http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&...&d=8&m=2&y=2006
US Diplomacy Over Iran Echoes Louis XVIII’s Court
Polly Toynbee, The Guardian

LONDON, 8 February 2006 — Now the mullahs of Iran will soon have nuclear bombs, are we all doomed? Thumbing his nose at the impotent west, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad taunts us: “Our enemies cannot do a damn thing. We do not need you at all. But you are in need of the Iranian nation.” And he is absolutely right. A frisson of panic shudders around the globe: He has already threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. Do something, someone! But what and who? And if there is nothing to be done, what then?

The International Atomic Energy Agency has failed to stop Iran restarting its nuclear program. The matter has been referred to the UN, with a decision on any possible action in early March. But that may be yet another dismal reminder of UN incapacity. Meanwhile, the Americans are grinding out ritual bellicose statements, Donald Rumsfeld refusing to rule out airstrikes. The Israelis warn that Iran will pay “a very heavy price” and Iran replies that if anyone attacks “we will give the enemy a lesson that will be remembered throughout history”. Is this the way the world ends?

All this suggests that international diplomacy is not one whit wiser than it ever was. Talking to experts in the field, these appear to be a few key facts: Even if the US or Israel strike down the sites where they think Iranian nuclear weapons are being built, that can only delay their development. (How good are we at finding weapons anyway?) If Iran wants weapons above all else, it can get them by around 2010. Unlike Libya, Iran may well put national pride before economic growth, ignoring any harm sanctions can do them. If the world’s fourth largest producer sends oil prices through the roof, it can cause near-nuclear damage to the global economy. If this is how the West wants to play it, then Iran seems to hold some strong cards.

History sheds light, but offers few answers. The Anglo-American coup knocking over Mossadegh in 1953 to enthrone the Shah was another shining example of how Western crusaders for democracy prop up dictators in exchange for oil, afraid of the elections they pretend to champion. That is the paradox of the White House dream of turning Afghanistan and Iraq into “beacons of democracy” to spread their light across the Middle East. Yet — at least at first — democracy was always bound to bring mullahs and religious parties to power in Kabul and Baghdad or the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise in Egypt. More theocratic parties are the price of free elections, and the West has to accept it.

American pride is easily bruised, unused to taking such humiliations as the 1979 embassy-hostage crisis that lasted 444 shaming days and the Iran-backed Beirut Embassy attack that slaughtered 241 marines. On its side, Iran will never forgive the US for backing Iraq in the bloody eight-year Iran-Iraq war. So the two countries have barely attempted to speak in all these years: Admirable EU attempts at peacemaking could not bridge that historic bile. Without the US at the table, a deal was impossible.

On the face of it, Iran has every reason to feel insecure. While America occupies two of Iran’s neighbors and Israel’s nuclear weapons point at Tehran, paranoia seems as justified as it is dangerous. Yet Iran knows its strength. The Iraq adventure has exposed the painful limits to force, and America can no longer make a credible threat of invasion: It has forfeited the power to frighten.

What’s more, Iran is the true winner of that war. They only had to sit tight and smile as the West delivered on a golden plate all the influence Iran had always sought in the Middle East. The US and its allies will soon be gone from Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving Iranian-backed Shiites dominant in both countries, their influence well spread across Syria, a chunk of Saudi Arabia and other countries for decades to come. Historic Iranian ambitions have been fulfilled without firing a shot while the US is reduced to fist shaking. How foolish was that?

If Iran is determined, no one can stop it becoming a nuclear power, alongside Israel, Pakistan and India. The crazed dictator of North Korea shows the way: Nuclear weapons make nations unassailable. Why on earth would Iran not want them too?

It is much odder that Britain demands them. What for? Protection against whom? The UK Defense Secretary John Reid has said the submarine-launched Trident nuclear missiles will be replaced — and now the UK Finance Minister Gordon Brown has said he too would renew British nuclear weapons, despite the £20 billion price tag and a lack of anyone to point them at. If we can seriously consider such expensive folly in pursuit of strutting our stuff and punching above our weight to buy a UN Security Council seat, we can hardly pretend outrage at Iran’s ambitions.

But fantasy diplomacy is taking a grip. The pretense is that the world united can deflect Tehran: There is still a small chance that Russia’s offer to strike a deal could work. But the experts expect an aggressive standoff, with a risk of futile air attacks. Even if no blood is spilt, the West may find itself in a cold jihad with a nuclear-armed adversary, and no solution in sight. Nothing suggests that sanctions and fiery words will make the more moderate forces in Iran overthrow their mullahs and choose westernization: Under external pressure in this clash of civilizations, history suggests they will close ranks. Meanwhile, oil-hungry nations will do dirty backdoor deals: Oil tends to trump UN resolutions.

Fantasy diplomacy is ready to fight all the way to stop the mullahs getting the bomb. Reality suggests there is a difficult choice: If you cannot win, give up at once to minimize the damage. Get off the high horse and start to negotiate terms on which Iran can be allowed to enrich uranium. It amounts to turning a blind eye to their weapons potential while striking a deal that saves their face, affords them some dignity and entices them economically into becoming a more stable force. It takes some swallowing, but what if there is no alternative? Either they have nuclear weapons and we are at Cold War, or else they have nuclear weapons and we have an uneasy kind of peace. But that decision has to be made before UN sanctions ratchet up the rhetoric to no-turning-back resistance. It may be beyond the ability of this White House to climb down, but the US should remember Aesop’s fable The Sun and the Wind: when they competed to get a man’s coat off, the full force of a cold blast only made him hold on to it tighter, but the warmth of the sun made him take it off by himself. So far US diplomacy over Iran echoes Louis XVIII’s court: They seem to have forgotten nothing and learned nothing.

Blair: "British Troops In Iran? We Can Never Say Never"

TONY Blair yesterday refused to rule out a British military invasion of Iran.
http://tinyurl.com/by8jx


UK: Military action on a nuclear Iran not inevitable:

Military action against Iran is not inevitable even if the Islamic state develops the technology to build a nuclear bomb, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said on Wednesday.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11835.htm


Selling a war:

Iran Greatest Threat, Most Americans Think :

President Bush has been warning about Tehran's nuclear program - The poll found two-thirds or more of Americans think if Iran develops nuclear weapons, it's likely to attack Israel, Europe, or the U.S.
http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/2274236.html


Iran's missile tech suppliers named :

Two German businessmen, a former Russian military officer and North Korea are among those helping Iran develop missiles that the West fears could one day carry nuclear warheads, diplomats and intelligence officials say.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060208/ts_nm/...iran_germany_dc


Iran designs tunnel that could one day be used for atomic test:

Iranian engineers have completed sophisticated drawings of a deep subterranean shaft, according to officials who have examined classified documents in the hands of U.S. intelligence for more than 20 months.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/3643805.html


Fixing The Intelligence For War With Iran:

State Department sees exodus of weapons experts:

State Department officials appointed by President Bush have sidelined key career weapons experts and replaced them with less experienced political operatives who share the White House and Pentagon's distrust of international negotiations and treaties.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11829.htm


More false evidence?

Suspected drawings of nuclear test site found in Iran: diplomats :

The document was part of US intelligence which has been made available to the UN nuclear watchdog and which has been presented to Iran, said a diplomat, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp.../192275/1/.html


An Interview with British MP George Galloway:

"If I have to choose between Iran and George Bush, I choose Iran."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11839.htm

Iran: A Clear and Present Danger to the Jewish People, Says World Jewish Congress

2/9/2006 8:17:00 AM

Iran: A Clear and Present Danger to the Jewish People, Says World Jewish Congress

To: National Desk

Contact: Avner Tavori of the World Jewish Congress, 212-755-5770 or 646-678-2954 (cell)

JERUSALEM, Feb. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The World Jewish Congress has called upon Jewish Communities and Jewish organizations around the world to actively work with their respective governments to put a stop to Iran's development of nuclear weapons.

After hearing testimonies from renowned experts, the members of the World Jewish Congress Governing Board meeting in Jerusalem today issued on the following statement:

"Whereas Iran represents a clear and present danger to the safety and security of the people of the world, Jews everywhere and Israel in particular, The World Jewish Congress will work to inform governments and international organizations about the Iranian threat and contribute to the emerging world effort to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. As part of this effort, the WJC will discuss with governments and international organizations how to utilize economic and political means against Iran and how to reduce the reliance on oil by developing alternative sources of energy."

---

About the World Jewish Congress:

The World Jewish Congress is the international federation of Jewish communities representing Jewish communities around the world. The WJC serves as the diplomatic arm of the Jewish people to world governments and international organizations.

For more information contact: Avner Tavori, director of communications, World Jewish Congress, 501 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022, Phone: 212-755-5770, Cell: 646-678-2954. Please visit http://www.worldjewishcongress.org.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

Iran may need force, warns Hurd :

Former Foreign Secretary Lord Hurd has said Britain cannot "realistically" rule out using military force against Iran over its nuclear programme.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4698066.stm

===
Russia confirms missile defence contract with Iran:

Amid the escalating crisis around Iran's nuclear programme, Russia said on Thursday that it will still arm Tehran with missiles that can secure nuclear facilities from attacks.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1408706.cms

===
U.S. shield blunts Israeli military option on Iran:

Israel has long pursued a policy of preemptive attack as its preferred form of defence. But when it comes to tackling arch-foe Iran, that option may have been put on hold under a protective "umbrella" on offer from the United States.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L09764669.htm

===
Iran poised to retaliate against UN referral:

Ahmadinejad vows his country will continue on the road to victory, labels Bush warmonger who should be put on trial.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=15628

===
Iran dismisses US threat over nukes:

"We are not afraid of attacks by the United States or by other countries on Iran's nuclear installations because we have nothing to hide, we have no installations to produce nuclear weapons," Iranian Vice President Esfandyar Rahim Mashaee said
http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/02/10/d60210012622.htm

===
Parallels Between Iran and Pre-War Iraq :

Iran is not Iraq, and the year 2006 is not the same as year 2003 for George Bush; but one cannot stop wondering about the uncanny similarities between Iraq at the verge of war, and the present state of affairs in Iran. Parallels are abound:
http://www.payvand.com/news/06/feb/1069.html

===
China says welcomes Iran-Russia nuclear talks:

China said on Thursday it welcomed talks between Iran and Russia next week on plans to defuse the crisis over Tehran's atomic programme, but refused to say whether it would join the meeting.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP103048.htm

February 10, 2006
Polls: Anti-Iran Propaganda Working

by Jim Lobe
The escalating crisis over Iran's nuclear program appears to have persuaded the U.S. public that Tehran now poses a greater threat to the United States than any other country, or even al-Qaeda, according to recent surveys.

