Headline after headline leads us to hope, only to have it all torn away.

Some examples:

Iran going back to Russia

Iranian - Russian talks fail

Iran to talk with EU

Iran not accepting EU demands

The list goes on and on. False signals put out by Iran and Ahmadinejad time and time again. How long do they think this Rope-A-Dope will work? Hussein managed to make it work for years, Ahmadinejad has burned all his bridges in a few weeks.

There are very few options left. The world, including the United States keeps hoping for a diplomatic solution when alas we all know there will not be one.

Ahmadinejad keeps looking down the collective worlds barrel hoping someone will pull the trigger. Does he really believe the 12th Imam will keep him from getting his head blown off?

I have seen some megalomaniacs in action in recent years, Castro and Hussein to be exact and Hitler and scores of others before them. Yet I see no correlation or historical reference to like actions from any of his predecessors. What exactly is his game?

Iran: 60 percent drop in tourism

Majority of European tourist packages to Iran particularly from Germany and France have been cancelled in the current month, according to the secretary of the committee for incoming tours, Ebrahim Pourfaraj. He added that the state of tourism is now back to the days just after the 9/11.

He emphasized that due to current situation many tourists are scared of traveling to Iran and tourist packages with 25 guests have dropped to 15 and in some cases as low as even five.

With 60 percent drop in the number of tourists visiting Iran, Pourfaraji expressed fear if the current trend continued the damage to Iran's tourism industry would be irreparable.

Avoiding Iranian nuke terror

By Yonah Alexander
March 5, 2006

http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060304-101033-4540r.htm

Almost a century and a half ago, on hearing of the clash between the Monitor and the Merrimac, the American historian Henry Adams warned, "Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power; and the human race will commit suicide by blowing up the world."
    Tragically, the net balance at this time and the foreseeable future is tilting toward the risk of suicide by nuclear terrorism. This shift should be a matter of urgent concern to the international community.
    Can we prevent such an unconventional catastrophe, particularly since Iran, foremost state sponsor of terrorism, is more actively than ever engaged in mass destruction programs, such as developing nuclear capabilities and their delivery systems? The short answer is definitely yes, if responsible nations can agree on the intensity of the threat and immediately craft realistic policies designed to minimize the looming dangers from nuclear terrorism.
    More specifically, Iran's lawless record of the past 25 years in sponsoring terrorism at home and abroad is rather transparent. It includes violating its own citizens' fundamental human rights; establishing, directing and supporting indigenous and foreign terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al-Asqa martyrs; setting up cells and networks in the Middle East, Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere; cooperating with various jihadist movements; sabotaging the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; and undermining efforts to stabilize Iraq.
    What is particularly alarming about Iran's integrated strategy of systematic and carefully orchestrated terrorism are two intensifying trends. The first is related to Tehran's propagation of "Jihad" (holy war) and "Shahada" (self-sacrifice), assuring the centrality of the suicide weapon in the arsenal of terrorism.
    For instance, in Iraq. Last year, Iran's leader Ali Khamenei praised the culture of Sahada and called the young generation of students to follow the path of martyrdom because "this is the most beautiful human value."
    The second clear trend is indicated in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent statements denying Israel's right to exist, expressing doubts about the Holocaust, and seeking to achieve the late Ayatollah Khomeini's revolutionary Islamic goals, while apparently pushing ahead with a quest for nuclear arms. These are signs the world might be headed toward the most serious challenge to its existence since the dark days of the Cold War. The question is when and under what circumstances Iranian terrorism might escalate to an unconventional level.
    As a start, consider the following scenario: Hezbollah, in response to US policies and actions, activates cells in several large U.S. cities that simultaneously detonate the most primitive of terrorist nuclear devices -- "dirty bombs," made of stolen radioactive sources embedded in conventional explosives. In each city, a cloud of radioactive dust spreads downwind and settles over tens of square miles in densely populated areas. Only the suicide terrorists setting off the explosions and a few bystanders are killed, but the long-term effects will be substantial in cancers and the costs of evacuation and the decontamination of tens of square miles. There is immediate widespread panic as first responders and officials try to quell fear and face dealing with months or years of psychological, economic and social disruption.
    And this is only the beginning. Should efforts fail to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, within several years it will be able to promote its political aims in the Middle East with nuclear weapons that could kill hundreds of thousands of people, fueled with highly enriched uranium and perhaps plutonium and delivered by terrorist means to cover up any fingerprints.
    Can the U.S. unilaterally or in concert with other nations, deny Iran nuclear capabilities and their use as terrorist weapons? What realistic options are available to U.S. decision makers?
    Several courses of action are recommended in the short term:
    (1) The U.S. should prevail on Russia and China in the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran if Iran does not halt its centrifuge uranium e(2) Only concerted diplomacy by the U.S. in concert with Russia, China, India and the EU-3 can dissuade Iran from following its nuclear weapons course. Attacking Iranian nuclear facilities as a last resort may be unwise, but it should not be doubted that a limited air attack could penetrate Iran's defenses and severely disable its nuclear infrastructure.
    (3) India, Russia and China, countries with growing economic ties to Iran as a market for technology and a source of oil and natural gas, need to take the threat of Iraqi civil war as an opportunity to urge Tehran to halt exporting terrorism to its neighbor, as well as indigenous uranium enrichment and the construction of a reactor for plutonium production.
    In sum, nuclear terrorism is a threat to the very survival of civilization, including Iran. It would be prudent for all nations to heed the Persian proverb, "Even with the strength of an elephant and the paws of a lion, peace is better than war."
    
