Rabbinate’s Kosher Supervisors Qualify As Iran Inspectors

“The nuclear inspection program could be a wonderful opportunity for our underemployed supervisors.”

Jerusalem, July 16 – The International Atomic Energy Agency announced today that in keeping with the leniency shown to Iran under the recent Vienna agreement, inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities would be performed by kashrut supervisors from Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, which have a reputation for exactly the kind of token, ineffective supervision the world powers are looking for.

IAEA spokesman Bishul Nokhri told reporters that in the agreement’s spirit of placing only minor obstacles in Iran’s path to nuclear weapons, the agency would use inspectors with a proven track record of focusing attention on only certain details of the facilities they inspect, while ignoring far more egregious and problematic questions that make the efficacy of the entire inspection regime questionable at best.

“Rabbinate mashgihim have demonstrated the exact set of skills we are looking for,” said Akkum, using the technical term for a kashrut supervisor. “Whether it involves showing up maybe a handful of times a year and staying long enough only to check the garbage can and collect a check, these inspectors are perfect for the type of verification the P5+1 powers have shown they are comfortable with.”

Moreover, said Akkum, the typical Rabbinate mashgiah has been conditioned to give the benefit of the doubt to the institutions undergoing inspection. “In complete violation of everything Jewish law says about reliability and objectivity, the structure of the standard supervision arrangement with the Rabbinate is that a specific inspector is assigned to the restaurant or other establishment, and the business directly pays the mashgiah for his services – thereby making the mashgiah beholden to the business for at least part of his livelihood and compromising his objectivity. That is exactly the kind of half-assed regime we intend to run, given the other free passes Iran is getting under the agreement.”

The agency spokesman explained that total removal of sanctions from even the most notorious individuals and entities responsible for hundreds of deaths in terrorist and guerrilla activities set the tone for the type of inspections the IAEA will conduct. “If the inspection mechanism were meant to be part of a tough stance toward Iran’s violations, there would have been some talk of Americans currently being held as political prisoners, of Iran’s continuing sponsorship of terrorism all over the globe, or of its explicitly stated goal of destroying Israel” he said. “But since none of that is part of the agreement, it’s clear the whole point of it is simply to let Iran have everything it wants, but make a show of delaying it for a few years, as if that will solve all the underlying problems.”

Israeli Rabbinate officials expressed excitement at the announcement. “There are only so many restaurants and factories here in Israel, and we have an entire bureaucracy and patronage system to maintain,” said spokesman Rabbi Itsa Rippoff. “Our mashgihim rely on putting together a respectable income by taking on the supervision of more businesses than they can reasonably expect to handle properly, and there are still many mashgihim who can’t manage to find enough, er,  clients to put together a comfortable living. The nuclear inspection program could be a wonderful opportunity for our underemployed supervisors.”

Rippoff dismissed objections that the Rabbis in question lack the requisite knowledge to conduct meaningful inspections in Iran, pointing out that they are almost never called upon to invoke the knowledge they have in kashrut, either.