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President Jimmy Carter is shown on a video screen as he addresses the nation on the failed attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran. | AP Photo

On this day in 1980, an ill-fated military operation aimed at rescuing American hostages being held in Tehran ended with eight U.S. servicemen dead and no hostages rescued. With the Iran hostage crisis stretching into its sixth month and diplomatic appeals to the revolutionary Iranian government proving fruitless, President Jimmy Carter agreed to launch a military mission to free them.

During the operation, three of eight helicopters failed. Under the pre-arranged rules of engagement, the mission was consequently canceled at the staging area in Iran. During the withdrawal, one of the retreating helicopters collided with one of six C-130 transport planes, killing eight soldiers, and injuring five. The next day, Carter held a news conference at which he took responsibility for the military debacle.

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The hostages were not freed for another 270 days.

The crisis began on Nov. 4, 1979, when militant Iranian students, angered by a White House decision to allow the ousted shah of Iran to travel to the United States for medical treatment, seized the American Embassy in Tehran. The Ayatollah Khomeini, Irans political and religious leader, assumed control over the hostage situation. He released non-U.S. captives and female and minority Americans, citing these groups as among the people purportedly oppressed by the U.S. government. The remaining 52 captives remained in custody.

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, fearing that the operation would not work and, moreover, that it would endanger the lives of the incarcerated diplomats, told Carter he would resign, regardless of whether the mission succeeded or not. Vance was also outraged by a decision, promulgated by his White House rival, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser, to bomb Tehran as an act of revenge if the rescue went ahead as planned, but ended in complete failure and the deaths of all the Americans on the scene.

Most analysts concur that inadequate planning, a flawed command structure, the lack of suitable pilot training and poor weather conditions in the Iranian desert all combined to doom the operation. Some political observers have speculated that a successful mission, had it come off, could have enhanced Carters political standing sufficiently to propel him to a second term. In the event, Carter proved unable to resolve the crisis, either militarily or diplomatically.

Three months later, the former shah died of cancer in Egypt, but the crisis lingered. In November, Carter lost the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan. Soon thereafter, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations began between the United States and Iran. On the day of Reagans inauguration, Jan. 20, 1981, the United States freed nearly $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets. The 52 hostages, having spent 444 days in captivity, were safely released. The next day, Carter flew to West Germany to greet these U.S. government staffers, for whom he took personal responsibility, on their eventual way home.

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Iran rescue mission ends in debacle, April 24, 1980 - Politico

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in Iran while on a family holiday. Photograph: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe/PA

Irans supreme court has upheld the conviction of a British-Iranian woman sentenced to five years in jail on non-specific charges relating to national security, dashing her hopes of overturning the verdict through legal avenues.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agencys charitable arm, had lodged a final appeal in January after the confirmation of her sentence in a lower court. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said on Monday that the supreme court had rejected her appeal.

I hadnt had great hopes for the supreme court appeal, he told the Guardian. Now, realising that thats it, that all options are gone in the middle of an election cycle, its hard to get attention on Nazanins case.

Irans presidential elections are to be held on 19 May, while the UK goes to the polls in a general election on 8 June.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, has spent 387 days behind bars, most of which have been in Tehrans Evin prison. The elite Revolutionary Guards arrested her in April 2016 while she and her two-year-old daughter, Gabriella, were about to return to the UK after a family visit to Iran. She was tried and found guilty on the unspecified charges relating to national security in September.

Ratcliffe said the final appeal was submitted on 20 January. His wifes lawyer received a telephone call on Tuesday to say that it had been rejected. Her parents went with Gabriella to meet the judges in [the city of] Qom about a month ago, and only her mum and Gabriella were allowed in for about two minutes; there was no court hearing; on Tuesday her lawyer was told on the telephone and the family had a prison visit [on Sunday] and discussed [the rejection] with her, he said.

Although the exact reasons behind Zaghari-Ratcliffes incarceration remain unclear, the Guards have accused her of attempting to orchestrate a soft overthrow of the Islamic Republic. An Iranian news agency affiliated to the countrys judiciary also said in April that she was a spy. Richard Ratcliffe has vehemently denied both allegations.

