Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

 

By Sreeram Chaulia
The contention of a senior Russian diplomat, Vladimir Voronkov, that Iran is presently incapable of developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them has reopened an international Pandora's box.
The comments by Voronkov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of European Cooperation, cast doubts on, if not contradict, Israel's assessment that Iran is rapidly gaining nuclear-weapons capability in the guise of "peaceful" electricity generation.
Russia's word has a notable significance on the matter because it enjoys unparalleled access to Iran's nuclear facilities. Russian

engineers working for a Russian company are building Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor and are in daily touch with Iranian ground realities. Voronkov buttressed his claim by adding, "This information is confirmed by all the services responsible for the collection and analysis of information."
If Moscow's combined intelligence agencies are in agreement that Iran does not have nuclear-weapons capability, it calls for serious rethinking about whether the "crisis" built up over Tehran going nuclear was nothing but a bogey to roll back its rise as the impresario of a Shi'ite resurgence in the Middle East.
Long before the George W Bush administration began trumpeting the Iranian nuclear threat theory to the level of an international headache, Israel was gravely worried that a nuclear-armed Tehran could neutralize Tel Aviv's regional lead in unconventional weaponry. As an undeclared nuclear weapons power since the 1960s, Israel has been watching its volatile neighborhood like a jealous hawk for any signs of other states acquiring the ultimate deterrent.
In 1981, former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin ordered Operation Opera, a surreptitious air strike to bomb and damage Iraq's Osirak reactor before it could be loaded with nuclear fuel and possibly used for weapons production. At that time, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein pleaded the exact line that Iran's political leadership is purveying today - that Osirak was part and parcel of Baghdad's legal and "entirely peaceful" civilian nuclear program.
In September 2007, Israel did a redux of Osirak by aerially bombarding Syria's partially built nuclear reactor near the Turkish border which was allegedly a joint venture with the government of North Korea. Planning for this strike happened in early 2007, when the head of Israeli intelligence, Meir Dagan, presented Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with "evidence" that Syria was seeking to buy a nuclear weapon from North Korea to give Tel Aviv a "devastating surprise".
Compared to the Osirak incident, Israel's Syria attack is shrouded in greater mist and speculation. One theory is that the Syrian reactor was only partially constructed and that it was years away from churning out anything threatening to Israel. The New York Times cited an American official that the action was a warning from Israel to Iran rather than a pre-emptive strike to decapitate Syria's barely existent plutonium infrastructure. The fact that Syria and Iran are close allies holding out against Israeli and American designs in the Middle East makes this interpretation plausible.
Israel started sounding alarm bells about Iran's nuclear program in 1991, but these fell on deaf years in Washington for a long time. From the mid-1990s, Israeli strategists were issuing dire predictions that Iran is just "a few years away" from acquiring a nuclear weapon. While the Bill Clinton administration did not buy this threat perception, Israel found empathy in the succeeding George W Bush White House and Pentagon. With many of the neo-conservatives hailing from Jewish backgrounds, or attached to the special US-Israel relationship, it became relatively easy for the US to push Iranian nuclear weapons to the top of the stockpile of pressing global issues.
Before the US military campaign in Iraq got bogged down in fierce anti-colonial resistance and sectarian violence, it was common to hear neo-cons in the US and Israel reach shrill pitch about the impending disaster of Iran going nuclear. Sensing a window of opportunity to fulfill their dream of forcible "regime change" in Tehran, the neo-cons used Iranian nukes as the casus belli. The US intelligence community was cowed by its political bosses to concur that Iran posed a serious world threat.
But as the war in Iraq dragged on and drained American troop morale and public enthusiasm, internal rifts cropped up within the US over plunging into a second war before the first was won. The 2005 National Intelligence Estimate, a comprehensive report based on consensus among various American spy agencies, projected that Iran is "about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon". This revised figure was double the previous conjecture of a five-year distance between Tehran and the atom bomb. It poured cold water on war-mongering rhetoric by downplaying the urgency of the "Iranian nuke crisis", which had been highlighted by Israel as a ticking time bomb that must be defused by all means.
Adding another twist to the empirical debate about whether or not Iran has nuclear weapons is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations' nuclear watchdog organization. In June 2008, IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei cast a new stone into already rippled waters by opining, "It would need at least six months to one year to reach the point where we would wake up one morning to an Iran with a nuclear weapon." In November this year, a routine IAEA update based on inspections recorded that Iran had already produced enough low-enriched uranium to build a single atomic bomb.
Israel and the neo-cons, whose influence in US policymaking has gradually declined, jumped at this neutral view and again sharpened their knives. Talk that Bush would bow out of power by waging war on Iran mounted in step with the IAEA's revelations. The seesaw drama about Iran's possession or lack of nuclear weapons was always integrally linked to Israeli and US war-making intentions.
Unfortunately for ElBaradei, who is on record that he will resign if Iran is physically attacked, his public candor about Tehran's imprecise and opaque disclosures has played into the hands of those itching for a military solution.
The latest Russian pronouncements are antidotes to the Israeli scare tactics. But like all previous assessments, Moscow's words can also be questioned for their veracity. Among the permanent members of the UN Security Council, Russia is strategically the closest to Iran and a staunch opponent of using force on Tehran. With rumors abounding that Israel could "do Osirak 3" on Iran at any moment, the Russian release could be timed to protect a friend.
Russian and US representatives are also meeting in Moscow to sort out a spat over Washington's proposed stationing of anti-missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. Voronkov specifically mentioned Iranian delivery systems (read missiles) in his announcement, a likely message for Washington which is portraying the Iranian missile threat as the raison d'etre for militarizing eastern Europe.
However, it bears reminder that even Russia and China acquiesced in three rounds of UN economic sanctions against Iran for refusing to suspend its nuclear activities. As Tehran plays hide-and-seek with the IAEA and European Union interlocutors, the "Iranian nukes" cover story is set to dominate international headlines. US president-elect Barack Obama's remark that a nuclear Iran is "unacceptable" keeps the door open for speculation about the technical status quo of Tehran's weapons program.
The military decapitation option might not be taken off the table by Israel, despite Obama's inauguration next month in Washington. With the smog around Iranian nukes showing little sign of clearing, a dangerous informational confusion persists in which war could still break out.
Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international affairs at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in New York.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

Nuclear Engineering International

 

No change on Iran

Introducing the report on Iran, ElBaradei said: “There remain a number of outstanding issues, relevant to the alleged studies and associated questions identified in my last report to the Board, which give rise to concerns and need to be clarified in order to exclude the existence of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme. Regrettably, the agency has not been able to make substantive progress on these issues... I also still regret the fact that the agency has not been able to share with Iran documentation [related to the alleged studies] provided by member states. I call upon the member states concerned to authorise the agency to do so.”

The report said that Iran has continued to feed UF₆ into the 3000-machine IR-1 unit (Unit A24), and five cascades of Unit A26, at the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP). Installation and testing of the 13 remaining cascades of Unit A26 is continuing. Preparatory installation work at Units A25, A27 and A28 continues. As of 7 November, the total amount of UF₆ fed into the cascades since the beginning of operations in February 2007 was 9750kg, and Iran is estimated to have produced approximately 630kg of low enriched UF₆. All nuclear material at FEP, as well as all installed cascades, “remain under agency containment and surveillance.”

In September, the agency conducted a physical inventory verification (PIV) at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP), the results of which are pending. Between 25 August and 28 October, Iran had fed approximately 31kg of UF₆ into the 10-machine IR-2 cascade and the single IR-1, IR-2 and IR-3 centrifuges. All nuclear material at PFEP, as well as the cascade area also remains under agency containment. “To date, the results of the environmental samples taken at FEP and PFEP2, and the operating records for FEP3, indicate that the plants have been operating as declared” (less than 5.0% U-235 enrichment). Since March 2007, 20 unannounced inspections have been conducted at FEP.

On reprocessing, the agency has continued to monitor the use and construction of hot cells at the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) and the molybdenum, iodine and xenon radioisotope production (MIX) facility through inspections and design information verification (DIV) and there are no indications of ongoing reprocessing related activities at those facilities.

In August, the IAEA conducted a PIV at the Fuel Manufacturing Plant (FMP), the results of which are consistent with the declaration made by Iran. An inspection in October revealed no major changes in the construction status of FMP since May.

As of 3 November 2008, approximately 33t of uranium in the form of UF₆ had been produced at the Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) since the last PIV in March. This brings the total amount of UF₆ produced at the facility since March 2004 to 348t, all of which remains under agency containment. The UCF was shut down in August for a routine maintenance and restarted operation in October.

