We Are At War with Radical Islamism National Security Speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit ….Newt Gingrich   1-24-15

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4525157/newt-gingrich-war-radical-islamism

MIL-ED submission by Dr. JL: " I believe this is a succinct, forceful and accurate synopsis of our quandary today.   Give this a serious look and listen.  I believe that this is a speech  that every American should hear as to the threat and as  to our government's handling of the threat."

THE WORLD MOVES TOWARD A BAD DEAL Dore Gold 2-28-15 Just last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iran's declared nuclear facilities, issued its latest report. As in previous reports, Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium from all its nuclear facilities together continues to grow -- it is now understood to be at 14,174 kilograms (31,248 pounds). The report does not say this, but a quick calculation leads to the following disturbing conclusion: The roughly 8,000 kilograms (17,637 pounds) of that amount that are already in a gaseous form and can be injected into centrifuges for further enrichment are sufficient for at least seven atomic bombs. The speed with which the Iranians could do this largely depends on the number of centrifuges any future agreement will allow them to keep. But the most disturbing part of the new report has to do with the ongoing concern of the IAEA with what it calls "the possible military dimensions" of the Iranian nuclear program. It refers to "undisclosed nuclear related activities," which involve military-related organizations. According to the report, these activities include "the development of a nuclear payload for a missile." In other words, Iranian work on a nuclear warhead. The IAEA refers to a detailed study it presented a few years ago in 2011 on this subject. At that time the IAEA disclosed that the Iranians were working on "the removal of the conventional high explosive payload from the warhead of the Shahab 3 missile and replacing it with a spherical nuclear payload." The Shahab 3 missile, which became operational in the Iranian armed forces in 2003, has a range of 1,300 kilometers (808 miles) and can reach Israel even when launched from Iranian territory. The Shahab 3 has also been regularly displayed in Iranian military parades. On the missile carrier, on which it is transported, there is usually a sign attached stating that "Israel must be wiped off the map" (as was the case in 2004) or that "Israel must be destroyed " (as in 2013). By presenting the data it possessed on the possible military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program, the IAEA completely contradicted Iran's claim that it is only enriching uranium for civilian purposes, like the production of electricity from nuclear reactors. In 2011, the IAEA carefully checked the sensitive information it acquired about "a nuclear explosive device" and concluded it was "credible." Now in its latest 2015 report, the IAEA added that it had since that time received more information that "further corroborated the analysis" from 2011. Yet according to the latest IAEA report from last week, Iran was still hiding its military program. It refused to provide any details about the concerns raised in past IAEA reports. It also refused to give the IAEA access to its Parchin weapons facility, which the West had repeatedly requested. Instead, Tehran tampered with the site making verification of any work on nuclear weapons more difficult for inspectors in the future: The Iranians poured asphalt on large areas inside of the Parchin complex, making soil samples for checking the presence of radioactivity hard to obtain. With no baseline on how far the Iranians have progressed in their weapons work, there is no way the new agreement can cover the whole issue of weaponization, leaving a huge hole in any agreement. Iran dismissively stated that all these issues related to its military program were "mere allegations and do not merit consideration." Unfortunately, the P5+1 did not put the clarification by Iran of its past military activities as a requirement in its interim agreement with Iran in 2013. Originally, when the interim agreement was reached, the White House put out a "fact sheet" stating that the U.S. understood that Iran would have to address the military dimensions of its nuclear program, including the Parchin issue. But that did not happen and nonetheless the P5+1 progressed with Iran nonetheless, focusing mainly on uranium enrichment, and here only partly. A senior U.S. official, who preferred to remain anonymous, stressed in a February 2014 press conference in Vienna, that this important issue of Iran's past military activities was between the IAEA and Iran but was not part of the understandings between the P5+1 and Iran. Parchin illustrated the Iranian tendency to hide facilities from the West that were later discovered. It showed why it was so difficult to trust the Iranians to keep their written agreements. Indeed, Parchin was not the only problem. This Tuesday, on Feb. 24, the MEK -- the Iranian opposition group that disclosed in the past many of Iran's secret facilities, like Natantz and Arak -- made yet another revelation about the Iranian nuclear program during a press conference in Washington. It uncovered an underground facility near Tehran called Lavizan-3, where Iran was secretly developing a new generations of centrifuges that could enrich uranium at much greater speeds. The U.S. has known for years about faster Iranian centrifuges, but the question that arises from this latest revelation is why Iran was determined to keep the production of these fast centrifuges a secret. Perhaps, the facility was part of a parallel nuclear program which would allow Iran to break out of any limitations that were instituted by the international community in the future. The new agreement between Iran and the P5+1 that is presently being completed will leave Iran's massive nuclear infrastructure largely intact. But if Parchin teaches the West any lesson, it is that Iran has not put its weaponization efforts on the negotiating table, nor will it. Neither has it agreed to allow its huge ballistic missile forces to become a subject of discussion. For that reason, Israeli spokespeople have been saying that Iran will be at the threshold of having nuclear weapons, and can be described as a threshold nuclear power. Undoubtedly, there are those in the West who are convinced that if Iran violates its agreement and crosses the threshold to assemble a nuclear weapon it would immediately face a strong reaction which could include the use of force. There is an enormous problem for anyone who thinks that this last stage of assembling a nuclear weapon can be reliably detected. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made this point on April 11, 2010, when he appeared on the American news show "Meet the Press." He stated: "If their policy is to go to the threshold but not assemble a nuclear weapon, how do you tell they have not assembled? I don't know how you would verify that." Gates understood how intelligence collection worked since he was head of the CIA in the 1990s. The former head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, reached a similar conclusion in testimony he gave before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 20, 2014. He told the Congressmen bluntly: "Absent an invasive inspection regime, with freedom to visit all sites on short notice, American intelligence cannot provide adequate warning of Iranian nuclear developments." In short, Iran could acquire nuclear weapons without being detected unless a future agreement gave the West the right to move all over Iran with little notification. Given the struggle over Parchin and other sites, there is no indication that the West will have an inspection regime of this sort.

