Monday, July 16, 2018

How could Israelis roam around Iran?

On 31 January, "The Mossad agents moving in on a warehouse in a drab commercial district of Teheran, Iran, knew exactly how much time they had to disable the alarms, break through two doors, cut through dozens of giant safes and get out of the city with a half-ton of secret materials: 6 hours and 29 minutes," wrote Sanger and Bergman. There were 32 safes but they left many untouched "going first for the ones containing the black binders, which contained the most critical designs. When time was up, they fled for the border, hauling 50,000 pages and 163 compact discs of memos, videos and plans." In April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made some of the material public, after briefing Donald Trump privately beforehand, claiming that Iran had lied about its nuclear program. The International Atomic Agency responded that none of the material was new and that there were "no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009". European governments dismissed Netanyahu's claims altogether, saying that it was old news and it was proof that the nuclear deal was necessary because the deal had got rid of 97% of Iran's nuclear material. How long would it take Iran to manufacture a nuclear weapon? Less than one year if they go full speed, say some experts. In 2015, Iran announced discovery of new uranium reserves. It said that two-thirds of the country has been explored and the rest will be covered in another 4 years. "The Obama administration granted citizenship to 2,500 Iranians, including family members of government officials, while negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, a senior cleric and member of parliament has claimed." It set off a competition between officials to see whose children could get to the US. Following signing of the nuclear deal former President of Iran Ahmadinejad wrote to Obama to return $2 billion of Iran's money frozen by the US Supreme Court. Prime Minister Angela Merkel of Germany vowed to defend the nuclear deal against unilateral sanctions by the US and the European Union passed a law to protect European companies from US punishment. Despite such assurance companies are leaving Iran for fear of losing US business. For India, this is bad news. On the one hand, there are a large number of Indians working in Gulf countries, which are against Iran, and on the other, India has a stake in Chabahar port in Iran which will allow us to bypass Pakistan to trade with central Asia. All because Israelis were operating around Tehran for 2 years.

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