Free Republic

VIENNA, Austria — The chief inspector of the UN’s nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resigned Friday, a spokesperson for the agency said. No reason was given for Tero Varjoranta’s sudden departure, which comes days after US President Donald Trump took America out of the deal between Iran and world powers over its nuclear program.

The United States asked North Korea to remove five nuclear weapons, that would be then flown to France for destruction, according to a South Korean press report. The Segye Ilbo reported Friday the U.S request from visiting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was part of a process to verify Kim Jong Un's intent. Quoting a South Korean diplomat, the newspaper said North Korea's sincerity about dismantlement is being tested. "It is my knowledge this position was directly conveyed to Kim by Secretary of State Pompeo," the diplomat said, adding the United States wants to shorten the time "as much as...

U.S. seeks the relocation of N. Korean nuclear engineers By YOSHIHIRO MAKINO/ Correspondent May 10, 2018 at 16:35 JST SEOUL--In preliminary negotiations before their upcoming summit, the United States is demanding that North Korea relocate its nuclear engineers to other countries and discard data from its nuclear development program. The demands were made in preliminary discussions for the U.S.-North Korea summit scheduled to be held by early June, sources related to North Korea said on May 9. However, North Korea is resisting the relocation of up to several thousand nuclear engineers and is taking a vague stance on the abandonment...

TEHRAN, Iran - President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many people here in the Islamic republic. Many Iranians hoped the Obama-era pact would lead to prosperity and closer ties with the West. But with the agreement now on the rocks, some Iranians feel double-crossed by America and say they are pessimistic about their country’s future. Many Iranians feel they haven't seen the economic benefits of the nuclear deal. While it allowed Tehran to sell its crude oil and natural gas on the international market, Iran's economy remains weak...

South Carolina's state owned utility paid $9 million in performance bonuses to executives of a private utility for two nuclear reactors that were never finished, according to the public utility and emails turned over to state and federal investigators. SCANA Corp. even billed taxpayer-supported Santee Cooper $3.2 million for bonuses in August, A MONTH AFTER the utilities abandoned 10 years of construction and planning for the reactors, according to the emails released by Gov. Henry McMaster's office on Wednesday.

If your "signature achievements" are done by executive power alone, they might as well be written in pencil. Say what you will about Donald Trump pulling the United States out of the Iran deal. Personally, I wish the United States had stayed in. But this sort of zig-zag is exactly what happens when you end up governing with your pen and your phone, as Barack Obama did. Faced with a recalcitrant, obstructionist Republican Congress that he helped bring to power two years into his presidency, Obama increasingly gave up on getting congressional approval for anything: military actions, immigration policy, trade...

The nuclear deal hasn’t reduced Tehran’s threat to international security and stability. Highly controversial? Yes. But President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—also known as the Iran nuclear deal—was totally justifiable. The deal was a well-intentioned effort by the Obama administration to limit Iran’s nuclear program—including its nuclear weapons program. But from the beginning, there were a number of reasonable concerns about the JCPOA. How About That Sunset? One of the most problematic provisions of the JCPOA is that it ends —or “sunsets”—after a specified period of time. At the fifteen-year mark of...

LONDON - President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal has left foreign firms with a choice: Stop doing business in Iran or run the risk of U.S. sanctions. Multinational companies have billions of dollars tied up in Iran. In 2016, the European Union exported more than $9.7 billion worth of goods to Iran, while importing almost $6.5 billion from there, according to the European Commission. But Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, warned firms that continuing to do business there would have consequences. “U.S. sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies...

It was well telegraphed in advance but that didn't make the punch of the US withdrawal from the Iran deal any less powerful. President Donald Trump has just sent an earthquake through the Middle East and risked alienating key European allies. Anyone who thinks there was a glimmer of optimism, and the door is left open for a new deal, wasn't really listening to what the President had just said. Virtually every aspect of the Iranian regime's foreign agenda was attacked. This was not just about the deal. This was about Iran's aggressive behaviour across the region. The problem with...

