Could Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei be Right?

 

There is one leader in the world who has taken a unique view of the so-called Framework Agreement, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran. He has decided to be neither for the Framework nor against the Framework for as he sees it, there really is no Framework to support or oppose. He has posted to his official website, “It’s all about the details. The disloyal side may want to stab Iran in the back over the details; it is too early to congratulate. What’s been done so far secures neither the main deal nor its contents nor is it even clear whether talks will bear fruit and lead to a deal.” The Ayatollah Khamenei might be the only commentator to actually call the Framework Agreement what it really is, all things to all people. As has been commented on this site and elsewhere, there appear to be as many versions of the Framework as there are commentators making their own assessments and predictions. The immediate reality which struck within hours of the announcement of there being a Framework Agreement there were commentaries from all fronts on the terms of the Framework Agreement. The White House gave their interpretation which included “fact sheet” which included the most rosy and wonderful set of conditions giving the indications that the P5+1 had procured every single item from even the most optimistic sources’ predictions of what would constitute the perfect agreement. Then there was the news of the Iranian conclusions about the Framework Agreement which granted Iran every last desire they could possibly have expected. Then there was what might be the actual best representation of the actual Framework Agreement given by the French and the European Union Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini, both who held the supposed actual copies of the direct, interpretation free, translation of the actual Framework Agreement from which the United States and Iran each had made their own determination and translations. The unique, and in our opinion, near perfect interpretation and potentially most direct and honest translation of the actual Framework Agreement is the French version which is not required to fulfill any expectations nor infer any political intents satisfying public opinions and provide, false as they might be, feelings of safety and satisfaction of our hopes and dreams.

 

So, if we are expecting the framework agreement, as the citizens in the United States have been told by their media, was satisfied by the Framework Agreement, you will likely not be uplifted by the rest of this article. If you are seeking promises that your nations has hoodwinked the Western Imperialist fools and have used the wiles and tactics developed over the thousands of years or Persian history and conquest to deliver the perfect and most promising possible affirmation of your leaders promises, you too will likely be upset by the remainder of this article. Even those who have been left scratching their heads after reading the French version of the Framework Agreement and desire somebody to make sense out of the jumbled up mashing of contradictory terms and nonsensical jumble of words, we will not be much help here either. We will try to explain what has occurred, maybe even explain some of the why, and finally give a guess at what to expect between now and the June 30, next deadline. As far as the actual meaning of the Framework Agreement, we believe the French is by far the most accurate translation which is anything but satisfying.

 

The Ayatollah Khamenei probably nailed the true reality about the Framework Agreement, it was actually meaningless and was an acquiescing by the Iranian to allow President Obama and his supporting actors to perform their kabuki dance for their supporting media and spin doctors giving them the ability to appear victorious and gaining the upper hand and have bested the Iranians by issuing their fact sheet while the Iranians were happy to issue their own version of a fact sheet which supported a completely opposite set of realities drawn from the Framework Agreement. The French version tells us everything we need to understand about the Framework Agreement. It is simply the invention which permits a continued set of negotiations despite their original statements that the postponement to March 31 was to be the final delay for reaching an agreement. This addressed the promise to finally reach an accord by claiming that they had made progress and set down a set of agreements which would act as the skeleton of the eventual agreement which is now scheduled to be produced in another quarter of a year, three months. This was their way of allowing another stretching of the deadline kicking the can down the road. If one looks at the promises President Obama and his supporting staff and media have set as their interpretation, if not the actual terminology, of the Framework Agreement it does not prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed nation, it merely puts that date off by ten years, the exact ten years which Islamic traditions allow for the application of a Hudna which states that the longest period any truce or treaty is permitted is a decade and which can be transgressed by the Islamic party to the Hudna if they feel they have the tactical advantage and strength which they had lacked when seeking the Hudna. Actually, the ten years limit to the majority of the terms of the agreement in the Framework Agreement may be the only accuracy which we can rely upon and yet it is also the most troubling of the claims made by the White House. We are not going anywhere near claiming that the ten year timing in the Framework Agreement and the fact that the Islamic limitation on treaties of such natures being limited by the Hudna to ten years makes President Obama a Muslim, but we would agree that he has a deeper knowledge of Islamic laws and practices and may be more sensitive to such nuances which has driven him to implement the ten year limitation for much of the Framework Agreement out of respect.

