HISTORY AND CONTROVERSIES REGARDING THE TEMPLE MOUNT

Recommended by Ted Belman 11-30-14

The Temple Mount in Court: Will Israel’s supreme court prevent the destruction of ancient remains?

Jerusalem’s Temple Mount: A Jewish-Muslim Flashpoint by Yisrael Medad in 2000.

The “Status Quo” on the Temple Mount by Nadav Shragai, JCPA (Nov 2014)

He also recommended The Temple Institute as an excellent resource on the laws pertaining to the Temple Mount.

Its time we all learned about the Temple Mount  

By Ted Belman 11-29-14

I recently posted  The Israeli Relinquishment of the Temple Mount originally published by the JCPA. In my preface to the article I included a comment by a lawyer.

 Israel Medad, who blogs at MyRightWord and Zion’s Corner wrote to me to tell me the lawyer didn’t get it right. He is the Information and Content Resource coordinator for the Begin Heritage Center. I asked him to provide me with some links which he did. I was so impressed with the content of these articles that I wanted to share them with you.

For anyone who would like to know more about the history and controversies regarding the Temple Mount, they are indispensable.

The Temple Mount in Court: Will Israel’s supreme court prevent the destruction of ancient remains?

Jerusalem’s Temple Mount: A Jewish-Muslim Flashpoint by Yisrael Medad in 2000.

The “Status Quo” on the Temple Mount by Nadav Shragai, JCPA (Nov 2014)

He also recommended The Temple Institute as an excellent resource on the laws pertaining to the Temple Mount.

While reading these article I realized how woefully uninformed I was on all matters relating to the Temple Mount.

THE ARABS’ WAR AGAINST THE JEWS (CONT.): ROOT CAUSES & RED HERRINGS

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   MARTIN SHERMAN   11-27-14
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If the Jews are to prevail in the Arabs’ war against them it is essential that they accurately differentiate misleading red herrings from real root causes.

Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse any aggression, but to initiate it ourselves, and to destroy the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland of Palestine. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united. I believe the time has come to begin a battle of annihilation.
– Hafez Assad, then Syrian defense minister, later president, May 20, 1967 We will not accept any... coexistence with Israel.

The existence of Israel is in itself an aggression...against the Palestinian people.
– Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt, to the international media, May 28, 1967

The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear – to wipe Israel off the map.
– Abdul Rahman Arif, president of Iraq, May 31, 1967

The Arabs have been waging war against the Jews and their presence in the Land of Israel for over a hundred years; they have been waging war against the Jewish political sovereignty for almost seven decades.

The war has ebbed and flowed over the years, but as I have pointed out in recent columns, we are entering a new, and particularly menacing, phase of ongoing Arab aggression aimed at the annihilation of the Jews and their nation-state. As Shmuley Boteach wrote in his column earlier this week, the sense is that “it’s open season on the Jews of Israel.”

Diagnosing root causes & red herrings

If the Jews are to prevail in this brutal assault to drive them out of their ancestral homeland, if they are to preserve their national independence, it is essential that they diagnose the true reasons for Arab aggression, and distinguish misleading red herrings from real root causes.

After all, if the diagnosis is flawed, the prescription for remedy will be similarly flawed – even fatally so.

Sadly, if we judge by the tenor of public discourse in Israel today, there is little ground for optimism.

One senior public figure after another – not only on the Left of the political spectrum – have come out with declarations that have ranged from regrettably inappropriate, through hopelessly unfounded, to dangerously counter-productive.

From the newly elected president, Reuven Rivlin, to veteran Police Chief Yohanan Danino, statements explicitly alleging or insinuating that the Jews’ own conduct – such as exercising their right of access to religious sites or legislative initiatives to codify in law the values reflected in the Declaration of Independence – precipitated, or at least, exacerbated, recent Arab butchery of innocent Jews in the streets, on the roads, inside synagogues, and at building sites across the country.

Apart from a resurgence of a shtetl mentality that Zionism was supposed to eradicate, such unfortunate proclamations reek of the “soft racism” of low expectations for the Arabs, and a craven desire to avoid upsetting non-Jews that is dangerously detrimental. These personages hopelessly conflate red herrings with root causes – and in so doing, promote misguided policies and foster the very problems they mean to contain.

What the Jews are, not what they do

Only the moronic or the malevolent could seriously contend that Arab animosity toward the Jews is a result of anything the Jews do.

No matter what the Jews do, they are assailed for what they don’t; and no matter what they don’t do, they are assailed for what they do. If they do not concede to Arab demands, they are accused of being intransigent. If they make far-reaching concessions, they are berated for those not made.

As the introductory excerpts show, Arabs harbor a burning Judeophobic hatred, and a blatant Judeocidal desire to annihilate the Jewish state infuses the entire Arab world – from Iraq through Syria to Egypt. This obdurate enmity had nothing to do with the policies of the Jewish state, but with its very existence.

For these bellicose proclamations all predate the 1967 Six Day war. They were all made before any Jewish presence in Judea-Samaria (a.k.a. the “West Bank”); before “occupation” and “settlements” – the perennial buzzwords for rallying anti-Israeli sentiment – had any practical relevance or conceptual significance.

It was before there was any access for Jews on the Temple Mount, or any legislative initiative to declare Israel a “Jewish state.” It was a time when Jewish holy sites in the Jordanian-controlled “West Bank” were desecrated, made into public urinals or converted into goat sheds; when Jewish cemeteries were defiled and Jewish gravestones uprooted to be used as construction materials; when, under the Hashemite monarchy, Jordanian snipers lurked atop the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, randomly picking off civilians going about their business on the Israeli-controlled western side of the city.

The mortal sin of existence

Yet despite this, on March 8, 1965, fully two years before the outbreak of the 1967 war (!), long before Israel controlled a square inch of territory now claimed as “Palestine,” long before any “radical right-wing rabbi” could offend Arab sensibilities or ignite Arab rage with “rabid religious rhetoric,” Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser laid out the Arabs’ bloodcurdling objective: “We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand, we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.”

