Iran's Nuclear Program: Gary Sick on the US Approach after the "Secret Plant"

NEW Iran’s Nukes: Did Gates Just Complicate the Obama Position?
Iran’s “Secret” Nuclear Plant: Israel Jumps In
The Latest from Iran (27 September): Is There a Compromise Brewing?

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Gary Sick, a former official in the Carter and Reagan Administration and one of the sharpest analysts of US-Iranian relations, works through the possibilities for American strategy and tactics after Iran's revelation of its second enrichment facility. Playing devil's advocate, I would argue that the Obama Administration already had "calculations" --- since it knew of the facility --- before Tehran's declaration to the International Atomic Energy Agency. What changed was Washington's decision to go high-profile, with President Obama's public statements, on the claims of the threat posed by the second plant.

That, to me, bears out Sick's caution: "The risk for the P5+1 [US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China] negotiators is that they will be so filled with righteous indignation that they will overplay their hand" at the talks with Iran in Geneva on 1 October. And it points to an absence in Sick's evaluation: there is still no sign that Russia and China are on-board with a US-led pressure campaign against Tehran; their position is better characterised as wait-and-see.

Iran's Nuke-Talks Game-Changer

The discovery and announcement of a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility – apparently on a Revolutionary Guards base near the holy city of Qom – has changed everybody’s calculations.

For the Obama administration, it provides them the kind of leverage against Iran that previously seemed to be lacking in the run up to the October 1 start of negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany (the P5+1). The revelation of the new site brings closer than ever before the possibility that Russia, certainly, and perhaps even China, might lend their support (or at least tacitly acquiesce) to a new round of sanctions. That will make the threat of real consequences for Iran’s defiance of the United Nations Security Council much more credible and strengthen the hand of the western negotiators.

Iran, in turn, will arrive at the meeting red-faced but almost certainly not apologetic. Iran will claim that it had no obligation to announce the site until 180 days before introducing nuclear material. They notified the IAEA of that position in 2007 on the grounds that the original agreement was not ratified by the Iranian majles (parliament). Members of the IAEA will dispute this, since changes to the Safeguards Agreement are technical and do not normally require ratification.

The legal technicalities, however, are less important than the politics, and Iran will clearly be on the defensive in a way that has not been true for a long time.

Iran lied about this site. Very probably it was never intended to become public. Building a small enrichment facility in an underground chamber on a Revolutionary Guards base with no notification to any international authority, at a time when Iran was under intense pressure to respond to Security Council requests for more inspections, was clearly intended to avoid scrutiny.

Does that mean that Iran was prepared to proceed covertly with a nuclear weapon? Yes and no. If you start with the conviction, as I do, that Iran was and is determined to develop a nuclear capability that would permit it to “break out” and build a nuclear weapon if and when a decision was taken by Iran’s highest authorities, probably in response to a direct military threat to Iran by another nuclear power, then the creation of this site would serve two logical purposes.

First, it would disperse Iran’s enrichment capabilities, making it much more difficult for an enemy to destroy its nuclear program with a single strike. If the facility was unknown to the enemy, it would provide an immediate fall back capability in the event the enrichment site at Natanz was destroyed or severely damaged. It was very likely a component of Iran’s post-strike Plan B and assumed that any internal opposition to a nuclear weapon would have been removed by the military attack. As such, this facility would very likely be intended to produce a nuclear weapon.

The ambiguities of Iran’s position, which have always been present, would be amplified enormously by the existence of such a facility. The mere existence of such an undeclared site would be a constant worry for the non-proliferation community and a constant temptation to some in Iran to jump-start a weapons program. At a minimum, the availability of a covert enrichment site could shorten considerably the expected time from Iran’s moment of decision until the actual production of a weapon, since it could be launched without the knowledge of the IAEA inspectors.

The second key point, which is no less important, is that the site was apparently discovered by intelligence long before Iran made its announcement. That has to be an alarming and hugely unwelcome fact from Iran’s perspective. At a minimum, it pulls the rug out from under any Plan B, and Iran has to wonder about what western intelligence may know about any other covert activities that may exist or that might be undertaken in the future.

Both of these considerations serve to strengthen the hand of the P5+1 and to weaken Iran’s position.