Asked the right question, a suspect will often incriminate himself. Asked why the Iran deal isn't a treaty, Secretary of State John Kerry basically answered it's because we've killed the Constitution. Secretary Kerry, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, pumped another bullet into the legal foundation of the American system of government ratified by We the People nearly 227 years ago. Asked by Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wis., "Why is this not considered a treaty?" — which would mean 67 senators would have to agree before the Iran deal would take effect — former Sen. Kerry's startling and...

First, we learned last year that the Obama administration made a secret side deal with Iran that allowed the regime to effectively inspect itself - collecting its own soil samples, instead of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, at the Parchin military complex. Then we learned last month that the Obama administration made a secret $400 million ransom payment to Iran, in which “wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane” on the very same day that U.S. hostages were released. Now it appears the Obama administration has cut...

FULL TITLE: 'A serious mistake': Read Barack Obama's statement on President Trump's decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal "I believe that the decision to put the JCPOA at risk without any Iranian violation of the deal is a serious mistake," Obama. Here's Obama's full statement:

ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran’s foreign minister said on Thursday U.S. demands to change its 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers were unacceptable as a deadline set by President Donald Trump for Europeans to “fix” the deal loomed. [snip]“Iran will not renegotiate what was agreed years ago and has been implemented,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a video message posted on YouTube.

Sketchy reporting on this so far even a few hours out from this tweet, but hugely interesting if true — although perhaps not unexpected. CBS’s sources within the US intel community tell them that North Korea has begun dismantling their nuclear testing facility at Punggye-ri. If true, it might mean that they’re serious about ending their nuclear program … or that the facility is already useless: Presumably US intelligence has developed this information from either reliable human intelligence, which is difficult to get in the prison camp north of the 38th Parallel, or from real-time satellite surveillance, which is much...

For many years, the Iranian regime has insisted to the world that its nuclear program was peaceful. The documents obtained by Israel from inside of Iran show beyond any doubt that the Iranian regime was not telling the truth. I have personally reviewed many of the Iranian files. Our nonproliferation and intelligence officials have been analyzing tens of thousands of pages and translating them from Farsi. This analytical work will continue for many months. We assess that the documents we have reviewed are authentic. The documents show that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program for years. Iran sought to...

In a dramatic televised address Monday evening, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu revealed to the public information gathered from Iran’s nuclear weapons program, proving that the Tehran regime had lied about its efforts to acquire atomic weapons. The address was made less than two weeks before President Trump’s May 12th deadline for reaching an agreement to improve the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal. If no alterations are made to the deal by the deadline, President Trump has warned he will not hesitate to end sanctions relief for Iran, effectively ending the nuclear deal. Prime...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed new "dramatic" intelligence Monday which he claimed shows Iran is "brazenly lying" about its nuclear weapons program and shows the country is not complying with the vaunted nuclear deal it signed in 2015. The information was obtained within the past 10 days, Israeli officials told Fox News. Netanyahu said the "half a ton" of files were moved to a "highly secret" location in Tehran after the deal was signed, and contained materials spread over 55,000 pages and 55,000 files on 183 CD's. "These files conclusively prove that Iran is brazenly lying when it says...

The United States is aware of the information just released by Israel and continues to examine it carefully. This information provides new and compelling details about Iran’s efforts to develop missile-deliverable nuclear weapons. These facts are consistent with what the United States has long known: Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people. The Iranian regime has shown it will use destructive weapons against its neighbors and others. Iran must never have nuclear weapons.

Oct. 13 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump said Friday he won't certify that Iran is complying with the terms of a landmark 2015 nuclear agreement, and instead announced new sanctions against the regime in Tehran. "I am announcing today that we cannot and will not make this certification," the president said in a news conference at the White House. "Given the regime's murderous past and present, we should not take lightly its sinister vision for the future. The regime's two favorite chants are death to America and death to Israel," Trump said. Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly said the...

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recertified Iran's compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal late Monday, but senior administration officials emphasized that Tehran is a dangerous threat to both U.S. interests and Middle East stability. Under U.S. law, the State Department is required to recertify to Congress Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal every 90 days. Despite President Trump's harsh criticism of the agreement forged under his predecessor, it is the second such certification since he took office. The controversial agreement, which came into force in July 2015, was ironed out among Iran, the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia, the United...