The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency reported Thursday that while Iran has largely been complying with agreements on curtailing its nuclear program, it has built an extension to its military facility at Parchin.
A segment of the confidential report seen by the Reuters news agency says the Islamic Republic’s activity at the site since February 2012 has likely undermined the IAEA’s ability to “conduct effective verification.”
“Since [our] previous report [in May], at a particular location at the Parchin site, the agency has continued to observe, through satellite imagery, the presence of vehicles, equipment, and probable construction materials. In addition, a small extension to an existing building appears to have [been] constructed,” the report was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The report covers Iranian activity from before the signing of the long-term nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers in July.
Activities at the site since 2012, during a time Iran stonewalled IAEA requests to visit the site or receive information on it, have undermined the agency’s ability to verify intelligence suggesting that Tehran conducted tests relevant to nuclear bomb detonations at the site in the past, diplomats said Thursday.
Specifically, the IAEA believes Tehran may have experimented there with high-explosive detonators for nuclear arms.
On Tuesday, IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said that his agency received large amounts of information from Tehran but it was too early to say whether any of the information is new.
Israel last week demanded the publication of undisclosed agreements reached between Iran and the IAEA, after a report on part of the accord detailed Iran’s ability to police itself at Parchin. The Associated Press reported the nuclear watchdog ceded the responsibility of nuclear inspections at the Parchin military complex to Tehran officials, and published what it said was a text of the side deal.
The U.S.-backed Ukrainian Armed Forces, on Wednesday August 26th, resumed their all-out war against the breakaway Donbass region, according to an announcement on August 27th by the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Deputy Commander, Eduard Basurin. Donetsk is the largest city in Donbass — the region that broke away from Ukraine after the February 2014 U.S. coup in Kiev, which threw out the democratically elected Ukrainian President, for whom the residents of Donbass had voted over 90%. If this apparent re-invasion of Donbass by U.S.-backed forces is true, it would flagrantly violate the Minsk II Agreement that Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Francois Hollande had achieved, and that the warring parties had signed, six months ago, on February 11th.
As reported August 27th by the Fort Russ news site, Mr. Basurin said:
The situation in the DPR has drastically deteriorated. … From 5 P.M. [August 26th], punitive forces [that’s to say, forces aiming to ‘punish’ Donbass for rejecting Obama’s coup in Ukraine] began massively shelling positions of the DPR army and the civilian areas of Belaya Kamenka, Novolaspa, Staroslava, and Staroignatovka.
The fascists have used heavy artillery prohibited by the Minsk Agreements against the civilian areas of Aleksandrovka and Marinka. The outskirts of Donetsk have been struck.
The shelling has been carried out from the positions of the 72nd mechanized brigade under the command of the criminal Grishchenko, as well as the 19th infantry battalion. The enemy is using ACS howitzers of 152 and 122 mm, mortars of 120 and 80 mm, and tanks.
Basurin said that “According to our estimate, the enemy is trying to provoke a response by our troops and with such activity convince the army command of the DPR to prepare for an offensive in this direction of the UAF,” so that DPR’s strategy of — as much as possible — not initiating fire, but only responding to it, will be broken. That would then provide the U.S. side the opportunity to charge the DPR side with violating Minsk II.
Basurin went on to say:
the criminal fascist regime is purposefully trying to disrupt the Minsk Agreement. The bloodthirsty Kiev puppets are out to disrupt the establishment of peaceful life in the Republic, thereby showing the whole world their inability to conduct civilized negotiations. The paranoiacs in power are leading Ukraine into the abyss!
The President of Ukraine seeks to resume hostilities and lead a new escalation of tensions in Eastern Europe, and therefore, we appeal to the people and officers of Ukraine: sabotage the criminal orders of the UAF command, show acts of defiance, and demonstrate an absence of support for the aggressive plans of Poroshenko.
Basurin is urging the U.S.-backed forces to violate their instructions, which would be an extremely dangerous thing for those troops to do. However, a significant number of Ukrainian soldiers have, in fact, defected to the ‘rebels.’
As I reported earlier, a conflict within the Obama Administration broke out on May 15th, when Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State whom Obama had placed in charge of policy on Ukraine (and who had masterminded the coup and selected the post-coup government), contradicted her nominal superior, Secretary of State John Kerry, and said that, despite Kerry’s warning to Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko not to violate Minsk II, Poroshenko would have America’s full backing if he were to follow through on his repeated threats to re-invade Donbass, regardless of what had been agreed to, and signed, at Minsk.
Ms. Nuland has continued to maintain that the U.S. will support the Ukrainian side no matter what; and so, Donbass has been on constant alert, expecting Poroshenko to resume the invasion at any time.
In the interim since the first of the two Minsk agreements, the U.S. Congress has endorsed Obama’s policy and authorized funds for retraining Ukraine’s troops and for resupplying them with weapons.
Perhaps the decision has finally now been made in the White House to resume the war at full force. The next few days could make clear whether that is the case, or whether, instead, this is just yet another of the many relatively minor violations of Minsk, which both sides have engaged in during the past six months.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) announced today that she would be voting in favor of a resolution of disapproval against the president’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action becoming the 14th Democratic congressional lawmaker to buck Obama. Two Senators, Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez, also announced their intention to vote in favor of a resolution of disapproval.
