Iranian official on nuke deal: 'We did not agree to dismantle anything'

[WestVirginiaRebel]

CNN:

(CNN) -- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif insisted Wednesday that the Obama administration mischaracterizes concessions by his side in the six-month nuclear deal with Iran, telling CNN in an exclusive interview that "we did not agree to dismantle anything."

Zarif told CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto that terminology used by the White House to describe the agreement differed from the text agreed to by Iran and the other countries in the talks -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.

"The White House version both underplays the concessions and overplays Iranian commitments" under the agreement that took effect Monday, Zarif said in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum.

As part of the accord, Iran was required to dilute its stockpile of uranium that had been enriched to 20%, well above the 5% level needed for power generation but still below the level for developing a nuclear weapon.

In addition, the deal mandated that Iran halt all enrichment above 5% and "dismantle the technical connections required to enrich above 5%," according to a White House fact sheet issued in November after the initial agreement was reached.

Zarif accused the Obama administration of creating a false impression with such language.

"The White House tries to portray it as basically a dismantling of Iran's nuclear program. That is the word they use time and again," he said, urging Sciutto to read the actual text of the agreement. "If you find a single, a single word, that even closely resembles dismantling or could be defined as dismantling in the entire text, then I would take back my comment."

________

 

No deal. Smart power!

[Valin]

@WestVirginaRebel

Iran President Rouhani: No Destruction of Centrifuges
No Limitations to Nuke Technology
DANIEL HALPER
Jan 23, 2014

The Iranian president tells Fareed Zakaria of CNN that, under the nuclear deal, there will be no limitations to nuclear technology and no destruction of centrifuges:

(Snip)

[Valin]

Head of Iran Nuclear Organization: 'Entire Nuclear Activity of Iran Is Going On'
DANIEL HALPER
9:18 AM, Feb 5, 2014

The head of an Iranian nuclear organization, Ali Akbar, says the "entire nuclear activity of Iran is going on," despite the nuclear deal reached with the United States and other Western nations. Akbar made the comments in an interview with PressTV, an Iranian propaganda outfit.

 

Akbar also says they won't dismantle Arak reactor, that the American have achieved nothing, and that they're continuing to build new nuclear sites.

 

Press TV has conducted an interview with Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi, the Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran in Tehran about the disputed issues surrounding Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

 

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

 

 

Press TV: The United States says that it has managed to dismantle at least parts of Iran’s nuclear program. What do you say to that?

 

Salehi: At the outset allow me to thank you and it’s my pleasure talking to you.

 

If you look at the word ‘dismantle’ and you look at it in the dictionary, dismantle means to take apart and try to put it into pieces, equipment. Well, you can come and see whether our nuclear sites, nuclear equipment and nuclear facilities are dismantled or not.

The only thing we have stopped and suspended – and that is voluntarily – is the production of 20 percent enriched uranium and that’s it.

Of course, there is another thing that we have undertaken; we have committed ourselves not to install main equipment, which have been defined as to what those main equipments are in the Arak 40 megawatt heavy water reactor.

 

The nuclear facilities are functioning; our enrichment is proceeding, it’s doing its work, it’s producing the 5 percent enriched uranium and those centrifuges that stopped producing the 20 percent will be producing 5 percent enriched uranium. In other words our production of 5 percent [uranium] will increase. The entire nuclear activity of Iran is going on.

 

Centrifuges that were used for the production of 20 percent, they will be used now for producing 5 percent enriched uranium.

 

(Snip)

 

[Valin]

Air Weapons: MOP Tweaked To Go Deeper

February 14, 2014:

 

The U.S. confirmed rumors that tests of its 14 ton deep penetrator bomb (the MOP or Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a.k.a the GBU-57) in 2013 were indeed to confirm the success of modifications enabling the bomb to hit targets deeper underground. The tests were apparently against an accurate replica of the main Iranian nuclear weapons development facility at Fordo. Some of the results of this test were distributed to American allies with the intention of sending a message to Iran. At the time there is no confirmation of such a test.

 

The first eight GBU-57s were ordered in 2011 and about twenty have been obtained so far. In early 2013 the U.S. Air Force announced unspecified improvements to the GBU-57. Seven of the first eight production model bombs were used for tests, which resulted in a classified list of tweaks to the existing design and these upgrades have been added regularly since 2011. All this apparently paid off during the 2013 test against the Fordo replica.

 

The GBU-57 contains 2.4 tons of explosives and costs $3.5 million each. In the last few years several B-2 bombers have been equipped to carry these weapons (two bombs per B-2). This was apparently meant to send a message to Iran and North Korea. There were no known targets for such a weapon anywhere else, but there are plenty of such targets in Iran and North Korea. Moreover, even if there were deep bunkers in Somalia or Afghanistan you don't need a stealth bomber to deliver an MOP. The enemy in those countries have no way of detecting a high flying B-52, much less a stealthy B-2. But Iran and North Korea do have radars, and a B-2 could slip past those radars and take out the air defense system command bunkers, or any other targets buried deep.

 

(Snip)