Iran Rejects Idea of a New ‘Trump Deal’ in Nuclear Row
Parisa Hafezi | Reuters
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani dismissed on Wednesday a proposal for a new “Trump deal” aimed at resolving a nuclear row, saying it was a “strange” offer and criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump for always breaking promises. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has praised Trump as a great dealmaker, called on Tuesday for the president to replace Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with major powers with his own new pact to ensure Tehran does not get an atomic weapon. Trump said he agreed with Johnson that a “Trump deal” should replace the Iran nuclear deal. In a televised speech, Rouhani told Washington to return to the nuclear pact, which Washington abandoned in 2018, under which Tehran curbed its nuclear work in return for the lifting of international sanctions on Iran. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Reuters that the deal was still alive: “No, it’s not dead. It’s not dead,” Zarif said on the sidelines of a conference in New Delhi. But he told the conference Trump’s withdrawal from the earlier deal made new negotiations with Washington pointless: “I had a U.S. deal and the U.S. broke it. If I have a Trump deal, how long will it last?” In its biggest step away from the agreement yet, Iran announced on Jan. 5 it would abandon all limitations on enriching uranium set down in the pact. Britain, France and Germany reacted by activating a dispute mechanism in the deal on Tuesday, which eventually could lead to the reimposing of U.N. sanctions. Iran called this step a “strategic mistake”. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Washington now expects the U.N. sanctions to “snap back into place” as a result of the European move. The European countries have said that is not their goal.
Days Before Europeans Warned Iran of Nuclear Deal Violations, Trump Secretly Threatened to Impose 25% Tariff If They Didn’t
John Hudson and Souad Mekhennet | Washington Post
A week before Germany, France and Britain formally accused Iran of breaching the 2015 nuclear deal, the Trump administration issued a private threat to the Europeans that shocked officials in all three countries. If they refused to call out Tehran and initiate an arcane dispute mechanism in the deal, the United States would impose a 25 percent tariff on European automobiles, the Trump officials warned, according to European officials familiar with the conversations. Within days, the three countries would formally accuse Iran of violating the deal, triggering a recourse provision that could reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran and unravel the last remaining vestiges of the Obama-era agreement. The U.S. effort to coerce European foreign policy through tariffs, a move one European official equated to “extortion,” represents a new level of hardball tactics with the United States’ oldest allies, underscoring the extraordinary tumult in the transatlantic relationship. It remains unclear if the threat was even necessary, as Europeans had been signaling their intention to trigger the dispute resolution for weeks. While the United States views the mechanism as critical to reimposing sanctions on Iran in as little as 65 days, the Europeans see the measure as a last chance to salvage a deal they view as vital to reducing tensions and limiting Iran’s nuclear program. European officials complained privately that Trump’s threat only complicated their decision Tuesday to invoke the mechanism, which starts the clock on 65 days of negotiations with Iran about returning to full compliance with the deal. If the dispute isn’t settled, U.N. sanctions could be reimposed on Iran, including a blanket arms embargo. Officials in Britain, France and Germany say that they had planned to initiate the mechanism but that Trump’s threat nearly caused them to backtrack, out of concern that they could be viewed as stooges of Washington if word of the threat leaked.
US Envoy Calls on South Korea to Consult With US About North Korea Engagement
Yonhap News Agency
South Korea should consult with the U.S. about its plans to engage with North Korea to avoid any "misunderstandings" that may trigger sanctions, the top U.S. envoy to Seoul said Thursday. Ambassador Harry Harris made the remark as South Korea is pushing to expand inter-Korean exchanges to facilitate the stalled nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang. President Moon Jae-in said earlier this week that individual tours to the North do not violate the U.N. sanctions and that it could eventually induce the North to return to dialogue and win international support for partial relief of sanctions. “President Moon's continued optimism is encouraging,” Harris was quoted by Reuters as saying to foreign journalists in Seoul. “But with regard to acting on that optimism, I have said that things should be done in consultation with the United States.” “In order to avoid a misunderstanding later that could trigger sanctions, it's better to run this through the Working Group,” he said. The Working Group was set up in 2018 to coordinate North Korea-related issues. In response, the U.S. State Department said the allies are committed to a unified response to North Korea and that all U.N. member states are required to implement the sanctions resolutions. It did not comment on whether individual tours to the North fall under the scope of sanctions. Washington has been wary of allowing exceptions to the U.N. sanctions regime out of concern they could undermine its “maximum pressure” campaign to denuclearize Pyongyang.
