May 19, 2006
Iran va Jahan
Youssef Goleyjani

 http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2006&m=05&d=19&a=1

 

In Reply to the letter of Mr. Ahmadinejad
The President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Presidential Office
Teheran, Iran

Don’t be surprised if I do not address you as “Mr. President”. A president is defined as “the highest chief executive of a country designated by people in a free election to the highest office of the country”. You however, are neither the highest personality of your country nor have you been freely elected by your fellow countrymen. I remind you that you have been named the winner of an election in which the participation of over 1000 candidates including university professors from both inside and outside Iran, known political activists and even reformists from within your own regime had been ruled out by a non-elected institution. (The Council of the Guardians of the Constitution)

In addition to this massive exclusion of candidates in the presidential election of June 2005, the election was not even fair to those who had survived the Guardians of the Constitution’s filtering procedure. The existence of a plan called “Bassir” was brought to my attention. This was designed to incite the armed forces of the country, notably “The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps” and the Iranian paramilitary “Bassij” to collect votes and to fill the ballot boxes. The extent of this electoral fraud was such that in some places your votes outnumbered the registered voters! For instance, results demonstrated that in “Shemiran”, the pilot area where you have been the happy winner, the number of votes cast was 8 times greater than

Do not try to blame the enemies of the Islamic Republic of Iran for reminding the world of the lack of free elections in your country in general, and particularly that of June 2005. You have certainly not forgotten that even Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani (one of the pillars of your revolution) could do nothing but complaining to God Almighty about all these injustices.

You start your letter with questions that your claims are regularly debated by Iranian people and especially among students. Due of the reasons cited above and many others, I cannot allow you to address me in the name of Iranian people and Iranian students. Which students? Those who have been deprived of education because they drew your cartoon in a university journal? Those who are imprisoned and tortured to death because they have protested against the assassination of their friends? Do you speak for the students who have been protesting because you have decided to bury your "martyrs" on the university campus and in this way turn the universities into cemeteries? Students, who sadly, in what should be the best years of their life, prefer death to life and commit suicide?

Your letter of 8 May 2006, instead of being an attempt to improve the relationships between our two countries, or to alleviate international concerns regarding your nuclear ambitions, has been clearly designed to influence the fundamentalists and the enemies of the West.

However, I am writing this to address the major points of your letter, hoping that even those fundamentalists can read them and think for a few seconds without prejudice.

Regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s willingness to employ them, this should not be held in doubt, particularly by Iranians who have been their victims. The inspections made in Iraq between 1992 and 1998 revealed the extent of Bath Regime’s ambitions to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The expulsion of United Nations inspectors from Iraq in 1998 had lead us to suspect Saddam’s intentions. Aggressive intentions which were clearly demonstrated during the Iran-Iraq’s war and also during the invasion of Kuwait.

It is true that later it was proved that the main parts of intelligence received from Iraq were faulty, but in the absence of any reliable international inspections from 1998 to 2003, which responsible leader in this world could have left the security of a sensitive region like the Middle East to the good intentions of a dictator like Saddam Hussein?

If today you admit the general happiness of the region’s people about Saddam’s removal from the power, do not forget that American lives and money made this possible. Restoration of security and democracy in Iraq faces great difficulties, but Mr. Ahmadi Nejad, who causes these difficulties? Who carries out the bombings and the killings of women, children and workers? Are they not the fanatics like you who consider the fight against the West more important than innocents lives and more important than any thing else in this world?

You accuse the West of having helped Iraq during the war with Iran. Do I need to remind you that your greatest supporter today (Russia) had a defense treaty agreement with Iraq and provided Iraq with 85% of all her military needs?

The accident which caused the shooting down of an Iranian passenger airplane in the Persian Gulf was a deplorable mistake. We reacted quickly to this accident and apologized unreservedly, offering compensation to the victims’ families. Your regime insisted that the compensation be paid to the Iranian government while we preferred it to go directly to the victims’ families. This unfortunate accident could undoubtedly have been avoided, if Iran's Civil Aviation Organization had the common sense to choose other air routes than the one over the war zone.

Although you disagree, we believe that the United States of America was neutral in Iran-Iraq’s war. After your revolution of 1979, the American government recognized the new regime and had a sincere desire to continue its friendly relationship with Iran. For further information on this matter, I advise you to read all books and memories of those involved in the events of that period, both Iranian and foreigners (The non censored versions, would of course be a better option).

What makes you believe in American hostility towards the Islamic revolution of 1979? Particularly as there were so many people who, unjustly, accused and continue to accuse the US of helping your revolution along by making the Shah’s regime practically untenable.

The initial good intentions of our country was rewarded by launching a barbaric, attack on our Embassy in Tehran and taking our diplomats hostage. In doing this, your regime flouted the most elementary principles of international laws and yet today you speak to me of international principles.

Since that hostage taking event and regardless of the different American governments and policies in place, your hostility towards my country has been a constant principle in your foreign and even internal policies. My country’s flag has been regularly insulted, it has been set on fire and your soldiers have trampled it under foot. In every religious and political gathering, your cries of “death to America” are heard and you openly incite the destruction of my country. You help and train anti-American terrorist groups. You have arrogantly refused the friendly hand of all previous American governments, and now you expect us to respect you and to take no hostile actions against you.

Mr. Ahmadinejad,

You talk about the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay as if they were innocent altar boys. These prisoners are in fact the men trained by Al Qhaeda in more than 30 training camps in Afghanistan to carry out terrorist attacks against my country and the West. The famous terrorist, Abou Moussab Al Zarqavi is one of them who with the generous help of your intelligent services managed to reach Iraq under the protection of Saddam Hussein.

The reason why they are kept in Guantanamo Bay is the lack of international laws dealing with terrorism. Some governments, such as yours, do not allow an agreement on the definition of the word "terrorism" to be reached. Whenever the West is attacked you prefer to call it a “liberating struggle” than terrorism.

The prisoners of Guantanamo Bay have been arrested in the war between the USA and the Taliban and Al Qhaeda. Their trial within the American judiciary system, if not impossible, is very difficult. Simply because they have not committed any crimes on American soil. Some prisoners have been repatriated only to resume their involvement in terrorist activities.

The prisoners of Guantanamo Bay can be considered as prisoners of war. This would suggest that they need to be detained till a normalization of the situation.

I do not claim that these people are being held in luxurious surroundings however, the envoys of the international Red Cross visit them on a regular basis and check their sanitary and life conditions while the prisoners of your country are deprived of these rights. In addition, regarding your claims that we have "kidnapped and kept people in hidden prisons", take a closer look at your own regime and at yourself to see whether you are in a position to accuse others.

Mr. Ahmadi Nejad

You mention in your letter that Israel did not exist 60 years ago. There are plenty of other countries which did not exist 60 years ago neither. Among Iran’s present neighbors only Turkey and Afghanistan can boast of over 250 years political existence, the rest have been created in the 20th century and some only in the last 15 years.

Anti-Jewish people like you, present the facts as if a group of European Jews with no link whatsoever with Palestine, came and massacred the real owners of those lands and built Israel instead.

I do not intend to tell you the story of the Jewish nation but I would point out that the Jews have historical roots in Palestine. What should be considered is whether an interruption in a nation’s sovereignty over its land means that sovereignty right should be limited. “Goa” was invaded by Indian troops in 1961 after being ruled for 450 years by the Portugese. The international community however, did not deny the right of Indian sovereignty over “Goa” even after all those years.

You believe that Palestinians, who left this land since 80 years ago, voluntarily or by force, can still claim sovereignty. The question is: what is the length of time after which the sovereignty of a nation over its land is no longer recognized, after 60 years, 450 years or 1000 years and who makes this judgment?

It is true that the ancient boundaries, past empires and old countries could not be restored again without endangering an already frail world peace. However, the right of nations to return to their historical lands could not be denied easily. In such conditions, accepting the status quo might be the best way to compensate all injustices committed in the past.

Your friends and allies, Mr. Ahmadinejad, only see the facts the way they wish to. I am not Israel’s attorney, they can defend themselves when needed. With regard to the attitude and manners of Israel, there are issues to be criticized and the US government has in many cases been clear in their criticism. But when you talk about the brutal operations of Israeli forces against Palestinians, do not forget the attacks carried out by Palestinian terrorist groups. These groups rely on your regime’s support for financing, training and media exposure. If killing innocent people is horrible, how can you admire, encourage and invest in the suicide bombings in the buses, restaurants and markets in Israel?

In 1993, the world came close to the implementation of a fair peace in this region. Who, using terror attacks, tried and succeeded in disrupting the peace?

Mr. Ahmadinejad,

You repeatedly deny the mass murder of Jews by Nazis during the World War II. There are undeniable documents to prove this historical fact, and for further information, I strongly advise you to visit the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel. This said, even though you and other revisionist friends claim to have proof that the number of victims of the holocaust were 3 or 4 million and not 6 million, does this diminish the nature of the atrocities committed by the Nazis? Is the oppression of people solely because of their tribal or religious identity not condemnable in your beliefs? If it were so, you would probably treat the “Bahrain's”, the non Moslems and even the non Shiites slightly better.

The most interesting point in your letter is your pressing demand for implementation of a referendum with participation by all refugees and exiled Palestinians to decide on the nature and even the name of the future Palestine. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of your pre-conditions to this referendum be the non participation of Jews who have not been living in Palestine for a few generations. In other words, your solution for settlement of peace in the Middle East would be that Palestinians vote the dissolution of Israel and that this should be accepted by Jewish people. I imagine you must be encouraged by your Leader each time you talk about this intelligent project.