And even though the public remains worried and unhappy about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, a significant percentage has already begun thinking of eventual military action against Iran.

"Americans are telling us that they would prefer we pack our bags and leave Iraq now, and yet they appear ready to do some damage to Iran if it proceeds with its nuclear program," said John Zogby, president of the polling firm, Zogby International, which released a survey last week in which nearly half of the respondents (47 percent) said they favored military action, preferably along with European allies, to halt Iran's nuclear program

Still, despite the high level of concern, the polls do not show eagerness to take military action now or unilaterally. The public appears to prefer an effort to settle the crisis diplomatically, preferably through the United Nations.

If that fails, the poll respondents indicated they would prefer for any military action to be undertaken in conjunction with other countries and, in any event, strongly oppose an invasion designed to overthrow the regime, as in Iraq.

"Are people clamoring for military action at this point? Definitely not," said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

"Between now and military action, the public would definitely be looking for more negotiations. And then they want to try to do something multilaterally," he said. "They'd have to cross a whole bunch of hurdles before you'd get military action."

Nonetheless, the latest poll, released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that some 27 percent of respondents cite Iran as Washington's greatest menace – three times the percentage who ranked it at the top of foreign threats just four months ago.

The same survey, which polled 1,500 adults during the first week of February, also found that nearly three in four (72 percent) believed Tehran was "likely" to launch attacks on Israel if it obtained nuclear weapons. An even higher percentage (82 percent) said they believed the Iranian government would likely transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists.

The latest results strongly suggest that the combination of belligerent declarations by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Tehran's defiance of European appeals not to resume its uranium enrichment activities; and efforts by Israel and its allies here to mobilize international and U.S. opinion has moved the Islamic Republic to the center of the public's foreign-policy consciousness.

This shift in some ways echoes how the hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush focused the public's post-9/11 fears on former President Saddam Hussein in the yearlong run-up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003.

"How Dangerous Is Iran?" was the bold headline that ran along a photo of Ahmadinejad on the cover of this week's Newsweek magazine. "The Next Nuclear Threat" and "Radical Islam in Power" topped the cover.

Similarly, a familiar cast of Washington hawks – many of whom greeted Ahmadinejad's election and declaration that Israel should be "wiped off the map" as a godsend for their own efforts to rouse the public against Iran – has also been talking up the threat.

"An 'Intolerable' Threat" was the title of the neoconservative Wall Street Journal's lead editorial, while the Weekly Standard featured an article entitled "Iran or Bust: The Defining Test of Bush's War Presidency," which argued that Iran had become "the central crisis of the Bush presidency."

In an interview on the public television network PBS's Newshour this week, Vice President Dick Cheney, citing Ahmadinejad's "pretty outrageous statements," described the nuclear standoff as "dangerous" and warned that "no options are off the table," even as he rejected repeated questions by the host about "striking parallels" between the escalating crisis and the run-up to the Iraq war.

At the same time, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice blamed Iran for inciting this week's violent protests in the Middle East against offensive cartoons about Muhammad published in European newspapers.

In that respect, the Pew poll results were perhaps the most striking. Over the last 15 years, an average of only about 6 percent of respondents rated Iran as the "greatest danger" to the United States. In October, the same month that Ahmadinejad threatened Israel for the first time, that grew to 9 percent, still far below Iraq (18 percent), China (16 percent), and North Korea (13 percent).

But the latest survey found that the percentage had tripled to 27 percent compared to China (20 percent), Iraq (17 percent), North Korea (11 percent), and al-Qaeda/terrorists (4 percent).

Moreover, two-thirds of respondents listed Iran's nuclear program, which U.S. intelligence agencies believe is still a decade away from developing an actual weapon, as a "major threat" – compared to 60 percent who described North Korea's nuclear program that way, despite the fact that Pyongyang is believed to have built as many as a dozen bombs. Pew director Andrew Kohout, however, noted that 55 percent of respondents in the October poll said they believed that Iran already possessed nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless, the public is divided about what to do about Iran, according to the survey's results. Nearly four in five respondents (78 percent) said they wanted the UN to deal with the situation, compared with only 17 percent who said the United States should.

Nearly 80 percent of respondents said they had heard about Iran's announcement that it would resume its enrichment activities. Nearly half of those who said they had heard a lot about it ranked Iran as the greatest threat to the United States, according to the poll.

"There's been so much written and broadcast about the intransigence of the Iranians, it would've been remarkable otherwise," Kohout told IPS.

A poll taken in late January by the Washington Post and ABC television network found strong support for diplomatic efforts and economic sanctions to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear program

Asked in the same poll whether they would support U.S. bombing of suspected nuclear sites if those steps don't work, 42 percent were in favor, while 54 percent opposed the idea.

In a similar poll taken at the same time by Fox News, nearly 60 percent of respondents said the United States should be prepared to "use whatever military force is necessary" to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons if diplomacy failed, and 47 percent said they considered Iran more of a threat than Iraq was when the U.S. invaded.

More than 90 percent of respondents said they were either "very concerned" (68 percent) or "somewhat concerned" (23 percent) that Iran would give nuclear weapons to terrorists; and more than 80 percent who said they were either "very" (54 percent) or "somewhat concerned" (27 percent) that it would attack a neighboring country.

Kull attributed these more dramatic results in large part to the impression created by Ahmadinejad since his election. "I think this is caused more by the personality of the president and his comments than specific developments in the negotiations over the nuclear program He certainly comes across as a hothead, and that has definitely focused people's minds."

At the same time, less than 20 percent in the Fox News poll and a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted a few days before described Iran as an "immediate" or "imminent" threat.

(Inter Press Service)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...11/ixworld.html
Iran plant 'has restarted its nuclear bomb-making equipment'
By Con Coughlin, Defence and Security Editor, in Washington
(Filed: 11/02/2006)

Iran's controversial Natanz uranium processing plant has successfully restarted the sophisticated equipment that could enable it to produce material for nuclear warheads, according to reports received by Western intelligence.


An aerial view of the Natanz plant
In the past few days Iranian nuclear scientists have reportedly restarted four of the centrifuges required to produce weapons-grade uranium, and have begun feeding them with uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas, a key component in the production of nuclear bombs.

This crucial development follows Iran's decision to withdraw its co-operation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna after the body decided last week to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council.

Iranian officials have moved quickly to obstruct the work of the UN nuclear inspectors still working in the country's nuclear facilities.

Intelligence officials say restrictions have been imposed on the inspectors' movements between the various facilities at Natanz.

They have been specifically excluded from those areas where the Iranians have announced they would resume uranium enrichment, and have ordered the UN inspectors to report to officials running the plant on a daily basis. Security cameras installed by IAEA officials to monitor key facilities have been disabled.

Having effectively excluded the UN inspection teams from the most sensitive sites, Iranian nuclear scientists have removed the seals from the P-2 centrifuges that Iran acquired from Pakistan through the secret nuclear network operated by Dr A Q Khan, the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb.

They have also begun installing tanks in underground bunkers that are designed for industrial enrichment.

In previous submissions to the UN inspectors, the Iranians insisted they had acquired the P-2 centrifuges merely for research purposes, They have continued to insist that their nuclear programme is solely aimed at developing alternative energy sources.

However, a senior Western intelligence official said: "Iran's recent activity is a clear escalation of its attempts to enrich uranium to weapons grade. With the UN inspectors out of the way they are basically free to do as they please."

7 February 2006: Iran tells watchdog to end snap inspections
5 February 2006: Iran raises the nuclear stakes after being reported to UN
5 February 2006: US turns screw as Iran atom row goes to UN

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8531

February 11, 2006
Smoking Laptop

by Gordon Prather
Since February, 2003, Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei and his inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency have been conducting intrusive investigations into Iran’s Safeguarded nuclear programs.

Since December, 2003, Iran has been voluntarily adhering to an (as yet) unratified Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement.

Furthermore, Iran has searched for and provided ElBaradei documentation of its past procurement activities for nuclear programs, going back two decades. Documentation that Iran had been under no obligation to provide the IAEA at the time, much less obligated to preserve for later inspection.

In effect, for more than two years Iran has been attempting to comply with a retroactive Additional Protocol.

Nevertheless, a year ago, ElBaradei publicly announced that – although he had found no indication that (a) there were any undeclared "source or special nuclear materials" in Iran nor that ( "source or special nuclear materials" were being or had ever been "used in furtherance of a military purpose" – he still had "concerns" that Iran had been unwilling to address.

ElBaradei still had concerns?

Perhaps it was time (in mid-July) for senior intelligence officials to brief ElBaradei and senior staff on some of the sensitive "intelligence" they had gleaned from a "stolen Iranian laptop computer."

However, ElBaradei didn’t buy their intelligence. "Sources close to the IAEA" said what they had been briefed on appeared to be aerodynamic design work for a ballistic missile reentry vehicle, which certainly couldn't contain a nuke if the Iranians didn't have any.

Bummer!

Unless "source or special nuclear materials" had been "used in furtherance of a military purpose" it was none of ElBaradei’s beeswax.

So, surprise, surprise.

Last week Dafna Linzer "revealed" that the smoking-laptop had, indeed, contained evidence that was ElBaradei’s beeswax.

According to Linzer;

"In the spring of 2001, a small design firm opened shop on the outskirts of Tehran to begin work for what appears to have been its only client – the Iranian Republican Guard. Over the next two years, the staff at Kimeya Madon completed a set of technical drawings for a small uranium-conversion facility, according to four officials who reviewed the documents.

"Several sources with firsthand knowledge of the original documents said the facility, if constructed, would give Iran additional capabilities to produce a substance known as UF4, or "green salt," an intermediate product in the conversion of uranium to a gas. Further refined in a large-scale enrichment plant, such as the one Iran says it intends to build for its energy program, the material could become usable for the core of a bomb."

According to Linzer, the CIA has had the smoking-gun laptop for twenty months, but it was not until last December that the CIA provided the IAEA the "intelligence" about the Green Salt Project and its alleged link to the Iranian Republican Guards.