Not to be outdone in the expression of sheer savagery, Yasser Arafat’s predecessor as PLO chairman, Ahmad Shukeiri, crowed in a somewhat premature expression of triumph, a few days before the crushing Arab defeat: “The Arabs... will not flinch from the war of liberation...

This is a fight for the homeland – it is either us or the Israelis. There is no middle road... We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors – if there are any – the boats are ready to deport them.”

It is clear, therefore, that the Arabs cannot countenance Jewish existence itself – or at least, the existence of a sovereign Jewish political entity. They unequivocally state and actively strive to fulfill their stated intention: “The [very] existence of Israel is in itself an aggression; they “will not accept any... coexistence with Israel” since “the existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified.”

‘establishment of the state of Israel entirely illegal’

The same implacable refusal to accept any form of Jewish national independence is clearly reflected in the founding documents of all Palestinian political organizations.

Thus, Fatah’s constitution declares its goal to be the total “eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence,” which it pledges to achieve by “armed struggle...

[which] will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished”; the Hamas Charter candidly asserts: “Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims,” cautioning that the Day of Redemption will not come “until Muslims fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him; while the Palestinian National Covenant declares: “The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time,” denying that “Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own,” since “Judaism... is not an independent nationality.”

But this adamant inflexibility is by no means confined to documents alone. It epitomizes the unequivocal positions of the current leadership of the Palestinian-Arabs – including the allegedly moderate Mahmoud Abbas and his PLO.

Breathtaking duplicity & double standards

The PLO’s response to the proposed “Jewish state” legislation (The Jerusalem Post, November 25) should be extremely edifying for anyone at all open to being edified.

According to the PLO, the bill “is a racist political decision to complete the theft of Palestinian land and rights,” and “the so-called historic homeland of the Jewish people is a racist and ideologically exclusionary attempt to obscure the Palestinian historic narrative and abolish Palestinian existence.”

With a breathtaking display of hypocrisy and double standards, Abbas, who has unabashedly and consistently proclaimed that any Palestinian state must be entirely judenrein, had the temerity to declare that the initiative to codify Israel’s status as a Jewish state in law “places obstacles in the way to achieving peace.”

There you have it. The prospect of a Jewish state is a racist obstacle to achieving peace on the basis of the two-states-for-two-peoples principle, but the exclusion of all Jews from a Palestinian one, is not? Hmmm.

It is against this background of uncompromising rejection by Abbas and the PLO of any permanent acceptance of, or possible reconciliation with, some arrangement that would allow the Jews national sovereignty in land the Arabs perceive as theirs, that Israel’s policy options should be evaluated.

Corroborating breaking news

The Arabs’ war against the Jews has taken on many forms and configurations. When one method proved ineffective, another was adopted – fedayeen insurgency, conventional warfare, terrorist attacks, suicide bombings, rockets and missiles at civilian targets.

All were tried. All failed to bring about the demise of the Jewish nation-state. We are entering a new phase: Ideological incitement to provoke individuals, or small unorganized groups, to commit acts of slaughter, and to foster insurrection among Arabs with Israeli citizenship.

But before considering how this should be dealt with, one must grasp that none of the manifestations of Arab endeavor to eliminate the Jewish state were a result of provocation on the part of the Jews – not “occupation” (there was no “occupation” prior to 1967), not settlements (there are no settlements in Gaza), not Jewish access to the Temple Mount, not any legislative initiative to declare Israel what it is – a Jewish state. Rather, they are all rooted in the abiding hostility and hatred that Arabs harbor for the Jews, or, at least, for Jewish sovereignty.

And consistent with this, breaking news came while this column was being composed of a massive terrorist plot, initiated from Hamas headquarters in Turkey, that was uncovered and thwarted by the security services.

The Post reported that the terrorists planned massive attacks against Jerusalem’s main Teddy soccer stadium, the capital’s light rail system, car bombings, and kidnappings of Israelis in the West Bank and elsewhere.

Significantly, the terror network began operating at the end of August – well before MK Moshe Feiglin’s visits to the Temple Mount or MKs Yariv Levin and Ayelet Shaked submitted their proposal (based on former Kadima MK Dichter’s initiative) for “Jewish state” legislation.

None of those are the real reason for Arab violence against Jews – only opportunistic excuses, sadly endorsed by many Jews.

Ruthless resolve, not reticent restraint

The Arabs cannot be appeased or placated into abandoning their quest to eradicate Jewish national sovereignty. Each gesture of conciliation will only fuel further demands for additional such gestures.

They can only be deterred from pursuing their design, or – should deterrence fail – be defeated in doing so.

Anything else is a dangerous delusion, which will result in tragedy.

Tough measures – punitive and preemptive – are called for. Arab communities must be saturated with intelligence collection efforts – whether conducive, consensual or coercive.

Challenges to Jewish sovereignty must be met with stiff penalties, including deportation and loss of citizenship/residency for offenders and their dependents. The Jews must convey an unambiguous message to the Arabs – on both sides of the Green Line – that they will not brook any challenge, domestic or foreign, from within its borders or from without, to their national sovereignty and political independence.

Unless the Jews convey the unequivocal message that any such challenges will be met with overwhelming force, they will increasingly be the victims of such force at the hands of their Arab adversaries.

There may be those who find this prescription excessively harsh.

Sadly, the only way the Jews can avoid living permanently by the sword is to convey convincingly to the Arabs that they have the resolve to do so. I invite everyone to consider the alternative.

Only Arab despair can bring any hope for peace.

Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

Alleged Fatwa prohibiting Iran from developing nuclear weapon is fake

 Rachel Avraham  11-27-14

http://www.jerusalemonline.com/news/world-news/around-the-globe/alleged-fatwa-prohibiting-iran-from-developing-nuclear-weapon-is-fake-9747?

Moderate Qatari journalist claims the fictional fatwa part of elaborate Iranian disinformation and deception scheme.

Many in the Arab world are skeptical that Iran will give up its nuclear program.  They view any Iranian assurances that they will only pursue their nuclear program for peaceful purposes to be a campaign designed to deceive the west.   These commentators within the Arab world fear that the west will buy into the Iranian deception, granting them either concessions on their nuclear program that will harm Arab interests or, if the Iranians do indeed make concessions on their nuclear power, it will be in exchange for giving the Iranians a free hand to dominate the Arab world. 