If the right of Palestinians to a referendum is so dear to you, why do you refuse the Iranian people the same right? Iranians have been demanding free elections and a referendum to change the constitution for years now. But they are attacked in the streets by your "civil agents", they are oppressed and imprisoned. They are tortured and expelled from your universities.

Mr. Ahmadinejad,

I am pleased to see that you consider the will and eagerness to "scientific achievements as one of the most basic rights for all nations". I can only hope that you stick to this principle by canceling the censorship of scientific books and papers in the fields of biology, history and philosophy etc... So that researchers may be permitted to freely research and ask questions in all subjects for instance, creation, evolution, humanity, history of Iran and Islam, and that they may be allowed to publish their works.

During the Middle Ages, some ignorant religious people were categorically refusing the right of scientific investigation as they firmly believed that "all the knowledge that men needed were to be found in the Holy Book". Fortunately, 500 years ago, Europe managed to free herself from this yoke and opened the way to knowledge and scientific progress. In other societies, even a few decades ago, there were ignorant and unenlightened people who were preaching against Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, engineering etc... And who believed in only "two forms of knowledge; religious knowledge dealing with men’s soul and medical knowledge dealing with their bodies". They were hostiles to all types of arts, music, painting, sculpture, dance and singing. These idiots forbade whatever was from the West; radio, television, cinema, occidental medicines and even the railway. In your own country, some of your religious leaders were against the railway; please refer to the archives to find out why the railway station of “Sabzevar” was built 50 kilometres out of the town. Hostility towards new technologies e.g. satellite broadcastings, still exists in Iran today.

Regarding your nuclear program or what you call the "nuclear research and investigation program". Your regime, regardless of all your obligations towards the IAEA, has deceived them for 19 years by hiding your so called peaceful nuclear activities. You certainly know that any country capable of enriching uranium to 4.5% will also be able to do it up to 90% and higher and ultimately make atomic bombs. Do not try to hide your real intentions behind the nuclear fuel cycle. In which nuclear power plant are you planning to employ this nuclear fuel cycle? You have one nuclear power reactor in construction to generate electricity, for which Russia has guaranteed a 10 year fuel provision. There is no other reactor, and customers are not lined up either. Is there any other reason for this program other than using the excuse of scientific progress to obtain the knowledge and equipments of bomb making? You have purchased facilities from China and Russia to enrich uranium without them being declared to the IAEA. Iran and Libya have purchased the same facilities and plans and these purchases were hidden from the IAEA. All facilities you have provided from Pakistan and North Korea were later presented by Iranian authorities as their local findings and achievements.

And you continue to hide and lie. The inspectors of the IAEA have not been permitted to inspect your suspicious sites. You do not permit your scientists to be interviewed by IAEA. You hide all requested plans and programs from inspectors and are still stunned as to why the international community does not trust you.

In these circumstances, and given your relationships with terrorist organizations, the hatred you preach against the West and your vows to wipe Israel out of the map, allowing you to obtain atomic bombs would appear foolhardy.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, Your letter contains some interesting elements. For instance, you condemn lying and in the next line, you make a false reproach to the USA. You say that we do not permit the Latin Americans to freely elect their governments. Obviously you are not familiar with the situation in this region and have not noticed that apart from your friend “Cuba”, all other Latin American governments have been elected with free elections and many of them such as the left wing governments of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentine, Chile and recently Bolivia do not back the USA.

Regarding Africa, you write as if we were still in the 1960’s claiming that on this continent everything is ready for development and progress which is thwarted by the hostility of the nasty Americans and Europeans.

Mr. Ahmadinejad,

If development and progress depended on the natural minerals and other underground sources of a country, Denmark one of the most developed countries in the world, would have been considered as a less developed one. I do not intend to insult any people, but a nation who has nothing else to present to the international community but its minerals could not be realistically considered as "creative, hard workers and intelligent". Do not blame the developed countries for buying your petrol and other resources. Have you ever thought what would happen to you if the developed countries stopped buying them from you?

Mr. Ahmadinejad,

I will now address a few other issues that you raised, again in the name of the Iranian people. Of course my explanations are not for you whose intension is only propaganda but for other readers of this letter.

We never had any kind of hostility towards oil nationalization in Iran at the beginning of 1950s. This was known to Mr. Mohammad Mossadegh the Iranian prime minister of the time, better than anybody else. The United States of America did their best to help finding equitable solutions to the divergence between Iran and Great Britain. Mr. Averell Harriman’s mission to Iran in July 1951 and the proposals given to Mr. Mossadegh were among these efforts. However, Mr. Mossadegh’s way of managing governmental affairs placed him in such a position that he could not stop the wave he had created. Communists and soviet agents made the most of this situation. Bear in mind that until March 1953, when Mr. Mossadaegh’s removal from power was being planned, Stalin was still alive. The principal goal of USA in taking part in actions leading to his removal from power was solely to avoid Iran falling in Stalin’s hands and not for oil.

Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State offered America’s apologies to your predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, but this was not accepted by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

With the great interest that you show in the history of the last century, have you noted and thanked the USA for their role in returning “Azerbaijan” and” Kurdistan” to Iran in 1946?

It is astonishing that you also refer to the freezing of Iranian assets by USA. I take this opportunity to remind you that these frozen Iranian assets of up to 10.52 billion dollars plus interest were repaid in two instalments to the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran according to the agreement reached between two countries during the “Algiers agreement”. I suggest you trace them and see where they have gone to!

The only money left is a few million dollars confiscated from the account of the Iranian Embassy in Washington when you attacked the US embassy in Iran and if you looked into this case, you would realise that in this matter we are the debtors and certainly not you. Next time you talk about Iranian assets confiscated by the US government, please explain what assets you refer to, so we can look into it carefully.

Mr. Ahmadinejad,

In your letter, the 9/11 attacks have been implicitly attributed to our intelligent services. Apparently, since 19 August 1978, when the fundamentalists set fire to a movie theatre “Cinema Rex of Abadan” burning hundreds of Iranians trapped inside the hall, and then you attributed this horrendous act to the Shah’s regime, this became a routine tactic of your regime to blame these unjustifiable odious crimes on your enemies.

It is clear that our intelligent service was proved ineffective and the weakness of our system permitted the terrorists to execute their evil plans. The 9/11 commission has published a, almost 600 pages document, detailing the results of their investigation. If you are interested in finding out more about those attacks ask your representatives in the US for a copy, unless of course you prefer to rely on the rumours nursed in local cafes all over the Middle East.

Mr. Ahmadinejad,

You probably expect the American tax payers to thank you for your concern regarding the excessive money spent on Iraq’s war but it is useful to remind you that there is almost nothing the President of the United States can do without the permission and approval of the US Congress and the Senate. As President, I am not allowed to spend even one cent from the country’s budget without it being approved and passed by the members of the parliament. Therefore, it is clear that what has been spent in Iraq has been approved by the representatives of American people.

However, can you the leaders of Islamic republic of Iran, claim to have done the same with your country’s budget? Can you explain to the Iranian people what has been done with the extra 24 billion dollars income in the last financial year (March 2005-March 2006) and clarify what happened to the hundreds of billion of dollars income from oil sales since your revolution? Have you built houses for homeless people, have you rescued nearly 10% of Iranians from drug addiction, have you created jobs, have you rebuilt the war zones, have you established any plans for the economical, industrial and agricultural developments of your country, have you replanted your forests destroyed in the last 27 years, have you improved sanitary conditions for your fellow countrymen? Have you rebuilt the ruins of “Roudbar” and “Bam”? Tell, what have you done?

In the last 27 years of your regime despite all your promises:

  Instead of prosperity, peace and security, you have delivered unemployment and insecurity to the Iranian people. The balconies of apartments in Tehran are barricaded to protect against all type of aggressions. A signs of the complete insecurity you have
brought to your people.

  Instead of restoring justice, you defended and enriched only yours.

  You have spread drugs among young people.

  You have pushed Iranian women to prostitution. Is this in accordance with the religious education you often preach?

  You have said much on oppressed and poor people’s rights and completely
neglected them afterwards.

  You used the pretext of exporting your Islamic revolution as a way of export terrorism and fundamentalism.

  You have built atrocious prisons and filled them with freedom seekers, students, workers, journalists and innocents.

  You have tortured and killed and then promoted the killers, torturers. Even lawyers and attorneys of the victims have been imprisoned.

  You have lied over and over and expect us to believe that your nuclear program will never put the international community in danger.

Yes, Mr. Ahmadi Nejad, as you claim, "no government built on lies and cruelty has ever survived" and you and your regime will be judged by Iranian people.

May 12, 2006

George W. Bush
The President of the United States of America
White House
Washington D.C.
USA

US Spells Out Plan to Bomb Iran

May 16, 2006
The Herald
Ian Bruce, Defence Correspondent

link to original article

The US is updating contingency plans for a non-nuclear strike to cripple Iran's atomic weapon programme if international diplomacy fails, Pentagon sources have confirmed. Strategists are understood to have presented two options for pinpoint strikes using B2 bombers flying directly from bases in Missouri, Guam in the Pacific and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

RAF Fairford in Gloucester also has facilities for B2s but this has been ruled out because of the UK's opposition to military action against Tehran. The main plan calls for a rolling, five-day bombing campaign against 400 key targets in Iran, including 24 nuclear-related sites, 14 military airfields and radar installations, and Revolutionary Guard headquarters.

At least 75 targets in underground complexes would be attacked with waves of bunker-buster bombs.

