Nuclear proliferation | Why not just blow your whistle? | Economist.com

 

"Nothing Mr ElBaradei's men say looks able yet to dispel the cloud of Iranian secrecy "

Feb 28th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Its latest Iran report highlights the problems of the UN's atomic watchdog

APElBaradei: please elaborate

SO IS Iran trying to build the bomb or not? Iran says it is not. Israel says it is. America's intelligence people say it was trying to until 2003 but probably stopped—and is still keeping its options open. Wouldn't it be splendid if an independent referee, with full access to the evidence, could rule for sure one way or another?

Such a body does exist. But the latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), published on February 22nd, shows how tentative the UN's nuclear watchdog must sometimes be. Iran took the report as proof of its innocence. America and several European countries drew the opposite inference. They say that although the IAEA has still found no clear evidence of a bomb programme, the report leaves ample grounds for suspicion.

A look at the report's careful equivocations shows why it can be used as ammunition by both sides. Of the “outstanding” technical issues between Iran and the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency's director-general, claims his people have clarified all but one. But (there is said to be tension between the director-general and his safeguards experts) that is not quite what the report actually says. To anyone of a suspicious cast of mind, these “clarifications” leave something to be desired.

Why, for example, did Iran possess a 15-page document describing among other things how to machine enriched uranium metal into hemispheres, which are components of nuclear weapons? Iran's explanation is that the nuclear smuggling network run by Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan had sent it this document in 1987, along with other documentation on centrifuges Iran had received, but that Iran had not asked for it. The agency says it is still waiting for further details on this from Pakistan.

In the case of other issues that Dr ElBaradei now calls clarified, what the report actually says is that Iran has provided explanations that are “consistent with” (or “not inconsistent with”) information available to the agency, but for which it is still “seeking corroboration”, even though it considers the question no longer outstanding “at this stage”. That is the formula the report applies, for example, to Iran's explanation for having conducted research on polonium-210, which can be useful for triggering nuclear weapons. This, say the Iranians (with supporting documents) was just basic science carried out at the personal initiative of the project leader.

The IAEA's ability to be more definitive is hampered by limited access to the evidence. Having run a secret nuclear programme for nearly two decades, Iran suffers from what Mr ElBaradei delicately calls a “confidence deficit”, which he urges it to correct by embracing fully the so-called “additional protocol”, giving his inspectors the right to a much closer look at its nuclear doings. But the agency's knowledge is also determined by the amount of information that foreign intelligence services choose to offer—or withhold.

In mid-February the Americans at last gave the IAEA permission to show Iran a batch of evidence, much of it reportedly recovered from an Iranian laptop, suggesting that it had conducted work on uranium conversion, missile-warhead design and high-explosives testing—all possibly related to nuclear weapons. This, says the IAEA's latest report, “is a matter of serious concern”. But on being shown the new evidence before the agency's report was compiled, Iran called the allegations baseless and the supporting documents forged.

The world's supposedly independent nuclear referee, in short, is stumped for the present. It has verified that none of the nuclear material that Iran has already declared has been diverted for a weapons programme. It has received some “consistent” explanations of previously fishy-looking activities. It says it knows more than it did about Iran's programme, but that it has not yet received complete information. And now it has to deal with an impasse over the evidence from America that Iran dismisses as a fabrication.

Iran says it would sign the additional protocol as Mr ElBaradei asks if the UN Security Council got off its back and its nuclear file was returned to the IAEA to handle alone. Fat chance. Having ignored two resolutions ordering it to stop enriching uranium, Iran now faces the prospect of a third. Nothing Mr ElBaradei's men say looks able yet to dispel the cloud of Iranian secrecy and Western suspicion that hovers over Iran's nuclear programme.

Nuclear proliferation | Why not just blow your whistle? | Economist.com

West must build on success of Iran-IAEA work plan - US academics

 

West must build on success of Iran-IAEA work plan - US academics

London, Feb 27, IRNA - Two American academics on Wednesday praised the success of Iran cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and suggested that the west should build upon this rather than seeking more sanctions.

The IAEA process, particularly last year's agreed work plan "is working," said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations and Joseph Cirincione, the incoming president of the Ploughshares Fund to prevent the threat of nuclear weapons.