According to a report in MEMRI, Qatari journalist Abd Al Hamid Al Ansari wrote in Al Watan: “All signs indicate that Iran will manage to continue its nuclear program. Iran will not step back or give up what it regards as its legitimate right to obtain nuclear technology. According to its viewpoint, if less noble countries, such as Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea, have managed to obtain nuclear weapons, how can the international community deny this to Iran, with its noble civilization?”

“Iran thinks this is its chance, now that the man in the White House is so eager to complete this historic deal and thereby score a historic achievement that previous presidents did not manage to attain,” Al Ansari proclaimed. While Al Ansari agreed that Rouhani is more flexible than previous Iranian leaders, he noted that this is driven by calculated prudence and not be a true desire to reform. He emphasized that Iran will “never undermine Iran's strategic principles.”

“Iran will not make meaningful concessions that will harm its capacity to enrich uranium,” Al Ansari stressed. “If it negotiates over enrichment levels, it will not open all its facilities to inspection, and if it allows the inspection of some, this will be in return for the lifting of the sanctions, if only a gradual one. This explains the statement Rohani made in a meeting with young people. 'You ask me if we are winning in the nuclear negotiations?' he said. 'The answer is yes, we are!'”

“Whoever believes that Iran spent these astronomical sums only for the sake of 'electric energy' is either naïve or a fool,” Al Ansari proclaimed. “One has to throw out one's brain to believe this...! Why does Iran need to produce electricity in dangerous facilities that can disastrously leak radioactivity into the waters of the Gulf and are also very expensive, when it has dozens of sources of cheap and safe energy like oil, gas, hydroelectric dams, and sun and wind-powered facilities?”

Al Ansari noted that despite all of these facts, the Iranians have managed to successfully market their nuclear program as being for civilian purposes and to gain the confidence of the international community utilizing deception: “Iran distributed a fatwa allegedly issued by the Imam Khomeini or by Khamenei banning the possession and use of nuclear weapons. Iran managed to convince the U.S. president that this fatwa exists and Obama frequently mentions it and tries to convince the American people that it exists!”

Al Ansari asserts that this fatwa does not exist: “In fact, every Muslim knows that such a fatwa contravenes the Koranic verse ‘and prepare against them all that you can’ [Koran 8:60], which obliges the Muslims to use every means of power, including nuclear weapons, to deter the enemies, though not for offensive purposes. Furthermore, any fatwa can be abrogated by a counter-fatwa, according to the circumstances, situation and interests. In addition, the religious principle of taqiyya in dealing with enemies [i.e., hiding one's true beliefs to avoid oppression] is a fundamental principle of the Shia.”

Al Ansari is not the only journalist within the Arab world to be highly critical of the US seeking a rapprochement with Iran. According to MEMRI, a former TV director on Al Arabiya TV declared: “We in the Middle East have serious reservations about these negotiations and the first of them is the secrecy surrounding the talks! Obama’s administration intentionally kept its contacts and negotiations with Tehran a secret, even from its own regional allies.” He noted that such an approach contradicts how the US negotiated with North Korea, where regional allies played a critical part in the negotiations.

An article in Al Sharq Al Aswat criticized the Iran deal for sacrificing Arab interests in order to reconcile with Iran: “Since the Arabs were absent from the talks on Iran's nuclear program in Geneva... they became part of the price of the nuclear deal. What Iran gets in return for giving up the nuclear program is the absence of any constraint on its influence in the Arab countries. That is, Iran has been given a free hand in the region.”

MEMRI noted that Jasser Al Jasser furthermore wrote in the Saudi newspaper Al Jazirah: “Several analysts, if not all, regard Obama's letter to Iran's Supreme Leader as indicative of a pro-Iranian bias and as a continuation of Obama's negative policy towards the Arabs. This because it allows Iran freedom of action in the Arab region despite all the suspicions about the Iranian regime's complicity in terror! This American and Western bias in favor of Iran and against Arab interests refutes everything that has been said about the nature of the U.S. alliance with the Arab countries. The agreement that the Americans currently want to sign with the Iranian regime places the Arab interests 'on the negotiating table,' after the concerned Arab countries have been kept away from the negotiations. The absence of the Arabs from the negotiations has led to the expected results: Iranian interests may grow stronger and gain precedence in the Arab region, at the expense of Arab interests.”

Al Watan cartoon declares Iran hiding nuclear weapon at the negotiating table 

From: The Nazi Romance With Islam Has Some Lessons for the United States

By David Mikics|November 24, 2014 

Two new important histories look at Hitler’s fascination with Islam and Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey

In addition to courting Erdogan, President Barack Obama hopes to make use of Iran as a stabilizing regional force. In his most recent personal letter to Ayatollah Khamanei, Obama seems to have made a promise: We will repeal sanctions, fight against ISIS, and preserve the rule of Iran’s client Bashar al Assad as long as Iran agrees to a deal on nuclear weapons.

 But what will the United States get in return? In the best-case scenario—which is far from assured—Iran’s bomb-making abilities will be hindered by the deal they sign. But even an Iran without the bomb cannot be relied on to make the Middle East less conflict-riven.Iranian actions speak for themselves: support for Hezbollah, with its hundred thousand weapons aimed at Israel, and support for Assad, who has massacred his people endlessly and thrown massive numbers of them into concentration camps. 

One thing is certain: If Khamanei and Rouhani are given a larger role in the Middle East, they will not serve U.S. interests, nor those of the majority of Muslims. They will serve their own interests, which are inimical to ours. 

David Mikics,,the author most recently, of Slow Reading in a Hurried Age., is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of English at the University of Houston.

Who Are the Real Racists in Israel?

Chloe Valdary  11-27-14

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Nineteen-year-old Israeli Eden Attias dreamed of becoming a DJ one day. His special knack for mastering electronics and technology attracted the attention of the Ordnance Corps of the IDF, who recruited him for basic training in November 2013. But this position with the Israeli army would never be fulfilled. As Attias closed his eyes to sleep on a bus with his fellow soldiers in Nazareth one fateful Wednesday morning, he had no idea that he would never wake up. As the bus rolled to a stop in Afula, Israel, a Palestinian terrorist boarded, pulled out a knife, and stabbed Attias several times in the neck and chest area. Aspiring to one day fill the world with music, Attias would instead succumb to his wounds and die an untimely death.