Iranian radar networks and air defence bases would be struck by submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and then kept out of action by carrier aircraft flying from warships in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.
The alternative to an all-out campaign is a demonstration strike against one or two high-profile targets such as the Natanz uranium enrichment facility or the hexafluoride gas plant at Isfahan.

UK sources say contingency plans have also been drawn up to cope with the inevitable backlash against the Basra garrison in neighbouring Iraq.

Quietly, GCC Agrees To Effort Against Iran

May 18, 2006
Middle East Newsline
MENL

link to original article

LONDON -- The Gulf Cooperation Council has quietly agreed to help the United States in efforts to destabilize Iran. Western diplomatic sources said the six-member GCC has agreed to participate in a U.S. campaign against Iran's nuclear weapons program. The sources said several Gulf Arab countries would be used for a range of non-combat operations against the Iranian regime.

"The activities will be subtle and designed to avoid a direct link to the Gulfies," a diplomatic source said. "With the support of the GCC, the United States will completely surround Iran."

The sources said the GCC effort would involve significant participation from such countries as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They said GCC countries could be used for U.S. intelligence, psychological operations and surveillance in southern Iran, particularly its maritime.

 

IRAN FACES A HARD CHOICE

 

BY MOHAMMED A.R. GALADARI (COMMENT)
19 May 2006

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/weekend/2006/May/weekend_May30.xml&section=weekend&col=   

President Ahmedinejad's much-publicised letter to George Bush has made little difference to the nuclear stand off between the two countries. The US has dismissed it instantly as more of philosophising and less of practical politics. Both sides remain firm with mediators caught in between.

Comment

 On the positive side, the door is open for Iran for a negotiated settlement of the issue as opposed to a set of Security Council sanctions or even military offensive by or led by the United States. Bush says he wants to give diplomacy a try, but worst come to worst, would not rule out military action.

Sanctions are a near possibility though. Iran is not new to sanctions, but every sanction will bring with it its own problem to the country and the people. It is bound to come in the way of progress.

Time is running out for Iran to make up its mind either way: reconcile or face the situation. The promise by the Top-3 in the EU sounds good. It is that they would help Iran in the technological advancement, prominently in the matter of nuclear technology to the extent that it is used for peaceful purposes. In return, what they expect from Teheran is a guarantee that it will halt its programme to enrich uranium — the material that would, otherwise, help it make a bomb.

Iran is faced with hard choices — cooperation or confrontation. Iran is not another Iraq. It has greater strengths, economically and politically and a government that has strong bases of support among the people, unlike the case with the former regime in Iraq. But, can it afford to have a confrontation with the West, is the moot point; how much it would gain and how much it would lose in the event of a fight? Who would suffer other than the nation and the people?

President Ahmedinejad's insistence that Iran's sole aim in respect of the nuclear programme was to make electricity mainly to push its industrialisation programmes does not have many takers. It may even not have any taker, given the international mood against nuclear proliferation; and, his stand that Iran wants to conduct uranium enrichment for research purpose is seen, rightly or wrongly, with far more scepticism. Feelings are also that Iran already has the capability or near capability to make the bomb. Iran is signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and holds the right to have a nuclear programme for peaceful purposes. No one questions that right. The Top-3 promise this past week was to provide Iran with sophisticated nuclear technology that in normal circumstances would not have been easy for Iran to acquire. The offer also includes sharing of technological knowhow in other fields, as also other economic and scientific incentives. If it is a question of bargaining, Iran is well within its rights to do so; even a hard bargaining at that. Ahmedinejad is well within his right, too, to question George Bush, or anybody else for that matter, on moral grounds as he did in his letter to Washington, and some of the questions that he raised may have valid reasons for argument, like, for instance, the question, "Why is it that any technological and scientific achievement reached in Middle East regions is translated into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime?"

If the stress is on science and technology, that is the right way forward for Iran and the region as well. The Top 3 offer is precisely science and technology and a sophisticated one at that. If we look around, we find that Germany and Japan are among the most advanced in technology in their own fields, and are not using that technology to make the bomb. Their concentration is fully on economic development. They have no time to even think about any confrontation. If they want, they can have the bomb in a jiffy; they have as much technological excellence. But no. History has taught them lessons. The Top 3 — Britain, France and Germany — lead the world in matters of technology. An opportunity is at hand for Iran and it must explore how far it can go.

Look at India. When Bush visited the country, he gave a chance to New Delhi to come clear on the nuclear issue, accept safeguards and open its installations for international inspections; and in turn make gains from America. India was quick to grab the opportunity. Both sides gain. That is the way forward for Iran as well. The Security Council is seized of the matter. Action can follow as Iran has refused to allow inspection of its nuclear installation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A resolution is being drafted by the West, proposing economic sanctions. China and Russia, two of the veto holding members stonewalling the resolution and seeking a diplomatic/negotiated solution to the crisis, however, appear to support the latest Top 3 intervention. All the more reason why Iran should look at the offer positively. And, as the letter shows, Ahmedinejad as president is mindful of his responsibility to the nation, its people and the world at large. "The people will scrutinse our presidencies. Did we manage to bring peace, security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment? ...Did we defend the rights of all people around the world or imposed wars on them...?".

Ahmedinejad would do well to be aware of Iran's limitations and how much it can push. Confrontation is not the way forward; cooperation is. With Iran's dignity, intact, of course.

U.S. Moves to Weaken Iran

 

A campaign to promote democracy and fund dissidents prompts speculation that the administration's goal is to change the regime.

By Laura Rozen
LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-usiran19may19,1,7501303.story?coll=la-headlines-world

May 19, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration, shunning pressure from allies for direct dialogue with Iran, is shifting toward a more confrontational stance and intensifying efforts to undercut the country's ruling clerics.

U.S. officials have taken a series of steps to increase pressure on Iran, most recently creating new offices in the State Department and Pentagon specifically to bolster opposition to the Tehran government. In February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Congress for $75 million to supplement $10 million in funds to promote democracy, aid Iranian dissidents and expand the Voice of America's Persian-language broadcasts beamed across the Persian Gulf from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

"We are more out of sync now with Iran than at any time since 1979," said a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I don't think the time is right now for a dialogue. We seem to be moving closer toward a confrontational stance, versus a compromise stance."

Although some observers note similarities in the Iran policy to the stance on Iraq in the lead-up to the war in that nation, officials emphasize that this time around, State Department diplomats rather than Pentagon war planners are in charge. Still, the campaign illustrates the administration's hostility toward Iran's rulers and raises the question of whether its ultimate goal is to curb Iran's nuclear program or change the regime.

"The administration is trying to make regime change through democratization the policy, instead of making confrontation by military means the policy," said Trita Parsi, a Middle East specialist at Johns Hopkins University who advocates direct U.S. talks with Tehran.

The administration's efforts are taking shape on the second floor of the State Department, where a new Office of Iranian Affairs has been charged with leading the push to back Iranian dissidents more aggressively, boost support to democracy broadcasters and strengthen ties with exiles.

Nearby at the Pentagon, an Iranian directorate will work with the State Department office to undercut the government in Tehran.

Rice and other officials have publicly advocated steps to pressure the Iranian government. But by setting up the new offices, staffs and programs, the administration is institutionalizing its long-held antipathy toward Iran's government.

The new offices are modest in size — the Pentagon's directorate began with six full-time staff members. But they can draw on expertise throughout the government, providing access to potentially hundreds of specialists.

The State Department's new Iranian Affairs office is headed by David Denehy, a longtime democracy specialist at the International Republican Institute, who will work under Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the vice president.

Recently, Denehy and other officials went to Los Angeles for meetings with Iranian exiles and the Persian-language media. The purpose was to inform them of the government's plans, get feedback and — perhaps not a secondary consideration — create a buzz within the Iranian American diaspora and its satellite media outlets, which are beamed into Tehran.

Afterward, some Iranian Americans were left disappointed by their first look at the new campaign and by the fact that officials had not begun distributing money to exile groups.

"They came here — we didn't know why they came — asking: 'What do you think about Iran? Do you have any connections to people inside?' " recounted Zia Atabay, the founder of Los Angeles-based NITV, a Persian-language broadcaster. "We said, 'The reason you are here is you know we have a connection.' "

Assistance to dissidents in Iran is complicated by the Iranian regime's demonstrated brutality toward its critics — writers, bloggers, trade union members and human rights activists — much less anyone perceived to be receiving U.S. aid. For that reason, the State Department does not publicly disclose whom it funds.

Even private U.S. groups receiving money to support democracy efforts in Iran are reluctant to discuss their programs for fear they will put their Iranian partners in harm's way.

As much as $50 million of the funds requested will go to the Voice of America for Persian-language broadcasts. The State Department also is planning to send 15 foreign service officers to countries neighboring Iran and to capitals with large Iranian exile populations to serve as "Iran watchers."

At the Pentagon, the new Iranian directorate has been set up inside its policy shop, which previously housed the Office of Special Plans. The controversial intelligence analysis unit, established before the Iraq war, championed some of the claims of Ahmad Chalabi. A number of assertions made by the former Iraqi exile and onetime Pentagon favorite were later discredited.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable declined to name the acting director of the new Iran office and would say only that the appointee was a "career civil servant." Among those staffing or advising the Iranian directorate are three veterans of the Office of Special Plans: Abram N. Shulsky, its former director; John Trigilio, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst; and Ladan Archin, an Iran specialist.

Even if the chief U.S. goal is arresting Iran's nuclear program — and not overthrowing the government — the democratization effort could be a useful part of the strategy, some experts said.

"The State Department policy of isolating the regime diplomatically is the main policy so far," said Daniel Byman, a professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a former CIA analyst who also worked for the Sept. 11 commission.