The risk for the P5+1 negotiators is that they will be so filled with righteous indignation that they will overplay their hand. The purpose of the negotiations, after all, is not simply to posture, to issue impossible demands, and thereby justify moving to sanctions. Iran is plagued by political divisions at home, and this latest revelation undercuts their international arguments. But that is no guarantee that they will simply roll over and comply with whatever is demanded of them.

All of the factors that were well known before this latest discovery remain true. Sanctions have not worked after fifteen years of trying, and sanctions alone are almost certainly not going to get Iran to abandon its basic nuclear program. Sanctions are and always have been more useful as a threat or a trading card than as an effective tool in practice. Iran clearly dislikes the sanctions that are in place now, and they are anxious to avoid more in the future. So there is room for discussion. But there is no evidence whatsoever that if increased sanctions are actually applied Iran will dismantle its enrichment program. Instead, they will escalate. The reality today is the same as before: the end game of sharply increased sanctions is war.

In my view, the objective of these negotiations has also not changed. We want Iran to stop its nuclear growth and agree to much more intrusive inspections. The west should be willing to pay a price for such concessions, perhaps in the form of conditional removal of sanctions, freezing United Nations Security Council action on Iran in the interim, and inviting greater inclusion by Iran in regional affairs as Iran implements concrete steps of confidence-building. That is not easy, but neither is it an unreachable goal.

The negotiators going into the October 1 meetings are starting with a much better hand than most of them anticipated. Will they play their hand as cleverly as they have managed the pre-negotiation period?

A "Normal" Middle East: US Presses for Arab Steps on Israel

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The Jerusalem Post reports that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, working on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings, urged senior officials from Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to take steps toward normalizing relations with Israel. She later told reporters that talks were "extremely productive."

While Arab nations still insist on an Israeli settlement freeze before gestures such as the opening of trade and commercial offices, permission for Israeli overflights, and academic and cultural exchanges; Washington is increasing its pressure. Jeffrey Feltman, the top US diplomat for the Middle East, said after Clinton's meeting:

We don't want to wait for the perfect package. It's time to start negotiations now... We hope that the Arabs would find ways to demonstrate to the Israeli public that Israel will be an accepted, normalized part of the region.

Still, progress is still far from assured. The State Department's press release did not mention any "extremely productive" outcome, balancing calls for the re-launching of Israeli-Palestnians negotiations without preconditions with the vision of a freeze on settlements to foster a viable Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders:

The Foreign Ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and the United States met today in New York City to coordinate on efforts to promote their shared vision of a stable, peaceful and prosperous Middle East, and to intensify their consultations as partners and friends.

The Ministers welcomed the trilateral meeting among President Obama, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and President Abbas on September 22, and expressed their hope for rapid progress towards the resumption of negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Ministers welcomed President Obama’s important statement before the UN General Assembly which calls for the re-launching of negotiations – without preconditions – that address the permanent status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. The Ministers reiterated their call for a freeze on settlement activities. They expressed their continued support for an independent, viable, and democratic Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel, with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions, the Road Map, and the Arab Peace Initiative. They reiterated their full support for the Palestinian Authority under the leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian government led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and their efforts to build the institutions of a future state. The Ministers also reiterated their support for achieving a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.

Iran's "Secret" Nuclear Plant: Israel Jumps In

NEW Iran’s Nukes: Did Gates Just Complicate the Obama Position?
The Latest from Iran (27 September): Is There a Compromise Brewing?

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Perhaps the least surprising dimension of the story of the second Iranian enrichment plant has been the speed and intensity of Israeli official reactions came flat out.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio on Saturday:

This removes the dispute whether Iran is developing military nuclear power or not and therefore the world powers need to draw conclusions... Without a doubt it is a reactor for military purposes not peaceful purposes.

Referring to representatives of Arab countries at the UN meetings last week, Lieberman claimed:

Nobody is worried about the Palestinian problem, everybody in the Muslim and Arab world, and first and foremost in the Gulf states, are worried about the Iranian problem.

Haaretz reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Senators and Congress members in Saturday telephone conversations that it was the time to act to halt the Iranian nuclear program. "If not now, then when," Netanyahu reportedly said. "Action must be taken in all areas to increase pressure on Iran and impose crippling sanctions on it."

