At Last, Has The World Heard The Real President Trump? By Sigurd Neubauer: New Age Islam's Selection, 21 September 2017
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
21 September 2017
• At Last, Has The World Heard The Real President Trump?
By Sigurd Neubauer
• Qatar and the Saudi ‘Invasion’ That Never Was
By Abdulrahman Al-Rashed
• The Srebrenicans Are Standing With the Rohingya
By Camil Durakovic
• Mosul's Seat of Learning Now In Ruins
By Stephennie Mulder
• Renewed Hope In Qatar’s Emerging Opposition
By Abdullah Bin Bijad Al-Otaibi
• Why the Iranian Nuclear Deal Should Not Be Cancelled
By Maria Dubovikova
• Iran’s Nuclear Deal Must Be Fully Enforced or Scrapped
By Oubai Shahbandar
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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At Last, Has The World Heard The Real President Trump?
By Sigurd Neubauer
20 September 2017
President Donald Trump delivered on Tuesday a forceful yet measured address to the UN General Assembly that balanced his nationalist domestic agenda with a commitment to US global leadership by pledging to uphold the rules-based international system that was established after the Second World War. He reaffirmed his commitment to the UN, helping refugees and enhancing global cooperation to strengthen humanity’s shared goals.
But Trump also chided the North Korean regime for its brutal repression of its own people, and warned that Washington will never accept its nuclear program. By threatening to “blow up” North Korea, he repeated that the military option remains on the table, but that a diplomatic process spearheaded by the UN Security Council — with the support of Russia and China — remains his preferred choice.
Before Trump’s UN address, US Defense Secretary James Mattis told the Wall Street Journal that Washington has “military options available for North Korea that would not put South Korea at grave risk of counterattack,” but declined to elaborate.
Between Trump’s UN speech and Mattis’s warning, the US administration is signalling that it has a coherent strategy vis-a-vis the North Korean threat — presented by its nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile program — and that a military option would be used as leverage to ensure that the difficult diplomatic process with Pyongyang can move forward without repeating decades of failed US policy on the matter.
On Iran, Trump reiterated his well-known criticism of the nuclear deal, but stopped short of calling for its abolition. However, he continued to push back on Tehran’s destabilizing regional policies, including by chiding its role in Syria and Yemen.
Trump remained lukewarm about an increased US role in the Syrian conflict, leaving observers to conclude that the reconciliation process will probably continue to be spearheaded by Russia and Turkey. But he left little doubt about the illegitimacy of the Syrian regime, and repeated his warning that further chemical attacks against the Syrian people or any other atrocities would not be tolerated by the US.
Trump’s ability to match rhetoric on the Syria issue with concrete action — as demonstrated by his limited military strike against the regime after it used chemical weapons against its own people in April — is not only a departure from the policies of the Obama administration, but also signals to the North Korean leadership that Washington’s military option against Pyongyang is not just a hollow threat.
Given Trump’s well-known disregard for traditional US diplomatic norms and practices, his speech was unlike any given by his predecessors. It should be considered a major improvement on his previous speeches, especially his dark inaugural address in January, as he refrained from UN bashing and outlined a coherent vision, whether or not one agrees with it.
The speech was not only about threatening North Korea, which certainly many commentators will focus on — and condemn, as it is fashionable and politically correct to trash everything Trump says; but it also outlined his administration’s goals for international security. Regardless of whether one supports Trump’s style, his address was a significant improvement and could even be considered presidential.
Trump, however, also demonstrated consistency in his support for the 80-year-old US-Saudi strategic alliance and his commitment to strengthening regional anti-terrorism cooperation by repeating his core principles from the Riyadh Summit in May.
“In Saudi Arabia early last year, I was greatly honoured to address the leaders of more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations. We agreed that all responsible nations must work together to confront terrorists and the Islamic extremism that inspires them. We will stop radical Islamic terrorism because we cannot allow it to tear up our nation, and indeed, to tear up the entire world. We must deny the terrorists safe haven, transit, funding and any form of support for their vile and sinister ideology. We must drive them out of our nations,” Trump said.