"But there are all these different ways you could game this. Supporting opposition groups could also be a way of raising the stakes, in effect saying, 'Here's what we are going to do if you won't comply,' " he said.

The new focus also may be contradictory, Richard N. Haass, a State Department official during President Bush's first term and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said at a conference in Washington this month. .

"We are telling Iran, 'We want regime change, but while you're still here, we'd like to negotiate with you to stop your nuclear program,' " Haass said.

 

The Weapon Iran May Not Want to Use

Withholding Oil Exports Could Wreak the Most Havoc at Home

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 19, 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/18/AR2006051802089.html

 In 1967, after Israel trounced its Arab neighbors in the Six-Day War, five oil-producing Arab countries used what they called the "oil weapon" and cut off supplies to the United States and its European allies. But the weapon turned out to be a dud. The United States increased its production by a million barrels a day, and more modest boosts by three other oil-producing nations defused the crisis.

Now, as the U.N. Security Council ponders sanctions or other tough measures to punish Iran for developing technology could be used for making nuclear weapons, Iran's president and interior minister have threatened to deploy the oil weapon -- and people are taking it seriously.

Oil traders and others are worried. Many believe that Iran's oil weapon could prove more useful than any nuclear weapon it might develop. Using a nuclear weapon would assure Iran's destruction. Using the oil weapon, by trimming exports to jack up oil prices and holding the world economy hostage, could bring influence, concessions and, if handled adroitly, tens of billions of dollars in extra revenue without any direct military conflict.

European diplomats, eager to avoid testing Iran's willingness to resort to that weapon, have been crafting a package of incentives rather than punishments to convince Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program.

But sources said that senior policymakers within the Bush administration and their French and British counterparts have come to the conclusion that Iran would continue to sell oil abroad even in the face of heightened economic and diplomatic pressure from Western powers. Administration officials have considered and discounted the possibility that Iran would shut in oil supplies, robbing world markets of much-needed crude.

Experts on Iran point to a number of reasons it might be reluctant to cut oil exports. Oil accounts for 85 percent of Iran's exports, according to an International Monetary Fund report issued last month. Revenue from those exports makes up 65 percent of government income. And Iran uses a good chunk of that money to raise public-sector wages and to subsidize its own gasoline prices, one way to keep domestic discontent in check when unemployment is running at more than 12 percent and inflation at 13 percent.

"If you think a little beyond the moment when this happens, the credibility of the country as an economic partner will go down the drain," said Giandomenico Picco, a consultant who was a mediator during the Iran-Iraq war. "The economy as a whole will be affected, not just because of lack of income." Picco said that already some European banks are reluctant to do further business with Iran and that some petrochemical projects might be delayed.

Moreover, the politics of cutting off exports are muddy for Tehran. In recent years, Iran has shifted its oil exports away from the West. It sells substantial amounts to China and India, though U.S. allies such as Japan, Italy and France are still the major buyers. None is sold to the United States because of sanctions dating to the 1979 hostage crisis. All oil is fungible and even selected export cuts will affect market prices regardless of the customer; the symbolism of hurting Japan, China and India to retaliate against sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies would be fuzzy.

So far, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to be banking on the oil weapon even as European countries try to avoid testing it. On Wednesday, he rejected a potential European offer of incentives, including a light-water nuclear reactor, to give up uranium enrichment. "Do you think you are dealing with a 4-year-old child to whom you can give walnuts and chocolates and get gold from him?" Ahmadinejad told thousands of people in central Iran.

The reason Iran has any leverage is the change in the world oil balance. As recently as four years ago, the world had 7 million barrels a day of spare oil production capacity, but today that cushion between supply and demand is smaller than Iran's 2.5 million barrels a day of exports. Losing Iran's exports would spell disaster, with soaring prices and limited supplies.

"There is no cushion that is that great," said Edward Morse, executive adviser of Hess Energy Trading Co. in New York. Saudi Arabia's spare capacity could cover 1.2 million to 1.5 million barrels a day of any shortfall, though that would be heavy oil unsuited for many refineries. Morse added, "If there were peace in Iraq or Nigeria, they could produce more. But there isn't peace in either place."

Fear of the oil weapon is "one of the reasons the U.N. Security Council is tiptoeing around this one," said Gary Sick, who dealt with Persian Gulf affairs at the Pentagon and then the National Security Council through most of the 1970s. "I think this is something that's got to be in people's minds and I assume in the minds of folks in Washington. The price of gas is not making them real popular. If they thought about that price going up another $1 a gallon, that has got to be a sobering thought."

Mere tension between Tehran and the West has added, by some estimates, $10 to $15 a barrel to the price of crude oil. That's been a boon to Iran, which announced on Tuesday that its oil revenue this year would hit $55 billion, up $10 billion from the previous year. Every day, Iran is making $156 million in oil sales.

Youssef Ibrahim, a longtime journalist and consultant on Middle East oil-producing nations, said: "They've got the oil weapon now. This is the ideal situation for them." Iran could also disrupt oil exports by other countries in the Persian Gulf, either by mining the gulf, firing a missile or simple sabotage; even if the damage were slight, a spike in insurance rates would effectively shut down much of the oil exports in the area. Outside the oil markets, Iran could also foment greater violence or unrest in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some people familiar with Iran believe cooler heads among the supreme religious clerics will prevail and that Iran would not use the oil weapon unless the United States launched a military attack. "When it gets down to their sources of revenues, they get pretty conservative," Sick said. "At the time of the revolution they behaved differently, but they discovered that that didn't work. They've been trying very hard to put themselves back on a rational basis."

Many Iran experts believe oil is more of a shield than a weapon.

"I think that the issue of Iran using oil as an economic weapon has been highly exaggerated," said Abdulsamad al-Awadi, the former head of European operations for Kuwait Petroleum Corp. "From talking to a lot of their officials, I don't believe that they would use the oil weapon unless they were attacked."

Al-Awadi doubts that the United States could convince other countries to impose economic sanctions. "Iran is not North Korea, which can be isolated," he said.

Iranians themselves seem worried about possible conflict, as well as about Ahmadinejad's ideological criticisms of the stock market and banking system. Iranian government officials have told foreign consultants that about $200 billion has flowed out of Iran to overseas money centers such as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The Iranian stock exchange has dropped 7.5 percent this year, on top of double-digit declines last year, despite the tremendous inflow of money from oil sales. Every other stock exchange in the region has risen sharply.

Meanwhile, the signals from Iran's government remain mixed. While some Iranian officials, including the oil minister, have played down the likelihood of restricting oil output, other Iranian officials have kept that tension high. "If sanctions are imposed, we will definitely use the oil tool and other tools and we will stop at nothing," the interior minister, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, told reporters in March. Last week, the country's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, told a news conference, "We are not interested in using oil as a weapon . . . but if the conditions change it could affect our decision."

Staff writer Dafna Linzer contributed to this article.

Iran pulls curtain on atom sites

 

By William J. Broad and Elaine Sciolino The New York Times

FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2006

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/18/news/nukes.php

 

Due south of Tehran, the desert gives way to barbed wire, anti-aircraft guns and a maze of buildings, two of them cavernous underground halls.

Atomic inspectors could once freely roam the 20 or so main buildings there, at the Natanz uranium enrichment complex. Operating more like police detectives than scientists, they combined painstaking sleuthing with a knowledge of physics and engineering in an effort to ascertain the site's true mission, war or peace.

But in February, after three years of unusual openness, Iran drastically reduced access to Natanz and hundreds of other nuclear sites, programs and personnel.

No longer can the inspectors swab machines, scoop up bits of soil, study invoices, monitor videotapes, peek behind closed doors, interview workers and gather seemingly innocuous clues. Now the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, can track only a narrow range of operations involving radioactive material, and even then with cumbersome restrictions.

The result is that the outside world is losing its ability to address the most pressing questions about Iran's nuclear ambitions: how fast Tehran could make an atom bomb and whether it harbors a secret program to do so. International diplomats and nuclear experts say the diminished view increases the risks of miscalculation, and possibly war, just as the Iranians are raising their rhetoric and the impasse with the West is reaching a volatile new stage.

The IAEA, whose credibility as the world's nuclear watchdog is at stake, is particularly worried. Full access "increases our ability to detect possible undeclared nuclear activities," said the agency's director, Mohamed ElBaradei. Its absence, he emphasized, severely limits "our ability to provide credible assurances." The new restrictions were alluded to in the agency's most recent report on Iran, late last month. But their scope and repercussions emerged in interviews with diplomats, nuclear analysts and government officials.

American intelligence officials say the reductions are particularly significant because their own assessments depend heavily on the agency's findings. The reasons include the scarcity of human intelligence emerging from Iran, and suspicions about American intelligence after the failures in Iraq.

"To build a public case, we need the international inspectors," a senior administration official said in a recent interview, declining to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. "The president knows that he cannot go out and give a speech describing our suspicions, not in this environment."

Iran insists that until negotiations with the West collapsed, it had given the inspectors "full and unrestricted access" as a way to prove that its atomic work is entirely peaceful, meant for nuclear power and medical isotopes for fighting disease. But the United States, Israel and many European governments see the situation as more complex. They say that Tehran opened up only after being caught hiding clandestine nuclear advances for nearly two decades, and that when it did cooperate, a steady accretion of clues suggested that much else remained hidden.

Now, analysts are left with far fewer tools to penetrate those mysteries, many involving how close Iran is to mastering the transformation of uranium and plutonium into atomic fuel.

