

[jimmyk on iPhone]

"Just like in 1992, the GOPe has nobody to blame but itself if a third party run happens."

Trump is such an egotist that I suspect he's more likely to go 3rd party if the R nominee is someone who dissed him like Perry, as opposed to Walker or Cruz.

[narciso]

probably, someone probably showed him the codevilla piece,

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/07/22/ice_director_tells_ted_cruz_he_is_absolutely_right_about_obama_admin_releasing.html

[sbw]

The progs have told us what kind of contest they want. We can play accordingly, or we can lose. There really isn't a third choice.

I expect you have read the Hunger Games to discover that good guys too easily become bad guys themselves.

One can compete outside the box without losing core principles. One has to or principles aren’t principles.

We are not in the no-rules war scenario, and perish the thought good people in this country might have to be. We are still engaged in a conflict of ideas . . . and in instilling the processes to contemplate them.

[sbw]

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred will speak at our local chamber annual breakfast Friday morning. He went to school in the class of my wife’s brother.

[DebinNC]

Trump is such an egotist that I suspect he's more likely to go 3rd party if the R nominee is someone who dissed him like Perry, as opposed to Walker or Cruz.

I agree with that. Trump doesn't seem to gratuitously issue personal insults to people who haven't personally insulted him first. I think Rubio has now remarked that neither BOzo or Trump "has class", maybe thinking getting into a back and forth with Trump will get him more attention than he's getting on his own.

[MarkO]

"I expect you have read the Hunger Games to discover that good guys too easily become bad guys themselves."

No such thing as fair play anywhere, much less in politics.

So amusing are the candidates and their functionaries trying to get Rush or someone to "smother" Trump. Now Perry is after Trump for, oh please, insulting McCain.

Of course Trump is breaking all the "rules" of this election cycle. So did Obama, with his lawlessness. The Establishment tut-tutted but had no idea how to contain him.

Will there be a GOP conservative strong enough to take him on the merits, because if not, there will be no GOP candidate who can win.

Can we find someone who can win?

[Captain Hate]

Perry needs to STFU and go away. I can't believe what a worthless boil on the ass of the GOPe he's become after listening to that idiot Schmidt.