(Photo: Jeffrey Lewis )
Welcome one and all to a wondrous apparition, provided by magician. The giant doing cartwheels, as well as the statue wearing high heels, will be joining us shortly. Meanwhile, let us join Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu as he screams "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" while frenetically waving a 3 year-old newspaper in each hand.
As you may have heard, Israel's Prime Minister, suspected in three corruption cases ranging from the petty and pathetic to the humongous in scale and perfidy, convened a special press conference to deliver "something the world has never seen before" - proof that Iran LIIIIIEEEEED about its military nuclear program (i.e. that it had one before the deal it made to stop it), and therefore the JPCOA deal prohibiting Iran should be scrapped.
And I think it's safe to say that the world has never seen anything like it. You might recall Netanyahu's flair for dramatic presentations from hits such as "This is the detonator, this is the bomb," and others, and this was much in the same vein: Parading before a bookcase full of binders, pointing with flair and elan at a giant powerpoint presentation on the wall-sized screen, Netanyahu told us about a daring Mossad raid on a super-duper-top-secret "nuclear archive" in Iran, from which our daring lads stole a stupefying amount of documents and data, including said binders holding 55,000 documents on paper and another such amount on CD's (ayo, bruh... why not a flash drive?)
Flashback to 2015. It's "Show And Tell With Bibi" time again! (Photo: Reuters)
And what, you may be wondering, did said treasure trove actually prove? Um... not a whole lot. What it proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that when Iran kept saying, in the 90's, 2000's and up to the signing of the JPCOA in 2015, that it does not want nuclear weapons and wasn't working to obtain them, it was LYYYYYYYYYYINNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!
Shocking, I know. I mean, wasn't it BECAUSE we took Iran at its word that we instituted a sanctions regime of over a decade, and then made a multi-lateral international agreement including every single permanent member of the UN security council + the biggest economy in Europe (Germany), aka he P5+1, that took years to negotiate? Isn't that how people behave towards someone they believe?
"You're pursuing military nuclear capabilities!"
-- I swear, I'm not!
"OK, I believe you, and to prove it I'm gonna forbid my companies to do business with you, expel a shitload of your diplomats, seize hundreds of billions of your dollars in assets, and threaten you with military options until you submit to a highly invasive inspection regimen. That's how I roll when I believe someone."
PROOF OF THE ALREADY KNOWN
But it gets worse. It's not just "Yeah, we knew in our hearts that they were lying, call it intuition." There was not a single detail exposed by Netanyahu about the Iranian nuclear program that hasn't been said before, in official writing, by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its GOV/2015/68 report from 2015, which was on the table as the deal with Iran was fiercely debated in each of the (democratic) signatory countries before being ratified.
Examples courtesy of Jeffrey Lewis, aka @armscontrolwonk:
- The secret name of Iran's military nuclear program, Amad? Ooooh, a proper villain org name! Spectre! Hydra! But... exposed by the IAEA, by name and in great detail. Section 22.
- Development of a nuclear weapons design, specifically implosion simulations? Nefarious! Alas, detailed by the IAEA three years ago, sections 58-62.
- Developing the ability to cast uranium cores. Infamous! Sections 33-35.
- Multipoint Initiation System. Dastardly! Sections 41-46.
- Preparations for a nuclear test. Oh, the humanity! Sections 66-68.
- Work on integrating a warhead. Shehab 3! SMOKING GUN!!! Um, section 69.
And so it goes. Netanyahu sent secret agents on what seems to be a truly breathtaking covert operation, burning who knows how many contacts, covers, safehouses and other assets, just to prove what everyone already knew. Not suspected, knew. Kinda like if Adelai Stevenson had dramatically produced the proof of Russia's Cuban missiles... in 1965. After the deal to remove what Russia had said it didn't have had already been made.
Adelai Stevenson pantsing USSR Ambassador to the UN, Valerian Zorin, in October 1962. Timing is everything.
But Netanyahu wasn't speaking to everyone. He wasn't even speaking to his own people, really. He was speaking to an audience of one, who is ignorant and already convinced of the message: The Orange Oaf on Pennsylvania Avenue.