In explaining her decision, Maloney quite accurately noted that even if Iran doesn’t cheat -- an unlikely prospect given the Islamic Republic’s record of deceit and fabrication -- the Iranians can legally become a threshold nuclear power once many of the restrictive provisions of the JCPOA expire in 8 to 10 years. In the best-case scenario, Obama has merely kicked the can down the road. Moreover, in 8 years, Iran will be a lot richer and infinitely more menacing thanks to sanctions relief as mandated by the JCPOA.
A day prior to Maloney's announcement, a group of nearly 200 retired generals and admirals sent a letter to Congress urging them to reject the deal. Such unanimity among such a high number of senior military officials is impressive and Maloney may have been swayed by their compelling arguments as well as stature. She may be also cognizant of recent opinion polls which are decidedly against approval of the JCPOA.
Obama’s Iran deal is leading the nation toward the inevitable path of war. With or without the deal, war with the Islamic Republic is a virtual certainty. The only question is will war break out with an economically strong and powerful Iran, equipped with sophisticated weapons purchased from the Russians and Europeans or will it break out while Iran’s military is relatively weak and its economy is in shambles?
Already we are witnessing foreboding signs of Iranian malfeasance. The IAEA announced today that Iran is building an “extension to an existing building” at the top-secret Parchin military facility. IAEA inspectors believe that the facility also serves as a testing site for conducting nuclear experiments with military applications. In early August, the Institute for Science and International Security announced that based on satellite imagery they believed that Iran was attempting to sanitize the Parchin site before any IAEA inspection. The Iranians countered that they were merely engaged in road repair. What is truly amazing is that the ink on the JCPOA hasn’t even dried yet and already, the Iranians are up to their old antics.
Anticipating an immediate influx of $150 billion as well as billions more resulting from sanctions relief, Iran is now substantially shoring up its military capabilities. Russia announced that it would be selling the Iranians the S-300 weapon system, a state-of the-art anti-aircraft platform capable of tracking and shooting down multiple targets and great distances. Once acquired and integrated, the system will greatly complicate plans for a preemptive strike.
Iran and China are now in the midst of negotiating a deal worth $1 billion whereby Iran would acquire 24 Chinese Chengdu J-10 fighter jets in exchange for granting China control of Iran’s biggest oil field for two decades. Iran’s air force is currently in a decrepit state, flying aircraft that date to the 1950s but the purchase of these sophisticated fourth-generation aircraft will substantially improve Iran’s tactical and strategic capabilities.
Iran is also seeking to transfer sophisticated military technology to its Lebanese Shia proxy, Hezbollah. According to Israel’s foreign ministry director-general Dore Gold, Iran is seeking to transfer Yakhont cruise missiles and SA-22 anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah. Both of these weapons systems are game-changing platforms that endanger Israeli commercial and military aircraft as well as offshore gas facilities.
Iran’s acquisition of these new weapons platforms facilitated by revenue flowing in as a result of the JCPOA and its destablizing transfer of military technology to Israel’s genocidal enemies will merely serve to accelerate Israel’s military response. Though the math looks bad for opponents of the JCPOA, those who are still on the fence line should be cognizant of the fact that Iran is gearing for war not despite the JCPOA, but because of it.
Earlier this week, as the financial world was mesmerized by a min-stock market crash, the Financial Times published a dastardly little piece of fascist propaganda.
There is no more egregious anti-liberty economic policy imaginable than banning cash. I covered this earlier in the year in the post, Martin Armstrong Reports on a Secret Meeting in London to Ban Cash. Here’s an excerpt:
At this point, anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention to the central planning economic totalitarians running the fraudulent global financial system is aware of the blatant push in the media to acclimate the masses to accepting a “cashless society.”
In the mind of an economic tyrant, banning cash represents the holy grail. Forcing the plebs onto a system of digital fiat currency transactions offers total control via a seamless tracking of all transactions in the economy, and the ability to block payments if an uppity citizen dares get out of line.
While we’ve all seen the idiotic arguments for banning cash, i.e., it will allow central planners to more efficiently centrally plan economies into the ground, Martin Armstrong is reporting on a secret meeting in London with the aim of getting rid of any economic privacy that remains by ending cash.
Three months later, the Financial Times publishes an article titled, The Case for Retiring Another “Barbarous Relic.” When you start to see increased propaganda about banning cash, you know the status quo is very scared and things are getting very serious. You’ve been warned.
The fact that people treat cash as the go-to safe asset when banks are teetering is heavy with historical irony. Paper money was once the symbol of monetary irresponsibility. But even as individuals have taken recent crises as reasons to stock up on banknotes, authorities would do well to consider the arguments for phasing out their use as another “barbarous relic”, the moniker Keynes gave to gold.
Already, by far the largest amount of money exists and is transacted in electronic form — as bank deposits and central bank reserves. But even a little physical currency can cause a lot of distortion to the economic system.
The existence of cash — a bearer instrument with a zero interest rate — limits central banks’ ability to stimulate a depressed economy. The worry is that people will change their deposits for cash if a central bank moves rates into negative territory. The Swiss, Danish and Swedish central banks have pushed rates lower than many thought possible; but most policymakers still believe in an “effective” lower band not far below zero.
Of course, if cash were involuntarily”ended,” there would be a surge in demand for physical gold and silver, which would then necessitate a ban on those items. Then the cycle of economic and financial tyranny would be complete, and crawling our way out of it, nearly impossible.
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