by Jim Lobe
Robert Einhorn, who served as the State Department’s special advisor on non-proliferation and arms control under President Barack Obama until less than a year ago, has issued an important report, “Preventing a Nuclear-Armed Iran: Requirements for a Comprehensive Nuclear Agreement,” which no doubt reflects [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Robert Einhorn, who served as the State Department’s special advisor on non-proliferation and arms control under President Barack Obama until less than a year ago, has issued an important report, “Preventing a Nuclear-Armed Iran: Requirements for a Comprehensive Nuclear Agreement,” which no doubt reflects much of the thinking of the administration’s main negotiators. It was presented at the Brookings Institution, Einhorn’s current employer, Monday morning with reactions from Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near Policy (WINEP) and Frank N. von Hippel of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend but I just noticed that an audio recording of the session is available here
For the short version — the report is some 56 pages long — you should read the Introduction and Summary (pp. 4-10), but Barbara Slavin also published an article about the report on Al-Jazeera America if you want to read an even shorter account that summarizes the main points, highlighting what are likely to be the more contentious provisions. Hopefully, we will be able to offer a real expert’s analysis of the report’s recommendations on the blog by the weekend. Laura Rozen also wrote up a summary on her blog for Al-Monitor.
While, as Einhorn acknowledges, his recommendations could prove problematic to the Iranians, the fact that the ongoing negotiations appear to be proceeding smoothly clearly suggests that the basic elements that he lays out as part of an eventual agreement are not deal-breakers. Indeed, I’m pretty certain the U.S. negotiating team has already put much of this on the table, and the Iranians clearly haven’t rejected any of it.
That said, I find one recommendation particularly objectionable; specifically, one related to actions designed to “convey clearly to Iran’s leaders that any attempt to abandon constraints and pursue nuclear weapons would be met with a firm international response that would be highly damaging to Iran’s interests” in the event that a comprehensive agreement is reached.
The Congress should take legislative action to give the president prior authorization to use military force in the even t of clear evidence that Iran has taken steps to abandon the agreement and move toward producing nuclear weapons.
In other words, as part of the process of sealing a comprehensive accord that would also see Congress lifting nuclear-related sanctions against Iran, Einhorn is calling for an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to be given to the president — any president, presumably, for the life of the accord. While this may help undermine opposition to lifting sanctions as part of a final agreement, I have serious questions about its wisdom under any circumstances. Not only would the Iranians consider this a highly aggressive gesture comparable to putting a “gun to [their] head,” but anyone — especially Democrats — who remembers the uses to which the October 2002 AUMF were eventually put by George W. Bush must surely find this a rather frightening prospect. Imagine if Jeb or Marco or Ted is sitting in the Oval Office. Besides, look what happened to the proposed AUMF on Syria. Will an AUMF really be politically necessary to get enough support to lift nuclear-related sanctions if a comprehensive agreement along Einhorn’s thinking is reached? And think of all the potential provocateurs — Israel’s right-wing leadership and its backers here, Saudi Arabia, the MEK — who would be lining up to try to blow up an agreement by, among other things, offering doctored evidence of non-compliance to a nervous or complicit White House. While most of Einhorn’s proposals recommendations appear on their face (at least to a non-technical person) to be reasonable, an AUMF just seems irresponsible.
]]>by Wayne White
Most historic parallels are far from perfect. Yet regarding what transpired in Ukraine leading up to the current crisis, an episode from World War II does seem instructive about the risks associated with shifting from accommodation to defiance in dangerous neighborhoods. It is not, however, the tiresome Munich analogy [...]]]>
by Wayne White
Most historic parallels are far from perfect. Yet regarding what transpired in Ukraine leading up to the current crisis, an episode from World War II does seem instructive about the risks associated with shifting from accommodation to defiance in dangerous neighborhoods. It is not, however, the tiresome Munich analogy already being trotted out by some observers.