Inspectors recently confirmed Iran's claims of having enriched very small quantities of uranium to low levels, and they can continue to monitor those narrow steps. But at Natanz and elsewhere, they have lost their window into the future - for instance, into the factories where Iran has claimed it will build tens of thousands of centrifuges, machines that spin incredibly quickly to enrich, or concentrate, uranium into fuel. Low-enriched uranium can fuel reactors; highly enriched uranium can power bombs.

So, too, they cannot investigate Iran's boasts that it is forging ahead with research on a more advanced centrifuge that could accelerate its efforts to make atomic fuel.

The Iranians have also stopped cooperating with investigations into the possible existence of clandestine work on uranium and plutonium, an alternate bomb fuel. Just last week, diplomats revealed an inquiry into the origin of traces of highly enriched uranium linked to a razed military research base at Lavizan, outside Tehran.

For the inspectors, and the American intelligence agencies that rely on them, the new reality is "myopia compared to what they had before," said David Kay, a former inspector who in 2003 and 2004 led the American hunt for unconventional weapons in Iraq. The danger of such an information void, he said, is that officials would fall back on "defectors, anti-regime elements and what foreign intelligence services tell you they know - sort of an Iraq redux."

American intelligence officials say the Iraq experience has forced them to consider a range of scenarios in Iran, including the best case, rather than assuming the worst. For that reason, they say, the intelligence community has not budged from the official estimate that Iran would need five to 10 years to produce a weapon, even though some intelligence officials foresee a shorter time frame.

Refining that forecast is harder than ever. As one senior European official with knowledge of the inspections put it, "You need to roam around."

Iran's atomic obligations began in 1968, when Tehran signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which requires countries to forgo nuclear weapons in exchange for peaceful atomic aid. Six years later, Iran signed the treaty's safeguards agreement, which mandates detailed reports on steps that could lead to weapons and allows inspectors to hunt for cheating.

The era of expanded openness, though, did not begin until early 2003, after an Iranian opposition group revealed the existence of a vast nuclear facility at Natanz. Iran had no choice but to cooperate with the inspectors if it hoped to prove that its nuclear program was peaceful. The buildup to the invasion of Iraq further pressured Iran.

Iran invited ElBaradei and a team of inspectors to a historic visit to Natanz. Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, proudly led the tour, showing off the parts and processes for making centrifuges and claiming they had learned how to do so in only five years with information from the Internet.

The inspectors saw that as a lie and concluded that Tehran had long been violating the treaty's safeguard agreement. Iran, determined to reassure the West, agreed to suspend much of its atomic program while negotiating with Europe over its fate. Beyond the basic safeguards, it agreed to abide by the treaty's Additional Protocol and to adopt so-called transparency measures. Together they let inspectors go most anywhere, even military bases, and expand their investigations far beyond radioactive materials to seemingly innocuous things, such as air samples and old files.

Thus began a game of nuclear cat- and-mouse in which inspectors praised the Iranians for the information they divulged, while criticizing them for what they appeared to withhold. Little by little, the agency pieced together a pattern of deception dating to 1985, proving that Iran had done uranium and plutonium work that could help fuel a bomb.

Over nearly three years of inspections, IAEA reports documented dozens of surprises, including:

Iran was found to have used lasers to purify uranium starting in 1991 and in 2000 established a pilot plant for laser enrichment.

Significant research was uncovered on polonium 210, a rare element that can help trigger an atom bomb.

Many ties emerged to the black market of A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani atomic pioneer who supplied Iran with its centrifuge designs. Inspectors found one Khan document offering to help shape uranium metal into "hemispherical forms" needed for bomb cores.

Even on their best behavior, the Iranians could delay and stonewall. They are still refusing to turn over an important Khan document that inspectors have sought for more than two years.

Sometimes, the excuses bordered on the comical. Keys to a centrifuge hall at the Kalaye Electric Company were lost. The Lavizan-Shian military physics research base on the outskirts of Tehran, recently linked to the discovery of highly enriched uranium, was razed because City Hall said it needed the land for a park.

In a sense, Iran's candor backfired. It always came up with detailed explanations for its omissions, discrepancies and hidden programs. But each new disclosure raised new doubts and demands for better information.

"It's true to say the Iranians went beyond what they were strictly obliged to do," said Pierre Goldschmidt, a former IAEA safeguards chief who is now a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "But it doesn't mean what they did was enough."

Even that qualified cooperation ebbed last year after the talks with Europe collapsed and Iran got a new, hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Tehran resumed uranium enrichment at Natanz in January, and the next month, after the 35-country IAEA board decided to send Iran's case to the UN Security Council for possible punishment, it made good on a threat to drop all but the bare-bones inspections.

Now, the agency estimates it can visit only 20 percent of the buildings at Isfahan, the oldest and largest part of Iran's nuclear program, where, among other things, raw uranium is made ready for enrichment.

At Natanz, inspectors once had the right, on two hours notice, to visit any building and did so dozens of times, diplomats said. Now, they can go only to the few areas where the Iranians are enriching uranium, handling radioactive materials or preparing to do so.

So the inspectors can no longer enter plants where Iran makes centrifuges and their numerous parts. Iran has said that these factories and warehouses, some at Natanz, will produce 54,000 centrifuges for the cavernous underground enrichment halls.

The loss is important because global estimates on how fast Iran could get the bomb center mainly on understanding its potential rate of centrifuge production. The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington group that tracks Iran's program, has estimated that, based on past production, Iran could make up to 100 centrifuges a month. Now, however, no one outside Iran knows if that pace has slowed or accelerated.

Inspectors would also like to know if Iran is designing more sophisticated centrifuges. The IAEA has repeatedly asked for information about an advanced type, the P-2, which could speed the making of atomic fuel.

Iran had long insisted that it abandoned work on the project three years ago. Then, last month, Ahmadinejad made the startling announcement that Tehran was "presently conducting research" on the P-2, boasting that it would quadruple Iran's enrichment powers. Since then, the agency, which suspects Iran has a hidden P-2 research center, has written to the Iranians demanding an explanation. They have not replied.

There are also questions about plutonium. Last month's IAEA report on Iran tells of subtle discrepancies in Iran's experiments with plutonium made at a research reactor in Tehran.

Iran says the agency is exaggerating the significance of a simple case of contamination. But inspectors say that without the freedom to explore the nooks and crannies of the Iranian program, they cannot pursue other possible explanations, such as clandestine reactor runs or the smuggling of plutonium from abroad.

In recent weeks, the West has sought to fashion a package of incentives to persuade the Iranians to limit their nuclear program and reinstate fuller inspections.

Tehran has offered a counterproposal: It would be happy to reopen the window, but only if the Security Council drops its case against Iran and returns it to the IAEA. That would remove the threat of sanctions, and possibly war.

Washington dismisses such moves as playing for time. But Iran says it genuinely wants to prove that its aims are peaceful, even as it pledges to be more forthcoming.

"We have every interest in cooperating," said Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. "But if the other side wants to adopt an approach of confrontation, cooperation is hard to justify."

 

US looking to arm Iran's neighbours - general

By Jim Wolf

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1147988522950B265&set_id=  

Washington - Iran's neighbours - including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates - are talking to the United States about ways to bolster their defences, the general in charge of US arms sales said on Thursday.

Iran, which has defied United Nations demands to suspend enrichment of uranium that could be used to build bombs, has "awakened some major concerns" among all its neighbours, Air Force Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kohler said in a Reuters interview.

"We're in discussion with their services and their leaders to see what capabilities are required and how the United States can best fulfil those needs," said Kohler, who heads the Pentagon's Defence Security Cooperation Agency, which handles US government-to-government arms sales.

Potentially at stake are billions of dollars in US-built missile defence systems, ships to protect off-shore oil rigs and shipping lanes and the technology that would let Iran's neighbours share a digitally networked view of the Gulf.

Kohler's organisation oversaw $10,6-billion in US government arms sales last year and is on track to approve about about $13-billion this year, he said.

"Our job is not to rack up sales," Kohler added. "Our job is to help people get the capabilities they need."

Asked which Middle East countries were involved in talks sparked by Iran concerns, he said: "Let's just say everybody that is not Iran."

Pressed on whether this included Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, he said, "All of them."

Kohler said he expected competition from France and possibly others for Middle East arms sales.

However, whether the perceived threat has "been Iraq in the past or Iran in the future, I think most of the countries realise that a partnership with the US is critical."

A key US goal, Kohler added, was to enable partners to operate smoothly with US forces.

Iran says its nuclear programme is for energy production, not military use.

Weapons sales to Middle East states, particularly those in the Gulf, have slowed since the early 1990s because large orders placed at the time are still being integrated into those countries' militaries, said Richard Grimmett, who tracks such deals for the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.

Big arms purchases take years to complete. Potential beneficiaries of any fresh Middle East military spending wave include the top US contractors - Lockheed Martin,

 

 

West may bring forward date of possible Iran N-bomb

By Daniel Dombey and Stephen Fidler
Published: May 18 2006 22:06 | Last updated: May 18 2006 22:06

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/12654090-e690-11da-a36e-0000779e2340.html

Western intelligence agencies are likely to speed up their estimates of when Iran could develop a nuclear weapon, so increasing the pressure on President George W. Bush to act against the Islamic republic, according to western officials and nuclear experts.

In the latest public pronouncement on the issue, John Negroponte, US director of national intelligence, said in February that if Iran continued on its current path it would “likely have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon within the next decade”.

Since then, Iran’s announcement last month that it had “joined the nuclear club”, together with other evidence that it has stepped up its nuclear programme, is likely to make the US intelligence agencies think again.