He did not, however, address the continuing dispute between Qatar and its Gulf neighbours, and neither did he mention his well-known policy objective to accelerate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
All things considered, for those who had given up on Trump’s ability to pivot from a controversial showman turned divisive president, as witnessed by his first eight months in office, his General Assembly address should be considered nothing short of transformational. It put forward a positive vision of what the international community can achieve collectively, spearheaded by US global leadership. Whether this transformation will last or whether he will revert back to his controversial style of chiding domestic political opponents — be it the US media, Democrats or illegal immigrants — is, of course, unclear.
What is certain, however, is that North Korea remains Washington’s top foreign policy priority with the Iranian threat to regional stability a distant second.
If Trump follows through on his UN address, international leaders and US allies — in Europe, the Gulf or Asia — should have little doubt of continued US global leadership, but with a caveat; every US ally is expected to step up when it comes to enhancing global burden-sharing so that the common goals of humanity can be achieved.
Source: arabnews.com/node/1164736
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Qatar And The Saudi ‘Invasion’ That Never Was
By Abdulrahman Al-Rashed
20 September 2017
A news agency recently attributed to the White House a statement claiming that President Donald Trump managed to prevent Saudi Arabia and the UAE from invading Qatar. However, an hour later, the US President issued a statement denying the report.
Then another story surfaced claiming that President Trump had rebuked the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim, when they met in New York, and showed him secret information proving that Qatar continued to finance terrorism even after it signed a commitment with the Americans to stop doing so weeks before.
Many stories have been circulated for political purposes, despite the availability of facts to the contrary. The nature of the crisis and the early entrenchment of Qatar by the American bases and international military alliances defy the logic of such ways of thinking. Nevertheless, Qatar has resorted to this propaganda since June to generate sympathy, in Kuwait for instance, and to depict its opponents as evil states.
But the reality is quite the opposite. Qatar has been trying for years to weaken and target states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt. Its targeting of the state of Bahrain, through supporting the opposition which wants to topple the regime, is no secret. Moreover, it has been financing the Saudi extremist religious opposition in London since the 1990s. This Saudi opposition, which calls openly for toppling the government in Saudi Arabia, participated in the assassination plot against late King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz. As for Egypt, observing the Qatari media for one night only would be enough to hear clear calls for toppling the Sissi government by force, in addition to the large and incessant involvement of Qatar in financing the Egyptian opposition.
Nevertheless, none of the affected countries worked on an armed or provocative project against Qatar at the time. Even Hosni Mubarak, the former president of Egypt, who was targeted the most by Qataris, refrained from responding to the Qatari plots and chose to simply ignore them.
The Anti-Terror Quartet, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain, declared openly their program against Qatar, and there are more than 10 other Arab countries that silently support the Quartet against Qatar. The agenda against Qatar is based on the strategy of isolating and weakening it, with the hope of achieving one of two objectives: Either forcing it to change its policies or at least weakening it to prevent it from meddling in others’ affairs. But no one has suggested, or even hinted at, any intention of toppling the regime of Qatar or its ruler.
Many people think, and they may be right, that the present emir, Sheikh Tamim, is helpless, and that the real person who is calling the shots and creating problems in Qatar is his father, who abdicated, in name only, four years ago.
Since the beginning of the crisis, Doha has been asking the Turks, the Americans, and even the Iranians, for help, alleging that the Saudis and Emiratis have been plotting against it, and that they have been stifling Qatar in an unprecedented blockade. No logical person can believe this Qatari gibberish, which has been copied from the manuals of Gaza, about a country full of Ferraris and caviar. In short, the problem is that the spoilt rulers of Doha do not want to stop playing the role of a big regional state, but are unwilling to bear the consequences of their actions.
Source: arabnews.com/node/1164746
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The Srebrenicans Are Standing With the Rohingya
By Camil Durakovic
A year ago, I wrote about Aleppo and Syria. Today, I am writing about another country, another people and yet another crime. I feel obliged to write, because genocide survivors bear a responsibility to react when they realise that others are being threatened with the treatment they once received. My story thus brings me to Southeast Asia and Myanmar, or as we used to call it - Burma. And, therein Arakan.
Arakan is a land in the west of Myanmar. The Rohingya people, the majority of whom are Muslim, live in the northern parts of Arakan, in townships such as Maungdaw and Buthidaung, towards Myanmar's border with Bangladesh. The Rohingya have been living in these areas for a long time, as they are indigenous to this region. But today, some people claim that the Rohingya moved to this area during the British colonial rule and they use this claim to argue that this persecuted minority is not entitled to any right or status in Myanmar.
The persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar began as early as 1982 - they have been denied basic civil rights and freedoms for decades. I know this because I have been reading about the arduous fate of this people for days.
I don't know whether we would have heard about the plight of the Rohingya if they were not Muslims or whether that is precisely why the news about their fate reached us in Srebrenica and strongly resonated with us. What I do know is that, to me, their ethnicity or religion does not matter. They are my brothers regardless of religion. I call them my brothers because we share the same story and the same fate. They are brothers and sisters to everyone from Srebrenica.
"Never Again To Anybody"
Everything that is happening in Myanmar today had happened at dozens of other places before, and it had happened to us, too. These current events are exactly what we have in mind when every year on July 11 we say in our prayers "never again to anybody".
Violence has been present in Myanmar for years. Segregation became legal, persecution "desirable", and entire villages and towns were proclaimed "free of Rohingya" long before the current events. The closing of mosques, revocation of citizenship rights, propaganda and pressure have been a significant part of the Rohingya's daily reality for a very long time. These are facts that are really easy to unearth, and these are the stories we must share.
The Rohingya are now enduring what we, Bosniak Muslims, endured during the war and the genocide, and what we are still enduring to this day in the Republika Srpska.
As the international community's interest for our region and the Bosnian returnees diminishes, we find ourselves asking, "Is our story going to repeat itself once again?"
Today, our children's protests are being ignored and Muslims are being bullied in Republika Srpska. Are these the signs of a far worse situation approaching?
Fundamental to the suffering of both Bosniaks Muslims and the Rohingya, as I see it, is dehumanisation.
They erase our cultural institutions from their "cultural strategies", they forget our writers, they don't hire our journalists, they block the renovation of our cultural and spiritual sites, they deny our right to language and they raid our villages. When our mothers ask, "Who murdered our children?" or when we ask, "Where are the bones of our brothers?", they refuse to answer.
Currently, Bosniacs are nothing but a dot in the Republika Srpska. We, the survivors and the returnees, are cornered. Just like the ill-fated people at the border of Myanmar and Bangladesh, we remain tacitly unwanted on both sides.
An Attempt to Resettle
They would rather resettle us worldwide, which they have tried both during the war and afterwards. They would be the happiest if we have never returned to our homeland, if we neglected our villages and left our land uncultivated. They would rejoice if all disappeared and vanished, if our monuments lost their white colour, if tombstones were not visited, if Al-Fatiha wasn't recited to those we can no longer see, if laughter of our children wasn't heard.
This is why Myanmar is not far away from us. The Rohingya's cries are not far away. Those cries that we hear so clearly are warning us that we alone can win the fight for our freedom, and that we should never wait and pin our hopes on someone else. They will all deceive us, and their symbolic gestures and support will last as long as the commercials on TV.
Therefore, it is important that we, as people who have been through the same, support the Rohingya. This is why I welcome the decision of Grand Mufti Husein Kavazovic to establish a Committee in support of the Rohingya. I am willing to do whatever I can to help.
May it never happen again to anybody. We do not want to say "never again" in our prayers for our lost sons, while we know that a second, third, fourth people is going through the same. When will "never again" be truly never again?
Source: aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/srebrenicans-standing-rohingya-170920075010318.html
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Mosul's Seat of Learning Now In Ruins
By Stephennie Mulder
September 20, 2017
Mosul was founded in ancient times, on the outskirts of the older Assyrian city of Nineveh.
The mosque of Al Nuri in Mosul, built nearly a millennium ago and one of Iraq's most revered religious sites, was destroyed when the Daesh detonated explosives inside it in June.
Founded in the 12th century by one of Islam's most famous rulers, Nur Al Din ibn Zangi, in the medieval period the mosque was considered the "ultimate in beauty and excellence." It was famous for its soaring, 150-foot minaret, the tallest in Iraq and nicknamed Al Hadba or "the Hunchback" because it leaned to one side. Its destruction was a terrible blow to the people of Mosul, and for the rest of the world.
I am a scholar of Islamic art, and my research reveals that such acts of deliberate, ideologically based destruction are unusual in Islamic history. Although today Mosul is famous outside of Iraq primarily as a site of conflict, its rich and diverse history forms an important legacy.
Mosul was founded in ancient times, on the outskirts of the older Assyrian city of Nineveh. The precise date of the city's foundation is unknown, but at least from the medieval era, it was known as Madinat Al Anbiya or City of the Prophets, with dozens of tombs, shrines, synagogues and churches.
Perhaps the most famous of these was the Tomb of the Prophet Jonah, a figure revered by Christians and Muslims alike. In the Bible, God causes Jonah to be swallowed by a whale to convince him of his prophetic mission to preach to the people of Nineveh. And in Islam, Jonah evokes the themes of justice, mercy and obedience - seen as exemplary models for human behaviour.
There were numerous other sites in Mosul linked to prophetic figures: among them, the Monastery of Elijah or Dar Eliyas, a 1,400-year-old Christian monastery thought to be the oldest in Iraq.
Sadly, none of these monuments survived the destruction of Daesh.
Mosul was also an important centre for trade as well as scholarly exchange. It sat at a key junction on the Silk Road - a rich network of premodern superhighways - stretching over mountains, deserts and plains across three continents that moved goods from lands that seemed impossibly distant and exotic to those at either end. Mosul itself was known for some of the most luxurious inlaid metalware of the medieval era.
As a centre of such exchange, the city was home to a diverse group of people: Arabs and Kurds, Christians, Sunnis and Shias, Sufis and dozens of saints holy to many faiths.
It was also home to poets, scholars and philosophers such as the 10th-century philosopher Al Mawsili and the 11th-century astronomer Al Qabisi, one of a line of famous Mosul astronomers who helped formulate a critique of the Earth-centred model of the universe. That model would eventually make its way to Europe to inform Copernicus' view of the solar system. Mosul also produced one of Islam's most famous historians, Ibn Al Athir, who completed his magnum opus, a monumental universal chronicle called The Complete History, in the city in 1231.
Important works of mathematics, including a commentary on the Greek mathematician Euclid that was later translated into Latin, were written in Mosul. It was also a centre for significant medical advances, including an early description of surgery to remove cataracts.
As mosques were traditionally places of knowledge transmission and learning, it is entirely possible that some of these scholars' ideas were formulated, discussed and refined within the walls of Al Nuri Mosque.
Mosul's medieval past informed its contemporary history as well: in modern times, the city was home to some of the most important museums, libraries and universities in Iraq, including a renowned medical school.
Although the mosque of Al Nuri was transformed over the centuries, it remained a beloved symbol of the ancient city and its diverse heritage. In 1942, much of the mosque, with the exception of the minaret, the prayer niche and some of its columns, went through significant renovation. But the mosque did not lose its value for the citizens of Mosul - in fact, it appeared on the Iraqi 10,000 dinar bill.
In June of 2014, when Daesh originally captured the city and approached the mosque with explosives, residents of the town formed a human chain around it.
Only a few short weeks later, in a complete about-face, Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi stood at the pulpit of that same mosque and declared the creation of his "caliphate."
Over time, Mosul will rebuild its damaged mosque. But for those of us outside Iraq, who today know Mosul largely through newspaper stories of war and intolerance, the loss of the mosque will make it that much harder to imagine the diverse intellectual and religious world that once characterised not only Mosul, but all of the Middle East.
Although there were conflicts, people lived in pragmatic cooperation for much of their history.
Source: khaleejtimes.com/editorials-columns/mosuls-seat-of-learning-now-in-ruins
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Renewed Hope In Qatar’s Emerging Opposition
By Abdullah bin Bijad Al-Otaibi
20 September 2017
The Qatari opposition has found a new voice. This was evident at a conference held in London by Qatari opposition figures on Thursday. This new voice and vitality will enable the reinvigorated opposition to pursue its cause in all Qatar-related matters.
It’s been more than three months since Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE boycotted Doha over its relentless 20-year long hostile policies against them. The time has come to increase pressure against Qatar at the international level.
Doha has done its best to hide its heavy handed excesses and executes them in secret. It interferes in internal affairs of other countries and sows seeds of terrorism and destruction. When its brothers asked it to stop indulging in seditious activities against them, it adopted an intransigent attitude and threw itself openly in the camp of Iran, the regional enemy of the Gulf and their people.
Qatar’s Impudence
In spite of all the crimes Iran has perpetrated against Arab and Gulf countries, Qatar’s envoy had the impudence to call Iran an honourable country. This so-called honour which Qatar attributes to Iran is stained with the blood of Arabs in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It is also stained with the blood of the people in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait where Iran did not hesitate to plant its intelligence and terrorism cells.
Qatar has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence western media outlets in the US and Europe to spread news that are harmful to Arab countries, while overlooking its own violations against the Qatari people who are suffering gross injustice.
Doha did not only spend money on media outlets but it also spent millions to influence Western research centres, think tanks, human rights organizations and public relations companies. The voice of a Qatari opposition will help thwart all these plans and expose Doha’s practices against its people along with its several other devious conspiracies.
Uniting the Qatari opposition, as envisioned at the conference held last week, can be a significant step in the right direction as the opposition can then focus on reaching out to international Western decision-makers, think thanks and media outlets to provide a permanent platform for answering questions and providing information and analyses of Qatar’s political, economic and military decisions against the Qatari state or its people.
Human Rights Violations
Nothing harms the regime in Qatar more than spreading the right information about its conspiracies and absolutist ways to the West. For example two decades ago, Qatar revoked the citizenship of 6,000 families from Al-Ghafran clan from Al-Murraha tribe.
The expulsion of these families and confiscation of their property worsened the extent of the crime. Recently, Qatar revoked the citizenship of Sheikh Taleb bin Lahom bin Shreim along with 50 of his relatives.
This issue should be brought to notice of international human rights organizations in the West to demonstrate how Qatar violates the rights of its people and humiliates them just because they do not accept its political adventurism.
We hope the opposition’s conference is able to unify its ranks and that political, legal, media and human rights organizations are formed to tackle all the seditious and terrorism-supporting policies of the Qatari regime.
Source: english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2017/09/20/Renewed-hope-in-Qatar-s-emerging-opposition.html
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Why the Iranian Nuclear Deal Should Not Be Cancelled
By Maria Dubovikova
20 September 2017
Debate over the cancelation or reconsideration of Iran’s nuclear deal is gathering momentum, and Iran is enjoying successes on the geopolitical front, making its adversaries nervous and concerned.