Using satellite imagery, the IAEA has continued to monitor the status of the Heavy Water Production Plant, which appears to be in operational condition. Satellite imagery is also being used to monitor construction of the Iran Nuclear Research Reactor (IR-40) since Iran, in March 2007, suspended implementation of arrangements concerning the early provision of design information. Because of this, the agency was not permitted to carry out the DIV scheduled for October. However, it has confirmed that construction of the reactor is continuing. The IAEA requested in December 2007, but has not yet received, preliminary design information for the nuclear power plant that is to be built in Darkhovin.

Outstanding issues

A number of outstanding issues remain relating to the “alleged studies,” based on US intelligence data, which indicate weapons development, although Iran has insisted that they are forgeries. Moreover, the USA refuses to allow the agency to give copies of these studies to Iran, but still expects Iran to give detailed answers to the charges. The report says the agency currently has no information — apart from the uranium metal document (an issue dealt with in earlier reports) — “on the actual design or manufacture by Iran of nuclear material components of a nuclear weapon or of certain other key components, such as initiators, or on related nuclear physics studies. Nor has the agency detected the actual use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies.” However this issue is stalling any further progress and the agency asked Iran to cooperate in supplying the requested information.

“Iran needs to provide the agency with substantive information to support its statements and provide access to relevant documentation and individuals in this regard. Unless Iran provides such transparency, and implements the Additional Protocol, the agency will not be able to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.”

Dependence on intelligence information for its investigations does not sit well with the IAEA. Opening the board meeting, ElBaradei had raised the issue of satellite imagery as a tool to assess claims of undeclared nuclear activities. He noted: “It is of course unfortunate that the agency, like the United Nations as a whole, does not have an independent satellite capability, as was proposed some years ago by France. As that is unlikely to change any time soon, we will continue to make use of available commercial and member state satellite imagery. But I should stress that, because the agency cannot verify the authenticity of such imagery, we rely on it only as an auxiliary source to corroborate other information …(and) this may mean that the agency’s assessments in some cases are inconclusive.”

After the meeting, Iran’s Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani said the IAEA should set a deadline for the USA to present evidence for its claims about Iran's nuclear programme. He told reporters on the sidelines of the Nuclear Power Plants, the Environment, and Sustainable Development conference in Tehran (see panel), that the IAEA should take the issue off its agenda if those countries that want Iran to halt its uranium enrichment programme cannot prove their allegations. He said the latest report was “ambiguous”, and criticised IAEA officials for allowing the intelligence services of certain countries to have undue influence over its activities.

Moscow’s mediation

Moscow has stressed the need for Iran to ensure full cooperation with the IAEA at a meeting in Moscow between Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryabkov, and the Iranian ambassador to Russia, Mahmud Reza Sajjadi. At the same time, Russian officials said that US president-elect Barack Obama will have to normalise relations with Iran to reach an agreement over the disputed nuclear programme, reiterating opposition to any further sanctions. Russia is hoping that “the new administration understands that there is no alternative to the political process and dialogue at all levels,” said Ryabkov in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Moscow. Asked if Obama would have to normalise ties with Iran to reach a nuclear agreement, he replied: “Yes, absolutely.”

Pressure for a US policy change is also coming from inside the USA. A panel of American diplomats and other experts have advised Obama against any further economic and military threats. “An attack would almost certainly fail,” while coercing Iran with economic sanctions has very little chance of success, the experts said in a report to a conference on the future of US-Iran policy. “Threats are not cowing Iran and the current regime in Tehran is not in imminent peril,” according to the report.

Far more likely to succeed, according to former US ambassadors Thomas Pickering and James Dobbins, Columbia University scholar Gary Sick and 17 other experts, is to “open the door to direct, unconditional and comprehensive negotiations at the senior diplomatic level.”

Author Info:

Judith Perera is Editor of McCloskey NuclearBusiness

Nuclear Engineering International

Are Key Obama Advisors in Tune with Neocon Hawks Who Want to Attack Iran? | ForeignPolicy | AlterNet

 

A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners, and neoconservatives expects Barack Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail -- and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of U.S. strike forces, including the prepositioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.

Once the future negotiations break down, as they are convinced will happen, they propose that Washington quickly escalate to war-like measures, including a U.S. Navy-enforced embargo on Iranian fuel imports and a blockade of that country's oil exports. Finally, of course, comes the strategic military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran that so many of them have wanted for so long.

It's tempting to dismiss the hawks now as twice-removed from power: first, figures like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith were purged from top posts in the Bush administration after 2004; then the election of Barack Obama and the announcement Monday of his centrist, realist-minded team of establishment foreign policy gurus seemed to nail the doors to power shut for the neocons, who have bitterly criticized the president-elect's plans to talk with Iran, withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, and abandon the reckless Global War on Terrorism rhetoric of the Bush era.

"Kinetic Action" Against Iran

When it comes to Iran, however, it's far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize. Several top advisers to Obama -- including Tony Lake, UN Ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle, and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden or Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton -- have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes.

Last spring, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, for example, took part in a WINEP "2008 Presidential Task Force" study which resulted in a report entitled, "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge." The Institute, part of the Washington-based Israel lobby, was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has been vigorously supporting a confrontation with Iran. The task force report, issued in June, was overseen by four WINEP heavyweights: Robert Satloff, WINEP's executive director, Patrick Clawson, its chief Iran analyst, David Makovsky, a senior fellow, and Dennis Ross, an adviser to Obama who is also a WINEP fellow.

Endorsed by both Lake and Rice, the report opted for an alarmist view of Iran's nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal U.S.-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for "preventive military action"). It drew attention to Israeli fears that "the United States may be reconciling itself to the idea of 'living with an Iranian nuclear bomb,'" and it raised the spurious fear that Iran plans to arm terrorist groups with nuclear weapons.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with consultations between the United States and Israel. But the WINEP report is clearly predisposed to the idea that the United States ought to give undue weight to Israel's inflated concerns about Iran. And it ignores or dismisses a number of facts: that Iran has no nuclear weapon, that Iran has not enriched uranium to weapons grade, that Iran may not have the know-how to actually construct a weapon even if, sometime in the future, it does manage to acquire bomb-grade material, and that Iran has no known mechanism for delivering such a weapon.

WINEP is correct that the United States must communicate closely with Israel about Iran. Practically speaking, however, a U.S.-Israeli dialogue over Iran's "nuclear challenge" will have to focus on matters entirely different from those in WINEP's agenda. First, the United States must make it crystal clear to Israel that under no circumstances will it tolerate or support a unilateral Israeli attack against Iran. Second, Washington must make it clear that if Israel were indeed to carry out such an attack, the United States would condemn it, refuse to widen the war by coming to Israel's aid, and suspend all military aid to the Jewish state. And third, Israel must get the message that, even given the extreme and unlikely possibility that the United States deems it necessary to go to war with Iran, there would be no role for Israel.

Just as in the wars against Iraq in 1990-1991 and 2003-2008, the United States hardly needs Israeli aid, which would be both superfluous and inflammatory. Dennis Ross and others at WINEP, however, would strongly disagree that Israel is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Ross, who served as Middle East envoy for George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton, was also a key participant in a September 2008 task force chaired by two former senators, Daniel Coats (R.-Ind.) and Chuck Robb (D.-Va.), and led by Michael Makovsky, brother of WINEP's David Makovsky, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the heyday of the Pentagon neocons from 2002-2006. Robb, incidentally, had already served as the neocons' channel into the 2006 Iraq Study Group, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton. According to Bob Woodward's latest book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, it was Robb who insisted that the Baker-Hamilton task force include an option for a "surge" in Iraq.

The report of the Coats-Robb task force -- "Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development" -- went far beyond the WINEP task force report that Lake and Rice signed off on. It concluded that any negotiations with Iran were unlikely to succeed and should, in any case, be short-lived. As the report put the matter, "It must be clear that any U.S.-Iranian talks will not be open-ended, but will be limited to a pre-determined time period so that Tehran does not try to 'run out the clock.'"

Anticipating the failure of the talks, the task force (including Ross) urged "prepositioning military assets," coupled with a "show of force" in the region. This would be followed almost immediately by a blockade of Iranian gasoline imports and oil exports, meant to paralyze Iran's economy, followed by what they call, vaguely, "kinetic action."