The investigation and inspections have, in effect, "resolved many of the outstanding historical questions" about Iran's nuclear program, Takeyh and Cirincione said.

In an article for the Financial Times, they said that the latest IAEA report accepts that the discovery of traces of highly-enriched uranium on machinery, which was one of the main issues, came from contamination in Pakistan - the country that reportedly sold Iran the machines.

"Similarly, the agency accepts Iran's evidence that equipment it acquired, such as balancing machines and magnets that could be used for nuclear weapons research, is now being used for legitimate civilian purposes," the two academics said.

The IAEA, they added, was "also satisfied that experiments with polonium-210 (that can be used as a trigger for an explosive nuclear chain reaction) were not part of a larger weapon project." Their joint article suggested that the evidence to date indicated similar findings by the US National Intelligence Estimate, which was belatedly published last November that gave Iran a clean bill of health.

Takeyh and Cirincione criticized the "popular parlour game in Washington's corridors of power and European chancelleries to deride Mohamed ElBaradei as a quixotic bureaucrat determined to subvert the western strategy of restraining Iran's nuclear program."

The latest report suggesting progress is "quietly disparaged by the Bush administration" but the that ElBaradei's critics miss "is that he is judiciously achieving the goals that they seemingly desire." The two American academics said that the path now should be to the success of the cooperation with Iran and to deepen it by offering Iran a chance for a resumed relationship.

"Instead of sanctions, the west should appreciate that a nuanced diplomacy of reconciliation could both regulate Iran's nuclear programme and help stabilize the Middle East," they proposed.

West must build on success of Iran-IAEA work plan - US academics

Kuwaiti paper: Mughniyeh hit 'only first step' | Jerusalem Post

 

A Kuwaiti newspaper has quoted unnamed Israeli sources as saying the Mossad killed Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus on February 12.

Slain Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh.
Photo: AP

"The assassination of Hizbullah arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh was only the first in a string of assassinations that Israel is planning to carry out against senior figures of Hizbullah, Hamas and perhaps even Iran," Kuwait's Al-Jarida newspaper quoted Israeli sources as saying on Wednesday.

The paper said the sources did not rule out the possibility that "the Mossad will move to stage two and target the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards - without waiting for Hizbullah's response to the assassination of Mughniyeh."

"Those who assassinated Mughniyeh knew well enough that they had hit the highest-ranking coordinator between Iran and its proxies around the globe," the sources said. "Those who did this understand the implications of such an operation."

According to the sources, "The Mughniyeh assassination was a link in a long chain of operations. After Mughniyeh there will be a second stage and a third stage, which will target Hizbullah and Hamas. This could prompt Iran to take action, which will force Israel to target it."

The sources reiterated a claim made in a Sunday Times report earlier this week that the successful killing of Mughniyeh had clinched the government's decision to extend the term of Mossad head Meir Dagan.

Ahmadinejad listens to Iran's Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, during a military parade in Teheran. According to Al Jarida, Jafari could be next in line on the Mossad's hit list.
Photo: AP

"This operation restored the Mossad's status and its dignity," the Israeli sources were quoted as saying, "that, and the bombing of the Syrian installation in Dir al-Zur last year." On September 6, the IAF reportedly destroyed a suspected nuclear site deep in Syria.

The Prime Minister's Office declined comment, saying it had no idea who the sources were who spoke to the Kuwaiti newspaper.

On Tuesday, a senior Kuwaiti analyst was quoted by Reuters as saying that Persian Gulf nations believed Israel would strike at Iran's nuclear facilities rather than allow Teheran to attain offensive nuclear capabilities.

Sami Alfaraj, president of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies, went on to say that if Iran did acquire a nuclear bomb, Gulf states would appeal to Israel, as well as to the United States and Pakistan, to help ensure their security.

Alfaraj, who advises the Gulf Cooperation Council secretary general and Kuwait's prime minister, Foreign Ministry and National Security Bureau, said a nuclear Iran would drag nations from far beyond the Persian Gulf into an arms race.

Countries that could not build their own nuclear weapons would seek a "nuclear umbrella" - even if they had to appeal to Israel, he said.