THE FATAL FLAW IN THE IRAN DEAL  Charles Krauthammer February 26 , 2015

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fatal-flaw-in-the-iran-deal/2015/02/26/9186c70e-bde1-11e4-8668-4e7ba8439ca6_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1

A sunset clause?

The news from the nuclear talks with Iran was already troubling. Iran was being granted the “right to enrich.” It would be allowed to retain and spin thousands of centrifuges. It could continue construction of the Arak plutonium reactor. Yet so thoroughly was Iran stonewalling International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors that just last Thursday the IAEA reported its concern “about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed . . . development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

Bad enough. Then it got worse: News leaked Monday of the elements of a “sunset clause.” President Obama had accepted the Iranian demand that any restrictions on its program be time-limited. After which, the mullahs can crank up their nuclear program at will and produce as much enriched uranium as they want.

Sanctions lifted. Restrictions gone. Nuclear development legitimized. Iran would reenter the international community, as Obama suggested in an interview in December, as “a very successful regional power.” A few years — probably around 10 — of good behavior and Iran would be home free.

The agreement thus would provide a predictable path to an Iranian bomb. Indeed, a flourishing path, with trade resumed, oil pumping and foreign investment pouring into a restored economy.

Meanwhile, Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile program is subject to no restrictions at all. It’s not even part of these negotiations.

Why is Iran building them? You don’t build ICBMs in order to deliver sticks of dynamite. Their only purpose is to carry nuclear warheads. Nor does Iran need an ICBM to hit Riyadh or Tel Aviv. Intercontinental missiles are for reaching, well, other continents. North America, for example.

Such an agreement also means the end of nonproliferation. When a rogue state defies the world, continues illegal enrichment and then gets the world to bless an eventual unrestricted industrial-level enrichment program, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is dead. And regional hyperproliferation becomes inevitable as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others seek shelter in going nuclear themselves.

Wasn’t Obama’s great international cause a nuclear-free world? Within months of his swearing-in, he went to Prague to so declare. He then led a 50-party Nuclear Security Summit, one of whose proclaimed achievements was having Canada give up some enriched uranium.

Having disarmed the Canadian threat, Obama turned to Iran. The deal now on offer to the ayatollah would confer legitimacy on the nuclearization of the most rogue of rogue regimes: radically anti-American, deeply jihadist, purveyor of terrorism from Argentina to Bulgaria, puppeteer of a Syrian regime that specializes in dropping barrel bombs on civilians. In fact, the Iranian regime just this week, at the apex of these nuclear talks, staged a spectacular attack on a replica U.S. carrier near the Strait of Hormuz.

