http://nypost.com/2014/11/23/nuke-deal-pitfalls-licensing-an-iranian-bomb/ \t _blank Nuke-deal pitfalls: Licensing an Iranian bomb

By Benny Avni 
November 23, 2014 
The New York Post
http://nypost.com/2014/11/23/nuke-deal-pitfalls-licensing-an-iranian-bomb/ \t _blank http://nypost.com/2014/11/23/nuke-deal-pitfalls-licensing-an-iranian-bomb/ 

As the latest deadline for talks on Iran’s nukes expires today, let’s take a look at North Korea.
Last week, the UN General Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution to refer the Kim Jong-un regime’s atrocities to a Hague court, where its members can be tried for crimes against humanity.
No court date is likely to ever be set (Russia and China, which can block any such referral, voted against last week’s resolution), yet Pyongyang still immediately announced that it will conduct a “retaliatory” nuclear test — its fourth since “coming out” as a nuclear power.
Kim’s neighbors are spooked. As the South Korean UN ambassador, Oh Joon, told me last week, the North may soon make good on its latest threat: “You can’t rule it out, not least if they have been waiting for a window” to hone their nuclear capabilities by testing them again.
It may well backfire on Kim, he added, if it finally awakens the world to the danger the North poses. A nuke test, Oh said, may be the “last straw that will break the [North Korean] camel’s back.”
Mmm, maybe. More likely, the nuclear-powered mad dog will continue to threaten its neighbors anytime Kim chooses. (He may also sell his dangerous toys to some well-heeled terrorist.)
Multiply that threat by the gazillions, and you get near-future Iran.
The negotiators in Vienna are unlikely to cap the last year of talmudic discussions with a nuclear deal today, as they set out to do. On Sunday afternoon, they seemed close to announcing a partial agreement, again extending the deadline for completing a comprehensive deal.
Either way, Iran’s Sunni neighbors are livid. Why should they stick to past agreements not to develop nukes when Iran, which has violated every nuclear agreement it’s ever signed, gets to exact compromises from the major powers?
And as the former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/regional-nuclear-plans-in-the-aftermath-of-an-iran-deal \t _blank Olli Heinonen, notes, “If an Iran deal is reached and Gulf leaders dislike it, preventing the proliferation of nuclear technology in the region will be a considerable challenge.”
Israel is another unhappy US ally. After all, it will be directly threatened by a regime that often declares its desire to wipe the Jewish state off the map. “What’s now on the table is a bad deal,” Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz told me Friday.
He won’t blame America or the Europeans. He said, in fact, that Jerusalem cherishes the cooperation in intelligence and diplomacy with Washington. But differences remain: Israel wants to assure that Iran won’t obtain even the means to get a bomb, while America’s declared goal is to prevent Iran from, well, getting it.
Put another way, Washington is widely reported to seek only assurances that Iran will remain at least one year away from testing a nuclear weapon.
But a year isn’t really a year: It would take IAEA inspectors a few months to detect any Iranian cheating, then a few more months for the West to verify said cheats — and then even more until the West convinces everybody else to renew sanctions, which would’ve been removed by then.
By that point, if Iran decides to go for the prize, no one will be able to stop it from testing a bomb.
Then, too, some of the West’s cave-ins in the talks so far “throw the IAEA under the bus,” according to former inspector David Albright.
The latest, reportedly, would forgo the agency’s demand that Iran account for all its past covert activities before any agreement is signed. As Albright explains, without a baseline of what the Iranians have already done, it’ll be tough to discover future cheating.
In fact, “the IAEA will need additional authority” if it’s ever charged with safeguarding an agreement, Heinonen told reporters in a recent briefing.
Will the Western negotiators in Vienna demand such new authority for the inspectors? Well, they’ve spent the last few months marginalizing the agency, talking down any negativity in the IAEA’s reports.
As Steinitz noted, in 2004 negotiators lifted some North Korea sanctions, believing they’d left Pyongyang two years away from a bomb. They thought they’d have ample time to act if the North violated the agreements.
Oops. North Korea surprised the world with its first nuclear test on Oct. 9, 2006.
And it’s been decades since Pyongyang had any serious ambition to export its revolution. Not so Iran — not to mention Tehran’s promises to wipe Israel off the map, nor its clear intent to become the undisputed top dog of the region.
Regardless of today’s outcome, remember the North Korean lesson: The faster the ink dries on a sanctions-ending agreement with a rogue regime, the quicker the pace toward its nuclear test.