The slope of the curve is increasing. It was 1.12 percent between
Dec 26-27, 1.33 percent between Dec 27-28 and has reached 1.76 percent between
Dec 28-29
בדרך למיליון מתחסנים!
— Yuli Edelstein 🇮🇱 יולי אדלשטיין (@YuliEdelstein) December 30, 2020
152,000 מתחסנים נכון לאתמול,
קרוב ל 650,000 בסך הכל.
ככה מנצחים מגפה! pic.twitter.com/bKAWf07NIp
COVID-19 vaccination doses administered per 100 people (ourworldindata.org)
Update January 7. Because of Israel they had to introduce the logarithmic scale
 |
| Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova |
 |
| George F. Kennan |
Letters to the Editor, Jerusalem Post, Dec 30, 2020
In “Moscow ‘confused’ by Israeli anger at
envoy’s remarks to ‘Post’” (December
27), Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “All statements
by the Russian ambassador quoted in the publication are in line with Russia’s
well-known position on the Middle East.”
But that does not
necessarily mean that these well-known positions (such as there is “no proof
Hezbollah created the tunnels” crossing into Israel) have any connection to the
truth. After all, the motto of Oceania in George Orwell’s 1984 was “War is
Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.”
It helps to have
read Arthur Koestler, Artur London, Milan Kundera and Orwell, but what comes to
mind when I read what Zakharova said is what George F. Kennan, then counselor
of the US Embassy in Moscow, said in a September 1944 memorandum:
“It would be useful
to the Western world to realize that… the men in the Kremlin have never
abandoned their faith in that program of territorial and political expansion…
which underlay the German-Russian non-aggression pact of 1939.”
MLADEN
ANDRIJASEVIC
Beersheba
It is unfortunate that the Jerusalem Post edited out part of George F.
Kennan’s quote
which shows that this Russia’s policy of territorial and political expansion had always been there and predated
the USSR!
“It would be useful to the
western world to realize that despite all the
vicissitudes by which Russia has been afflicted since August 1939, the
men in the Kremlin have never abandoned their faith in that program of
territorial and political expansion which had once
commended itself so strongly to Tsarist diplomatists, and which underlay
the German-Russian non-aggression pact of 1939.”
15 December, 2020
Since the UK’s first lockdown in March, the government
has had one (perhaps only one) consistent message — protect the NHS, write Alastair McLellan of HSJ and Fiona Godlee of The BMJ.
Now, with the number of hospital patients with
covid-19 again on the
rise, and a third wave almost inevitable, the new year is likely to
see NHS trusts facing a stark choice: be overwhelmed or stop most elective and
non-urgent work. Rather than lifting restrictions over Christmas as currently
planned, the UK should follow the more cautious examples of Germany, Italy and
the Netherlands.
By and large the NHS has coped well with the additional
caseload of covid-19 patients during the autumn. The second wave began to hit
hospitals at the start of September. Government figures report 451 inpatients
with covid-19 in England on 2 September. Over the ensuing 10 weeks, the numbers
rose steadily and then rapidly, peaking at a reported 14,712 inpatients with
covid-19 in England on 23 November.
If the third wave turns out to be of the same order of
magnitude as the second wave, the health service should manage. But this will
be the case only if that wave starts with a broadly similar extra caseload of
covid-19 inpatients as at the beginning of the second wave: around 450.
With current restrictions failing to control the virus,
extrapolation suggests that the actual figure is likely to be more than 40
times higher (see explanation in paragraph below). The planned relaxation of
restrictions over Christmas will boost the numbers further as the NHS also
struggles with the additional demands of winter.
England went into lockdown on 5 November and the number
of inpatients with covid-19 began to fall, down to 12,968 on 5 December. If
this rate of decline had continued, the English NHS would have been on course
for just under 11,000 covid-19 inpatients on 31 December. However, in the past
two weeks, despite most of the country being in tiers 2 or 3, numbers of
inpatients have started to rise again. By 14 December (the latest data
available) covid bed occupancy had climbed back to 15,053.
Unless something happens to change this trajectory,
hospitals in England will have just short of 19,000 covid patients on new
year’s eve. This figure, derived by extrapolating a straight line from December
5 to December 14 through to December 31, would be almost exactly the same as
the 18,974 peak of the first wave on April 12.
The NHS currently has around
95,000 general acute beds. It is operating with around 10 per cent
fewer beds than a year ago as a result of infection prevention and control
measures introduced to try to stop the spread of covid in hospitals.
The cost of inaction
The main impact of a further surge in covid-19 inpatients
is likely to be felt most by those with other conditions. The NHS has learnt
from the first and second waves and has robust plans to rapidly increase
intensive care capacity, including through the Nightingale
hospitals. However, a large influx of covid patients similar or greater
than that seen in the autumn can only be managed if staff and other resources
are diverted from treating non-covid patients.
Having recovered much of their capacity for elective and
non-urgent care during the autumn, NHS trusts in the most pressured regional
health systems are already now having to
cancel almost all such activity because of the resurgent virus.
A significant third wave could wipe out almost all the reductions in waiting
times for elective procedures achieved in the past 20 years. Performance
against the standard which requires the NHS to treat 92 per cent of elective
patents within 18 weeks will have slipped to 12 months by
March next year. The number of patients waiting over a year for
treatment has risen from a hew hundreds to 160,000. This will take years to
recover from, at the cost of much suffering and loss of life.
The coming months are also likely to see the NHS under
intense winter pressures due to seasonal outbreaks of norovirus, increased
admissions of frail older people and the peak of staff absence. The NHS will
also be in the middle of delivering the largest vaccination programme in its
72-year history, via already overstretched general practices and hospitals.
Even if NHS England succeeds in vaccinating all those ‘at
risk’ by Easter, this will not be in time to prevent hospitalisation and death
for many during the next few months. “NHS Track and Trace,” which has almost
nothing to do with the NHS, continues to squander money on failure. So too does
the mass testing of asymptomatic people using lateral flow tests that are not
fit for purpose.
Of particular concern is the impact on staff, many of
whom have already worked through the hardest nine months of their professional
lives. Levels of burnout and sickness absence are likely to exceed those
already experienced.
What should be done
London and many neighbouring counties will enter tier 3
on Wednesday 16 December. However, other areas such as Kent which has been in
tier 3 since 2 December are still seeing strong increases in hospital
admissions. These measures are clearly inadequate.
Ministers are meeting tomorrow (16 December) to review
current restrictions for England. When government devised the current plans to
allow household mixing over Christmas it had assumed the covid-19 demand on the
NHS would be decreasing. But it is not, it is rising, and the emergence of
a new strain of
the virus has introduced further potential jeopardy.
Members of the public can and should mitigate the impact
of the third wave by being as careful as possible over the next few months. But
many will see the lifting of restrictions over Christmas as permission to drop
their guard.
The government was too slow to introduce restrictions in
the spring and again in the autumn. It should now reverse its rash
decision to allow household mixing and instead extend the tiers over the
five-day Christmas period in order to bring numbers down in the advance of a
likely third wave. It should also review and strengthen the tier structure,
which has failed to suppress rates of infection and hospitalisation.
This joint editorial is only the
second in the more than 100 year histories of The BMJ and HSJ. We are publishing it
because we believe the government is about to blunder into another major error
that will cost many lives. If our political leaders fail to take swift and
decisive action, they can no longer claim to be ‘protecting the NHS.’
Alastair McLellan, editor, HSJ
Fiona Godlee, editor in chief, The BMJ
My comment:
Our civilization is apparently completely screwed up!
It defies belief that this can happen in a serious country! The UK government had recently decided to relax the social distancing rules for Christmas but now it seems that it will have horrible consequences on the spread of the virus. Instead of strongly coming out and reversing the previous decision they are being indecisive. More people are going to die but they just can’t make a resolute decision.
But this is a world-wide phenomenon! All around the world people have been behaving completely irrationally, and what is more, hardly anybody has the bluntness to point that out! Less than half of Israelis plan to get vaccinated for COVID-19 – survey. How come people who see this absurdity are not screaming on the top pf their voices? What is going on? This is a global failure of common sense across the world.
Update, December 16, 2020
I cannot understand politicians. Boris Johnson in the
Commons doubles down and refuses to reverse the 5 day Christmas relaxation of
social distancing despite the plea in the medical journals. Keir
Starmer’s criticism was spot on.
Boris Johnson should of all people have remembered Churchill’s blood, toil,
tears and sweat May 13, 1940 speech
instead of giving such a confusing message.
Boris succumbed to reason, finally!
PM announces 'tier 4' Covid curbs and curtails Christmas
mixing in England
“He re-wrote spy fiction in this country and across the world”
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) December 14, 2020
On #BBCBreakfast novelist Robert Harris pays tribute to British espionage writer John le Carré who has died aged 89.https://t.co/b3pIYfn0V7 pic.twitter.com/BK7CevnZU3
The
Times January 15, 2003
Replies to novelist
John le Carre and "U.S. has gone mad!"
From
Mr Mladen Andrijasevic
Sir,
What utter nonsense coming from the best spy novelist of all
time.
George
Smiley must be turning in his grave. So probably is Karla.
Sincerely,
MLADEN
ANDRIJASEVIC,
Meir
Grossman 19/10,
Be'er
Sheva, Israel.
January 15.
 |
| US, Nov 25, Thanksgiving travel |
There is no other way to put it – this pandemic
has exposed the shocking fact that a huge proportion of humankind is dumb. For there is no other way to explain what is
happening around the world:
Israel and the US
“In scenes
recalling Black Friday mobs in the US, thousands crowded together in entrances,
hallways and in stores as they attempted to quench their consumer hunger after
being deprived for close to two months.”
“Americans
couldn’t resist the urge to gather for Thanksgiving, driving only slightly less
than a year ago and largely ignoring the pleas of public health experts, who
begged them to forgo holiday travel to help contain the coronavirus pandemic,
data from roadways and airports shows.”
“Despite the calls
that came from some doctors to ban the open-casket funeral, many mourners who
were not wearing masks or maintaining social distance approached his remains,
with some customarily kissing the cleric's hands or forehead. "
“The statement
refers to a private party in Brussels on November 27. Police stormed the party
in a building housing a gay bar. It has been widely described in Belgian news
reports as a lockdown sex party that allegedly involved men only and included
diplomats and a member of the European Parliament".
“Videos have emerged of thousands of Satmar
Hassidim two weeks ago celebrating the wedding of the grandson of the community’s grand
rabbi in Brooklyn, in what amounts to a massive violation of state COVID-19
regulations.”
As epidemiologist
Michael
Osterholm put it: “I do not know what the disconnect is here.”
It is true that scientists and politicians have
not done enough to educate the population. But what is truly shocking is the behavior of so
many regular people who seem to be completely incapable to understand elementary
scientific concepts and to use their own faculties to comprehend the predicament
we are all in and act accordingly. Psychologists will have a hard task ahead.
 |
Covid-19 |
 |
| Nuclear fission |
Letters
to the Editor, Jerusalem Post, Dec 2, 2020
In “Trying to avoid war” (November 29) Yonah Jeremy Bob writes,
”Paradoxically, the assassination of Iran nuclear program “father” Mohsen
Fakhrizadeh was probably undertaken to avoid war with Iran.”
Joe Biden wants to rejoin the Iran deal. President Trump mocked Laura Inghraham for wearing a mask. You can just cringe at the stupidity of both of them.
Matthew Kroening explains here
what is wrong with the Iran deal. It just does not fundamentally resolve the
issue. Snapback sanctions - if Iran is caught in violation the sanctions will supposedly
“snapback” in place. Sunset clause - after 15 years Iran could have as many
enrichment facilities as it wants.
Nature:
To be clear, the science supports using
masks, with recent studies suggesting that they could save lives in different
ways: research shows that they cut down the chances of both transmitting and
catching the coronavirus, and some studies hint that masks might reduce the
severity of infection if people do contract the disease.
The number of new infections in the US is approaching 200
000 per day. Michael
Osterholm said yesterday: “We are now living in the most dangerous public
health moment since 1918 “. His basic message: “Stop Swapping Air!”
President Trump asked
for options for attacking Iran last week, but held off.
Why is it that we cannot have leaders who understand the dangers
from Iran and the virus at the same time?
So we are back to the article I
wrote in 2008. Israel now has two
months, till January 20, 2021 to make up
its mind.
Facing Iran, Alone
We are back in 1940
In May 1940 Britain stood
alone facing Nazi Germany. The USSR had signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov
nonaggression pact; the US had not entered the war yet.
On May 7, Leo Amery spoke in the
Commons, attacking Neville Chamberlain's government, quoting Oliver Cromwell:
"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I
say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"
On May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill
became Prime Minister.
Ever since the US government's
National Intelligence Estimate report it has become increasingly probable
that Israel will be the one to tackle Iran. With the election
of Barack Obama this is now almost certain. We are back in May
1940.
There are many who believe that, for all
their talk, the Iranians would never launch a nuclear attack. The 12th Imam is
for the masses, the way Marx was, the argument goes, and not to be believed in
verbatim. How many Arab or Muslim leaders have become suicide bombers to get
the virgins? None.
But comparing Communists with the
followers of the Islamic prophet is misleading. For one, the Communists never
produced suicide bombers and we already have had 148 explode here
in Israel. Muhammad Atta was not the top leader, but he was
among the educated, for whom education was just a tool to be used in
accomplishing his jihadi goals. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is
an ardent believer in theMahdi, the Hidden Twelfth
Imam, the four-year old who went into hiding in a well 1,140 years
ago. The idea that Iran itself may become a nuclear suicide bomber is
real.
Those who question Iranian motives are
projecting Western values, almost patronizingly so. The privileged party
members in the USSR, the so-called priviligentsia, would not dream of
sacrificing themselves. They had their closed shops, hospitals and pharmacies,
access to foreign media and, most coveted of all, access abroad. They enjoyed
their privileges. The Iranian mullahs are no Bolsheviks.
The world watched Hitler rearm, reoccupy
the Rhineland in 1936, annex the Sudetenland in October 1938 and the rest
of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, and rape Austria in 1938.
As Churchill put it, they kept feeding the crocodile hoping they would be eaten
last.
Anyone who reads about the policies and
the press of the 1933-1940 period cannot but be struck by the similarities. We
know what happened then, yet we are following almost the same path. Scary.
Might Israel strike
at Iran before Obama takes over? As reported in the Jerusalem
Post, Benny Morris says yes. Most other analysts disagree. I believe that
it is in the US interest for Israel to destroy the Iranian nuclear sites, since
the destruction and the rise in oil prices resulting from a non-nuclear Iranian
retaliation would still be much less than the consequences of a nuclear war
following an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel and an Israeli nuclear
retaliation.
There is only one remaining scenario
left.
On February 10 Israel goes to
the polls. The leaders we elect will be our last line of defense. Help will not
come from the Europeans, the United Nations and not even from the US. The
decisions that will determine the survival of this country will come from
Benjamin Netanyahu, Moshe Yaalon, Benny Begin or Tzipi Livni.
Take your pick.
I have been reading Robert Harris’s gripping new novel V2 the last two days and have been out of the covid picture but when I glimpsed at the covid-19 data for Serbia I got a shock: +5,613 new cases in one day for a population of 8.7 million! So I call a friend in Belgrade to find out what happened and got an explanation that people just let their guard down and have had huge parties on boats on the Sava river. There were no fines for not wearing masks. They don’t trust the government, he said.
If you don't trust the government, just do the research yourself - read what epidemiologists say* and not what politicians or economists or journalists say! I just cannot believe that people cannot take things seriously when their lives are at stake! But apparently they don’t.
The numbers are skyrocketing throughout Europe and the situation in the US is horrible, so it is not just Balkan disregard for authority – it is pure stupidity almost throughout the world. After all, Trump most probably lost his presidency because he downplayed the dangers of covid-19 and refused to wear the mask.
I do not know what historians of the future will say about the pandemic of 2020. I am sure that they will have to mention that the 2020 pandemic exposed human stupidity like no other event in history.
14:30 into the podcast
Celine Gounder: Today, it's my great pleasure to have on the podcast Dr. Mark Pagel. Mark is an evolutionary biologist and professor at the University of Reading. He studies how evolution imprints on human behavior from genes to language and culture. And he’s the author of one of my favorite books, Wired for Culture.
Celine: So Mark, I want to start with talking about why humans form tribal groups. As a public health expert who's very much involved in, in the coronavirus pandemic, it's been very challenging to communicate and to cross sort of political divides in the United States. And I think it would be helpful to understand, um, why those tribes are forming in the first place.
Mark Pagel: Humans have, have sort of explored the earth in these little co-operative societies that we in a kind of shorthand refer to as tribes. And all manner of rules and sort of personality or psychological traits have sprung up in us to make sure those small groups work. One of the strongest and can lead to some of the most disturbing outcomes is that we've evolved a whole lot of tendencies for and abilities to identify people that we think are in our group. And some of them are obvious like skin color or facial shape. Others are less obvious, like an accent that you have. Those things give you a way as coming from a certain area. And so humans really are tribal in this way, probably in a way that no other species is.
Celine Gounder: And so a question that's more directly, you know, applicable to the current pandemic. Why do people risk their health and even their lives on behalf of their culture, their, their social affiliations?
Mark Pagel: This is a really, really difficult subject. Humans seem to be a species in which we have evolved this, these psychological tendencies to look out for our societies and, and the most vivid examples of that are when we go to war and fight for our societies. And this kind of altruism seems to be widespread in human societies.
Mark: This is a personality trait that humans have that you just don't see in other animals, you would never expect a chimpanzee to go around worrying about how it can improve the wellbeing of the group of chimpanzees it lives in.
Celine Gounder: So why is it that people might choose not to wear a mask, even though the science would indicate that that protects them and, and others in the midst of the pandemic.
Mark Pagel: It comes back to the psychological traits that we've evolved as a species. This, this strong need to identify and to advertise the group that we belong to because we think in doing so, we attract other like-minded people to be around us. And, we notice this with the groups of people who don't want to wear masks, they're quite vociferous about it. It isn't just that they're quietly going about their business, but they want it to be known that they're not a mask-wearer and in some sense, this attracts like-minded people to them.
Celine Gounder: Why is it whether it's politics or science, you know, why is it we're best persuaded by our family and friends rather than science and facts?
Mark Pagel: Yes. I think we have to be aware that we go through life taking direction from other people. Most of us have to make decisions about things on a daily basis that we really don't have the information to, to make the correct decision about. If you look around you at any given time, the ideas and the behaviors that you can observe are ideas and behaviors that by and large have kept the people alive who have them. And so in a sense, I think that we follow those who are most close to us in terms of our family or in terms of the tribal identities we have, and we look to what they're doing and we just take it on board, that those are going to be reasonable things to do. It's a kind of predisposition we have as a species.
Celine Gounder: There’s been a lot of back and forth among public health leaders about how best to message about masks. Is it to say, it’s to protect yourself? Is it to say, it’s to protect others? Which message is more convincing and why?
Mark Pagel: Typically, our first allegiance is to ourselves, and so we probably want to convince people that wearing a mask will protect them. And then I think our second allegiance is going to be to our society. To the extent that we think our societies are going to be organized in a way that will bring us good. We’re willing to engage these kinds of altruistic acts like wearing a mask if we think that if everybody wears a mask we’ll all be better for it. So we’re not willing to do it simply to help others but if we think we’ll all be better for it. So one of the benefits that might come from everyone wearing masks is that I, personally, will be less likely to get coronavirus. So, that will be a motivation for me to join in with that campaign. And then secondary but, you know, in close, um, succession, also appealing to people not to harm others, because that is a very powerful moral, or ethical principle in human society.
Celine Gounder: One of the arguments for mask-wearing has been to protect yourself, but it's also to protect others. What is reciprocal altruism and how is that different from altruism?
Mark Pagel: So a, a pure altruistic act might be putting on a mask to go out shopping simply because you think it's wrong to expose others to a virus that you might be carrying. You're not expecting anything back. Our societies are, are based on an even more abstract form of altruism that we call indirect reciprocity. So, mask-wearing becomes a value. I don't wear a mask in front of you just so you'll wear a mask in front of me. I wear a mask because I want to advertise to people I'm a mask-wearing kind of person that that's an important thing to do. And then I'm hoping that others will adopt that value and will all simply wear masks. That's what governments are desperately trying to do. They're desperately trying to convince us that we should wear a mask simply because it's the right thing to do and one of the most effective messages I think in that campaign has been to say that you could kill somebody if you didn't wear a mask. Killing another person is probably the most strongest prohibition we have. And so perhaps that has worked somewhat.
Celine Gounder: So I would say personally that wearing a mask is patriotic. That it's something that's for the good of my community, for the good of my nation. Why is it that wearing a mask might not be seen as patriotic by somebody who's conservative?
Mark Pagel: There has been this sort of polarization, especially in American society. And, and some groups are seeing wearing a mask as a patriotic thing to do because it improves public health of the nation. Other groups are seeing wearing a mask, for example, as, uh, statement that you're not a member of their tribal group. And so we can see again, that depending upon the tribal identity, that one is adopting we can get completely different behaviors and actions and beliefs
Celine Gounder: In your book, you say that the more arbitrary the norm or signal of group commitment, the more powerful that signaling. You know, and again, going back to wearing masks, why is it that maybe the seemingly more arbitrary that, that signal becomes more powerful?
Mark Pagel: So the more arbitrary they are tells me that somehow they've really adopted those behaviors because they want to demonstrate their commitment to my tribal group because they're not getting anything out of those. They're not benefiting from them in any other way, other than to advertise that they're a member of a group.
Mark: [00:53:09:24] And the very risk that's associated with that tells me if I'm looking for other people, I want to know are a part of my group. It tells me that they're probably a, a real member of my group. They're willing to take risks to be part of my group. So not wearing a mask. It could, in that sense, indeed be a very powerful measure of tribal identity.
Celine Gounder: So, what about how we enforce some of these norms? Um, shame and, and stigma are often used, you know, in addition, to say, mandates or fines. Are shame and stigma, useful tools and, and enforcing such behavior. And when they're targeted, say at the individual versus at a group, how effective are they and can they backfire?
Mark Pagel: They're probably very effective and yes, they, they can backfire. I mean, what has to happen is that shame needs to come from the group that we hope to be a part of. If we can get enough people in that group, our immediate society, the people that we spend time with to be sort of in a sense, threatening to ostracize us, we will come around because we don't want to be excluded from that group. And so if that shame can arise sort of naturally out of one social group. I think it can be very, very powerful. If it feels imposed upon us, especially by people we don't identify with people who aren't in our group. Oh, those people who think wearing masks is important. Then I think it will backfire very, very badly.
Mark Pagel: So I think it has to be applied very, very carefully. It can’t come, come from above, it needs to rise up out of our societies naturally.
Celine: Well, Mark, thank you so much for speaking with us.
Mark Pagel: Thanks very much, Celine.
Stockpile, along with
advanced centrifuges and nuclear research, underscores challenge Biden would
face in persuading Iran to return to 2015 deal
 |
| A satellite image shows Iran's nuclear facility in Isfahan on Oct. 21 |
By Laurence
Norman
Mr. Biden, who was vice president when the Iran deal was struck, has criticized the Trump administration’s decision to quit the nuclear deal in May 2018 and impose sweeping sanctions on Tehran. In September, he said that approach “recklessly tossed away a policy that was working to keep America safe and replaced it with one that has worsened the threat.”
Iran has said it is open to negotiation but has placed various conditions on returning to the accord’s terms, including compensation for the U.S.’s withdrawal and sanctions. On Wednesday, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was quoted in Iranian state media saying “the way back is open” for the U.S. to the deal.
Iran has gradually moved away from the nuclear deal’s limits since the summer of 2019 in response to the U.S.’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign.
Mr. Trump, in justifying his decision to take the U.S. out of the deal, said it would fail to stop Tehran from eventually obtaining nuclear weapons and ignored key issues, like Iran’s ballistic-missile capacity and its support for terrorism. Trump administration officials have indicated they could slap new sanctions on Iran in the final weeks before January’s transition.
In its latest quarterly report, sent to member states and seen by The Wall Street Journal, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had now accumulated a low-enriched uranium stockpile of 2,443 kilograms. That compares with a limit of 203 kg under the nuclear deal.
Of the total, which the agency said is enriched up to 4.5% purity, around a quarter has been produced in a way that nuclear experts say would be of little use for further enrichment. Nonetheless, Iran has now accumulated enough enriched uranium to produce the high-enriched uranium needed for two nuclear weapons, according to analysts at the Institute for Science and International Security. Weapons-grade material is of around 90% purity.
Iran denies that it is seeking or has ever sought to build a nuclear weapon.
The report also detailed various moves by Iran to install more-advanced centrifuges, which can produce enriched uranium much more quickly, at its nuclear facilities. That could allow Iran to step up its enriched-uranium production in coming months.
Among the more important changes was Iran’s decision to install a first group of so-called IR-2M centrifuges at its underground enrichment site at the Natanz facility, breaching one of the nuclear deal’s terms.
The IR-2M machines are the only more-advanced centrifuges Tehran has successfully deployed, and Tehran had already said it was intending to place up to three cascades of the machines underground. However, the machines aren’t yet being fed with uranium, the IAEA reported.
“Iran may choose to exploit the U.S. presidential transition period to augment its nuclear programs and manufacture a crisis so that a Biden administration feels compelled to re-enter the [nuclear deal],” said Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has campaigned against the nuclear deal.
“The Biden camp should…recognize it holds all the leverage of sanctions relief built from the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign and seek a better agreement,” she said.
The IAEA report showed the agency is still not
receiving adequate explanations from Iran for its discovery of uranium at a
site in the outskirts of Tehran last year. The site, first revealed by the
Israelis, is believed to be where Iran stored material and equipment used in
what Western countries believe was a nuclear-weapons program in the 1990s and
early 2000s.
The agency cited a letter it sent Iranian authorities on Monday that said Iran’s explanations for the material were “not technically credible” and urged a “full and prompt” explanation by Iran for the material.
In a footnote to the report, it said the
material found at the site was similar to traces found on centrifuges imported
into Iran by Pakistan, as detailed in a report in 2008.
It was long believed that Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program was linked to Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan’s global nuclear-supply network.
Under its international commitments, Iran is supposed to declare and account for all nuclear material in the country.
Following the discovery of the nuclear material, and with Iran blocking for months IAEA inspectors’ access to two nuclear sites, now visited by the agency, the Trump administration pressed IAEA members to force Iran to open up about its past nuclear work.
***
Letters
to the Editor, Jerusalem Post, Nov 11, 2020
I have two comments:
1) Regarding “Biden’s not
Trump, but he won’t let Israel’s security be compromised” (November
8), the article title is dead wrong.
Biden’s rejoining of the Iran deal whose sunset clause paves
the way for Iran to get the bomb soon would be a disaster. Let’s not forget
what Bernard Lewis said:
“In this context, the deterrent that worked so well during
the Cold War, namely M.A.D. (Mutual Assured Destruction) , would have no
meaning. At the End of Time, there will be general destruction anyway. What
will matter is the final destination of the dead – hell for the infidels, and
the delights of heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, M.A.D.
is not a constraint; it is an inducement.”
2) “Jerusalem
needs to move fast with Democrats” (November 10) got it reversed. It
is not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is to blame for ruining relations
with the Democratic Party; it is the Democratic Party who is to blame for
ruining relations with Israel. That party could not even pass a resolution in
the House condemning Representative Ilhan Omar for her antisemitism.
As Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote, “Islamists have understood
well how to couple Muslim antisemitism with the American Left’s vague notion of
‘social justice.’ They have succeeded in couching their agenda in the
progressive framework of the oppressed versus the oppressor. Identity politics
and victimhood culture also provide Islamists with the vocabulary to deflect
their critics with accusations of ‘Islamophobia,’ ‘white privilege’ and
‘insensitivity.’ A perfect illustration was the way Ms. Omar and her allies
were able to turn a House resolution condemning her antisemitism into a garbled
“intersectional” rant in which Muslims emerged as the most vulnerable minority
in the league table of victimhood.”
MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC
Beersheba
And
my take, as a letter sent to the Jerusalem Post:
Of all the ways Biden’s win will rattle Israel (Tova Lazaroff, Nov 7) https://www.jpost.com/us-elections/10-ways-a-biden-win-rattles-israel-palestinians-middle-east-analysis-648358 no 10 on the list, revival of the 2015 Iran deal is the most serious. Trump just needed to wear a mask and we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Trump lost not to Biden but to covid-19. What really made
all the difference was his incredibly absurd denial of the seriousness of
covid-19 and many, especially older voters, took notice. Of the most important
issues for voters coronavirus topped the list with 41 percent. After all,
on Friday the US had 132 979 new cases at the time Trump kept repeating
how the US was “rounding the corner”.
Be'er Sheva