http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/...6-27_060428.pdf

Implementation of the NPT Safeguards
Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Report by the Director General

Uh oh, methinks you provided the wrong link or something. When I clicked on it I got "Ah, the ubiquitous 404 Error: you've tried to access something that isn't there, at least as far as the web server is concerned. Statistically speaking, this would have to be about the most common of all errors on the Internet so you are not alone.", eh?

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/arti...hp?storyid=6969

Full Text: IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear activities
Fri. 28 Apr 2006
Iran Focus

London, Apr. 28 – The following is the full text of a report released on Friday by the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei on Iran’s nuclear program.

In March, the United Nations Security Council gave Iran one month ending today to suspend all its uranium enrichment activities. It also called on ElBaradei to prepare a report verifying whether or not Tehran had complied.

Earlier this month, Iran said that it had successful enriched uranium to 3.5 percent and on Friday hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran “does not give a damn” about resolutions by the Security Council calling on it to suspend its sensitive nuclear activities.

The matter is expected to be discussed at the Security Council in early May.

Click here for full text of report.
Please go directly to the above link. Thank you.

It works! Thank you, but now I gotta ask why is it here under "U.S. Military Issues"?

The Missile Defense program is an Army program. If the President decides to act on Iran, sorties are likely to be run by the Air Force. In short, the military will likely be conducting the preemptive strike, when and if "diplomacy" fails and the UN refuses to issue sanctions because of vetoes by China and Russia. The press is going to characterize the IAEA Report every which way to Sunday. I believe the Report speaks for itself and is useful for all interested, military included to read.

Okay, I was only observin' that the onus seemed more 'bout Iran and the politics of the issue, eh?

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060508/attack_iran

Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith


Take Action: Urge your congressional representative to support the Fazio Resolution reinforcing the War Powers clause of the Constitution.

During the 2004 election, George W. Bush famously proclaimed that he didn't have to ask anyone's permission to defend America. Does that mean he can attack Iran without having to ask Congress? A new Congressional resolution being drafted by Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon, can be a vehicle to remind Bush that he can't.

Bush is calling news reports of plans to attack Iran "wild speculation" and declaring that the United States is on a "diplomatic" track. But asked this week if his options included planning for a nuclear strike, he repeated that "all options are on the table."

The President is acting as if the decisions that may get us into another war are his to make and his alone. So the Iran crisis poses not only questions of military feasibility and political wisdom but of Constitutional usurpation.

Bush's top officials openly assert that he can do anything he wants--including attacking another country--on his authority as Commander in Chief.

Last October, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee whether the President would circumvent Congressional authorization if the White House chose military action against Iran or Syria. She answered, "I will not say anything that constrains his authority as Commander in Chief."

When pressed by Senator Paul Sarbanes about whether the Administration can exercise a military option without an authorization from Congress, Rice replied, "The President never takes any option off the table, and he shouldn't."

The founders of the American Republic were deeply concerned that the President's power to make war might become the vehicle for tyranny. So they crafted a Constitution that included checks and balances on presidential power, among them an independent Congress and judiciary, an executive power subject to laws written by Congress and interpreted by the courts, and an executive power to repel attacks but not to declare or finance war.

But the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, as laid out in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States and reiterated in 2006, claims for the President the power to attack other countries--like Iran--simply because he asserts they pose a threat. It thereby removes the decision of war and peace from Congress and gives it the President. It is, as Senator Robert Byrd put it, "unconstitutional on its face."

Congressional Response

DeFazio is now preparing a resolution underscoring the fact that the President cannot initiate military action against Iran without Congressional authorization. He is seeking support from other House members.

"The imperial powers claimed by this Administration are breathtaking in their scope. Unfortunately, too many of my colleagues were willing to cede our constitutional authorities to the President prior to the war in Iraq. We've seen how that turned out," DeFazio told The Nation. "Congress can't make the same mistake with respect to Iran. Yet the constant drumbeat we're hearing out of the Administration, in the press, from think tanks, etc., on Iran eerily echoes what we heard about Iraq.