Attias’ story is sadly not an anomaly; Jews commuting on buses and in cars are frequently attacked by Palestinian terrorists throughout Israel, creating headlines that play across Israeli news television screens all too often.

This political landscape wherein Palestinian extremists see fit to attack Jews going about their daily work serves as the primer for the rationale behind Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s proposed security measure to compel citizens of the Palestinian areas who work in Israel to “return through the same crossing they left so there will be supervision of entry and departure like in any sovereign country that protects itself and takes care to admit foreign residents into its territory in orderly fashion.”

According to Ya’alon, the policy does not ban Israelis and Palestinians from riding the same busses. Instead, it compels Palestinians to exit through the same checkpoint through which they entered, namely the Eyal checkpoint. This will enable the IDF to “better account for the thousands of Palestinian laborers who enter Israel on a daily basis by tracking their return back to the West Bank.”

To be sure, the pragmatics of this security policy must and should be debated and discussed by Israeli policy makers in the Knesset; that is what democracies do. Yet it must be stressed that this policy does not come out of a vacuum. As noted above, it comes out of a pattern of repeated incidents of aggression towards Jews; any debate must bear these conditions in mind.

But context is a foreign concept to J Street U leaders Catie Stewart and Gabriel Erbs, who describe the policy in a Haaretz article as “segregation” and an act of “denying Palestinian civil rights and self-determination.” In a hit piece published on November 4, Stewart and Erbs invoke the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King to suggest that policy makers trying to protect Jews from racist attacks are themselves guilty of racism.

“The idea of segregated buses should send chills down the spine of anyone who has ever … learned about … the segregated Jim Crow-era American south,” they write, after describing Ya’alon as a bloodthirsty fiend who wants to end the “Palestinian cancer” with “chemotherapy.” Yet both accusations are disingenuous. Yet Ya’alon clearly says, “We do not have intentions to annihilate them [the Palestinians] and we have also expressed readiness to grant them a state, whereas they are unwilling to recognize our right to exist here as a Jewish state.”

Moreover, creating a different bus route so as to deter attacks on Jews is no more “segregationist” than blacks refusing to go through an all-white neighborhood for fear of a lynch mob in the 1950s. Heaven forfend they should value their lives and take reasonable precautions so as to prevent beatings, raping, stabbings, and hangings. No, no, that would be a form of self-imposed “segregation,” a systematic disparaging of white people that should be publicly denounced by human rights folk everywhere.

Unfortunately, in Stewart and Erbs’s world, inversion is in vogue. Protection from racists becomes racism and a person’s right to defend himself is eroded, turning victims into victimizers.

To make matters worse, Stewart and Erb represent an organization that has no qualms about preventing Jewish communities from being established in the West Bank. According to J Street’s website, the very presence of Jewish communities, “undermines the prospects for peace by making Palestinians doubt Israeli motives and commitment.” Erb specifically writes in The Jewish Week that Jewish communities, “fuel inter-group tensions.” To wit, according to Erb, the presence of Jews in certain areas is itself a provocation; it is Jews who are responsible for the incitement against them.

That Stewart and Erb arrogate to themselves the authority to give commentary on the issue of “segregation” when they actively advocate for the establishment of a state which, according to them, must segregate Jews before it comes into fruition, illustrates the absurdity of their own hypocrisy.

And this is what their appraisal of Israeli policy ultimately boils down to: an excess of hyper-idealistic solipsism whereby members of a mutual admiration society think that referencing the name of a prominent civil rights leader means they are just like them. Yet, Dr. King understood fundamentally that a persecuted people will grow tired; they will grow tired of being pelted with stones; they will grow tired of having their children run over with cars; they will grow tired of having their soldiers stabbed to death while they sleep. “So in the midst of their tiredness, these people … rise up and protest against injustice.”

Security officials says that this policy seeks to address that injustice. Perhaps it isn’t the right one; perhaps it is. But one thing is certain: Stewart and Erb’s faux righteous indignation are categorically not.

Poll: Arabs Prefer Israel to Palestinian Authority

Tuesday, November 25, 2014 |  Israel Today Staff

The picture painted by the mainstream international media and loud-mouthed anti-Israel advocates is always the same: Israel is a racist and oppressive place to live for Arabs. This, so the argument goes, is particularly true following this week's government approval of the controversial "Jewish State" law.

But, if Israel's such a bad place for non-Jews to live, then why does an overwhelming majority local Arabs prefer life under the rule of the Israeli government, as opposed to the Palestinian Authority?

That was the finding of a survey commissioned by Israel's Channel 10 News and carried out last week by the Statnet research institute, which is headed by Israeli Arab statistician Yousef Makladeh

Makladeh asked fellow Arabs plainly and clearly: "Under which authority do you prefer to live, Israel or the Palestinian Authority?"

A full 77 percent of respondents chose Israel.

This was despite the fact that most respondents said that as a minority, they experience some degree of racism, and that only nine percent felt they enjoy full equality with Israel's Jewish citizens.

An 81 percent majority said they believe Israel is trying to alter the status quo on the Temple Mount, where Jews are currently forbidden to pray, but 84 percent said they oppose the reactionary violence emanating from the Arab sector.

An earlier Peace Index poll found that a 46.5 percent plurality of Israeli Arabs ultimately support allowing Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, which is Judaism's holiest site. Just 34 percent continue to oppose such a change, and 19.5 percent declined to weigh in on the topic.

Ditching Israel, Embracing Iran  LEE SMITH  11-10-14 Last week, the Obama White House finally clarified its Middle East policy. It’s détente with Iran and a cold war with Israel. To the administration, Israel isn’t worth the trouble its prime minister causes. As one anonymous Obama official put it to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, what good is Benjamin Netanyahu if he won’t make peace with the Palestinians? Bibi doesn’t have the nerve of Begin, Rabin, or Sharon, said the unnamed source. The current leader of this longstanding U.S. ally, he added, is “a chickens—t.”  It’s hardly surprising that the Obama White House is crudely badmouthing Netanyahu; it has tried to undercut him from the beginning. But this isn’t just about the administration’s petulance and pettiness. There seems to be a strategic purpose to heckling Israel’s prime minister. With a possible deal over Iran’s nuclear weapons program in sight, the White House wants to weaken Netanyahu’s ability to challenge an Iran agreement.  Another unnamed Obama official told Goldberg that Netanyahu is all bluster when it comes to the Islamic Republic. The Israeli leader calls the clerical regime’s nuclear weapons program an existential threat, but he’s done nothing about it. And now, said the official, “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.” In other words, the White House is openly boasting that it bought the Iranians enough time to get across the finish line. Obama has insisted for five years that his policy is to prevent a nuclear Iran from emerging. In reality, his policy all along was to deter Israel from striking Iranian nuclear facilities. The way Obama sees it, an Iranian bomb may not be desirable, but it’s clearly preferable to an Israeli attack. Not only would an Israeli strike unleash a wave of Iranian terror throughout the region—and perhaps across Europe and the United States as well—it would also alienate what the White House sees as a potential partner.  The negotiations with Iran were only the most obvious part of the administration’s policy of pressuring Israel. The White House knew the Israelis would have difficulty striking Iranian nuclear facilities so long as there was a chance of a deal. Jerusalem couldn’t risk making itself the enemy of peace and an international pariah. All Netanyahu could do was warn against the bad deal Obama was intent on making. The White House used plenty of other tools to pressure Jerusalem. For instance, leaks. Virtually every time Israel struck an Iranian arms depot in Syria or a convoy destined for Hezbollah, an administration official leaked it to the press. The White House understood that publicizing these strikes would embarrass Bashar al-Assad or Hassan Nasrallah and thereby push them to retaliate against Israel. That was the point of the leaks: to keep Israel tentative and afraid of taking matters into its own hands.  Another instrument of pressure was military and security cooperation between Israel and the White House—the strongest and closest the two countries have ever enjoyed, say Obama advocates. It allowed administration officials to keep even closer watch on what the Israelis were up to, while trying to make Jerusalem ever more dependent on the administration for its own security.  Don’t worry, Obama told Israel: I’ve got your back. I don’t bluff. The Iranians won’t get a bomb. And besides, the real problem in the region, the White House said time and again, is Israeli settlements. It’s the lack of progress between Jerusalem and Ramallah that destabilizes the region. As John Kerry said recently, the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process is what gave rise to the Islamic State. From the White House’s perspective, then, Israel is the source of regional instability. Iran, on the other hand, is a force for stability. It is a rational actor, Obama has explained, pursuing its own interests. The White House, moreover, shares some of those interests—like rolling back the Islamic State.  The fact that Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani now calls the shots in four Arab capitals—Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Sanaa—makes him the Middle East’s indispensable man. Compared with the one-stop shopping Obama can do in Tehran to solve his Middle East problems, what can Israel offer?  The Obama administration’s Middle East policy, finally clarified last week, is premised on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Islamic Republic. The question is whether the White House has also misunderstood the character of a man, the prime minister of Israel, whose courage they mock.

ISRAEL ALSO FIGHTS AMERICA’S BATTLE

The US Left keep complaining that Israel is the largest recipient, per capita, of US foreign Aid amounting to $3B per year. They totally ignore what the US gets in return, which by all account greatly exceeds the investment. This “aid” should be reclassified as a defense expenditure, which it really is. It would be less that 0.5 % of the total yearly US Defense Budget of $650B. As Ettinger keeps reminding us, if Israel wasn’t looking out after US interests in the ME, the US would have to expend many times more to get the same value. Ted Belman

By Yoram Ettinger, ISRAEL HAYOM

The rising threat of Islamic terrorism on the U.S. mainland, in pro-U.S. Arab regimes and in Western countries has reaffirmed Israel’s role as the U.S.’s moral and military outpost in the Middle East.

Israel’s strategic role has gained importance against the backdrop of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, the drastic cuts in the U.S. defense budget, the resulting erosion of the U.S. posture of deterrence, the collapse of Europe’s power projection, the raging Arab tsunami, growing anti-U.S. sentiments on the Arab street and the unprecedented Islamic threats to vital U.S. economic and national security interests.

In 2014, Israel is facing terrorism from both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The ?latter is a subsidiary of the transnational Muslim Brotherhood, which has terrorized pro-U.S. Arab regimes in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt, upholding the five-pillar banner: “Allah is our objective; the Quran is the constitution; the prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.”

These Arab countries realized that Israel was fighting their battle for them during the recent war in Gaza, so they overtly criticized Hamas and subtly supported Israel. According to The Yemen Times: “The Saudi king, Abdullah, attacked unnamed ‘traitor terrorists,’ who sully the name of Islam … implying that he viewed Hamas as much of a terrorist group as the Islamic State. … The so-called ‘Arab moderates’ have become even more blatant in their U.S.-Israel alignment … with a vulgar anti-Palestinian position.”

According to Dr. Mira Tzoreff of the Dayan Center for Middle East Studies, “The sympathetic opinions voiced in Egypt’s state-run media regarding Israel’s posture ?towards Hamas — even before the 2014 war in Gaza — were unprecedented. … [Egyptian] President [Abdel-Fattah el-] Sissi believes that Hamas was responsible for attacks on Egyptian military and security personnel in the Sinai Peninsula.”

The Saudi daily Al Arabiya ?reported that hundreds of Egyptian soldiers have been killed in Sinai by Ansar Beit al-Maqdis’ jihadist terrorists — associated with ISIS, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood — since June 2014. CNN claims that Israel is fighting a proxy war against Hamas, advancing the homeland security interests of Jordan and the Gulf States.

In 2014, the eyes of the pro-U.S. Arab regimes are upon Israel and its war on Islamic terrorism.