 

So, we have a Framework Agreement and have three separate and conflicting versions of said document with one being so vague and contradictory as to make it worthless, where does all this lead? It leads exactly where we have been before as this is far from the first extension of the nuclear weapons talks. This is notable because this extension is merely a quarter of a year compared to the previous delays which were often a year or longer. There was a statement by CIA Director John Brennan this past week when speaking to Fox News Sunday stating on Fox News Sunday, “I think they realize there’s going to be tremendous costs and consequences and implications if they were to decide to go for a breakout.” And if the deal fails, “If they decide to go down that route, they know they will do so at their peril.” There have been recent rumors that the Iranians have constructed a secret nuclear enrichment facility which was built in an area beneath one of the government buildings in order to conceal the construction from the world and the entrance. This location has been stocked with cascades of their newest model IR-8 centrifuges which spin somewhere around twenty times faster than their original centrifuges. This may be behind the latest estimate which claims that Iran currently has a breakout time of a mere couple of months, three at the longest, to building a nuclear warhead as they already have all the technical talent and abilities to produce such a weapon. This claim takes into consideration the advances the Iranians have made in their rocketry and other weapons including drones and cruise missiles and came to the conclusion that the sole impediment is the length of time it takes to enrich sufficient highly enriched uranium over ninety percent and fashion the core for the device which we have been currently told is approaching a full year but some have claimed the Iranians would only need a few months, somewhere between two and three months. What makes all this of interest is that it is possible that the Iranians desired this three month extension so they can produce at least one nuclear device and to announce that the negotiations are ended as Iran has joined the nuclear weapons club of nations. This would present the world with the worst possible result from talking the problem to death and by extending the time repeatedly the Western powers have failed hopelessly at attaining their expected goal of preventing Iran from producing nuclear weapons. This has been our greatest fear here after the second time the talks were extended for yet another year or more as each of the extensions contained smaller additional extensions before simply setting a completely new date usually a year down the road. This frightening eventuality may be exactly what we will witness at the end of this latest push back of the deadline for an agreement. This is the problematic result of the hubris and superciliousness of the approach by President Obama and his haughty treatment of the Iran negotiations standing aloof and apart from the actual negotiations and simply seeing only that which he desired while ignoring everything else. Now President Obama may be about to be standing facing explaining how it was that Iran developed nuclear weapons not only on his watch but during President Obama’s declarations guaranteeing preventing their attaining such weapons.

 

There is one thing which can be guaranteed should an Iranian nuclear weapon be tested or used against either the Greater or Lesser Satan during his watch, he will simply blame it on George W. Bush, Benyamin Netanyahu and the Republicans who signed and sent the note to be published as an editorial aimed at the Iranians because, as we all have come to realize as this has been explained to us ad nauseum, it is absolutely impossible that President Obama and those he has assigned to carry out his directives to have failed unless a third party crossed some line and thus caused the misfortune. There will be much of the blame heaped on Israel, her Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, the close cabinet around Prime Minister Netanyahu and with additional blame heaped upon Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon for making threats which caused the Iranians great amounts of fear pushing them to hurriedly produce a nuclear weapon for their protection from this Israeli threat. What will be the result of this ever dithered, repeatedly suspended, and interminably put-off target date for a final agreement which simply had to eventually produce a nuclear weapons armed Iran just as the negotiations with North Korea resulted in a nuclear armed North Korea after former President Jimmy Carter promised the deal made along with the scheduled IAEA inspections would lock down their efforts preventing their reaching a nuclear bomb. We used many of the same people in negotiating these ever protracted and delayed negotiations which oft appeared more like an attempt to provide the Iranians sufficient time to forge ahead and produce nuclear weapons while they were not obligated by any treaty as the negotiations were still in progress. When, and if Iran decides to go to breakout and charge forward to establish themselves as the next nation to join the nuclear club there might be nothing to prevent their breakout just as nothing short of taking the military option off the table and implementing the less than perfect solution but perhaps the only option which will attain the desired results. We can bet that if President William Jefferson Clinton refused to use United States military troops and firepower to prevent North Korea from attaining nuclear weapons then there is absolutely no possibility that President Obama would use military force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed nation, and they are aware of this weakness and lack of fortitude, quite aware. And as we all understand, any arms displayed as part of national armaments will forever going forward have them as an option. Perhaps the only nation to choose to forgo nuclear arms after once having nuclear weapons has been South Africa who dismantled their nuclear armaments and destroyed everything which was part of the research and development such that if they were ever to decide to build another nuclear weapon they would need to start from square one. Still, it appears that Iran will become a nuclear armed nation in the near future if they desire such and there is nothing which will stand in their way. This is the sad reality of affairs and it appears that we will need to address what to do about a nuclear armed Iran and the ramification of an arms race spreading rapidly through the Middle East and also across North Africa spreading nuclear weapons capability in such a relatively unsteady area of the globe. G0d help us.

 

Beyond the Cusp