Daily Archives: 9 April 2015

Iran Inspections

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President Barack Obama insists that the inspection régime agreed by Iran is

the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history.

No.

After the 1991 invasion of Iraq to liberate occupied Kuwait, an inspection régime was set up. The inspectors entering and operating in Iraq could

go anywhere, anytime, with any equipment. They could seize documents, interview people, operate aircraft for transportation (and with sensors), and, basically anything else the Chairman of UNSCOM (the special Iraq WMD inspection team) and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency decided was necessary.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way, which emphasizes my point: the inspection régime agreed by Iran doesn’t even begin to start to approach that level. The inspections are notice-only, they’re allowed only for specific sites, only preselected personnel may be interviewed…. The whole thing is allowed to be carefully choreographed, and not by the inspectors, but by the inspectees.

Of course, Obama knows this, as do his Democratic Party henchmen—you know the ones: those who aren’t on board with giving the Senate and the House veto-proof majorities in the Corker-Menendez bill requiring Congressional approval of any nuclear deal with Iran.

Remember this in the fall of 2016. And in the Democratic primaries, if you’re so inclined.

Discussions with Arabs

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Gerald Seib, writing in The Wall Street Journal earlier in the week, had some thoughts about President Barack Obama and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, an association of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates who are just across the Arabian Gulf from Iran. Seib anticipates that Obama will invite the six to Camp David to discuss Obama’s Iranian nuclear weapons deal.

Senior American officials have made clear that this is a conversation they now want to have to reassure the Gulf states, particularly the giant among them, Saudi Arabia.

No. This is a conversation Obama and his should have wanted to have—should have had—before beginning their foolishness with Iran and that they should have been having throughout those…negotiations.

Seib recognized the problem, if not the timing of its response.

The underlying question, of course, is whether the Gulf states now trust the US enough to embrace security guarantees or pledges of new defense cooperation. The answer is crucially important if the US is to convince the Gulf’s Sunni leaders that it isn’t tilting toward Shiite Iran. It’s also important to prevent a different and more ominous kind of reaction: a move by the Saudis to instead acquire their own nuclear weapon, by dialing up their friends in Pakistan to place an order, because they aren’t convinced Iran’s nuclear program will be stopped.

It’s too late, now. The damage is done, and we’ll be years repairing it. Hopefully Israel will still be alive.

Hopefully, the Gulf Cooperation Council will still be interested in our input for dealing with a nuclear armed Iran.