That "kinetic action" -- a U.S. assault on Iran -- should, in fact, be massive, suggested the Coats-Robb report. Besides hitting dozens of sites alleged to be part of Iran's nuclear research program, the attacks would target Iranian air defense and missile sites, communications systems, Revolutionary Guard facilities, key parts of Iran's military-industrial complex, munitions storage facilities, airfields, aircraft facilities, and all of Iran's naval facilities. Eventually, they say, the United States would also have to attack Iran's ground forces, electric power plants and electrical grids, bridges, and "manufacturing plants, including steel, autos, buses, etc."

This is, of course, a hair-raising scenario. Such an attack on a country that had committed no act of war against the United States or any of its allies would cause countless casualties, virtually destroy Iran's economy and infrastructure, and wreak havoc throughout the region. That such a high-level group of luminaries should even propose steps like these -- and mean it -- can only be described as lunacy. That an important adviser to President-elect Obama would sign on to such a report should be shocking, though it has received next to no attention.

Palling Around with the Neocons

At a November 6 forum at WINEP, Patrick Clawson, the erudite, neoconservative strategist who serves as the organization's deputy director for research, laid out the institute's view of how to talk to Iran in the Obama era. Doing so, he said, is critically important, but only to show the rest of the world that the United States has taken the last step for peace -- before, of course, attacking. Then, and only then, will the United States have the legitimacy it needs to launch military action against Iran.

"What we've got to do is to show the world that we're making a big deal of engaging the Iranians," he said, tossing a bone to the new administration. "I'd throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into it." He advocates this approach only because he believes it won't work. "The principal target with these offers [to Iran] is not Iran," he adds. "The principal target of these offers is American public opinion and world public opinion."

The Coats-Robb report, Meeting the Challenge," was written by one of the hardest of Washington's neoconservative hardliners, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. Rubin, who spent most of the years since 9/11 either working for AEI or, before and during the war in Iraq, for the Wolfowitz-Feith team at the Pentagon, recently penned a report for the Institute entitled: "Can A Nuclear Iran Be Deterred or Contained?" Not surprisingly, he believes the answer to be a resounding "no," although he does suggest that any effort to contain a nuclear Iran would certainly require permanent U.S. bases spread widely in the region, including in Iraq:

"If U.S. forces are to contain the Islamic Republic, they will require basing not only in GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Without a sizeable regional presence, the Pentagon will not be able to maintain the predeployed resources and equipment necessary to contain Iran, and Washington will signal its lack of commitment to every ally in the region. Because containment is as much psychological as physical, basing will be its backbone."

The Coats-Robb report was issued by a little-known group called the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). That organization, too, turns out to be interwoven with WINEP, not least because its foreign policy director is Michael Makovsky. Perhaps the most troubling participant in the Bipartisan Policy Center is Barack Obama's minence grise and one of his most important advisers during the campaign, Tom Daschle, who is slated to be his secretary of health and human services. So far, Daschle has not repudiated BPC's provocative report.

Ross, along with Richard Holbrooke, recently made appearances amid another collection of superhawks who came together to found a new organization, United Against Nuclear Iran. UANI is led by Mark Wallace, the husband of Nicole Wallace, a key member of Senator John McCain's campaign team. Among UANI's leadership team are Ross and Holbrooke, along with such hardliners as Jim Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Fouad Ajami, the Arab-American scholar who is a principal theorist on Middle East policy for the neoconservative movement.

UANI is primarily a propaganda outfit. Its mission, it says, is to "inform the public about the nature of the Iranian regime, including its desire and intent to possess nuclear weapons, as well as Iran's role as a state sponsor of global terrorism, and a major violator of human rights at home and abroad" and to "heighten awareness nationally and internationally about the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran poses to the region and the world."

Barack Obama has, of course, repeatedly declared his intention to embark on a different path by opening talks with Iran. He's insisted that diplomacy, not military action, will be at the core of his approach to Tehran. During the election campaign, however, he also stated no less repeatedly that he will not take the threat of military action "off the table."

Organizations like WINEP, AIPAC, AEI, BPC, and UANI see it as their mission to push the United States toward a showdown with Iran. Don't sell them short. Those who believe that such a confrontation would be inconceivable under President Obama ought to ask Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Dennis Ross, Tom Daschle, and Richard Holbrooke whether they agree -- and, if so, why they're still palling around with neoconservative hardliners.

See more stories tagged with: iran, neocons, tom daschle, richard holbrooke, dennis ross, susan rice, tony lake

Robert Dreyfuss, an independent journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, is a contributing editor at the Nation magazine, whose website hosts his The Dreyfuss Report, and has written frequently for Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Washington Monthly. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.

Are Key Obama Advisors in Tune with Neocon Hawks Who Want to Attack Iran? | ForeignPolicy | AlterNet

Think-tank comments on Iran worry Israel | Iran news | Jerusalem Post

 

Israeli officials expressed concern Wednesday about some of the recommendations in a report top American experts have prepared on Middle East policy for the Obama administration, including expanding engagement with Iran and possible responses should Teheran acquire nuclear capabilities.

US President-elect Barack Obama.
Photo: AP

Slideshow: Pictures of the week

The report, drafted by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, will be a major focus of the latter's Saban Center for Middle East Policy forum this weekend for top US and Israeli officials, as Washington heavy hitters try to play a role in shaping the policies of the next administration.

Foreign Ministry officials weren't thrilled about the report's recommendations, but downplayed its significance.

"We have nothing to be afraid of," one official said, refuting those who expressed fear that this report would become Obama's diplomatic road map. "Obama is surrounding himself with people who we know - from Hillary Clinton, to Rahm Emanuel, to James Jones. There is no reason to panic.

"It could be that the new administration's policy will be different from the Bush administration's; in fact, it will be a little different. But that doesn't mean it will be against Israel."

The official remarked that the report would likely be passed around by Obama subordinates, along with many other similar documents being prepared over the transition period. It was unrealistic, he said, to think Obama is going to internalize this report's findings and make them his own policies.

Still, the Saban gathering draws together international figures of the highest order and leading thinkers and experts on Middle East issues. US President George W. Bush is set to give his valedictory speech on the region at the weekend event, being held in Washington.

Despite Bush's presence, the report is blunt in assessing that current US policies toward Iran have "failed." Instead, the report calls for direct engagement with Iran, to begin at a low level as soon as possible.

Though it acknowledges that diplomacy is not a cure-all, it considers diplomacy more likely than other options - including a military attack and regime change - to productively manage Iran's nuclear ambitions.

A separate chapter on Iran estimates that the country won't be capable of producing a credible nuclear weapons option for another two to three years, during which increased sanctions alongside engaged diplomacy are advocated.

But, it adds, "If diplomacy or force fails to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a declared US nuclear umbrella for the region or parts of it should be a key mechanism for deterring Iran, reassuring Israel, and incorporating our other allies into an effective regional balance."

Martin Indyk, who heads the Saban Center and co-wrote the report's introductory section - though he didn't author the chapters dealing with specific countries - explained the latter recommendation as potentially helping to synchronize the American and Israeli time frames on Iran.

Speaking to the press after the report was unveiled on Tuesday, Indyk said that the US and Israel have different deadlines for dealing with the threat of a nuclear Iran, because Israel sees the issue as an existential one while the US sees room to maneuver, even if Tehran did acquire some nuclear capabilities.

By the US providing security guarantees, such as a nuclear umbrella, he argued, it could reassure Jerusalem and "buy more time" for diplomacy to work.

Indyk also backed US support for Israeli-Syrian negotiations that are already under way through a third party, Turkey.

He suggested that they could strengthen the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace process, since a price for an agreement would be Syria cutting its ties to radical Islamic parties and Iran, whose influence the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority also wants to see diminish as part of its effort to tame Hamas.

In its chapter on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the report contends that Hamas needs to be brought back into a Palestinian national unity government to try to reshape its current role as a spoiler.

The report doesn't push the US to recognize Hamas, but suggests mediation by the Arab countries between the rival Palestinian parties.

Indyk also said the current Annapolis process could continue to provide a good framework for moving forward on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Richard Haass, president of CFR and the co-author of the introduction, agreed that there were positive aspects of Bush's policies that shouldn't be thrown out in the new administration's haste to turn the page.

"It's important that the administration not start with an ABB approach - anything but Bush," he said.

