The "Possible Military Dimensions" Bomb That Could Blow Up the Iran Deal

By Gareth Porter,

The United States and Iran may have agreed on a vague framework for resolving remaining issues between them, including the lifting of sanctions, but the final stage of the negotiations will bring a diplomatic confrontation over the sequence and timing of lifting sanctions.

And the most difficult issue in the coming talks will be how the "Possible Military Dimensions" or "PMD" - the allegations of Iranian nuclear weapons work that have been at the center of the entire Iran nuclear crisis for several years - is to be linked to lifting certain UN Security Council sanctions.

On that linkage Iran will insist that its cooperation in providing access to the International Atomic Energy Agency must be reciprocated with the lifting of certain sanctions on an agreed-upon timetable, regardless of how long the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) takes to make up its mind and what judgment it renders, according to a source in close contact with the Iranian negotiating team.

The US "fact sheet" on the "parameters" of an agreement says, "All past United Nations Security Council resolutions on the Iran nuclear issue will be lifted simultaneously with the completion by Iran of nuclear related activities addressing all key concerns," and the list that follows includes "PMD."

However, nothing was officially agreed on in Lausanne on how Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the PMD issue would be linked to sanctions relief, according to the source close to the Iranian negotiators. But the source said that an informal understanding was reached that the linkage would involve the lifting of UN Security Council sanctions directly involving Iran's imports for its nuclear and missile programs.

Iran is prepared to cooperate to complete the IAEA investigation of past allegations, the source said, but will demand concrete limits that provide assurances that the process will not be prolonged indefinitely.

Iran continues to insist that the evidence being used to impugn its intentions was "manufactured." Nevertheless, Iran "would be ready to give access to the IAEA on PMD even though that goes beyond NPT [Nonproliferation Treaty]," the source told Truthout.

But the source said Iran would not agree to make the lifting of those UN sanctions contingent on any IAEA judgment about the PMD issue. Instead, Iran will demand a list in advance of everything the IAEA wants. "We would give the IAEA access to everything on the list," said the source.

Once the IAEA completed its visits and its environmental sampling, however, Iran will consider that the process is finished. "We don't care what the IAEA analysis would be or how long it took," the source said. "What Iranians cannot accept is that [the PMD issue] becomes an indefinite instrument for theIsraelis, because they want to find out about Iranian capability and ask for this or that military site and a new inspection."

The negotiations on the PMD-sanctions linkage will be part of a broader set of negotiations in which Iran will insist on a detailed set of arrangements on sanctions relief in return for each of its concessions in the agreement, according to the source. "Each of the elements listed in the US fact sheet must have a step-by-step plan with a timetable and proportionate reciprocation," said the source.

Obama Under Pressure He Helped Create

The Obama administration has been under heavy pressure from the Israelis and their supporters in Washington to insist that Iran confess to having carried out nuclear weapons research and development as a condition for sanctions relief.

That pressure is the result of several years of news media coverage that has treated allegations that Iran carried out research and development on nuclear weapons, published by the IAEA in 2011, as established fact. The media have constantly repeated the theme that Iran has been "stonewalling" the IAEA to cover up its past nuclear weapons experiments.

Absent from the media narrative is the fact that the allegations that the IAEA is demanding that Iran explain are all based on intelligence that is now known to have come from Israel and which the IAEA itself suspected of being fabricated, from 2005 to 2009.

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Iran apparently concluded from that experience that the IAEA would keep Iran on the hook as long as the United States and its allies wanted to maintain leverage over Iran. The Obama administration has now confirmed that conclusion by holding the lifting of sanctions hostage to Iran's "cooperation" on PMD.

US officials have never explained how they would expect Iran to satisfy the IAEA if the intelligence at issue was indeed fabricated.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30265-the-possible-military-dimensions-bomb-that-could-blow-up-iran-deal