May 05, 2006
Guardian
Ewen MacAskill
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ewen_macaskill/2006/05/post_69.html
The key to the
demotion of Jack Straw from foreign secretary is
Iran. Mr Straw for more than a year, in his
favourite outlet the BBC Today programme or at
various press conferences, said repeatedly a
military strike on Iran was
inconceivable.
Politicians always try to avoid boxing
themselves in, but Straw did on this issue: if a
military strike had become a serious option, he
would have been forced to resign.
He was reflecting
the reality of British domestic politics.
Against the background of the Iraq debacle, Mr
Straw knew it would be difficult to win support
for the military option in cabinet and that it
would create even more upheaval among the
membership of the already weakened Labour party.
The problem for Mr Straw is that Tony Blair does
not view Iran the same way. He regards the
threat posed by Iran as the most serious in the
world today, and is even more messianic on the
issue than George Bush. That does not mean that
a military strike will happen but Mr Blair, like
Mr Bush, thinks it is a good idea to keep the
option on the table, if only to keep Iran
guessing.
Downing Street
phoned the Foreign Office several times to ask
Mr Straw to stop being so categoric in ruling
out a military strike. And the White House also
phoned Downing Street to ask why Mr Straw kept
saying these things. And that was before Mr
Straw dismissed as "nuts" the prospect of a
tactical nuclear strike on Iran, an option that
Mr Bush subsequently refused to remove from the
table.
Margaret Beckett
inherits the Iran portfolio. One of her first
jobs will be in New York on Monday where she
will meet Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of
state with whom Mr Straw built up such a close
relationship, and other counterparts to discuss
Iran.
One of the first
challenges she will face from the media is to
confirm that a military strike is
"inconceivable". She is likely to say that a
military strike is not being discussed and that
she is focused on the diplomatic route. But will
she say that a military strike is
"inconceivable"?
On other main
issue that consumes the time of both the Foreign
Office and Downing Street, Iraq, there is likely
to be any significant change. There is nothing a
foreign secretary can do about Iraq: its fate is
in the hands of the new Iraqi government and the
insurgents. Britain, like the US, is hoping it
can begin to pull out troops before the end of
the year.
Ms Rice went out
of her way to establish a good relationship with
Mr Straw, but she also had a good relationship
while she was Mr Bush's national security
adviser with Sir David Manning, at the time Mr
Blair's foreign affairs adviser, with whom she
spoke on a regular, almost daily, basis. There
is no reason why Mrs Beckett cannot too
establish a close working relationship
EU presidency expresses ’serious concern’ about
human rights in Iran
(AP)
5 May 2006
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/May/middleeast_May123.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
VIENNA,
Austria - The European Union on Friday expressed
“serious concern” about the human rights
situation in Iran.
In a
statement from Austria’s government, which holds
the rotating EU presidency, the 25-nation bloc
said it was particularly worried about 10
executions carried out at Iran’s Evin prison on
April 19 and the indictment of human rights
defender Abdolfattah Soltani.
“The
EU calls on Iranian authorities to respect Mr.
Soltani’s right to a fair and public hearing by
a competent, independent and impartial tribunal
established by law,” the statement said. It also
called on the Tehran regime “to stop penalizing
individuals for contacts with embassies.”
“The
European Union also expresses its serious
concern about the general increase in executions
in Iran. This trend is confirmed by the 10
executions carried out recently in the prison of
Evin,” the EU said.
“The
EU reiterates that it is, as a matter of
principle, opposed to the death penalty under
all circumstances and calls for its universal
abolition. Where the death penalty still exists,
the EU calls on states to progressively restrict
its use ...”
Relations between the EU and Iran have
deteriorated as the West’s standoff with Iran
over its nuclear program has intensified.
Gold Rises to 25-Year High as Standoff With Iran
Spurs Buying
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000082&sid=aTS7cF15Lbb8&refer=canada#
May
5 (Bloomberg) -- Gold rose to a 25-year high in
New York as increased tension between Iran and
the U.S. spurred investors to buy the precious
metal as a haven and a hedge against inflation.
The
U.S., U.K. and France are trying to get support
in the United Nations Security Council for a
resolution demanding Iran quit enriching
uranium. Oil prices have surged to a record on
concern exports from Iran, the world's
fourth-largest producer, may be disrupted,
stoking inflation.
``Gold may rise to $1,000 before June should the
situation in Iran intensify,'' said Bernard Sin,
chief trader at Geneva-based MKS Finance, a
precious-metals trading and refining company.
Gold
futures for June delivery rose $4, or 0.6
percent, to $680.50 an ounce at 9:31 a.m. on the
Comex division of the New York Mercantile
Exchange. Prices earlier reached $687, the
highest since October 1980.
AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., the world's
third-largest gold producer, said the gold
market is ``set for a sustained positive
cycle.'' The company's quarterly loss narrowed
as it benefited from the higher gold price.
Bernard Swanepoel, chief executive officer of
Harmony Gold Mining Co., Africa's third-largest
gold producer, said he expects prices to rise
further.
Barrick Gold Corp., the world's largest gold
producer, has said it's cutting forward gold
sales, which lock in prices, to take advantage
of rising prices.
Oil
Shipments
``This is clear evidence of producers' positive
outlook about the gold price,'' John Meyer, an
analyst at London-based Numis Securities, said
in a report.
Iran
would probably retaliate for any military strike
against its nuclear facilities by trying to
choke off oil shipments through the Strait of
Hormuz, military planners said.
The
U.S., U.K. and France yesterday circulated a
draft UN resolution that demanded Iran ``suspend
all enrichment-related and reprocessing
activities, including research and
development.'' The three countries have said
Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a charge
Iran has denied.
The
draft resolution ``is extremely unhelpful and
won't get anywhere,'' Iranian Ambassador Javad
Zarif said. ``Iran does not respond to threats
and intimidation.''
``It's the same story of Iran, inflation
concerns and rising oil prices,'' said Charles
Dowsett, head of trading of precious metals at
ABN Amro Holding NV in Sydney.
Stock Crash
Marc
Faber, author of a newsletter called The Gloom,
Boom & Doom Report, yesterday said that gold is
becoming the ``global currency of choice.'' Gold
may surge to $6,000 an ounce in the next decade,
and possibly to as much as $10,000 depending on
U.S. monetary policy and the level of the Dow
Jones Industrial Average at that time, he said
Faber told investors to bail out of U.S. stocks
a week before the 1987 Black Monday crash.
Some
investors buy gold to hedge against inflation,
which erodes the value of fixed-income assets
such as bonds. They also buy bullion as a haven
against instability in financial markets caused
by geopolitical tension.
Crude oil in New York reached $70.70 a barrel
today and has gained 38 percent in the past
year. Oil climbed to $75.35 on April 21 and
April 24, the highest since trading began in
1983, partly on concern over the Iranian
dispute. Oil more than doubled in 1979 after a
revolution in Iran cut the nation's oil exports.
``We're currently in territory not even
contemplated six months ago,'' said Ron Cameron,
a Sydney-based analyst at Ord Minnett Ltd. ``The
price seems to have momentum on its side.''
Iranian cleric says US, UN can’t “bully” Iran
(Reuters)
5 May 2006
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/May/middleeast_May122.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
TEHERAN - Iran will not be pushed into
abandoning its nuclear fuel work by United
States pressure or a United Nations resolution,
an influential cleric said on Friday.
Ahmad Khatami also told worshippers at Friday
prayers in Tehran that any country which chose
confrontation with Iran would regret the move
“for ever”.
France,
Britain and Germany, with US backing, have
drafted a UNresolution that demands a halt to
Iran’s nuclear fuel programme, which they fear
is aimed not only at power stations but also at
arms. Tehran denies the charge.
“The
US and the Security Council can rest assured
that Iran is not a country to retreat in the
face of bullying resolutions,” Khatami said.
Khatami, no relation of the former liberal
President Mohammad Khatami, is a hardliner who
sits on the Assembly of Experts, the body of 86
clerics that constitutionally supervises Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Iran is a strategically sensitive part of the
region. Be assured that Iran’s insecurity means
insecurity for the Middle East and the smoke
will sting your eyes too,” he added, in remarks
broadcast live on state radio.
Iran
is the world’s fourth biggest oil exporter and
often warns any action against it will ramp up
oil prices beyond levels developed economies can
bear.
It
also holds a strong military vantage point over
the world’s main oil-tanker nexus, the Strait of
Hormuz, and Israel is within range of its
ballistic missiles.
“If
you take the path of confrontation instead of
the path to negotiations ... you should know
that the reaction of the great Iranian nation
will be something that the enemy will regret for
ever,” Khatami added.
US
and EU diplomats hope they can convince
permanent Security Council members China and
Russia to back their draft resolution by
specifying that this resolution will not provide
a basis for sanctions or military action.
Iran’s
economy would be highly vulnerable to sanctions
on imported gasoline, bank loans and engineering
equipment.
Washington
has said it would prefer a diplomatic solution
to the crisis but has said military strikes are
an option and that it is willing to take action
independently of the Security Council to stop
Iran getting an atom bomb.
German MPs: Iran Remains Resistant to Western
Diplomacy
Hardy
Graupner (jp).Deutsche Welle
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1994027,00.html
German MPs have returned to Berlin from a
fact-finding mission in Iran. Two-day talks with
political leaders in Tehran helped gauge the
leadership's resistance towards suspending its
uranium enrichment activities.
