President Joe Biden, 78, finds out just how hard it is to deal with the Persians, as 82-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khemenei demands an end to U.S. sanctions. Former President Donald Trump, 74, ended U.S. participation in former President Barack Obama’s July 15, 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] AKA “The Iranian Nuke Deal,” hand billions of dollars to Iran exchange for curtailing their uranium enrichment program. Iran denied ever enriching uranium for military purposes, something doubted by Western nuclear analysts. Most nuclear experts believed years ago that Iran was generating weapons grade uranium from advance centrifuges developed with the help of Pakistan’s bomb-maker and atomic entrepreneur A.Q. Khan. Fomer Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Iran part of the “Nuclear Club” April 11, 2006.
Iran continued to build out its nuclear enrichment facilities to the point that Ahmadinejad declared Feb. 11, 2010 that Iran was now a “nuclear state,” something usually designated for countries with nuclear weapons. No matter how much the Ayatollah denies Iran’s ambitions for an A-bomb, Western expert thought they were well on the way prompting Obama in 2013 to start negotiations to curb Iran’s enrichment activities. Obama spent two years in intense negations with 77-year-old former Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s 61-year-old Foreign Minister Mohamad Javid Zarif working on the JCPOA. When the negotiations ended with a deal July 15, 2015, Obama had given Iran $1.6 billion in cold, hard cash and another $150 billion in sanctions relief. During the two years before 74-year-old former President Donald Trump took over, Iran spent its newfound wealth on state terrorism.
Khamenei threw down the gauntlet, demanding that Biden end all sanctions before rejoining the JCPOA. “If [the U.S.] wants Iran to return to its commitments, it must lift all sanctions in practice, then we will do verification . . then we will return to our commitments,” said Khamenei on state TV. Khamenei’s statements makes clear that he’s giving the green light to Iran’s nuclear industry to work on weapons grade material, despite denying that they have any intent of building a bomb. So if Khaemnei’s right that Iran has no intent of building a bomb, what’s the U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China and Germany [P5+1] jumping through Iran’s hoops? Western nuclear experts always said that Iran was dangerously close to breaking out on a bomb, prompting the P5+1 to enter into the JCPOA, limiting Iran’s uranium enrichment for the next 10 years. Only serious flaw in the JCPOA was verification.
When Khaemenei says, “we’ll do verification,” what was he doing with the original JCPOA agreement? U.N.’s Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] inspectors were denied access to Iran’s secret military enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordo, leaving inspectors to guess about what was really going on. “This is the definitive and irreversible policy of the Islamic Republic, and all of the country’s officials are unanimous in this, and no one will deviate from it,” Khamenei said. When it comes to the rest of the P5+1, Khamenei has basically said the JCPOA is dead. Since Trump pulled out May 8, 2018, Khamenei told the P5+1 that Iran would comply with the JCPOA if other signatories met their end of the bargain. U.K, France, Russia, China and Germany bent over backwards to keep the agreement going, yet Khamenei still cheated upping uranium enrichment limits.
If Biden jumps through the Ayatollah’s hoops, he would make a big mistake knowing the Persians’ propensity to cheat and lie about their covert nuclear enrichment activities. Khamenei wants and end to all U.S. sanctions but he doesn’t want to give IAEA inspectors access to secret military enrichment sites. Khamenei wasn’t happy with the JCPOA when the deal was inked July 15, 2015, even though he got a pile of cash. Trump ended the agreement when Iran continued to fuel the proxy wars against Saudi Arabia and Israel. Supplying arms and cash to Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Iran made sure that Saudi Arabia was under constant attack. When Houthis struck Saudi’s Abaiq-Khurais oil refinery Sept. 14, 2019, it knocked out 25% of the world’s petroleum refining capacity. Iran has been supplying arms-and-cash to Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip to continuously attack Israel.
Before Biden jumps through the Ayatollah’s hopps, he should let the IAEA work with Iranian authorities to ascertain the extent of Iran’s secret military enrichment facilities. No agreement should be revived without real verification, something that never happened with the first agreement. When Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated Nov. 27, 2020, Khamenei vowed to take revenge. While no one knows for sure the extent of the targeted assassination, Khamenei blamed Israel and the United States. When it comes to getting back to the JCPOA, Khamenei showed no interest in the JCPOA once Qud’s leader Gen. Qaessam Soleimani was assassinated Jan. 3, 2020 by a U.S. predator drone strike near Baghdad’s International Airport. Any U.S. concessions made to Iran now must take into account that the original JCPOA offered not real verification of Iran’s secret military sites.