"It likely won't be long until we hear from the President that he can take pre-emptive military action against Iran without Congressional authorization, which is what he originally argued about Iraq. Or that Congress has already approved action against Iran via some prior vote, which he also argued about Iraq," DeFazio said. "That is why it is so important to put the Administration, my colleagues and the American people on notice now that such arguments about unilateral presidential war powers have no merit. Our nation's founders were clear on this issue. There is no ambiguity."

There is considerable evidence that military action against Iran has already started. Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner (ret.) told CNN that "the decision has been made and military operations are under way." He said the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency recently told him that the Iranians have captured dissident units "and they've confessed to working with the Americans." Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker that "American combat troops are now operating in Iran." He quotes a government consultant who told him that the units were not only identifying targets but "studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds."

Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio has written to Bush, noting, "The presence of US troops in Iran constitutes a hostile act against that country" and urged him to report immediately to Congress on all activities involving American forces in Iran.

Bipartisan Concern

Concern about presidential usurpation of the war power is not just a partisan matter. Former Vice President Al Gore this year joined with former Republican Congressman Bob Barr to express "our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger." As Gore explained, "In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power."

One of the stunning revelations of recent news stories is that top military brass are strongly opposed to the move toward military strikes. The Washington Post quotes a former CIA Middle East specialist that "the Pentagon is arguing forcefully against it." According to Hersh's reporting in The New Yorker, the Joint Chiefs of Staff "had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran."

The Bush Administration is putting military officials in a position where they will have to decide whether their highest loyalty is to the President or to the country and the Constitution. Lieut. Gen. Gregory Newbold (ret.), who recently called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has criticized the US military brass for its quiescence while the Bush Administration pursued "a fundamentally flawed plan" for "an invented war." Now he is calling on serving military officers to speak out.

The "generals' revolt" has not publicly targeted the plans to attack Iran. But its central critique concerns Rumsfeld's disregard for the military's evaluation of the costs of the Iraq War and the scale of commitment it would require. If a similar disregard of the costs of an attack on Iran aren't already the subtext of their action, it certainly is a logical concomitant.

The American people are by now deeply skeptical of Bush's reliability in matters of war and peace. In a recent Los Angeles Times poll, 54 percent of respondents said they did not trust President Bush to "make the right decision about whether we should go to war with Iran," compared with 42 percent who did. Forty percent said the war in Iraq had made them less supportive of military action against Iran. But Americans are being systematically deprived of any alternative view of the Iranian threat, the consequences of American policy choices or the real intentions of the Bush Administration.

Smoking Gun, Mushroom Cloud

Congress and the military allowed the Bush Administration to bamboozle the country with false information and scare talk prior to the Iraq War--and they share responsibility for the resulting catastrophe. Now we're hearing again about a smoking gun that will be a mushroom cloud. It's up to Congress and the military to make it clear that the President does not assume monarchical power over questions of war and peace.

Congress and the American people--who should make the decision about war and peace--haven't even heard the forceful arguments of military officials against military strikes. Calling those Pentagon officials to testify--and protecting them against Administration reprisals--would be a good place to start.

Colonel Gardiner, who specializes in war games and conducted one for Harper's magazine that simulated a US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, concluded, "It's a path that leads to disaster in many directions." Unless preceded by a UN endorsement or an imminent Iranian attack, it's also aggression, a war crime under international law and the UN Charter. If Bush or his subordinates have already ordered military operations in Iran, it should be considered a criminal act.

The DeFazio resolution could provide a rallying point for a coalition to act pre-emptively to put checks and balances on the Bush Administration's usurpation of constitutional powers. Indeed, the growing evidence that the United States is already conducting military operations in Iran demonstrates the urgency of placing limits on executive power. Anyone who wants to avoid national catastrophe should get busy defending it. Otherwise, George Bush's legacy may be: "He bombed Iran, and the collateral damage wiped out the Constitution."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2800321_pf.html

Report Sets Stage For Action on Iran
U.N. Nuclear Agency Provides Evidence Needed to Open Security Council Debate

By Molly Moore and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 29, 2006; A01



PARIS, April 28 -- In a sharply worded report, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Friday that Iran is accelerating its uranium enrichment efforts and hiding crucial information about its nuclear program. The report opens the way for the U.N. Security Council to debate potential actions against Iran.

The Vienna-based U.N. nuclear monitoring agency said serious gaps in the information provided by Iran made it impossible "to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear materials and activities" or to assess the role of the Iranian military in the nuclear work.

