An agreement that limits the number of centrifuges Iran can possess makes them useless for nuclear energy but very useful for producing a nuclear weapon, according to a former CIA director who now is an analyst for CBS. Michael Morell said on Charlie Rose:

If you are going to have a nuclear weapons program, 5,000 is pretty much the number you need. If you have a power program, you need a lot more. By limiting them to a small number of centrifuges, we are limiting them to the number you need for a weapon.”

Iran has about 19,000 centrifuges, 10,000 of which are operating. The Obama administration’s proposal for a deal with Iran reportedly offered to let Iran enrich uranium with around 6,500 centrifuges. The Obama administration has countered the numbers, some of which are supplied by the Netanyahu administration, by arguing that the type and size of centrifuges are no less important than the number when it comes to enriching uranium.

President Barack Obama thinks that he can negotiate a deal that will keep Iran from making a nuclear weapon for two decades. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says Iran simply is buying time, cannot be trusted to honor any agreement, and that any deal to which it agrees will be a “bad deal.”

Obama supposedly wants to cut the number of centrifuges to approximately 5,000, which Morrell said is enough to produce a nuclear weapon.

PunditFact verified Morell’s claim with several experts, including Georgetown Associate Prof. Matthew Kroenig, who has little faith that Iran will honor any agreement; Arms Control Association official Daryl Kimball; David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security; and Harvard Prof. Matthew Bunn. Bunn told PunditFact:

People think surely you must need a bigger enrichment system to make 90 percent enriched material for bombs than to make 4-5 percent enriched material for power reactors. But exactly the opposite is true. A nuclear reactor, which Iran claims it is building for peaceful purposes, requires tons of uranium. A nuclear bomb can be produced with only 50 pounds of highly enriched uranium.

Bunn explained that producing low-grade uranium makes it possible to produce the enriched stuff, even though it is harder.

That is why Netanyahu told the United Nations three years ago Iran must be allowed zero percent uranium. Once Iran has 5 percent grade uranium, “you’ve already done more than 2/3 of the work of going all the way to 90 percent U-235 for weapons,”

Bunn said. “So the amount of work needed to make bomb material is only a modest amount more per kilogram, and the number of kilograms you need for bombs is 1,000 times less.”

Kimball is more dovish than Kroenig and thinks that since it would take Iran a year to produce enough enriched uranium for one bomb, “That would give you enough time to detect that activity.”

That means the deal, if one is made, comes down to inspections, something which Iran has circumvented for years. Either it allows inspections after removing evidence that its nuclear development is aimed at building a nuclear weapon, or it simply allows them after it has moved its operations to another unknown facility.

The National Coalition of Resistance of Iran insists that the Iranian regime has systematically lied to United Nations nuclear inspectors and has built and is running a secret “Lavizan-3″ underground enrichment operation near Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in a report last week that was obtained by Reuters and the Associated Press, stated that Iran is living up to its commitment to reduce enrichment activities but did not erase suspicions that it is carrying out research for making a nuclear bomb. The IAEA report said:

Iran has not provided any explanations that enable the agency to clarify the outstanding practical measures.

Obama apparently thinks Iran can be trusted, and that is why he is so incensed that Netanyahu is trying to convince Americans that the president is letting himself be conned – again.

Jordanian and Israeli officials signed a multi-million dollar deal on Thursday to rescue the Dead Sea from oblivion. The ceremony took place on the Jordanian shore of the Dead Sea, with Israel’s National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom signing on behalf of the Jewish State. His Jordanian counterpart, Water and Irrigation Minister Hazim el-Naser, signed on behalf of the Hashemite Kingdom.

The historic project began with a memorandum of understanding signed in Washington by Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian Authority leaders on Dec. 9, 2013.

The $800 million agreement authorizes the construction of a 65 to 80 million cubic meter capacity desalination plant in Aqaba, Jordan. The plant is to produce potable water that will benefit both nations.

In return for its purchase of some 45 m.cu.m. of potable water annually from Jordan, Israel will add 50 m.cu.m. To its current annual sale of water to Jordan from Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) in the north.

A 200-kilometer pipeline will supply Red Sea saltwater to replenish the shrinking waters of the Dead Sea, also benefiting both Israel and Jordan, whose borders share the shorelines of the lake on each side.

The memorandum of understanding worked out in 2013 also called for Israel to faciliate the direct sale of an additional 20 m.cu.m. of water from the Mekorot national water company to the Palestinian Authority.