Well, say the administration apologists, what’s your alternative? Do you want war?

It’s Obama’s usual, subtle false-choice maneuver: It’s either appeasement or war.

It’s not. True, there are no good choices, but Obama’s prospective deal is the worst possible. Not only does Iran get a clear path to the bomb but it gets sanctions lifted, all pressure removed and international legitimacy.

There is a third choice. If you are not stopping Iran’s program, don’t give away the store. Keep the pressure, keep the sanctions. Indeed, increase them. After all, previous sanctions brought Iran to its knees and to the negotiating table in the first place. And that was before the collapse of oil prices, which would now vastly magnify the economic effect of heightened sanctions.

Congress is proposing precisely that. Combined with cheap oil, it could so destabilize the Iranian economy as to threaten the clerical regime. That’s the opening. Then offer to renew negotiations for sanctions relief but from a very different starting point — no enrichment. Or, if you like, with a few token centrifuges for face-saving purposes.

And no sunset.

That’s the carrot. As for the stick, make it quietly known that the United States will not stand in the way of any threatened nation that takes things into its own hands. We leave the regional threat to the regional powers, say, Israeli bombers overflying Saudi Arabia.

Consider where we began: six U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding an end to Iranian enrichment. Consider what we are now offering: an interim arrangement ending with a sunset clause that allows the mullahs a robust, industrial-strength, internationally sanctioned nuclear program.

Such a deal makes the Cuba normalization look good and the Ukrainian cease-fires positively brilliant. We are on the cusp of an epic capitulation. History will not be kind.

The Bidding War for Iran

by David P. Goldman February 24th, 2015 

The world now anticipates that the U.S. will reach a strategic agreement with Iran. Russia and China are responding by offering their own deals to Tehran. A possible game-changer is Russia’s offer of the Antey-2500 air defense system to Iran. After canceling the planned delivery of the older, shorter-range S-300 system in 2010, Russia has now escalated drastically by proposing to sell Iran a much more effective system. Western air forces have never engaged the Russian system, so we don’t know how exactly good it is. No-one I know in the military wants to find out; by Western estimates, the Russian systems are extremely good. It is possible that Russia’s unwelcome intervention might make Iran effectively impregnable from attack by Israel. The Antey-2500 can take down missiles as well as airplanes.

In addition, Russia is retaliating against the West’s stance on Ukraine. Russia has made it clear all along that it would respond to Western efforts to remove Crimea from Russia by making trouble in Iran, as Russia’s deputy foreign minister warned last March. Russia, unlike the U.S., views the world as a single chessboard: attack my position here, and I will hurt you somewhere else where you are not prepared. Putin isn’t crazy; he’s a Russian commander in the classic mold, forcing the burden of uncertainty onto his adversary, muddying the waters and leaving his opponent guessing. His countermoves on the global chessboard include a prospective alliance with China as well as mischief in the Persian Gulf. My conservative friends who urge us to “stand up to Putin” should take a cold, dispassionate look at the whole of the chessboard and anticipate moves of this sort; otherwise, the whole thing is a lot of beery blather. As I wrote recently, Israel takes the brunt of American policy blunders. What happens if Putin gives Iran the means to shoot down anything Israel (and a good deal of what the U.S.) might throw at it? No-one in Washington seems to ask such questions. I’ve been warning about such a development for the past five years (see “When the Cat’s Away, the Mice Kill Each Other,” Oct. 20, 2009).

China, which depends on Persian Gulf oil more than any other major economy, is watching these developments with alarm, as a Feb. 22 Xinhua commentary makes clear (hat tip: M.K. Bhadrakumar):

U.S. President Barack Obama, who admitted that Washington “brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine” a year ago, has warned that a collapse in the peace process could push his country into approving deliveries of weapons to the East European country. Such a proposal is not only counterproductive, but also dangerous. Indeed, the Americans might be the only one poised to gain from the Ukraine crisis with both Europe and Russia being weakened, but they should be mindful that one who sees the crisis as a power game would only drag itself into the quagmire. By antagonizing Russia, for instance, Uncle Sam might lose a possible – and powerful – partner in its ongoing anti-terrorism drive in the Middle East.