    Yonah Alexander is director of the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies. Milton Hoenig, a physicist, is a Washington consultant. They co-edited "Super-Terrorism: Biological, Chemical, and Nuclear" (transnational). nrichment operations by the next meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors on March

Larijani Threatens to Leave IAEA

March 04, 2006
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Monsters and Critics

link to original article

Vienna -- Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani threatened to leave the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Saturday if it referred Tehran's nuclear programme to the UN Security Council. 'Why did we become a member of the IAEA? In order to be allowed to have atomic energy. It is a paradox that we are an IAEA member and yet we are not permitted to do anything. In this case, we will leave the IAEA,' Larijani told the Viennese Kurier daily in an interview to be published in its Sunday edition

Larijani is also secretary of the influential Iranian National Security Council.

Iran has been an IAEA member since the late 1950s and a signatory to the international Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty that expressly guarantees every country the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Larijani stressed that Iran wanted 'to go the way of India and Pakistan (both non-signatories to the treaty) ... These countries aspire to atomic bombs; we do not, under any circumstances.'

Iran refused Friday during a meeting with the French and German foreign ministers to give up completely the domestic enrichment of uranium.

Enriched uranium is required to fuel nuclear power plants, but at higher grades it can be used to make nuclear weapons which the West, led primarily by the United States, fears Iran is planning to do.

A report by the IAEA to be released Monday criticizes Iran for violating the non-proliferation treaty. A vote by the agency's board of governors on the same day is expected to refer the case to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

Larijani described the involvement of the Security Council as the worst case scenario for Iran. 'If the case is there (before the council), the Europeans who are on the Security Council will be sidelined by the US. The Americans will take over the steering-wheel and confront us directly without Europe exerting an influence,' he said.

But Larijani said his country was not afraid of sanctions. 'We have lived with sanctions (by the US) for 27 years. The conditions in the region are not such that sanctions could have the influence the Americans expect. I am not claiming that we won't have any difficulties, but the others will also have some,' Larijani said.

If the conflict 'pushed oil prices sky high, the Europeans would also be affected,' Larijani said.

Iran Tests Washington's Limits

March 02, 2006
The Power and Interest News Report
PINR

link to original article

Iran's recent uncompromising stance over its nuclear research program testifies to Tehran's assessment that the United States does not have the leverage to prevent it from pursuing its aggressive nuclear policy.