"I believe in something on the same Iraqi [Osirak reactor] model... We are assuming in the Gulf that Israel will take it out," Alfaraj told Reuters.
In June 1981, the IAF heavily damaged the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq.

Also in Kuwait on Wednesday, a parliamentary bloc said it had expelled two of its Shi'ite lawmakers who took part in a ceremony eulogizing Mughniyeh, because they had disregarded the feelings of their fellow Kuwaitis.

Describing the fugitive Lebanese militant as a hero has sparked public outrage in a country that holds him responsible for hijacking a Kuwait Airways flight and killing two of its Kuwaiti passengers 20 years ago.

The two lawmakers remained in the legislature, although some deputies have said the two should resign from the 50-seat house.

The Popular Action bloc, which includes prominent opposition members, said it "utterly rejects and condemns" the participation of lawmakers Adnan Abdul-Samad and Ahmed Lari in Saturday's eulogy, which "bloodied the hearts" of Kuwaitis.

After the expulsions, the seven-member bloc is down to five members, including one Shi'ite deputy.

Kuwait does not have official political parties, and political positions vary according to the issue being deliberated.

At the eulogy, Abdul-Samad said there was no evidence Mughniyeh was involved in the Kuwait Airways hijacking.

The cabinet in this Sunni-dominated country has condemned the glorifying of Mughniyeh and warned it could cause civil strife. It said Monday it was taking "legal measures that would safeguard national unity."

Four lawyers have filed a complaint with the prosecution against the two parliament members, accusing them of endangering national unity and splitting Kuwaitis along sectarian lines. One of them, Dhaidan al-Mutairi, said the complaint also named other politicians who attended the eulogy gathering.

Despite repeated tensions over the circulation of tapes and books seen as insulting to Shi'ites, this small ally of Washington in the Gulf has seen no major violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites, who make up around 30 percent of its 1 million citizens.

In April, 1988, Shi'ite gunmen hijacked the jumbo jet en route from Thailand to Kuwait City. They diverted it to Iran, Cyprus and Algeria, demanding Kuwait free 17 pro-Iranian terrorists jailed for attacks in Kuwait. After a 16-day ordeal and the murder of two Kuwaiti passengers, hijackers freed the hostages and were allowed to leave Algiers.

Kuwaiti paper: Mughniyeh hit 'only first step' | Jerusalem Post

The Associated Press: US: Iran Must Confess to Nuclear Arms

 

US: Iran Must Confess to Nuclear Arms otherwise will be in violation security council and subject to attack

By GEORGE JAHN – 1 day ago

VIENNA, Austria (AP) — The U.S. on Friday demanded that Iran confess to trying to make atomic weapons, suggesting that anything short of that would doom an International Atomic Energy Agency probe of Tehran's nuclear past.

The call by Gregory L. Schulte, chief U.S. delegate to the Vienna-based IAEA, appeared to set the bar insurmountably high for the investigation by the U.N. agency's chief, Mohamed ElBaradei.

There is only about a week left before he reports on the probe's progress, and Iran has steadfastly denied ever working on a nuclear weapons program.

Schulte said the "measure for progress is whether Iran fully discloses its past weapons work and allows IAEA inspectors to verify it's halted."

"This," he told reporters, "includes explaining past work on weapons design and weaponization and the role of the Iranian military."

Schulte spoke a day after diplomats told The Associated Press that the U.S. had recently shared new intelligence on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons work. One of them also said that Washington also gave the IAEA permission to confront Iran with at least some of the evidence in an attempt to pry details out of the Islamic republic on the activities.

Tehran insists its program is intended only to produce energy and has refused U.N. demands that it suspend its uranium enrichment program — technology that can produce both fuel for nuclear reactors and the fissile material for a bomb.

The U.S. is leading the push for a third set of U.N. sanctions against Iran. A recent U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran had a clandestine weapons program but stopped working on it four years ago has hurt Washington's attempts to have the U.N. Security Council impose the new sanctions.

