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Painful truth: The really awful thing about speaking for this State Dept is all the spin one must do on behalf of the govt of Iran Frum wrote that yesterday. More than 24 hours later, Harf’s still shilling for our partners in peace in Tehran. To understand what this is about, re-read yesterday’s post about the growing alarm among western diplomats that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has been increasing despite their promises to freeze it at a certain level. There may be an innocent-ish explanation for that related to the process of converting uranium into fuel rods; there may...

"The president feels very strongly that the very significant problems that are faced by people in Syria, for example, are not problems that the United States is going to come in and solve for them," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said recently. It's becoming clear that the Obama administration's determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran most likely informed its decision to refrain from intervening in the Syrian civil war. "The administration's Syria policy has been predicated on the White House's desire for a deal with Iran and its care to accommodate Iranian interests in Syria, which he...

Okay, so now it’s 20 years. President Obama informed Israel Tuesday via a TV interview: “Sanctions won’t do it, a military solution is temporary – the deal that we’re negotiating potentially takes a nuclear weapon off the table for 20 years.” If you’re keeping score at home, you may remember that the president had previously acknowledged to the world that it was legitimate to believe that Iran “in year 13, 14, 15,” of the deal would “have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point, the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.” And once...

State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said she was “perplexed” by a New York Times story Tuesday on Iran’s 20 percent increase in nuclear fuel over the past 18 months. The United States has been in negotiations with Iran for a final deal about their nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report on Friday that documented an increase of Iran’s nuclear fuel stockpile. A reporter asked Harf if Iran’s increased stockpiles has complicated the current negotiations. “Not at all. Our team read that story this morning and was quite frankly perplexed because the main contentions of it are...

“Western officials and experts cannot quite figure out why,” notes the Times, despite the fact that UN inspectors have had “almost daily access” to Iranian nuclear facilities. These are the same inspectors we’ll be relying on to detect whether Iran’s cheating once the final deal is in effect. If they can’t tell why a stash of nuclear fuel right under their noses is growing, what don’t they know about projects that Iran has worked harder to conceal?As a preface to the news, here’s a suddenly memorable quote from this year’s State of the Union: “Our diplomacy is at work...

Secretary of State John Kerry’s severe bicycle accident might have foreign policy implications. He recently broke his leg while cycling in Switzerland. When asked by reporters about the accident, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest admitted that nuclear talks with Iran would be affected by the accident, but reassured them that Kerry would still play a prominent role in the process. “The fact is, we do continue to believe that we have the time and resources necessary to pursue and hopefully complete the Iran negotiations,” he said. “And I’m confident that those negotiations will be affected by the secretary’s injury,...

US President Barack Obama tells Channel 2 in an interview that he can “demonstrate” that a “verifiable” agreement with Iran will be the best way to contain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. “I can, [I] think, demonstrate, not based on any hope but on facts and analysis, that the best way to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon is a verifiable tough agreement. A military solution will not fix it, even if the United States participates. It would temporarily slow down an Iranian nuclear program but it would not eliminate it,” he says. Asked whether Israel may attempt a military strike...

WASHINGTON - The White House is confident it can still pursue Iran nuclear talks despite US Secretary of State John Kerry's injury over the weekend, a spokesman said on Monday. Kerry left Europe for the United States earlier on Monday after breaking his leg in a cycling accident on Sunday. "We do continue to believe that we have the time and resources necessary to pursue, and hopefully complete, the Iran negotiations," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in a briefing. He added that Kerry would continue to play a critical role in the talks, although it was unclear exactly...

Amid accelerated international efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, the UN atomic agency on Friday reported that work on an assessment of allegations that Tehran worked on atomic arms remains essentially stalled, according to The Associated Press (AP). The report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also reiterated that more cooperation is needed by Iran for full clarity on its present activities. Without it, the IAEA said, it cannot “conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.” Iran and the IAEA agreed in November of 2013 on a new attempt to probe the accusations....

We have followed the performance of Marie Harf as a spokesman for the Obama administration foreign policy at the State Department. Harf gives the catastrophic foreign policy of the Obama administration a lighter than air, Valley Girl kind of feel. She is a walking self-parody. As such, she presents a novel use of expressive form. Now comes word that Harf is being promoted to Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications to Secretary of State John Kerry. Like a helium filled balloon, Harf ascends. In her new position Harf will focus on negotiations between the U.S. and Iran on nuclear weapons. It...