Israel Warns Iran Is Closer to Nuclear Bomb
Linda Gradstein | Voice of America
Israel’s army intelligence says Iran will have enough enriched uranium to produce one nuclear bomb by the end of the year. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will not let Iran become a nuclear power. Israeli military analysts say that by the end of 2020 Iran will have enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb. The United States pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, and Israeli intelligence officials speculated that Iran would resume its efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb. Israeli army intelligence officials based their calculation on their assessment that it takes 40 kilograms of 90-percent enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb. At the same time, the Israeli assessment found that Iran does not possess missiles that can carry a nuclear bomb and that as far as they know, Iran is not working on one. He said that Israel knows exactly what is happening with the Iranian nuclear program and that Israel will not let Iran get a nuclear weapon. He also called on European states to impose new sanctions on Iran for breaching the nuclear deal.
Study Raises Prospect of Space Conflict If US and Russia Abandon Nuclear Arms Control Treaty
Sandra Erwin | Space News
The military and intelligence community’s space agencies may have to cope with growing instability in outer space if the United States and Russia don’t renew the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) that is set to expire on February 5, 2021, experts warn in a new report. A study released Jan. 15 by the Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy notes that abandoning the New START Treaty could not only reignite a nuclear arms race but also destabilize outer space. If U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin allow the treaty to expire, limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear arms will cease as well as prohibitions on interference with space-based “national technical means” that are used to verify treaty compliance, the Aerospace report says. Space-based national technical means include satellites operated by the National Reconnaissance Office and the Defense Department. Michael Gleason, senior strategic space analyst at Aerospace and co-author of the paper, said the United States and Russia have for decades maintained a de facto ban on interfering with each others’ surveillance and military satellites but that could change in the absence of an arms control regime. The United States might have to prepare for the possibility that Russia could try to interfere with both U.S. government and commercial remote sensing assets, Gleason said Jan. 15 at an Aerospace Corp. news conference in Arlington, Virginia.
Russia’s Hypersonic Missiles Are Not ‘Game Changing,’ Says US Army Chief of Staff
Sean Naylor | Yahoo News
The U.S. Army’s top officer said Tuesday during an appearance in Washington, D.C., that he isn’t worried by Russia’s growing arsenal of hypersonic missiles. Asked during an appearance at the Atlantic Council whether he considered Russia’s deployment of its hypersonic arsenal “game changing,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville replied: “No, I don’t.” “I have not seen them actually hit a target with that system, and I know where our [hypersonic] technology is,” he continued, “and I’m very comfortable with where our technology’s going and with the speed it’s going, so I don’t see it as game changing yet.” Western analysts have speculated about Russia’s hypersonic weapons since Russian President Vladimir Putin disclosed in March 2018 that his military was developing an arsenal of “invincible” nuclear weapons. The Russian Ministry of Defense announced Dec. 27 that it had established its first intercontinental missile regiment equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle. The Russians probably designed the Avangard to defeat U.S. missile defenses by striking those defenses’ “key infrastructure,” such as command and control facilities, Michael Kofman, a Russian military expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, told Yahoo News. A hypersonic weapon is usually defined as one that reaches speeds of at least Mach 5, or five times faster than the speed of sound. The Avangard reportedly flies at speeds of up to Mach 27, although Kofman warned against taking Russian claims at face value