U.S. Included a ‘Poison Pill’ in ‘Fact Sheet’ on P5+1 Agreement with Iran

In a speech delivered on April 9th to the National Day of Nuclear Technology, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced the White House “Fact Sheet” issued about the P5+1 agreement with Iran. Quotes from Khamenei were sent out in a series of Twitter statements, saying:

“I support the negotiators & agree with a deal which ensures nations interests. … I trust our negotiators but I’m really worried as the other side is into lying & breaching promises; an example was White House fact sheet.”

Immediately the lying U.S. media went wild about this reference to “lying and breaching promises,” trying to falsely paint it as Khamenei reneging on the P5+1/Iran agreement.

Nuclear expert Robert Kelley, a veteran of over 35 years in the U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex, and U.S. official at the IAEA where he served twice as a Director of the nuclear inspections in Iraq in 1992 and again in 2001, already warned on April 3, in a statement made available to EIRNS, that the White House Fact Sheet contained serious contradictions to what Tehran and other participants in the negotiations reported.

“The agreement announced by Iran and the P5+1 is an extremely good one and offers a major blockage of any weapons ambitions for Iran, coupled with very good and intrusive verification measures. The plutonium route is completely closed off by the commitment to modify the Arak reactor, forgo reprocessing and ship spent fuel out of the country,” Kelley wrote.

“The inspection regime is going to be very strict, but not much more strict than the regime that Iran agreed to 16 months ago in the first agreement and with which they have completely complied. It is important to remember that Iran has strictly complied with its obligation for 16 months already and this has been attested to by the IAEA, in written reports, by the U.S. State Department and most recently by President Obama.

“A very positive aspect of the agreement is the access by inspectors to many aspects of the nuclear supply chain that are not normally inspected, for example mines and equipment manufacturing. This can act as a serous deterrent for Iran to have a secret parallel program….”

Kelley added that this access to inspecting the supply chain is “in many ways more important than inspecting” the nuclear facilities themselves that Iran will keep.

But, “A caution is the loose and careless language in the White House Fact Sheet that has been widely circulated. It must be compared to the Iranian statement which is detailed and similar but without some overly intrusive suggestions in the U.S. version.”

‘Poison Pill’

“In particular Iran makes no mention of answering questions about its past alleged program to research and possibly produce actual nuclear weapons, so called PMD or Possible Military Dimensions. The whole scope of the Lausanne accord is only about nuclear materials production limitations and the insertion of this weaponization issue in the U.S. version is a poison pill.

“In addition, although sanctions are supposed to be removed quickly in both the U.S. and Iranian versions, the U.S. version makes several references to satisfying the IAEA that all nuclear-related matters including PMD are met. This is a non-starter because Iran met all of its material production goals to the satisfaction of IAEA, but has a ten-year long stand-off with IAEA over what it claims are baseless charges of PMD. Regardless of who is right, PMD is not on the table in Lausanne. Iran has extreme distrust in IAEA for very good reasons. IAEA has failed to make decisions in other cases and has constantly badgered Iran on PMD issues ignoring Iran’s answers.”