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Iran Complies With Nuclear Deal; Sanctions Lifted (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Iran has shipped most of its nuclear fuel out of the country, destroyed the innards of a plutonium-producing reactor and mothballed more than 12,000 centrifuges. This compliance with the nuclear accord struck in July has caused the U.S. and Europe to lift financial sanctions on Iran, releasing ~$100 billion in assets. "Under the new rules put in place, the United States will no longer sanction foreign individuals or firms for buying oil and gas from Iran. The American trade embargo remains in place, but the government will permit certain limited business activities with Iran, such as selling or purchasing Iranian food and carpets and American commercial aircraft and parts. It is an opening to Iran that represents a huge roll of the dice, one that will be debated long after Mr. Obama he has built his presidential library. It is unclear what will happen after the passing of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has protected and often fueled the hardliners — but permitted these talks to go ahead."
During election time, if Israel doesn't like it, then expect every candidate to dance for Israeli money.
About 20% (> $500 million) of the $3.15 billion that flows into Israel as military defense aid, flows back into US politics via commercial conduits (Israeli/US companies that receive lucrative government contracts, whose US subsidiary in turns drives US politics directly and indirectly.
So a large part of this election cycle will be dominated by pro-Israel lobbies.
It won't matter if a Republican president takes this step. It will just mean more business for the EU, Russia, etc. No one outside the US takes this buffoon seriously, and Iran's demographics make the theocracy's grip on power increasingly tenuous. Wouldn't a future with good relations between US-Israel-Iran be so much better than one with the disgusting Saudi regime?
Perhaps, but enriched fuel is HARD to make. The technology is quite.. finicky and specialized and not available to you and me.
To enrich uranium to weapons grade requires centrifuges, a lot of them (because it's the only way to separate U-235 from U-238). Civil enrichment uses a few centrifuges to none (there are designs that don't need enriched fuel). But that's because they only need 5% U-235 to work. Weapons grade is 40% or higher (and bombs need almost pure - 90%+), which requires a stunningly large array of centrifuges at which point it's really hard to do and keep a secret underground - it's going to be a huge facility.
And let's not forget that the world IS watching and monitoring. You cannot detonate a nuclear bomb anywhere without it being detected by third parties. Underground? The earth is covered with seismographs recording everything from earthquakes to nuclear bombs. There are isotope detectors scattered around detecting the products of the nuclear reactions. And you can't do it out in the open because a lot of satellites carry detectors.
Plus, nevermind the intelligence capabilities of everyone - think of what it would take to design something like Stuxnet to only fire at the right target configured a certain way. Chances are, if there is such an underground facility, it's well known. You can't really hide such a facility - having to dig out lots of earth and then moving it places means it's captured on satellite photos and everything. And such a facility requires a lot of infrastructure and likely will generate quite a bit of heat, which shows up nicely on thermal cameras, again on satellites.
And if it really posed a threat, well, a "bomb" will be accidentally dropped on it. After all, it landed out there in the middle of the desert where there was nothing there.
Too bad you're posting as an AC
People like you who forget what the moderation system is for only make me want to post anonymously even more.
Iran have seen the light - from the sun and realised it's much cheaper to use solar panels and renewables than to waste huge amounts of money on more expensive systems like nuclear power.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Too bad you're posting as an AC.
Huh?
Too bad you're a douchebag and don't mod posts according to their merits.
Perhaps, but enriched fuel is HARD to make. The technology is quite.. finicky and specialized and not available to you and me.
Reminder that India became a nuclear power thanks to Canada, and them using "peaceful reactors" to produce nuclear weapons. The world was also watching when India decided to give a big-ol-fuck you as well.
Om, nomnomnom...
That is certainly NOT a "purely political" story; although I can understand why someone would make that mistake. It's a story about the decline of technology in the United States caused by those who make money favoring secret actions by secret U.S. government organizations.
NSA = No Sales for America.
Boeing Might Lose $4B Brazil Deal For F-18 Jets After NSA Surveillance Scandal; Analysts Say Politics Won't Trump Business (09/12/13)
Three months later: President Dilma Rousseff Announces Brazil Is Buying Sweden's Saab Gripen Jet Fighters (12/18/13)
NSA = Not a Sensible Arrangement.
The NSA does not provide "Security". Instead, the secrecy makes everyone feel insecure. Anyone can claim that a secret organization did something destructive; that's an easy sale when a small group wants violence. Suppose an NSA manager wants a promotion. The manager can arrange something likely to cause violence; there is no outside review; new violence can be used as a reason for new authority.
Consider the Culture of fear. Nazi leader Hermann Goring: "The people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
Quote from that same Wikipedia page: 'Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski argues that the use of the term War on Terror was intended to generate a culture of fear deliberately because it "obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue." '
Another quote: "... journalist Adam Curtis argues that politicians have used our fears to increase their power and control over society."
NSA = No Structural Authority.
There are complicated problems in running ANY organization. Managing secret organizations sensibly is impossible. Each manager of a secret organization has an excuse to hide his or her mistakes. There can be no outside ideas to fix problems because no outsiders are allowed to know what is happening.
