US Admits Iran Is Not
Building a Nuclear Bomb
"Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon
and we currently believe it is not pursuing
one."
By Ted Snider
November 07, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "Antiwar"
- America’s top diplomat for
negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran said on
October 30 that the US is not going to "waste
time" trying to keep the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal alive.
President Biden’s special envoy for Iran,
Robert Malley,
said that “It is not on our agenda. We are
not going to focus on something which is inert
when other things are happening…and we are not
going to waste our time on it… if Iran has taken
the position it has taken."
Apparently reading from the script, Malley
insistence that "we are not going to focus" on
the negotiations echoes earlier statements from
the State Department. On October 12, State
Department spokesman Ned Price used the same
formulation,
saying that the negotiations are "not our
focus right now."
The Biden administration has walked so far
away from the negotiations that another senior
US official recently
said that because of Iran’s response to
protests and because of its support for Russia
in the war in Ukraine, "even if Iran came back
to the table today and said it wanted a nuclear
deal, the U.S. was unlikely to move forward."
That senior Biden official went on to say
that the US is virtually considering the deal
dead and is "taking steps to ensure the US has a
ready military option." Malley, while denying
that diplomacy is totally dead, echoed those
words too, declaring that Biden "is ready to use
military means as a last resort to prevent Iran
from acquiring a nuclear weapon."
The US is not wasting its time renegotiating
the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran because of
Iran’s response to protests or because Iran is
supporting Russia. Were Iran developing a
nuclear weapon, it would be worthwhile
negotiating a nuclear agreement to prevent it
from getting one whatever its position on
protests or Russia. The US is wasting its time
renegotiating a nuclear agreement to stop Iran
from developing a nuclear bomb because the US
has admitted that Iran is not developing a
nuclear bomb.
On October 27, after a long delay, the US
Department of Defense finally released its
Nuclear Posture Review. The review contained
a bombshell that failed to explode in the media
because it was understandably lost in the glare
of three other bombshells that the Secretary of
Defense dropped.
The US insistence that it would use a nuclear
weapon in a first strike, that it would use a
nuclear weapon in the face of a conventional
threat and that it would use a nuclear weapon,
not only to defend itself, but to defend an ally
were colossal enough to draw all the attention.
But that meant that what went unnoticed was
the colossal admission that Iran is not even
building a nuclear weapon nor has it even made a
decision to pursue one. The Nuclear Posture
Review makes that admission, not once, but
twice. And the admission is made again in the
National Defense Strategy in which it is
included.
The Nuclear Posture Review first says that
"Iran does not currently pose a nuclear threat
but continues to develop capabilities that would
enable it to produce a nuclear weapon should it
make the decision to do so." It then formulates
the truth about Iran in the greatest clarity:
"Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon
and we currently believe it is not pursuing
one."
If the US knows that Iran does not posses a
nuclear weapon and does not even believe that it
is pursuing one, then why the threats,
assassinations, sabotage and sanctions? Why are
Iranian people being starved, scientists and
generals being killed, nuclear plants being
crippled and war being threatened?
If the US is concerned that Iranian nuclear
activities are continuing, then they should not
abandon the renegotiation of the JCPOA nuclear
agreement, but return to it, since they admit in
the Nuclear Posture Review that these activities
were "previously constrained by the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)."
Prior to the US illegally pulling out of the
JCPOA, Iran was in full compliance with its
JCPOA commitments. Eleven consecutive
International Atomic Energy Agency reports
verified that
Iran was completely and consistently in
compliance with their commitments under the
agreement. Iran only started slowly and
reversibly going beyond the limits prescribed by
the JCPOA long after the US had ended their
legal requirement to comply by illegally leaving
the agreement.
Why sanction Iran and abandon the JCPOA
negotiations when Iran is neither possessing nor
pursuing a bomb and when Iran’s actions of
concern were constrained by, and can be
constrained again by, the JCPOA agreement that
the US is abandoning?
The absurdity of Malley’s recent statement is
revealed by the Nuclear Posture Review. It is a
waste of time to negotiate a deal to stop Iran
from developing a weapon that the US believes it
is not pursuing. It is not a waste of time to
renegotiate an agreement that "previously
constrained" the very activities the US hopes to
constrain.
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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