Iran Analysis

Former UK ambassador Sir Richard Dalton wrote a piece back June 2016 in Asian Affairs explaining seven problems with the implementation of the JCPOA. The very first item on his list, is: not re-authorizing U-turn transactions in dollars (for reasons related to current US politics), thereby maintaining a sanction that was originally enacted to get… Continue reading Why the JCPOA failed first time around, and will probably fail again: No US dollar exchange permitted.

The standoff in the JCPOA talks is a redux of past failed deals; the standoff is not attributable to Iranian “intransigence” a much as domestic U.S. constraints on Biden and prior presidents, that prevented any real lifting of sanctions, leaving nothing to negotiate with but threats of Plan B and attempts at blame-shifting. This whole… Continue reading Why Blame Iran in JCPOA talks?

The concept of “preventing breakout capability in Iran” is a false and artificial constraint on the US nuclear talks with Iran. Timeline of media mentions of “breakout capability” in general: Number of times “breakout capability” was mentioned in the media since 1981: 5,973* Number of times “breakout capability” was mentioned in the media excluding “Iran”:… Continue reading Questioning “breakout capability” as a constraint in Iran JCPOA talks

The National Interest seems to have a fanboy crush on the F-35 fighter and has been writing odes to Israeli F-35s bombing Iran on a weekly basis. The “Military Industrial Complex” should be renamed the “military-industrial-think tank-media complex”. Pushing for war on Iran is profitable, folks. Just a selection of around 1 month’s worth of… Continue reading The National Interest’s weird obsession with F-35 jets bombing Iran

In the 40+ years I’ve been following the Iran-US conflict closely, I’ve come across a few really funny and silly items that I try to keep for future reference. I was going to write about these later but there’s an article behind a paywall on Haaretz entitled “Three years late, Israelis finally hear the truth… Continue reading Former Israeli officials now admit that Netanyahu’s Iran policy was a failure and a lie; will they admit the “secret Iran nuclear archive” he pushed is also a lie?

The IAEA’s Grossi is helping promote a manufactured nuclear crisis with Iran by now complaining about Iran searching inspectors and not allowing access to a non-nuclear site, and yet has nothing at all to say about Israel earlier blowing up the same site along with IAEA’s own monitoring equipment there, after Iran had voluntarily opened… Continue reading IAEA is MIA on Israeli sabotage in Iran; promoting a fake ‘nuclear’ crisis instead.

“We’re relying upon others, because we’ve sanctioned ourselves out of influence with Iran . . . in other words, we don’t have much leverage with the Iranians right now.” – George Bush, 2004 So, in the course of a few days the world took a an interesting turn for President Biden: Iran had previously raised… Continue reading Biden’s not-so-good, very bad Thanksgiving

The U.N. nuclear agency has no proof that Iran has or once had a covert atomic bomb program, it said on Thursday, dismissing a report that it had concluded Iran was on its way to producing nuclear weapons.  IAEA denies report it is sure Iran seeking atom bomb | Reuters “Gaslighting” is a colloquial term… Continue reading Gasligthting Iran and the JCPOA

With or without an agreement, Iran will be a nuclear state and have a nuclear weapon within five years, tops.”- Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman Israel sees Iranian atomic bomb in five years, deal or no deal | Reuters My first blog entry is about today’s news is that Israeli sources are claiming that 5… Continue reading Iran “just 5 years” from getting nukes…again.