A March 3 meeting of the 35-nation IAEA board will evaluate ElBaradei's efforts to probe Tehran's nuclear past — including alleged attempts to make weapons. The probe was to have been completed months ago, but agency officials have privately acknowledged it could drag on even past the board meeting.

Reflecting Western dissatisfaction — and the possibility that ElBaradei's report would fall short of expectations — Britain, France and the United States have begun consulting on a resolution for the March meeting that would "draw a line in the sand" both for the IAEA chief and Iran, said a diplomat accredited to the agency.

The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue.

The last board resolution referred Iran to the U.N. Security Council in late 2006. Any new resolution would reflect frustration with Russian and Chinese opposition to tough U.N. sanctions on Iran, he said.

If ElBaradei's probe is deemed unsatisfactory, the board, through a new resolution "has to report to the Security Council that the agency has done all that it can do, and that it cannot guarantee for the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program," the diplomat said.

Iran is already under two sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, which it started developing during nearly two decades of covert nuclear activity built on illicit purchases and revealed only five years ago.

Since then, IAEA experts have uncovered activities, experiments, and blueprints and materials that point to possible efforts by Iran to create nuclear weapons, even though Tehran insists its nuclear project is peaceful.

The Associated Press: US: Iran Must Confess to Nuclear Arms

Burning issue: Should US air strikes be used to stop Iran's nuclear programme? - Scotsman.com News

 

Burning issue: Should US air strikes be used to stop Iran's nuclear programme?

By Zbigniew Brzezinski and Louis Rene Beres

NO
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US national security adviser

There are compelling reasons against a preventive air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.
First, in the absence of an imminent threat (and the Iranians are at least several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war. If undertaken without a formal congressional declaration of war, an attack would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the president. Similarly, if undertaken without the sanction of the United Nations Security Council, either alone by the United States or in complicity with Israel, it would stamp the perpetrator(s) as (an) international outlaw(s).
Second, likely Iranian reactions would significantly compound ongoing US difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps precipitate new violence by Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly elsewhere, and in all probability bog down the US in regional violence for a decade or more. Iran is a country of about 70 million people, and a conflict with it would make the misadventure in Iraq look trivial.
Third, oil prices would climb steeply, especially if the Iranians were to cut their production or seek to disrupt the flow of oil from the nearby Saudi oilfields. The world economy would be severely affected, and the United States would be blamed for it.
In short, an attack on Iran would be an act of political folly, setting in motion a progressive upheaval in world affairs.
That certainly is the lesson taught by our experiences in Vietnam and Iraq.
YES
Louis Rene Beres, professor of political science in the US
Further diplomacy has no chance of stopping Iran's nuclear programme. Neither will UN sanctions have any effect. Unless there is a timely defensive first strike at pertinent elements of Iran's expanding nuclear infrastructures, it will acquire nuclear weapons. The consequences would be intolerable and unprecedented.
A nuclear Iran would not resemble any other nuclear power. There could be no stable "balance of terror" involving that Islamic republic. Unlike nuclear threats of the Cold War, which were governed by mutual assumptions of rationality and mutual assured destruction, a world with a nuclear-armed Iran could explode at any moment. Although it might still seem

reasonable to suggest a postponement of pre-emption until Iran were more openly nuclear, the collateral costs of any such delay could be unendurable. Ideally, a diplomatic settlement with Iran could be taken seriously. But in the real world, we must compare the price of prompt pre-emptive action against Iran with the costs of both inaction and delayed military action. To be sure, all available options are apt to be injurious.
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, maintains that his country's nuclear programme is intended only to produce electricity, but there is no plausible argument or evidence to support this claim. Meanwhile, Mr Ahmadinejad's genocidal intentions towards Israel are abundantly clear.
Iran must be stopped immediately from acquiring atomic arms. Precise defensive attacks against Iran's nuclear assets would be effective – and they would be entirely legal.