The eight-page report provided official evidence that the United States, Britain and France have sought to launch a push for possible sanctions against Iran. But Russia and China, also permanent members of the Security Council, have repeatedly expressed skepticism with that approach.

President Bush said after the report's release that "the world is united and concerned" about Iran's "desire to have not only a nuclear weapon but the capacity to make a nuclear weapon or the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon." He said he hoped for a diplomatic solution.

Iran insists that its program is intended only to generate electricity. In a letter delivered to the IAEA staff on Thursday, Iranian officials said they had complied with many of the agency's requests. "Iran is prepared to resolve the remaining outstanding issues in accordance with the international laws and norms," the letter added. "Iran will provide a timetable within the next three weeks."

But Iranian political leaders' statements have been almost universally confrontational, declaring that the country has a sovereign right to pursue a nuclear program and that international pressure will backfire.

Addressing a rally in northwest Iran shortly before the report was made public, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: "Enemies think that by . . . threatening us, launching psychological warfare or . . . imposing embargos they can dissuade our nation from obtaining nuclear technology. We do not give a damn about such resolutions."

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Wednesday that any military attack on Iran would bring Iranian retaliation against U.S. interests worldwide.

The verbal threats and counter-threats between Washington and Tehran escalated dramatically in recent weeks in anticipation of Friday's report, contributing to the highest oil prices in history and a fall in the value of the dollar against foreign currencies.

Members of the Security Council -- which wanted the IAEA report before it considered action on Iran -- are divided on how best to persuade Tehran to back off from its nuclear program.

China and Russia, which both have veto power on the council by virtue of their permanent seats and also have strong trading relations with Iran, are advocating less-provocative diplomatic efforts.

U.S. and European officials said they hoped to present a legally binding resolution early next week that would require Iran to suspend enriching uranium and increase its cooperation with U.N inspectors.

The resolution would not explicitly threaten sanctions against Iran if it failed to comply. However, U.S. and European diplomats would seek to invoke Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which has traditionally been used to justify sanctions or military action.

"The Security Council is going to have to raise the costs to the Iranians," Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said in an interview. Burns is to meet Tuesday in Paris with top officials from Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to discuss the next steps in the council and prepare for a meeting of foreign ministers on Iran on May 9 in New York.

"This is leading toward a sanctions regime," Burns said. "We won't get there in the next two or three weeks, but this has to be the course of actions." He called on Iran's major trading partners to halt business with the country and to cancel pending weapons sales.

The report, issued by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei after inspectors from his agency visited Iranian facilities again, revealed few new details about the program. But it expressed growing frustration over Iran's efforts to stonewall the inspectors.

"After more than three years of Agency efforts to seek clarity about all aspects of Iran's nuclear program, the existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of concern," the report says. "Any progress in that regard requires full transparency and active cooperation by Iran."

The agency's toughest complaint concerned Iran's failure to provide a credible explanation for where it obtained materials used for small-scale experiments with plutonium. Plutonium separation is a process that can be used in weapons development.

"The agency cannot exclude the possibility -- not withstanding the explanations provided by Iran -- that the plutonium analysed by the agency was derived from source(s) other than the ones declared by Iran," the report says.

The report says that in addition to the 164 centrifuges Iran was previously reported to be using in uranium enrichment experiments, two additional 164-centrifuge systems known as cascades are under construction, an indication that Iran is trying to step up its experiments.

Officials with knowledge of the Iranian program, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said that several centrifuges had crashed during the enrichment run last month and that the Iranians had cut many corners in a rush to demonstrate technical prowess.

The IAEA said Iran had refused to provide any explanation of public statements by Iranian officials concerning the testing of centrifuges known as P-2 models, which can enrich uranium more quickly and efficiently than the P-1 centrifuges currently in use can.

In addition, inspectors reported that since September, Iran has produced 110 tons of UF6, a key product used in the enrichment process. That is a higher amount than previously recorded.

Nuclear experts generally say Iran's program does not pose any immediate dangers to the outside world. "If they don't have a plant that is able to operate for a significant time, then this doesn't pose a near- or mid-term threat," said Michael Levi, a nuclear expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But many experts are concerned that the capabilities gained from experiments -- even those done under the monitoring of the IAEA -- could help Iran conceal the rate of progress in its program.


"Conducting open experiments with uranium enrichment teaches you how to more effectively hide that work, avoid accidents and control emissions that might give away the program," Levi said. He called Iran's ability to enrich uranium to 3.6 percent purity, as outlined in the report, an achievement.

Linzer reported from Washington. Staff writer Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.


© 2006 The Washington Post Company

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel28.html

Generals trying to stop new fiasco

April 28, 2006

BY ANDREW GREELEY Advertisement

May military officers for reason of conscience criticize the political leadership of the armed forces, even after they've retired, on the grounds that the behavior of the leadership is immoral? As Marine Gen. Gregory Newbold said, the "decision to invade Iraq was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who never had to execute these missions or bury the results." This judgment does not differ from that of George Packer, an early supporter of the war in his extraordinary book, The Assassin's Gate. Two men with different backgrounds and perspectives come to exactly the same judgment and use the same word, "casual."

One may be prepared to agree that the protesting generals should have resigned from the services if they thought that the war was being run by civilian cowboys. But, should they not, like Colin Powell, have maintained a stoic silence about their discontent? One hears two arguments in favor of this position: regard for the morale of the troops and respect for the American tradition of civilian control of the military.

It seems to me that if an officer is convinced his civilian leadership is reckless with his soldiers' lives, then he must resign and speak out. Otherwise he is cooperating in evil and is as much a war criminal as the "casual, swaggering civilian leadership."

The "support our troops" theory is a much weaker one. If "our troops" are in an impossible situation, devised by arrogant, incompetent leadership, the best support is to demand they be removed from the situation into which folly has placed them. Taken literally, ''support our troops'' means the same thing as ''our country, right or wrong.''

The issue becomes not whether it is right to criticize the leadership but whether the criticism is valid. If it is, then there should be a resignation, but of the president instead of the secretary of defense. Another book on the war -- Cobra II by military historians Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor -- addresses the same issue. Their craft requires a careful and detailed description of the battles, major and minor, of a campaign that future generations of cadets will study in the service academies. Such men have no particular ideological bias. They are diagnosticians whose duty it is to describe what worked and what didn't work.

There can be no doubt after reading the 500 pages of battlefield reconstructions in Cobra II that American soldiers and Marines fought with tenacity and courage and that their noncommissioned officers and lower level commissioned officers were resilient and ingenious, even up to regimental, brigade and divisional commands, as they always have been in American military history. The problems were at the very highest level -- Franks, Sanchez, Bremer, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz.

Gordon and Trainor sum up their work at the beginning: "The Iraq War is a story of hubris and heroism, of high-technology wizardry and cultural ignorance. The bitter insurgency American and British forces confront today was not pre-ordained. There were lost opportunities, military and political, along the way. The commanders and troops who fought the war explained them to us. A journey through the war's hidden history, demonstrates why American and allied forces are still at risk in a war the president declared all but won on May 1, 2003."

The hubris and devotion to high technology and total ignorance of the enemy are not the problems of the officer corps or the troops. They are problems at the very top level of the country, from the president on down. Why have the generals spoken out now? Doubtless because they see the same group that created the mess in Iraq preparing to incite a war against Iran, using the same techniques of stirring up fear and pseudo-patriotism. They actually seem to believe they can carry it off again, despite their failures in Iraq. It is almost as though there is a Karl Rove scenario. As part of the War on Terrorism we begin to create shock and awe in Iran during October. The Republicans are the party of victory and patriotism. We must keep them in power to support our brave troops and our brave president, and to avenge the heroes of 9/11.

As Vice President Dick Cheney is alleged to have argued to the president, "If we don't finish Iran now, no future administration will be able to finish them."

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12877.htm

IAEA Finds no Proof of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program

By Juan Cole

04/29/06 "ICH' -- -- In its April 28 report, the International Atomic Energy Agency mentioned the UNSC mandate to Iran of last February:

' • re-establish full and sustained suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities,
including research and development, to be verified by the Agency;

• reconsider the construction of a research reactor moderated by heavy water;

• ratify promptly and implement in full the Additional Protocol;

• pending ratification, continue to act in accordance with the provisions of the Additional
Protocol which Iran signed on 18 December 2003;

• implement transparency measures, as requested by the Director General, including in GOV/2005/67, which extend beyond the formal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol, and include such access to individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual use equipment, certain military-owned workshops and research and development as the Agency may request in support of its ongoing investigations.

