Iran and the Bomb

For John, BLUF:  You will wake up some morning and find that Iran has nuclear weapons.  My hope is that it will not be via a bright flash of light.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Here is an opinion piece by Reza Kahlili♠ on the new President of Iran, Hasan Rouhani, "KAHLILI:  Rouhani’s Iranian nuclear deception".  The theme is "How the ‘moderate’ new president secretly pushed the weapons program".  Here is the lede and three following paragraphs:

Iran’s newly elected president, Hasan Rouhani, officially took office Sunday and, with the blessing of the supreme leader, promised moderation.  Don’t believe it.

Mr. Rouhani’s election was orchestrated by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for a specific mission: buy time so the Islamic regime can complete its nuclear-weapons program, according to a former intelligence officer who defected to a Scandinavian country.

A second goal is to persuade the United States to relieve some of the crippling sanctions as a sign of good faith.  Iran’s economic situation has deteriorated to the point that officials have warned of the possibility of food rationing.  Inflation is rampant, and unemployment growing.

Mr. Rouhani, through his Cabinet picks, is sending a signal that he is willing to engage the West and even hold direct talks with the United States.  He already has named former U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Javad Zarif, who has had deep conversations with U.S. officials before, as foreign minister, and Mohammad Nahavandian, a U.S.-educated businessman, as his chief of staff.

But, if that doesn't disturb you regarding the new Iranian Government, from the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center we have this item—"Who is Mostafa Pourmohammadi? A profile of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s pick for Minister of Justice".

While some of Rouhani’s other cabinet nominations include moderate and reformist leaning politicians Mohammad Javad Zarif (Foreign Minister), Bijan Zanganeh (Oil Minister) and Mohammad Ali Najafi (Education Minister), as well as leading reformist Eshaq Jahangiri as his first Vice President and top deputy, Rouhani’s selection of Pourmohammadi, a member of an association of conservative political clergy, stands in stark contrast.

Of particular note is Pourmohammadi’s record of human rights violations during his tenure as Deputy Intelligence Minister from 1987 until 1999. During this period, Pourmohammadi was directly involved in the mass executions of members of leftist political groups in Iranian prisons in 1988, the extrajudicial assassinations of political opponents abroad and the unlawful killings of dissidents within Iran’s borders.

There you go.  I am on the lookout for more information.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Per the paper, "Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and author of “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010)."