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Category Archives: Iran
Looming Iran Nuclear Deal
Secretary Kerry in a question and answer session yesterday seemed to be saying that Iran’s progress in weaponization, that is developing and testing the design of a nuclear weapon is not important for the completion of a deal with Iran. … Continue reading
Posted in Intelligence, Iran, Russia, United Nations, WMD
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Policy and Intelligence
There has always been a debate about the relationship between the Intelligence Community and the Policy leadership. The idea was that those charged with intelligence should stick to intelligence collection and assessments. For the past few weeks, one of the … Continue reading
Posted in Intelligence, Iran, WMD
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Inspectors in Iran-Political Science and Physical Science
In the President’s announcement of the Iran Nuclear deal, he highlighted the authorities of the IAEA inspectors under the new agreement–even though the details are not worked out. This will not be the case. The UN inspectors in Iraq had … Continue reading
Posted in Iran, Iraq, Russia, United Nations, WMD
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Monitoring Iran? Don’t bet on it…
There are a series of massive problems with the Iran nuclear agreement. A key one is the assertion of tough inspections. The diminished US objective of “limiting” Iran’s enrichment capacity to a point where there would be a one-year “breakout” … Continue reading
Posted in Intelligence, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Russia, United Nations, WMD
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Iran Nuclear Deal?
The volume of opinions on the potential deal concerning Iran’s nuclear capacity is deafening. I risk adding to the noise. One thoughtful voice with long experience working on the Administration’s part is Robert Einhorn. He just offered the case for … Continue reading
Posted in Iran, ISIL, ISIS, Saudi Arabia, United Nations, WMD
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Who’s Happy in Iraq?
Watching Iraq and the US actions there is disheartening, unless of course you are Qassem Suleimani, commander of Iran’s notorious Quds force. Suleimani and the Iraqi Shia militia he largely directs, are doing quite well (see the happy chap in … Continue reading
Posted in Intelligence, Iran, Iraq, ISIL, ISIS, Sunni
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Iran: How bad a deal is worse than no deal?
The momentum to agree to something with Iran on their nuclear program is obvious even considering the public comments cautioning that a deal may not happen. Discussion now centers on how long of a breakout lead-time a deal would create. … Continue reading
Posted in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Nations, WMD
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ISIS or ISIL or IS? Does it matter?
The President gave his speech on strategy towards ISIL…except everyone calls it ISIS in the West. ISIL is Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and ISIS is Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or al Shams, which is roughly … Continue reading
Video Driven Policy vs. Strategy
The need for a strategy on ISIS was provoked by the videos of Americans being barbarically executed. A year ago, there was horrible video of Sarin use against civilians in Syria. That provoked action by the White House. In both … Continue reading
ISIS – Next Steps
The President is now stuck with the ISIS problem. It is his, not former President Bush’s. The rest of his term may be defined by how he deals with ISIS, in some ways as Bush was defined by how he … Continue reading
Posted in Intelligence, Iran, Iraq, ISIL, ISIS, Russia, Sunni, Terrorism
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