[1]The Goldberg interview with Obama reads like a conversation with an idiot. Actually make that two idiots, both of whom are also compulsive liars.One of the highlights of their insane exchange is when Obama tries to insist that Iran won’t be more dangerous if it gets another $150 billion. Obama: The question is, if Iran has $150 billion parked outside the country, does the IRGC automatically get $150 billion? Does that $150 billion then translate by orders of magnitude into their capacity to project power throughout the region? So Obama brings out the math, and by math, I mean...

Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, snapped his fingers to signify how quickly the Jewish state could go from being strong to vulnerable in the face of a nuclear Iran. “We don’t believe the choice is war or to accept this deal,” Dermer said. “We believe the way to peacefully resolve this issue is to combine a credible, military threat of force with crippling sanctions.” “That combination has not been deployed for 10 years,” he noted. “We had sanctions on Iran for a long time, but crippling sanctions only began in 2012. And within 18 months, Iran...

Iran is optimistic that it can reach a final nuclear deal with world powers, its foreign minister said in an excerpt of an interview with Germany's Spiegel magazine published on Friday. "An agreement is very likely - provided that our negotiation partners mean it seriously," Mohammad Javad Zarif told Der Spiegel. Zarif criticized Saudi Arabia, which has voiced concern that a nuclear deal could embolden Iran and harm its security. "Some people in the region are evidently panicking," he said, adding there was no reason to do so. "We don't want to dominate the region. We are happy with our...

President Barack Obama has defended the impending nuclear deal with Iran by promising Americans that there will be automatic “snap-back” provisions to restore sanctions automatically if Iran cheats on its obligations: “If Iran violates the deal, sanctions can be snapped back into place,” he said in April. On Wednesday, Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told Bloomberg News that there would be no such provisions: “There can be no automaticity, none whatsoever,” he said. The Russian rebuke came in the same week that Secretary of State John Kerry was in Russia to meet directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin himself (after...

The U.S. is seeking a rapprochement with Iran over its nuclear program, potentially ending several decades of hostility. But while the U.S. is extending an open hand to Iran, other countries in the Middle East are casting a wary eye towards the negotiations. In fact, it is starting to appear that Gulf Arab states could be a major impediment to a final agreement over Iran’s nuclear program. Led by Saudi Arabia, many of the oil-producing members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are skeptical of, if not downright hostile towards Iran. With little trust between Iran and its Arab neighbors,...

In an editorial for the new issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Bill Kristol notes the "ludicrous" "guarantee" Secretary of State John Kerry made last week regarding Iran's so-called breakout capacity towards nuclear weapons. Kerry told Israelis: I say to every Israeli that today we have the ability to stop [the Iranians] if they decided to move quickly to a bomb and I absolutely guarantee that in the future we will have the ability to know what they are doing so that we can still stop them if they decided to move to a bomb. This is not the first time Kerry has...

As the June 30 deadline for a nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran approaches and the passage of a U.S. Senate bill that does not require the deal to be viewed as a treaty by Congress, the Center for Security Policy’s (CSP) President Frank Gaffney warned of the consequences of this scenario. “We are dealing with national security fraud on the part of the Obama administration and its apologists or champions with regard to this agreement,” Gaffney said at a panel discussion hosted by the CSP on Friday in Washington, D.C. “It will not prevent Iran from getting...

Obama turns a smiling face to Israel. Biden: Iran has enough material for 8 nuclear bombs "pRes_ _dent Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have gone out of their way in the last fortnight to shower friendly gestures on Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and even Ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer. .... on April 23, Biden was the keynote speaker at the Israeli embassy’s Independence Day reception. ... Biden went on to warn: “Let’s not kid each other. They already have paved a path to a bomb’s worth of material. Iran could get there now if they walked away...

Capitalism is a wonderful thing - except when it isn't. Several US businessmen - oil execs for instance - are eagerly waiting for the day when "normalizing" relations with Iran would lead to exploiting the business opportunities offered by the mullahs. The Hill: Leaders from the United States’ oil industry are traveling to Iran this week to discuss potential investment opportunities, Iran’s government said. The delegation of oil company leaders and investors are visiting Iran in anticipation of sanctions being loosened against Tehran, Iran’s state-owned Mehr News Agency reported Monday. “It is forecast that by the visit of [the] American delegation...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on its 30th anniversary.