Whereupon President Bush immediately called for an emergency meeting of the IAEA Board to consider an "update brief," [.pdf] dated January 31, 2006, prepared by ElBaradei’s deputy for safeguards, which included – among other things – these paragraphs about the Green Salt Project:

"On 5 December 2005, the Agency reiterated its request for a meeting to discuss information that had been made available to the Agency about alleged undeclared studies, known as the Green Salt Project, concerning the conversion of uranium dioxide into UF4 ("green salt"), as well as tests related to high explosives and the design of a missile re-entry vehicle, all of which could have a military nuclear dimension and which appear to have administrative interconnections.

"In the course of the meeting, which took place on 27 January 2006, the Agency presented for Iran’s review a copy of a process flow diagram related to bench scale conversion and communications related to the project.

"Iran reiterated that all national nuclear projects are conducted by the AEOI, that the allegations were baseless and that it would provide further clarifications later."

The Iranians were first confronted with the alleged Green Salt Project on January 27, and the IAEA Board issued its resolution [.pdf] on February 4.

The resolution did not "refer" Iran’s nuclear program to the Security Council for possible action, nor did it contain any mention of a military UF4 project.

Why not? Perhaps, because the just-in-time discovery on the Iranian laptop of a link between the IRG and UF4 production doesn’t pass the smell test.

Obviously – much too obviously – someone wanted the IAEA Board to be able to charge that Iran had used "source or special nuclear material in furtherance of a military purpose."

Mike Kress: The Urgency of Now: Stopping the War on Iran:

Innocent Iranians, our children, our military, and all the world waits for us to wrest America’s destiny from the hands of the warlords. There is no time to waste. Gradualism is a luxury we cannot afford. The architects of the war against Iran have a head start – but we can prevail if we put our demands for peace into action.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11868.htm

Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse:

It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam's long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining strategic control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9698.htm

February 12, 2006
Bracing for Penalties, Iran Threatens to Withdraw From Nuclear Treaty
By NAZILA FATHI
TEHRAN, Feb. 11 — Iran's president warned on Saturday that Iran could withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if international pressure increased over its nuclear program.

His threat was a significant escalation of the government's previous position that it would only stop complying with spot inspections of military installations and sites it has not declared to be part of its nuclear program. The warning also raised the specter that Iran was considering following a strategy set by North Korea three years ago.

In a speech to tens of thousand of demonstrators who had gathered to mark the 27th anniversary of the Islamic revolution, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also staked out a broader path of resistance if penalties are imposed against Iran.

Evoking the possibility of penalties and international ostracism, he insisted that the country would continue its nuclear activities and urged Iranians to brace for tough times.

"The Islamic Republic has continued its program within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the nonproliferation treaty," he said in the speech, which was broadcast live on state television. "But if we see that you want to use the NPT regulations to deprive us of our rights, know that the people will revise their policy in this regard."

"I ask our dear people to prepare themselves for a great struggle," he added, evoking the possibility of international penalties. "Fasten your seat belts and pull up your sleeves."

In interviews in recent days, American and European officials have said they have been looking for signs that Mr. Ahmadinejad's government might abandon the nonproliferation treaty.

American officials and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, have said that the treaty provision allowing countries to renounce it, with just 90 days' notice, constitutes a major flaw in the effort to keep nations from becoming nuclear powers.

That provision essentially allows nations to build up a civilian nuclear infrastructure under the protection of the treaty, and then convert it to military use as soon as the country abandons the treaty.

"It's the obvious hole in the treaty, and the Iranians may choose to exploit it," one senior American official said this week, before Mr. Ahmadinejad's speech. "From their perspective, the North Koreans didn't pay much of a price."

The Central Intelligence Agency has estimated that the North Koreans have produced fuel enough for six or more weapons since they left the treaty three years ago. But those are rough estimates, based more on the country's ability than knowledge of what they have produced, and it is unclear whether that fuel has been converted to weapons. Iran is further away from that ability.

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Robert Joseph, the State Department official in charge of fighting nuclear proliferation, said that "a nuclear-armed Iran with this leadership does represent an existential threat to the state of Israel."

"We ought to make very clear not only that we find that repugnant," Mr. Joseph said, "but that that has policy significance, that that hardens our view, that we and the entire international community must band together and prevent this regime from acquiring nuclear weapons."

But he said he had no clear idea of when Iran might obtain a weapon.

The governing board of the atomic energy agency passed a resolution this month to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council for possible penalties over its nuclear program. But the resolution gave Iran until March to halt its atomic research and development work.

On Thursday, Secretary General Kofi Annan also called on Iran to freeze those activities and pursue a proposal by Moscow to enrich Iranian uranium in Russia.

But in his speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad again discounted proposals by Europe and Russia that countries could sell enriched nuclear fuel to Iran rather than have the country produce it itself.

"According to international regulations, every country that sells aircraft to other countries is required to sell its spare parts as well," he said. "For 27 years you have refused to give us aircraft spare parts. How can we be sure that you will give us nuclear fuel?"

Iran immediately reduced its cooperation with the United Nations nuclear agency after the referral resolution, saying that it would end compliance with the nuclear treaty's Additional Protocol, which allows intrusive inspections of nuclear sites. The government also announced that it was preparing to resume the enriching of uranium, which it had suspended for more than two years.

But at the time, some Iranian officials said they would not leave the treaty, in part because they feared that would bolster the West's argument that Tehran was racing toward production of a weapon.

All of Iran's senior officials have emphasized the country's right to have a peaceful nuclear energy program. But on Saturday, statements by two senior Iranian figures continued to show that differences were emerging over how to handle international pressure.

At the same rally where the president called for complete resistance regardless of the cost, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is head of the powerful Expediency Council, said that "instead of relying on strength, we must try to fix the situation wisely," the news agency ISNA reported.

A former speaker of Parliament, Mehdi Karroubi, told demonstrators that officials must refrain from "imprudent" policies and must try to adopt dialogue and act wisely.

In his speech at the rally, Mr. Ahmadinejad repeated his much-publicized claims that the Holocaust was a myth, and he made reference to the wave of demonstrations in the Arab world over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in some Western newspapers.

"In some European countries and in America insulting Prophet Muhammad is acceptable," he said. "But questioning the Holocaust and formation of the Zionist regime is a crime. This is a myth with which the Zionists have blackmailed other countries and carried out their crimes for 60 years in the occupied territories."

He continued: "The real Holocaust is happening in Palestine where the Zionists are killing Palestinians. If you are looking for the crimes of Holocaust, find them in Iraq."

Angry protesters attacked the Norwegian, Austrian and Danish Embassies in Tehran in recent days over the cartoons. They also attacked the British and the French Embassies on Thursday with homemade bombs and stones.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times

http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jse...xportaltop.html

US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 12/02/2006)

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.

"This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," said a senior Pentagon adviser. "This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months."

The prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain which fears that an attack would spark violence across the Middle East, reprisals in the West and may not cripple Teheran's nuclear programme. But the steady flow of disclosures about Iran's secret nuclear operations and the virulent anti-Israeli threats of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has prompted the fresh assessment of military options by Washington. The most likely strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers, each armed with up to 40,000lb of precision weapons, including the latest bunker-busting devices. They would fly from bases in Missouri with mid-air refuelling.

The Bush administration has recently announced plans to add conventional ballistic missiles to the armoury of its nuclear Trident submarines within the next two years. If ready in time, they would also form part of the plan of attack.

Teheran has dispersed its nuclear plants, burying some deep underground, and has recently increased its air defences, but Pentagon planners believe that the raids could seriously set back Iran's nuclear programme.



Iran was last weekend reported to the United Nations Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency for its banned nuclear activities. Teheran reacted by announcing that it would resume full-scale uranium enrichment - producing material that could arm nuclear devices.

The White House says that it wants a diplomatic solution to the stand-off, but President George W Bush has refused to rule out military action and reaffirmed last weekend that Iran's nuclear ambitions "will not be tolerated".

Sen John McCain, the Republican front-runner to succeed Mr Bush in 2008, has advocated military strikes as a last resort. He said recently: "There is only only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, has made the same case and Mr Bush is expected to be faced by the decision within two years.

By then, Iran will be close to acquiring the knowledge to make an atomic bomb, although the construction will take longer. The President will not want to be seen as leaving the White House having allowed Iran's ayatollahs to go atomic.

In Teheran yesterday, crowds celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution chanted "Nuclear technology is our inalienable right" and cheered Mr Ahmadinejad when he said that Iran may reconsider membership of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

He was defiant over possible economic sanctions.

11 February 2006: Iran plant 'has restarted its nuclear bomb-making equipment'

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2036145,00.html

The Sunday Times February 12, 2006


Bush urged to stir rebellion within Iran
Sarah Baxter, Washington



NEOCONSERVATIVES in Washington are urging President George W Bush to drop diplomacy with Iran in favour of boosting internal dissent and opposition forces within the Islamic regime.
In an open breach with White House policy, they argue the multilateral diplomacy pursued by Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, is encouraging the Iranians to snub the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and develop a nuclear bomb under cover of a peaceful energy programme.

Michael Rubin, a Middle East expert at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said: “The United States doesn’t have a policy on Iran. We should be looking for a way to address the people of the country.”

Rubin accused Rice of being tepid in her support for democratic reform and internal regime change. “I don’t believe Rice has ever put her neck out for freedom when the Soviet Union was dissolving or now,” he said.

Foreign policy hawks believe America should be assisting democratic forces inside Iran, much as President Ronald Reagan did with the trade union organisation Solidarity in Poland in the early 1980s.

Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative who helped to make the case for the invasion of Iraq, accused the Bush government of doing little “to exploit the evident weaknesses in the regime”.

The Wall Street Journal argued last week that “neorealists” such as Rice, who support diplomacy as the best way to project American power and interests, were consolidating their grip.

Rice helped to broker the agreement in London by recommending that Iran be reported by the IAEA to the United Nations security council for breaching the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, although it is unlikely to lead in the first instance to tough economic sanctions.

In response Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has told the IAEA to remove the seals and surveillance cameras at its nuclear development sites. Yesterday, in what could mark a further escalation in the crisis, he warned Iran might withdraw from the treaty.

Few foreign policy hawks believe the Iranian regime should be overthrown by force but they argue it could collapse from within.

There are signs of labour unrest in Iran. Mansoor Oslanloo, leader of a bus workers’ union, has been in prison since December last year and hundreds of union members have been arrested, prompting a wave of protests in Tehran.