Despite not being fully in compliance with these demands, Iran maintains that it is in fact fulfilling its obligations under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty.

The IAEA found no smoking gun.

Here is its conclusion, which others will not quote for you at such length:

' 33. All the nuclear material declared by Iran to the Agency is accounted for. Apart from the small quantities previously reported to the Board, the Agency has found no other undeclared nuclear material in Iran. However, gaps remain in the Agency’s knowledge with respect to the scope and content of Iran’s centrifuge programme. Because of this, and other gaps in the Agency’s knowledge, including the role of the military in Iran’s nuclear programme, the Agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.

34. After more than three years of Agency efforts to seek clarity about all aspects of Iran’s nuclear programme, the existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of concern. '

This ambiguity is being twisted by the Bush administration to make it seem as though Iran has done something illegal. The report can be read to say that there is no evidence that Iran is doing anything illegal.

In fact, under the NPT, countries do have the right to do the sort of experiments Iran is doing. Most of the complaints are not about substance but about something else.

Iran's president pledged to continue to cooperate with UN isnspectors.

More about Iran later. For now see the next item, where an Iraqi VP says all hell would break loose in Iraq if the US attacked Iran.
Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Visit his website www.juancole.com

http://www.g2bulletin.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=1045

How U.S. will hit Iran
British sources say Bush ‘significantly closer' to attack

Publishing Date: 29.04.06 18:36

LONDON -- A secret crisis meeting of Britain's military and political chiefs has been told President Bush has moved "significantly closer" to launching attacks on Iran's nine nuclear plants.

Both Washington and the International Atomic Energy Agency believe the facilities are now "advanced in providing uranium enrichment and plutonium materials which will be used to provide nuclear bombs." The time frame for this to happen "is within three years at the outside," the meeting was told.

The Pentagon battle plans for the attack were revealed to the meeting.


Tactical Tomahawks key to attack plan
Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles would be launched from U.S. Navy ships and submarines in the Gulf to target Iran's air defense systems at the nuclear installations. The updated Tomahawks have an onboard facility that allows them to be reprogrammed while in-flight to attack an alternative target once the initial one is destroyed. Each has also a "loitering" capability over a target area to provide damage assessment through its on-board TV camera.

U.S. Air Force B2 stealth bombers, each equipped with eight 4,500-pound bunker-busting bombs, would fly from Diego Garcia, the isolated US Navy base in the Indian Ocean, the Whiteman USAF base in Missouri, and the USAF base at Fairford in Gloucestershire. Each meter-long bomb of hardened steel can penetrate 6 meters of concrete. There would be no ground-force follow-up attacks.

The meeting was called after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Foreign Secretary Jack Straw during her recent "feel good" visit to England that "if all else fails, we are prepared to go it alone or with the assistance of our good friend, Israel."

In Tel Aviv, officials of Israel's new centrist-left coalition government, led by Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party, said they remained committed to supporting a U.S. attack.

For Straw, Rice's privately-delivered blunt warning undermined his own reported public statements that an attack on Iran was "not going to happen - now or probably ever."

An official who was with Straw at the time of Rice's warning said: "She made it very clear military action was inevitable unless Tehran backed down."

Held in the monolithic Ministry of Defense building in Whitehall, the meeting had been ordered by Prime Minister Tony Blair to establish the level of Britain's own military involvement in such an attack.

It was also asked to assess the political consequences the strike would have for the United Kingdom - including the increased threat of terrorist attacks on the country - its relationship with the European Union and the effect on the role of Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The last time such a meeting was held was in March, 2003, on the eve of the war with Iraq.

The meeting was chaired by General Sir Michael Walker, the chief of the defense staff. Lt. General Andrew Ridgeway and the chief of army defense intelligence and Major-General Bill Rollo, the assistant chief of the general staff, flanked Walker.