During 1939-1941, Yugoslavian Regent Prince Paul did whatever he could to avoid a Yugoslavian confrontation with its increasingly dominant Axis neighbors. But when he thought he had cut a deal buying lots of valuable time for Yugoslavia, he was overthrown by the Yugoslav Army supported by Serbian nationalist and other anti-Axis elements. The result was the swift Axis invasion of Yugoslavia — just the beginning of a ghastly wartime ordeal for that nation.
Ironically, Prince Paul’s sympathies were with the Allies, having close ties to England, but he was realistic. By 1940 Germany, Italy and Axis Hungary adjoined nearly every Yugoslav border. Yugoslavia also harbored German, Italian and Hungarian minorities left over from the carving up of Europe after World War I. Paul feared that with its domestic Serbo-Croatian rivalry (that would later tear the country apart under Axis occupation and again in the 1990s), Yugoslavia might not be able to fight a war against the Axis as a united country. Worse still, there was no possibility of meaningful near-term help from a beleaguered Great Britain or any other outside powers (despite repeated appeals by Paul to England, France — before its defeat — and the United States).
So, under intense pressure from the Axis for greater accommodation and in order to insure Yugoslavia’s survival, Prince Paul signed the Axis Pact on March 27, 1941. He did, however, insist on important reservations. Yugoslavia’s sovereignty was to be observed fully, the Yugoslav military would take no part in the war, and no Axis troops could transit or be based in Yugoslavia. As a result, on the eve of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Paul thought he had spared his country from catastrophe until the time came when Yugoslavia might be in a position to take a stand.
A furious Winston Churchill, however, encouraged a coup against Paul by anti-Axis elements in the army and among the country’s politicians, replacing him with the youthful King Peter II. Upon hearing of the successful overthrow of Paul, Churchill announced: “Yugoslavia had finally found its soul.”
Catastrophic consequences were not long in coming. An angry Adolf Hitler, perceiving Yugoslavia now as potentially hostile and possibly aligned with England, ordered that it be occupied. A German blitzkrieg was unleashed on April 6, with military assistance from both Italy and Hungary. The hopelessly outclassed Yugoslavian Army surrendered unconditionally less than two weeks later, on April 17.
Yugoslavia was subsequently carved up among the Axis victors, along the creation of a new pro-Axis Croatian state. Between the excesses of Croatia, a civil war between Communist and anti-Communist partisans (won by Josip Broz Tito), Tito’s campaign against Axis occupying forces, and the extension of the Holocaust into Yugoslavia, the country suffered terribly. For example, of its roughly 80,000 Jews (several thousand of whom came to Yugoslavia from countries occupied earlier) nearly 80% perished.
For quite some time history treated Prince Paul, who fled abroad, as a traitorous scoundrel who sold out his country. The British kept him under house arrest in Kenya until 1945. Tito’s Post-war Yugoslavia declared him an enemy of the state. Only much later did Churchill acknowledge that his treatment of Paul had been unfair and overly harsh. It also took decades after Paul’s death in 1976 before was he rehabilitated by Serbia.
This historical backgrounder is not intended to brand, by extension, the deeply flawed Victor Yanukovych as a Prince Paul or Russia’s Vladimir Putin as an Adolf Hitler. Nor is it meant to cast Western leaders today in the mold of the Winston Churchill whose dangerous 1941 gambles in Yugoslavia (and Greece) turned both into Axis-occupied countries in short order.
But all this does show that under certain circumstances, as with the Ukrainian opposition of today, substituting hope and defiance for reality based caution can prove very dangerous. Putin’s aggressive reaction to Yanukovych’s overthrow was unjustified. Nonetheless, there was reason to fear, drawing upon historic scenarios like that of 1941 Yugoslavia, that the anti-Russian tone of the Ukrainian opposition (and the Westward-leaning first statements by the new leadership in Kiev), would likely bring some sort of grief to the Ukraine. And amidst the ongoing crisis, considerable caution is warranted regarding Moscow on the part of the new leadership in Kiev — as well as the West — if Ukraine is to extract itself from its face-off with Russia with a minimum of adverse consequences.