As for President Obama's engagement strategy, the Jerusalem Post quoted a senior Israeli official on "the last chance" given to Tehran by the United States, France, Britain and Germany,  "The free world has reached the last opportunity for engagement with Iran. We believe many Western countries now see that the Iranian mask is slipping." He added, however, "But we don't yet know if Russia and China understand this."

Obsessing over Obama: The UK Press and the "Snubbing" of Gordon Obama

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I had the pleasure of chatting with Kenneth Vogel of Politico as he prepared his article on the British press and the myths and realities of the US-UK "special relationship". His article pivots on the bigged-up story, which was hot for 24 hours, of a supposed "snub" of British Prime Minister by President Obama:

The British press's Obama complex

After the latest week’s worth of British press reports that there’s no love lost in the White House for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, even his one-on-one meeting Friday with President Obama only provided the papers across the pond with a reason for another round of stories.

Since Obama burst onto the international scene last year, newspapers in the United Kingdom have spilled gallons of ink on his perceived slights of British leaders, and especially Brown.

To be sure, the “Special Relationship” between the U.S. and the U.K. has long been a favorite topic for the notoriously sensational British papers, but interest seems to have spiked since Obama’s 2008 campaign world tour swung through London for visits with top British leaders.

The local press claimed that Obama confided in aides that while he found former Prime Minister Tony Blair impressive, he thought Brown was boring, and dismissed Tory leader David Cameron as “a lightweight.”

While Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush went to great lengths to highlight his affection for Blair – earning the president generally favorable treatment, while the prime minister was frequently caricatured as the American’s poodle – the British press breathlessly reported on an array of alleged slights of Brown during Obama’s first 100 days as president.

Though the does-Obama-like-us-or-not storyline adds little to the public debate, expect to see more of it in British media for at least until the elections there in May, said Scott Lucas, a former American journalist who moved to the U.K. in 1984 and is a professor at the University of Birmingham specializing in U.S. and British foreign policy.

Lucas, who maintains a blog about U.S. foreign policy, conceded that stories about Obama’s feelings towards British leaders are hot since Obama is immensely popular in Western Europe, while Brown, a favorite punching bag for the British press, is lagging in U.K. polls and is expected to be trounced by Cameron’s Tory Party in next May’s election.

After Obama took office, the papers pounced in February when Obama returned to the British government a bust of legendary Prime Minister Winston Churchill, which Bush had displayed in the Oval Office. The Telegraph reported that “Barack Obama has sent Sir Winston Churchill packing and pulse rates soaring among anxious British diplomats.”

When Brown visited in March, he gave Obama a pen holder carved from the wood of the 19th century British warship HMS President and a first-edition of Sir Martin Gilbert’s seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill. Obama reciprocated with 25 DVDs of American movie classics – “a gift about as exciting as a pair of socks,” whined a Daily Mail columnist.

That’s to say nothing of the offense taken by the perceived inequity between the Obamas’ and Browns’ gifts to each others’ kids.

Brown's wife Sarah gave Obama’s daughters Sasha and Malia dresses and matching necklaces from a trendy U.K. store and a selection of books by British authors, while First Lady Michelle Obama responded with toy models of Marine One for the Brown’s two little boys “While Sarah Brown had spent time choosing gifts for the Obama girls, Michelle had clearly sent an aide to the White House gift shop at the last moment,” asserted a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, who declared the Obama’s reception of the Browns “appalling” and “rudeness personified” and concluded “All in all, (Obama) doesn’t think much of us.”

Though White House aides brushed off the British analyses as ridiculous, they did release an unusually-detailed readout of Obama’s post-visittelephone call to Brown, in which the President again expressed gratitude for the gifts and said he put the pen holder on his Oval Office desk and had put the Churchill biography in his private study.

“It is really lazy journalism,” Lucas said, because it misses real tensions between the two nations, including divergent strategies on stabilizing Afghanistan and the diminishing importance of bilateral relationships.

Read rest of article....