Burning issue: Should US air strikes be used to stop Iran's nuclear programme? - Scotsman.com News

The Podhoretz Method - February 11, 2008 - The New York Sun

 

The Podhoretz Method

New York Sun Editorial
February 11, 2008

Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative sage, will be honored tonight at a dinner in Manhattan, where his "World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism," will be given the "Book of the Year" award by Powerline. The award carries the largest financial component of any major book award, though the Powerline Prize is given to charity in the name of the honoree; the charity is "Soldiers Angels," which sends care packages and moral support to our GIs overseas. Powerline's Scott Johnson, in announcing the Powerline Prize, quoted Mr. Podhoretz's description of his book — which, incidentally, was also one of the Sun's best books of 2007 — as "the first serious attempt to set 9/11 itself, the campaigns that have followed it in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the war of ideas it has provoked at home, into the context of the role the United States has played in the world since 1941. Seen in this light, the struggle against the forces of Islamofascism into which 9/11 plunged us reveals itself as the direct successor to the wars against the totalitarian challenges to our civilization posed by Nazism in World War II and Communism in World War III (as the cold war becomes in this scheme of things)."

As if to underline the point, a kerfuffle has been sputtering on the World Wide Web over a question Mr. Podhoretz asked in respect of the Kurds. Mr. Podhoretz asked the question five years ago at a banquet in New York honoring Robert L. Bartley of the Wall Street Journal, Bernard Lewis of Princeton, and Jeffrey Goldberg, then of the New Yorker. Mr. Goldberg, a marvelous reporter, was being saluted for a dispatch from Kurdistan that had helped light the way for American entry into the Battle of Iraq. Mr. Goldberg had just come in from Northern Iraq and spoke about Kurdistan. In a tour d'horizon of the Middle East in the January/February number of the Atlantic, Mr. Goldberg related that after the event, Mr. Podhoretz asked him, "What's a Kurd, anyway?" Mr. Podhoretz, in Mr. Goldberg's account, "seemed authentically bewildered." As it happens, we were either in the same or a similar conversation with Mr. Podhoretz at the same banquet, and we took him not as being ignorant of the Kurdish question; after all, Commentary during his years as editor in chief contained plenty of references to Kurdistan. We took him to be curious as to how Mr. Goldberg would answer a question of ethnography that has never been resolved.

Basic questions are what one might call the Podhoretz Method, and we predict that generations from now, journalists will study his knack for — his insistence on — pressing the simplest seeming, most basic questions as if each were fresh and open to new implications. The Podhoretz Method is one for our moment, too, what with our country at a crossroads and in the midst of a presidential election that for the first time in decades appears it will involve neither a presidential nor vice presidential incumbent. It may well shape up as a contest between, on the one hand, the Republican who, in Senator McCain, has been most determined to stick with the fight and most outspoken in warning of the consequences of retreat and, on the other hand, a Democratic nominee, in Senators Clinton or Obama, who either regrets going into the Battle of Iraq or opposed it from the start. It is a time when, more than ever, we need sages like Norman Podhoretz to ask basic questions, and deliver basic answers, which no doubt explains why so many — including Secretary of State Kissinger and Mark Steyn — will be crowding into the Four Seasons as Mr. Podhoretz is honored this evening.

The Podhoretz Method - February 11, 2008 - The New York Sun

When Kissinger Met the Bloggers - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

 

February 12, 2008,  3:28 pm

When Kissinger Met the Bloggers

By Jennifer 8. Lee

It was a bit like the great-grandson having a party for the patriarch. On Monday night, the six-year-old conservative blog Power Line gathered a group of luminaries — including Henry A. Kissinger, William Kristol and Paul D. Wolfowitz (with his companion, Shaha Ali Riza, in tow) — to honor Norman Podhoretz with a book award.

It was the kind of crowd that applauds when a speaker calls for military action against Iran. Some other highlights: There were calls to fight “Islamofascism” and praise for John McCain’s stance on the Iraq war. Mr. Podhoretz predicted that George W. Bush’s presidency would one day be held in the same high esteem as Harry S. Truman’s. Mr. Kissinger, perhaps in deference to his hosts, discussed digital media for a bit but admitted he didn’t know what a blog was.

Power Line is a blog that drew national attention for helping to hasten the departure of Dan Rather from “CBS Evening News” in the debate over the authenticity of documents over President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. The award, for Mr. Podhoretz’s “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” was $25,000 — more money than the National Book Critics Circle Award or the Pulitzer, the bloggers noted.