The
German MPs were told that Iran was by no means
willing to abandon its nuclear program, as
leaders there felt that the United States and
the West as a whole had gambled away all trust
in them by allegedly applying double standards.
The
visiting German MPs met with high-ranking
Iranian politicians to discuss the most
sensitive issues relating to Tehran's nuclear
ambitions.
During
talks with the parliamentary president, the
deputy foreign minister and many other leading
political representatives, Ruprecht Polenz, the
Christian Democrat head of Germany's
parliamentary foreign affairs committee, urged
his hosts to rethink their stance on the
national nuclear program with uranium-enrichment
activities now having gone into their second
phase.
Cutting little ice
Bildunterschrift:
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:
Ruprecht Polenz
Polenz
said the international community was expecting a
sign of good will from Tehran to promote a
speedy solution to the conflict and save the
country from any potential sanctions in case it
kept reacting so stubbornly.
Talking
to the media back home in Berlin, Polenz
acknowledged that his delegation's talks cut
little ice with Iranian leaders, who like to see
themselves engaged in a fight between themselves
and the United States and other western nations.
The
German MPs were told that history had shown that
westerners were unreliable and unpredictable and
had no real understanding of Iran's own security
interests in a region full of tension. Polenz
said it was important for the UN Security
Council to keep demonstrating unity. He urged a
"softer" resolution on Iran which would again
have the backing of China and Russia too, saying
that this meant a resolution not involving any
sanctions yet.
Iranian
media reports said Tehran had encouraged Germany
to play a greater mediating role in the
conflict, but Polenz said in Berlin that Germany
wasn't in a position to do so.
"We are
with the world, we are side by side with the US,
Britain, France, China, India, Russia and all
the others," he said. "Together we are trying to
convince the Iranians to correct their nuclear
program and give up their enrichment activities.
What we can do, with regard to bilateral
agreements, is convince Iran to change its
policy."
Anti-Americanism
Bildunterschrift:
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:
Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad
Green
party parliamentarian Marie-Luise Beck, who
accompanied Polenz to Iran, was shocked about
the level of anti-Americanism and said it was
all the more important for the US administration
to seek direct dialogue with Iranian leaders on
a settlement of the conflict.
Coming
back from Tehran, she said she'd realized that
the task ahead of the Security Council was a
daunting one.
"I had
not realized how fixed this impression is that
the US is against this country," she said. And
if they give you this feeling, even if they're
wrong in a rational sense, you have to take that
feeling seriously."
Security concerns
Iranian
leaders have meanwhile voiced concern that there
might be plots to attack their national football
side during the World Cup in Germany, starting
in June. They feel threatened by the best-known
Iranian resistance group, the People's
Mujaheddin, who are on the EU's list of
terrorist organizations.
Security
problems are also expected in connection with a
possible visit of the Iranian president to
Germany during the world cup.
But
Bavaria's interior minister, Günter Beckstein,
has already signaled that Mahmud Ahmadinedshad
would not be welcome here after repeatedly
denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to
be wiped off the map.
Iran
playing game to buy time
May 5, 2006.
Toronto
Star
Reza Beyzaei
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1146779411368&call_pageid=970599119419
Iran
is playing its game again, buying time and soon
surprising the whole world with its possession
of at least one nuclear bomb if not more. As in
the past, the Iranian president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad tried to use his blackmailing tactic
by threatening to attack Israel if his country
is attacked.
Despite such repeated threats, not only to its
neighbours but to Europe and North America, the
members of the United Nations Security Council
failed to impose appropriate sanctions on Iran
and show unanimously that the time for threat
and blackmail has come to a serious end and Iran
needs to listen to the fair and just voices of
the world body and stop lying and hiding.
Cheney Says Iran Should Renounce Nukes
May
05, 2006
The Associated Press
WRAL.com
link to original article
ASTANA, Kazakhstan -- Vice President Dick
Cheney, visiting Kazakhstan Friday, said that
Iran should follow the example the Central Asian
set several years ago in renouncing nuclear
weapons.
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is seen during
his bilateral meeting with Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili, not seen, during the
Vilnius Conference 2006 in Vilnius, Lithuania,
Thursday, May 4, 2006. Cheney and the presidents
of eight former communist bloc countries arrived
in the Lithuanian capital on Wednesday for a
conference on the future of the Baltic and Black
sea regions.
At a news conference, Cheney also shrugged off
Russian criticism of a speech he delivered
Thursday that accused President Vladimir Putin
of backsliding on democracy and using energy
resources as political leverage against European
countries.
"We need to find a way diplomatically to avoid a
kind of problem that would result from
Iran-developed nuclear weapons," Cheney told
reporters after unexpectedly lengthy talks with
President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
He said the United States is working with others
to try to find a "diplomatic solution to avoid a
confrontation over this issue."
With Nazarbayev standing a few feet away, Cheney
added, "I frankly think that the example
provided by Kazakhstan some years ago when they
achieved independence, of giving up the
inventory of nuclear weapons that were deployed
in Kazakhstan, was an outstanding example that
the Iranians might want to consider."
Cheney said he hadn't yet had the chance to
"study the reaction out of Moscow" from
Thursday's speech.
"The speech was very carefully crafted but made
it clear the extent to which they seek to resist
the development of strong democracies" in
Eastern Europe, he said.
Cheney said that even with his remarks, he
expects a meeting of the world's industrialized
nations to occur as scheduled in Russia this
summer, and "we'll all benefit from a free, open
and honest exchange of views at that
conference."
Nazarbayev, whose country shares borders with
both Russia and China, betrayed no concern about
the sharp rhetoric. "Every country has the right
to voice their opinion about what is happening
in another country and if they'll just do that
in a friendly fashion we'll all benefit from
it," he said.
Cheney arrived for talks seeking to maximize
access to the vast oil and gas reserves in the
central Asian nation with a troubled
human-rights record.
He became the fourth top administration official
to visit the former Soviet republic in recent
months, underscoring the importance placed on a
country that is strategically located and an
ally in the war on terror, as well as rich in
energy resources.
The two men met privately more than an hour, far
longer than the few minutes that had been
expected to precede a larger meeting of
delegations.
There was no word on what the two men discussed
in their private talks.
They sat down in a year-old presidential palace,
part of a new capital that has been rising for
nearly a decade. Signs of economic development
were seemingly everywhere _ more than two dozen
towering construction cranes were easily visible
in the distance from the steps outside the
palace.
Cheney's schedule included a dinner with his
host, with horsemeat cold cuts, a local
delicacy, on the menu.
Administration policy favors development of
multiple means of delivering Kazakhstan's energy
supplies to markets in the West and elsewhere.
Among them, Assistant Secretary of State Richard
Boucher told Congress recently, the United
States is "working on securing the flow of oil"
from North Caspian oil fields by tanker to a
pipeline terminus in Azerbaijan. That route
would bypass Russia and Iran. There has also
been periodic talk of building a pipeline under
the Caspian Sea.
Energy aside, one senior administration official
said the vice president would prod Nazarbayev to
make further democratic reforms in the country
he has ruled since the Soviet Union dissolved in
1991.
"The government's human-rights record remains
poor," according to a recent State Department
report.
It was unclear how Cheney would attempt to
balance the two concerns _ American energy needs
in a time of high prices alongside a desire for
political reforms. His talks came one day after
a speech to East European leaders in Lithuania
that sharply criticized Russia for retreating on
democracy.
One senior administration official traveling
with Cheney said the remarks, which drew quick
criticism from Moscow, had been "very well
vetted" in advance within the administration.
Officials disclosed belatedly that while in
Lithuania to attend a meeting of eastern
European leaders, Cheney had met Thursday
afternoon with Inna Kulei, the wife of the
jailed Belarusian opposition leader, Alexander
Milinkevich .
The vice president's stop in Kazakhstan followed
visits in recent months by Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, Agriculture Secretary Mike
Johanns and Samuel Bodman, secretary of energy.
According to the Web site of the U.S.-Kazakhstan
Business Association, the Asian country has
potential oil reserves of as much 110 billion
barrels.
American energy companies are heavily invested
in that nation's oil industry, and Halliburton,
the company Cheney ran before becoming vice
president, has an oil-field services presence
there.
"Kazakhstan, an economic success story, is
rapidly becoming one of the top energy producing
nations in the world," Boucher told a House
committee on April 26.
Along with its economic reforms, Boucher said,
the nation "has an opportunity to achieve
stability by upholding standards of democracy
and human rights."
Playing to the Home Crowd in Iran
May
05, 2006
The New York Times
Mark Bowden
link to original article
Just
over a quarter-century ago, five Iranian college
students hit upon the idea of seizing the
American Embassy in Tehran and staging a sit-in.
Among them were Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who
is now Iran's president, and Habibollah Bitaraf,
the current energy minister.
The takeover of the embassy did not play out
exactly as its student planners envisioned —
indeed, Mr. Ahmadinejad himself initially
opposed the move — but as a symbolic step, it
not only isolated Iran from the rest of the
world, it also rallied millions of Iranians to
the idea of a strictly Islamist future. The
ensuing hostage crisis made a big splash
internationally, but perhaps its most important
and lasting consequence was local: it gave the
mullahs the leverage to take full power.
It is an old political strategy: identify a
foreign enemy, provoke a crisis and wrap
yourself in the flag. Today's confrontation with
Iran over nuclear research is an example of how,
as the saying goes, history rhymes.