Iran: The "Die Zeit" Article on Opposition and Change

The Latest from Iran (27 September): Is There a Compromise Brewing?
The Latest from Iran (26 September): The False Flag of the Nuke Issue

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For days, there has been a buzz about an article in the German newspaper Die Zeit. Most of it is a summary profile of the opposition in Iran, but deep in the article, there is the claim of "preparations for a new government", including "a group of five to eight clerics" on fixed terms to replace the Supreme Leader and President Ahmadinejad's resignation in favour of Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf. The translation is by Paleene on the Anonymous Iran site:


The Green is not fading out

Protest of the mothers and planning for the Day X: How the Iranian opposition organizes and continues to fight.

BY CHARLOTTE WIEDEMANN

In a live broadcast on Iranian state television a mullah gives spiritual advice. An in-caller is talking about her marital problems, then she suddenly says: "Coincidentally, my husband has the same name as our newly elected president, Mir Hussein Mousavi," The moderator silences, the program is interrupted.

On money you will nowadays often find a green victory sign or the words "Down with the dictatorship”. Or a thumbnail portrait of Neda, the best known dead from the unrest in the days after the election in June. The print works give a professional impression, instructions circulate on the internet.

A football match in Isfahan, many spectators wearing green. The television cameras are trying to avoid these images. However, Green is the colour of the football club in Isfahan; now the club is requested to find a different colour.

The movement for democracy is visible in Iran, despite of all repression, torture and show trials. It is not strong enough to stop the Ahmadinejad government. But it is strong enough to keep the country in tension. Because meetings are banned, official occasions are subverted, eg. last Friday: During the anti‐Israel Quds rallies tens of thousands held their fingers up forming the V‐sign, demanded the release of imprisoned reformers. On this day, an experience from June repeated and changed the psychology of society: It is possible to take to the streets and defy prohibitions. It is dangerous but possible.
Another hidden source of energy is feeding the green movement; it has conciliated generations in families, bridging the gap between the old, who revolted 30 years ago, and the young, suffering from the outcomes today. Thus, sons started talking with their fathers again.

Every Saturday afternoon, the mothers of the killed protestors gather silently in Tehran's Laleh Park, all dressed in black . Other women surround them in silent solidarity. On a list of 72 dead, who are known by name, there are also workers, shoe salesmen, small employees. How the battle lines harden can be observed by the violation of previously existing taboos. Mohammad Khatami, the ex‐president, was pushed to the ground last Friday, his black turban torn down. In the first place, the usually moderate Khatami had accused the regime of "fascist" methods.

There is almost no way back after such actions and words. The events in Iran roll forward with a tenacious implacability. But where to? And can anyone control this process?

The young look forward to the great turning point, the elders are afraid of the chaos

The young, the students whose creativity influenced the aesthetics of the movement, still burn for the hope of something great to happen, a radical change ‐ in the system as in their lives. More prudent Iranians fear the power vacuum of a regime falling apart rapidly.

The 68‐year‐old Mir Hussein Mousavi, a candidate in June, remains the figurehead for all sides; but it is the width of the movement which makes him virtually incapable of acting. Coming from the system himself, the former prime minister wants to win as many of Ahmadinejad's conservative opponents as possible. For the moderates within the nomenklatura, Mousavi offers a great advantage, an insider explaine: "You know, he might take away their power, but not their lives.” But at the same time Mousavi has to appear unyielding, if he doesn’t want to lose the support of the young, and of the modern middle classes.

On the street outside his home, the regime has installed surveillance cameras. When Mousavi leaves home, a double cordon accompanies him: his own people and a troop of the Revolutionary Guard. The danger of being arrested is become greater for the leading group, so earlier plans for founding a party or a mass organization were discarded. The movement for democracy is to expand as a "network" which can’t be banned.

“Everyone appreciating the Iranian and Islamic identity of the country as a value and the constitution as the fundament for action is welcome "said Alireza Beheshti, a close adviser Mousavi. “The framework of the Islamic Republic should remain, but with corrections”, can be heard in Mousavi’s vicinity. Especially the civil rights under the constitution should show to advantage, including freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.

