A CNN interview to be aired on Sunday will have Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declaring to CNN host Fareed Zakaria that Iran “will not accept any limitations” on its “nuclear technology” in the context of a comprehensive agreement between Tehran and the West, and that the Iranians will “not under any circumstances” agree to destroy any uranium enrichment centrifuges.
Zakaria described Rouhani’s statement as a diplomatic “train wreck,” observing that “the Iranian conception of what the deal is going to look like and the American conception now look like they are miles apart.” The preview of Rouhani’s statements came a day after CNN aired footage of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif asserting in an interview that Iran is not obligated to dismantle centrifuges, and that White House statements to the contrary – and there have been several such statements – were mischaracterizations. A report published this week [PDF] by the U.S.-based Institute of Science and International Security (ISIS) had outlined the minimum requirements that Iran would be obligated to take under any agreement that robustly imposed limits on Tehran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons. The Wall Street Journal pointedly observed that the report’s prescriptions “aren’t viewed as particularly harsh or hard-line,” and ISIS head David Albright emphasized that they had been produced after ‘extensive discussions in recent months with Obama administration officials working on the Iran file.’ The ISIS reported calculated that any agreement would have to require the Iranians to dismantle 15,000 centrifuges, and that some of the dismantled equipment should actually “be taken out of Iran.”
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Counterterrorism officials are continuing to unpack the significance of yesterday’s announcement by Israel’s Shin Bet security service that Israeli officials had captured three Al Qaeda-linked Palestinians plotting mass-casualty terror attacks in Israel, with Israeli CT expert Aviv Oreg telling USA Today that the plot indicated “that hard-core al-Qaeda elements are involved within Israel” for the first time in years. Fox News read the incident against “growing evidence” from over recent months that “Al Qaeda and other Sunni Jihadists [are] gaining a foothold in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” The Jerusalem Post today cited sources indicating that the Gaza-based operative who recruited the three men had “received his orders directly from the head of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri.” Israel’s head of military intelligence had already last summer worried that the chaos in Syria would provide a local foothold for jihadist, while the growth of Al Qaeda to Israel’s south in the Sinai Peninsula has been extensively documented. Al Qaeda’s expanding strength along Israel’s borders and inside the West Bank is likely to have straightforward diplomatic consequences. The Israelis have been insisting that any final peace agreement with the Palestinians must include provisions allowing Israel to maintain a security and counterterror presence along the border with Jordan. The Palestinians have flatly rejected the position. Evidence of fresh Al Qaeda efforts seems set to reinforce Jerusalem’s position.
(Israel Project News Service)