]]>by Jim Lobe
The Iran Project has just published the first in a series of “Short Reports” on Iran, its negotiations with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany), and U.S. policy, which it plans to put out over the next few months. This one, entitled “Assessing Claims [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
The Iran Project has just published the first in a series of “Short Reports” on Iran, its negotiations with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany), and U.S. policy, which it plans to put out over the next few months. This one, entitled “Assessing Claims and Counter Claims over New Sanctions,” reviews the recent debate over the Kirk-Menendez bill. S. 1881, which I called the “Wag the Dog Act of 2013.” Among other conclusions, the report, which was drafted by Jim Walsh, an international security expert at MIT, finds that new sanctions at this time would likely undermine the prospects for a successful negotiation, particularly given the fact that all of the parties in the P5+1 are themselves clearly opposed to the legislation. It also found that new sanctions may yet prove useful, but not when negotiations are just getting underway, as they did today in Vienna. And it noted that some critics of the bill, presumably including some administration officials, probably overstated the intentions of many of the bill’s 59 co-sponsors as deliberately wanting to sabotage the negotiations (as opposed, presumably, to deliberately wanting to sabotage President Obama). In any event, you can find the new report here.
The Iran Project, which has involved an impressive number of foreign policy veterans led by Amb. William Luers (ret.) and Amb. Thomas Pickering (ret), who served as Washington’s chief envoy in virtually every hot spot — from Moscow to San Salvador and from Lagos and Tel Aviv to Turtle Bay (in the run-up to and during the first Gulf War) — has itself conducted Track II diplomacy with leading Iranians over the past decade or so, including and especially many of the same Iranians, such as Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who have filled key posts in Hassan Rouhani’s government. The group has also played a key role in shaping the elite debate here over Iran during the past few years. Although it has maintained a relatively low public profile, opponents of the engagement policy, of which AIPAC and the Israel lobby are the most important, know how effective the Project has been.
In addition to Luers, Pickering and Walsh, the new report is signed by Amb. Frank Wisner (ret.); Paul Pillar, the CIA veteran who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace president Jessica Tuchman Mathews; and Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen Heintz. Upcoming reports will include an analysis of the Nov. 24, 2013, accord between Iran and the P5+1 (the Joint Plan of Action, or JPA); the issues that must be addressed in a comprehensive agreement; and the challenges of lifting sanctions if a comprehensive agreement is indeed reached.
]]>The stakes could not be higher—or the issues tougher—as the world’s six major powers and Iran launch talks February 18 on final resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The goal “is to reach a mutually-agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful,” says the temporary Joint [...]]]>
The stakes could not be higher—or the issues tougher—as the world’s six major powers and Iran launch talks February 18 on final resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The goal “is to reach a mutually-agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful,” says the temporary Joint Plan of Action, which calls for six months of negotiations. If talks fail, the prospects of military action—and potentially another Middle East conflict—soar.
Six issues are pivotal to an accord. The terms on each must be accepted by all parties—Iran on one side and Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States on the other—or there is no deal. The Joint Plan notes, “This comprehensive solution would constitute an integrated whole where nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”
1. Limiting Uranium Enrichment
Iran’s ability to enrich uranium is at the heart of the international controversy. The process can fuel both peaceful nuclear energy and the world’s deadliest weapon. Since 2002, Iran’s has gradually built an independent capability to enrich uranium, which it claims is only for medical research and to fuel an energy program. But the outside world has long been suspicious of Tehran’s intentions because its program exceeds its current needs. Iran’s only nuclear reactor for energy, in the port city of Bushehr, is fueled by the Russian contractor that built it.
Centrifuges are the key to enriching uranium. In 2003, Iran had fewer than 200 centrifuges. In 2014, it has approximately 19,000. About 10,000 are now enriching uranium; the rest are installed but not operating. To fuel a nuclear power reactor, centrifuges are used to increase the ratio of the isotope U-235 in natural uranium from less than one percent to between three and five percent. But the same centrifuges can also spin uranium gas to 90 percent purity, the level required for a bomb.