Earlier on Monday, Ratcliffe said in a statement that his wife still did not have firm details of the charges against her, insisted that she is innocent and criticised the UKs handling of her case.

As her husband, I can say Nazanin is innocent until I am blue in the face. I have spent a year doing it, he said. But it makes a clear difference that the government hasnt. It indulges the whispers.

He added: She was a mum on holiday, who works for a development charity in London, whose crime seems to be that it gets funding from the UK government. That is not espionage, that is not attempting to overthrow a regime, and it is not working against national security.

Ratcliffe said that they had asked the government to speak out and to say Nazanin is innocent of the allegations that she is a spy; to publicly call for her release now their conditions to do so have been reached, and to press again for the British ambassador to be allowed to visit to check on her health and hear from her directly.

Ratcliffe has previously claimed that his wife, who has dual nationality, is being used as a pawn in political deals with the UK. Nearly 1 million people have signed a petition on change.org calling on Iran to release her.

An official from the Iranian embassy in London told the Guardian that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been detained due to her illegal acts and that the appeal has been rejected based on information from the countrys judiciary, which acts independently of President Hassan Rouhanis government.

While being in prison is not a pleasant experience, Mrs Zaghari has full access to [a] social worker, physician, medical care, medical services and other necessary facilities. She also has the right to regularly meet her family, including her parents and particularly her beloved kid, the Iranian official said, adding that Richard Ratcliffe could apply for a visa to visit his wife on humanitarian grounds.

It is worth mentioning that there are thousands of dual nationals who are traveling on a daily basis to Iran without any difficulty. Although dual nationality is not recognised by the Iranian law, Iranian dual nationals are respected as Iranian citizens, the official added. Dual nationality should not be seen, however, as an instrument to obstruct the application of the law. Dual nationals will be subjected to the same legal processes as other Iranian nationals when committing offences.

Monique Villa, Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO, said the supreme courts decision extinguishes the last hope we have had of legally overturning a punishment where the crime remains a mystery. She asked the Iranian authorities for clemency.

She is not a spy, but an innocent mother who travelled to Iran only to show her baby to her parents, said Villa.

Ratcliffe told the Guardian that his wife was allowed to call him directly for the first time on 10 April and that Gabriella, who remains in Iran on the request of her mother, is now allowed to visit her twice a week. The solution is definitely in the political space, thats why we have requested the [UK] government to say that shes innocent, shes not a spy, he said.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: We are deeply concerned by reports that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffes supreme court appeal has been rejected, while Iran continues to refuse the UK access to her. The prime minister and foreign secretary have both raised Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffes case with their counterparts in Iran.

Link:
British-Iranian woman jailed in Tehran loses legal appeal - The Guardian

There is a moment in the life of nearly every problem like this when there is an opportunity for it to be seen and clearly understood and still time to deal with it effectively. That moment happened back when Wendy Sherman was negotiating this deal with North Korea. She was the architect of the North Korean nuclear deal. And they paid the ransom, but they did not secure the hostage. And, ironically, North Korea had already gone nuclear when they did the same thing with Iran. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), interview on CNN, April 20, 2017

The irony, for some Republicans, appears to be too delicious: The same diplomat who negotiated the ill-fated nuclear deal with North Korea under President Bill Clinton was also the chief negotiator for the nuclear deal with Iran under President Barack Obama. The theory is that just as North Korea found a way to cheat, so will Iran. Franks uttered this line on CNN recently, but it also pops up a lot on right-leaning websites and television programs.

But theres a big problem with this line of reasoning: Wendy Sherman, Obamasundersecretary of state who led the talks with Iran, did not negotiate the 1994 North Korean nuclear deal, known as the Agreed Framework. I am really tired of the inaccuracies, Sherman said with a sigh.