The US state department spends roughly $4m (£2.3m) a year on the promotion of democracy and women’s rights in Iran — too little to make a difference, according to critics. A campaign for human rights and democracy in Iran is to be launched in the US Congress on March 2.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Military_ana...f_war_0211.html


Military analysts say price of war with Iran could be severe
RAW STORY
Published: February 11, 2006


A chilling new look at Iran's military capability in response to a U.S. strike will appear in Sunday editions of The Boston Globe, RAW STORY has learned. Headlined "Iran is called capable of launching strikes," the piece provides a sobering analysis of Iran's capabilities.

"Iran is prepared to launch attacks using long-range missiles, secret commando units, and terrorist allies planted around the globe in retaliation for any strike on the country's nuclear facilities, according to new US intelligence assessments and military specialists," the Globe's Brian Bender writes. Excerpts:

#
"US intelligence officials have said that Iran, which fought a war with Iraq from 1980-1988 that cost one million lives, still has the most threatening armed forces in the immediate region. Its combined ground forces are estimated at about 800,000 personnel. The CIA has concluded that Iran is steadily enhancing its ability to project its military power, including by threatening international shipping.

Advertisement


"A major worry: newly acquired long-range missiles. Obtained with the assistance of North Korea, the Shahab 3 could strike Israel and perhaps even hit the periphery of Europe, according to a recent report by the Pentagon's National Air and Space Intelligence Center.

"The missiles could also be tipped with chemical warheads and threaten US military bases in the region. Iran is believed to have at least 20 launchers that are frequently moved around the country to avoid detection.

"Iran has an extensive missile-development program and has received support from entities in Russia, China, and North Korea," the Pentagon report said, estimating their range to be at least 800 miles.

"New missile designs under development could travel 400 miles farther, it said, while Iran purchased at least a dozen X-55 cruise missiles from Ukraine in 2001 that are capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as far as Italy."

The Urgency of Now: Stopping the War on Iran

By Mike Kress

The neo-cons will use their tool at the UN, Ambassador John Bolton, to help create an international crisis and thereby justify attacks on Iran. Though there’s no evidence to prove that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, Iran’s refusal to halt its lawful nuclear programs will become the pretext for America’s next unnecessary war.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11868.htm

Iran warns it may quit NPT :

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned on Saturday the Islamic republic could quit the Non-Poliferation Treaty if forced by the West to limit its disputed nuclear programme.
http://www.asianage.com/main.asp?layout=2&...&RF=DefaultMain

===
Use of force debate persist on Iran:

In a private meeting with European diplomats this week, a former senior U.S. official raised the idea of launching a dozen B2 bombers in an air raid aimed at crippling key Iranian nuclear facilities.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11870.htm

===
Gingrich: U.S. Must Stop Iran:

Facing a potential nuclear holocaust at the hands of Iran, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich say the United States must do everything in its power to bring about regime change there, even if it means invading that nation.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/2/...3752.shtml?s=ic

===
World Jewish Congress launches anti-Iran campaign :

The World Jewish Congress has launched a campaign against Iran following the nuclear crisis and the anti-Semitic statements of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/681155.html

===
Karen Kwiatkowski: Why We Fight:

Why We Fight will eagerly be consumed and digested by millions and millions of real and loyal Americans who are now weary of strange endless wars in far away places and an economy wasting under the demands of voracious spending on "defense."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11874.htm

Iran is prepared to retaliate, experts warn
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | February 12, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Iran is prepared to launch attacks using long-range missiles, secret commando units, and terrorist allies planted around the globe in retaliation for any strike on the country's nuclear facilities, according to new US intelligence assessments and military specialists.

US and Israeli officials have not ruled out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to thwart its nuclear ambitions. Among the options are airstrikes on suspected nuclear installations or covert action to sabotage the Iranian program.

But military and intelligence analysts warn that Iran -- which a recent US intelligence report described as ''more confident and assertive" than it has been since the early days of the 1979 Islamic revolution -- could unleash reprisals across the region, and perhaps even inside the United States, if the hard-line regime came under attack.

''When the Americans or Israelis are thinking about [military force], I hope they will sit down and think about everything the ayatollahs could do to make our lives miserable and what we will do to discourage them," said John Pike, director of the think tank GlobalSecurity.org, referring to Iran's religious leaders.

''There could be a cycle of escalation."

President Bush has said military force should be the last resort in international efforts to deter Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb. Yet Bush has stated unequivocally that the United States would not tolerate an Iranian nuclear arsenal, which the CIA estimates could be in place in three to 10 years. Iran maintains its nuclear program is solely aimed at producing electricity, not weapons.

Israel, which Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has threatened to annihilate, asserts that Tehran is much closer to going nuclear and has been far more direct with its counter-threats.

The Israel Defense Forces, which destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, has said it is perfecting ways to launch a preventative strike against Iranian nuclear sites, including outfitting its Air Force with American-made, bunker-busting munitions.

US intelligence officials have said that Iran, which fought a war with Iraq from 1980-1988 that cost one million lives, still has the most threatening armed forces in the immediate region. Its combined ground forces are estimated at about 800,000 personnel. The CIA has concluded that Iran is steadily enhancing its ability to project its military power, including by threatening international shipping.

But it is Iran's unconventional weapons and tactics -- rather than its conventional military -- that would pose the greatest threat, according to the intelligence officials.

Bush's new intelligence chief, John D. Negroponte, outlining the conclusions reached by a variety of US spy agencies, warned in his first overall annual threat assessment this month to Congress that Iran is capable of sparking a much wider conflict it comes under threat.

A major worry: newly acquired long-range missiles. Obtained with the assistance of North Korea, the Shahab 3 could strike Israel and perhaps even hit the periphery of Europe, according to a recent report by the Pentagon's National Air and Space Intelligence Center.

The missiles could also be tipped with chemical warheads and threaten US military bases in the region.

Iran is believed to have at least 20 launchers that are frequently moved around the country to avoid detection.

''Iran has an extensive missile-development program and has received support from entities in Russia, China, and North Korea," the Pentagon report said, estimating their range to be at least 800 miles.

New missile designs under development could travel 400 miles farther, it said, while Iran purchased at least a dozen X-55 cruise missiles from Ukraine in 2001 that are capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as far as Italy.

Meanwhile, Iranian agents and members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, widely believed to have a large presence in Iraq, could attempt to foment an uprising by the their fellow Shi'ite majority in Iraq or join insurgents in directly attacking US troops there, Negroponte warned.

He reported that Tehran has ''constrained" itself in Iraq because it is generally satisfied with the political trends in favor of the Shi'ite majority and to avoid giving the United States another excuse to attack Iran. But that could change if Iran were targeted militarily.

A leading Shi'ite cleric in Iraq, Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia has clashed with US troops and rival Shi'ite groups, vowed in a visit to Tehran last month to defend Iran if it were attacked.

The assessment presented by Negroponte said the Iranian regime already provides ''guidance and training" to militant groups in Iraq and ''has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anticoalition attacks by providing Shia militants with the capability to build" improvised explosive devices.

Government and private analysts assert that Iran's intelligence apparatus and Revolutionary Guard Corps could cause serious damage to US efforts to pacify Iraq.

''The Iranian ayatollahs may deploy an 'asymmetric' answer and incite a Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq," the respected Russian military publication ''Defense and Security," warned last month, referring to a military strategy that employs such tactics as guerrilla warfare. ''That would be disastrous for the United States."

Iran, believed to be responsible for the bombing of a US Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, also would be expected to enlist its terrorist allies around the world to come to its aid if attacked, US officials and private specialists contend.

''Tehran continues to support a number of terrorist groups, viewing this capability as a critical regime safeguard by deterring US and Israeli attacks, distracting and weakening Israel, and enhancing Iran's regional influence through intimidation," according to Negroponte's assessment to Congress.

Primary among them is Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group that killed 241 US Marines when it bombed a Beirut barracks in 1983.

''Lebanese Hezbollah is Iran's main terrorist ally, which . . . has a worldwide support network and is capable of attacks against US interests if it feels its Iranian patron is threatened," according to the report.

''They have all kinds of people that would like to embrace martyrdom," Pike said of Iran, raising the specter that a terrorist group allied with Iran would be capable of launching attacks inside the United States to avenge a strike against Iran.

Intelligence officials also point out that Iran controls a small island at the mouth the Strait of Hormuz and could use missiles and gunboats to temporarily shut off access to the economically vital Persian Gulf, sparking an oil crisis.

''Military attack is not the solution to this problem," Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the leading dissident group, said in a telephone interview from Paris. ''The regime is absolutely focusing on nonconventional responses. Missiles and terrorist operations are the strong points."



© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=8533

February 13, 2006
Iran: The Next War

by John Pilger
Has Tony Blair, our minuscule Caesar, finally crossed his Rubicon? Having subverted the laws of the civilized world and brought carnage to a defenseless people and bloodshed to his own, having lied and lied and used the death of a hundredth British soldier in Iraq to indulge his profane self-pity, is he about to collude in one more crime before he goes?

Perhaps he is seriously unstable now, as some have suggested. Power does bring a certain madness to its prodigious abusers, especially those of shallow disposition. In The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, the great American historian Barbara Tuchman described Lyndon B. Johnson, the president whose insane policies took him across his Rubicon in Vietnam. "He lacked [John] Kennedy's ambivalence, born of a certain historical sense and at least some capacity for reflective thinking," she wrote. "Forceful and domineering, a man infatuated with himself, Johnson was affected in his conduct of Vietnam policy by three elements in his character: an ego that was insatiable and never secure; a bottomless capacity to use and impose the powers of his office without inhibition; a profound aversion, once fixed upon a course of action, to any contradictions."

That, demonstrably, is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the cabal that has seized power in Washington. But there is a logic to their idiocy – the goal of dominance. It also describes Blair, for whom the only logic is vainglorious. And now he is threatening to take Britain into the nightmare on offer in Iran. His Washington mentors are unlikely to ask for British troops, not yet. At first, they will prefer to bomb from a safe height, as Bill Clinton did in his destruction of Yugoslavia. They are aware that, like the Serbs, the Iranians are a serious people with a history of defending themselves and who are not stricken by the effects of a long siege, as the Iraqis were in 2003. When the Iranian defense minister promises "a crushing response," you sense he means it.