In his statements "to the people of Iran”, which Mousavi only can send out on the internet, he calls for: a reform of the electoral law, press freedom, the licensing of private radio and television stations, a law prohibiting the military to intervene in economics and politics, the release of political prisoners and the penalisation of atrocities in the prisons. In Tehran, it is said that along with this minimum catalogue subject-specific sections have begun "with the preparations for a new government". Members of the current administration as well as Iranians living abroad are said to be involved in these groups.

Replacing the powerful revolutionary leader, a group of five to eight clerics should directly be elected by the people for a limited period of time. They should represent a religious pluralism equivalent to the freedom of choice in Shiite everyday life, where believers are free to choose the teachings of a scholar they want to follow. In future, nobody should be allowed to rely on divine authority. Mousavi: "Nobody has the right to say: How I look at the Islam is the one and only valid way."

This will be no quick go. Sustained pressure and a progressive wearing down of Ahmadinejad’s regime could force him to resign over the medium term, that is the hope. Mousavi does not insist in replacing him. To gain time for the elucidation of the population, an intermediate solution might be necessary. This could look like this: Ahmadinejad resigns in favour of the Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. The moderate, popular conservative had recognized the width of the People's Movement in June, when he estimated the demonstrators to be in the three millions.

Mousavi seems to be aware of being severly influenced by three decades of Islamic Republic, so not to be able to represent Iran's future. As a strict Muslim, he constantly would struggle inwardly to meet the youth’s demand of a liberalized lifestyle. Iranians drinking alcohol should have a place in the movement ‐ but Mousavi does not want to sit down at a table where the wine is drunk.

Mehdi Karroubi, the second reform candidate, is acting much more aggressive. In recent weeks, the fine-boned clergyman was the real challenger of the regime. He published that men and women were raped in detention ‐ which has deeply shaken many Iranians, even the more simple, religious people in Ahmadinejad's clientele. Karroubi wouldn’t make a leader who is appealing the masses, but he has made the cracks in the system visible.

Mousavi is resembling the figure of the king in chess: small moves, in case of danger retreat, always covered by his men. It is not cowardice. His fellow campaigners assume the movement to slide into the underground, to radicalize and to narrow dangerously, if Mussawi is detained. He sees himself as someone who can open an unbloody way to change. But then the people have to decide which system they want to live in.

For the first time since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Iranian opposition abroad has found a common language with the forces of change within the country. This opens up options that were unthinkable only recently. In the case Mousavi and Karroubi are arrested, the leadership of the Green movement would automatically be taken over abroad. Soon a statement will be released in Tehran, saying a five‐member committee in the diaspora ‐ the names are not disclosed ‐ is authorized to replace the leadership in case needed. The symbolic gesture says a lot in a country where the fear of foreign agents is almost obsessive. And Mousavi signals the regime: Look out! If you arrested me, you obstruct the peaceful path to change.

In the diaspora, former bitter enemies have reconciled. The monarchists are relegated to irrelevance, while the advocates of a secular republic criticize Mousavi only mutedly as for the time being. Several prominent heads of the reformers are currently in the West, among them the former Culture Minister Ataollah Mohajerani in London, the film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf in Paris, and reform theologian Mohsen Kadivar in the US.

Kadivar, currently teaching at Duke University, appealed to "the Iranian bourgeoisie" to provide funds for a new, independent national television. "The cost of a green medium have to be borne by Iranian investors." The Iranian women are requested to donate their jewels as a patriotic gesture. Free, uncensored and genuine Iranian Radio and satellite television: That's what currently is worked for in four countries. In Amsterdam, Mehdi Jami as a former head of the Farsi-speaking Radio Zamaneh has a lot of experience with bloggers in Iran. Now he wants to establish citizen journalism as a new generation of broadcasting, giving the young Iranians, who constantly provide their clandestine videos on YouTube, a national platform.

Thus, networking, making various voices audible and being virtual, is the strength of the green movement ‐ and its weakness. It lacks a clearly audible voice, which eg comments on the resuming nuclear negotiations between Iran and the international community, beginning 1 Oct. Suspicion about Ahmadinejad buying legitimacy abroad which he is denied at home is rampant even among those who want the dialogue, basically. In Mousavi’s vicinity they say that "what ever is agreed now has no validity until it has been reviewed by a legitimate, new government of Iran." Mousavi does not want to seek confrontation in this highly sensitive issue.