Tehran insists its programme is purely peaceful and intended to bolster its energy security, but the US and the EU believe it is intended to develop nuclear weapons capacity.

Intelligence calculations about when Iran could have a nuclear bomb are beset with great uncertainty and, given the American intelligence debacle in Iraq, may be greeted by the world with great scepticism. But they will provide critical ammunition for arguments within the US administration over a military strike against Iran – especially in the light of diplomatic deadlock on a United Nations Security Council resolution on the issue.

“Perhaps the single most important factor in this whole dispute is the CIA estimate of when Iran could get nuclear weapons and whether in the light of present events they move the probable date to before the end of President Bush’s term in office,” says François Heisbourg, an adviser at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. “With a five to 10 year estimate he has more leeway. If the date was moved he would have to explain why he wasn’t doing anything.”

The momentum of Iran’s nuclear programme has picked up since last August when Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad took office as Iran’s president. Since then, Iran has in steps abandoned a freeze it had agreed to its programme, culminating in the production of 3.6 per cent enriched uranium – fit for a nuclear reactor though not a bomb – in April. People close to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, say the amount produced was “grams” not “kilograms”.

“The CIA estimate [for when Iran could develop enough material for a nuclear weapon] has been five to 10 years,” says Mark Fitzpatrick, a former US official, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “Iran has made progress, so it’s necessary to recalibrate it.”

Analysts say that Iran would need 15-25kg of highly enriched uranium for a single device. But what questions confront intelligence agencies in deciding when this could be achieved?

According to David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute of Science and International Security, the most important single question is “how fast it can put together and operate the P-1 centrifuges” for uranium enrichment.

He estimates that the Iranians would need to assemble 1,500-3,000 of the P-1s – P stands for Pakistan from where Iran obtained the technology – in a so-called cascade. This could conceivably be done by the end of 2007, after which it would take a further year, barring problems, to enrich enough uranium for a bomb.

The assessment assumes that there is no secret enrichment programme on which Iran has moved further. But otherwise this is a “worst case estimate”. Aluminium centrifuges such as the P-1 are required to spin in a vacuum at rapid speeds of up to 500 revolutions per second and many are likely to crash. Added to this, the P-1 – based on a model originally designed and subsequently rejected by Urenco, a European consortium – “is not a very good centrifuge”, said Mr Albright.

Pat Upson, responsible for research, development and centrifuge manufacturing at Urenco, said it could take three to five years to get a large cascade built and running effectively – but he indicated that, once working, it could produce enough material relatively quickly. But he said: “One machine crashing can start other machines crashing. If you have a cascade of 3,000 centrifuges the quality has to be very high for it to work.”

Analysts have also recently raised questions about the quality of Iran’s uranium hexafluoride, the highly corrosive gas fed into the centrifuges. Mr Upson said it had to be of good quality – free of contaminants – to produce highly enriched uranium. Iran admitted in 2003 that it had previously had to resort to using Chinese uranium hexafluoride in its programme.

Assuming enough highly enriched uranium is produced to make a bomb, Iran would also need to fashion a nuclear warhead and, to achieve a credible deterrent, fit it into a ballistic missile. While research on this could run concurrently with enrichment, these are not negligible steps.

Some analysts say the more US rhetoric is stepped up, the greater incentive there is for Iran to move ahead. Already, said Mr Albright, “fear of a a US military strike seems to have led them to accelerate their P-1 programme.”

Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon.

MK Eitam: Strike Iran now

Chairman of National Union Party Effie Eitam warns if US, others don't take action against Iran nuclear plan, Israel should act alone within about a year
Aaron Klein
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3252584,00.html

 

Israel and the international community should consider carrying out strategic strikes now against Iran's nuclear facilities to stall its suspected nuclear weapons development project, Israeli Knesset Member Effie Eitam told WorldNetDaily yesterday during an interview.

Eitam, chairman of the National Union party and a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, warned that Israel would need to attack Iran on its own if the international community led by the Unites States fails to successfully halt Tehran's nuclear program within about a year.

He blasted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's administration for "failing to devise a coherent strategy toward Iran" and urged Israel to immediately make public a doctrine of deterrence that would assure "total destruction" of Iran should it contemplate a first strike against the Jewish state.

 "Iran is now at that kind of bottleneck junction where strategic sites that are known can be relatively easily and safely attacked with the goal of causing maximum delay. Strikes now can stall the entire nuclear process by many years," said Eitam.

 Eitam: Israel will have to take action

 The Knesset member, a former Israeli Defense Forces general, said Israel may need to act alone against Iran.

 "With or without a world coalition, Israel will have to take action at some point when we are fully sure Iran's nuclear project is reaching a point of no return. I am worried all mechanisms of diplomacy used by the Iranians in response to the international movement against it are to buy time as they camouflage the real nature of their programs."

 Asked to offer a timeline for the point at which he feels Israel would have to strike Iran by itself, Eitam replied, "we are talking about the period when Iran would have enough uranium to build a bomb. The information indicates this is not long away. Six months to a year or not much more.

 "It is clear Iran is already starting to enrich uranium, and they are nearing the completion of technology necessary to assemble weapons. It is true they may leave quantities of uranium unpacked and not processed as weapons-grade for a time, but they can soon bring themselves to the point where they can make weapons within short periods of time," said Eitam.

 'With diplomacy you can never be sure'

 Eitam deemed Iran "an international problem – by far not just an Israeli problem. The Iran leadership threatens the entire free world. It is a source of evil and not just a typical enemy. This evil will not compromise. It is best if it is destroyed physically. If the world doesn't act by a certain point, then Israel must."

 Eitam said military action is the best assurance against Iran's nuclear program.

 "With diplomacy and agreements you can never be sure unless the diplomacy comes to a point where the Iranians agree to dismantle their nuclear projects under intense international supervision. This looks extremely unlikely after so many years of negligence (by the US, Israel and Europe). There is no second to physical destruction of Iran's facilities," said Eitam.

"It is clear Iran is already starting to enrich uranium, and they are nearing the completion of technology necessary to assemble weapons. It is true they may leave quantities of uranium unpacked and not processed as weapons-grade for a time, but they can soon bring themselves to the point where they can make weapons within short periods of time," said Eitam.

 'With diplomacy you can never be sure'

 Eitam deemed Iran "an international problem – by far not just an Israeli problem. The Iran leadership threatens the entire free world. It is a source of evil and not just a typical enemy. This evil will not compromise. It is best if it is destroyed physically. If the world doesn't act by a certain point, then Israel must."

 Eitam said military action is the best assurance against Iran's nuclear program.

 "With diplomacy and agreements you can never be sure unless the diplomacy comes to a point where the Iranians agree to dismantle their nuclear projects under intense international supervision. This looks extremely unlikely after so many years of negligence (by the US, Israel and Europe). There is no second to physical destruction of Iran's facilities," said Eitam.

Rice Rejects Kissinger Call for Talks with Iran

May 19, 2006
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Monsters and Critics.com

link to original article

Washington -- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday rejected a call by a predecessor - Henry Kissinger - for Washington to negotiate with Iran. Rice pointed to diplomatic efforts by the European trio of France, Britain and Germany to persuade Iran to rein in its nuclear activities. The US has backed that diplomacy.

'There are many ways that we can communicate our concerns, and we do so,' Rice said after talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al- Faisal.

Kissinger in a newspaper article this week called for the US, Russia and China to join the European trio at the table with Iran.

Rice said she appreciated his advice, but made plain that the US administration is sticking by its refusal to talk with Iran despite a flurry of calls in the US to change its stance.

The US broke diplomatic relations with Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution and the storming of the US embassy in Tehran, where Iranian students held US diplomats hostage for more than a year. Swiss diplomats have served as intermediaries since then.

Al-Faisal expressed concern about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, a goal Iran denies it is pursuing.

'What we have anxiety about is the stability and security of our region, and definitely the spread of atomic weapons or the threat of spread of atomic weapons in the region is a threat to the countries of the region,' the Saudi minister said.

U.S. Should Spell it Out: Iran Can't Go Nuclear

May 18, 2006
The Heritage Foundation
Edwin Feulner

link to original article

There's a reason few people write letters anymore. In a world of BlackBerrys, e-mail, cell phones and fax machines, the old-fashioned letter is simply too slow to deliver important information. Unless, of course, your intention is to send a message to someone other than the person to whom the letter is actually addressed.

That's why lawmakers often issue open letters to the president. If they really wanted to influence him, they'd call the White House. But when they want to use the media to influence us, they send off a letter encouraging the president to do something.

This probably explains the recent missive from Iran's mercurial president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He proposes "new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation of the world."

But it's not actually aimed at President Bush. His real intention is to influence public opinion. He doesn't actually want to open a dialogue with the United States. Ahmadinejad's simply stalling for time so Iran can finish building its nuclear weapons program.

Frighteningly, they're quickly closing in on their goal, and the international community isn't doing much to interfere. In March the United Nations Security Council urged Iran to suspend its uranium-enrichment activities and fully cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But the IAEA admitted on April 28 that Iran has ignored that warning.

In fact, the Iranian government has repeatedly violated the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and has made clear that it intends to keep right on doing so until it has the bomb. When faced with the threat of U.N. Security Council sanctions, Ahmadinejad was refreshingly clear. Iran "won't give a damn about such useless resolutions," he announced.

It's time for the United States to act.

As a first step, we should demand that the U.N. Security Council impose targeted diplomatic and economic sanctions on Iran unless it immediately freezes its nuclear research and allows international access to its facilities. These inspections must be allowed "anytime, anywhere," to preclude Iranian cheating.

