Tag: Iran

I guess this means we will no longer see any defenders of the 1994 Agreed Framework considering one of the nation’s top Democrats has now disavowed it:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday the recent landmark deal on Iran’s nuclear program grew out of “the failure of the North Korea experience.”

Kerry also said that Iran and North Korea are different, defending the Iranian deal during a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing as Republican senators raised concern the Iranian deal could fall apart like the 1994 nuclear deal with North Korea.

“Iran has also agreed to accept the additional protocol, and the additional protocol is an outgrowth of the failure of the North Korea experience, which put in additional access requirements precisely so that we do know what Iran is doing,” Kerry said.

The 1994 deal with North Korea, known as the Agreed Framework, required North Korea to freeze and ultimately dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for economic and political concessions. But the deal fell apart after the North was found to have been running a secret nuclear program in late 2002.

Kerry stressed that Iran is different from the North.

“Unlike North Korea, that created a nuclear weapon and exploded one and pulled out of the NPT (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty), Iran has done none of that,” he said.

The North Korea experience is “what gave birth to the additional protocol” in the Iranian deal, Kerry said.  [Yonhap]

I can still remember the good old days when Democrats claimed the failure of the Agreed Framework was all Bush’s fault.  How times have changed.

This deal with Iran does not mean much for North Korea because they have already gone down this road two times before with two different US presidential administrations and cheated on the deals both times.

The South’s unification minister, Hong Yong-pyo, was blunt in comments Tuesday about what to expect. “Conclusion of Iranian negotiations will not lead to solution of the nuclear problem” in North Korea he told foreign correspondents here. But as the North now represents “the only country … to exercise nuclear power to intimidate the rest of the world…the agreement will at least give some pressure on North Korea.”

It is not known whether negotiators in Vienna discussed or agreed privately to address the broader issue of Tehran’s assistance or cooperation with Pyongyang.

WILL TEHRAN STOP AIDING PYONGYANG?

Analysts like Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations say that how North Korea now responds to the new deal “ultimately will depend on whether US negotiators also have a tacit understanding with Iran to curtail questionable relationships with North Korea in these areas.” If North Korea “loses another customer,” Mr. Snyder believes, “Pyongyang may take notice.”

So far Pyongyang has kept its silence. The North Korean media has yet to report on the historic accord with Iran, much less offer any commentary.

The Iran deal does give Pyongyang something new to worry about, says Mark Fitzpatrick at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “I bet their gut reaction will be along the lines of, ‘We are more isolated than ever, with even Iran making peace with Washington,’” he says.  [Christian Science Monitor]

You can read the rest, but if anything the Iranians took solace in the fact that the North Koreans were able to cheat on their deals for many years with the US turning a blind eye to their activities due to other pressing concerns in the world at the time.  If the North Koreans feel like they can cut yet another deal and get a lot free goodies for little or nothing in return they would probably do it.  However, I don’t think the Obama administration is going to be as eager to cut a deal with North Korea simply because of their history of cheating on past deals.  As always time will tell.

https://twitter.com/Max_Fisher/status/621019725464739840

https://twitter.com/freekorea_us/status/615834727929499648

This report is not really surprising because infecting North Korea’s nuclear program with a Stuxnet like virus would be far more challenging than Iran.  Reportedly the US and Israel were able to infect the Iranians’ nuclear program with the virus despite it being on a closed Intranet.  They did this by infecting a worker’s USB thumb drive with the virus who then plugged it into a computer within the intranet.  With Iran being a more open society it would be easier to place intelligence assets within the country to pull off such an attack.  In North Korea it would be much more difficult due to the closed nature of their society where most people are not even free to move about the country without an official permit much less get close enough to a nuclear facility to identify ways to infect their systems:

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The United States tried to deploy a version of the Stuxnet computer virus to attack North Korea’s nuclear weapons program five years ago but ultimately failed, according to people familiar with the covert campaign.

The operation began in tandem with the now-famous Stuxnet attack that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program in 2009 and 2010 by destroying a thousand or more centrifuges that were enriching uranium. Reuters and others have reported that the Iran attack was a joint effort by U.S. and Israeli forces.

According to one U.S. intelligence source, Stuxnet’s developers produced a related virus that would be activated when it encountered Korean-language settings on an infected machine.

But U.S. agents could not access the core machines that ran Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, said another source, a former high-ranking intelligence official who was briefed on the program.

The official said the National Security Agency-led campaign was stymied by North Korea’s utter secrecy, as well as the extreme isolation of its communications systems. A third source, also previously with U.S. intelligence, said he had heard about the failed cyber attack but did not know details.

North Korea has some of the most isolated communications networks in the world. Just owning a computer requires police permission, and the open Internet is unknown except to a tiny elite. The country has one main conduit for Internet connections to the outside world, through China.  [Reuters via a reader tip]

You can read more at the link, but I am sure the North Koreans are smart enough to not be using USB thumb drives thus meaning their systems are likely only vulnerable to an insider attack.

