Emerging 'bad deal' with Iran puts Israel on offensive - http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Emerging-bad-deal-with-Iran-puts-Israel-on-offensive-379366
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued in private meetings on Monday to express concern about an emerging "bad deal" between the world powers and Iran, a clear sign that his discussion with US President Barack Obama in Washington three weeks ago left him unconvinced.
Netanyahu repeated in private discussions on Monday the warning he gave publicly on Sunday - that an agreement is emerging that would "leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, with thousands of centrifuges through which Iran can manufacture the material for a nuclear bomb within a short period of time."
One government official said Netanyahu's "No. 1 concern" is that an agreement - which the world powers and Tehran are trying to hammer out before a November 24 deadline - would leave Iran with enough centrifuges in place to allow it to hover above nuclear threshold status.
Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, who is closely coordinated with Netanyahu on the Iranian issue, repeated the message publicly on Monday as well, saying in an Israel Radio interview that Israel was concerned by the world's apparent powerful desire to reach an agreement so it can focus on other problems.
Steinitz said the world understands the danger of a nuclear Iran, "but there are other problems in the world, and there is a desire by some of the actors to clear off the table."
The minister refrained from mentioning any names.
What makes Netanyahu's and Steinitz's comments significant is that they came after both held meetings on the matter in Washington in recent weeks. Netanyahu met Obama on October 1, and Steinitz met with the US's top negotiators with Iran in mid-September - yet their statements were very critical, indicating that nothing they heard left them reassured.
In an op-ed in The New York Times on Sunday, Steinitz wrote that "Israel is deeply concerned about the trajectory of the ongoing negotiations," adding that the talks were "moving in the wrong direction, especially on the core issue of uranium enrichment."
The intelligence minister said on Israeli Radio that since the Iranians have made no concessions on anything significant, but rather only on secondary or symbolic issues, the question today is not whether there will be a good or bad agreement, but rather a bad agreement or no agreement.
"It is better not to sign an agreement now, and wait in the hope of getting a better agreement in the future through the stepping up of pressure," he said.
Israel's concern is that the sudden focus on the threat posed by Islamic State is diverting attention from the much more serious concern: a nuclear-threshold Iran, Steinitz said.
It is essential not to repeat the error the US made in 2003, when it focused on Iraq, "at the expense of dealing with a more critical problem for the peace of the world - the Iranian nuclear program, which then was in its early stages," he said.
While it was important to focus on Islamic State and those who want to establish a new caliphate, this must not come "at the expense of preventing the nuclearization of the veteran caliphate - the Islamic Republic of Iran," Steinitz said.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, whose comments on Iran - unlike those of Steinitz - are not as closely coordinated with Netanyahu, said Israeli officials have spoken enough about the issue, and now it is time to make a decision.
"Our message is clear," he said in an Israel Radio interview.
"In the final analysis we are responsible for our fate, and the Israeli government is responsible for the citizens of Israel, and we have to make decisions without a connection to the position of the world. I have said more than once: 'if you want to shoot, shoot, don't talk.'" Israeli leaders must realize they cannot avoid making a decision on Iran by looking for someone else to bail them out, he said. "We don't always need to look at someone else and say they are to blame, or they need to make the decisions.
The responsibility is on us. It is possible to make a decision, this way or that."
Throughout the interview, however, Liberman gave no indication of what decision he thought the government should make regarding possible military action against Iran.
In a related development, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will continue leading nuclear negotiations with Iran until a deal is reached, even if the November deadline is missed, she said on Monday.
Ashton's five-year term as EU foreign policy chief ends at the end of this month, and she had said she would stay on as nuclear negotiator until November 24, the deadline for reaching a long-term settlement.
Asked if she would continue beyond that date if necessary, she told reporters at an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Luxembourg: "I have been asked to carry on until it's done."
Steinitz, at a press briefing last month, addressed the approaching end of Ashton's tenure, saying the Iranians may believe that since Ashton is leaving, and since she has been a leading figure in the negotiations, "she may have extra motivation to conclude a deal - whether it is a good deal or a bad deal - and this is problematic. I hope this is not the case."
Steinitz said he hoped Ashton "can be honest enough with herself to say that maybe there isn't a deal, that a deal would be nice, but let's not deceive ourselves."
Meanwhile, Meretz chairwoman Zehava Gal-On accused Netanyahu on Monday of deluding the public by exaggerating the Iranian threat in order to cover up his failures in the diplomatic and economic arenas.
"The solution to the Iranian question revolves around enlisting international support and strengthening the status of Israel in the international community through cooperation with the states acting against the Iranian nuclear threat," she said. "Instead, Israel is running away from the peace process and is on a collision course with the Europeans and the Americans."
Officials in the Prime Minister's Office rejected Gal-On's charges.
Meanwhile on Monday, a monthly UN atomic agency report, seen by Reuters, said Iran is meeting its commitments under the temporary deal with the world powers.
It said Iran had diluted more than 4,100 kg. of uranium enriched to a fissile concentration of up to 2% down to the level of natural uranium.
This was one of the additional steps Iran agreed to undertake when the six-month accord that took effect early this year was extended by four months in July.
In addition, Iran since July had used 17.1 kg. of 20% uranium in oxide form to manufacture fuel for a research reactor, the report said.
Netanyahu warns world powers: A nuclear threshold Iran is a bigger threat than ISIS - http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Netanyahu-warns-world-powers-A-nuclear-threshold-Iran-is-a-bigger-threat-than-ISIS-379211
In an indication of the degree to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is concerned about the direction the world's negotiations with Iran are going, he used the naming of an entrance into Jerusalem on Sunday to warn of the danger of the Islamic Republic becoming a nuclear threshold state.