Russia and China probably will block these measures, as they have so far blocked any Security Council action. If that happens, the United States should push ahead by leading a coalition of the willing to impose sanctions outside the U.N. framework. And we certainly won't be alone.

Our longtime ally Britain likely would join the effort. Iran is a growing threat, and as Prime Minister Tony Blair said last October: "If they carry on like this, the question people will be asking us is -- when are you going to do something about Iran? Can you imagine a state like that, with an attitude like that, having nuclear weapons?"

At the same time, Washington should make it clear that if Iran presses ahead with its nuclear research, the United States will invoke its right to self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

There's little doubt that Israel and the United States would be the top targets of a nuclear Iran. After all, Ahmadinejad himself has announced that, "God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism," and he's called for Israel to be "wiped out from the map." Even if the United Nations won't take such threats seriously, the United States and our democratic allies must.

Iran's president is using old-fashioned methods to get his message across, and the United States should answer in kind. We should use Ahmadinejad's letters to try to determine what he'll do next. But we should also make clear -- to Iran and the U.N. -- that the United States isn't going to allow Iran to go nuclear. It's time to remind our enemies we're ready, willing and able to act in our own defense.

Edwin Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org), a Washington–based public policy research institute and co-author of the new book Getting America Right.

First Appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times

Spying on Iran: Penetrating a Mysterious Regime

Kenneth R. Timmerman

Friday, May 12, 2006

http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/5/11/231239.shtml?s=lh

 An Iranian opposition group has asked a French court to dismiss fraud charges against three of its members, claiming that they are victims of an Iranian government intelligence operation.

"The disagreement between us and the Islamic Republic is the old dispute between the Iranian opposition and the regime," a leader of the Organization of the People's Fedaii Guerillas of Iran (OPFGI) wrote to the French judge this week. "Our conflict with the regime will not be settled outside of our country ... I hope that European governments would show a better understanding of the situation in Iran, and above all, that they would stop defending a feudal power."

At stake is $12.4 million an Iranian government bank claims the opposition activists embezzled from their Paris branch, but also the ability of the Iranian opposition to operate freely in France.

The case also provides a window on the extraordinary intelligence war under way for more than two decades between the Islamic Republic of Iran and a sophisticated opponent that has bribed, corrupted, and tricked top regime officials.

French lawyers for the Iranian government-owned Bank Sepah (Army Bank) claim the bank was swindled by a currency trading office in Paris that was established by the OPFGI as a cover for illicit activities.

In an extraordinarily detailed letter to the French judge, obtained by Newsmax, the OPFGI leader acknowledged that he had established the currency office as a cover, but claimed the money was transferred into secret accounts controlled by Iranian officials as part of an opposition effort to penetrate the regime and gather intelligence on its arms procurement networks in Europe.

 "I even gave orders to return 13 million French francs belonging to the Iranian embassy to Hamid Reza Assefi, the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Paris," he wrote the judge. Worth approximately $2.5 million at the time of the operation in 1995, the money had been deposited with the group's currency exchange office, Sedigi.

"The only reason we returned this money was because I did not want to have a financial dispute with the Iranian regime in France."

The OPFGI leader, who goes only by the nom de guerre, "Bahram," detailed three assassination attempts against him he believes were carried out by intelligence agents sent by the Iranian regime to kill him.

"The Iranian regime calls these intelligence agents "unknown soldiers of the 12th Imam," he said, explaining that the phrase was a play on words. "These ‘unknown soldiers' are all secret agents. Because they are ‘unknown,' they can carry out any crime with complete impunity."

The Marxist-oriented Organization of the People's Fedayeen Guerillas of Iran was already at war with the Iranian government of the Shah. The group's leader, Bahram, spent five years in the Shah's prisons in the 1970s, where he got to know members of the future, Islamic regime.

He and other leaders of the group fled Iran in the early 1980s, after the takeover of Ayatollah Khomeini. Accepted in France as a political refugee, Bahram went to work as a currency trader and later set up front companies he used to entrap top regime officials and to gather intelligence on their activities.

Two months before the assassination of former Iranian prime minister Shahpour Bakhttiar in August 1991, Bahram told the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire – the French counter-espionage service, known by its initials, DST – that the Iranian regime had placed a mole in Bakhtiar's office.

"We told the DST that this man, Fereidoun Boyer-Ahmadi, was getting $1000 per month from the Islamic Republic embassy in Paris," he told Newsmax in an interview. "Our currency exchange bureau, Sedigi, changed the money for him at a very good rate," he added.

Boyer-Ahmadi was later accused by the French government of complicity in Bakhtiar's murder, but fled the country before he could be arrested.

The OPFGI disrupted Iranian regime operations in Europe by launching a series of commando-style raids on Iranian embassies and consulates, during which they seized highly-classified intelligence documents and made them public.

Many of the documents published by the OPFGI from Iranian embassies in France, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Holland and the regime's consulate in Geneva, Switzerland, involved secret arms deals and bank accounts used by regime officials to stash money they had received as commissions and bribes. The group has also published lists of Iranian government intelligence operatives, many of them working under cover in Iran Air or as carpet merchants.

In his letter to the French judge, Bahram revealed that he has led "a clandestine life" for the past thirty-six years. "Naturally, the revolutionary struggle imposes on me a certain life style. I do without many things and appear rarely in public places," he wrote. "When I enter into a relationship with someone, it is only within the framework of my political responsibilities and to achieve my goals, nothing else, especially if that person is a member of the regime – a regime whose members all graduated from schools of criminality."

In the mid-1990s, Bahram explained, he sought to cultivate the manager of the Bank Sepah in Paris, Heydayat Ashtari Larki. "I learned that he was a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran… and that he had just been appointed as number two for Iranian intelligence in France."

As their relationship developed, Bahram learned that Ashtari Larki's wife's family in Iran wanted to buy a house but was short of money, so he asked members of his group in Iran to raise the money so they could make the purchase. "Thus, by financing the purchase of a house in Iran for the family of an ‘unknown soldier' of the regime, I managed to consolidate my relationship with Ashtari," he wrote the French judge.

Ashtari became a key informant, and provided the opposition group with intelligence on regime arms purchases. "In Room number 222 of the Hotel Concorde Lafayette in Paris, he was a member of the group that negotiated the purchase of Rasit radar" from a French defense contractor.

Fearing his colleagues in Iranian intelligence had learned of his involvement with the opposition group, Ashtari fled France and joined Bahram and other OPFGI activists in Spain, where he remained for a year. In July 1996, Bahram published information on the Rasit radar purchase, as well as documents Ashtari had obtained on a scheme by the Bank Sepah in Paris to take hundreds of millions of dollars of precious stones on deposit, using them as collateral to open lines of credit to purchase aircraft and weaponry from France.

In another scheme that formed the basis of the Bank Sepah lawsuit against Bahram and his opposition group, Ashtari explained that "a senior regime leader" had earned $8 million in commissions on the deals with France and wanted to send them to Iran. "He asked if we could carry out this operation," Bahram wrote the French judge.

On orders from Tehran, he explained, Bahram had the Sedigi currency exchange office send the money, $2 million at a time, to a variety of different bank accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere around the world, before eventually sending it to accounts in Tehran.

In Iran, we have a proverb," Bahram explained to the judge: ‘a liar has no memory.'" Thus, before each transfer, Sedigi provided Bank Sepah with a $2 million check as guarantee. But once they went to the French court, the bank "forget to say that after each operation, they returned our security deposit" without ever attempting to cash them. "The lawyer for the Bank Sepah, who receives substantial payments from the Iranian regime, tries to say nothing about this, because he knows that he would be lying."

Bahram also revealed that a company owned by two Americans and a Pakistani, Aura Investment, paid a commission of 750,000 French francs (around $150,000) to the Bank Sepah through the group's currency trading office, which the OPFGI used to purchase an apartment in Paris for the Iranian bank manager to further corrupt him.

The French court handed down a one-year suspended sentence against Bahram and two other OPFGI activists in 2002 for their actions against the Bank Sepah and froze several million dollars of property and bank accounts belonging to the group in France and in Switzerland.

Bahram apologized to the French judge for not personally appearing in court, but explained that he feared that regime agents would assassinate him if they could discover his true identity.

Richard Hailey, of the Indianapolis-based lawfirm Ramey and Hailey, met Bahram in Europe recently in connection with a lawsuit he and other firms are pursuing against the Islamic Republic of Iran for its alleged involvement in the September 11 attacks on America.

"I was absolutely fascinated by Bahram," he told Newsmax. "He was careful, but detailed. Listening to him was tantalizing - like reading a book that's so good you can't stop turning the pages. Here is somebody who operates beneath the radar screen, a real pro. You felt he would just vanish into thin air the minute he walked out of the room."

Dealing With the Devil

By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 18, 2006

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=22513

Should President Bush “respond” to the 18-page rant sent to him through the media by the jihadist president in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

The Party of Appeasers – which includes the Senator from France, Chuck Hagel – believes the answer is yes. They believe the United States should be offering concessions to a regime that murders its own young, that cheats on its international obligations, and that threatens to obliterate another member of the United Nations.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who has now acknowledged publicly that she and her political masters completely missed the rise of political Islam during the 1990s because of their ideological rejection of religion in any form whatsoever, had a slightly more interesting suggestion. She has said the president should respond to the message he wants to receive, not necessarily the one that was sent.

That is a constructive suggestion, seeing as there is nothing – absolutely nothing – in the bearded boy wonder’s screed that deserves serious attention by anyone other than a rapid consumer of urban legend. (Which is why Cindy Sheehan thinks it’s a masterpiece, no doubt).