In 1994, the Clinton administration negotiated an agreement with North Korea to essentially freeze its nascent nuclear program in exchange for the eventual construction of two light-water reactors. North Koreas program was clearly created to churn out nuclear weapons; the reactor at Yongbyon was not connected to the power grid and appeared only designed to produce plutonium, a key ingredient for nuclear weapons. The theory of the deal was that, with the plant shuttered and the plutonium under the close watch of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), North Korea would not be able to produce a bomb.

The chief negotiator of the 1994 accord was Robert L. Gallucci, at the time the assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. Sherman was working in the State Department at the time as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs. Gallucci co-wrote an excellent book about the negotiations, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis. But Sherman merits only one brief mention, on page 376, in reference to a trip she made to Pyongyang in 2000, years after the deal was concluded.

I dont recollect Wendy playing any role in the 1993-4 Agreed Framework negotiations, but her deputy did help a great deal in guiding me through the briefings on the Hill after we were done, Gallucci said. The deal was controversial in Congress, in part because Clinton structured the agreement so that it was not considered a treaty that would have required ratification by the Senate.

Sherman agreed: Bob Gallucci negotiated the Agreed Framework.

My short hand is that the deal ended the Norths plutonium production program for about a decade one operating 5-megawatt electrical reactor, one operating reprocessing facility and two gas graphite plutonium production reactors under construction, a 50-megawatt electrical and a 200-megawatt electrical reactor, Gallucci said. The intelligence community calculated that if all three were operating, the North would be producing about 200 kilograms of plutonium a year, enough for about 40 nuclear weapons.

Gallucci added that it would not be an exaggeration to say that a fair estimate of the DPRKs nuclear weapons stockpile at the end of the Clinton Administration could have been between 50 and 100 nuclear weapons, absent the restraints of the Agreed Framework. Instead, as best we know, the North had no nuclear weapons when the Bush Administration took office. (North Koreas official name is the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.)

Sherman did become a prominent player on North Korea policy in Clintons second term. As counselor to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Sherman worked with former defense secretary William Perry on a 1999 review of U.S. policy toward North Korea. That review warned that the team had serious concerns about possible continuing nuclear weapons-related work in the DPRK. The review also viewed with alarm the Norths continued efforts to improve its long-range missile capability. But it concluded that it was important to keep the Agreed Framework in place.

Unfreezing Yongbyon remains the Norths quickest and surest path to nuclear weapons, the review said. U.S. security objectives may therefore require the U.S. to supplement the Agreed Framework, but we must not undermine or supplant it.

Sherman, who was named policy coordinator for North Korea, then spearheaded talks to get North Korea to agree to limit the development of its long-range missiles; at one point North Korea agreed to a moratorium on new missile testing. For the first time, a senior North Korean military official visited the United States, and in 2000 Albright became the first secretary of state to visit Pyongyang.

But a final agreement was not completed before Clinton left office in 2001, and the incoming president, George W. Bush, was highly skeptical. Sherman and other former officials say that incoming Secretary of State Colin L. Powell appeared impressed by their progress when they briefed him at his McLean home in late 2000 but that others in the administration were determined to take a more confrontational approach.

The new administration terminated missile talks with Pyongyang and then spent months trying to develop its own policy, labeled the bold approach.

Then, in 2002, intelligence agencies determined that North Korea was tryingto develop nuclear material through another method highly enriched uranium. The Bush administration sent an envoy who confronted North Korea, and the regime was said to have belligerently confirmed it.

In response, the Bush administration in December 2002 terminated a regular supply of fuel oil that was linked to the Norths freeze of its nuclear program. North Korea quickly kicked out the U.N. inspectors, restarted the nuclear plant and began developing its nuclear weapons, using the material in radioactive fuel rods that had been under the close watch of the IAEA. Thats how North Korea obtained much of the plutonium that it used for its first nuclear test in 2006 and for subsequent tests. (There is also evidencethat North Korea earlier had separateda small supply of plutonium from the fuel rods.) Before the Agreed Framework collapsed, the CIA in had warnedin November 2002 that this was a possible consequence of letting it fail.