In 2014, Israel is facing Hamas, one of the numerous offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been the most productive incubator of Islamic terror organizations, such as al-Qaida, Islamic Jihad, the Nusra Front, Ahrar ash-Sham, Abdullah Azzam Brigades, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, Ansar al-Shariah, Taliban, Nigeria’s Boko Haram, etc. These terror organizations strive to establish an Islamic Middle East empire, as a prelude to global domination, bringing the U.S. and the Western world to social, political and military submission, governed by the laws of Islam.

Irrespective of the Palestinian issue, Israel (the “Little Satan”) has been a major obstacle standing in the way of megalomaniacal Islamic imperialism, clipping the wings of terrorism and thereby enhancing the homeland security of pro-U.S. Arab regimes. Meanwhile, according the U.S. (the “Big Satan”), Israel is also a reliable beachhead in the economically and militarily critical Middle East.

In 2014, U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq benefit from Israel’s battle experience in general, and its counter-terrorism and urban warfare experience in particular. In 2007, Israel demolished a Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear reactor. In 1982, Israel destroyed 20 advanced Syrian-operated Soviet surface-to-air missile batteries, deployed throughout the world and deemed impregnable by the U.S.

Israel’s unique battle tactics were promptly shared with the U.S. Air Force, enhancing the U.S.’s military edge over Moscow. In 1981, Israel devastated Iraq’s nuclear reactor, sparing the U.S. a nuclear confrontation with Iraq in 1991. On July 4, 1976, Israel’s Entebbe hostage rescue operation was a turning point in the battle against Islamic ?terrorism, inspiring Western democracies and dealing a blow to America’s enemies.

In 1973, in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War against Soviet-aligned Egypt and Syria, Israel shared with the U.S. its battle experience, as well as captured Soviet military systems, which provided the U.S. military command and defense industries with a global competitive edge. In 1970, Israel’s military forced pro-Soviet Syria to roll back its invasion of pro-U.S. Jordan in efforts to topple the Hashemite regime. They surged into Saudi Arabia, affording the USSR a dramatic triumph and dealing the U.S. an unprecedented economic and national security blow.

In 1967, Israel obliterated the military forces of Syria and Egypt, aborting an attempt by the pro-Soviet Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to bring down pro-U.S. Persian Gulf regimes, control the supply and price of oil, dominate the Arab world and provide Moscow with a historical victory. In November 1952, following Israel’s performance during the 1948-49 War of Independence, General Omar Bradley, the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proposed to expand strategic cooperation with Israel, only to be rebuffed by the State Department, which was Arab-oriented, denying the U.S. a more effective outpost in the Middle East.

In 2014, the U.S. faces a most vicious Islamic terrorist threat, which benefits from hundreds of sleeper cells on the U.S. mainland, is not amenable to peaceful coexistence and is not driven by the Palestinian issue, but by a 14-century-old intolerant violent Islamic ideology. It behooves the U.S. to learn from history by avoiding, rather than repeating, past mistakes; enhancing — rather than eroding — the mutually beneficial ties with its most stable, reliable, effective, experienced, democratic and unconditional ally, Israel.

 Jeff Goldberg's article documents that the Obama administration boasts of enabling Iran’s  nuclear progress.

 President of the United States is the most powerful job in the world because of the unrivaled power it gives the executive to chart America’s course in the world and thus the course of much of the world. 

With the Senate falling into Republican hands, what’s on tap? The first and easiest prediction that any number of pundits have made is that the administration will circumvent Congress and push through a permanent agreement with Iran over its nuclear weapons program when the deadline comes up Nov. 24, 2014.

 As we learned last week from Jeffery Goldberg, the Obama  administration has already helped Iran get across the nuclear finish line—and they’re bragging about it. Lost in all the noise about an unnamed Obama Administration official telling journalist Jeffrey Goldberg that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is a chickenshit ,” WAS THE EVEN NEWSWORTHIER COMMENT OF ANOTHER UNNAMED OFFICIAL WHO CROWED THAT IT IS NOW TOO LATE FOR ISRAEL TO STOP THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC FROM GETTING A NUCLEAR WEAPON—THANKS TO THE WHITE HOUSE’S OWN DELIBERATE CAMPAIGN OF DECEPTION.

Obama's White House fooled Netanyahu into believing it was serious about the military option, the Obama aide said. And now, he continued, THE ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER HAS NO OPTIONS LEFT BESIDES TO WHINE AND COMPLAIN. “TWO, THREE YEARS AGO, THIS WAS A POSSIBILITY,” HE EXPLAINED TO GOLDBERG. WHAT SIDELINED THE ISRAELI LEADER, THE OFFICIAL CONTINUED, “WAS A COMBINATION OF OUR PRESSURE AND HIS OWN UNWILLINGNESS TO DO ANYTHING DRAMATIC. NOW IT’S TOO LATE.”

The president has long insisted that his policy was not to contain or deter a nuclearized Iran, but to prevent the clerical regime from acquiring the bomb. ACCORDING TO THE ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL QUOTED BY GOLDBERG, THIS POSTURE WAS SIMPLY A LIE. 

Now, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan,Israel, the rest of The middle east ,Europe, and the US, is going to have  to cope with an expansionist  Iranian regime in possession  of a nuclear bomb.

Centrifuge Cascades and

a Final Deal with Iran

JINSA’s Gemunder Center Iran Task Force 12-14

Co-Chairs Ambassador Eric Edelman and Ambassador Dennis Ross

This report is a product of JINSA’s Gemunder Center Iran Task Force. The findings expressed

herein are those solely of the Iran Task Force. The report does not necessarily represent the

views or opinions of JINSA, its founders or its board of directors.

Gemunder Center Staff

Dr. Michael Makovsky

Chief Executive Officer

Ashton Kunkle

Research Assistant

Jonathan Ruhe

Associate Director

Co-Chairs

Ambassador Eric Edelman

Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Ambassador Dennis Ross

Former special assistant to President Obama

and NSC Senior Director for the Central Region

Members

The Honorable Chris Carney

Former U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania

Professor Eliot Cohen

Director of Strategic Studies Program at Johns

Hopkins School of Advanced International

Studies

Lt. General (ret.) David Deptula

Former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence,

Surveillance and Reconnaissance, U.S. Air

Force Headquarters

Larry Goldstein

Founder and Director of Energy Policy

Research Foundation, Inc.

John Hannah

Former Assistant for National Security Affairs

to the Vice President

Admiral (ret.) Gregory Johnson

Former Commander of U.S. Naval Forces,

Europe

Alan Makovsky

Former Senior Professional Staff Member,

House Foreign Affairs Committee

Steve Rademaker

Former Assistant Secretary of State for Arms

Control and Nonproliferation

Ray Takeyh

Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies,

Council on Foreign Relations

General (ret.) Charles Wald

Former Deputy Commander of U.S. European

Command

Mort Zuckerman

CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors,

Boston Properties, Inc.

Task Force and Staff

Table of Contents

Overview 5

Centrifuge Cascades 5

Issues for Implementation 7

Implications 9

Endnotes 10

Centrifuge Cascades and a Final Deal with Iran 5

Overview

Significant differences remain between Iran and the P5+1 over the parameters of a

comprehensive agreement on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. In particular, Tehran

has resisted agreeing to dismantling any of its existing uranium enrichment infrastructure. With

the November 24, 2014, deadline for a final deal looming, U.S. negotiators have reportedly

considered several workarounds intended to roll back Iran’s breakout timing while leaving its

existing centrifuges in place.

As this Task Force laid out in a September paper, one such possibility would be to limit the total

output of Iran’s enrichment facilities (as measured in Separative Work Units, or SWU).1 Since

then, U.S. officials reportedly have considered another route, whereby Iran would disconnect

the links between some or all of its thousands of installed centrifuges.2 Depending on the

extent of the disconnections, this could potentially increase Iran’s breakout timing anywhere

from a matter of days to months, were it ever to renege on a final deal and reconnect its

centrifuges. Unlike the SWU approach, Iran would not necessarily remain a flip of a switch

away from sprinting to a bomb. However, as with the SWU approach, Iran would maintain a

latent nuclear weapons capability, and could even expand and upgrade its existing nuclear

infrastructure without violating a final deal.

Centrifuge Cascades

Uranium enrichment is a process wherein a centrifuge increases the concentration of fissile

isotopes in uranium by separating the small quantity of fissile isotopes from the heavier, and

much more common, non-fissile ones. The uranium input for a centrifuge is referred to as its

“feed.” The higher-enriched output is called the “product” (or “heads”), and the lower-enriched

byproduct is called the “waste” (or “tails”). Because the difference in atomic mass between

these two isotopes is just over one percent, individual centrifuges can only achieve a very

minimal amount of enrichment. Therefore, large numbers of these machines are connected

in stages, via tubes, to create a “cascade” that increases the enrichment level over that of

a single centrifuge. These tubes take the product from one centrifuge, now slightly more

enriched than before it was fed into that machine, and feed it directly into another centrifuge,

which enriches it further, and so on. Separate tubes can also feed the waste from this process

back into earlier stages of the cascade for further enrichment. Finally, multiple series of

centrifuges are often connected in parallel to increase the product flow rate of a cascade.3

Under the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) interim deal on its nuclear program, Iran has slightly less

than 10,000 operating centrifuges producing 3.5 percent low-enriched uranium (LEU). These

are grouped into 60 cascades, each consisting of 164 or 174 centrifuges. Prior to the JPA, Iran

interconnected some of these cascades in pairs – often referred to as “tandem cascades” –

to enrich uranium to higher levels more efficiently than by using separate cascades. As part

of Iran’s agreement not to enrich LEU beyond five percent during the interim deal, the JPA

required Iran to remove the tubes interconnecting these paired cascades. Though the original

cascades continue producing 3.5 percent LEU, removing the interconnecting tubes between

cascades makes it more difficult, though not impossible, for Iran to return to enriching uranium

to 20 percent or higher if it chose to violate the JPA by doing so.

6 Centrifuge Cascades and a Final Deal with Iran

Figure 1: Model Iranian Tandem Cascade4

Centrifuge Cascades and a Final Deal with Iran 7

Issues for Implementation

Determining the impact on Iran’s nuclear program of the P5+1’s newest proposal depends

on several unresolved issues. It can be presumed that the scale of disconnection would be

much greater than what Iran has already done under the JPA: as Figure 1 indicates, the sheer

number of tubes within a cascade is at least an order of magnitude larger than those between

cascades. Furthermore, the JPA only required Iran to disconnect the tubes between two pairs

of cascades at Fordow; under a final deal Iran possibly could have to disconnect the tubes

within several dozen cascades.

There remain several other issues that would have to be resolved before being able to

gauge the overall effect of such a proposal on Iran’s breakout timing, including: the nature of

disconnection; the number of cascades in which centrifuges would be disconnected; and the

safeguards against Iran reconnecting the tubes. Importantly, none of these factors would roll

back Iran’s latent enrichment capability. As with the idea of capping SWU output, this proposal

would not require dismantlement of any centrifuges or the facilities containing them. Iran could

thus remain in position to enrich sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon, should it ever

cheat on such an agreement. Moreover, it could maintain or even expand the overall capacity

of its enrichment program under such a deal, potentially leaving it well-positioned for an

industrial-sized nuclear program once a comprehensive agreement expires.

What would “disconnecting” the tubes entail?

The definition of “disconnect” would affect how far Iran’s breakout timing could be rolled back.

If it means “no connections” – paralleling the JPA’s language on “no interconnections between

cascades” – Iran would have to physically remove the tubes connecting individual centrifuges.

According to various nonproliferation experts, it could take anywhere from several days to

several months to reinstall the tubes and run the necessary tests to ensure the cascades

function properly again. The wide range of estimates stems partly from the lack of any

precedent by which to judge Iranian engineers’ proficiency at reconnecting cascade tubes.

This process may not simply be the reverse of disconnection, since the timeframe for the latter

includes both disconnection and decontamination. Thus, the 1-2 days it took Iran to remove the

interconnectors between the two pairs of tandem cascades at Fordow (as per the JPA) likely

provides no more than a rough approximation of the time required to reconnect them.5

Alternatively, the term could imply merely shutting down the tubes, without removing them from

the cascades. This would likely have minimal effect on Iran’s breakout timing, because it could

remain potentially just a flip of a switch away from reactivating the cascades in question.

