Israeli satellite firm reports ‘unusual’ activity at Iran nuclear site

https://www.timesofisrael.com/when-the-ny-times-says-abbas-is-no-partner-something-fundamental-is-shifting/
Israeli satellite firm reports ‘unusual’ activity at Iran nuclear site
Images of Fordo show full parking lot, open gates to 'uranium enrichment tunnels,' but no indication of illicit activity
By JUDAH ARI GROSS
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A satellite image from April 29, 2018, showing recent activity at the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran. (ImageSat International ISI)

An Israeli satellite imaging company on Thursday released images showing what it described as “unusual” movement around the Iranian Fordo nuclear facility, a one-time uranium enrichment plant buried deep underground that was converted to a research center as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.

The photographs, which show large numbers of vehicles at the entrance to the facility and other signs of increased activity there, do not in themselves indicate any violation of the nuclear accord, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

The fate of the highly contentious nuclear agreement lies in the balance, with US President Donald Trump set to decide whether or not America will remain party to it ahead of a May 12 deadline.

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The underground site, which has been protected by the powerful S-300 air defense system since 2016, was not shuttered as part of the accord, but the types of activities allowed there were heavily curtailed.

Barring a massive, heretofore undetected effort by Iran to bring Fordo back online in violation of the JCPOA, the increased activity could likely be attributed to an attempt by the Islamic Republic to imply that it is prepared to begin enriching uranium at the site if the US pulls out of the agreement.


A satellite image from April 29, 2018, showing recent activity at the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran. (ImageSat International ISI)
As part of the JCPOA, Iran was forced to limit the number of centrifuges allowed inside Fordo to 1,044, which would be kept in only one wing of the facility, and agreed that it “will not conduct any uranium enrichment or any uranium enrichment related [research and development] and will have no nuclear material at the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) for 15 years.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is tasked with monitoring Fordo and Iran’s other nuclear facility under the JCPOA, last released a report on the site in late February. Under the agreement, IAEA monitors are entitled to inspect the facility regularly, “including daily” if they so choose.

“Throughout the reporting period, Iran has not conducted any uranium enrichment or related research and development (R&D) activities, and there has not been any nuclear material at the plant,” the IAEA reported on February 22.

The agency did not immediately respond to a Times of Israel request for comment on the date of its latest inspection of the site.

Russian-made, S-300 long-range missiles at the Fordo nuclear site in central Iran, August 28, 2016.(Screenshot/Press TV)
The pictures of the Fordo plant, which were taken on April 29, were released by ImageSat International, a satellite imagery analysis firm based out of Or Yehuda in central Israel. The company is largely run by former members of the Israeli Air Force.

One satellite photograph showed cars and buses filling the Fordo facility’s parking lot. ImageSat said it “has not detected any large presence of private vehicles nor buses” in recent months.

The firm provided a second image from July 8, 2016, in which no vehicles are visible. However, an aerial photograph from April 2, 2016, shows at least 10 cars and two buses in the facility’s parking lot.

A satellite image from April 29, 2018, showing recent activity at the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran. (ImageSat International ISI)
A satellite image from April 2, 2016, of the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran. (Google Earth)

Another image shows that a gate leading to what ImageSat refers to as “uranium enrichment tunnels” was open on April 29. Before that, the gate was last seen open on November 23, 2015. However, publicly available satellite images of the site are few and far between.

A satellite image from April 29, 2018, showing recent activity at the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran. (ImageSat International ISI)
ImageSat also noted the construction of new buildings at the site, which the firm said appeared to be for research and development. There was no indication the buildings were used for research into uranium enrichment, which is expressly forbidden under the accord. Other types of scientific research are permitted at Fordo, so long as they are approved by the IAEA.


A satellite image from April 29, 2018, showing recent activity at the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran. (ImageSat International ISI)
Construction of the buildings began prior to implementation of the JCPOA in January 2016 and was completed sometime in the past year, as the structures can be seen in a Google Earth image of the site from September 2017.


A satellite image from September 15, 2017, of the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran. (Google Earth)
The facility is buried deep underneath a mountain, apparently to offer it protection against potential Israeli or American airstrikes. It is also located just outside the city of Qom, which is considered holy to Shiite Muslims, making any attempted bombing of the site more complicated.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the Fordo facility this week, as he unveiled a stunning operation by the Mossad intelligence service, in which over 100,000 documents pertaining to Iran’s nuclear weapons program were spirited from Tehran to Israel.

“You all remember the Fordo facility? The Fordo Uranium Enrichment Facility. This was a secret underground enrichment facility that the Iranians built under a mountain. You don’t put thousands of centrifuges under a mountain to produce medical isotopes. You put them there for one reason: nuclear weapons, enrichment for nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister noted that construction of the facility took place after Iran was meant to have ended its atomic weapons program — known as Project AMAD — in 2003.

“You also will not be surprised that Iran insisted on keeping Fordo. And amazingly, the nuclear deal enabled it to do it,” he said.

While no official announcement has been made by the US regarding the future of the JCPOA, multiple sources told Reuters on Thursday that Trump had “all but decided” to abandon the deal and impose new sanctions against Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Thursday responded to Trump’s threats to pull out of the deal with a threat of his own. “If the US continues to violate the agreement or if it withdraws altogether, we will exercise our right to respond, in a manner of our choosing,” he said in an English-language video.