That hardly needs translation: Beijing is worried about instability in the Persian Gulf, whose oil China needs more than any other major economy, and observes that Russia is in position to stir up instability in retaliation for Western intervention in Ukraine. Russia may be a second-rate power, but it still is a power in the Middle East, as well as the purveyor of game-changing military technologies.

China, meanwhile, is courting Iran. Visiting Tehran Feb. 15, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi “said that increasing relations with Iran is one of his country’s foreign policy priorities….Cooperation between Beijing and Tehran is of strategic importance and beyond bilateral relationship, Wang added. The Chinese foreign minister also said that the nuclear talks between Iran and the 5+1 group (the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) have entered final phases and nothing should be done to prevent the talks to yield a result….Wang also expressed his country’s opposition to Western-led sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program.” China operates on the principal that one should keep one’s friends close and one’s enemies closer. It has sold a great deal of weapons to Iran, but sold much better weapons to Saudi Arabia, including top-of-the-line intermediate range missiles that give KSA “a formidable deterrence capability” against Iran, in the words of one Chinese analyst.

Now Beijing faces the prospect that Iran will become the dominant regional player with de facto help from the United States, and is trying to reposition itself as an Iranian ally — while Russia does the same thing. It’s a bidding war for the good graces of the craziest regime on earth.

Our Dangerous Historical Moment---

Obama and European leaders are repeating the mistakes of their 1930s predecessors.

By Victor Davis Hanson — February 19, 2015

World War II was the most destructive war in history. What caused it?

The panic from the ongoing and worldwide Depression in the 1930s had empowered extremist movements the world over. Like-minded, violent dictators of otherwise quite different Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and the Communist Soviet Union all wanted to attack their neighbors.

Yet World War II could have been prevented had Western Europe united to deter Germany. Instead, France, Britain, and the smaller European democracies appeased Hitler.

The United States turned isolationist. The Soviet Union collaborated with the Third Reich. And Italy and Japan eventually joined it.

The 1930s saw rampant anti-Semitism. Jews were blamed in fascist countries for the economic downturn. They were scapegoated in democracies for stirring up the fascists. The only safe havens for Jews from Europe were Jewish-settled Palestine and the United States.

Does all this sound depressingly familiar?

The aftershocks of the global financial meltdown of 2008 still paralyze the European Union while prompting all sorts of popular extremist movements and opportunistic terrorists.

After the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, America has turned inward. The Depression and the lingering unhappiness over World War I did the same to Americans in the 1930s.

Premodern monsters are on the move. The Islamic State is carving up Syria and Iraq to fashion a fascist caliphate.

Vladimir Putin gobbles up his neighbors in Ossetia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine, in crude imitation of the way Germany once swallowed Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

Theocratic Iran is turning Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon into a new Iranian version of Japan’s old Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Western response to all this? Likewise, similar to the 1930s.

The NATO allies are terrified that Putin will next attack the NATO-member Baltic states — and that their own paralysis will mean the embarrassing end of the once-noble alliance.

The United States has now fled from four Middle Eastern countries. It forfeited its post-surge victory in Iraq. It was chased out of Libya after the killings of Americans in Benghazi. American red lines quickly turned pink in Syria. U.S. Marines just laid down their weapons and flew out of the closed American embassy in Yemen.

America has convinced its European partners to drop tough sanctions against Iran. In the manner of the Allies in 1938 at Munich, they prefer instead to charm Iran, in hopes it will stop making a nuclear bomb.

The Islamic State has used almost a year of unchallenged aggression to remake the map of the Middle East. President Obama had variously dismissed it as a jayvee team or merely akin to the problems that big-city mayors face.

Europeans pay out millions to ransom their citizens from radical Islamic hostage-beheaders. Americans handed over terrorist kingpins to get back a likely Army deserter.

Then we come to the return of the Jewish question. Seventy years after the end of the Holocaust, Jews are once again leaving France. They have learned that weak governments either will not or cannot protect them from Islamic terrorists.