Either way, even if its breakout timing is affected, Iran’s latent enrichment capability would

remain intact. Disconnecting tubes would not involve removing or in any other way dismantling

the centrifuges themselves. In fact, depending on what other constraints, if any, would be

placed on its enrichment program under such a deal, Iran could potentially expand or upgrade

its centrifuges as long as it did not connect them.

How many cascades would be disconnected?

In conjunction with the degree to which tubes are disconnected within a cascade, breakout timing

would be affected by the number of cascades in which such disconnections occur. It would do

so in two ways. First, the more tubes that would be removed, the longer it would likely take Iran

8 Centrifuge Cascades and a Final Deal with Iran

to reconnect them and run the necessary tests before reactivating the cascades. Second, the

fewer cascades Iran would have operating, the more time-consuming it would become to enrich

a bomb’s worth of weapons-grade uranium. Though much of the debate over a final deal has

concerned the number of centrifuges Iran would be allowed to keep, this is fundamentally a

negotiation over the quantity of cascades, given the miniscule amount of enrichment achieved

by unconnected centrifuges (even if thousands are operating in this manner). For example,

increasing Iran’s breakout timing to six months to a year – which would entail cutting its operating

centrifuges from 10,000 to 2,000-4,000 operating centrifuges – equates to Iran disconnecting all

but approximately 12-24 of the 60 cascades it operates under the JPA.

Consequently, the number of cascades to be disconnected could have a significant impact

on Iran’s breakout timing, assuming it would not be able to restart them. As with the issue

of defining “disconnection,” resolving this question would not by itself preclude Iran from

maintaining or expanding the number of installed centrifuges.

What safeguards would be included?

As the preceding sections indicate, simply disconnecting the tubes within cascades would

not be certain to roll back Iran’s breakout timing significantly, and would not limit the size of its

overall enrichment program. Thus, even if Iran were required to physically remove every tube

from every cascade, safeguards would still be crucial to determining the effect on breakout

timing. Physically removing tubes from the cascades would simplify the verification of Iranian

compliance, as long as the equipment was mothballed off-site in locations under constant

supervision of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors.

Merely turning off the tubes without removing them would complicate verification. IAEA

cameras at Iran’s enrichment facilities monitor the feed and product levels at the beginning

and end of a given cascade, respectively, but not the tubes within them, which must be

accomplished during on-site inspections by IAEA personnel. If it chose to renege on the final

deal, Iran could thus change the configuration of its dormant cascades to increase their latent

enrichment capability without automatically being detected.

The IAEA Additional Protocol, to which Iran has agreed to adhere under a final deal, would

not necessarily spell out airtight safeguards on either count. Access to storage facilities could

presumably be the product of Iranian negotiations with the P5+1 and IAEA – as it is under the

JPA – and therefore unlikely to include complete removal of the equipment from Iranian control.

Moreover, while the Additional Protocol does allow unannounced inspections of cascade halls,

these are regulated by the Low Frequency Unannounced Access (LFUA) regime, which limits

such visits to 4-12 times per year. Even if the IAEA could carry out the maximum number of

these visits annually, Iran might conceivably reconfigure its cascades before being detected,

should it ever choose to do so.6

These IAEA safeguards would need to be understood in the context of any other constraints

Iran negotiates with the P5+1 on its enrichment program. The most stringent limit on cascade

tubing would do nothing to roll back Iran’s nuclear program for the long term if it is not

accompanied by dismantlement of key elements of its existing enrichment infrastructure

– specifically centrifuges – and verifiable limits on centrifuge output, number and types

of operating and installed centrifuges, research and development (R&D) activities, and

enrichment levels and facilities, among others. Without these additional restrictions, Iran could

expand its latent enrichment capability while adhering to a final deal.

Centrifuge Cascades and a Final Deal with Iran 9

Implications

Beyond technical concerns over the viability of disconnecting cascade tubes, such a proposal

would represent a rollback of U.S. redlines – and a reinforcement of Iran’s – regarding the

latter’s nuclear program. Specifically, it would contradict statements by Administration

officials since the JPA was agreed that Iran must dismantle significant amounts of its nuclear

infrastructure, and that it must close its Fordow enrichment facility. Simultaneously, the proposal

would underscore declarations by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan

Rouhani and leading Iranian negotiators that they would never agree to dismantle a single

centrifuge or to close Fordow.

This would limit U.S. credibility when it comes to enforcing adherence to a comprehensive

agreement. Promises to punish violations – whether by Iran, other countries or companies

eager for the lifting of sanctions – would likely gain less traction if the United States was

attempting to uphold a deal whose terms it had previously said were unacceptable.

Furthermore, were Iran ever to decide to reconnect the tubes, the potential difficulties for the

United States and its diplomatic partners of detecting such activities, discerning whether

they constitute a clear violation and agreeing to an appropriate punishment before Iran had

completed the process, could all compound the challenges stemming from limited credibility at

the outset of the final deal.

10 Centrifuge Cascades and a Final Deal with Iran

Endnotes

1. JINSA Gemunder Center Iran Task Force, “Separative Work Units (SWU) and a Final Deal with Iran,” September

22, 2014.

2. David E. Sanger, “U.S. Hopes Face-Saving Plan Offers a Path to a Nuclear Pact with Iran,” New York Times,

September 19, 2014.

3. For an overview of uranium enrichment technology, see: Ivanka Barzashka and Ivan Oelrich,”Enrichment

Cascades,” Federation of American Scientists (accessed October 2014).

4. This figure is derived from models suggested by staff at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies. See,

for example: Wiliam C. Witt et al., “Modeling Iran’s Tandem Cascade Configuration for Uranium Enrichment by

Gas Centrifuge,” paper presented at INMM 54th Annual Meeting (Palm Desert, CA), July 14-18, 2013.

5. Time estimates for Iran to disconnect and reconnect centrifuge tubes were provided to Gemunder Center staff

in not-for-attribution discussions with nonproliferation experts.

6. Nuclear Safeguards and the International Atomic Energy Agency (Washington, D.C.: Office of Technology

Assessment, 1995), 72.

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