Experts differ on how many centrifuges Iran should be allowed to operate. Zero is optimal, but Iran almost certainly will not agree to eliminate totally a program costing billions of dollars over more than a decade. Iranian officials fear the outside world wants Tehran to be dependent on foreign sources of enriched uranium, which could then be used as leverage on Iran—under threat of cutting off its medical research and future nuclear energy independence.
Most experts say somewhere between 4,000 and 9,000 operating centrifuges would allow many months of warning time if Iran started to enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels. The fewer centrifuges, the longer Iran would need to “break out” from fuel production to weapons production.
So the basic issues are: Can the world’s major powers convince Iran to disable or even dismantle some of the operating centrifuges? If so, how low will Iran agree to go? And will Iran agree to cut back enrichment to only one site, which would mean closing the underground facility at Fordow?
A deal may generally have to include:
In short, as George Shultz and Henry Kissinger say, a deal must “define a level of Iranian nuclear capacity limited to plausible civilian uses and to achieve safeguards to ensure that this level is not exceeded.”
2. Preventing a Plutonium Path
Iran’s heavy water reactor in Arak, which is unfinished, is another big issue. Construction of this small research reactor began in the 1990s; the stated goal was producing medical isotopes and up to 40 megawatts of thermal power for civilian use. But the “reactor design appears much better suited for producing bomb-grade plutonium than for civilian uses,” warn former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Los Alamos Laboratory Director Siegfried Hecker.
For years, Iranian officials allowed weapons inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, intermittent access to Arak. Inspectors have been granted more access since the Joint Plan of Action went into effect on January 20. But satellite imagery can no longer monitor site activity due to completion of the facility’s outer structure.
The reactor will be capable of annually producing nine kilograms of plutonium, which is enough material to produce one or two nuclear weapons. However, the reactor is at least a year away from operating, and then it would need to run for 12 to 18 months to generate that much plutonium. Iran also does not have a facility to reprocess the spent fuel to extract the plutonium. In early February, Iranian officials announced they would be willing to modify the design plans of the reactor to allay Western concerns, although they provided no details.
3. Verification
The temporary Joint Plan allows more extensive and intrusive inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities. U.N. inspectors now have daily access to Iran’s primary enrichment facilities at the Nantaz and Fordow plants, the Arak heavy water reactor, and the centrifuge assembly facilities. Inspectors are now also allowed into Iran’s uranium mines.
Over the next six months, negotiations will have to define a reliable long-term inspection system to verify that Iran’s nuclear program is used only for peaceful purposes. A final deal will have to further expand inspections to new sites. The most sensitive issue may be access to sites suspected of holding evidence of Iran’s past efforts to build an atomic bomb. The IAEA suspects, for example, that Iran tested explosive components needed for a nuclear bomb at Parchin military base.
Iran may be forthcoming on inspections. Its officials have long held that transparency—rather than reduction of capabilities—is the key to assuring the world that its program is peaceful. They have indicated a willingness to implement stricter inspections required under the IAEA’s Additional Protocol—and maybe even go beyond it. But they are also likely to want more inspections matched by substantial sanctions relief and fewer cutbacks on the numbers of centrifuges in operation. At least four of the six major powers—the United States, Britain, France and Germany—will almost certainly demand both increased inspections and fewer, less capable centrifuges.
4. Clarifying the Past
The issue is not just Iran’s current program and future potential. Several troubling questions from the past must also be answered. The temporary deal created a Joint Commission to work with the IAEA on past issues, including suspected research on nuclear weapon technologies. Iran denies that it ever worked on nuclear weapons, but the circumstantial evidence about past Iranian experiments is quite strong.
Among the issues:
Iran may be reluctant to come clean unless it is guaranteed amnesty for past transgressions—and can find a way to square them with its many vigorous denials. And any suspicions that Iran is lying will undermine even rigorous new inspections that verify Iran’s technology is now being used solely for civilian purposes.
On February 8, in a potential breakthrough, the IAEA and Iran agreed on specific actions that Iran would take to provide information and explanations of its past activities. “Resolution of these issues will allow the agency to verify the completeness and correctness of Iran’s nuclear activities,” says Kelsey Davenport of the Arms Control Association, “and help ensure that Tehran is not engaged in undeclared activities.” Resolving all past issues before a final agreement may prove difficult, however. Negotiations may instead produce a process for eventual resolution.
5. Sanctions Relief
Iran’s primary goal is to get access to some $100 billion in funds frozen in foreign banks and to end the many sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy. Since the toughest U.S. sanctions were imposed in mid-2012, Iran’s currency and oil exports have both plummeted by some 60 percent.
The temporary Joint Plan of Action says a final agreement will “comprehensively lift UN Security Council, multilateral and national nuclear-related sanctions…on a schedule to be agreed upon.” (It does not, however, address sanctions imposed on other issues, such as support for extremist groups or human rights abuses.) The United States and the Europeans may want to keep some sanctions in place until they are assured that Iran is meeting new obligations.
The specter of the U.S. Congress will overshadow negotiations. Its approval will be required to remove the most onerous sanctions over the past five years. “The U.S. Congress will have to allow meaningful sanctions relief to Iran, just as Iran’s hard-liners are going to have to be convinced not to stand on principle when it comes to their ‘right’ to enrich and their demand to have all sanctions lifted,” says Brookings Institution scholar Ken Pollack, “The U.S. Congress is going to have to agree to allow Iran’s economy to revive and Tehran’s hard-liners are going to have to be satisfied with the revival of their economy and some very limited enrichment activity.”
6. The Long and Winding Road
The final but critical issue is timing: How long is a long-term deal? It will clearly require years to prove Iran is fully compliant. But estimates vary widely from five to 20 years. Another alternative is a series of shorter agreements that build incrementally on one another.
For all the big issues ahead, both sides have an interest in negotiating a deal. The world’s six major powers want to curtail more of Iran’s program, while Iran wants to revive its economy and normalize its international relations. If the negotiators succeed, they will make history. Their failure could open the path to a nuclear-armed Iran or a new war in the Middle East – or both.
– Joseph Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund and author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World before It Is Too Late
This article was originally published on the Iran Primer
]]>by Jim Lobe
Eli and Ali have rendered a great service — and a must-read – by disclosing the contents of a private briefing by Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk on the Iran nuclear negotiations he gave to invited supporters Monday. If any additional evidence were needed to show that Kirk, who [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Eli and Ali have rendered a great service — and a must-read – by disclosing the contents of a private briefing by Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk on the Iran nuclear negotiations he gave to invited supporters Monday. If any additional evidence were needed to show that Kirk, who is leading the Republican charge in the Senate to impose new economic sanctions against Iran and thereby scuttle the ongoing Geneva process, serves as Bibi Netanyahu’s biggest advocate in Congress, this article would seem to provide a lot. Just as people used to call my former senator, Henry “Scoop” Jackson “the senator from Boeing,” so it seems that Kirk has made himself the senator from AIPAC.
Kirk, whose voting record on domestic and civil-rights issues suggests that he’s one of the last of a dying breed of “moderate” Republicans, has long carried water for the right-wing leadership of the Israel lobby, spearheading anti-Iran, anti-Palestinian and pro-Israel resolutions and legislation throughout his nearly 15-year career in Congress. His identification with the policies and apocalyptic worldview of Netanyahu and hard-line U.S. neo-conservatives — he has taken to comparing the Obama administration with Neville Chamberlain and the Geneva talks with Munich, respectively — has been a source of some bewilderment to many observers. After all, theologically, he’s offered no obvious signs of Christian Zionism of the kind that believes the the “ingathering” of the Jews in Israel and the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem will trigger the Second Coming of Jesus.
Of course, his claim that he is “totally dedicated to the survival of the State of Israel in the 21st century,” as he put it in his briefing, may be completely sincere, although, like many senior Israeli national-security officials, including Netanyahu’s hawkish former defense minister, Ehud Barak, most analysts find it very difficult to take seriously the notion that Iran, even if it obtains nuclear weapons, represents an “existential” threat to Israel. His strident advocacy for Israel’s positions may also have to do with the fact that he has surrounded himself with staffers who have been associated with AIPAC and with even more hard-line pro-Israel groups, like Daniel Pipes‘ Middle East Forum, as suggested in this post by Annie Robbins published by Mondoweiss last year while Kirk was pushing legislation designed to slash funding for Palestinian refugees even as he was in the relatively early stages of recovery from the devastating stroke that he suffered in early 2012.