In France, radical Islamists recently targeted a kosher market. In Denmark, they went after a synagogue. In South Africa, students demanded the expulsion of Jewish students from a university. A Jewish prosecutor who was investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina was found mysteriously murdered.

Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being blamed for stoking Middle Eastern tensions. Who cares that he resides over the region’s only true democracy, one that is stable and protects human rights? Obama-administration aides have called him a coward and worse. President Obama has dismissed the radical Islamists’ targeting of Jews in France merely as “randomly shoot[ing] a bunch of folks in a deli.”

Putin, the Islamic State, and Iran at first glance have as little in common as did Germany, Italy, and Japan. But like the old Axis, they are all authoritarians that share a desire to attack their neighbors. And they all hate the West.

The grandchildren of those who appeased the dictators of the 1930s once again prefer in the short term to turn a blind eye to the current fascists. And the grandchildren of the survivors of the Holocaust once again get blamed.

The 1930s should have taught us that aggressive autocrats do not have to like each other to share hatred of the West.

The 1930s should have demonstrated to us that old-time American isolationism and the same old European appeasement will not prevent but only guarantee a war.

And the 1930s should have reminded us that Jews are usually among the first — but not the last — to be targeted by terrorists, thugs, and autocrats.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. © 2015 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

 {obama's}credibility gap

By Fred Hiatt Editorial page editor washington post 

 February 22, 2015

Can President Obama sell an Iran deal at home?

If his negotiators strike an agreement next month, we already know that it will be far from ideal: Rather than eradicating Iran’s nuclear-weapons potential, as once was hoped, a pact would seek to control Iran’s activities for some limited number of years.

Such a deal might be defensible on the grounds that it is better than any alternative, given that most experts believe a military “solution” would be at best temporary and possibly counterproductive.

But making that kind of lesser-evil defense would be challenging in any circumstances. Three conditions will make it particularly hard for Obama to persuade Congress and the nation to accept his assurances in this case: the suspicious, poisonous partisanship of the moment here, with Israeli politics mixed in; worries that he wants a deal too much; and the record of his past assurances.

The partisanship needs no explanation, but the record of foreign-policy assurances is worth recalling:

●In 2011, when he decided to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq, Obama belittled worries that instability might result. Iraq and the United States would maintain “a strong and enduring partnership,” Obama said. Iraq would be “stable, secure and self-reliant,” and Iraqis would build a future “worthy of their history as a cradle of civilization.”

Today Iraq is in deep trouble, with a murderous “caliphate” occupying much of its territory and predatory Shiite militia roaming through much of the rest.

●That same year, Obama touted his bombing campaign in Libya as a model of U.S. intervention and promised, “That’s not to say that our work is complete. In addition to our NATO responsibilities, we will work with the international community to provide assistance to the people of Libya.”

The United States and its NATO allies promptly abandoned Libya, which today is in the grip of civil war, with rival governments in the east and west and Islamist terrorists in between.

●Obama also said then, “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

That was before Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s barrel bombs, systematic and well-documented prison torture and other depredations of civil war killed 200,000 of his compatriots , and drove millions more from their homes.

●In August 2011, Obama declared that Assad must “step aside.” In a background briefing a senior White House official added, “We are certain Assad is on the way out.” In August 2013 came Obama’s statement that “the worst chemical attack of the 21st century . . . must be confronted. . . . I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets.”

No military action was taken, and Assad remains in power.

●In September, the president said his strategy for defeating the Islamic State “is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.” Shortly thereafter, an Iran-backed rebellion deposed Yemen’s pro-U.S. government, forcing the United States to abandon its embassy and much of its anti-terror operation.

●Just last month, in the State of the Union address, Obama presented his Ukraine policy as a triumph of “American strength and diplomacy.

“We’re upholding the principle that bigger nations can’t bully the small by opposing Russian aggression and supporting Ukraine’s democracy,” he said.

Since then Russian forces have extended their incursion into Ukraine, now controlling nearly one-fifth of its territory. Russia’s economy is hurting, but Ukraine’s is in far worse shape.

This litany of unfulfilled assurances is less a case of Nixonian deception than a product of wishful thinking and stubborn adherence to policies after they have failed. But inevitably it will affect how people hear Obama’s promises on Iran, as will his overall foreign policy record.