"We are standing before the danger of an agreement [between the world powers and Iran] that will leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, with thousands of centrifuges through which Iran can manufacture the material for a nuclear bomb within a short period of time," he said at the naming of Road No. 9 into Jerusalem near Motza after former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir.
"This is a threat to the entire world, first and foremost to Israel, and it is much worse than the threat of Islamic State," he said.
His comments come against the backdrop of reports reaching Jerusalem that the US was willing to accept an agreement with Iran that - according to Channel 2 - would allow it to retain some 5,000 centrifuges.
"There is concern in Jerusalem because we have not seen any evidence of the Iranians willing to show genuine flexibility, and we are concerned that in the framework of cosmetic concessions they are willing to make, they will retain the ability to become a nuclear threshold state," one government official said.
Netanyahu, who served under Shamir as Israel's ambassador to the UN and as deputy foreign minister, said that the seventh prime minister - who died in 2012 - was a realist who was not taken in by illusions and false hopes.
Regarding Jerusalem, Netanyahu said Israel would fight against those trying to redivide the capital. His comments came two days after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Palestinians to prevent Jews from going up to and "desecrating" the Temple Mount.
Netanyahu said Shamir stressed at every opportunity the need to preserve the unity of Jerusalem, "He stood by our natural right to build and be built in Jerusalem," Netanyahu said. "Is it conceivable, he asked, that a Jew cannot establish his home in the capital of Israel. Do we have to be forbidden to build the capital of Israel, the inheritance of our forefathers? So we build and continue to build, for Jews and Arabs and members of other religions alike - for all its inhabitants."
Netanyahu said that even though there are those who want to divide the city again, "to rebuild the walls in its heart," Israel will not allow this and will fight against it "with an iron fist."
The prime minister related to the uptick in violence in Jerusalem, saying that it was taking place almost exclusively in the eastern part of the city. "But that is part of the city, and it is our city," he said. "We are not willing to tolerate the throwing of rocks in the capital of Israel, and will use all the means at our disposal to prevent it."
Iran's Red Line: Centrifuges for 38 A-Bombs Per Year - Mark Langfan - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/186252#.VEPXdpt0x9D
Arutz Sheva analyzes Ayatollah Khamenei's alarming demands in the talks with the P5+1, as outlined in a graphic he tweeted.
With the self-imposed deadline of November 24 looming over the negotiations between the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) and Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader and effective ruler, tweeted a graphic last week which outlined Iran's 11 "Red Lines for Nuclear Talks."
These included a "red line" of retaining enough centrifuge capacity to produce approximately 38 uranium nuclear bombs per year. This is Red Line 8, which says: "Supplying the final need of the country's enrichment capacity which is 190 SWUs."
Khamenei's tweeted graphic included an inset that reads: "Ayatollah Khamenei, in line with his support for the Iranian negotiators... has called it necessary to observe the red lines in the course of the nuclear talks. In this infographic, some details of these red lines are reviewed in the Leader of the Revolution's remarks."
"SWU" is an acronym for a "Separative Work Unit" which is a measure by which nuclear centrifuge capacity is measured to enrich uranium. Nuclear centrifuges separate the heavier isotope of uranium U238 from its lighter cousin uranium isotope U235. Natural uranium has a high percentage of U238 and a low percentage of U235. Only enriched uranium that has a high percentage of the lighter U235 isotope is useable for a nuclear bomb.
Now, in order to calculate how many uranium nuclear bombs' worth of enriched uranium "190,000 SWUs" of centrifuge enrichment capacity could produce per year, one has to know two separate figures: first, the amount of kilograms of enriched uranium needed for a nuclear bomb, and second, how many SWUs are necessary to enrich the required number of kilograms of enriched uranium.
Sources such as A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, estimates the amount of highly enriched U235 necessary for an implosion-type uranium nuclear bomb to be 10kg-18kg, and for a simple gun-type bomb - about 40 kg.
Also, the IAEA defines a "Significant Quantity" (SQ) of enriched uranium as "the approximate amount of nuclear material for which the possibility of manufacturing a nuclear explosive device cannot be excluded. Significant quantities take into account unavoidable losses due to conversion and manufacturing processes and should not be confused with critical masses. Significant quantities are used in establishing the quantity component of the IAEA inspection goal."
IAEA defines a "Significant Quantity," or "SQ" of highly enriched Uranium to be 25 kg.
So, for purposes of the "SWU/bombs per year" calculation, the IAEA "Significant Quantity" estimate of 25 kg of 90% U235 / 10% U238 uranium is a good basic number of kilograms of enriched uranium needed for one uranium nuclear bomb.
The scientific "MrReid.org" website has generated a SWU graph which easily calculates the amount of SWUs needed to produce a given enrichment percentage level of U235-enriched uranium to a specific kilogram amount of the enriched level of uranium.
The "Mr. Reid-SWU" chart states that 3,831 SWUs are necessary for 20 kg of 90% U235 enriched uranium, if one starts from scratch with unenriched uranium. So, approximating and rounding up for 25 kilograms of 90% U235, the number of SWUs necessary is about 5,000 SWUs.
Since Khamenei stated that Iran needs at least 190,000 SWUs, that means he is demanding that Iran needs enough nuclear centrifuge capacity to enrich 38 uranium nuclear bombs per year (190,000 SWUs per year / 5,000 SWUs necessary to produce one nuclear bomb). This amount of centrifuge capacity demanded by Iran will surely meet opposition from Israel, which has demanded Iran be barred from any centrifuge capacity whatsoever.
Recently, at the UN General Assembly, PM Netanyahu explained that many countries that use civilian nuclear power have no need for any centrifuge capacity, because outside countries enrich the fuel necessary for their civilian nuclear power plants.
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