Hard as it may be for Americans to believe, in
November 1979 Iran's theocratic future was
hardly assured. There had been a revolution, of
course, but many different forces had combined
to overthrow Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The
mosque network, which had sunk deep roots that
had spread wide during years of political
oppression, provided the popular muscle; it was
the force that propelled millions into the
streets. But despite fervent and widespread
reverence for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the
new Iran could have taken any number of
identities.
Among those who had cast out the shah were
Communists, nationalists, socialists and others
— many of whom envisioned at least some flavor
of democracy. Some of these groups were highly
organized and well-financed, especially Tudeh,
Iran's Communist party. These groups had varying
ideas about the new Iran, but were united in
preferring a secular state.
Ayatollah Khomeini himself was of two minds on
the subject: he did not immediately seize power
on his triumphant return to Iran from Paris but
retreated to the holy city of Qom, appointed a
provisional government manned by the secular
political leaders who had surrounded him in
exile, and established a revolutionary council
to write Iran's new constitution.
The idealistic young Iranians who seized the
American Embassy that month and held 52
Americans hostage for more than a year, however,
wanted a total Islamic revolution. They faced
intense competition on college campuses from
Tudeh and other secular groups. Feeling
outnumbered, they formed the umbrella group
Strengthen the Unity to combine the Islamist
students scattered throughout the city into a
single force.
In the confusing, violent aftermath of the
revolution, there were plots galore. Mr.
Ahmadinejad feared the influence of Tudeh most
of all; he argued that the better embassy to
occupy would have been the one belonging to that
party's sponsor, the Soviet Union. He lost that
debate to those in his group who felt the
greater threat was America, the nation that had
propped up the shah for more than 25 years.
The embassy seizure worked beyond its plotters'
wildest expectations. It was greeted with
extravagant enthusiasm throughout the nation. In
Tehran itself, hundreds of thousands of happy
citizens took to the streets to dance on the
Stars and Stripes and burn Jimmy Carter in
effigy. It was a great party of purgation,
casting off all remnants of American domination.
Ayatollah Khomeini, whose initial response to
the takeover was to order that the students be
chased off the grounds, reconsidered when he
heard reports of its popularity. Overnight
heroes, the student occupiers quickly produced
"evidence" on Iranian TV to substantiate their
claim that America had been planning a
countercoup.
For years the United States had used its base in
Tehran to coordinate spy operations against the
southern Soviet states, so there was plenty of
high-level espionage equipment to place before
the cameras — coding and decoding equipment,
shredders and disintegrators, a plastic-walled
"bubble" for holding conversations free of
electronic eavesdropping, and the like. All the
Americans seized were labeled spies, including
Marine guards and secretarial staff. The
students had not just occupied the American
Embassy, they claimed, they had uncovered and
thwarted an evil plot to destroy the revolution
and assassinate Khomeini.
The immediate effect was the collapse of the
provisional government. A week before the
seizure, Prime Minister Mehdi Barzagan and his
foreign minister, Ibrahim Yazdi, had met
informally with President Carter's national
security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in
Algiers to explore new footing for a
relationship between the two longtime allies.
After the embassy takeover, that meeting,
revealed in the press, appeared sinister. When
Khomeini sided with the students, and with their
claims of an American plot, it was clear that a
dangerous season had opened for secular
politics. Mr. Barzagan and his government
stepped down.
Day after day, the student hostage-takers held
press conferences broadcast in Iran, and
sometimes around the world. While the United
States was fixated on the fate of the hostages,
a different drama was playing out in Iran. Using
files seized in the embassy, the students
smeared secular political leaders with charges
of treason and spying.
The Muslim students had reason to fear
competition. There remained strong support for a
more secular government, and some of the
provisional administration figures remained
popular. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, a minister in the
collapsed government, was elected president in
early 1980. He and Sadegh Ghotzbadeh, the new
foreign minister, took on the hostage-takers in
their first months in office. They tried in vain
to arrange for transfer of the hostages to
government custody, and publicly condemned the
students, even as the daily embassy press
conferences started featuring denouncements of
members of their own administration.
But by then it was too late: Mr. Bani-Sadr was
eventually branded a spy and now lives in exile
in Paris; Mr. Ghotzbadeh, who secretly met
several times with President Carter's chief of
staff, Hamilton Jordan, in an effort to end the
hostage situation peacefully, was arrested and
executed in 1982.
What does all this have to do with today's
nuclear standoff? The embassy occupation in 1979
was viewed by most Americans as a challenge to
our world authority and a statement by the
Iranian revolutionaries that they wanted to take
Islamist rebellion beyond Iran's borders; in
fact, it was primarily a well-orchestrated
confrontation intended to place the mullahs
firmly in power.
Today, as the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, presides over an increasingly
restive, unhappy population, his pit bull,
President Ahmadinejad, has picked a new fight
with the United States of America. Even many
Iranians who oppose the theocracy now favor
joining the nuclear club; it adds to national
prestige and arguably enhances Iran's security.
In openly pursuing nuclear power and defying
world opinion, the old revolutionaries are
shoring up their stature at home by appealing to
nationalism and to fears of foreign invasion or
attack.
And why shouldn't they? It worked before.
Mark Bowden, a national correspondent for The
Atlantic Monthly, is the author of "Guests of
the Ayatollah" and "Black Hawk Down."
Unstoppable?
May
04, 2006
The Economist
Economist Special Report
link to original article
Diplomacy is the art of the seemingly
impossible. Fingers crossed, then, that the
diplomatic toing and froing among America,
Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China over
the coming weeks succeeds in avoiding the two
biggest dangers in the gathering nuclear
confrontation with Iran. One is that, despite
calls to desist from the United Nations Security
Council, Iran carries on its nuclear
experimentation and gets itself a bomb. The
other is that failure to stop it in its nuclear
tracks by other means leads to military force
being tried instead.
Steering clear of both these potential
calamities requires that the costs to Iran of
pressing on and the potential benefits of giving
up both rise sharply. Yet the diplomats are
stuck, and Iran may (mis)calculate that it can
get away with it.
Would it be so disastrous if Iran got the bomb?
Pakistan, India and Israel all built theirs in
defiance of the anti-nuclear rules that others
accepted (though unlike North Korea and now Iran
they did not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, so never broke its provisions). The cold
war, too, passed off without the threatened
nuclear Armageddon. Yet at times it was an
alarmingly close-run thing, and each new nuclear
state multiplies the dangers. All have fingered
their nuclear trigger at one time or another.
Iran, it has to be said, denies any interest in
a bomb. Yet it spent two decades deceiving
inspectors from the International Atomic Energy
Agency about its enrichment of uranium and its
experiments to produce plutonium (both potential
bomb ingredients), and it is still covering up.
Few either inside Iran or outside believe that
its nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful, as
claimed. The fear is a double one: of what a
regime like Iran's might be tempted to do with a
bomb, and of the aftershocks a nuclear-capable
Iran might cause.
Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has
called for Israel to be wiped from the map.
There is little love lost between Iran and its
Gulf neighbours either (see article). But would
even Iran's fire-breathing clerics be foolhardy
enough to threaten Israel or anyone else with
nuclear weapons, if they had them? No one knows.
But others that have lived, albeit grumpily,
with Israel's basement bomb for years—including
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, possibly even
Turkey—are unlikely to wait to find out. And a
nuclear arms race in this fissile region would
magnify the dangers by a factor of megatonnes.
Measured against that prospect and the worry
that Mr Ahmadinejad might seek to use a bomb as
cover for more aggressive behaviour in other
ways, military action to put Iran out of the
weapon-making business can start to look like a
plan. It is not in principle “nuts”, as
Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, has
suggested, to think in extremis of pre-empting a
potentially nuclear-tipped threat. In the hope
of instilling caution in a self-styled
“revolutionary” regime, America, Israel and
others are right to take no option off the
table.
In practice, however, the use of force might
succeed only in adding to the dangers. Iran's
known nuclear sites are dispersed, while others
may be hidden; a military strike might set back
its nuclear ambitions, but would be unlikely to
end and may well redouble them. Meanwhile, the
mullahs have means to retaliate: through the
armed groups they finance in the fight against
Israel and through Shia allies in Iraq and
beyond. An attack on Iran would also divide the
outside world, which has lined up pretty solidly
against its nuclear plans so far, and would
unite ordinary Iranians behind an oppressive
regime that many of them would rather be shot
of.
The aim, surely, should be the reverse: to keep
up as united a diplomatic front against the
atomic ayatollahs as possible, while encouraging
other influential Iranians to weigh the costs of
isolation. That is the mission-impossible the
diplomats have been set. Pulling it off will
take much tougher and more imaginative diplomacy
than has been managed so far.
The auguries are not good. In theory, with so
many Iranians (two-thirds of whom are under 30)
out of work, the government should be desperate
to lure in foreign investment and trade. Yet
with oil at over $70 a barrel (and rising with
every threat Mr Ahmadinejad utters), the
windfall is helping the regime to increase
hand-outs, replenish its coffers and bank on
riding out the diplomatic storm.
Meanwhile, even though Iran has brushed aside
the Security Council's request to cease
uranium-making, Russia and China are balking at
the obvious next step: turning its request into
an instruction that, if necessary, can be
enforced under Chapter 7 of the UN's charter.
Neither Russia nor China wishes to see Iran go
nuclear. Both have insisted, like America and
the Europeans, that it must suspend all uranium
work if negotiations are to resume. Russia has
also offered to enrich uranium on Iran's behalf,
so as to make space and time for a solution to
be found. Yet both are loth to risk their
economic ties to Iran, and both fret that any
Chapter 7 resolution will be used to justify
force. That, they say, was the lesson of Iraq.
The other
lesson from Saddam
But there is a different Iraq lesson they should
be drawing. Saddam Hussein was able to drag out
his defiance for years because the Security
Council was badly divided. He believed to the
end—mistakenly, and disastrously for him—that
Russia and China would protect him from the
consequences. Iran is now boasting the same.
Thus a Chapter 7 resolution, even one at first
with only fairly mild sanctions attached (though
tougher ones, including an end to investment in
Iran's oil and gas industries may eventually
have to be tried), is probably necessary to jolt
Iran out of its dangerous complacency—before
anyone else is tempted to try something more
desperate.
But if all options are indeed on the table, as
America suggests, then it is time for the
Americans to take a fresh look at the diplomatic
one too. It may be that nothing can induce Iran
to give up its nuclear plans—it has already
brushed away European offers of trade, improved
ties and help with other nuclear technologies.
But between America and Iran there is at least a
meeting of motives, if not of minds: Iran's
regime points to America's threatening talk as
reason to defend itself; to America, Iran's
nuclear work makes it a potential target. If
Iran agreed to halt its uranium and plutonium
activities, and America agreed not to attack,
might that open the way to direct talks that
could help finesse the nuclear problem for good?
America has resisted the idea of such talks.
Iran supports armed groups hostile to Israel,
opposes the Middle East peace process and
harbours some senior al-Qaeda suspects that
America says are still plotting violence. George
Bush bristles too at the regime's
anti-democratic ways. Yet only America could
make Iran an offer it would find it hard to
refuse and that might help it rethink its
hostility to the West—not least because American
sanctions have for years helped throttle Western
investment in Iran's economy.
This sort of “grand bargain” between
outpost-of-tyranny Iran and Great Satan America
may be beyond anyone's reach. Russia and China
may block all Security Council action. And Iran,
whose nuclear rule-breaking is the cause of the
crisis, may insist on enriching regardless. But
the coming weeks may bring the last opportunity
to head off a future conflict. A combination of
tougher penalties and juicier carrots may still
not be enough to avoid a crisis. But they are
surely worth a try.
The Iranian Jekyll and Hyde Threat Confuses the
World
May
05, 2006
Asharq Alawsat
Amir Taheri
link to original article
During the past few weeks, a number of prominent
Iranians have been calling on various capitals,
including some in the region, to seek a way out
of the current crisis.
The latest such move came in Almaty, the capital
of Kazakhstan, the other day on the sidelines of
a media conference hosted by President Nursultan
Nazarbayev’s daughter. Two Iranians, claiming to
speak for former President Hashemi Rafsanjani,
told two senior American figures that there was
support in Tehran for “an extended dialogue”
with Washington.
A couple of weeks earlier a similar message had
been unveiled in an Arab capital with a demand
that it be relayed to Washington.
Should one take these moves seriously?
Provided one does not lose sight of the context,
the answer is yes.
There is no doubt that some factions within the
Khomeinist establishment are concerned that
President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad’s defiant style
might be leading the regime into dangerous
waters.
The problem, however, is that the negotiations
that the self-styled emissaries propose come
with strings attached.
First, they want direct talks with the US,
dismissing the Europeans as “irrelevant” and
Arab powers as “midgets.” The idea is to get the
regime off the hook of the International Atomic
Energy Agency and the United Nation’ Security
Council, and transform what is a conflict
between the Islamic Republic and the rest of the
world into a quarrel between Tehran and
Washington.
Such a development could weaken the
international front, reopen the split between
the European Union and the US, and mobilise
anti-American forces in support of the
Khomeinist regime.
The second problem is that the emissaries want
the talks to take place in secret so that the
Islamic Republic does not lose face by admitting
that it is forced to talk to the “Great Satan”.
The model is the one that led to ”Irangate”
scandal in the 1980s when two rival factions,
one led by Rafsanjani and the other by the then
Prime Minister Mir-Hussein Mussavi, were talking
with the Americans without telling one another.
The third problem is that the proposed talks are
intended to “drown the fish”, as the French say,
that is to say shift the focus from the crisis
over Iran’s nuclear ambitions to other issues,
including Iran’s membership of the World Trade
Organisation, Iraq, and oil. This would mean
that Iran’s nuclear ambitions should be
swallowed as a fait accompli.
Finally, and possibly the most important point
to take into account, is the fact that one can
never be sure when and where the Khomeinist
interlocutors would have recourse to “Taqiyyah”
(Obfuscation) and “Kitman” (dissimulation).
Taqqiyyah, a Shiite theological term, advises
the individual and the community not only to
hide their true beliefs but even to profess the
opposite where this is to their advantage.
Kitman, a politico-theological terms, means
never revealing one’s true intentions,
especially when dealing with non-Shiites and
“the Infidel”.
Muhammad-Baqir Majlesi, the most prolific of
ayatollahs, has a famous saying: “Not to be
exposed, adopt the prevailing colour!”
Marked by both taqqiyah and kitman from the
beginning, Khomeinist diplomacy has prevented
Iran from developing a strategy based on its
national interests.
As if all that was not baffling enough one must
add another complication.
Today there are two Irans.
The first is the Iranian nation-state that has
existed in its present shape since the start of
the 16th century. This Iran, which had painful
experiences with Tsarist and British empires,
has no reason to be anti-American. Throughout
the Cold War the US helped this Iran protect its
independence against an aggressive Soviet Union
that had tried to annex two Iranian provinces at
the end of the Second World War. This Iran
should also be grateful to the US for having
eliminated the two most anti-Iranian regimes of
recent times, the Taliban and the Ba’athists, in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Then there is the second Iran: as the
manifestation of the Khomeinist revolution. This
Iran is anti-American in its DNA because it
knows that the only power capable of preventing
it from exporting “revolution” to the rest of
the Middle East and building an empire in the
name of the “Hidden Imam” happens to be the US,
at least for the time being.
This conflict between state and revolution, of
course, is nothing new and has been experienced
by other nations that went through revolutionary
turmoil.
As long as a nation-state has not managed to
absorb the revolution and thus reassert its own
interests it would not be able to develop normal
relations with other nation-states. For example
China, a manifestation of the Maoist revolution,
had to be anti-American. But once China, under
Deng Xiapoing, reasserted its existence as a
nation-state rather than a revolution, it was
not long before it welcomed the US as its
number-one trading partner.
Thus it is clear that relations between Iran and
the US, or indeed any other country, cannot be
normalised until and unless Iran makes a
comeback as a nation-state which has digested
and dissipated its revolutionary experience. For
Iran to be re-born as a nation-state it is
necessary for it to die as a manifestation of
the Khomeinist revolution.
The Jekyll and Hyde syndrome from which Iranian
policy suffers was illustrated in a recent oped
by the Islamic Republic’s ambassador to the UN,
published in the New York Times.
The ambassador, remembering his Majlesi, started
by editing his own name, which is Muhammad-Jawad
Zarif, by dropping the Muhammad bit which, so he
must have thought, sounds threatening to
American readers. Next he described himself as
Iran’s Ambassador, not the Ambassador of the
Islamic Republic as mentioned in his official
diplomatic credentials. He made only one
reference to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describing
him as “leader”, and ignoring his titles of
“Supreme Guide” and “Regent of the Hidden Imam.”
The ambassador also referred to the “Iranian
Parliament”, something that does not exist. What
exists is the Islamic Consultative Assembly. But
once again, taking his clue from Majlesi, he
thought that such a phrase might frighten
American readers. Although he represents a
regime which uses the words Islam and Islamic
more frequently than Iran and Iranian, Zarif did
not once use “Islam” or “Islamic”. Nor did he
cite “Imam” Khomeini’s name which features in
every single official discourse in Tehran as a
leitmotiv.
More interestingly, he made no mention of
President Ahmadinejad who is, after all, his
ultimate boss under the Khomeinist constitution.
One again, it was Majlesi who advised Zarif that
mention of Ahmadinejad to an American audience
might be ill advised.
Last but not least, the Khomeinist ambassador
presented Iran’s recent history as a seamless
continuum by recalling that Iran had not invaded
any country in the past 250 years.
What he did not mention is the fact that the
current regime regards all of Iran’s
pre-Khomeinist history, including the period
mentioned by Zarif, as an era of “zulm” or
“darkness”, and thus something evil to castigate
rather than applaud.
All this is not a criticism of the ambassador
who is, after all a small cog in a giant
machine. He is doing the best he can in a bad
situation created by the Khomeinist ideology. It
may even be that Zarif is one of a growing
number of technocrats, civil servants, and
diplomats who believe that it is time for Iran
as a revolution to be subsumed by Iran as a
nation-state.
What matters as far as negotiating is concerned,
is to find out which Iran one talks to . You
cannot negotiate with two Irans with
diametrically opposed interests and world
visions- two Iran that are enemies of each other
as well. It takes two to tango, not three.