Mr. Podhoretz, a former editor-in-chief of Commentary and a founder of the neoconservative movement, said he would donate the money to Soldier’s Angels, a nonprofit group that helps members of the military. (Where does a blog get money like that, City Room wondered. The answer: From an anonymous donor, where else?)

With the attendance of contributors and editors from National Review, The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the dinner was a merging of the old and new conservative media establishment — perhaps too new for some people’s metabolism. (We should note that at least one blog — Gateway Pundit – live-blogged from the event.)

As Mr. Kissinger said in his remarks: “I don’t know what a blog is. I don’t know how to find a blog.” His computer, he said, is used to read newspapers. (Though the blog/newspaper line is becoming more blurred over time, City Room notes. The most e-mailed list of The Times often includes items from the newspaper and its blogs.)

Mr. Kissinger said he was skeptical about the digitalization of media, for if his words and sentences “get shortened for cyberspace, there is no telling what will come out.” (Though, City Room points out, traditional forms of journalism are not immune from misinterpretations of Mr. Kissinger’s remarks, either.)

The world is undergoing three types of transformation, Mr. Kissinger argued: the collapse of the state system, the shift of the global center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and an emerging set of problems that can only be dealt with on a global basis. And he largely agreed with Mr. Podhoretz’s assertion that the most important global conflict, which was once the cold war, is now the struggle against terrorism by Islamic radicals.

“This is a war against radical Islam that has to be won,” said Mr. Kissinger, who was national security adviser and then secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations, from 1969 to 1977.

The country cannot try to escape the battle with Islam by withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, he said, for such a withdrawal would have “not just long-term consequences, but immediate consequences.”

(Mr. Kissinger noted that he had been asked to limit his remarks about Mr. Podhoretz to 10 minutes. “If I do, you can all say you were present at a historical event,” he said. Indeed he made the cutoff.)

Upon accepting the award, Mr. Podhoretz expanded on the themes of his book, about the need to take an aggressive military stance around the world to counter what he and other conservatives call Islamofascism, and particularly the government of Iran. He also said the United States should “stop defining torture down” to the point that meaningful interrogation of terrorism suspects becomes useless.

The audience was made up of, as one attendee put it, the kind of people who would be rounded up by the fiscal conservatives and social conservatives and told, “Look where your war got us,” should the Democrats win the White House in November. Or, in other words, it was a crowd who literally applauded at talk of military action against Iran, despite the recent intelligence assessment that says Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. (A typical comment by Mr. Podhoretz in answer to an audience question: “If we let Iran get the bomb, people will look back and say, how did they let this happen?”)

While the event was billed as the presentation of the “first annual” Power Line book award, John H. Hinderaker, one of the Power Line bloggers, said it was uncertain how the award would look in the future, who would present it, where the prize money would come from — and even if there would ever be another. This one came together mainly because the anonymous donor wanted to honor Mr. Podhoretz’s “World War IV,” Mr. Hinderaker said.

These award categories come and go, he said. “We were Time’s blog of the year for 2004,” he recalled. “There has never been another one.”

When Kissinger Met the Bloggers - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

Accept That the Regime in Iran Is Here To Stay - Forward.com"

 

Accept That the Regime in Iran Is Here To Stay
The Strategic Interest

By Yossi Alpher
Wed. Feb 06, 2008

Many respectable experts on Iran, prominent among them Americans, Israelis and Iranians-in-exile, believe they know how to replace the theocratic regime in Tehran with something far more benign and friendly.

“Another $100 million for broadcasting to Iran’s disaffected youth and women will do the trick,” says a veteran Israeli security official who served in pre-revolutionary Iran.

“Half the population are non-Persian minorities — Azeris, Kurds, Baluch, Arabs,” says an American intelligence expert. “We should incite them to rise up against the Persians.”

Once you do the math with these experts, you can only conclude that nearly 100% of Iranians are so unhappy with their nasty rulers that getting rid of the Islamic regime is a slam dunk.

I have been listening to this talk, often from the highest American and Israeli government and security officials, for nearly 30 years. Much of it is based on a persistent belief that the regime brought to power by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 is an aberration, not the “true Iran” we knew back in the Shah’s day, and hence undoubtedly illegitimate in the eyes of most Iranians.