Iran is a “threshold “country, one step from obtaining its own nuclear arsenal. The reasons it would want its own nuclear arms are numerous. For Iran, this would mean a guarantee of safety and containment of hostile countries. A nuclear arsenal would give Iran a much stronger position on the world stage. Iran believes it has a right to nuclear weapons as a great power, a status it can lay claim to as a nation with an undeniably great history and culture. It sees no reason why countries such as Pakistan, India, China and Israel have nuclear weapons and it cannot. Furthermore, acquiring nuclear weapons would mean a breakthrough in Iran’s science field, which is developing with intense force on its own.
It should be noted that Iran may look forward to obtaining nuclear weapons to impose its will and threaten neighbouring countries. In recent years, Iran has had significant success in the development of its missiles that in addition to nuclear military technology would constitute a major threat to regional powers.
However, this scenario is unlikely given Tehran’s national interests, separate from its ideology, and insistence that even its military developments are a matter of defense, not offense.
But if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, it would cause the collapse of the non-proliferation process, triggering other countries to work on their own nuclear arsenals and possibly bringing the world to the brink of nuclear conflict. Furthermore, Iran possessing nuclear weaponry would bring sheer chaos to the regional balance of power, with consequences such as the intensification of sectarianism and further militarization of the region. This may fill the pockets of Western weaponry bigwigs with dollars, but there is no doubt it would stain the region with blood.
The factors that restrain Iran from getting nuclear weapons are determined by the benefits it gains from its non-nuclear status. The 2015 nuclear agreement — albeit partially — lifted sanctions on Iran, which it had been suffering from for decades.
The deal permits Tehran to revive its trade contracts with partners worldwide, to boost its economy. The deal guarantees constant development of Iranian atoms for peace programs that are satisfying the growing needs for energy of the sustainably developing country. Under pressure from the youth, who are increasingly looking to the West, the Iranian regime has to expand its ties and become more open to the world.
Given these factors, the nuclear deal perfectly serves its interests for the time being. However, if the players involved reconsider the deal, or request extra concessions from Tehran, this would have two major consequences. First, the regime would use this to toughen its domestic policies and further depict the West as an aggressor who cannot fulfil the agreements and who has a hostile stance against Iran. Second, the international community would lose its relative control over the Iranian nuclear program.
Iran would survive new sanctions, but the world would hardly stay in peace if Iran went nuclear.
However, as the dramatic situation unfolds in North Korea with ongoing weapons testing, there are rising voices in the US calling for the cancelation of or at least a reconsideration of the nuclear deal with Iran. Undoubtedly, the Israeli lobby in Washington is busy calling for action against Iran, who they reckon is threatening Israel and affecting the regional balance. There are other reasons for the heightened Iran-talk. The 2015 nuclear deal came under the Obama administration and at the time, Washington’s hawks were opposed to it.
It is not surprising that their stance has not changed in the last few years. The Trump administration comprises many hawkish Republicans who are more than willing to bring down a deal that they link to Obama’s legacy.
What is happening in North Korea persuading them of the dangers of soft approaches toward pariah states. Unfortunately, US history is chequered with instances where the country has reached the wrong conclusions and subsequently taken the wrong steps.
If the deal is revised or cancelled, those who cancel it will be the main losers. Iran and its allies, primarily Russia, will rise victorious. Moreover, Russia is more interested in Iran being a “world pariah” than an equal member of the international community. It is quite clear in Moscow that close alliances built with Tehran are not as solid as they seem and they will remain so until Iran is under international pressure. The West has much more to offer Tehran in terms of trade, investments and technologies, than Russia can and does propose.
Iran will always play its game in the region, regardless of the policies of the international community and deals reached or cancelled. But these games are more manageable when Iran is a member of the international community, not the outsider.
The more the pressure is placed on Iran, the fiercer its response will be. The West continues to repeat the same mistakes with Russia, North Korea and Iran. It would benefit immensely from adopting softer approaches to all the three countries.
Source: arabnews.com/node/1164731
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Iran’s Nuclear Deal Must Be Fully Enforced or Scrapped
By Oubai Shahbandar
20 September 2017
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday succinctly captured the essence of the global danger posed by the Iran nuclear deal, when he told the UN General Assembly that the agreement was “one sided” and an “embarrassment.”
His administration is due to review whether to recertify the deal next month. If Iran is found to be in violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Trump has the option of holding it in contempt of the agreement, thus paving the way for Congress to impose crippling sanctions.
Iran has embarked on a slow-boil approach in violating a number of critical sections of the JCPOA. A leading Washington-based think tank monitoring the nuclear deal, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, recently warned that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has “omitted key data on Iran’s nuclear activities… raising concern that the agency is concealing compliance disputes that may jeopardize the deal.”
While Tehran continues to cite IAEA quarterly reports to misleadingly claim it is in full compliance, there are broader covert military dimensions to its nuclear program that still have not been inspected by international monitors.
Supporters of the deal claim it is the only way to stop Iran from achieving a nuclear breakout capability, defined as producing enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear weapon. They say decertifying the deal would lead to a war that would wreak untold havoc, but this argument is flawed and myopic.
Iran was allowed to maintain its most advanced centrifuges, critical components for quickly enriching weapons-grade uranium. It also refuses to grant the IAEA full access to sites that Tehran has classified as conducting conventional military activity. A senior advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was recently quoted as saying: “The Americans will take their dream of visiting our military and sensitive sites to their graves.”
Does that sound like a party that has nothing to hide? It is time for the IAEA and the signatories to the nuclear deal to demand immediate and unconditional access to these sites, or hold Iran in gross violation of the JCPOA.
Proponents of the deal are in effect arguing that in order to maintain Tehran’s adherence, it must be allowed to pick and choose which parts it wishes to violate. Such an approach almost certainly paves the way for a confrontation in the near future, with Tehran in possession of nuclear weapons and harder-to-reach uranium enrichment and production facilities.
Western intelligence agencies continue to report that Iran is actively conducting illegal procurement of ballistic missile technology and production parts. It may be covertly working to improve the range of its ballistic missiles and their capacity to carry nuclear warheads, while claiming it is not in violation of the JCPOA simply because IAEA inspectors have not had access to military sites.
Iran’s continued ballistic missile research and production program is intended at some point to carry nuclear-tipped missiles that could reach the West and blackmail Middle Eastern countries. By not aggressively policing and curtailing its ballistic missile program within the parameters of the JCPOA, Iran is being granted a free pass in the naive hope that it does not pull out of the agreement.
This violation of the spirit of the deal is particularly vexing since Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, in April said Tehran can produce en masse advanced centrifuges necessary for making mass quantities of weapons-grade uranium at will. In effect, Iran has shortened the breakout window if and when it chooses to embark on unrestricted nuclear weapons production once key provisions of the JCPOA expire in 10 years.
According to the Institute for Science and International Security, serious questions remain on “whether Iran is secretly making centrifuge rotor tubes at unknown locations, in violation of the JCPOA.” In order to save the deal, gross violations are being ignored, offering Tehran a blank check to set the stage for nuclear breakout a few years down the line.
So the question remains: If Iran’s nuclear program is truly designed for civilian purposes, why is it seemingly preparing a production capacity and procurement network that far exceed civilian nuclear purposes? IAEA officials told Reuters in August that they will not ask for access to the military sites because they know Iran will say no, which strengthens the logic for withdrawing from the deal.
Tehran’s policy calculus remains fixated on eventually developing nuclear weapons; the nuclear deal does not change that. The JCPOA must either be fully and relentlessly enforced without exception, or wholly jettisoned. Anything in between simply plays to Tehran’s strategic advantage.
Source: arabnews.com/node/1164696
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/middle-east-press/at-last-world-heard-real/d/112600