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Bibi’s Statement on Iran’s Nuclear Lies
Powerful stuff. What I couldn’t tell from the presentation is if the program continued after the agreement was signed.
Read about it on Drudge. Where are our intelligence agencies on this? Did they uncover anything? If so, did they hide it to preserve “The Deal” made by BHO?
I hope that the US and Israel at least consulted before Bibi put this out there.
I’d be horrified to find out that this was the first US agencies had heard of it.
With the good will from the Trump administration moving the American embassy to Jerusalem and creating a movement internationally toward other embassies moving as well (possibly creating a “Trump Town” area of the city according to city planners), I’d really hope they are working together on this.
You can form a presentation and media blitz around it, but it’s still old news. Did the Obama administration really not know about Iran’s overt and covert development since 2003? I guess this doesn’t change much, but it certainly opens up a window for public debate. I’d guess it redounds to Bibi’s favor especially with Trump’s decision about the Iran deal coming up and his willingness to placate the hawkish conservative commentariat.
Netanyahu said at the outset that Israel had already shared this information with America.
Netanyahu met with Pompeo a day ago. To me, it seems like a joint effort to lay the pr groundwork to exit the Iran deal with cause.
Iran’s leaders must be FREAKING OUT. Someone, or many someones, actively helped Israel. Who? How? Who can be trusted? Who are the moles?
And then the next question: If Israel knows this…. how much else do they know?!
Imagine the general panic among leaders who might be targeted…
I actually think there is a chance that the Mullahs try emulating the Nork angle, and at least fake obeisance to avoid a shooting war. Wouldn’t that be marvelous?
I know that I have a tendency to focus on the shallow during moments of grand import, but did anybody else simply love the Steve Jobs/TED-style format of the PM’s presentation?
When the big screen behind him came up with the words “IRAN LIED” I have to admit I laughed.
I love the theatricality.
@9:58 Netanyahu asserts that SPND in 2018 is continuing the Project Amad work.
And here’s how the New York Times decided to cover it:
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/04/30/world/middleeast/ap-ml-israel-iran-the-latest.html
The honest newspaper in New York City knows how to interpret the Iranians.
Right, but I didn’t see a lot of evidence for that assertion. I mean I assume he has it, but its not as profound as what he presents about the programs inception and work prior to the agreement.
This is the most intriguing part to me — how did the Israelis come by these materials??
It’s like that tweet that went out showing the drone base and its commander. “We know where you are and what you’re up to.” Yes, the Iranian leadership should be freaking out!
The media is spinning hard. “Oh, we always knew they lied to us! That’s why we gave them pallets of cash!”
WHAT?!
Presumably that comes from a source he is not prepared to burn. but, also, at this point that is the least important part of the program and the deal. The thing is this whole program is intended to protect Iran through nuclear breakout.
The last thing Iran would want to do is test a bomb when all it had was enough fuel for that one bomb or just a few. Iran’s got the designs. Ironically, the photos (which I assume are real) look similar to what Vanunu disclosed Israel as having.
Where Iran wants to go is to having enough fuel to make a few hundred devices before it does any testing. If it tested its only weapon or one of just a few, it would risk possible preemptive strike or at least blockade.
It will go something like this: the declared part of their program will expand in an otherwise nonsensical way, building up a huge stockpile of material a stage or few away from bomb grade. They will have a smaller hidden enrichment program. The hidden part of the program, will go all the way and make say 20 functional devices and mount them on missiles. Then they test and, in announcing the test, they announce the 20 missiles as a deterrent to preemptive attack. Perhaps they test one or two devices by launching on Israel. They then immediately complete the enrichment of the bulk of the declared material and fill out their arsenal.
Right but the fact that Iran lied in the past, (something important and a clear violation of the deal as it exists) doesn’t tell us much about whether they are continuing the research now. That’s something I’d dearly like to know.
But he doesn’t show proof of that does he? Isn’t the counter argument exactly what it has always been which is that yes we knew they were doing this back in the early 2000’s hence our sanctions and saber rattling. Then Obama made the Nuke Deal and now they have shelved their program. Isn’t that then exactly where we were before this speech? The argument being that they lied in the past (which we knew, and now we know more fully) and so we can’t trust them now, and that in 10 years they will be able to reactivate their program, and make weapons so the deal is at best only a delaying tactic. To which Obamaland answers well yah, we held them back 10 years that gives us room to breath and plan something else.
It seems to me other than flushing out some of the details of the past arguments about this nothing much has changed. What would be explosive is if we had proof of them doing work on the bomb or enriching now.
Will Gen. Mattis now shut up about how great the agreement is, so I can love him completely?
I just updated the OP to include this video of Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer on Bret Baier’s show tonight.
https://youtu.be/eIFMlO6vqL0?t=7m55s
He says in this video that if we’d had this information in 2015, this deal would not have happened.
I suspect we had that information and went ahead with the deal knowingly. Think of all the other lies the Obama administration told to sell this deal. Why would we be so naive as to think the Obama administration would have called it off? They wanted a nuclear Iran.
For anyone that’s been on Ricochet for awhile anonymous all but said that Iran has the bomb sometime back.
The fact that Iran was at one point pursuing nuclear weapons will likely be a surprise to no one—and indeed was a rationale for concluding the nuclear agreement in the first place.
“If you like your nuclear weapons, you can keep your nuclear weapons.”
It will be no surprise only to those who are able to believe that we have always been at war with Eastasia.
Yes, a 1984 reference.
The rest of us who live in reality remember being told over and over again that Iran was only looking to develop their nuclear program for electricity and stuff and loved peace and love. Because, you know, all that oil and natural gas has to be sold to other countries in order to finance their nuclear power program. And that’s why Obama needed to reduce sanctions against them and provide them with a plane stuffed with cash and allow them to sell more oil. For the nuclear power program.
Now, anyone with a brain knew that we were being lied to, but it cannot be called “a rationale for concluding the nuclear agreement in the first place” because we were actively being lied to about it.
Just to clarify for everybody: This is about an old Iranian nuclear program that was suspended years before the deal.
We knew they had a program. So in a way, this is old news.
Don’t kid yourself, the audience for this was one person: Donald Trump. This is an attempt by the Israelis to manipulate our gullible President into decertifying the Iran nuclear deal.
Bibi demonstrated that they lied, and they are still lying now. That the old team is still in place, and at work, in facilities that the deal allowed to stay open. The name of the new nuclear program, with the names of some of the old guys working in the new program, as well as the location of some of the work in the new program…
You have to be willfully blind to pretend that Iran is not in active development, in breach of the agreement. Evidence was shared yesterday.
This new news is really old news? That’s a new one.
Just as a reminder, here’s what some people were saying about the deal back in 2015 and 2016. In an interview with CNN in 2016, while the Obama administration was lying about the deal and the state of Iran’s nuclear program, the Iranians were actually telling the truth, saying, “We did not agree to dismantle anything.”
Whatever it takes to kill the “deal” . . .
I for one don’t sell Trump short when it comes to intelligence. I believe he knows many people do, and he has no qualms about using that to his advantage.
Meh, not so sure. I think Obama wanted a foreign policy “win” to put in his column. It was probably rationalized by “fairness.” If anyone has nukes, everyone should have nukes.
Deep thinkers, these lefties.
I have actually observed the complete opposite. He seems oblivious to when he’s being manipulated. The simplest example is the Saudi trip.