Other advocates of regime change in Tehran base their views on opinion polls of doubtful veracity, the popularity of smuggled American movies and music clips in the salons of north Tehran, or just plain faith in the longing of everyday Iranians to doff their chadors, rebuff their religious police and embrace Western-style freedom and liberty. Wishful thinking plays a role, too: This regime is indeed dangerous, hence it simply must be overthrown, whatever the price.

Like almost any Israeli and Jew, I, too, would like to see the emergence of a more tolerant and friendly regime in Iran. Indeed, I have my own special reasons of late: A few months ago, the regime contrived to manipulate the televised “confessions” of two imprisoned Iranian intellectuals so as to implicate me and the Internet dialogue magazines I co-edit in an alleged American effort to sponsor a Ukrainian-style “orange revolution” in Tehran.

These assertions are ridiculous. Not only do I not advocate changing this regime by force or outside manipulation, I believe it is a totally unrealistic proposition. Moreover, it is harmful to pursue this approach to the Islamic Republic.

True, the Tehran regime actually encourages Western regime-change advocates by its paranoia. A regime that goes to such extreme measures to suppress dissent and concoct virtual subversives must, the outsider reasons, be extremely weak and unstable.

Yet the simplest indication that regime change efforts against Tehran don’t work is the fact that for nearly 30 years they haven’t worked.

Indeed, objectively speaking, the mullahs’ regime has been in far worse straits throughout most of the past three decades than it is today, when it is flooded with petrodollars. Iranians willingly vote in their elections, however unfair and undemocratic they may look to us. They idolize the heroes of the war in the 1980s with Iraq. And when they express dissatisfaction with their abject lack of freedoms, the regime is very skillful at suppressing dissent.

After three decades, you would think that intelligent observers and analysts would get the message: This regime, however odious, is here to stay.

When it comes to Iran, it still makes sense to keep all options on the table — as long as these don’t include regime change. If international sanctions and pressures don’t bring the Iranians to their senses regarding their nuclear plans and if military action, by the United States or Israel, is judged to have a good chance of succeeding, then it cannot be ruled out, as long as we don’t delude ourselves that it will catalyze a revolution in Tehran.

On the contrary, military achievements aside, it is likely to strengthen the regime. That is but one of the reasons why, as the Iraq Study Group report advocated a few months ago, genuine dialogue should be tried first.

Israel should not fear an American-Iranian dialogue. True, Iran poses a far greater threat to Israel than to the United States. And the Islamic Republic not only appears to covet weapons of mass destruction but is actively working with Hamas, Hezbollah and other non-state actors on Israel’s borders that, like Tehran itself, advocate Israel’s destruction.

Nonetheless, if Israeli security officials and decision-makers would abandon their unfounded hope of bringing down the Iranian regime, they could more constructively confront the remaining, more practical, options.

Iran refuses to talk to Israel, but not to the United States. Fears in Israel that Washington might somehow cut a deal with Tehran that compromises Israel’s security — or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia’s security, or Jordan’s — appear to have no foundation.

If Washington does agree to sit down at the negotiating table with Iran, it cannot permit itself to be perceived by Iranians as entering the talks with dirty hands. It cannot appropriate tens of millions of dollars to encourage Iranian civil society efforts, however admirable, that are understood by the regime as subversive, and perhaps here and there encourage dissident Iranian Baluch and Kurds to oppose the regime (while reassuring Iran with a smirk that regime-change is not official American policy), and still expect to engage the Tehran regime in dialogue on a level playing field.

Whether talking to this regime will produce useful results is, of course, not clear. But it is certainly a more pragmatic option once we rid ourselves of the pathetic notion that, with a little push, or even a big push, the regime will collapse.

If and when the theocratic regime in Tehran is replaced, its demise will, like the Khomeini revolution 30 years ago, be the result of domestic developments, not outside intervention. In the meantime, containment will be an easier task if we approach Iran without illusions.

Yossi Alpher, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, is co-editor of the bitterlemons family of online publications

Accept That the Regime in Iran Is Here To Stay - Forward.com"