A Government That Thrives on Defiance
May
04, 2006
The Economist
Economist Special Report
link to original article
A connoisseur of the vagaries of history, a
benevolent patriot, a “peace-loving
schoolteacher who has not, to date, done harm to
anyone”. This is how Iran's president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, whose earlier broadsides against
Israel have provoked comparisons to Hitler, cast
himself at a recent press conference. From his
ruminative performance, you might not have
guessed that his country faces sanctions, and
perhaps American military attacks, if it carries
on with its nuclear programme in defiance of the
United Nations Security Council. He declared
himself unconcerned.
Mr Ahmadinejad does not decide Iran's nuclear or
foreign policies. These are in the hands of the
supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his
lieutenant at the top of the National Security
Council, Ali Larijani, a political rival of the
president's. But Mr Ahmadinejad has gone out of
his way to associate himself with Iran's
ambition to become a producer of nuclear fuel—an
ambition that Iran insists it holds only to
generate electricity, but which others fear will
lead to bomb-making.
The president is a populist in all things and,
unlike Mr Khamenei and Mr Larijani, answerable
to Iran's voters. Having struggled to fend off
his domestic critics after coming to power last
summer, Mr Ahmadinejad has learned to silence
them by beating a nationalist drum. Hence his
decision to talk up the nuclear issue at every
turn, and to announce personally, on April 11th,
that Iran had successfully enriched small
quantities of uranium. Two weeks later, he
declared, “Iran is a nuclear country. It has the
full gamut of nuclear technology at its
disposal.”
Even if Iran's scientists find it a breeze to
perfect and install the batteries of centrifuges
they would need in order to enrich uranium
industrially, it will be several years before
their country has enough of the stuff to power a
reactor—and between five and ten, in the opinion
of America's director of national intelligence,
before it could make a bomb. Clearly, Iran is
some way from being a “nuclear country”, but Mr
Ahmadinejad has never been one to let facts get
in the way of his mission to make Iranians feel
strong and respected.
He has been greatly helped by the rise in oil
prices—propelled, in part, by the worries about
Iran. The country's oil revenues for the Iranian
year that ended in March were in the region of
$50 billion, nearly twice the figure of two
years earlier. As long as world prices stay
high, the Iranians know that the chances of
their being punished with an oil embargo—which
would push prices far higher—are virtually nil.
By playing down the prospect of lesser
sanctions, and by emphasising the eagerness of
China and some Asian countries to sell Iran
machinery and consumer goods if European
countries refuse to do so, officials are
assiduously generating a sense of immunity from
misfortune.
To reinforce it, the president has promised
unprecedented spending on housing, public works
and government bodies, such as the broadcasting
authority, that propagate the official ideology.
He has also ordered big public banks whose books
are full of non-performing loans to lend
generously, especially to ordinary citizens.
With subsidies and controls, the president and
members of parliament, who compete to be
generous, have ensured that the prices of
petrol, electricity and basic foods rise more
slowly than inflation, if at all.
In general, Iranians approve of the nuclear
programme, though not all believe official
assertions that it is peaceful. As long as the
programme threatens neither their wallets nor
their security, their enthusiasm for it as an
_expression of national self-assertion, and
their irritation at what they see as the
duplicity of Western nuclear powers, are likely
to endure. Indeed, from the huge numbers—almost
half the population, according to the tourism
ministry—that holidayed away from home over the
Persian new year, and the lavish wedding parties
held nightly in the capital's smarter hotels,
you might think Iranians are pretty cheerful
about the future.
But that picture is incomplete. Look, for a
corrective, to the private investors who fled
the stockmarket last October, frightened by the
furious reaction to the president's suggestion
that Israel should be “wiped off the map”, and
have yet to return in large numbers. These
investors are cool towards the building
industry, once-profitable but now in recession.
Nor do they want to buy state enterprises: by
its own admission, the government stands little
chance of hitting its modest privatisation
target. Instead, Iranians seem to prefer gold:
the price of Iranian gold coins reached its
highest level in over a decade last month,
before the central bank's intervention brought
it down again. From fancy hillside stud farms to
Tehran's textile bazaar and scores of suburban
estate agents, the refrain is identical: “The
market is depressed.” The reason? “Politics.”
Split hairs,
not atoms
That partly reflects the fact that the economic
liberalisation nudged forward by Muhammad
Khatami, Mr Ahmadinejad's timidly liberalising
predecessor, has been halted. But it also
reflects rather greater worries about the
current crisis than the government admits to.
Indeed, if European and other countries do join
America's longstanding sanctions regime against
Iran, it is far from clear that, in Mr
Ahmadinejad's words, these countries “will be
more hurt than us”.
Some of Mr Ahmadinejad's rivals certainly sound
less sanguine. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a
former president who lost to Mr Ahmadinejad in
last year's election, recently predicted that
the diversion of the nuclear programme from its
“natural course”, by which he meant the
reference of Iran to the Security Council, would
cause “lots of problems for us”. Mr Rafsanjani
also mentioned another embarrassment that
Iranian officials rarely bring up these days:
Russia's foot-dragging in completing the nuclear
reactor that it has built for Iran at Bushehr,
on the Gulf coast; that was due to be finished
several years ago.
Mr Rafsanjani has long let it be known that he
favours direct—though not necessarily
declared—talks with America, aimed at settling
all bilateral differences. The supreme leader's
views, however, are less easy to read. Having
said that Iran would respond to American
aggression by striking at the United States'
interests “anywhere in the world”, Mr Khamenei
recently qualified that vow: Iran would not
initiate a confrontation. Mr Larijani, for his
part, has repeatedly asserted that Iran is open
to the idea of talks. On April 30th, he spoke of
Iran's “readiness for agreement and
accommodation”.
Over what? A history of Iranian overtures
suggests that Iran would dangle concessions on
its nuclear programme, its support for Arab
groups that reject Israel's right to exist, and
common interests such as Iraq, in return for an
end to American efforts to destabilise the
Islamic republic and a plan to establish full
economic relations. But President George Bush
has repeatedly shied away from talking to an
Islamic theocracy that he detests—despite the
urging, most recently, of the Republican head of
the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee.
Instead, the Bush administration is committing
new money and resources to promote opposition to
Iran's theocracy.
Recent contacts, or not-quite-contacts, between
the two countries, seem to have gone nowhere.
Since mid-April, when it emerged that Muhammad
Nahavandian, a member of Iran's National
Security Council, was in America, his itinerary
has been the subject of fevered speculation. Did
he try to make contact with American officials?
Was he rebuffed? The Iranians say he went there
as an economist, at the invitation of American
scholars, but that he also popped in to see
Iran's ambassador at the UN. The State
Department has denied that Mr Nahavandian, who
holds a green card, entered the country “for
meetings with US government officials”.
Neither did anything come of a very public
attempt to set up meetings in Baghdad between
American and Iranian officials. Having been
talked up last month, the putative negotiations,
ostensibly aimed at stabilising Iraq, seem
distant now that both sides have sulkily averred
that they never really wanted to talk at all.
Yet many, in Washington, DC, and Tehran, argue
that America and Iran stand a better chance of
resolving their differences over a table than
through a megaphone.
Through the geopoliticking, some human-rights
activists argue, the lot of normal Iranians is
being ignored. Certainly, with parliament, the
bureaucracy and the judiciary all in
conservative hands, it is becoming harder to
write critically of the government, let alone
question the principles that underpin the
Islamic republic. One such questioner, Ramin
Jahanbegloo, an academic, was recently arrested
as he tried to leave Iran to attend a seminar in
Brussels. As yet, however, the authorities show
no consistent signs of a return to the violent
enforcement of the strict public-morality laws
that Iranians endured as recently as a decade
ago.
The state's reluctance to alienate the citizenry
was recently exemplified by Rahim Safavi, the
head of the ultra-ideological Revolutionary
Guard. He warned members of the baseej, a
national militia answerable to the Guard, not to
“interfere in people's lives...and ask for
identification cards and rifle through CDs and
cassettes”. This, in summary, is what the baseej
was once known for.
In this time of uncertainty, the authorities see
their job as that of managing public opinion.
Military attacks might make it easier, since
they would surely galvanise Iranians against the
foreign aggressor. The impact of new sanctions
is harder to assess. Mr Ahmadinejad's pugnacious
optimism, however, may soon be tested.
Iran
to Disrupt Hormuz Oil Flow If Attacked by U.S.
May
05, 2006
Bloomberg
Tony Capaccio
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a_Aw9B.MGCuY&refer=us
Iran may be planning to share the pain of any
U.S. attack with the world's oil markets. A
strike against Iran's nuclear program would
probably be met with an effort to choke off oil
shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, military
planners and Middle East analysts say. The goal
would be to trigger a market disruption that
would force President George W. Bush to back
off.
The Iranians hope the mere threat of such action
may lead oil-consuming nations to pressure the
U.S. to resolve the dispute short of a military
confrontation. About 17 million barrels of oil,
representing one-fifth of the world's
consumption, is shipped through the strait every
day.
Roiling the markets would be part of a broader
retaliation that would include terrorist attacks
against U.S. forces or other interests in Iraq
and worldwide, said Michael Eisenstadt, an Iran
expert at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy and a former Central Command analyst.
``They will not allow us to limit the conflict
to `tit for tat' -- us hitting their nuclear
facilities, and they restricted to hitting
deployed American military,'' Eisenstadt said in
an interview.
General John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in
the Middle East, said in a written statement to
the House Armed Services Committee on March 15
that Iran is expanding naval bases along its
shoreline and now has ``large quantities'' of
small, fast- attack ships, many armed with
torpedoes and Chinese-made high- speed missiles
capable of firing from 10,000 yards.