For instance, in late 2003 and in early 2004, when the policy of France, Germany and the United Kingdom did not support isolating Iran, Tehran attempted to work with the Europeans in order to provide them with the political ammunition to distance their policy from the more hard line one of the United States. However, in recent weeks, despite being isolated by the Europeans, the Iranians have continued down the path of controlling the nuclear fuel cycle, even in the face of being referred to the U.N. Security Council.

As PINR stated in March 2004, "Tehran agreed to the additional [N.P.T.] protocol not because it planned on giving up its uranium enrichment program, but because it considered signing the protocol to be the best available route toward that program." Indeed, since the start of the debate over Iran's nuclear research program, Tehran has refused to back down on its stance of controlling the nuclear fuel cycle. The strategy behind this desire is what PINR described in August 2003: "[Iran] can continue its research into peaceful nuclear energy all the while preparing for a possible day when it could quickly develop its first nuclear weapons and become a nuclear-armed state." By controlling the nuclear fuel cycle, Iran will be in a better position to add a military component to its nuclear energy program.

Until recently, Iran has been careful not to isolate itself from the international community. However, the difficulties encountered by the U.S. in Iraq have convinced Tehran that it is unlikely that Washington will take noteworthy military or even economic action against Iran. The U.S. military is overburdened by the ongoing insurgency in Iraq, making a realistic ground invasion of Iran improbable. While strategic air strikes are certainly an option, it is unlikely that such strikes would destroy completely Iran's nuclear research program. Furthermore, an actual attack on its facilities would probably hasten Iran's drive toward nuclear weapons, similar to the effect that Israel's 1981 strike on the Osirak reactor in Iraq had on Baghdad. Highlighting this strategic assessment, Iranian Deputy Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi was recently quoted by Iran's state-run Fars news agency as saying that "a military confrontation with Iran is impossible and unfeasible, and they [the West] are fully aware of it." [See: "Iran's Bid for Regional Power: Assets and Liabilities"]

Additionally, an attack on Iran could cause further instability in Iraq and in the region. In Iraq, Iran has influence over various Shi'a militias. It has been assessed that bomb making materials have moved from Iran into Iraq. Shi'a leader Moqtada al-Sadr -- who commands a sizeable militia, known as the Mehdi Army -- has already announced publicly that he would support Iran in case of a conflict with the U.S. Iran has even threatened publicly its ability to cause further instability in Iraq. For instance, Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, recently said, "If these countries [the United States and E.U.-3] use all their means...to put pressure on Iran, Iran will use its capacity in the region," insinuating Tehran's ability to control events in Iraq.

Even if the U.S. refrains from taking military action against Iran, it also faces problems with placing economic sanctions on the country. Because the bulk of Iran's income derives from its energy resources, effective sanctions will have to target Iran's energy exports. It cannot be expected that China will cease cooperation in the energy sphere with Iran, and it is also difficult to imagine the United States and the European Union moving ahead with an economic sanctions regime that also includes Iran's energy exports. Energy prices are already at very high levels, putting strain on the global economy. Economic sanctions on Iran would increase these prices, especially with all of the instability in the energy markets caused by the rhetoric from Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, the social unrest in Nigeria, the gas shutoff by Russia, the attacks on pipelines in Iraq and the recent Islamist attack on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities.

Therefore, the preceding factors explain why Tehran's current strategy is to push the limits of the United States over the nuclear issue. Tehran does not believe that Washington will take effective action against it, provided that Iran does not take any drastic steps that would provoke a mandatory response from the United States. Look for Iran to continue its current policy, buying as much time as possible to pursue its nuclear ambitions and move closer toward the technology and resources necessary to add a military dimension to its nuclear research program.

As Crisis Brews, Iran Hits Bumps in Atomic Path

March 04, 2006
The New York Times
William J. Broad and David E. Sanger

link to original article

When Iran defiantly cut the locks and seals on its nuclear enrichment plants in January and restarted its effort to manufacture atomic fuel, it forced the world to confront a momentous question: How long will it be before Tehran has the ability to produce a bomb that would alter the balance of power in the Middle East?