Think-tank comments on Iran worry Israel | Iran news | Jerusalem Post

UK Foreign Secretary Miliband has got the whole Iran nuclear issue the wrong way round

 

Wednesday, November 26, 2008
By Kaleem Omar
Tony Blair may be history, but there are still plenty of British politicians left in the Labour Party government who are only too willing to serve as poodles to US President George W. Bush and his neo-con cabal, even in the waning days of Dubya�s presidency. One such politician is British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, whom Iran on Monday accused of having Zionist ties after he said that the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is �the most immediate threat to Middle East stability.�
This, of course, is a case of Miliband toeing the line that Bush and members of his administration have been peddling for years, despite the fact that Iran has repeatedly insisted that its uranium enrichment programme is not aimed at making nuclear bombs but at manufacturing fuel for the nuclear power reactor it is building with Russian help to generate electricity for Iran�s national grid.
The Bush administration continues to claim that Iran is �the most immediate threat� to Middle East stability, just as it used to claim back in 2002 and in the first three months of 2003 that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that � in Bush�s words � �posed an immediate threat to the national security of the United States�� In fact, of course, as the whole world knew long ago, Iraq did not possess any WMD and posed no threat whatsoever to the mighty United States.
The whole Iraqi WMD thing was a lie cooked up by the Bush administration as an excuse to invade and occupy Iraq. When no WMD were found there by a 1,400-member team of US weapons inspectors and intelligence agents sent into Iraq by Bush after the invasion, wags promptly dubbed the so-called Iraqi WMD �weapons of mass disappearance.�
Then-US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly lied to the media about Iraq possessing WMD, going so far during one media briefing at the Pentagon to assert that not only did the US �know� that Iraq had WMD but also �knew� where they were.
Of course, the US �knew� no such thing. The whole thing was an outright lie, which eventually resulted in the Bush administration ending up with a massive amount of egg on its face.
The only �discovery� made by the US weapons inspectors during their 18-month-long search of so-called �suspect� Iraqi sites was that of a trailer, which the Bush administration initially claimed with fiendish glee was �a mobile laboratory for making chemical weapons.� Only two days later, however, it came out that the mobile laboratory was in fact a facility for manufacturing gas for weather balloons. Within hours of this news hitting the news wires, a highly embarrassed US CIA hurriedly removed all references to the so-called �mobile laboratory for making chemical weapons� from its web site.
Now, we have British Foreign Secretary David Miliband claiming that the �prospect� of Iran having nuclear weapons poses �the most immediate threat� to Middle Eastern stability� and appealing to Tehran�s neighbours to put pressure on Iranian President Mohmoud Ahmadinejad.
In saying what he did, Miliband conveniently choose to ignore the fact that the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Commission (the UN�s nuclear watchdog body) has said on more than one occasion that its inspectors have found no evidence that Iran is making a nuclear weapon. Miliband also choose to ignore the fact that in September last year, US intelligence agencies submitted a National Intelligence Estimate to President Bush stating that Iran was �at least ten years away from making a nuclear weapon.�
Even if we were to assume that Iran�s uranium-enrichment programme is aimed at making nuclear weapons (although there is no evidence to this effect), the US National Intelligence Estimate�s �ten years� time frame hardly constitutes �the most immediate threat� to Middle East stability � as falsely claimed by Miliband.
In fact, of course, the only country in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons is the Zionist state of Israel. According to the latest estimates, Israel has about 400 nuclear weapons in its arsenal and a variety of aircraft and missiles capable of delivering the weapons to all the Arab states and Iran. Israel also has the fourth most powerful conventional army in the world (after the United States, Russia and China).
On top of all this, Israel has long had an American nuclear umbrella, which successive US administrations have said they would use in support of Israel in the event of its existence being threatened. This commitment will be carried forward by the administration of US President-Elect Barack Obama after he takes office on January 20 next year. In August 2008, Obama publicly stated that he had a deep and abiding commitment to Israel�s security. He had nothing to say, however, about who will protect the beleaguered Palestinian people from the on-going acts of state terrorism unleashed on them by Israel.
In his anti-Iran diatribe on Monday, British Foreign Secretary Miliband, too, had nothing to say about the threat to Middle East stability posed by Israel�s nuclear arsenal. In October this year, Miliband warned of a possible nuclear arms race in the Middle East �if Iran was allowed to press ahead unchecked with a uranium enrichment programme.� Again, however, he had nothing to say about Israel�s nuclear weapons programme, which began back in the late 1950s.
The Jewish lobby in Washington is so influential that no American politician dares to say anything critical against Israel. Back in the 1980s, during the Reagan presidency, when then-US Defence Secretary Harold Brown was mildly critical of Israel at a press conference (saying that Israel should not deal so harshly with the Palestinian people), the Jewish lobby created such a fuss that Reagan had to sack Brown within 48 hours.
The only American president who ever criticised Israel�s nuclear programme was John F. Kennedy. In early 1963, he wrote a letter to the Israeli prime minister saying that Israel should stop pressing ahead with its nuclear weapons programme. Six months later, Kennedy was dead � assassinated in circumstances that have remained a mystery to this day. It is now widely believed by many in the United States that the Warren Commission report into Kennedy�s assassination was a cover-up job, designed to throw a veil of obfuscation over the identity of the real perpetrators and pin the blame on a lone American gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. A lot of Americans, however, are convinced that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was behind the assassination � which had all the hallmarks of a highly professional hit.
AFP and Reuters � both Western news agencies � reported on Monday that: �World powers, fearing that Iran might make atom bombs under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, have offered Tehran incentives and talks in return for a halt to uranium enrichment.� But why have these same Western World powers had nothing to say for decades about Israel�s known nuclear weapons programme � the details of which were revealed at exhaustive length some years ago by the well-known American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in his authoritative book �The Samson Option.�
Hersh is no ordinary hack; he is the same journalist who broke the story about the My Lai massacre of 350 women and children carried out by US soldiers in Vietnam in the 1960s. He is also the one who broke the story about the torture of Iraqi detainees by American soldiers at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in 2004. I mention these facts in order to make the point that Hersh is an investigative journalist of the highest credibility.
AFP and Reuters reported on Monday that: �Iran has ignored five UN resolutions demanding a suspension of uranium enrichment, which can supply nuclear fuel as well as the fissile core of an atom bomb in high purification.�
But neither of the two Western news agencies made any mention of the fact that Israel has ignored dozens of UN General Assembly resolutions demanding that it immediate vacate the Arab territories captured by it during the Arab-Israel war of 1967 � which, it should be remembered, was started by Israel and not by the Arab states.
In blatant disregard of these UN General Assembly resolutions, Israel continues to occupy Syria�s Golan Heights, the Palestinian West Bank and the Gaza Strip to this day. It also remained in utterly illegal occupation of southern Lebanon for twenty long years, following its unprovoked invasion of Lebanon in 1982 when Ariel Sharon (aka �The Butcher of Sabra and Chatillia�) was the Israeli defence minister. He later became Israel�s prime minister. When he was prime minister, he ordered Israeli army bulldozers to demolish the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin. Scores of Palestinian refugees were reported to have been buried alive under the rubble.

UK Foreign Secretary Miliband has got the whole Iran nuclear issue the wrong way round

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

 

As United States president-elect Barack Obama prepares to take over the White House two months from now, the mainstream US media have been awash reports about Iran's nuclear "threat" that will likely influence the coming Obama administration away from introducing any major change in the US's hitherto coercive Iran policy.
The latest anti-Iran spin is that Tehran has accumulated enough nuclear fuel for one nuclear bomb and that given Iran's rapid progress in installing more centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran's nuclear bomb-making capability will substantially increase in the near future.
Leading the pack in this media endeavor for a Chomskyian

