RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Monday, the Iranian propaganda outlet, Tasnim, reported that Iranian anti-aircraft crews succeeded in detecting and warding off a U.S. spy drone that strayed into Iranian airspace from neighboring Afghanistan. If true, it would mark yet another US-Iranian clash in the region. Though the instant confrontation was relatively minor and did not result in injury or damage, it is demonstrative of the more aggressive and assertive tone the Iranian military is taking with respect to its dealings with the United States and the region since the signing of Obama’s much touted Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the plan that provides the Islamic Republic with a legal pathway toward acquiring nuclear weapons.

According to a U.S. defense official, U.S. and Iranian naval vessels interacted on at least 300 occasions in 2015 and on more than 250 occasions this year alone. Many of those encounters were relatively benign but some were the result of egregious Iranian provocations.

In December of 2015, Iranian navy boats fired rockets within 1,500 feet of aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman. On January 12, 2016, an Iranian drone flew uncomfortably close to the Harry S. Truman. A U.S. Navy spokesman called the flyover “abnormal and unprofessional.” The Navy could have easily downed the drone but inexplicably chose not to. Such an action would have sent the Iranians the proper message without causing loss of life but the drone was nevertheless allowed to conduct its surveillance unmolested.

The very day that the drone was shadowing U.S. naval forces, the Iranians seized 10 American navy personnel and two Riverine Command Boats near Farsi Island in the Arabian Gulf. The RCB is heavily armed and armored but despite overwhelming firepower, the RCB crews humiliatingly surrendered to the Iranians without firing a shot. The crew and its commander displayed an abject lack of fighting spirit. A Pentagon investigation revealed that there were morale and training problems as well as a number of human errors that led to the shameful fiasco. Several officers were reprimanded and relieved of command as a result.

Kerry’s ruffled ostrich feathers

You’ve got to hand it to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for being consistent when it comes to his view of global terrorism. In Bangladesh on Monday, he reiterated his position to members of the press.

“Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much,” he said at a briefing at the Edward M. Kennedy Center in Dhaka. This way, he explained, “People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

This was Kerry’s clumsy way of acknowledging that though the phenomenon exists, its individual perpetrators — who “decide one day … to be … terrorists and [are] willing to kill [themselves], and go out and kill some people, [in order to] make some noise” — should not be given a spotlight. Indeed, he said, “no country is immune” from the phenomenon, because “it’s easy to terrorize.”

In other words, since suicide bombers who slaughter innocent people are a dime a dozen, the best way to burst their publicity-seeking bubbles is to ignore them. Especially when there are more pressing matters to tackle, chief among them the weather. Yes, in the eyes of America’s top diplomat, climate change is what ought to be concerning the global community, and tackling it requires everyone’s undivided attention.

In June, Kerry went as far as to say that refrigerators and air conditioners are a threat on a par with mass murder. In Vienna to amend the 1987 Montreal Protocol that would phase out hydrofluorocarbons in household appliances, he announced, “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we … are doing here right now is of equal importance [to Islamic State and other terrorist groups], because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”

A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the State Department should turn over all materials related to allegations in a new think-tank report charging that Iran got secret exemptions in the nuclear deal to get the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action completed on schedule.

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security report said “some nuclear stocks and facilities were not in accordance with JCPOA limits on Implementation Day, but in anticipation the Joint Commission had earlier and secretly exempted them from the JCPOA limits.”

“The exemptions and in one case, a loophole, involved the low enriched uranium (LEU) cap of 300 kilograms (kg), some of the near 20 percent LEU, the heavy water cap, and the number of large hot cells allowed to remain in Iran. One senior knowledgeable official stated that if the Joint Commission had not acted to create these exemptions, some of Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been in compliance with the JCPOA by Implementation Day,” wrote authors David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, and Andrea Stricker.

They added that the “secretive decision making process risks advantaging Iran by allowing it to try to systematically weaken the JCPOA. It appears to be succeeding in several key areas.”

“Given the technical complexity and public importance of the various JCPOA exemptions and loopholes, the administration’s policy to maintain secrecy interferes in the process of establishing adequate Congressional and public oversight of the JCPOA. This is particularly true concerning potentially agreement-weakening decisions by the Joint Commission. As a matter of policy, the United States should agree to any exemptions or loopholes in the JCPOA only if the decisions are simultaneously made public.”

The institute has remained neutral on whether or not the nuclear deal should have been implemented.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) called the revelations “yet another example of the administration’s false choice it presented to the American people in selling the flawed Iranian deal that provides the mullahs a patient pathway to the bomb.”

“The American public deserves answers from the administration, and I expect the State Department to release all relevant materials and to fully explain these allegations,” Gardner added.

State Department press secretary John Kirby told reporters today there was no loosening of the low-enriched uranium stockpile rule, insisting it “hasn’t changed; they’ve not exceeded that limit.”

“As many of you know, it’s written right in the JCPOA, which established the Joint Commission, that the work of the Joint Commission would be confidential,” Kirby said. “Unless the Joint Commission decided otherwise, and it’s right there in the JCPOA itself. And it’s designed that way.”

“…I also would assert that the Joint Commission has not and will not loosen any of the commitments and has not provide any exceptions that would allow Iran to retain or process material in excess of its JCPOA limits that it could use in a breakout scenario.”

Kirby said Congress “has been kept informed” of the commission’s work.