Listen to Blair in the House of Commons: "It's important we send a signal of strength" against a regime that has "forsaken diplomacy" and is "exporting terrorism" and "flouting its international obligations." Coming from one who has exported terrorism to Iran's neighbor, scandalously reneged on Britain's most sacred international obligations and forsaken diplomacy for brute force, these are Alice-through-the-looking-glass words.

However, they begin to make sense when you read Blair's Commons speeches on Iraq of Feb. 25 and March 18, 2003. In both crucial debates – the latter leading to the disastrous vote on the invasion – he used the same or similar expressions to lie that he remained committed to a peaceful resolution. "Even now, today, we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntary disarmament..." he said. From the revelations in Philippe Sands' book Lawless World, the scale of his deception is clear. On Jan. 31, 2003, Bush and Blair confirmed their earlier secret decision to attack Iraq.

Like the invasion of Iraq, an attack on Iran has a secret agenda that has nothing to do with the Tehran regime's imaginary weapons of mass destruction. That Washington has managed to coerce enough members of the International Atomic Energy Agency into participating in a diplomatic charade is no more than reminiscent of the way it intimidated and bribed the "international community" into attacking Iraq in 1991.

Iran offers no "nuclear threat." There is not the slightest evidence that it has the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium to weapons-grade material. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has repeatedly said his inspectors have found nothing to support American and Israeli claims. Iran has done nothing illegal; it has demonstrated no territorial ambitions nor has it engaged in the occupation of a foreign country – unlike the United States, Britain and Israel. It has complied with its obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty to allow inspectors to "go anywhere and see anything" – unlike the US and Israel. The latter has refused to recognize the NPT, and has between 200 and 500 thermonuclear weapons targeted at Iran and other Middle Eastern states.


Those who flout the rules of the NPT are America's and Britain's anointed friends. Both India and Pakistan have developed their nuclear weapons secretly and in defiance of the treaty. The Pakistani military dictatorship has openly exported its nuclear technology. In Iran's case, the excuse that the Bush regime has seized upon is the suspension of purely voluntary "confidence-building" measures that Iran agreed with Britain, France and Germany in order to placate the US and show that it was "above suspicion." Seals were placed on nuclear equipment following a concession given, some say foolishly, by Iranian negotiators and which had nothing to do with Iran's obligations under the NPT.

Iran has since claimed back its "inalienable right" under the terms of the NPT to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. There is no doubt this decision reflects the ferment of political life in Tehran and the tension between radical and conciliatory forces, of which the bellicose new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is but one voice. As European governments seemed to grasp for a while, this demands true diplomacy, especially given the history.

For more than half a century, Britain and the US have menaced Iran. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 overthrew the democratic government of Mohammed Mossadegh, an inspired nationalist who believed that Iranian oil belonged to Iran. They installed the venal shah and, through a monstrous creation called SAVAK, built one of the most vicious police states of the modern era. The Islamic revolution in 1979 was inevitable and very nasty, yet it was not monolithic and, through popular pressure and movement from within the elite, Iran has begun to open to the outside world – in spite of having sustained an invasion by Saddam Hussein, who was encouraged and backed by the US and Britain.

At the same time, Iran has lived with the real threat of an Israeli attack, possibly with nuclear weapons, about which the "international community" has remained silent. Recently, one of Israel's leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, wrote: "Obviously, we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don't know if they're developing them, but if they're not developing them, they're crazy."

It is hardly surprising that the Tehran regime has drawn the "lesson" of how North Korea, which has nuclear weapons, has successfully seen off the American predator without firing a shot. During the cold war, British "nuclear deterrent" strategists argued the same justification for arming the nation with nuclear weapons; the Russians were coming, they said. As we are aware from declassified files, this was fiction, unlike the prospect of an American attack on Iran, which is very real and probably imminent.

Blair knows this. He also knows the real reasons for an attack and the part Britain is likely to play. Next month, Iran is scheduled to shift its petrodollars into a euro-based bourse. The effect on the value of the dollar will be significant, if not, in the long term, disastrous. At present the dollar is, on paper, a worthless currency bearing the burden of a national debt exceeding $8 trillion and a trade deficit of more than $600 billion. The cost of the Iraq adventure alone, according to the Nobel Prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz, could be $2 trillion. America's military empire, with its wars and 700-plus bases and limitless intrigues, is funded by creditors in Asia, principally China.


That oil is traded in dollars is critical in maintaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. What the Bush regime fears is not Iran's nuclear ambitions but the effect of the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and trader breaking the dollar monopoly. Will the world's central banks then begin to shift their reserve holdings and, in effect, dump the dollar? Saddam Hussein was threatening to do the same when he was attacked.

While the Pentagon has no plans to occupy all of Iran, it has in its sights a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq. This is Khuzestan, home to 90 percent of Iran's oil. "The first step taken by an invading force," reported Beirut's Daily Star, "would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province, securing the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian military's oil supply." On Jan. 28 the Iranian government said that it had evidence of British undercover attacks in Khuzestan, including bombings, over the past year. Will the newly emboldened Labour MPs pursue this? Will they ask what the British army based in nearby Basra – notably the SAS – will do if or when Bush begins bombing Iran? With control of the oil of Khuzestan and Iraq and, by proxy, Saudi Arabia, the US will have what Richard Nixon called "the greatest prize of all."

But what of Iran's promise of "a crushing response"? Last year, the Pentagon delivered 500 "bunker-busting" bombs to Israel. Will the Israelis use them against a desperate Iran? Bush's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review cites "preemptive" attack with so-called low-yield nuclear weapons as an option. Will the militarists in Washington use them, if only to demonstrate to the rest of us that, regardless of their problems with Iraq, they are able to "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major-theater wars," as they have boasted? That a British prime minister should collude with even a modicum of this insanity is cause for urgent action on this side of the Atlantic.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HB14Ak01.html
Iran plays Russian roulette
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

The genie of Iran's nuclear crisis may be contained if the much-anticipated meeting in Moscow between Iranian and Russian officials bears fruit on the Russian proposal for a joint venture with Iran to enrich uranium on Russian soil.

Officials from Iran and Moscow were due to meet on Tuesday, but Iran announced on Monday that the meeting had been postponed, though it stressed that it had not been canceled.

So far, this proposal has received mixed reviews in Iran and there are indications of a split within Iran's ruling establishment. Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, warned on the eve of the recent International Atomic Energy Agency meeting in Vienna that the Russian proposal would be "killed" if Iran's case were sent to the United Nations Security Council, which it duly was. Larijani also categorically stated that such a move by the IAEA would "end diplomacy".

Yet despite such dire warnings, fortunately neither the nuclear diplomacy nor the Russian proposal is dead, partly as a result of timely intervention by Iran's former presidents, Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, as well as Hassan Rowhani, who until recently led Iran's nuclear negotiations and was the architect of the historic Iran-Europe agreement known as Paris Accord of 2004 that resulted, in part, with Iran voluntarily suspending its uranium-enrichment program, since, according to some reports, restarted.

Warning of Iran's isolation and a global consensus against Iran, these and other leading figures, such as the former Speaker of Iran's majlis (parliament), Mahdi Karubi, have definitely leaned on the militants controlling the presidency and the Supreme National Security Council to pursue a less confrontational approach. Yet Iran is not alone in evincing apprehension about the Russian offer, which has come under fire in the United States as well as in Russia.

Last November, Presidents George W Bush and Vladimir Putin discussed the Russian proposal for the first time, on the sidelines of an economic summit in South Korea. Subsequently, Stephen Hedley, the US national security adviser, clarified that Iran's role in this nuclear scheme would be "management participation and financial participation". In other words, the US does not favor a truly joint venture whereby Iran's nuclear scientists would gradually master the critical technology that could ultimately lead to developing a nuclear weapon.

In a recent commentary in the New York Times, Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin raised serious misgivings about the Russian proposal, their main argument being that (a) it would not stop Iran's drive toward nuclear weapons, ( Iran would exploit the Russian "sweetheart deal" to master the nuclear fuel cycle, and © it would simply adopt it as a short-term solution.

By all indications, the earlier White House enthusiasm for the Russian proposal has disappeared and one is struck by the peculiar absence of any meaningful follow-up on the part of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other US policymakers.

Meanwhile, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, in his press interview of last Friday, "Russia's suggestion to enrich uranium for Iran on Russian territory remains on the table." This is slightly different from the initial pitch for a "joint venture" by Putin, who is gearing up to lead the Group of Eight (G8) summit in St Petersburg in July and, per the advice of the US ambassador to Russia, William Burns, needs to "demonstrate a sense of direction".

To open a parenthesis here, while non-proliferation is not on the G8's agenda for the moment, events surrounding Iran between now and July may force the issue, all the more reason for the G8 working committees to start on this matter immediately, in light of the recent meeting of G8 finance ministers, which addressed risks to oil markets as a result of Iran's nuclear crisis. One reason Russia may wish the subject outside the purview of the G8 summit is that it may complicate Russia's relations with the West and thus diminish Russia's chances for economic support from the West's financial institutions.

This aside, the Russian proposal has its own domestic critics, including Anton Khlopkov, the deputy director of the influential Center for Policy Studies in Russia, who stated on Russian TV last Wednesday: "The Iranian request to have access to enriched technology and centrifuges in the framework of a joint Russian-Iranian consortium is not acceptable to Russia. Russia insists on observing a moratorium on transfer of uranium-enrichment ... technologies."

Khlopkov and a number of other Russian nuclear experts have called for a "feasibility study" before any agreement between Iran and Russia can be reached on this proposal. This may take several months, however, hardly befitting the crisis-prevention momentum generated by Putin's initiative.

The IAEA is due to present a report next month to the UN Security Council on Iran's nuclear program. After this, the possible imposition of sanctions on Tehran will become an issue.

The Russian proposal scrutinized
If accepted, the proposed facility would probably be at Angarsk Electrolysis Chemical Plant in Siberia, where there is already a uranium conversion plant, as well as operational enrichment facilities. Citing safety and economic reasons against the Iranian idea of transporting UF4 (uranium tetrafluoride) from its facility near Isfahan to the proposed site, Russia insists on conducting uranium conversion for Iran on its own territory. Yet in the light of Iran's prior investment in the uranium-conversion facility and the question of national pride, Russia may need to compromise on this issue.