``Iran's capabilities are focusing on disrupting
oil traffic through the straits,'' Army Colonel
Mark Tillman, a professor at the National
Defense University in Washington and former
Central Command planner, said in an interview.
``Why else would they have these things?''
Relying on
Diplomacy
The Bush administration has said it will rely on
diplomacy to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear
program, which Iran says is designed to produce
electricity but the U.S. suspects is aimed at
producing a bomb.
John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, told Congress on May 2 that those
diplomatic efforts so far have been frustrated
by Iran's clout as the world's fourth-largest
oil supplier.
``The Iranians have been very effective at
deploying their oil and natural-gas resources to
apply leverage against countries to protect
themselves from precisely this kind of pressure,
in the case of countries with large and growing
energy demands like India, China and Japan,''
Bolton said.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, has
said his nation won't rule out cutting oil
exports in response to pressure over the nuclear
dispute.
Rising Prices
Escalation of the dispute has helped to boost
oil prices by 17 percent over the past two
months. The current price of about $70 reflects
potential disruptions over the next six to 18
months, said Jamal Qureshi, lead oil industry
analyst for PFC Energy, a risk-analysis firm in
Washington.
Even with that, a military conflict would shock
the system so ``you'd very likely get a quick
spike that could very easily go to $100 a
barrel,'' until the U.S. releases oil from its
strategic reserve, Qureshi said in an interview.
``It could get messy real quick.''
While Iran probably couldn't close the Strait of
Hormuz -- which lies between Iran and Oman and
is 34 miles at its narrowest point -- it could
cause havoc by threatening or attacking
individual oil tankers or terminals, analysts
said. Oil from Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, the
United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia is
shipped through the Strait.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard-controlled navy ``has
been developed primarily to `internationalize' a
conflict by choking off oil exports through the
Strait,'' Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central
Command, told lawmakers.
`Pressure the
U.S.'
Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism and Middle East
analyst for the nonpartisan Congressional
Research Service, said that even if Iran can't
block the strait, it ``can create a sense of
crisis to drive up the price of oil, and
presumably'' the nations that consume all that
oil ``would pressure the U.S. to stand down or
shrink from confrontation or end it quickly,''
Iran supplies China with 4 percent of its oil;
France, 7 percent; Korea, 9 percent; Japan, 10
percent; Italy, 11 percent; Belgium, 14 percent;
Turkey, 22 percent; and Greece, 24 percent,
according to Clifford Kupchan, a director of the
Eurasia Group in Washington, a global
risk-consulting group.
These figures ``tell me that Iran for the
foreseeable future will have considerable
`petro-influence' over prospective U.S.
allies,'' Kupchan said in an interview.
Terrorist
Attacks
Eisenstadt said disrupting world oil markets
might not be Iran's ``preferred avenue of
response'' if attacked. ``I think they are more
likely to respond in Iraq by launching terrorist
attacks,'' he said. ``Disrupting oil shipments
is a far second or third, but this is something
we have to prepare for.''
W. Patrick Lang, formerly the chief Middle East
analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said
Iran ``could unleash the Shiites en masse in
Iraq, and kicking that up would place us in a
very different position there. You would have a
lot of people out there in the streets with
rifles.'' Shiite Muslims make up 89 percent of
Iran's population, and are a majority in Iraq.
Rear Admiral Jeffrey Miller, deputy commander of
U.S. naval forces in the Gulf, said, the U.S.
has ``the capability to keep the straits open
and clean them up if that should be required.''
``We understand the importance of keeping all
the choke points'' open ``and commerce moving,''
Miller said in a telephone interview May 3 from
Manama, Bahrain.
Missiles and
Seals
The U.S. has about 45 vessels in the Persian
Gulf and Red Sea region, including the USS
Ronald Reagan, the Navy's newest aircraft
carrier, and five escorts, including the USS
Tucson, an attack submarine that can fire new
tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles and launch
Navy Seal commandos.
Lang said the U.S. military, in a conflict,
``would be all air and naval, with no ground
operation.''
``Iran might surprise the U.S. by sinking a
tanker in the gulf or something and then the
U.S. Navy would beat the bejesus out of them,
but they could cause a spike in oil prices for a
month or two,'' Lang said in an interview.
Annan Wants Direct Iran-U.S. Talks
May
05, 2006
The Associated Press
CNN.com
link to original article
PARIS, France -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan has encouraged the United States to hold
direct talks with Iran and expressed hope that
an agreement can be reached to settle the
nuclear dispute with Tehran without resorting to
violence.
The U.N. chief called for intensified diplomatic
efforts to press the Iranians to suspend uranium
enrichment while putting something on the table
for Tehran, possibly technology or security
assurances that nobody is going to blow up their
nuclear facilities.
"It would also be good if the U.S. were to be at
the table with the Europeans, the Iranians, the
Russians, to try and work this out," Annan said
in an interview Thursday on "The NewsHour with
Jim Lehrer" on PBS television.
"I think it would be a good idea because the
Iranians give you the impression that ...
whatever they discuss with the Europeans had to
be checked with the U.S. and come back," he
added.
The secretary-general spoke as the U.N. Security
Council started discussing a Western-backed
resolution that would make mandatory an earlier
council demand that Iran stop uranium enrichment
or face the threat of "further measures."
While pledging to let diplomacy run its course,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she did
not see the need for direct talks now between
Washington and Tehran, as favored by the
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of
Indiana, and other lawmakers.
Britain, France and Germany have been leading
negotiations to try to get Iran to give up its
enrichment program, but Tehran has refused and
is pressing ahead, insisting it is legally
entitled to produce nuclear energy for
electricity under the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty. The three European nations, backed by
the U.S., want the program stopped because they
believe Iran's real goal is to use the enriched
uranium to produce nuclear weapons.
Iran said this week it is now enriching uranium
to 4.8 percent, the level required for fueling
nuclear power reactors. That level is far below
the enrichment of more than 90 percent that is
required for making nuclear weapons.
Iran:
Activists Fear Looming Crackdown
May
03, 2006
Radio Free Europe
RFE/RL
link to original article
Some
400 students protested in front of a Tehran
university on May 2 to protest the expulsion of
a student by the country's Education Ministry.
The ministry reportedly said that Peyman Aref --
a graduate student at Tehran university's
Faculty of Law and Political Science -- does not
have "general and ideological competence" to
continue his studies, and should be expelled.
Student activists and observers, however,
believe that Aref's expulsion and similar
sentences against other politically active
students are part of a new government crackdown
on Iranian universities.
At least two graduate student activists --
Peyman Aref and Mehdi Aminizadeh -- former
members of Iran's largest and most outspoken
reformist student group (Daftare Tahkim Vahdat)
have been expelled from school in recent months.
Others have reportedly been banned from studying
for one or several semesters.
Student
Harassment
Students have regularly reported being summoned
to disciplinary committees, security bodies, and
courts -- some have even faced jail sentences.
The Students
Protest
The authorities have also -- despite some
student objections -- started burying the
remains of unknown soldiers killed during the
Iran/Iraq war on university campuses. The
campaign is considered by many as an attempt to
bring extremist political groups into
universities to pressure more moderate students.
There have been also reports about the dismissal
of professors.
Mohammad Maleki, a former chancellor at Tehran
university, tells RFE/RL that the actions are
aimed at crushing the pro-democracy student
movement.
Maleki was among students on May 2 who protested
against Aref's expulsion and growing pressure on
student activists.
"[The main point of] our protest [is] that these
actions have become a trend; by burying the
remains or martyrs in the universities and
expelling students, it seems that they want to
have a new kind of cultural revolution and put
students and professors under pressure," he
said. "They especially want to create fear in
the universities. This government cannot stand
criticism and opposition."
Abdollah Momeni, an outspoken student leader in
Tehran, also believes that the Iranian
government is trying to limit freedom of
_expression and crush student dissent.
Calls For
Tolerance
He tells RFE/RL that the authorities are
violating the rights of students.
"Unfortunately, in the new system Ahmadinejad's
government and the Education Ministry are
ordering actions that are being taken by
security organs that violate the students' basic
right to study," he said. "Students who have a
critical view of the establishment, those who
protest against government policies and search
for democracy in Iran do not have the
possibility to study and be politically active."
Mehdi Aminizadeh, who has also reportedly been
expelled from university following intervention
by Iran's Intelligence Ministry, recently called
in an open letter for students groups, human
rights organizations, and political parties to
work on his behalf to help him return to school
and pursue his studies.
Aminizadeh told Radio Farda on April 26 that he
is determined to fight for this right.
"Continuing my studies is my right; I have the
right to study in the country where I was born
and where I live and I'm determined to do so,"
he said. "It is possible that there will be
opportunities to study outside the country but
that doesn't mean that whoever is [politically]
active in this country can be kept by the
Intelligence Ministry from studying and be
forced to leave the country."
Human rights activists have expressed concern
about the "intensifying repression" and the
worsening of the situation regarding freedom of
_expression in Iran since the government of
hard-line Ahmadinejad took office in August
2005.
Iran's main pro-reform group, the Participation
Front, expressed concern on May 2 over pressure
on students, including their expulsion, and
called on the government to have "more tolerance
in accepting criticism."
Leading
Intellectual Detained
Front spokesman Saeed Shariati told Iran's
Student News Agency (ISNA) that the group has
also expressed concern about the detention of
leading scholar and author Ramin Jahanbegloo,
and called on authorities to release information
about his situation.