RENEGING ON THE PLEA DEAL
The single, solitary thing Netanyahu proved is that Iran was, perhaps, not as truly forthcoming about its past activities as the spirit of the JPCOA requires. This is kind of like making a plea bargain with a perp, with strict parole officer supervision and conditions which you have no proof the perp is violating, and then 3 years later saying "I wanna tear up the plea bargain and throw you in jail after all, because before we made the plea deal, you kept saying you didn't do it." Only a full allocution of past misdeeds and surrender of any and all documents is not a significant part of this specific deal. Just the prevention of continuing the misdeeds. Which is happening and working according to every single professional involved.
But it may be a minor violation, and one that could be used to make the Iranians squirm a nice bit (more than the humiliation of this intel caper already is). But to do that, you have to accept the validity and utility of the deal, under which you may call for Iran to be forced to provide answers. But Netanyahu isn't doing that. He's waving these "discoveries" as a reason to scrap the deal. If you scrap the deal, Iran doesn't owe you an explanation - and is, of course, free to resume its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, currently rendered impossible by a dizzying array of invasive oversight, 24-7 camera monitoring, surprise inspections and constant intelligence surveillance, from space and on the ground.
So what did the prancing TED talk NOT include? Any proof whatsoever that Iran has done ANYTHING since the signing of the deal to continue its military nuclear program. Only that it tried to hide proof of its existence until then. If we take the plea deal metaphor from above, it's kinda like accusing the perp of hiding evidence... of a crime he already pled guilty to. You know what it can be handy for? EXTENDING the terms of the deal, when some of its provisions sunset in 7-12 years from now. Again, for that you need to let the deal work and remain intact until then. You can't have it both ways.
DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS
The very fact these documents were obtained by Israel is a HUGE humiliation to Iran, and that pleases me quite a bit (YMMV). It's also, to utilize the perp deal comparison one last time, like if you made an onerous plea-deal with someone, and they were keeping to it, but kept walking around whining they never did nothing, that your evidence was fake, that they didn't deserve it, and were thus painting themselves as wronged yet exceedingly cooperative, thereby laying the ground for easement of parole terms asap. These documents enable the world to drop them on the table in front of the babbling Iranian tool and go "Child, please. Stick to the deal and be thankful for it." Or as Bibi did it, playing Iran's Muhammad Zarif on video, saying "We didn't want a nuclear bomb" and smugly going "Yes you did!" That much it's good for, but don't oversell. It's nothing we didn't know, and it's most definitely not a convincing argument to scrap the agreement. If anything, it's the opposite.
Since the 90's, Israel (which reportedly has a nuclear arsenal of between 80-200 nuclear warheads, and unlike Iran is not a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is under zero nuclear inspections or oversight) has been screaming bloody murder that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapon, that if it achieved this goal it would be Nazi Germany all over again ("The year is 1938" - Binyamin Netanyahu). This must be prevented at all costs, Israeli leaders from all parties insisted. And eventually, the world obliged, causing Iran enough economic suffering that to alleviate some of it (sanctions relating to Iran's ballistic missile program, human rights violations and suspected involvment in terrorism are all still intact), it consented to the most invasive ongoing inspection regime EVER accepted by a sovereign, unoccupied nation.
Now, to be fair, most of the people who matter in Israel accept, however grudgingly, that the deal is working. From former PM Ehud Barak (insufferable fuck, knows his security/military shit) to the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, every single one of said Chiefs, the head of Mossad... everyone except Nutandyahoo and his idiot acolytes. Netanyahu never wanted a deal preventing Iran from reaching a bomb. He wanted regime change. He has a messianic complex about Iran, as you can suss from the "1938" talk. Also, as he probably knew but couldn't say, it was signing the deal that enabled Iran to ratchet up its presence in Syria, which to be frank is an even more threatening development to Israel than an Iranian nuke. Iran couldn't use a nuke on Israel without committing suicide. We have nuclear subs, which means second strike capabilities. But if it becomes entrenched along Israel's entire northern border, it can bleed us by a thousand cuts, and will do its damnedest to do just that.
The Atlantic
It's a shite state of affairs to be in, Benny, and all the powerpoint and pie charts in the world won't make any bloody difference.