Just to sum up, for those of who haven’t the patience to troll the gutter, Ahmadinejad makes the case why he believes why America is an evil empire. I guess that is what explains the letter’s unending torrent of torrid prose. It’s a long and often amusing case if you buy into it.

He complains that the United States has tried to overthrow his regime (millions of Iranian patriots wish that were true).

He criticizes the US for holding prisoners at Guantanamo who get “three hots and a cot,” as well as a prayer rug, exercise, and visits by the Red Cross. Gee, I know thousands of political prisoners in Iran who would much prefer GTMO to Evin prison in Tehran or Gohardasht prison in Karaj.

In calling on the president to change his ways, he counsels him to adopt “the values outlined in the beginning of this letter, i.e. the teachings of Jesus Christ (PBUH), human rights and liberal values."

My favorite is the way he phrased the allegation – which Michael Moore and the Cindy camp know is absolute, rock-solid truth – that elements within the U.S. government carried out the September 11 attacks. "Reportedly your government employs extensive security, protection and intelligence systems – and even hunts its opponents abroad,” he says.

This is what psychologists call “projection.” Since Ahmadinejad and his government have systematically hunted down and murdered opponents of their regime in France, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Dubai, Iraq, and elsewhere, ergo the United States must be gunning for Michael Moore and Saint Cindy as they hip-hop from gay gala to gala at the Cannes Film Festival. You wish.

I guess no one gave him the brief on the support his own government provided the al Qaeda hijackers, an extremely truncated version of which appears on pp241-242 of the 9/11 Commission report.

But seriously, President Bush should respond to the letter. He should treat it as an opportunity to address the Iranian people, doing in foreign policy what he occasionally has done so well here at home, talking over the heads of the media and taking his case directly to the people.

His address should be carried on Voice of America and Radio Farda in Farsi, as well as in the original English – if for no other reason than to ensure that pro-Tehran staffers at these radios do not deform the message when they translate it into Persian. The president’s speech should be re-broadcast again and again and again. And it should be followed up by action.

Here’s what the president should say and do.

First, he should restate his support for the right of the Iranian people “to choose your own future and win your own freedom.” He first said this, to great effect, in the 2002 State of the Union and restated it again this year. Presidential pronouncements that reaffirm the right of the Iranian people to pursue freedom in the face of tyranny are important, especially if the president follows up with clear actions.

Next, he should designate Vice President Dick Cheney as his Emissary to the Free People of Iran. (That will get the boy president’s attention, I assure you. Cheney = serious business). Cheney’s job will be to conduct a loya jirga of the Iranian opposition, and to help them designate a leadership council capable of taking their case to the world, as well as to the Iranian people.

(Note to skeptics: the Iran Referendum Movement has already taken a major step in this direction, bringing together political opponents from the National Front on the left to the Constitutionalists on the right. They have established 38 chapters in cities around the world, who designated 250 delegates to a founding conference in Brussels in December 2005. The conferees elected a 15 member Central committee, who then selected a 7-member executive board. That is a good example of democracy in action.)

Third, the President should ask Congress to fully fund programs in support of the Free People of Iran. These programs should include massive support for exile broadcasting out of Los Angeles, as opposed to expanding the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe’s pro-Iranian regime broadcasting in Persian.

VOA showed once again on May 11 just how opposed it is to the agenda of President Bush by inviting lobbyist Housang Amirahmadi onto their premier TV show broadcasting into Iran. (Amirahmadi is one of the legion of VOA guests who has called for lifting sanctions against Tehran and opening trade with the Islamic Republic, instead of confronting them.) What kind of message does that send to the people of Iran? Where are the pro-freedom advocates on U.S.-taxpayer funded broadcasts into Iran? Where are the president’s speeches in favor of freedom?

Finally, the Vice President’s office should work behind the scenes with non-profit organizations and with the leadership council that emerges from the loya jirga to get money and technical support items to opposition forces inside Iran. Not weapons – as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (aka the MEK) want – but secure communications equipment and the like to be used to help organize a massive, nation-wide movement. We need to help the Iranian people to master the weapons of non-violence against a regime that owns all the guns. This is war by other means.

Mr. President: bringing freedom to Iran is far too important to America’s national security to entrust it to the State Department, and especially not to the CIA. Go to the folks who can do, not to those who whine and leak.

How much will this cost? $300 million? $500 million? Perhaps more? Assuredly. And how much will it cost in blood and treasure if we have to send an armada of B2 bombers and F-22 and F-117 stealth fighters and U.S. special forces to take out Iran’s nuclear and missile sites? (And don’t forget that nasty little “tax” when oil tops $200/barril after a U.S. or Israeli military strike on Iran).

If we do not help the people of Iran to overthrow this radical regime, the military option will be all that we have left – unless, of course, as the Party of Appeasement would have it, we are to get used to the idea of a nuclear-armed regime of radical Islamic fundamentalists who openly espouse the thrill it would give them to murder millions of Americans and Jews.

This is the only option between Appeasement and War. It’s time we took it seriously. There is much to do.

Iran Targets Foreign Broadcasters

May 18, 2006
BBC Monitoring
Steve Metcalf and Mike Rose

link to original article

The authorities in Iran are reportedly making new plans to disrupt broadcasts from abroad after earlier efforts failed to stem the tide sufficiently. The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), a hardline body guarding the gains of the 1979 Islamic revolution, intends to increase the number of jamming stations in Tehran and other cities from 50 to 300 within two years, an Iranian online paper has reported.

The independent online paper Rooz says new technology will be used in an attempt to block specific satellite channels broadcasting from abroad.

The move comes at a time the Bush administration is planning to expand TV broadcasts to Iran, to augment Persian-language broadcasts by Voice of America.

Numerous Persian-language channels run by Iranian expatriates in California also crowd the airwaves over Iran.

But attempts to jam them a few years ago - said to have come from an Iranian diplomatic facility in Cuba - stopped after a month.

And further attempts to block them in the run up to the Iranian presidential election in June 2005, according to AFP news agency, were only partially successful, as the microwave signals being used proved so powerful that they interfered with state television and the mobile phone network.

Crackdown

Plans are also afoot to clamp down on the possession of satellite dishes within Iran. Although they are illegal, the ban has not been rigorously enforced in recent years.

Now the authorities are talking about confiscating satellite dishes and fining their owners.

At the same time, the Iranian state broadcaster Voice and Vision is seeking to expand its overseas broadcasting while controlling incoming broadcasts and channelling them via the state network and cable subscription services.

A member of the parliamentary cultural committee said that such broadcasts should "not be contrary to the values and principles of Islamic and national culture".

BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad.

Keep Iran military option, says Rifkind

May 18, 2006
Telegraph
Anton La Guardia

link to original article

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Conservative foreign secretary, said yesterday that western countries should be ready to consider military action against Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to curb Teheran's uranium enrichment programme. Sir Malcolm, who also served as defence secretary, is the first senior British politician to take such a robust stance against Teheran.

He told The Daily Telegraph that the "disaster" of Iraq should not stop the West from confronting the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Sir Malcolm said western "carrots" to persuade Iran to co-operate with the United Nations would not be taken seriously by Iranian hardliners unless accompanied by a credible "stick". "Iran is a serious potential threat that does have to be prevented," he said.

The world's leading powers are trying to draw up a package of "incentives and disincentives" to persuade Iran to halt the most dangerous parts of its nuclear programme. But Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has rejected all such ideas.

Previewing a speech he will give today, Sir Malcolm said that in return for a "permanent and verifiable renunciation of nuclear weapons, and ceasing work on uranium enrichment", Washington should offer to restore diplomatic relations with Iran and guarantee "that its frontiers would be safe from military attack". At the same time, European countries must adopt a more robust attitude if such an American offer were rebuffed. Even if Russia and China blocked UN economic sanctions, European countries should join the US in a financial boycott of Iran, he said.

"If such measures still did not have the desired impact, military intervention might have to be considered," said Sir Malcolm.

Action would depend on assessments of whether bombing could seriously set back Iran's nuclear programme. Sir Malcolm said only the US had the aircraft in the region needed to mount a campaign, but it should have the political backing of Europe.

Annan Warning Over Iran 'Crisis'

May 18, 2006
The Guardian
Agencies

link to original article

The UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, today warned that the confrontation over Iran's nuclear programme was a "crisis" that the international community had to address urgently. Mr Annan said only a negotiated settlement would resolve the dispute over Tehran's uranium enrichment programme, which the US claims is a cover for the development of nuclear weapons.

"It is a crisis in the sense [that] we need to work very actively," Mr Annan said in a speech at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo.

The standoff between Iran and the US has become increasingly tense since Tehran dismissed a package of EU-proposed incentives to suspend its uranium enrichment.

Mr Annan said it was his "strong hope that the current discussions in the security council will give new momentum to the quest for a negotiated solution".

He said there was "a need to lower the temperature, and refrain from actions and rhetoric that could further inflame the situation", warning of an increase in global tensions and "unwelcome delays in resolving the matter".

However, talks on Iran were postponed yesterday, highlighting differences between the US, the UK and Germany on one side and China and Russia on the other.

The talks had been due to take place in London tomorrow, but have now been delayed until Tuesday at the earliest, diplomats said.

Earlier this week, the EU said it could add a light water reactor to a package of incentives intended to persuade Iran to permanently give up uranium enrichment.

A light water reactor is considered less likely to be used for nuclear proliferation than a heavy water facility, which produces plutonium waste.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yesterday dismissed the proposal and compared it to offering "walnuts and chocolates" to a child in exchange for gold.