Iran has insufficient uranium ore for its power plant in Bushehr, which alone will deplete Iran's proven uranium reserves in about six years. This is not to mention the extremely uneconomical uranium mining near Ardakan. The Iranian media have recently reported the discovery of smaller uranium deposits in several provinces, including Isfahan, Khorasan, Azerbaijan and Sista-Balochistan.

To assuage Iranian concerns of nuclear-fuel disruption in light of their history of mistrust of Russia, this proposal has to be complemented with another proposal, for a nuclear-fuel bank under IAEA supervision, inside Iran, stockpiling several years of fuel, as well as an international guarantee to substitute Russian nuclear fuel in case there is a disruption in its flow to Iran. In turn, Iran would agree to implement its nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty right to enrich uranium on a rolling basis.

One of the potential problems of the Moscow meeting is that it may focus too narrowly on the proposal to enrich fuel inside Russia, without tackling the other outstanding issues that may hamper its acceptance in Iran. Above all, this includes the national-security concerns of Iran regarding a possible US and/or Israeli attack on Iran.

Without a firm security guarantee, it is highly unlikely that the Russian proposal can go too far in today's rather militant political climate in Iran. The economic carrot of Western financial compensation to Iran to recover the costs of facilities in Isfahan and Natanz is also, if not equally, important.

From Iran's vantage point, the Russian proposal has several merits, given their own technical struggles with enrichment technology. According to IAEA inspectors, Iran's UF4 is tainted with a large amount of heavy metals, such as molybdenum, which "risks blockages of valves and piping". Iran's plan is to convert UF4, or yellowcake, into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) potentially to be separated into isotopes by centrifuges at Natanz. Iran prides itself for manufacturing key centrifuge parts and if the "voluntary" suspensions continue indefinitely, it may lose that scientific edge.

At present, Iran has assembled more than 1,000 P-1 centrifuges at Natanz and, once operational, the giant facility could manufacture 100-120 rotors per month. Henceforth, the incentives to Iran for giving up its cherished nuclear investments, which are a source of national pride, must be sufficiently high, eg, a guarantee of a steady fuel supply and technological cooperation with Russia and, perhaps, an international consortium. However, at this point it is doubtful that the West is willing to put such necessary incentives on the table. What then may be necessary is an alternative proposal.

Alternative Russian proposal?
As an alternative, Russia could conceivably propose to enrich uranium for Iran on Iran's territory, together with China and other participants. In so doing, Russia and China could build on their own history of nuclear cooperation. Russia has supplied China with an entire uranium-enrichment facility at Janzhun, including a gas centrifuge plant for the production of low-enriched uranium with an annual capacity of 200,000-300,000 separative work units (SWU).

Russian experts have also participated in the installation of a Russian-designed Tokamak-7 experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor at Hefei.

Also, Russia's nuclear transactions with Europe are instructive, in view of the strict stipulations for keeping aspects of technology "black-boxed" so that Russian firms' anxiety about patent control and re-export of technology by the recipient nation to third parties are addressed.

This alternative has the advantage of nuclear safety and likely acceptance by Iran, compared with the current Russian offer, which can be telescoped into a scientific feasibility study that would cover the issue of "objective guarantees" about non-diversion to illicit purposes.

This alternative has yet to be examined by either the IAEA, the US or the European governments, and yet the mere escalation of the nuclear standoff requires a broadening of their horizons to all peaceful options to put this genie back in the bottle.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HB14Ak02.html
War with Iran on the worst terms
By Spengler

Europe has fought two Thirty Years' Wars. The first destroyed nearly half the population of German-speaking Europe between 1618 and 1648, and the second claimed 10 million casualties in its first phase (World War I) and 55 million lives in its second (World War II). In both cases, a century of well-meaning efforts to preserve peace ensured that war, when it came, would last until two generations of soldiers and civilians had been slaughtered. Washington wants to avoid a small war in the Middle East today, and instead may set in motion yet another Thirty Years' War in the region.

Iran cannot be persuaded to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Its peasants and urban poor gave an overwhelming electoral mandate to a government with imperial ambitions. The government cannot be overthrown, and cannot be derailed. But it can be beaten handily. A few hundred, or at worst a few thousand, sorties by US aircraft at this juncture could put an end to the matter now.

Why is Washington unwilling to take expeditious action? Iran's influence in Iraq is sufficient to throw the latter country into civil war should the United States attack the Islamic Republic. On October 25 (A Syriajevo in the making?), I warned that Iran kept Iraqi Shi'ite militias under its control in readiness to blackmail the United States. US intelligence, I observed, has accused Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, of sponsoring the Shi'ite radical leader Muqtada al-Sadr. "If Washington believes that Muqtada is Khamenei's dog, then Khamenei can credibly promise to muzzle him," I wrote them.

US National Intelligence Director John Negroponte spelled out in essence the same scenario before the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 1. Negroponte accused Tehran of arming Shi'ite militants in Iraq, warning that Iran has the capacity to broaden the conflict into a wider regional war.

The peace camp, meanwhile, hails Muqtada al-Sadr as the arbiter of civil peace in Iraq. Juan Cole, whose website (juancole.com) offers a running denunciation of the administration of US President George W Bush, reported on February 12 that the al-Sadr bloc in the Iraqi parliament determined the choice of Ibrahim Jaafari as Iraq's new prime minister.

Writing in salon.com on February 3, Nir Rosen called Muqtada "America's unlike savior", explaining:
On the crucial issues that divide Shi'ite and Sunni, Muqtada sides with the Sunnis. He opposes federalism, which he believes will lead to the breakup of Iraq, and supports amending the constitution. SCIRI [the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq] and the other main Shi'ite party, Dawa, support federalism and refuse to amend the constitution. For Sunnis, federalism means the loss not just of the old Iraq, which they dominated, but also of oil revenue, and they are determined to resist it. Muqtada is their only Shi'ite ally. Inexperienced in foreign affairs and barely experienced in politics, Muqtada may nonetheless be the only figure capable of halting Iraq's steady descent into a civil war that could ignite the entire region.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah received the Shi'ite militant Muqtada in Riyadh last month, an extraordinary gesture from the Saudi monarchy that preceded another extraordinary gesture to Saudi Arabia's own Shi'ite population. For the first time in a generation they were permitted to observe in public the mourning day of Ashura on February 8 (see The blood is the life, Mr Rumsfeld!, October 12, 2005). On Ashura, Shi'ites whip and cut themselves to express in streams of blood their grief over the death of Mohammed's grandson Ali in AD 680.

Both the concession to the Saudi Shi'ites and the reception of Muqtada represent Saudi gestures to Iran, which is emerging as the arbiter of power in the region. Muqtada already has warned that if the United States attacks Iran, his militias will rise in Iraq. That is not the only warning. "Iran is prepared to launch attacks using long-range missiles, secret commando units, and terrorist allies planted around the globe in retaliation for any strike on the country's nuclear facilities, according to new US intelligence assessments and military specialists," wrote the Boston Globe on February 12.

Much as Washington complains about Iran's efforts to arm militant Shi'ites in Iraq, it cannot do anything to hinder this except to deliver and execute a military ultimatum. The longer Washington dallies, the more resources Tehran can put in place, including:
Upgrading Hezbollah's offensive-weapon capabilities in Lebanon.
Integrating Hamas into its sphere of influence and military operations.
Putting in place terrorist capability against the West.
Preparing its Shi'ite auxiliaries in Iraq for insurrection.

The problem with postponing war is that the belligerents gain more time to prepare for war. Russia could not abandon the Central European Slavs without losing faith in its own mission, and Austria-Hungary could not accommodate the Slavs without destroying a multi-ethnic empire. Germany could not permit Russia to walk over Austria, for it might not be able to defeat Russia a generation later; France could not let Germany defeat Russia, for it would lose its last chance to prevent German domination of the continent. War might have broken out a half-dozen times prior to August 1914. Postponing war allowed France to cement its alliance with Russia, and France and Russia to ensure Britain's support in the event of hostilities with Germany. A perfect balance of power gives each armed camp assurance if there is no ultimate motivation for war, but in the event of war, it ensures that war will be prolonged and thoroughly destructive.

The 30 Years' War of 1618-48, by the same token, culminated a century of efforts to establish a balance of power between Catholic and Protestant powers in Europe. The 1555 Peace of Augsburg responded to episodic fighting between Protestant princes and the Catholic Empire, agreeing that each prince would establish the religion in his own domain. That did not prevent France from massacring its Huguenots in 1572, or the Spanish from suppressing Protestantism in the Netherlands. As Europe formed into two great and equally balanced camps, a revolt by Bohemian Protestants against the Austrian Empire precipitated the most terrible war in European history.

Today's Shi'ites are the Serbs of the Middle East. Emerging from a millennium of oppression into majority power in Mesopotamia and Persia, the Shi'ites have their first and only opportunity to exact compensation for the humiliation of centuries. They have the misfortune to enter modern history at a point of maximum disadvantage for the peoples of the Middle East, who have few means to compete with the economic powers of East Asia. In Iran, as I have shown elsewhere (Demographics and Iran's imperial design, September 13, 2005), they face a devastating economic and demographic decline one generation from now. That is why these choose leaders such as Mahmud Ahmedinejad in Tehran and Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad.

Washington does not wish to fight but will if necessary. The Europeans, and even the Saudis, will fight rather than allow Iran to become a nuclear power, although they wish to fight much less than Washington.

If Washington were to deliver a military ultimatum to Iran tomorrow, the results would be a painful jump in oil prices, civil violence in Iraq, low-intensity war on Israel's northern border, and a wave of anti-Americanism in the Arab world - not an inviting picture.

But if Washington waits another year to deliver an ultimatum to Iran, the results will be civil war to the death in Iraq, the direct engagement of Israel in a regional war through Hezbollah and Hamas, and extensive terrorist action throughout the West, with extensive loss of American life. There are no good outcomes, only less terrible ones. The West will attack Iran, but only when such an attack will do the least good and the most harm.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HB14Ak03.html
SPEAKING FREELY
Freedom dead, democracy dying
By Aseem Shrivastava

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

"Let us not speak falsely now, the hour is getting late." - Bob Dylan

Imagine: among the recent incidents following the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed was one that went oddly unreported. In Tehran, Iranian police managed to catch a few European teenagers who were throwing glasses and plates at the crowd from the windows of the Danish Consulate when Danish flags were being burned on the street outside.