"manufactured consensus" on Iran's nuclear threat is the nation's leading newspaper, the New York Times. Although known as the voice of the liberal "eastern establishment", the Times is perceived by many as a pillar of support for pro-Israel global public diplomacy and, therefore, it comes as little surprise that the respected newspaper may have been churning out alarmist and misleading articles about Iran's purported nuclear threat.
Case in point, in a high-profile article by two veteran reporters, William Broad and David Sanger, the paper claimed as per the expert opinion of various nuclear scientists, that Iran had already amassed "nuclear fuel for one weapon", to paraphrase the article's catchy title, and that, naturally, would be a serious problem for the upcoming Obama administration.
But does it? The article does not mention the following important, and highly relevant facts: 1. Iran's nuclear fuel is kept in containers sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
2. As stated by Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the Natanz facility is under the surveillance of IAEA cameras 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
3. Contrary to misleading claims by various US nuclear experts such as David Kay, a former weapons of mass destruction inspector, there is no evidence that Iran has gone beyond low-grade enrichment of uranium to the point of "weapons-grade" enrichment. In fact, the various IAEA reports confirm the fallacy of such unsubstantiated claims, routinely featured in Israeli papers' biased reports on Iran.
4. Nor do the reporters give more than cursory attention to the content of recent IAEA reports on Iran, which confirm the agency "has been able to continue to confirm the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran".
5. Another major flaw in Broad and Sanger's piece is that they deliberately underestimate the technical challenge of leaping from low-level enrichment to weapons-grade to a simple matter of "further purification".
6. The fact that the IAEA is well-equipped to uncover any attempt by Iran to engage in weapons-grade enrichment activities is mentioned only in passing, without influencing the gist of the article and the planned paranoia lurking behind it.
7. Finally, the whole argument that Iran's ability to produce nuclear fuel represents a "threat" warranting sanctions and other coercive counter-measures by the world community falls by the wayside in light of the legal framework of Iran's nuclear activity under the articles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and Iran's nuclear transparency mentioned above.
Instead of focusing on the objective guarantee of Iran's peaceful uranium enrichment activities, the reporters deliberately hyped up the perceived threat of a "nuclear breakout" via future scenario-setting of "if" Iran exits the NPT and terminates its cooperation with the IAEA, as if the US and other Western governments should engage in "pre-emptive" policy vis-a-vis Iran on the basis of such theoretical guesswork. Of course, the absurdity of the "inevitability of a nuclear weapon capable Iran" speaks for itself. Nothing is inevitable in world affairs and such deterministic analysis are inherently wedded to dogmatic assumptions about what is otherwise a highly fluid situation.
Given Iran's possession of dual purpose nuclear technology, although the potential for a future break out is inherently nested in this technology, there are several important intervening variables missing, without which this potential would not be actualized - one being the absence of a nuclear threat to Iran warranting Iran's reaction to go nuclear.
Sure Russia, Pakistan, India, China, and Israel have nuclear weapons, but none poses a nuclear threat to Iran, not even "out of area" Israel. If anything Iran's main fear today is the future break-up of Pakistan and the threats of Sunni extremism in Pakistan, but this is a low to medium level concern and not by any means blown out of proportion. Tehran remains confident about the ability of Pakistan's government to fight off the extremists and prevent them from accessing its nuclear arsenal.
With respect to Israel, some 1,500 kilometers distant from Iran's national borders, it is hard to digest the argument that Iran needs nuclear bombs to counter Israel's nuclear arsenal, principally because as Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself has repeatedly stated, Israel's bombs did not help it win the latest war in Lebanon nor have they been a factor in its previous wars with its Arab neighbors. So why should they be a factor of concern for Iran now? The absence of a credible answer is, in fact, one main reason why Iran is not racing to manufacture nuclear warheads today.
As for the US military threat against Iran, in light of the US military quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the overstretched nature of the US military. Tehran does not foresee an imminent threat of confrontation with the US, despite the occasional tensions over the "turf war" in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.
On the contrary, the mere post-9/11 proximity of US forces with Iran has translated into a qualitative deepening of diplomatic and security dialogue and interactions between the two countries and, henceforth, with the help of more Cold War style confidence-building measures, the tensions between Washington and Tehran can be lessened considerably.
What both Washington and Tel Aviv fail to realize is that their own action, of constantly threatening Iran with nuclear attacks, is tantamount to playing with fire. Such threats heighten Iran's sense of national security vulnerability and chip away at the latency of Iran's nuclear potential. In other words, the perceived remedy of issuing threats in the hope of thwarting Iran's march toward nuclear bombs has the exact opposite effect of poisoning the climate where Iran feels safe enough not to go beyond its reliance on conventional arms and acquire the actual bombs.
To return to the New York Times, a number of its columnists, such as Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, have also been fully involved in cultivating the perception of an "Iran threat". In Friedman's recent column titled "Show me the money" he takes this for granted and takes European, and the Russian and Chinese governments to task to prove their support for Obama by imposing tougher sanctions on Iran.
This aside, in light of the news of the impending selection of the ardently pro-Israel senator from New York, Hillary Clinton, as Obama's secretary of state, we are unlikely to witness any moderation of anti-Iran bias in Washington, influenced as it is by the incessant wheels of the "Fourth Estate".
Needless to say, hardly enough of this is encouraging and, indeed, is rather depressing and despairing of the hope that true change is coming to the practice and orientation of US foreign policy. The sheer speed of "over-Clintonization" of the Obama administration, reflected in the selection of so many officials linked to the Clinton "circle", none of whom can be regarded as agents of change, alone indicates that the hope for an Obama-led change in US foreign policy may be a hope against hope.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry, click here. His latest book, Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) is now available.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

'Israel should consider killing Ahmedinejad'- Hindustan Times

"Any they say Ahmadinejad is nuts!"

Israel's former Chief of Staff, Moshe Ya'alon, being touted as a possible candidate for defence minister if Likud party wins the elections, has said the West must consider "all options" necessary to foil Iran's nuclear programme, including assassination of its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"We have to confront the Iranian revolution immediately. There is no way to stabilise the Middle East today without defeating the Iranian regime. The Iranian nuclear programme must be stopped," Ya'alon told The Sydney Morning Herald in an interview.

When asked whether "all options" included a military deposition of Ahmadinejad and the rest of Iran's current leadership, Ya'alon reportedly said,"We have to consider killing him. All options must be considered."

Ya'alon, who served asChief of Staff during turbulent times between2002 and 2005 at the peak of second intifada told The Herald that a military strike on Iran would also be welcomed by regional elements as quelling the most divisive conflict in the Middle East today.

"Any military strike in Iran will be quietly applauded by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states," he reportedly said.

"It is a misconception to think that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the most important in the Middle-East. The Shiite-Sunni schism is much bigger, the Persian-Arab divide is bigger, the struggle between national regimes and jihadism is much bigger," he stressed.

"And I can't imagine that theUS will want to share power in the Middle East with a nuclear-armed Iran," he further added.

The former Israel Defence Forces Chief said that hehas for long seen Iran as the 'source of regional terrorism' and was surprised that the United States chose to invade Iraq instead.

"I was chief of staff during Operation Iraqi Freedom and I was surprised the US decided to go into Iraq instead of Iran," he said adding, "Unfortunately, the American public didn't have the political stomach to go into Iran."

Last week, Ya'alon announced his candidacy for the Likud party list in the upcoming Knesset elections.

Meanwhile, an aide to the former Chief of Staff has denied that he suggested killing Ahmedinejad.

"He said that Israel needs to defeat the Iranian regime," the aide told The Jerusalem Post

'Israel should consider killing Ahmedinejad'- Hindustan Times

U.S.: Obama Advised to Forgo More Threats to Iran

 

WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (IPS) - A strategy of threats and "provocations" against Iran by the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama is likely to be counter-productive, according to a new report released here Friday by a group of 20 former top U.S. diplomats and regional experts.
The group, co-chaired by former U.N. Amb. Thomas Pickering and James Dobbins, a top diplomatic troubleshooter under both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, called instead for the new administration to "open the door to direct, unconditional and comprehensive negotiations at the senior diplomatic level," as well as unofficial contacts and exchanges.
"Paradoxical as it may seem amid all the heated media rhetoric, sustained engagement is far more likely to strengthen United States national security at this stage than either escalation to war or continued efforts to threaten, intimidate or coerce Iran," according to the group, which also assailed what it called eight "myths" propagated by neo-conservatives and other hawks who have been pushing for greater pressure on Tehran to give in to western demands that it halt its nuclear programme.
The "Joint Experts' Statement on Iran", the product of several months of internal discussions, comes amid growing speculation that the Bush administration will try to open a U.S. Interests Section in Tehran in the two months left in its tenure to help lay the groundwork for direct diplomatic engagement with Iran, which Obama promised during the presidential campaign.
It also comes amid intensified jockeying among various factions and individuals for key Middle East-related posts in the incoming administration. Amb. Dennis Ross, an Obama adviser who led peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians during the Clinton years, is reportedly campaigning hard, with the backing of the so-called "Israel Lobby", to be appointed as special envoy to Iran and the wider region.
Ross, who, along with several other hawkish Obama advisers, was a charter member of United Against Nuclear Iran, signed a recent report drafted by two prominent neo-conservatives which argued that a deterrence would not work against a nuclear-capable Iran because of the "Islamic Republic's extremist ideology".
The report, sponsored by the "Bipartisan Policy Centre", also argued that the new president should make clear from his first day in office that he was prepared to militarily attack Iran with force if, in the face of escalating U.S. and international pressure on Tehran, it did not give up enriching uranium on its soil.
During his campaign, Obama stated on several occasions that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons was "unacceptable" and that he would never take military options off the table to prevent it. He has also sponsored legislation to tighten economic sanctions against Iran and companies that do business with it.
At the same time, however, he has repeatedly stressed that he would engage Tehran diplomatically without preconditions, even at the presidential level. At least one adviser has suggested that Obama would offer "more carrots" -- even as it seeks strong sanctions -- as part of a bargaining process than the Bush administration has considered.
The Experts' Statement, however, argues that a punitive sanctions approach, let alone a military attack, has been and is likely to continue to be counter-productive. "U.S. efforts to manage Iran through isolation, threats and sanctions have been tried intermittently for more than two decades," according to the group, which was also co-chaired by Columbia University Prof. Gary Sick, who dealt with Iran on the National Security Council staff of former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan.
"In that time they have not solved any major problem in U.S.-Iran relations, and have made most of them worse," it noted.
"Threats are not cowing Iran and the current regime in Tehran is not in imminent peril," it went on. "The United States needs to stop the provocations and take a long-term view with this regime, as it did with the Soviet Union and China."
The statement said retaining the threat of tougher sanctions if negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme fail is justifiable, but that the nuclear issue should be raised as part of a broader U.S.-Iran opening and that would include "the credible prospect of security assurances and specific, tangible benefits such as the easing of U.S. sanctions in response to positive policy shifts in Iran."
The new administration should also appoint a special envoy both to deal "comprehensively and constructively with Iran (as opposed to trading accusations) and explore its willingness to work with the United States on issues of common concern", particularly "in shaping the future of Iraq, Afghanistan and the region". It notes that the U.S. and Iran both support the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and face "common enemies" in Afghanistan in the Taliban, al Qaeda, and drug traffickers.
Dobbins, Bush's special envoy for Afghanistan and currently director of the International Security programme at the RAND Corporation, has repeatedly praised Iran's cooperation with U.S. efforts in ousting the Taliban and al Qaeda after 9/11 and setting up the government of President Hamid Karzai there.
The statement also stressed that a "U.S. rapprochement with Iran, even an opening of talks, could help in dealing with Arab-Israeli issues," given Tehran's influence with Palestinian Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah.
The statement also addressed certain "myths" which it said had been used by U.S. hawks to discourage engagement, including the notion that the religious nature of the regime renders it undeterrable and that its leadership is implacably opposed to the United States and determined to "wipe Israel off the map".
Citing specific examples of Tehran's foreign policy pragmatism over past two decades, including its secret arms trade with Israel and active support for the U.S. in Afghanistan, the statement asserts that Iran's "recent history...makes crystal clear that national self-preservation and regional influence -- not some quest for martyrdom in the service of Islam -- is Iran's main foreign policy goal."
It also cited declarations by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that Iran will not attack Israel unless it is attacked first and that "the day that relations with America prove beneficial for the Iranian nation, I will be the first one to approve of that."
While Iran's nuclear programme gives "cause for deep concern," its specific intent -- as a source of national pride, as a bargaining chip in broader negotiations with the U.S., as a deterrent against the U.S. or Israel, or as a weapon to support aggressive goals -- remains murky, according to the statement.
"The only effective way to illuminate -- and constructively alter -- Iran's intentions is through skillful and careful diplomacy. History shows that sanctions alone are unlikely to succeed, and a strategy limited to escalating threats or attacking Iran is likely to backfire -- creating or hardening a resolve to acquire nuclear weapons while inciting a backlash against us throughout the region," it said.
Besides the three co-chairs, the group's members included Emile Nakhleh, a retired senior CIA officer who served as director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Programme; Hadi Ghaemi, coordinator of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran; and academic specialists on Iran, Shi'a Islam, and nuclear proliferation and technology.

U.S.: Obama Advised to Forgo More Threats to Iran

The Truth Seeker - Myth of Iran wiping Israel off the map dispelled

 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due to address the UN General Assembly in New York on September 23. The following is an exclusive Press TV interview with the president on his message for the world. He also sheds light on several controversial issues.
Press TV: Mr. President, What part of your agenda or your message to the United Nations or the American people can you share with us before your trip?
Ahmadinejad: In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. I am going to attend this important international forum to hear from others and also to offer arguments, our viewpoints and positions and to have dialogue and conversations with different people there.
And the recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency is very clear. It has been confirmed that there is no diversion in our activities, and there is no negative point in this report.
Washington has lately claimed that the case is outside the purview of the IAEA and that the IAEA does not have the mandate to examine such issues. But we have said okay, legally speaking, this has no legal basis. The last part of Mr. ElBaradei's report has no legal basis, but the part that is based on the law and the rules of the IAEA is very clear. They have confirmed many times now that Iran has shown no diversion in its activities.
We are going through a very natural process, and some people are causing a lot of noises and a huge hullabaloo, which is not really important. All this not only has no legal value, it also has no propaganda value because they are moving from a position of illegality and there is no room in international relations to do such things. It will only isolate them.
What we are saying is very clear. Our activities are totally legal and peaceful; we are exercising our inalienable rights and do not want to violate the rights of any other people. Our activities are very transparent� We have the greatest amount of cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog and have provided all the necessary information to the IAEA.
My message to the people of the United States is very clear as well. It is a message to all world nations� We believe that the relations that prevail in the world today are cruel relations. There are gaps and distance between nations. Through propaganda, gaps are created in order to fill the pockets of wealthy people and capitalists with more money and power. We oppose these cruel and brutal relationships.
We want friendship for all world nations. We have respect for all nations and we believe that this minority, this bullying minority� If they step aside and give the affairs of the world to the nations of the world, people can live together in peace and will not have so many problems. We are friends of all world nations.
The people of the United States do not have any problem with the people of Iran. Of course, there is a one-sided propaganda network that is putting a lot of pressure on the people of the US to make things very difficult. It does not allow the people of the United States to express their views and to prevail; we hope these pressures will be removed.
Today the image, the personality and the resources of the people of the United States are being used to support criminal elements, those who occupy other countries. We do not believe that the people of the United States are satisfied with the sorts of things that are taking place.
No nation wants to support the killers. The Zionist regime is a regime that will disappear. The reason and philosophy of their existence no longer exists. This regime is based on a wrong foundation and with the passage of time and by themselves� their personality is becoming clear - they are not just. The regime will not gain legitimacy with the passage of time. They themselves know this.
Press TV: Alright, you just mentioned Israel and you called it the Zionist regime. A lot of controversy surrounds this issue. On the eve of your trip, the Jewish lobby is at work protesting, but behind the scenes stronger hands are at work to lobby each and every important politician in New York for both sanctions and a possible military attack against Iran. I want to know about this issue and the controversy of Israel being wiped off the map. A lot of controversy is surrounding that� was it a mistranslation, not a mistranslation? Mike Wallace had this interview with you a couple of years back. One part of it, a major part of it, was edited out. Your idea on the destruction of the state of Israel and Israel should be wiped off the map? The part you talked about democracy and referendum?
Ahmadinejad: We said we do not accept this regime and the solution that we are presenting is a humanitarian solution. It is a very clear solution. We are saying that the Palestinians should decide their destiny themselves; they should choose their own political system. What we are saying is very clear. We believe that the people whose ancestors have lived in that land and own the land although they have been deported and expelled and are under occupation, we are saying that they are the ones�.
Press TV: So you did not threaten to wipe Israel off the map as an Iranian leader? That we will wipe Israel off the map?
Ahmadinejad: No. We say that the people of Palestine should have rights and when the people of Palestine exercise this right, this will happen. Where is the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union has been wiped off the map. What happened to the Soviet Union? The decision of the people, the vote of the people. When the people of the Soviet Union, the Russian people, were allowed to decide to take charge of their destiny, the Soviet Union disappeared.
The Zionist regime is an artificial regime� a fictitious regime. You brought people from different parts of the world and you have built this state. No, that cannot last, it is not sustainable. If they do not listen to our solution, this will happen one day.
Press TV: Now this issue of a fabricated regime. There have been reports that they are planning airstrikes on Iran. Every single day we are hearing reports that Israel is getting frustrated with our nuclear program�.
Ahmadinejad: They are really too small to be a threat to Iran. They should protect themselves. They are not even able to protect themselves. The position of Iran is very clear. The capacity and the power of the people of Iran is very clear. The people of Iran are able to defend their territorial integrity and their national sovereignty. They know that Iran is a great country, an important power� a humanitarian power. The people of Iran know how to defend themselves and such propaganda has no impact on the people of Iran. The era of making threats is over.
Press TV: Let's talk about your UN trip. Everyone is talking about reform in the United Nations, including the new president of the General Assembly that surprised the world with harsh comments, anti-American comments. He talked about imperialism. He talked about the addiction to war�
Ahmadinejad: You should not limit me to comments by one person.
Press TV: Everyone is talking about reforms. What reforms do you do you see fit for the United Nations? What reforms are you seeking? I understand Iran is vying with Japan over a seat in the Security Council? That seat will be vacant in January.
Ahmadinejad: You see, the United Nations should be really truly united nations�a universal organization. It should not be an organization that belongs to certain circles and certain powers. All nations of the world should have the right to vote and to decide and democratic relationships should prevail over all organs of the United Nations. Now, there are people going to the General Assembly meeting and have to get permission from the government of the United States. How is the United Nations democratic?! The United Nations should be in an independent, impartial country, so that everybody can travel there without any limitations. This is a forum for exchanges views. It is a collection of the viewpoints of different nations. That's why we need to reform, to overhaul the whole United Nations.
Press TV: Are there going to be any events similar to what you did last year in Columbia on your itinerary.
Ahmadinejad: We have arranged some meetings. There is going to be this interfaith dialogue and various meetings. We are going to have a meeting with some students.
Press TV: One last question. What do you expect to gain from this perhaps last trip and your fourth to the UN?
Ahmadinejad: I am only carrying out my responsibility. My duty is to present the message of friendship to the entire humanity. Now, what will happen� I do not know.