That record includes successes, such as the killing of Osama bin Laden, warming ties with India and a potentially groundbreaking agreement with China on climate change. By most measures, though, the world has not become safer during Obama’s tenure. Islamist extremists are stronger than ever; democracy is in retreat around the globe; relations with Russia and North Korea have worsened; allies are questioning U.S. steadfastness.

The U.S.-Israel divide on Iran

By Dennis Ross February 20, 2015

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-israel-divide-on-iran/2015/02/20/38df4d18-b861-11e4-a200-c008a01a6692_story.html

The writer, a counselor and fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was a special assistant to President Obama from 2009 to 2011.

The controversy over Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress has had the ironic effect of diverting attention from the very topic the Israeli prime minister wants to discuss: the problems with a potential deal on the Iranian nuclear program. Although everyone debates the propriety of the Israeli prime minister challenging President Obama’s policy in such a setting, the partisan nature of the invitation and the timing of the speech — just two weeks before an Israeli election — the substance of the issue has been pushed aside. Why is there such a divide between the United States’ and Israel’s positions, and can they be bridged?

There is no disguising the gap between the president and prime minister. Obama is clearly prepared to accept a deal that would limit the Iranian nuclear program for perhaps the next 15 years and in a way that ensures the Iranians would be a year away from being able to produce weapons-grade uranium. Iran, however, would not be required to dismantle any nuclear facilities or infrastructure — and, after the agreement expires, would be permitted to have an industrial-size nuclear program and be treated like any other party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).

In Netanyahu’s view, however, that means leaving Iran as a nuclear-threshold state. Though the prime minister’s public posture is that Iran must not be allowed any enrichment capacity and that its nuclear facilities should be dismantled, my conversations with Israelis suggest that they could, in fact, live with an agreement that permits Iran a small enrichment capability. Their view is that, in return for a rollback of sanctions, there must be a serious rollback of the Iranian nuclear program. By contrast, the deal reportedly under consideration would limit the Iranian nuclear program, not meaningfully diminish it, in return for a rollback of sanctions.

The Israelis argue that if Iran is permitted to have an industrial-size nuclear energy program, it would be able to become a nuclear weapons state at a time of its choosing. Indeed, the transparency or verification system needed to detect a so-called breakout by a small program is unlikely to work for a very large one. Olli Heinonen, a former official at the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is responsible for verification, has been outspoken on this point. Heinonen has emphasized that what might be effective for a program with 1,000 to 2,000 centrifuges will not work for one with tens of thousands of centrifuges unless new protocols are developed, access is redefined and additional inspectors are permitted.

Thus, at least in part, the Israeli fear is related to the difficulty of verifying that the Iranians are complying with the NPT once they have an industrial-size program. No doubt it is also driven by concerns about the will of the United States and other nations to prevent Iran from crossing the weapons threshold, particularly if they have accepted a deal in which Iran is permitted a large nuclear infrastructure. Could the Obama administration address those fears?

Yes, provided that the administration is prepared to take two steps.

First, it should ensure that the verification measures in the deal provide for “anywhere, anytime” access to all declared and undeclared facilities, and buttress these measures, which are in the additional protocol of the NPT, with new means to enable effective inspection of a large nuclear program. Since any deal with Iran would serve as a precedent, the United States’ five negotiating partners should support this.

Second, it should be prepared to spell out in advance the consequences for all classes of violations of the agreement. For the most egregious, indicating a dash toward weapons-grade production, the use of force should be the result. Such consequences would be far more credible if the administration worked them out with Congress and they were enshrined in legislation — and if those consequences, especially the use of force, were also applied to an Iranian move to develop nuclear weapons after the term of the agreement.

Incorporating these measures in legislation would send a clear signal and demonstrate that the president and Congress are unified on this issue. It would also serve as a deterrent to Iran and reassure the Israelis about the certainty of our action — removing a key source of their fear of the agreement.

The administration, too, should find this approach acceptable. It would not jeopardize current diplomacy, it would give the administration a way to cooperate with Congress and it would give those on the Hill an outlet for their desire to have an imprint on the deal. And it would be consistent with the core of the administration’s argument: The agreement would limit the Iranian program and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — and we would be able to deter the Iranians even after the 15-year period of the deal. It just might also bridge the gap between Obama and Netanyahu.