Senior Foreign Office officials were led by William Ehram, director-general of the FO defence office, and David Landesman, head of the nuclear counter-proliferation department, Sir John Scarlett, head of MI6 and Eliza Manningham-Buller also had seats around the mahogany conference table. Senior officials from Downing Street completed the group.

Effectively they were the core of the Blair government "War Cabinet."
Before the meeting, Straw had flown with Rice to Baghdad to try and resolve another crisis which could affect when an Iran attack happened: the pressing issue of who governed Iraq.

In Baghdad Rice had said that "we need to get this settled as soon as possible." The words at the end of her press conference were not developed. But in London they were seen as an indication, a senior Foreign Office source said, "that Washington wants to get the Iraqi agenda off the top spot so it can concentrate on dealing with Iran. Bush is determined to destroy those nuclear sites."

The Whitehall meeting was given the latest intelligence on Iran's current ballistic missile capability:

•· A total of 85 S-300 air defence missiles. Provided by China, they would be effective against U.S. fighter-bombers. Less so against the multi-defense systems of the Tactical Tomahawks.

•· X-55 cruise missiles. Numbers believed to be no more than 40. Estimated range of over 1,000 miles. Situated close to the border with Turkmenistan.

•· Shabtai-3. A version of rocket provided by China. Exact numbers unknown. But believed to be no more than 26. Based in sites in southern Iran. Well within range of Israel.

•· Shahab-4. Currently being developed near Natanz, south of Tehran. Will not come on line until 2008. Each will have a range of 18,000 miles - able to strike against anywhere in Europe and the United States.

The present missiles can be adapted to fire from Iran's 25 missile craft and its three frigates. None can be launched from Iran's air force of 200 hundred old aircraft: Tomcats, MIG-29 Fulcum and Phantoms.

Iran's 500,000 army of regular and conscripts are poorly led and trained. Most of their equipment comes from the former Soviet Union.

The Blair "War Cabinet" meeting concluded:

•· Apart from the Blair Government who else will support attack on Iran? Definitely Israel. Its three Dolphin Class nuclear submarines are in the Gulf to help target Iran's air defences at the nuclear facilities. The submarines are currently linked by satellite to naval HQ at Tel Aviv. In turn that is linked to the Pentagon.

•· Who else would support the attack? Diplomatic support would probably come from Australia, Poland and possibly Germany, France and Spain. Less certain is the role of other European countries.

•· How high-risk is the attack strategy? It could trigger devastating reprisals against 8,500 British troops based in Iraq and the 3,500 troops due to arrive in Afghanistan by May, 2006. Both countries have strong religious and political links to Iran. It could also see Washington having to re-plan withdrawal of its troops from Iraq. It would also certainly lead to Iran cutting off oil supplies to the West. It could bring about confrontation with China and Russia that would inevitably destabilise the region - and probably beyond. It would increase the probability of suicide attacks against Israel - and all nations that supported the attack.

•· Finally, there is no guarantee that the U.S.-led attack would destroy all the country's facilities. MI6 told the meeting that, apart from the known eight identified targets, there are other secret facilities in Iran that have yet to be fully identified.

Given all this, when will the attack take place?

No date yet fixed. But if Iran continues to maintain its bellicose attitude and ignores demands made by the UN, the Bush administration will launch military action, either later this year or early in 2007. But certainly not later than the run-up to Bush's final year in office in 2008.

What are the present mission plans?

It is two-phased. First U.S. and probably Israeli cruise missiles will destroy defenses around targets. Second, B2 Stealth bombers will hit nuclear plants with bunker-busting bombs. Total mission time in target areas: probably eight hours.

What are the present targets?

Saghand: Mining operation set to begin later this year, yielding 50-60 tonnes of uranium annually.

Ardkan: Ore is purified to produce uranium ore concentrate known as yellowcake.

Gehine: Mine and milling facility.

Isfahan: Yellowcake cleansed of impurities and converted to uranium hexafluoride gas.

Natanz: Enrichment site which can be used to produce weapons grade uranium.

Tehran: Research reactor and radioactive waste storage.

Bushehr: Russian-built light water reactor.

Arak: Heavy water research reactor.

Anarak: Nuclear waste storage site.

Apart from its own intelligence briefing, what external analysis did the meeting consider?