Later, police took the boys to the nearest station and gave them a thorough thrashing. One of the boys was kicked in his genitals by a policeman, while others held him down. Another was held against the wall and given a sound hammering with batons on his back. A third was kicked by several of them as he lay prostrate on the ground. "Naughty little boys" and various unmentionable abuses were barked at them by the policemen, who were obviously reveling in the sadistic enterprise.

All this was recorded on video by someone and handed over to the television channel that broadcast it this morning.

Back to reality.

Of course, the above story is made up, but not really, because all I did was make the characters involved switch roles, much as in role plays schoolkids are often asked to do in multicultural neighborhoods around Europe, in order to understand where "others are coming from".

The above is precisely what could be seen on TV screens across the world, after the British tabloid News of the World released the video clip of the beating of Iraqi teenage boys carried out by British soldiers some months back.

Let's have, if only for a change, the same rules for everyone.

Let us not fall into the temptation of the old alibi that it was the work of a few bad men in an otherwise decent establishment. In the video there are plenty of soldiers passing by as the beating is going on. None tries to stop it. How many times they must have seen such things, or done them themselves, or seen their superiors do or order them.

When brutalization is banal, it is too boring to talk about, let alone stop.

How many pictures and videos have been banned from the TV screens of the world at the orders of the Pentagon? If there were nothing to hide, we would indeed be living in a free world at the moment.

It won't do to pass the buck downward. Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, the highest military officer to be punished ("scapegoated", in her own words) in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq (she was demoted to the rank of colonel), in her recent book One Woman's Army says the entire chain of command, starting with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, must be held accountable for the crimes at the prison since the blame "goes all the way to the top". Her interview with Amy Goodman on the news radio Democracy Now! program speaks volumes for the depth of cover-up going on quietly.

The New Standard had reported some months back that a Federal Bureau of Investigation e-mail released by the US government at the demand of the American Civil Liberties Union in December 2004 revealed that President George W Bush had sent out an executive order permitting the use of new interrogation techniques. The White House has neither confirmed nor denied that torture orders were given from the very top.

When the rot is this deep, it is understandable that justice cannot be done: for each finger pointing down at someone who infringed, there will be many times more pointing up toward the bosses who, far from disallowing, actually appear to have encouraged the tortures.

Britain has boasted much about its standards of military justice being some of the highest in the world. Let us see how far up the chain of command investigations are able to reach. Let's see whether the defense secretary is called upon to answer for the crimes.

If we are serious about such matters as peace and security, let us stop denying what is obvious to people living in Muslim countries. Let us not just keep our attention anchored on the silly cartoons and their aftermath on the streets of the Middle East. Let us consider the far graver matters threatening the moral core of civilization itself.

Now the actions last week on the streets of Cairo, Jakarta and Tehran appear in quite a different light. It should have been obvious that the issue - for people living there - did not concern freedom of expression at all. It should have been evident that it wasn't just a matter of a few cartoons. The actions against the cartoons are only at the little-rippling surface of surging anger among people living in Muslim countries at the systematic injustices they continue to suffer at the hands of the West, especially the United States and the United Kingdom. The Muslim clergy is able to make hay only because the blazing sun of foreign injustices refuses to set.

The Abu Ghraib revelations took place almost two years ago - those at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba even earlier. More recently, it was learned that special Central Intelligence Agency flights were being routed through Europe to carry suspects to be tortured in places where it would be safe to do so. Illegal detentions and tortures continue in a global archipelago of prisons run by Washington.

No significant (by which I mean proportionate) justice has been done with regards to the torture revelations. Muslims, much more so than others, cannot forget that. Nor has there been any promise that the practices would be stopped. On the contrary, Washington has sought to legalize torture.

When one has come to live in such a brutalized global village, when men in suits and ties calmly impose barbarities on others in the name of defending something they call civilization and for passing on the torch of liberty to less fortunate souls in strange lands, the time has come to ask for a clear definition of "civilization".

If you reserve your brutality for bar-room brawls and post-soccer angst, or export it abroad in the shape of oil-seeking military missions masquerading as human-rights campaigns, it does not make you any less barbaric than those Muslims who were openly burning European flags and throwing stones at consulates last week. On the contrary, machines kill more effectively than machetes.

Much deeper things than just freedom of speech are at stake these days. The very dignity of human beings is under the sword - everywhere.

Long before the first atom had been split and the first-ever bomb dropped from the air (by the Italians on Libya in 1911), the great 19th-century American writer Herman Melville had written with self-critical honesty that few in this modern world (which, we are assured, is freer today than ever before) would dare, though the truth is far more grim today:
The fiend-like skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth ... it is needless to multiply the examples of civilized barbarity; they far exceed in the amount of misery they cause the crimes which we regard with such abhorrence in our less enlightened fellow-creature.
Times have moved on much since Melville. But the world is such that the integrity of a white man still has greater impact on human destinies than the honesty of others (who are by no means exempt from their duty to find and tell the truth). One shudders to imagine what Melville would have written today. But the rest of the world expects exactly such honesty from Western citizens today. And we know, from the example of numerous noble exceptions, that they are capable of it. It is for them to terminate their indoctrinated ignorance, seek the truth and make it count.

We are truly scratching the bottom of the barrel of civilization now.

Civilization is not just about good manners, about neat and tidy exteriors that conceal a beastliness that would put animals to shame. At least with the anti-cartoon protests in Islamic countries the barbarities were on the surface, obvious to onlookers. But how do you detect the insane, well-entrenched barbarism of civilized societies if you are only going to be allowed occasional peeks at the scale of organized evil, if the iceberg of dehumanized depravity pops up but once in a while, staying underground long enough to lull us all into the sleep of drugged babies - until the next set of revelations arrive? When dated defensive ideologies of freedom or human rights are used to defend indefensible state actions?

Freedom is dead. Democracy is dying. There are no human rights for those without power. The example of Iraq should teach us that there are things - loss of human dignity, for one, civil war for another - worse than dictatorship.

It is for the citizens of Europe and America to terminate their shameful silence, resume the struggles for freedom, peace and justice that have been in abeyance since the 1960s, and march in their millions on the streets of Western capitals.

Next month we await a show called Death to Iran. If it is allowed to be aired, Westerners will find little left in their pockets after they have paid their rising oil bills.

Beyond that, all bets are off.

Aseem Shrivastava is an independent writer. He can be reached at aseem62@yahoo.com.

Jerusalem Newswirewww.jnewswire.com Print
Iran to West: Remove Israel, or we will
By Ryan Jones

February 12th, 2006

If the West fails to peacefully remove the “Zionist entity” from the Middle East, the “Palestinians” and their Islamic allies will do so through violent fury, warned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a mass demonstration in Tehran Saturday.

Addressing the hundreds of thousands who turned out to mark the 27th anniversary of Iran's “Islamic Revolution,” the virulent leader, as reported by WorldNetDaily, said regarding Israel:

“We ask the West to remove what they created sixty years ago and if they do not listen to our recommendations, then the Palestinian nation and other nations will eventually do this for them. Remove Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations.”
Islam dictates that formerly-Muslim dominated lands cannot revert to permanent non-Muslim control. It is this cornerstone of their faith that drives the murderous anti-Israel policies of Hamas and most of the Jewish state's Middle East neighbors.

But the threat is not only to Israel and other non-Muslim nations that have regained their sovereignty. Reconquering them is only the first step.

According to the Muslim faith, jihad must be waged until the entire world is under the thumb of Islam. Ahmadinejad declared that now is the time for the West to bow to this reality and submit to Allah:

“On the anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the Iranian nation, numbering in the millions, calls upon those governments to worship Allah.”
Similar sentiment was expressed by Iran's Hamas allies in the Palestinian Authority last week.

Speaking at a Damascus mosque on February 3, overall Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal declared:

“We say to this West... By Allah, you will be defeated... Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact.”Copyright 2002-2004 Jerusalem Newswire Print Close

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Monday, 13 February 2006 close window

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Posted to the web on: 13 February 2006
US hones military strategy as last resort against Iran
Stefan Smith

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Sapa-AFP

LONDON — US military strategists are drawing up plans for an attack on Iran as a last resort to stop the Islamic republic from developing nuclear weapons, the Sunday Telegraph in London, reported yesterday.



In a front-page dispatch from Washington, it said US central and strategic command planners were “identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation”.


The planners are reporting to the office of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with a view to having a military option if diplomatic efforts fail to put the brakes on Iran’s suspected bid to make a nuclear bomb.


“This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment,” the newspaper quoted a senior Pentagon adviser as saying. “This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months.”


Iran’s outspoken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also unleashed a fresh verbal assault against Israel — repeating his view that the Holocaust was a “myth” and predicting “Zionists” would soon be destroyed.

“Iran has continued its nuclear drive within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but if we see that you want to deprive us of our right using these regulations, know that the people will revise their policy,” Ahmadinejad said on Saturday.




Earlier this month, the IAEA referred Iran to the United Nations Security Council after the oil-rich nation resumed its uranium enrichment programme.

SA abstained in the vote.


The treaty is the cornerstone of the global battle against the spread of nuclear weapons, prohibiting the development of the bomb and subjecting its signatories to IAEA inspections.

Iran is under intense pressure to agree to a moratorium on nuclear fuel work that can be extended to make weapons, but insists it only wants to generate electricity and argues that its nuclear ambitions are therefore entirely legal.

Although foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said yesterday that Iran was “still committed” to the treaty, he nevertheless repeated the warning that this position could soon change.


The IAEA left a one-month window for diplomacy, for Iran to return to a full suspension of enrichment-related work and cooperate more with IAEA inspectors.

So far Iran has done the opposite, setting the scene for a major showdown.

Iran’s parliament speaker Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel said nuclear research would be resumed yesterday or today, adding that an IAEA team was in Iran to supervise this process.










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http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Security/7793.htm

British think tank says attack on Iranian nuclear sites would kill thousands, spark war
By Associated Press February 13, 2006


An Iranian couple at a demonstration to mark the 27th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, in Tehran, Saturday Feb. 11, 2006. (AP)

A U.S. air assault on Iranian nuclear and military facilities would likely kill thousands of people, spark a long-lasting war and push Iran to accelerate its atomic program, a British think tank predicted in a report published Monday.

The Oxford Research Group, which specializes in arms control and nonproliferation issues, said military action against Iran, "either by the United States or Israel, is not an option that should be considered under any circumstances."