Iran's claims that it is racing forward with enrichment have created an air of crisis as the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency prepares to meet Monday in Vienna before the United Nations Security Council takes up the Iran file for possible penalties.

Yet behind the sense of immediate alarm lies a more complex picture of Iran's nuclear potential. Interviews with many of the world's leading nuclear analysts and a review of technical assessments show that Iran continues to wrestle with serious problems that have slowed its nuclear ambitions for more than two decades.

Obstacles, the experts say, remain at virtually every step on the atomic road. And the most significant, they say, involve the two most technically challenging aspects of the process — converting uranium ore to a toxic gas and, especially, spinning that gas into enriched atomic fuel.

According to the analysts, the Iranians need to do repairs and build new machines at a prototype plant before they can begin enriching even modest quantities of uranium. And then, for a decade, they would have to mass produce 100 centrifuges a week to fill the cavernous industrial enrichment halls at Natanz. What is more, the gas meant to feed those machines is plagued by impurities.

The perception gap was underscored in February when Tehran issued a stark warning. By late this year, Iranian officials said, they would begin installing nearly 3,000 centrifuges at the giant Natanz plant, buried deep underground to withstand attack. That many centrifuges, international inspectors knew, could make fuel for up to 10 nuclear warheads every year.

In Washington and Europe, the announcement was dismissed as an empty boast. "Maybe they can move that fast," said a senior American official who tracks Iran's program but who declined to be named because it is an intelligence matter. "But they would need lots of help, luck and prayer."

Tehran maintains that it has every right to master the atomic basics in pursuit of a peaceful program of nuclear power. But more and more countries have come to view that as a cover story.

Estimates of just when Iran might acquire a nuclear weapon range from alarmist views of only a few months to roughly 15 years. American intelligence agencies say it will take 5 to 10 years for Iran to manufacture the fuel for its first atomic bomb. Most forecasters acknowledge that secret Iranian advances or black market purchases could produce a technological surprise.

Conservative forecasts often take into account not only the technical difficulties but also a political judgment: that Tehran will run for the finish line — making its first bomb — only when it can rapidly produce a large arsenal.

A further uncertainty is defining the exact point at which Iran's nuclear program would become an unstoppable threat. While most analysts identify the greatest danger as when Iran can produce nuclear fuel — the hardest part of the bomb venture, more difficult than designing a warhead — others, particularly the Israelis, say the tipping point may come earlier, when Tehran has accumulated a critical mass of atomic knowledge.

For all the bluster and anxiety of the moment, Iran's atomic history is a conundrum of delay: given its wealth of atomic scientists and oil revenues, why was Tehran unable to succeed years ago?

After all, it took only three years for the United States to build the first atom bomb. It took Pakistan and North Korea, poor by Western standards, roughly a decade to get enough material for their first nuclear devices.

Iran, by most estimates, has been moving toward the same objective for at least two decades.

Some of Iran's nuclear troubles can be traced to wavering political commitment by mullahs more interested in creating a theocracy than unlocking the secrets of the atom. And many top scientists fled after the Islamic revolution of 1979.

But the United States created other obstacles. In the 1990's, it pressured Russia, China and other nations to end deals that would have given the Iranian program a jump-start. Some of those maneuvers were covert; some played out in the press.

"In retrospect, we impeded a lot more of their progress than we knew," said Robert J. Einhorn, a central player in nuclear diplomacy in the Clinton administration and the early days of the Bush administration.

In Washington and around the world, assessments of Iran's technological maturity have driven deliberations over what to do. American and Israeli planners have quietly debated the possibility and the risks of military strikes, including whether they would be more effective soon or only after Iran has built a much larger infrastructure.

At least publicly, though, the Bush administration has followed a different strategy than it did with Iraq. After the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction there, President Bush has never argued that Iran poses an imminent threat, and his aides have called for diplomacy.

"There are still certain techniques and pieces of know-how that we do not believe that they have," Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, told reporters last month. That, he said, is "why we are focusing so much energy on trying to prevent Iran from achieving those key final capabilities."

Most experts focus on uranium and ignore Iran's work on plutonium, another bomb fuel, judging it as even further from fruition. Still, nuclear analysts warn against complacency.

"They do have serious problems," said Mohammad Sahimi, a chemical engineer at the University of Southern California who left Iran in 1978. "But we've made mistakes in underestimating the strength of science in Iran and the ingenuity they show in working with whatever crude design they get their hands on."

Centrifuges and Uranium

By all accounts, the oldest and most daunting problem involves centrifuges — temperamental machines whose rotors can spin extraordinarily fast to enrich uranium. After two decades of effort, Iran is barely out of the starting gate.

All uranium is not equal. One form, uranium 235, easily splits in two, or fissions, in bursts of atomic energy that power nuclear reactors and bombs. Its slightly heavier cousin, uranium 238, does not.

But since uranium 235 accounts for less than 1 percent of all uranium, engineers use centrifuges to separate the two and concentrate the rare form. Uranium enriched to about 4 percent uranium 235 can fuel most reactors; to 90 percent, atom bombs.

In 1987, the Iranians secretly began buying drawings and parts for centrifuges from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear expert who operated the world's biggest nuclear black market. International inspectors say the deals eventually included parts for about 500 primitive used centrifuges.

Tehran, apparently unhappy with their quality, turned to Moscow. In early 1995, it made a secret deal to buy an entire plant of centrifuges — typically tens of thousands of the spinning machines linked together to slowly increase the level of enrichment.

But after the Clinton administration persuaded Moscow to back out, Iran accelerated its secret drive to copy Dr. Khan's centrifuges. It also started building the huge enrichment plant near Natanz, in central Iran. The pilot factory there was to house 1,000 centrifuges; the main plant would shelter 50,000 machines underground.

In August 2002, Iranian dissidents revealed the existence of the Natanz site, beginning the current confrontation with the West. The next year, Iran agreed to suspend work while negotiating with Europe over the program's fate.

But when operators shut down an experimental cascade of 164 centrifuges at Natanz, about 50 of them broke or crashed, according to a January report by David Albright and Corey Hinderstein of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington.

Now, the report said, Iran must replace and repair the broken machines and prepare the cascade for operation. Then comes the really hard part: if all goes well, the Iranians must mass-produce thousands of centrifuges and learn to run them in concert, like a large orchestra.

Iran is also struggling to turn concentrated uranium ore, or yellowcake, into uranium hexafluoride, the toxic gas fed into the centrifuges for enrichment. Such conversion is done at a site on the outskirts of Isfahan.

Iran began the conversion effort in the early 1990's, asking China to help build the complex. But in 1997, the Clinton administration persuaded Beijing to stop the deal. The Iranians got blueprints but little else. So they started building on their own.

"From what I saw, everything looked like local manufacturing except for some gauges," said Gary S. Samore, who ran the National Security Council's nonproliferation office during the Clinton administration and who traveled to Isfahan in 2005.

Iran, which tried to hide most of its nuclear sites, voluntarily revealed Isfahan to international inspectors in 2000. But the plant encountered problems during its first runs in early 2004, its output laced with impurities, in particular molybdenum, a silvery element often found in uranium ore.

The contamination, experts say, can ruin delicate centrifuges, reducing their efficiency and cutting short their lifetimes.

The Iranians are working hard to solve the problem. Mark Hibbs of Nuclear Fuel, an industry publication, who broke the molybdenum story, said most experts believed that the Iranians would ultimately succeed. British intelligence, he said, put the time needed at a year and a half, Israeli analysts at two or three months.

Houston G. Wood III, a centrifuge expert at the University of Virginia, said the Iranians might simply learn to cope. "If you're smart enough," he said, "you could probably get by, maybe with decreased efficiency."

