Iran Stockpiles Uranium, and the U.S. Turns a Blind Eye

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently reported that, over the past eighteen months, Iran has increased its supply of nuclear fuel by 20 percent. Jonathan Tobin explains:

[T]he fact that Iran’s stockpile has been increasing at a time when President Obama has been proclaiming that their program was “frozen” is more than an inconvenient detail that can be swept under the rug. Under the terms of the framework, Iran is, at least according to the United States, obligated to shrink its nuclear stockpile by approximately 96 percent from the amount reported by the IAEA in a matter of months after the agreement is signed. Iran doesn’t have the capacity to convert its fuel into rods that can’t be used for bombs that quickly and has made it clear that it has no intention of allowing the precious stockpile to be taken out of the country. This creates an apparently insoluble problem for an administration that is all-in on a negotiating process that isn’t working the way it thought it would. . . .

If the final negotiations on the Iran deal proceed as if we didn’t know that Iran has been expanding its nuclear stockpile, it calls into question the credibility of the entire process. With no assurances about Iran opening up its facilities on military applications of nuclear research, inspections, and the re-imposition of sanctions, the obstacles to a final agreement before the June 30 deadline loom large. But if administration negotiators treat every instance of Iranian bad faith as merely a detail to be swept under the rug, as they have throughout this process, the Iranians have no reason to live up to their word.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iran nuclear program, Politics & Current Affairs

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