The Truth Seeker - Myth of Iran wiping Israel off the map dispelled

Ken Gude: Despite the advice of foreign policy experts, John McCain is still against negotiating with Iran | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

 

Experts agree the next US president should negotiate with Iran – but it's not a move John McCain would be willing to make

Comments (28)

• 
  • Monday November 03 2008 20.00 GMT

 

Iran's nuclear programme has returned to the forefront of the US presidential campaign as John McCain tries desperately to scare voters in Florida and Pennsylvania from choosing Barack Obama. The Democratic candidate would, he says, negotiate with Iran over its nuclear programme. The Bush administration has saddled the next president with a bankrupt strategy and a crisis rapidly spinning out of control. Remarkably, there is widespread agreement among foreign policy experts of both parties that changing course and negotiating with Iran early in the next administration is essential to prevent a conflict that could engulf the entire Middle East. The barrage of slime from McCain hides the fact that he has no strategy to resolve the standoff and prevent the coming military confrontation. A vote for John McCain is literally a vote for war with Iran.

Whichever candidate wins tomorrow will inherit a crisis of passive appeasement of Iran's nuclear ambitions. The Bush administration sought an economic stranglehold on Iran through UN sanctions but soaring energy prices wiped out any impact of the weak measures it attained at the security council. It faired no better in its attempts at political isolation, and far from halting Tehran's nuclear drive, the complete failure of the Bush administration's strategy has allowed Iran to accelerate its uranium enrichment programme bringing them much closer to a nuclear capability.

Making the task more difficult, the next president will take over during a period of dramatic political transition in the key countries in the conflict. Not only will there be a new administration in Washington, but there will also be a new government in Israel after fresh elections there in February or March and Iran has its own presidential elections in May. Throughout this period, Iranian nuclear scientists will continue to make progress on the uranium enrichment programme.

Iran is still likely several years from a nuclear weapon, but that is not the only timeline at work and there is a real urgency to change the dynamic surround their nuclear programme. As Iran's uranium enrichment has continued unabated during the Bush administration and new concerns emerge about the scope of its nuclear programme, even moderate Israeli officials are growing increasingly worried about Iran reaching a level of nuclear knowledge that is impossible to turn back. That threshold could be reached in little more than a year even though Iran would still be years from a functioning weapon. Unless the current trajectory of the crisis changes dramatically before that window closes, the Israelis may be compelled to act and fighting could spread across the entire region. Whatever one thinks about the merits of such an action, the next American president must do all that he can to prevent it.

Negotiating without preconditions is the only pathway to a breakthrough that could prevent an Israeli attack. Requiring that your adversary accede to all of your demands before negotiations can begin is simply an excuse not to negotiate. Barack Obama has pledged that he would drop the ultimatum that Iran suspend its nuclear programme before he would meet with the Iranian leader to conduct negotiations to designed to bring Iran's nuclear development to a halt. This shift would allow senior officials from both countries to engage in preparatory meetings to establish a framework for negotiations and the parameters and likelihood of any agreement. This strategy is no guarantee of success, but Obama knows that America's current strategy is an abject failure and that we need to try something different, and he is not alone.

A presidential election campaign is a terrible place to look for consensus across party lines, but that's just what has been happening among foreign and security policy experts of both parties on the question of negotiating with our adversaries. Recently, five former secretaries of state, three Republicans and two Democrats, endorsed talking with Tehran. So has the defence secretary, Robert Gates. Even the new Centcom commander General David Petraeus said last month that "you have to talk to your enemies".

The only one left out is John McCain, who bizarrely seems to think that too much presidential diplomacy caused the current impasse. Earlier in the campaign he derisively said of Obama's proposal that "many believe all we need to do to end the nuclear programmes of hostile governments is to have our presidents sit down with leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran, as if we haven't tried talking to these governments repeatedly over the past two decades". McCain's latest decent into dishonour warns that nothing less than a second holocaust could occur if Obama prevails on Tuesday.

All of McCain's incendiary charges hide the fact that, just like his secret plan to kill Osama bin Laden, he has not given any indication what he would do differently from the woefully inadequate efforts of the Bush administration to stop Iran's nuclear programme. After the catastrophe of the Bush administration, we do not have the luxury of repeating the same mistakes. Barack Obama promises the chance of averting disaster. John McCain only promises war.

Ken Gude: Despite the advice of foreign policy experts, John McCain is still against negotiating with Iran | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The Jakarta Post - Students up with int'l issues for mock UN nuclear debate

 

Students up with int'l issues for mock UN nuclear debate

Arghea Desafti Hapsari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

While many high school students prefer comics and other light reading materials, delegates at a mock UN conference keep up to date with the latest international issues.

Greta Aprilia Ali from Sekolah Pelita Harapan Cikarang said her team as U.S. delegates researched recent issues in other countries in the lead-up to the UN General Assembly simulation.

"Not only did we search the Internet to gather facts to support our argument, but we also consulted teachers and listened to their opinion on the U.S. and other countries," the twelfth grader told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

As a result, she and her team were one of the most vocal groups at the conference held at the Bina Nusantara (Binus) school in Simprug, South Jakarta, earning them third place.

The UN General Assembly simulation is part of the Blue Feather Interschool Competition held by the Binus School Simprug. The one-day conference took on the theme, "To Create a Better and Peaceful World through Responsible Use of Nuclear Weapons".

Eight schools around Jakarta sent a total of 12 teams of three. Each team represented one country: China, Indonesia, Pakistan, North Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Republic of Iran, Libya, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

These countries were selected by the Foreign Ministry because they had the most interest in the nuclear issue.

Tatu Hutami, a twelfth grader from SMU 78, said her team of Iran delegates had another strategy to win the competition. They researched the international laws on nuclear programs and based their arguments on these laws.

"We think international affairs have a lot to do with international laws. When a country wants to do something (that affects other countries), it must abide by these laws. Only when they fail to comply with these laws, then they can be prosecuted," Tatu said.

She and her team argued that Iran's nuclear program did not contravene any international laws.

Her argument won the favor of the judges and earned them first place. Tatu herself won best speaker.

Greta said the event taught her how to build precise and strong arguments.

"I've always been weak at debating, so I learned a great deal from this event," she said.

Franz from SMU 78 acting as German delegates said he could now imagine what it feels like to be an ambassador.

"I also know why other countries have interests of their own, and to get what we want we have to use diplomacy."

Students learn leadership, negotiation and problem solving sills through activities like the UN simulation, Carolina Tinangon from the Foreign Ministry said.

"An event like this is very beneficial for students. They learn marketing, public speaking and to how to influence people."

She said she hoped similar events would be held more often in the future.

"UN simulations are not new to Indonesia, but most of them are held for college students. I hope to see this kind of event for younger students."

The Jakarta Post - Students up with int'l issues for mock UN nuclear debate

Friedman: Sleepless in Tehran - International Herald Tribune

 

Friedman: Sleepless in Tehran

By Thomas L. Friedman

Published: October 29, 2008

I've always been dubious about Barack Obama's offer to negotiate with Iran - not because I didn't believe that it was the right strategy, but because I didn't believe we Americans had enough leverage to succeed. And negotiating in the Middle East without leverage is like playing baseball without a bat.