Western officials worry that the conversion has a secret side, and that it is run by a military group seeking to integrate the nuclear program with the design of missiles that could deliver a weapon. In a Jan. 31 report, the I.A.E.A. revealed that it had documentary evidence of a shadowy operation, the Green Salt Project. Tehran dismissed the charge of a hidden military effort as baseless and later called the Green Salt documents forgeries.

Estimating a Bomb's Birth

Atomic forecasts are driven largely by assessments of technological maturity, sometimes colored by judgments of the risks of guessing wrong.

That may explain the gulf between Israel's claim that the world has as little as six months before the "point of no return" and estimates that an Iranian warhead is many years away. .

"We live within Iranian missile range," said a senior Israeli official who has worked on the country's estimates. "Our survival depends on understanding the worst-case scenario." Thus, in the Israeli view, it would be a huge mistake to let the Iranians figure out how to clean up and enrich their uranium.

Israel cites studies like one published in October by the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, "Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran." Its timeline is short, one to four years. Iran, it asserted, "lacks for nothing technologically or materially to produce it, and seems dead set on securing an option to do so."

Henry Sokolski, an editor of the report, said neither he nor anyone else could actually produce a truly accurate forecast. "A lot of people are fraudulent, making it sound like a science," he said. "It's not."

He nonetheless defended the report's estimate as reasonable, pointing to Iran's long nuclear history.

Analysts like Mr. Albright and Ms. Hinderstein of the Institute for Science and International Security put the earliest date Iran might produce a weapon at 2009. They cautioned, however, that this estimate "reflects a worst-case assessment, and thus is highly uncertain."

To date, the most comprehensive public estimate is by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an arms analysis group in London. "If Iran threw caution to the wind," John Chipman, the institute's director, said, it might be able to make fuel for a single nuclear weapon by 2010.

Dr. Samore, who edited that report and is now at the MacArthur Foundation, said the Iranians might see political advantage in a more deliberate approach, doing nothing provocative until after 2015 or even 2020.

In his view, he said, Iran would complete the main Natanz plant, installing 50,000 centrifuges and learning to operate them. If successful, it could then enrich uranium to the low levels needed for a nuclear reactor and so comply with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Then it could rush ahead and produce enough highly enriched fuel for a nuclear arsenal in weeks or months. . At full tilt, the report concluded, Natanz could annually churn out material for up to 180 warheads.

Such a "breakout" chain of events worries experts because it leaves the world little or no time to react.

Seeking a Global Strategy

The Bush administration has concluded that even if Iran stops short of assembling a weapon, its ability to produce one on short order would change the politics of the Middle East. So it has been trying, with mixed success, to devise a broader atomic blockade that would turn the unilateral, often clandestine efforts of the past into a far more global effort involving not only Europe but India, China and Russia. In theory, the meeting Monday in Vienna is a step in that direction.

But administration officials are also trying to make headway on their own. They have persuaded several of Iran's neighbors — they will not say which ones — to block Iranian cargo flights that appear headed toward North Korea or other potential nuclear suppliers. Last year, that strategy appeared to succeed in at least one case, when China intervened.

In a little-noted speech in February, Robert Joseph, an under secretary of state and one of the administration's leading hawks on Iran, described the tools of denial he was employing, from cracking down on Tehran's finances to depriving Iran of crucial technologies.

But administration officials readily acknowledge that it is next to impossible to build a leak-proof wall. In his speech, Mr. Joseph warned of the "wild card" that Iran could obtain its nuclear fuel from an outside supplier.

As much as anything, officials worry about the unknown. They note that the United States missed signs that a country was about to go nuclear with the Soviets in the 1940's, the Chinese in the 1960's, India in the 1970's and Pakistan in the 1990's.

"People always surprise us," said a senior nuclear intelligence official who is not authorized to speak publicly. "They're always a little more cunning and capable than we give them credit for."