Gallucci, Sherman and other former U.S. officials say that they hadtracked information that North Korea was secretly obtaining gas centrifuge technology and equipment from Pakistan that could be used in an uranium enrichment facility. The plan was to use that intelligence as leverage in future talks, but instead the Bush administration viewed it as evidencethat North Korea was cheating on the 1994 nuclear deal.

Ironically, after North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, the Bush administration tried desperately to negotiate a new accord with Pyongyang, including offering new concessions, but those efforts ultimately failed. North Korea had weapons forged out of plutonium and later also built a uranium-enrichment facility.

Destiny Edwards, a spokeswoman for Franks, tried to claim thatthe congressman was not referring to the 1994 agreement but to Shermans unsuccessful effort several years later to get a missile deal. The congressman never specified 1994, like youre insinuating, Edwards said. He was referring to the 1999 plan/deal/agreement/arrangement, at which time Wendy Sherman was heading up NK negotiations for Clinton. and during which time a decision was made to ignore North Koreas violations of the Agreed Framework and provide them hundreds of millions of dollars of food and oil rather than renew sanctions for their violations.

But this is nonsensical. Franks specifically called Sherman the architect of the North Korean nuclear deal. But that agreement had been set in 1994; Sherman was trying to negotiate a missile deal in 2000.

Edwards provided a 1999 opinion article by former secretary of state James A. Baker as evidence of the deal negotiated by Sherman. But that article (which does not mention Sherman) only refers to a relatively minor agreement to allow the Perry mission to visit a disputed site in North Korea. The fuel oil referenced by Baker was already being provided under the Agreed Framework, while the State Department has consistently denied that food aid, provided via the U.N. World Food Program, was tied to nuclear negotiations. In any case, it was certainly not aNorth Korea nuclear deal but a relatively insignificant step in the Perry review process.

I would say that either Rep. Franks is grossly misinformed or wishes, himself, to misinform, Gallucci said.

Franks is making an inaccurate and facile observation, seeking to undermine the Iran nuclear accord agreement by insinuating the same negotiator crafted the failed North Korea deal. But thats wrong.

Sherman was involved in later negotiations with North Korea over its missiles, but she did not negotiate the Agreed Framework. She said she drew on her experiences with North Korea to help make the Iran accord more sustainable. (The Agreed Framework was only a few pages long, while the Iran accordrunsmore than 100 pages, many of which are extremely technical and detailed.) We learned from North Korea, and we learned something from other arms control agreements, Sherman said.

So, there is a North Korea connection. But depending on your perspective, it actually might undermine Frankss point.

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2017-04-24 11:20:08 UTC

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Wendy Sherman "was the architect of the North Korean nuclear deal"

Trent Franks

Member of Congress (R-Ariz.)

in an interview with CNN

Thursday, April 20, 2017

2017-04-20

Read the original here:
The facile claim that Obama's Iran negotiator was 'the architect of the North Korean nuclear deal' - Washington Post

The Trump administration is stepping up its rhetoric against Iran even as it acknowledges the country is in compliance with a nuclear deal the president has long derided.

Since fulfilling a legal requirement to certify to Congress that Iran is complying with the deal, administration officials have repeatedly slammed Tehran. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson compared the country to North Korea, and President Trump declared that Iran is violating the spirit of the deal.

The administrations actions were to make sure that the certification wasnt perceived as a newfound approval of the [deal] as a mechanism for dealing with Iran, said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution. The statements that weve seen from Tillerson are reflective of what I see as an emerging focus on Iran as a major priority.

Trump has long railed against the 2016 deal between Iran and six world powers that requires Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for lifted sanctions.

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly called the accord the worst deal ever negotiated" and threatened to tear it up or renegotiate it.

Shortly after taking office, Trump put Iran on notice and slapped new sanctions on the country for its ballistic missile program.

But the administration has been relatively quiet on Iran since, as other foreign policy issues, from Syria to North Korea, took center stage.

Now, the administrations rhetoric on Iran is ratcheting back up.

That deadline came this week, and Tillerson sent a letter to Congress making the certification Tuesday night.