The Bush administration has refused to rule out the use of force if Iran does not comply with international diplomatic efforts to curb its contentious nuclear program. Iran says it is seeking only to generate electricity, but the United States alleges that the Islamic republic aims to build nuclear weapons.

The report by University of Bradford professor Paul Rogers said a U.S. attack would likely consist of simultaneous air strikes on more than 20 key nuclear and military facilities, designed to disable Iran's nuclear and air-defense capabilities. Such strikes would probably kill several thousand people, including troops, nuclear program staff and "many hundreds" of civilians.

The report said a military attack would spur Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, accelerate its nuclear programs and step up support to insurgents in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and would fuel anti-American sentiment around the world.

Escalating military confrontation would draw in other states in the region, it warned, making "a protracted and highly unstable conflict virtually certain."

"A state of war stretching over years would be in prospect," the group warned.

Nuclear-armed Israel views Iran as its biggest threat and has joined Washington in charging that Tehran is trying to build nuclear weapons. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said last month that Israel was preparing for military action if diplomacy failed.

The Oxford Research Group report said an attack by Israeli forces, while on a smaller scale than a U.S. strike, also would have negative consequences.

"Alternative ways must be found of defusing current tensions and avoiding an exceptionally dangerous confrontation, however difficult it might be," said the group's director, John Sloboda.

Azerbaijan an ally in Iran nuke crisis


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yaakov katz , THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 11, 2006

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In the latest development in the crisis over Iran's nuclear enrichment program, diplomats said that IAEA inspectors have stripped most surveillance cameras and agency seals from Iranian nuclear sites and equipment as demanded by Tehran in response to its referral to the UN Security Council.

With most surveillance equipment and seals from Iran's nascent uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz now removed - and Iran recently ending the agency's rights to in-depth nuclear probes at short notice - the IAEA has few means to monitor the progress of Tehran's enrichment efforts, which can create either nuclear fuel or the fissile core of warheads.

Meanwhile, foreign diplomats stationed in Azerbaijan said over the weekend that Azerbaijan was a strategic partner to the US and Israel and could play a major role in the current showdown with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

US officials stationed in Baku said that Azerbaijan, wedged in between Russia in the north and Iran in the south, could possibly use the 20 million Azeris who lived in northern Iran to convince the radical regime and its extremist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to back down from developing nuclear arms.

"The Azeris in Iran could possibly lead a coup and assist in overthrowing the current regime there," one official told The Jerusalem Post. "They see that Azerbaijan life is improving and becoming more westernized while in Iran they are continuously suffering."

US officials said they had an "extraordinary relationship" with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev who granted them permission to use the country to flyover and stop in throughout the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. In total, 142 US planes, officials said, flew over Azeri skies in 2005.

"Azerbaijan regards militant political Islam as a threat to itself," a senior US diplomat stationed here said. A Muslim and predominately Shi'ite but secular country, Azerbaijan, the official said, has been serving as a strategic partner to the US in the global war on terrorism since 9/11 and has troops stationed in Afghanistan.

The US military reportedly has listening stations along Azerbaijan's border with Iran. According to other media reports, the US and Israel have considered using Azerbaijan as a launching pad for an attack on Iran's nuclear reactors.

In public however, Azeri officials have ruled out the possibility that their land would be used in an aggressive attack on Iran. Last Monday, Aliyev told Iran's envoy to Baku that he would not allow the US to launch an attack from his country's territory.

US officials here said that if they wanted to attack Iran they could always use Iraq or Afghanistan where the army is already heavily stationed.

"We will probably not let the US use Azerbaijan to launch a strike on Iran," Azeri Minister of Emergency Situations Kamaladdin Heydarov told the Post Saturday night adding that an attack on Iran would destabilize the region. "We need to restrain Iran," the minister continued. "But if the US attacks [Iran] it will bring bad results to the entire region."

Local Jews said they were afraid of the Iranian situation and that its shock waves would reach Baku, which, until now, is a safe and anti-Semitic-free place for Jews. If Iran were attacked, especially by troops based in Azerbaijan, the Jews said, they might feel repercussions.

"All we want is for things to stay quiet and the way they have been for years," said Reuven Ismailov, a local Baku Jew. "We are afraid of anything that might unbalance the region."

Israel having an embassy in Baku, said it viewed relations with Baku to be of extreme importance.

Israel's Ambassador to Baku, Arthur Lenk, told a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations visiting here that Azerbaijan might use the Ashkelon-Eilat oil pipeline to transfer oil it plans to begin retrieving from the Caspian Sea to countries in the West.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference, said he was optimistic Azerbaijan would remain loyal to its relationship with Israel throughout the Iranian crisis. "The message from here has been very clear," Hoenlein said. "Azerbaijan takes its relationship with Israel very seriously and they could play a key role in the Iranian showdown."

Hoenlein was leading a 100-person delegation to Azerbaijan this weekend for talks with local Jewish leaders and government officials. "We looked forward to this very timely gathering in view of our heightened concern regarding the Jewish communities in Europe, Russia and Asia as the war on terrorism moves ahead," Hoenlein said of the trip.

On Monday, the group is scheduled to meet with President Aliyev and Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...icle%2FShowFull

[Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5518

February 10, 2006


Dubious Assumptions about Iran
by Ted Galen Carpenter

Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of seven books and the editor of 10 books on international affairs.


A consensus is gradually emerging in the United States that Washington and its allies must take whatever action is necessary to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Various options are advocated, from U.N.-mandated economic sanctions to airstrikes on suspected nuclear installations to active subversion of the mullah-controlled regime in Tehran.

All of these options are based on key assumptions about both the probable conduct of the Iranian government and the underlying political situation in Iran. Unfortunately, many of those assumptions are dubious at best.

A nuclear Iran would attack Israel. Advocates of a hardline policy toward Tehran argue that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it will use those weapons against Israel, its hated adversary. Fears of such a scenario have risen sharply in recent months following comments by Iran's president that Israel should be wiped off the map.

Such a comment is certainly reprehensible, but does it negate the long-standing realities of deterrence? Israel has between 150 and 300 nuclear weapons of its own. Even if Iran does go forward with its nuclear program, it will not be able to build more than a dozen or so weapons over the next decade.

It would be suicidal for a country with a tiny nuclear arsenal to attack a county with a large arsenal. One should not confuse repulsiveness with suicidal tendencies. The current government of Iran is certainly repulsive, but it has never given evidence that it is suicidal. In all likelihood, rhetoric about wiping Israel off the map is merely ideological blather. Israel has more than a sufficient capability to deter an Iranian nuclear attack.

Iran would pass along nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. Tehran has a cozy relationship with a number of terrorist organizations in the Middle East, most notably Hezbollah. The pervasive assumption in the West is that if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, sooner or later it would pass one along to a terrorist ally.

But how likely is it that Iran would make such a transfer? At the very least, it would be an incredibly high-risk strategy. Even the most fanatical mullahs in Tehran realize that the United States would attack the probable supplier of such a weapon--and Iran would be at the top of Washington's list of suspects.

Significantly, Iran has possessed chemical weapons for decades, yet there is no indication that it has passed on any of those weapons to Hezbollah or to Palestinian groups that Tehran supports politically. Why should one assume that the mullahs would be more reckless with nuclear weapons when the prospect of devastating retaliation for an attack would be even more likely? The more logical conclusion is that Iran, like other nuclear powers, would jealously guard its arsenal.

It would be easy to overthrow the mullahs. American proponents of regime change -- most prominently Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute -- insist that the current government in Tehran is ripe for overthrow. Indeed, advocates of regime change typically argue that an invasion of the country would be unnecessary; rather, American financial and political support for dissident groups, combined with destabilizing special forces operations, should be sufficient.

There is undoubtedly significant popular discontent with the dour and repressive mullahs, but it is easy to overestimate the extent and clout of the opposition. It is not reassuring that many of the loudest American enthusiasts for a strategy of regime change are the same people who argued that the Iraq mission would be brief and easy and that Ahmed Chalabi was the most popular politician in Iraq. Those predictions proved to be spectacularly wrong, and we therefore should be doubly cautious about following the advice of that faction regarding Iran.

A democratic Iran would renounce all nuclear ambitions. This is the favorite assumption of those Americans who believe that Washington should pursue an aggressive policy of regime change. They argue that Tehran's nuclear program is merely the pet initiative of the Islamic elite, while the bulk of the Iranian people are indifferent or hostile. Regime change, therefore, would not only remove an odious regime, but also provide the ultimate solution to the nuclear problem.

It is yet another dubious assumption. Tehran's nuclear ambitions date back to the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. The bulk of the evidence suggests that a "peaceful" nuclear program has widespread support in Iran for reasons of national pride and regional prestige. The goal of a nuclear-weapons arsenal is more controversial, but given the dangerous neighborhood in which Iran is located, support for that objective also goes well beyond the mullahs and their staunch allies. Washington could be making a serious miscalculation if it assumes that a democratic Iran would be content to remain non-nuclear.

The Iranian nuclear issue is a hellishly difficult problem, and the United States has no good policy options. But whatever course U.S. leaders ultimately adopt must at the very least be based on sound assumptions. Unfortunately, some of the most crucial assumptions appear to be anything but well founded.


This article appeared on Foxnews.com on February 8, 2006.

February 14, 2006
Iran Delays Talks With Russia on Enrichment of Its Uranium
By NAZILA FATHI and MARK LANDLER
TEHRAN, Feb. 13 — Iran announced Monday that it had postponed talks on letting Russia enrich its uranium, a proposal that Russia had offered as a way to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran also signaled that it was resuming the enrichment of uranium at one of its main nuclear sites, according to diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

The enrichment move, while not unexpected, intensifies Iran's confrontation with the West over its nuclear ambitions, two weeks after the agency's 35-nation board voted to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council. Iran's hardening stance seemed to close off some options for diplomacy.

In Tehran, a government spokesman, Gholamhossein Elham, said during a weekly news conference that the Russian talks had been postponed because of the "new situation."

The talks were to resume Thursday on a proposal by Moscow to enrich Iranian uranium in Russia up to low level to allay international concerns that Iran might try to make a nuclear bomb. The plan was supported by the United States, Europe and China.

Mr. Elham said talks with Russia had not been canceled, but the date should be discussed. "The date of the talks, considering the new situation and the government's plans to pursue peaceful nuclear program inside the count