Jahanbegloo, who also holds Canadian
citizenship, was reportedly arrested late last
week after returning from a trip to India.
Jahanbegloo, the head of the department for
contemporary studies at Tehran's Cultural
Research Bureau, has published several books on
such subjects as liberal political philosopher
Isaiah Berlin and modernity in Iran.
The "Los Angeles Times " reports today that
Jahanbegloo had challenged, in an article he
wrote this year for the Spanish newspaper "El
Pais," Ahmadinejad's suggestion that the
Holocaust was a myth.
In recent days several Iranian websites had
published reports about his arrest and Iran
finally today it was confirmed that he has been
detained.
The head of Tehran’s prison organization, Sohrab
Soleimani, told Fars news agency that
Jahanbegloo was arrested on May 2 and is
currently detained in Tehran’s notorious Evin
prison. He did not give details about the
reasons of his arrest.
Another official who did not want to be named
has told Fars agency that Jahanbegloo was
arrested for security reasons and on espionage
charges.
Today in Tehran liberal cleric Mohsen Kadivar
told a gathering at the Association of Iranian
Journalists that World Press Freedom Day is
celebrated as one of the country’s leading
intellectual is under arrest.
Kadivar who has been jailed in the past for his
criticism of the Iranian establishment added:
"It has not been announced why [Jahanbegloo was
arrested] but we hope the day will come when no
one is held...before being tried by an open
court."
On April 30, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman
Hamd Reza Assefi said that Canada's ambassador
to Tehran has reported the detention of a
Canadian citizen to the Foreign Ministry. He
added that the matter will be pursued in the
courts.
(Radio Farda's Mosadegh Katouzian contributed to
this report.)
Moscow
the Focus of Iran Moves at UN
May
04, 2006
The Financial Times
Daniel Dombey in London, Neil Buckley in Moscow
and Guy Dinmore in Washington
link to original article
Russia’s
stance on Iran’s nuclear programme took centre
stage on Thursday, as the United States and the
European Union sought to win Moscow’s support
for a hard-hitting United Nations Security
Council resolution. But their efforts – inspired
by Russia and China’s rejection this week of a
draft resolution that appeared to pave the way
to sanctions – face a double challenge.
Moscow has deep-seated concerns about agreeing a
resolution under Article 7 of the UN charter,
which it believes could be used at a later date
to justify military conflict. “The Russians
appear to have the deepest reservations,” said
one European diplomat. “The Chinese appear to be
more flexible.”
The US and Europe also need to overcome a second
obstacle – the current difficult relations
between Moscow and the west. These were thrown
into relief on Thursday by US vice-president
Dick Cheney’s accusation that Russia had been
guilty of “blackmail” against close neighbours
such as Ukraine.
On a series of issues, including Russia’s energy
policy, Belarus and the planned expansion of
Nato, Russia is at loggerheads with US and
European states.
On the Iran dossier, top diplomats from the
permanent five members of the UN Security
Council have met twice in recent weeks. Each
time Russian objections to the US and EU’s
current course of action have left the most
lasting impact.
A day after the most recent meeting, on Tuesday
night, the British and French presented their
draft Security Council resolution in New York.
The resolution would legally oblige Iran to
suspend uranium enrichment – the process that
can create weapons-grade material – by an
unspecified deadline, thought to be about one
month. Such a timeline could bring the issue to
a head in the run-up to Russia’s hosting of the
summit of eight industrialised countries in
July.
“If the Russians say our approach is a problem,
they should come forward with another solution,”
said a French diplomat of the resolution. “They
haven’t done this until now.”
Another diplomat said the resolution showed the
west was calculating that it would be difficult
for Russia to veto a resolution against Tehran.
Moscow’s public stance on Iran, however, remains
unchanged – that the crisis can be resolved only
by diplomatic means. It insists that Iran’s
intention to produce weapons is unproven, and
that International Atomic Energy Agency
inspectors must be given a chance to complete
their work.
It has issued strongly worded calls for Iran to
restore its moratorium on uranium enrichment.
But one Moscow official argues that since the
moratorium was voluntary, and Iran is not in
breach of international law by carrying out
enrichment, coercive means to force it to
restore the moratorium are not justifiable.
Privately, diplomats say Russia concedes that
Iran is almost certainly seeking to acquire
nuclear weapons, and is just as concerned as any
of its partners.
Indeed, senior officials in Moscow are
understood to be angered by portrayals of them
in the US media as seeking to appease Tehran or
put commercial relationships above the goals of
non-proliferation. Russia has agreed contracts
of about $1bn (€790m, £540m) each to build a
nuclear reactor at Bushehr and provide Iran with
an air defence system.
The Russian government believes it has a far
better understanding of Iran – resulting from a
long-standing relationship the US lacks – and of
what actions are likely to be effective. It also
fears the US has a hidden agenda: the goal of
regime change.
On Thursday, Dominique de Villepin, France’s
prime minister, sought to reassure Moscow.
“Military action is certainly not the
solution,’’ he said. “Not only does it not solve
anything, but it increases risks.’’
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, stressed
in talks with President George W. Bush on
Wednesday night the importance of moving ahead
slowly to keep the coalition together, with
Russia on board. “Quite often, attempts have
been made to rush matters, and to actually
pre-empt what should be at the end of the
process,” she told reporters.
She was apparently referring to public remarks
by senior US officials that a “coalition of the
willing” would go ahead with sanctions
regardless of what transpired at the UN.
Iran
Making Nuclear Reactor Fuel Rods
May
04, 2006
The Associated Press
FOX News
link to original article
TEHRAN,
Iran -- Iran is producing fuel rods for nuclear
reactors, state radio reported Thursday in the
government's latest attempt to boost a nuclear
program that world powers are trying to curb.
Power-control rods, or fuel rods, contain
low-enriched uranium and are inserted into a
nuclear reactor's core to make the reactor run.
"After sanctions from the U.S., experts from
Iran's atomic energy organization have produced
better quality rods than the foreign samples,"
the radio reported.
It said these Iranian-produced rods were already
in use in a 5-megawatt reactor built by the
United States — before Iran's 1979 Islamic
revolution — at the nuclear research center in
Tehran.
Enriched uranium can be used in the production
of nuclear energy or weapons. Iran, a signatory
to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, insists
its nuclear program is aimed only at producing
electricity.
But the United States, France and Britain are
pressing for a U.N. Security Council resolution
that would demand Iran abandon uranium
enrichment or face the threat of unspecified
further measures.
Wade Boese, a research director at the Arms
Control Association, said that mastering the
production of fuel rods was not a major
technical development.
"It doesn't strike me as the most significant
step forward," Boese said in Washington.
The key notch toward nuclear technology and
weapons is the capacity to enrich uranium, which
Iran has already announced. Boese said the
power-control rod was a purely technical device
used in any nuclear reactor.
The new announcement showed Iran was trying to
prove its overall intent to produce energy, not
warheads, Boese said. "I think they're saying
this to bolster their peaceful bona fides," he
said.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said
earlier this week that a first nuclear plant
would be fully operational in 2007. Iran had
expected the Bushehr plant, which was built with
Russian help, to be in operation by the end of
this year.
White House rejects direct talks with Iran
May
04, 2006
AFP
TurkishPress.com
link to original article
The
White House again rejected the idea of
one-on-one talks with Iran, saying that the
dispute over Tehran's nuclear program is not
bilateral, but one that affects many countries.
"This is a threat posed to the region and to the
world," White House spokesman Scott McClellan
told reporters.
He added: "This is not a bilateral issue between
the regime and the United States, this is an
issue between the regime and the international
community." Iran and the United States have not
had direct relations since 1980, which many
experts say is a big factor in the current
diplomatic impasse.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister of
US ally Germany, recently called for direct
talks between the two countries.
McClellan expressed US support for a resolution
circulated by France and Britain in the UN
Security Council, calling on Iran to halt its
uranium enrichment program.
Meanwhile Tehran claimed Thursday it had made
more progress in ultra-sensitive nuclear work,
showing yet more defiance in the face of Western
lobbying for tough Security Council action.
The Franco-British text, worked out in close
consultation with Germany and the United States,
invokes Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which can
authorize economic sanctions or even as a last
resort the use of force in cases of threats to
international peace and security.
Russia and China -- which both have veto powers
on the Council -- appear to be opposed the text,
but McClellan said the process is in its early
stages.
"This is a draft resolution," said McClellan.
"It's been circulated by the United Kingdom and
France, and we are supportive of it."
Israel
PM: Israel Must Take Iranian Threats Seriously
May
04, 2006
Reuters
Dan Williams
link to original article
Israel needs to take seriously Iranian threats
to wipe out the Jewish state and can defend
itself against a country the West suspects of
seeking nuclear weapons, Acting Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert said on Thursday. Olmert's strongly
worded remarks to parliament before the
ratification of his new coalition government
came as Western powers sought action by the
United Nations to curb Iranian uranium
enrichment and other key nuclear processes.
"We must not ignore what the president of Iran
says -- he means everything he says," Olmert
told the Knesset, referring to repeated calls by
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Israel's elimination.
"The State of Israel, which the evil leaders in
Tehran have turned into a target for
annihilation, is not helpless and it has the
ability to defend itself against any threat," he
said.
Iran, the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter,
says it seeks nuclear energy, not bombs. Iranian
officials have argued that Ahmadinejad's
comments on Israel did not constitute a threat.
