{"id":311,"date":"2015-06-17T23:04:26","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T23:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=311"},"modified":"2015-06-17T23:04:26","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T23:04:26","slug":"looming-iran-nuclear-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=311","title":{"rendered":"Looming Iran Nuclear Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Secretary Kerry in a question and answer session yesterday seemed to be saying that Iran&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We know what they did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge with respect to the certain military activities they were engaged in.\u00a0What we\u2019re concerned about is going forward. It\u2019s critical to us to know that going forward, those activities have been stopped, and that we can account for that in a legitimate way.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>(Quote from :\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/john-kerry-on-irans-nuclear-disclosure-2015-6#ixzz3dMONUZA0\">http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/john-kerry-on-irans-nuclear-disclosure-2015-6#ixzz3dMONUZA0<\/a>)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I wonder if Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper would agree with this.\u00a0 If we &#8220;have absolute knowledge&#8221; about Iran weapons design, then there has been a massive improvement in intelligence on the Iran program.\u00a0 On the other hand, if we are writing off this requirement because it is &#8220;unattainable&#8221; like so many other things related to the Iran negotiation, this is troubling.\u00a0 Secretary Kerry and his team have worked endlessly on this task.\u00a0 But at some point, they have to hold firm and if Iran walks away, so be it.\u00a0 In fact, that might be a good outcome.\u00a0 Those who are so deeply involved in the process, and who have given so much of their time, reputation and lives to achieve an agreement, may not be the best positioned to judge its benefit.\u00a0 Congressional review of whatever may be agreed by the Administration will be very important.\u00a0 And &#8220;no&#8221; is an acceptable answer.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Secretary Kerry in a question and answer session yesterday seemed to be saying that Iran&#8217;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. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=311\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,71,77,19,74],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions\/312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}