I wonder if the Iranians were using this shipment as a way to test US willingness to strike a deal?

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, right, welcomes North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, for a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014

North Korea supplied several shipments of missile components to Iran during recent nuclear talks and the transfers appear to violate United Nations sanctions on both countries, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Since September more than two shipments of missile parts have been monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies as they transited from North Korea to Iran, said officials familiar with intelligence reports who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Details of the arms shipments were included in President Obama’s daily intelligence briefings and officials suggested information about the transfers was kept secret from the United Nations, which is in charge of monitoring sanctions violations.

Critics of the U.S.-led nuclear framework agreement reached in Switzerland earlier this month have said one major deficiency of the accord is its failure to address Iran’s missile program, considered a key nuclear delivery system for the Islamist regime.  [The Washington Free Beachon]

You can read the rest at the link, but if the Iranians saw that the US was allowing this ship to travel to Iran unmolested then that may have been a sign to the regime that the US was eager to cut a deal and overlook obvious sanctions violations. Anyone else have any other theories on the timing of this shipment?

I hope this deal works out, but considering North Korea is one of Iran’s best friends they would be well versed how to maintain a secret nuclear program and then back out of deal by blaming the other side:

Even two of the most skeptical experts on the negotiations — Gary Samore and Olli Heinonen of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and members of a group call United Against Nuclear Iran — said they were impressed with the depth of detail.

Mr. Samore, who was Mr. Obama’s top adviser on weapons of mass destruction in his first term as president, said in an email that there is “much detail to be negotiated but I think it’s enough to be called a political framework.” Just a day ago, that appeared in doubt.

Mr. Heinonen, the former chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said “it appears to be a fairly comprehensive deal with most important parameters.” But he cautioned that “Iran maintains enrichment capacity, which will be beyond its near-term needs.”

According to European officials, roughly 5,000 centrifuges will remain spinning enriched uranium at the main nuclear site at Natanz, about half the number currently running. The giant underground enrichment site at Fordo — which Israeli and some American officials fear is impervious to bombing — will be partly converted to advanced nuclear research and the production of medical isotopes. Foreign scientists will be present. There will be no fissile material present that could be used to make a bomb.

A major reactor at Arak, which officials feared could produce plutonium, would operate on a limited basis that would not provide enough fuel for a bomb.

In return, the European Union and the United States would begin to lift sanctions, as Iran complied. At a news conference after the announcement, Mr. Zarif said that essentially all sanctions would be lifted after the final agreement is signed.  [New York Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but North Korea first started negotiating in regards to their nuclear program back in 1994.  Now 21 years later they have nuclear weapons.  The Iranians if they choose to follow the same path will probably have nuclear weapons even sooner than that.  I think a lot of the decision on whether to covertly build nukes will depend on the geopolitical situation in the Middle East in the coming years.  Despite the media reports I think Iran wants nuclear weapons more for regime survival than to attack Israel with.  In the coming years if Iran feels like they are getting surrounded by hostile ISIS affiliates and Sunni governments they may then feel compelled to move forward with a covert nuclear weapons program.  This deal will allow them to keep that possibility open in the long term while still complying with the agreement to get sanctions dropped in the near term.

Analysing the political and military cooperation between Iran and the DPRK: http://t.co/M3ZPUNCtFO

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) January 19, 2015

Here is an interesting report from Strategy Page:

In central Iran, satellite photos revealed several tunnels being dug into a mountain near a nuclear weapons research facility. Several other nuclear research facilities have had some of their operations moved underground, but this tunneling operation is one of the most ambitious “protective” efforts yet undertaken. Iranian officials have been to North Korea, and seen the extensive underground facilities there. It’s possible, even likely, that North Korean engineers are lending their expertise (for a fee) to assist the Iranians in their tunnel construction. Tunnels for industrial facilities are not quite the same as highway, aqueduct or mining tunnels, which Iran has many of.

I did a little research and through Global Security.org I was able to locate the nuclear weapons research facility in central Iran.  The facility is located 15 kilometers southeast of the city of Isfahan.  The facility operates four nuclear reactors that were supplied by China.  I did a little Google Earthing to locate the site.  Here is where the city of Isfahan is located in relation to the rest of Iran:

Here is an image of where the nuclear facility is located in the vicinity of the city of Isfahan:

Here is a close up look at the nuclear facility:

Here is a still image of what this facility looks like:

To the northwest of the facility you can see the excavation occurring on the side of the moutain:

It appears that the center of the excavation is a possible concrete production facility to facilitate the construction of the bunker complex.  I highlighted on the image two bunkers that I could see that appeared either completed or at least their entrances are completed.  There is also what appears to be three possible large concrete buildings as well that may hide possible entrances to additional bunkers.  I could also make out what appears to be digging for two more bunkers on each side of the excavation area where our industrious North Korean engineers are hard at work for the Iranian mullahs.

Just another example that the enemies of the United States have no problem collaborating and working together in order to undermine the United States and the world community in general.