Backdoors:
The U.S. government allows secret government agencies to go to any executive in any company, make demands for "security", and threaten the executive with prison if he or she doesn't do what the secret agency wants. Is that the reason that U.S. computer equipment has backdoors? We are not allowed to know. Secret agencies are allowed to lie, so even if an agency says it didn't force a backdoor, no one can know if the statement is true.
A few of the many stories about backdoors in U.S. hardware:
D-Link: Reverse Engineering a D-Link Backdoor (Oct. 12, 2013)
Arris: 600,000 Arris cable modems have 'backdoors in backdoors', researcher claims (Nov. 20, 2015)
Juniper Networks: Juniper drops NSA-developed code following new backdoor revelations (Jan. 10, 2016)
Cisco: Snowden: The NSA planted backdoors in Cisco products (May 15, 2014)
Netgear
Uhm, it is a 'democracy' where eligibility is limited by a religious council, ultimate power is held by a not-popular-elected (not even indirectly) individual with potentially dictatorial authority, suspicion of massive voting fraud exists, where independent polling organisations are closed down to hide this, and where the press is severely limited ("one of the world’s most repressive in 2014" ; Last but 7 in 2015).
Please remember: "Voting not a democracy make."
They are willing to fight for Syria to the last Arab.
Epic fail. Persians (i.e. Iranians) loathe Arabs and vice versa. The Middle East is complicated and the West isn't their only foe. Whilst they have common enemies, they don't get along with each other either.
The US planes may be better in many respects but with US domestic politics as unstable as it is...who knows if the US would let them buy the planes.
However I would expect Iran Air to order a lot of spare parts for the 7 747 boeing planes it already owns and perhaps purchase additional boeing planes on the open market (there are plenty available).
they also won't buy any US cars.
Thats because on the whole compared to what is available from the rest of the world they're quite crap, especially in the fuel economy, power per litre and quality of materials used for interiors. Mitsubishi/Toyota make better pickup trucks, Land Rover and Toyota make better 4x4s, almost everyone else including European arms of US manufacturers like Ford and GM make better cars.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Airbus airplanes have substantial content sourced from the United States. Likewise Boeing airplanes have content sourced from the EU, including from subsidiaries of Airbus. The prime and its preferred contractors obviously get the greatest benefit but the industry is one big bowl of international spaghetti.
sPh
This. Just to make the point even clearer, it takes a long, long time to go from ore to bomb grade uranium. The only way to speed up the process is to scale it up -- to have lots and lots of centrifuges working in parallel on lots and lots of uranium, like the US did in the Manhattan Project. Here is what our plant looked like. You can also peruse aerial images Pakistan's enrichment facility to see what a more modern plant would look like. These are not small, readily concealable facilities.
Is it possible that Iran is operating centrifuges completely underground where our intelligence services can't see them, as the GP poster claims? Sure, but only if their patient enough to wait decades to produce enough HEU for a bomb. The construction of an underground facility large enough to achieve "fast breakout" would be if anything harder to conceal than a surface plant. All the other parts of making a bomb and a delivery system are readily concealable, which is why anti-proliferation efforts focus on fuel. That means either Pu production, which would be very hard to conceal, or uranium enrichment, which is impossible.
So what paths does this leave Iran to "fast breakout"? Well, without a concealable enrichment program they'd have access to secret stashes of fuel that's already bomb grade or nearly so. But if that were the case the game's essentially over; there's nothing left that further sanctions could accomplish.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Surely Iran won't secretly develop nukes anyway with all the billions they get from the sanctions being lifted
If Iran really has the ability to secretly develop nukes, then sanctions really have no point. Consider Iran in comparison to North Korea; Iran has 3x the population and 30x the GDP. Iran generates 750,000 university graduates/year and has substantial industrial, technological and scientific capabilities. If Iran wants a nuke it can develop a nuke, and it'll be a lot better than North Korea's nuke, provided they can get the fuel.
It should also be noted that Iran and North Korea share one advantage in the proliferation game that Iraq did not have: their own uranium mines. So they don't have to go to Niger for yellow cake, they can dig it out of their own ground.
So this leaves us with three options when it comes to sanctions and nuclear non-proliferation in Iran.
(1) We can maintain the status quo and hope that the sanctions render Iran incapable of developing its own nuke, despite Iran's obvious and massive advantages over North Korea even with sanctions in place.
(2) We can cut a deal which makes it much more difficult for Iran to produce weapons grade fuel. Naturally since this is a "deal" we have to have something to offer them.
(3) We can try to do to Iran what we did to Iraq in 2003-2011.
Before you decide you should consider the immensely greater geographical difficulty of fighting in Iran than in Iraq. Iran is a mountainous country 3x the size of Iraq and twice the population. Unlike Baghdad, Tehran is beyond the reach of US naval aviation, except from the extreme northern end of the Persian Gulf, and the entire length of that be extremely perilous for US ships to operate in. Basically we're looking at the most difficult land campaign the US has undertaken in since the WW2. The end result of that campaign isn't in question, but it's not reasonable to expect better or faster results than we got in Iraq.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.