Well, if Obama does win the presidency, my gut tells me that he's going to get a chance to negotiate with the Iranians - with a bat in his hand.

Have you seen the reports that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is suffering from exhaustion? It's probably because he is not sleeping at night. I know why. Watching oil prices fall from $147 a barrel to $57 is not like counting sheep. It's the kind of thing that gives an Iranian autocrat bad dreams.

After all, it was the collapse of global oil prices in the early 1990s that brought down the Soviet Union. And Iran today is looking very Soviet to me.

As Vladimir Mau, president of Russia's Academy of National Economy, pointed out to me, it was the long period of high oil prices followed by sharply lower oil prices that killed the Soviet Union. The spike in oil prices in the 1970s deluded the Kremlin into overextending subsidies at home and invading Afghanistan abroad - and then the collapse in prices in the '80s helped bring down that overextended empire.

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(Incidentally, this was exactly what happened to the shah of Iran: 1) Sudden surge in oil prices. 2) Delusions of grandeur. 3) Sudden contraction of oil prices. 4) Dramatic downfall. 5) You're toast.)

Under Ahmadinejad, Iran's mullahs have gone on a domestic subsidy binge - using oil money to cushion the prices of food, gasoline, mortgages and to create jobs - to buy off the Iranian people. But the one thing Ahmadinejad couldn't buy was real economic growth. Iran today has 30 percent inflation, 11 percent unemployment and huge underemployment with thousands of young college grads, engineers and architects selling pizzas and driving taxis. And now with oil prices falling, Iran - just like the Soviet Union - is going to have to pull back spending across the board. Fasten your seat belts.

The UN has imposed three rounds of sanctions against Iran since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005 because of Iran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment. But high oil prices minimized those sanctions; collapsing oil prices will now magnify those sanctions. If prices stay low, there is a good chance Iran will be open to negotiating over its nuclear program with the next U.S. president.

That is a good thing because Iran also funds Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and the anti-U.S. Shiites in Iraq. If America wants to get out of Iraq and leave behind a decent outcome, plus break the deadlocks in Lebanon and Israel-Palestine, it needs to end the Cold War with Iran. Possible? I don't know, but the collapse of oil prices should give America a shot.

But let's use U.S. leverage smartly and not exaggerate Iran's strength. Just as I believe that America should drop the reward for the capture of Osama bin Laden - from $50 million to one penny, plus an autographed picture of Dick Cheney - we need to deflate the Iranian mullahs as well. Let them chase us.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, compares it to bargaining for a Persian carpet in Tehran. "When you go inside the carpet shop, the first thing you are supposed to do is feign disinterest," he explains. "The last thing you want to suggest is 'We are not leaving without that carpet.' 'Well,' the dealer will say, 'if you feel so strongly about it ..."'

The other lesson from the carpet bazaar, says Sadjadpour, "is that there is never a price tag on any carpet. The dealer is not looking for a fixed price, but the highest price he can get - and the Iran price is constantly fluctuating depending on the price of oil." Let's now use that to our advantage.

Barack Hussein Obama would present another challenge for Iran's mullahs. Their whole rationale for being is that they are resisting a hegemonic American power that wants to keep everyone down. Suddenly, next week, Iranians may look up and see that the country their leaders call "The Great Satan" has just elected "a guy whose middle name is the central figure in Shiite Islam - Hussein - and whose last name - Obama - when transliterated into Farsi, means 'He is with us,"' said Sadjadpour.

Iran is ripe for deflating. Its power was inflated by the price of oil and the popularity of its leader, who was cheered simply because he was willing to poke America with a stick. But as a real nation-building enterprise, the Islamic Revolution in Iran has been an abject failure.

"When you ask young Arabs which leaders in the region they most admire," said Sadjadpour, they will usually answer the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. "When you ask them where in the Middle East would you most like to live," he added, "the answer is usually socially open places like Dubai or Beirut. The Islamic Republic of Iran is never in the top 10."

Friedman: Sleepless in Tehran - International Herald Tribune

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

 

IAEA misses the mark on Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
In his latest report to the United Nations, Mohamad ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) , has cited "substantial progress" in clarifying questions about Iran's nuclear program, stating unequivocally that the agency "has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran".
This admission by the UN's atomic agency naturally raises serious questions about the legitimacy of coercive UN sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt nuclear activities that are completely legal from the standpoint of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The legal and transparent nature of Iran's uranium-enrichment program in effect renders moot the UN's demand, and the sooner the UN backtracks on its unjustified demands the less the harm to its image.

There is still the residual issue of "alleged studies" in the past and in the same report cited above ElBaradei expressed confidence that an "arrangement can be developed which would enable the agency to clarify the remaining issues". Clearly, this does not sound like an alarm bell, heard ever so loudly in the US and Israel, about Iran's imminent leap to the nuclear weapons club.
However, the biggest hurdle on the path of normalization of Iran's nuclear file is the IAEA's demand that Iran should somehow prove "the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities". Historically, the only other country subjected to such a demand by the IAEA was Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and one would think that the agency would have drawn an appropriate lesson from that major fiasco.
"I regret that we are still not in a position to achieve full clarity regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran," ElBaradei stated before the UN General Assembly last week, thus warranting the legitimate question: isn't this beyond the purview of the IAEA's standards and, more specifically, the IAEA's inspection and verification agreement with Iran, to demand that Iran proves a negative?
What the IAEA needs to do is to stick to its own rules, instead of devising ad hoc new regulations or, for that matter, lavishing expanded new responsibilities on itself not embedded in the agency's technical mandate.
ElBaradei also calls for a new IAEA-supervised nuclear fuel bank, saying that "ultimately all existing enrichment facilities should be converted from national to multinational control". He then adds that "this is not going to happen overnight".
The fact is that it is a 90% sure bet that it will never happen and the big powers - the US, China and Russia in particular - will never consent to ceding authority over their nuclear fuel cycles to "multinational" hands.
Nor is Iran going to reveal its conventional military secrets by allowing the IAEA to pry into its missile technology, simply because someone in Washington or Tel Aviv came up with the idea that by concocting some evidence about Iran's missiles the Iranians would be checkmated at nuclear chess, since their refusal to let IAEA inspectors inside their missile systems would be interpreted as a sign they are hiding nuclear secrets.
ElBaradei insists that his intention is pure and is not meant to "pry" into Iran's conventional military secrets and, again, assures the Iranians that there is a way to examine Iran's missile system without risking the confidentiality of its military secrets. That is patently absurd. There is no such possibility, as if the US and Israeli intelligence would not be clamoring to get their hands on the vital information gained by the IAEA inspectors once they poked their noses into Iran's conventional missile program.
Again, history is relevant. The IAEA has a failed report card with respect to Iraq, when in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq the world learned that the US used the IAEA's data to justify its illegal invasion. Is ElBaradei, who is stepping down next year, in a position to fully guarantee that none of his inspectors will cooperate with Iran's adversaries and pass on information deemed vital for those currently planning military action against Iran?
He cannot, and he should stop embarrassing himself and his agency by imposing on Iran an unreasonable demand that could well backfire against the IAEA, and indeed the entire non-proliferation regime, in the event the Iraq fiasco is repeated with respect to Iran.
Already, there are reports of internal fissures within the agency with respect to Iran, reflected in the fact that some agency inspectors boycotted the last presentation by ElBaradei's deputy, Olli Heinonen, regarding the evidence on Iran's "alleged studies". Heinonen has displayed an uncanny propensity to adopt at face value any tidbit of disinformation on Iran and, as a result, it would be nothing short of a national security risk for Iran to comply with the IAEA's unreasonable demand cited above.
Lest we forget, when the IAEA approached Iran in the spring of 2007 and proposed a comprehensive work plan to tackle all outstanding issues, the agency did not list the "alleged studies" as one of its "outstanding issues". (The "alleged studies" relate to information allegedly obtained from a laptop computer that was taken out of Iran and handed to US intelligence in 2004.)
Those six issues have now been effectively dealt with and the IAEA has closed the book on them, that is, considers them "no longer outstanding" per the IAEA's February 2008 report. In terms of that agreement, Iran's nuclear file should have been placed out of the current exceptional or emergency status and treated as "routine", but that has not happened because of the "alleged studies".
Yet ElBaradei has admitted, in his August 2008 report, that the agency has not detected any diversion of nuclear material toward those "alleged studies".
The longer ElBaradei insists on his extra-legal demands from Iran the more the world community loses confidence in his fairness, objectivity and the ability of the atomic agency to remain insulated from big-power manipulation.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs