Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Team Obama Awards Iran With 13 Tons Of Gold - $370M Value
Team Obama Awards Iran With 13 Tons Of Gold - $370M Value
July 2, 2015
July 1, 2015 – San Francisco, CA – PipeLineNews.org – According to the state run Iranian news site Fars, yesterday the country took possession of 13 tons of gold [current value approximately $370M] which, until Team Obama's team of "negotiators" [read, facilitators] permitted the transfer – sans agreement – had been quarantined in a South African bank for 2 years.
"A sum of 13 tons of gold that had been purchased before and was deposited in South Africa in the past two years and could not be transferred to Iran due to the sanctions … was delivered to the Central Bank of Iran's treasury last night," [see, CBI Governor: 13 Tons of Iran's Frozen Gold Consignments Back Home, Fars]
With U.S. media obsessed about about the horse-race aspect of the matter - whether or not a nuke deal will be consummated, assuming they are covering the issue at all - it's ignoring the cold reality that many of the sanctions, which had been responsible for the Iranian economy's ill health, have already been lifted.
What we find especially alarming about this development is the potential impact it will have on the Shia theocracy's nuclear program.
A little known fact is that for just about any moderate to large nation the cost of developing a nuclear processing plant is not all that constraining [approximately $3B, see Geoffrey Rothwell, Chaim Braun, The Cost Structure of International Uranium Enrichment Service Supply, MIT University], nor is the cost of the individual centrifuges themselves:
"The cost of a program would also be modest. The first German version of the Soviet-type centrifuge, built by a firm named DEGUSSA in 1959, had about the same performance as Iran's IR-1 centrifuge (possibly slightly better).23 This centrifuge was offered for sale for a small-batch cost of US$235 per centrifuge, about US$1800 per centrifuge in 2012 currency. Assuming the DEGUSSA price reflected the actual cost of production, the centrifuge portion of the plant might be built for less than US$10 million in 2012 currency." [source, R. Scott Kemp, PhD, Centrifuges, a new era of nuclear proliferation , Non-Proliferation Policy Center]
It's impossible to justify the insanity of throwing a life-jacket of this magnitude to a regime, which though it has given up nothing in the talks, continues to develop nuclear weapons, threatens the annihilation of Israel and the United States and remains the world's primary funder and fomenter of terrorism.
That's quite a legacy, one which this administration has earned many times over.
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