The United States, Britain and France this week
drafted a U.N. Security Council resolution
demanding Iran curb its nuclear ambitions and
threatening sanctions if it does not. Fellow
council members Russia and China have balked at
sanctions.
Believed to have the Middle East's only atomic
arsenal, Israel backs the diplomacy but, like
its U.S. ally, has refused to rule out military
action as a last resort.
In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor at
Osiraq in Iraq, driving Saddam Hussein's quest
for nuclear weapons underground until it was
uncovered by U.N. inspectors.
Israel says Iran could be months away from
building a nuclear bomb, though Western
intelligence agencies put it at several years.
"Only a determined and uncompromising
international stance in the face of Iran will be
capable of stopping this threat and safeguarding
the entire world," Olmert said.
His remarks were quickly endorsed in the Knesset
by opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who has
called for an Osiraq-style preemptive strike on
Iran.
Tehran has said its armed forces would retaliate
for any attack. An Iranian Revolutionary Guards
commander said this week that Israel would be
the first target, a comment later played down by
the deputy chief of military staff. Foreign
analysts believe Iran could also hit U.S.
interests in the Gulf.
(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller and
Megan Goldin in Jerusalem)
Give Iran Enough Rope
May
04, 2006
RealClearPolitics
Victor Davis Hanson
link to original article
The
debate in the U.S. over how to contend with Iran
as it pursues nuclear weapons goes like this:
Many conservatives worry that the Bush
administration - stung by the backlash over Iraq
and the president's sinking poll numbers - has
sworn off the military option. They argue that
endless discussion and attempts at diplomacy
have only emboldened the Iranian theocracy.
Liberals counter that Iran's weapons program is
over-hyped in the manner of Saddam Hussein's
phantom nuclear arsenals. They worry we will
soon stage another preemptive attack - if for no
other reason than to wag the dog and shore up
the president's approval ratings. And even if
Iran gets the bomb, they argue, so what? Don't
we already live with a nuclear Islamic Pakistan?
Most Americans, though, probably understand the
current U.S. position. We are resigned to the
fact that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
is both unhinged and eager to get his own nukes
- and that we must somehow stop him at the 11th
hour.
For Ahmadinejad and Iran's ruling mullahs, there
is little downside to pursuing and perhaps
eventually obtaining a nuclear weapon. The issue
helps divert attention from the country's
domestic problems, humiliates Western diplomats
and threatens rival Gulf oil producers. Plus,
Ahmadinejad can brag that Iran is now the
Islamic state that most worries Israel while
blackmailing European capitals soon in missile
range.
Meanwhile, the United States, for a variety of
understandable reasons, is not eager to take out
Iran's nuclear facilities. A current parlor game
imagines the nightmares of such a preemptive
strike: It would be hard to know whether we
eliminated all the centrifuges. Oil prices would
get even worse. Some Shiites in Iraq might turn
on our troops. Terrorists could be unleashed
with dirty bombs in Western cities.
So, in the lull before the storm, the U.S.
should pause, and allow its critics a chance to
offer some utopian third-party or multilateral
solution.
The solutions bandied about so far? Let the
"seasoned pros" in Europe play the good,
diplomatic cop to the "unpredictable,
eager-for-a-fight" American bad cop. Or involve
Russia and China in more diplomacy in hopes they
will value regional stability over their own
economic interests. Then there's the U.N. option
- could the international body redeem itself
after the oil-for-food scandal with sanctions
and embargoes?
But given recent history, and how hell-bent
Iran's leaders are on pursuing its nuclear
program - for weapons, not, as they so often
profess, merely for energy - it is hard to
imagine that, on their own, these proposed
solutions will amount to much.
The good news is that Iran, like all ossified
societies in the current era of globalized
communications, is unstable. The eighth-century
theocrats in charge there could find their own
citizens questioning whether a bomb is worth
international ostracism and the threat of
military strikes.
At the same time, what's happening now in Iraq
must be of great concern to the Iranian
leadership. Jawad al-Maliki, the new Iraqi prime
minister, for example, is a nationalist. He,
like other Iraqi Shiites, has shown he is not
willing to be an Iranian pawn. As Ahmadinejad
promotes death, how will Iranians react to
images from Iraq of life-affirming free citizens
in a new democracy?
In other words, will Iraq's new liberality prove
more destabilizing to Iran than Ahmadinejad's
agents can to Iraq? As Iraq's 300,000-strong
army emerges as a well-trained and equipped
force, one suspects the answer is yes.
Notice: George Bush has been relatively silent
during the crisis; Ahmadinejad is the one losing
his composure on center stage. Nearly daily he
shouts to the cameras about wiping Israel off
the map or unleashing his Islamic terrorists
throughout the globe.
In the brief present window between Iran's
enrichment and its final step to weapons-grade
production, we must keep calm and give
Ahmadinejad even more rope to hang himself. As
his present hysteria grows, exasperated
Europeans or jittery neighbors in the region may
even prod the U.S. to take action - indeed, to
be a little more unilateral and preemptive in
letting the Iranians know that their acquisition
of a nuclear weapon will never happen.
For now, our best peaceful weapon in the little
time that we have left is, oddly, our own quiet
and hope that a democratizing Iraq stabilizes,
and in turn destabilizes undemocratic Iran. So
let the loud Ahmadinejad continue to make our
case why such a psychopath cannot be allowed to
become nuclear. Meanwhile, give confident
multilateral internationalists their
long-awaited chance at diplomacy, and prepare
for the worst.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and
historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
University, and author, most recently, of "A War
Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans
Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him
by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
U.S.-EU Unity Over Iran Masks Differences Behind
the Scenes
May
04, 2006
The Wall Street Journal
Marc Champion
link to original article
BRUSSELS
-- The U.S. and European governments are working
in lock step to get a fresh United Nations
Security Council resolution against Iran, part
of a global diplomatic coordination that hasn't
been seen since before the Iraq war.
But what they aren't talking about publicly is
where they diverge: Washington and its allies
still have profound differences over tactics and
the bottom line -- including whether or not
military force is an option -- that could pose
trouble for the alliance in the future,
according to officials familiar with the talks.
Britain and France yesterday circulated a
U.S.-backed joint draft resolution in the
Security Council that would require Iran to halt
its nuclear-fuel program. Russia and China
currently oppose the resolution, which under the
U.N.'s binding Chapter 7 rules could open the
path to sanctions and other punitive measures.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice floated another idea: forming a "coalition
of the willing" outside the Security Council, if
the members can't agree on sanctions. Ms. Rice
was talking about economic and political
sanctions, not military action. But with its
echoes from the Iraq war, the phrase "frightened
the horses," said one European diplomat familiar
with the talks.
The European Union's foreign-policy coordinator,
Javier Solana, said Europe wasn't ready to talk
about coalitions of the willing, at a German
Marshall Fund conference on trans-Atlantic
relations in Brussels over the weekend.
"The coalition we are working with now is inside
the Security Council. It's the Security Council,
the virtual EU as represented by Solana, and
Germany," said another EU diplomat familiar with
the talks. "If you start talking now about
building another coalition of the willing, you
undermine the one we have."
Equally unhelpful, in the European view, are
news reports of alleged U.S. military planning
for an attack on Iran and of senior U.S.
politicians talking about possible military
action. Most recently, Republican Sen. John
McCain of Arizona said at the same Brussels
conference, "There's only one thing worse than
military action, and that's a nuclear-armed
Iran."
The Bush administration is adamant that it isn't
planning for military action. "That is not what
we are thinking about. This is not on the
agenda. It is not where we are," said Daniel
Fried, assistant U.S. secretary of state for
European affairs. However, the administration
also has stressed regularly that the option
remains on the table.
Officials on both sides of the Atlantic stress
that the close working relationship they have
now on Iran -- and on how to deal with the new
Hamas-led government in the Palestinian
territories, on the Balkans and on China -- all
demonstrate a major improvement since the 2003
bust-up over the Iraq war.
But Ms. Rice's comments, made in response to
questions at the Chicago Council on Foreign
Relations, and the European reaction, showed
underlying differences that could later break
apart the new trans-Atlantic harmony. For the
U.S., a Security Council resolution would be
ideal, but patience to get one is limited. For
the Europeans, moving out of the Security
Council is a bleak prospect that risks again
splitting Europe, raising the specter of Iraq in
some governments and among the European public.
Not even Britain, a key U.S. ally on Iraq, is
currently willing to consider circumstances in
which it would support military action against
Iran. Some foreign-office officials believe such
a move would bring the worst of both worlds --
war, and a nuclear-armed Iran. Many European
diplomats also believe that any talk of military
action plays into the hands of the regime in
Tehran, which in the nuclear issue has found a
rare rallying point for broad national support.
U.S. officials have ruled out direct talks with
Iran, an approach that has been pushed recently
by senior German officials, who say the U.S.
could offer trade ties and security guarantees
in exchange for Iranian cooperation on the
nuclear issue, terrorism and other areas. German
Chancellor Angela Merkel was scheduled to talk
to President Bush about Iran in their meeting
last night.
Early next week, foreign ministers from the five
permanent Security Council members plus Germany
will meet in New York to talk about Iran again.
The hope, diplomats say, is that by then, the
new Security Council resolution will have been
passed -- despite resistance from Russia and
China -- and the foreign ministers can work on
ensuring Iran's compliance.
