WOW! This was amazing!
American Jewish leaders jeered and heckled Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew at the annual Jerusalem Post conference in New York City on Saturday.
Secretary Lew was defending the administration’s relationship with the Iranian mullahs when the crowd started loudly heckling him.
The jeers and heckling got SO LOUD that an organizer had to interrupt Lew’s speech and tell them to calm down!
This was wild!
The informed crowd wasn’t buying it!
** Here is the full text of Secretary Lew’s speech.
Here’s the part of his speech when he started defending Iran and pushing the Iranian nuclear deal that upset the crowd.
Over the last week, there have been news reports, based on information from the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran’s stockpile of uranium has grown over the past 18 months. Some took this to mean that Tehran failed to meet its commitments under the Joint Plan of Action. But the IAEA did not reach that conclusion. Quite to the contrary, the IAEA verified that Iran has met the terms of its agreements, that the progress on its nuclear program has been frozen, and that fluctuations in Iran’s stockpile of uranium were an entirely expected part of the chemical conversion process. To put it another way, even though Iran’s stockpile of uranium has gone up and down at various times over the past 18 months, this was something we anticipated and at each of the deadlines that have been set, Iran’s uranium stockpile levels have been within the levels that were agreed to.
That brings us to the framework for a final agreement – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – which we reached in Switzerland in early April, a framework that is the basis of a good, comprehensive deal. It meets our core objective: blocking each of Iran’s pathways to a bomb. This includes break – out attempts at the known nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Arak as well as any potential secret path to developing a nuclear weapon. At the same time, as the framework lays out, the final deal will be built around an incredibly robust and intrusive inspections regime on Iran’s nuclear program. We will have more insight into Iran’s program that we have ever had. We will be inspecting and monitoring Iran’s nuclear sites and, importantly, supply chains. Uranium mines, uranium mills, centrifuge production sites, assembly and storage facilities, the purchase of sensitive equipment – all will be under penetrating surveillance.
Make no mistake, we are not operating on an assumption that Iran will act in good faith. This deal will only be finalized if the connective tissue of the agreement meets a tough standard of intense verification and scrutiny. A final agreement will have to specifically address concerns about a potential covert nuclear weapon program. If we reach an agreement and Iran ends up flouting its obligations, we will know, and we will have preserved all our options – including economic and military measures – to make sure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon.
In return for meeting the demands that have been put on it by the international community, Iran would obtain phased-in relief from nuclear-related sanctions. But, in the same way that we have structured inspections around the notion that Iran might try to cheat, we have approached winding down sanctions so we can police against the same risk.
Should we come to a final agreement, sanctions relief will be granted under two conditions.
First, sanctions would be lifted in phases, only after Iran meets agreed-upon benchmarks. Our phasing will be designed to ensure that Iran meets and maintains its commitments.
And second, we will make sure that if Iran violates its commitments, we will have the full capability to snap sanctions back into place and reverse the relief.
The framework meets our requirements in both respects, and if we can get a comprehensive deal, here is how it will work.
Iran will receive relief from certain UN, EU, and US sanctions only after it verifiably completes major nuclear-related steps.
Right now, Iran is two to three months away from acquiring a bomb’s worth of nuclear material. Under the agreement we are pursuing, for at least 10 years, Iran will be kept at least one year away from having enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon and will have no path to developing a bomb using plutonium.
That is because we will have blocked all four of Iran’s pathways to develop a nuclear weapon. The core of the reactor at its only plutonium facility – Arak – will be dismantled and replaced. As far as uranium, Iran will no longer enrich uranium at its Fordow facility, and it will reduce its centrifuges at Natanz by two-thirds. The remaining centrifuges at Natanz will enrich uranium to below 5 percent for the next 15 years, only enough for energy purposes. In addition, Iran will have to reduce and maintain its stockpile of low-enriched uranium from approximately 12,000kg to 300kg – a reduction of 98 percent. But in addition to safeguarding these declared nuclear sites, a potential deal must prevent Iran from using a covert site to break out. And that is why any deal must ensure comprehensive and robust monitoring and inspection anywhere and everywhere the IAEA has reason to go.
