The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed alarm and criticism of the secret annexes to the nuclear agreement concluded by the P5+1 powers (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, including the United States, plus Germany) and Iran that have emerged – about which neither the U.S. Congress nor the American public were told. These secret annexes concern Iran’s military base at Parchin which, like other Iranian military sites, are off-limits to nuclear inspectors under the agreement, and Iran’s failure to disclose its past nuclear-related military and procurement activities as was once demanded of it. The ZOA has called upon President Obama to fully disclose the nature of these aspects of the nuclear agreement, noting that President Obama committed to fully disclose the full agreement to Congressional scrutiny.
The secret annexes were discovered by Senator Tom Cotton (R–AK) and Congressmen Mike Pompeo (R–KS) during a July 17 meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials in Vienna. Both legislators said:
“According to the IAEA, the Iran agreement negotiators, including the Obama administration, agreed that the IAEA and Iran would forge separate arrangements to govern the inspection of the Parchin military complex — one of the most secretive military facilities in Iran — and how Iran would satisfy the IAEA’s outstanding questions regarding past weaponization work. Both arrangements will not be vetted by any organization other than Iran and the IAEA, and will not be released even to the nations that negotiated the JCPOA [Iran nuclear agreement]. This means that the secret arrangements have not been released for public scrutiny and have not been submitted to Congress as part of its legislatively mandated review of the Iran deal.”
As former Department of Energy official William Tobey has written, “for inspections to be meaningful, Iran would have to completely and correctly declare all its relevant nuclear activities and procurement, past and present.” Yet meaningful inspections is precisely what we don’t have.
According to Fred Fleitz, senior vice president for policy and programs at the Center for Security Policy, “This means that two crucial measures of Iranian compliance with the nuclear agreement will not be disclosed to Congress despite the requirements of the Corker-Cardin bill (the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act), which requires the Obama administration to provide the U.S. Congress with all documents associated with the agreement, including all ‘annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements [emphasis added], implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical, or other understandings and any related agreements, whether entered into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into or implemented in the future.’ It also means that Congress will have no way of knowing whether Iran complied with either side agreement” (Fred Fleitz, ‘IAEA Tells Congressmen of Two Secret Side Deals to Iran Agreement That Won’t Be Shared with Congress,’ National Review Online, July 22, 2015).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “It is clear that, shockingly, the Obama Administration has not only done an end-run around the U.S. Congress by signing and voting to enshrine this deal in a binding UN Security Council resolution before the Congress has deliberated and voted to approve or reject it, but it has also shamefully withheld vital information pertaining to key elements of any nuclear deal –– inspections and full disclosure over past nuclear-related military and procurements activities.
“Given that what has thus far been publicized about the nuclear deal is disturbing –– the U.S. and other powers having caved on every substantive issue which we were once assured would be included in the eventual agreement, like dismantling centrifuges, shuttering certain nuclear facilities, free and unfettered inspections, disclosure of past nuclear-related military and procurements activities, maintaining non-nuclear sanctions, and so on –– we can only assume that these secret annexes, containing agreements wrongfully shielded from Congressional scrutiny, are even less rigorous and dangerous.
“President Obama should immediately disclose what is in these secret annexes. If the agreement he has signed is, as he repeatedly assures us, a good deal, he should have no objection to sharing these details of it with the Congress and the American public, quite apart from which he is under obligation to do so.”