Yet another — and by no means inconsistent — explanation may lie in the tangible rewards he has received for his steadfast support for Israel, at least insofar as campaign finance is concerned. If you look at the Center for Responsive Politics’ “opensecrets” website on the biggest recipients of campaign cash from pro-Israel public actions committees — most of them closely associated with AIPAC in one way or another (although the list also includes J Street) — you’ll find that Kirk has been a major — perhaps the biggest — beneficiary of their largesse. In the 2010 election cycle, when Kirk took Obama’s old seat, the otherwise moderate Illinois Republican ran far ahead of the pack, with nearly $640,000 in contributions — more than twice the harvest of the next-ranking recipient, Majority Leader Harry Reid (who, incidentally, bowed to the White House’s wishes by putting off a vote on Kirk’s diplomacy-killing amendment to the defense bill this week but announced Thursday that he was inclined to support it or something like it when the Senate returns from its Thanksgiving recess Dec 9). Here’s the Center’s list of top Congressional recipients of pro-Israel PACs for the 2010 election cycle compiled earlier this year.
| Rank | Candidate | Office | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kirk, Mark (R-IL) | House | $639,810 |
| 2 | Reid, Harry (D-NV) | Senate | $289,383 |
| 3 | Boxer, Barbara (D-CA) | Senate | $266,054 |
| 4 | Feingold, Russ (D-WI) | Senate | $265,487 |
| 5 | Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) | Senate | $262,699 |
| 6 | Cantor, Eric (R-VA) | House | $239,400 |
| 7 | Wyden, Ron (D-OR) | Senate | $223,431 |
| 8 | Inouye, Daniel K (D-HI) | Senate | $187,850 |
| 9 | Deutch, Ted (D-FL) | House | $181,181 |
| 10 | Specter, Arlen (D-PA) | Senate | $176,450 |
| 11 | Grayson, Trey (R-KY) | $174,480 | |
| 12 | Mikulski, Barbara A (D-MD) | Senate | $169,175 |
| 13 | Fisher, Lee Irwin (D-OH) | $167,625 | |
| 14 | Gillibrand, Kirsten (D-NY) | Senate | $159,466 |
| 15 | McCain, John (R-AZ) | Senate | $154,149 |
| 16 | Berkley, Shelley (D-NV) | House | $153,007 |
| 17 | Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana (R-FL) | House | $151,207 |
| 18 | Klein, Ron (D-FL) | House | $150,222 |
| 19 | Sestak, Joe (D-PA) | House | $144,170 |
| 20 | Bennett, Robert F (R-UT) | Senate | $138,200 |
Indeed, virtually throughout his Congressional career, Kirk was a clear favorite of the lobby.
Although he didn’t make the top 20 list in 2000, the year he first ran for Congress, he soared to the number 3 spot with nearly $100,000 in pro-Israel PAC contributions in his first re-election campaign in 2002, just behind Nevada’s Shelley Berkeley and former Majority Leader Dick Gephardt. In 2004, he fell to number 4, behind three Democrats, but still garnered $130,000 in contributions. And then, in the 2006 election cycle, he hauled in $315,000 in campaign cash, second only to Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin.
In the 2008 cycle, he reached the pinnacle by topping the House list with a whopping $444,531. That was about two-and-a-half times more than the runner-up, the current majority leader and the only Jewish Republican in the House, Eric Cantor ($172,740). For all 468 Congressional races that year, Sen. Norm Coleman, the sole Jewish Republican senator at the time, was the only candidate who outpaced Kirk, a House member with more or less average seniority. According to the Center’s statistics, in the ten years that Kirk served in the House, he received more money from pro-Israel PACs than any other House member.
And then, of course, he pulled in by far the biggest take ever from these same sources in 2010 when he ran for the Senate.
It seems they’ve been getting their money’s worth.
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