Yes, the IAEA Is Actually Letting Iran Inspect Itself

Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declared that it had successfully carried out inspections of facilities in the Iranian city of Parchin, which the organization has been trying to get into since it learned in 2012 that nuclear-weapons research was taking place there. Ephraim Asculai explains why these inspections are farcical:

According to . . . information from satellite observations, the Iranians immediately began clearing the site [in 2012], removing earth layers and probably removing all equipment, resurfacing all walls, floors and even ceilings—in short, removing all possible traces of previous activities. Although this should have been a warning sign, the IAEA did not heed suggestions not to go there because it would probably find nothing, resulting in a victory for Iran, and [instead] persisted in its request to inspect this particular building at Parchin. This is the synopsis of Act I of the farce.

Act II begins with the negotiations on the peculiar method by which the IAEA would conduct its inspection of the building, the major part of which would be carried out by the Iranians themselves, thus assuring that the results would not contradict their declarations that no improper activities took place in that building. . . .

The script for Act III is as yet uncertain since the results of the sample analyses are not yet in. The probable scenario runs like this: the IAEA will announce that “the inspection at Parchin did not produce any evidence of wrongdoing at the site.”

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Iran, Iran nuclear program, Politics & Current Affairs, U.S. Foreign policy

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF