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Comment by ajnin | Hacker News Reader

I don't really get it. If all they had to show were 15 year old documents, so dating before the Iranian nuclear accord, wouldn't this indicate that Iran did in fact fulfill its side of the agreement ? The main argument seems to be that if they kept the archives then it must mean that they want to resume their research program at some point in the future. I'm sure if Israel had any clear and direct evidence showing that Iran violated the deal they would have shown it.

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I've heard responses from former Obama appointees that the documents in general were not surprising. They believed that Iran had an active nuclear program, was lying about it, and was hiding it. So they tried to create a deal that would not require countries to trust that Iran was complying. Overall it looks like Iran was complying with the deal, even if we can't assume good faith. So Netanyahu's speech came across as overtly political.

The “problem” with the deal form Israel’s point of view is that the restrictions are temporary on both the enrichment and the long range missile programmes.

The Iran deal would work out only if there would be a regime change before the restrictions expire, and while 15 years are enough for the US it’s not enough for Israel considering that the Iranian nuclear program has started even before the revolution, then with the full support of the US.

While the documents should surprise no one their release by the Israelis was done to make it harder for Iran to continue to run “we never worked on nuclear weapons” story they at least from Israel’s point of view manage to successfully sell to quite a lot of people.

from a purely diplomatic standpoint, Im not so sure Iran was wrong to keep these documents. as its been proven the US is somewhat of a fair-weather friend with its treaties lately.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...

Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and ratified it in 1970. To date, Iran has never built a single nuclear bomb but only proven it can through enrichment should it choose to.

Israel's only real power in this case has been extrajudicial state-sponsored targeted assassinations. Its something that generally lands countries like Libya on the US terrorist embargo list, but Israel not so much.

I doubt this was the author’s intent, and it was certainly not the Israeli governent’s intent, but for me the most interesting parts of the article were the details of modern day intelligence techniques, and the overt descriptions of numerous (Israeli?) assassinations of people in Iran’s nuclear program, which was apprently justified by extremly flimsy evidence that Iran’s done anything to violate the treaty.

There is a very long history by succeeding Israeli governments of assassinations with little evidence. Sometimes using false evidence or odd justifications to base the killing on. But there is also little reason to point the finger. The Obama administration took the policy and expanded it even further.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/preside...

The article says Iran was hiding and saving these documents so that when the 15 year ban on nuclear material expired, Iran could startup it's nuclear program from where it left off.

Part of the issue, w/ respect to the U.S. pulling out of the deal appears to hinge on the Saudi's nuclear plans.

As the story was told at a D.C. forum (sorry can't remember which one, but it was w/i the last year):

1a) not only was U.S. representation excluded from bidding on their project(s), but the Chinese and the Russians were allowed to.;

1b) if the U.S. was excluded from bidding, and therefore uninvolved in the project(s), it would not be able to "monitor" it;

2) the Saudis were supposedly citing Iran's ability to enrich uranium, and saying that that therefore allowed them (the Saudis) to do so, too, because their program was also "only for peaceful purposes."

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