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Israel & the Region  Fordo  Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action JCPOA IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency  Iran nuclear deal  IAEA inspectors  Iran Donald Trump  Benjamin Netanyahu  Mohammad Javad Zarif  S-300 missiles
When the NY Times says Abbas is no partner, something fundamental is shifting
World response to PA head's vile speech shows a growing awareness that peace requires Palestinian recognition of Jewish rights here. That's not to say Israel will get a free pass
Raphael Ahren
By RAPHAEL AHREN
Today, 6:27 pm  6

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (L) is welcomed by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini prior to attending a EU foreign affairs council at the European Council in Brussels, January 22, 2018. (EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP)
The global chorus condemning Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for his incendiary speech on Monday, during which he blamed the Jews for their own mass murder in the Holocaust and denied any Jewish connection to the Holy Land, is largely helpful for Israeli government public diplomacy, but it does come with a caveat.

Broadly speaking, Jerusalem welcomes any statement, from anybody, criticizing the Palestinian leader, whom Netanyahu government members have long accused of duplicity, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and, perhaps most relevantly, a persistent refusal to accept the idea of Jewish self-determination anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Two days after Abbas’s speech, when the import of what he had said in a televised address before hundreds in Ramallah began to sink in, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called on the international community to “condemn Abu Mazen’s severe anti-Semitism.”

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With rare alacrity, much of the world heeded his call.

Condemnations poured in, not only from the governments of Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Lithuania, but also from more unlikely quarters: the United Nations’ Middle East envoy; the European Union’s foreign policy chief; the main pro-Palestinian lobby group in Germany; even the head of UNESCO, the UN cultural agency that Israel is leaving because of its notorious anti-Israel bias.

“The utterly unacceptable remarks of President Mahmoud Abbas regarding the victims of Shoa are an inexcusable insult to the memory of the millions murdered by the Nazis and an outrageous distortion of truth,” tweeted Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl. Kneissl is affiliated with the far-right Freedom Party, which Israel boycotts due to its neo-Nazi past and alleged xenophobia.

Greeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Netanyahu once more “condemned Abu Mazen’s anti-Semitic remarks and said that they reveal the true reason why there is no peace,” according to a readout provided by Netanyahu’s office.

Abbas’s vile remarks, the latest and worst of his inflammatory efforts at inciting anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment among his people, indeed constitute a vindicating moment from the perspective of a prime minister who has for years argued that the absence of peace is due neither to Israel’s settlement enterprise nor to any other ostensible hardline policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians.

Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas (C) chairs a Palestinian National Council meeting in Ramallah on April 30, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / ABBAS MOMANI)
Rather, Netanyahu has stressed countless times over the years, peace has been elusive simply because the Palestinian Arabs and their leadership adamantly refuse to accept a Jewish state in any boundaries.

It is for this very reason that he repeatedly cites Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people as one of two essential pillars on which any future peace agreement must stand (the other being the demilitarization of a Palestinian state and ironclad security arrangements for Israel).

Many Western leaders, and even many centrist and left-leaning Israeli politicians, consider Netanyahu’s insistence on Palestinian recognition of a Jewish state to be an unnecessary obstacle.

But Abbas’s speech to the Palestinian National Council — in which he claimed the Holocaust was caused by European Jews’ “social behavior” including lending gentiles money for interest, and that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Khazars and therefore had “no historical ties” to the Land of Israel — served to underline Netanyahu’s point: How can you expect Israelis to make peace with those who deny their basic connection to this land?

This has not been lost on the international community.

Abbas’s rhetoric “does not serve the interests of the Palestinian people and is deeply unhelpful to the cause of peace,” UK Minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt said Thursday, echoing a line articulated by other Western officials.

The international community is not about to start supporting West Bank settlements or backing the IDF’s use of live ammunition against protesters at the Gaza border. It certainly won’t abandon its support for the two-state solution Netanyahu may or may not still endorse.

But the negative response to Abbas’s remarks shows that the argument that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not merely a dispute over real estate that could be solved easily if only Israel were willing to make the required territorial concessions is gaining traction.

Based on the many statements issued, many international players are internalizing that for peace to prevail, the Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that Jews have millennia of history in this land and a right to sovereignty here that has nothing to do with the Holocaust.

When The New York Times editorializes that Abbas, by “feeding reprehensible anti-Semitic myths and conspiracy theories” has now “shed all credibility as a trustworthy partner,” something fundamental has patently begun to shift.

So why the caveat? Why does the fallout also have a partial downside for pro-Israel advocacy, known as hasbara?

Because defenders of Israel’s good name can no longer easily claim that the international community is hopelessly biased in favor of the Palestinians. The automatic Arab majority in UNESCO will still be there after this Abbas controversy fades from the headlines. The UN’s anti-Israel numerical bias won’t quickly be remade. But it will nevertheless be a little more difficult to argue that “everyone is instinctively against us” or that the Europeans have it in relentlessly for Jews and Israel.
In January, the EU refused to condemn Abbas for saying Israel was “a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism.”
“Our policy is not to comment on comments,” an EU spokesperson in Brussels told The Times of Israel at the time.
On Wednesday, by contrast, the EU denounced Abbas’s “unacceptable remarks concerning the origins of the Holocaust and Israel’s legitimacy.”
Apparently, Brussels’ policy is no longer not to comment on comments. Abbas’s rhetoric was too vicious to be left unremarked upon.
But that doesn’t mean Israel will be getting a free pass from now on. It means criticism of Israel from those many quarters that this week spoke out against Abbas might be a little harder to shrug off.