Since the PA violated the terms of the Oslo Accords and unilaterally applied to the United Nations for membership as an independent Arab country – albeit within the current borders of Israel – many things have changed. The move circumvented any need to negotiate the issues of boundaries, security and economic or infrastructure issues with Israel and resulted in the two sides generally putting aside any further talk of joint projects.

“We are going to provide water from the Israeli system to the Palestinians at points where they need water, and we are going to start discussing with them as soon as possible,” Maya Eldar, an adviser to Minister Shalom told The Jerusalem Post.

Apple CEO Tim Cook poked holes in the libel that Israel is racist, and he praised the country for integrating minorities in the hi-tech sector.

Apple’s vice president of Hardware Technologies is an Arab from Haifa and a graduate from Technion, Johny Srouji

Cook’s testimony during his visit to Israel to inaugurate Apple’s new R & D center in Herzliya, next to Tel Aviv, contradicted the annual Israel Apartheid Week hate fest on American campuses.

“True innovation can only result from full access to education for all, regardless of race, religion, or sex,” he said. “We would like to learn from your experience in the US, in bringing education and technology to periphery groups and communities.”

Cook told President Reuven Rivlin that Apple has “an enormous admiration for Israel, not just as an important ally for the US, but as a place to do business.”

Arsonists damaged a Greek Orthodox seminary in Jerusalem’s Old City in the pre-dawn hours Thursday, and spray-painted anti-Christian graffiti.

No one was injured, and damage was minimal.

A Greek Church archbishop said two people who hid their faces three a flammable liquid at a bathroom in the seminary, located on Mt. Zion (Hat Tzion).

He said there have been previous threats from people whom he described as religious Jews.

Newspapers in the United States carried a report of the fire, which further blackens the image of Israel and of Orthodox Jews.

Another attack, this time on a mosque in Judea and Samaria, was reported Wednesday.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat vigorously condemned the apparent arson attack and said, “There is no room for such deplorable activity in Jerusalem. We must eradicate this behavior and bring those responsible to justice.”

U.S. Consulate officials in Ramallah demanded that a visiting New York City official remove his kippa 10 feet from the entrance to the consulate, Brooklyn Councilman David Greenfield said.

He was visiting the American office in Ramallah on Sunday as part of a City Council delegation’s eight-day visit in Israel.

Greenfield implied he might have been able to understand there was a security problem if it were a matter of his standing in the middle of a Ramallah street with a kippa.

The last thing American security officials want is a religious Jew letting Muslims know he is around. Perhaps they might think he is plotting to blow up the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, or even worse, offering a peace compromise with the Palestinian Authority.

But the delegation of councilmembers was simply on a bus next to the consulate, Greenfield said.

Security officers “insisted that I not wear yarmulke when leaving US Ramallah office,” he said. When the officials agreed with the councilman that he was not endangering security, he refused the request.

Councilman Greenfield tweeted:

I’m still flabbergasted that a Jew cannot wear a yarmulke walking out of the US Consulate in Ramallah, Israel.

He told JPUpdate “We had an amazing trip to Israel. However, I was surprised that in the supposedly ‘moderate’ city of Ramallah, the unofficial capital of the Palestinian Authority, it’s unsafe for a Jew to wear a yarmulke

“After all, I wasn’t strolling through the streets. I was simply walking ten feet from the door of our bus to the entrance of the American Consulate’s office.”

The State Comptroller and Ombudsman will release his report on the housing crisis at 6 p.m. (11 a.m. EST) Wednesday night.

The report will cover the Olmert and Netanyahu administrations, letting Tzipi Livni and Yitzchak Herzog off the hook. They were Ministers of Housing in the Sharon government.

The Likud party is concerned that the report will blame Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the constantly increase in the price of housing.

The Herzog-Livni “Zionist Camp” also is anxious to read the report, which they hope will boost their popularity in the pre-election polls that so far show Netanyahu as the only one who would be able to form a government coalition.

Israel’s anti-Netanyahu media, which include all of the largest networks and newspapers, already have published speculation that Netanyahu will be blamed. If the report is less dramatic than expected, it will be a major blow for Herzog-Livni, and the media will have to find some other way to undermine Likud’s popularity.

Arabs from Jerusalem smashed three windows of the light rail train when it traveled through the Shuafat neighborhood, a hotbed of terrorists, drug and weapons traffickers.

Police officers from the elite Yassim unit spotted one of the terrorists who threw rocks at the train and arrested him, the 0404 website reported.

Arab reacted by staging a riot at a nearby mosque.