But Tillerson coupled the certification with an announcement that the National Security Council is reviewing whether lifting sanctions is in the United States's national security interests. Tillerson cited Irans sponsorship of terrorists, which is not covered under the nuclear deal.

The next day, Tillerson appeared at a rare, hastily arranged press conference, where he called the nuclear deal a failed approach that could lead to Iran becoming the next North Korea.

The JCPOA fails to achieve the objective of a non-nuclear Iran; it only delays their goal of becoming a nuclear state, he said. This deal represents the same failed approach of the past that brought us to the current imminent threat we face from North Korea. The Trump administration has no intention of passing the buck to a future administration on Iran.

Then on Thursday, Trump reiterated his belief that the deal was a terrible agreement and said Iran is violating its spirit.

They are not living up to the spirit of the agreement, I can tell you that, Trump said at a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. And were analyzing it very, very carefully and well have something to say about it in the not-too-distant future. But Iran has not lived up to the spirit of the agreement. And they have to do that. They have to do that. So we will see what happens.

However, Defense Secretary James Mattis said Friday the deal still stands. Mattis was a staunch opponent when it was being negotiated but has since said the United States should not renege on its commitments now that it is done.

That in no way mitigates or excuses the other activities of Iran in the region, to include its support of the war in Yemen that grinds on thanks to their support to the Iranian support or what theyre doing in Syria to keep [President Bashar] Assad in power and continue the mayhem and the chaos and the murder thats going on there, Mattis told reporters in Israel on Friday.

So these are separate issues, but the agreement on nuclear issues still stands.

Barbara Slavin, acting director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, called the administrations rhetoric on Iran in recent days schizophrenic.

Is the administration ashamed of the fact that the agreement is working? she asked. Its just unfortunate that we had gotten to a certain place of civility with Iran, and this administration seems willing to throw it all away.

Maloney, of Brookings, said the administration is likely talking tough because of two upcoming nuclear deal events.

First, on Tuesday, the Joint Commission overseeing implementation of the deal will meet in Vienna. As a member of the commission, the United States will send representatives.

And next month, the administration will have to decide whether to renew the waivers that provide sanctions relief to Iran, which many expect it will do.

That will have a certain perception, conceivably by [Trumps] base, and what the administration wants to do is begin to shape the narrative of its approach to Iran, Maloney said.

Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the Trump administration is threading the needle pending the completion of its Iran policy review. In other words, it is taking action that continues the status quo such as certifying Irans compliance with the deal and likely renewing the waivers while employing harsh rhetoric.

As long the policy review is not finalized, I think the administration will continue to hedge and not box the president in, Dubowitz said. From the rhetoric alone, weve seen a 180 degree reversal from the previous administration. Its clear that this administration does not see Iran as a stabilizing influence in the region.

Read more here:
Trump team raises rhetoric against Iran - The Hill

Sir, Without any sense of irony, US secretary of state Rex Tillerson proclaims that Iran is on notice and that the era of strategic patience is over. Meanwhile it is business as usual with Saudi Arabia, with both Theresa May and Donald Trump busying themselves courting the House of Saud for arms sales. This in the state where the biggest donors to Sunni terrorist groups, such as Islamic State, reside.

Of course, with Mr Trumps promise of an additional $100 billion per annum to the Pentagon, there is a ravenous military industrial complex to feed, from an unaudited budget.

Indeed it was recently reported that an investigation outlining $125 billion of waste at the Pentagon was buried.

The recent activities of the North Korean regime and the continued demonising of the Iranian bogeyman has been a boon to international arms industry.

The politics of fear allows the US arms industry to feed from the trough of the taxpayer while social infrastructure is eroded. The proposed increased Pentagon budget will come at the expense of items such as social security and healthcare.

Michael Jansens excellent review of the chequered history US interference in the Middle East (US intervention in Middle East has a long, difficult history, Opinion & Analysis, April 19th), along with the dubious credentials of the Trump regime, can only leave one assuming the worst. Yours, etc,

BARRY WALSH,

Blackrock,

Cork.

Link:
The US, Iran and the politics of fear - Irish Times