Professor Paul Rogers, author of the Oxford Research Group's report on Iran: "A real possibility of military conflict. The immediate consequence could do serious damage to Iran's nuclear program, but that would be deceptive. The Americans do not have the troops for a regime change and an attack would strengthen the Iranian regime, spark another oil crisis and could encourage the Iranians to go hell for leather for nuclear weapons."

Dr. Rosemary Hollis, the research director at the Chatham House think-tank:
"There is so much opposition that I don't see an attack as imminent."

Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board from 2001 to 2003: "Whether Iran's nuclear weapons program ends with a whimper or a bang is up to the Iranians. If the UN does its job, by blocking Iran's nuclear weapon ambitions, it may be possible to avoid a more kinetic solution."

Dr. Olivia Bosch, a former weapons inspector in Iraq: "The rhetoric is disproportionate to the capability that Iran has."

Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran: "I do not agree with foreign military intervention. However, if the international community and the Security Council hesitate in adopting a firm policy on Iran, the regime would obtain the only thing it needs to acquire nuclear weapons, namely time. Then we would be facing an Islamic fundamentalist regime, the leading state sponsor of terrorism, armed with nuclear weapons. This would make war inevitable."

--G2B contributor Gordon Thomas

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=49982


NUCLEAR WAR-FEAR
Iran's secret plan if attacked
codenamed 'Judgment Day'
8 Islamist groups funded to strike
U.S. military, economic interests

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: April 29, 2006
5:40 p.m. Eastern



© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Tehran has recruited and funded eight Islamic fundamentalist organizations to undertake retaliatory strikes against U.S. and British military and economic interests across the Middle East – and perhaps in the U.S. and Europe – in the event Iran's nuclear facilities are attacked, reports a London Arab daily, Asharq Al-Awsat.

The plan, which has been heavily funded and was created by a number of experts in guerilla warfare and terrorist operations, includes suicide attacks against U.S. and British targets in the region as well as their allies. According to information gleaned from a senior source in the Iranian armed forces' joint chief of staff, logistical support for the groups that would participate in the plan comes from Brigadier General Qassim Suleimani of the of the Revolutionary Guards' al Quds Brigades.


"Most of Iran's visitors in the last four months, including the leaders of revolutionary groups in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, as well as the heads of Hezbollah cells in the Persian Gulf and Europe and North America were asked, when they met with the Iranian intelligence minister Gholamhossein Mohseni Ezhei and his aides: 'Are you ready to defend the Islamic revolution and vilayat e faqih (rule of the clergy)?'" the source said. "'If you agree to take part in the great jihad, what would you need to be ready for the great fight?'"

The leader of one of the Iraq groups that is part of the "Judgment Day" plan told the Iranians his men would turn Iraq into hell for Americans in the event of an attack on Iran. The Revolutionary Guards' military training camps have been made available to Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army. Al Sadr has received more than $20 million from the Iranians.

Street-fighting training has been given in Isfahan, Iran, to members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as large sums of money and large quantities of arms.

As reported by WorldNetDaily, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has recruited Imad Mugniyah, the Lebanese commander of Hezbollah's overseas operations, to oversee retaliation against Western targets following any U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Officers sent to southern Lebanon last month are in command of more than 10 thousand rockets aimed at Israel's cities. It is believed they've been given control of Hezbollah's missiles to attack Israel if Iran's nuclear sites are hit. U.S. officials and Israel intelligence sources believe Mugniyah is in charge of these operations.

"When and if the Iranians decide to hit the West in its soft belly, Imad will be the one to act," a Western intelligence source said.

Approximately 80 members of Hezbollah received training last year in ultralight aircraft and undersea operations in order to carry out suicide attacks.


Implementation of the plan is set to begin immediately following a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities and would progress in six stages:

U.S. bases in Iraq and the Persian Gulf region to be struck by Iranian missiles.
Suicide attacks in a number of Muslim countries against U.S. embassies, military bases, economic and oil-related facilities tied to U.S. and British firms, and targets in countries allied with the U.S.
Attacks by Revolutionary Guards and Iraqi insurgents loyal to Iran against U.S. and British forces in Iraq.
Hundreds of rockets launched by Hezbollah against pre-selected targets in Israel.
If U.S. military attacks continue, more than 50 Shehab-3 missiles will be launched against Israel and 50 terrorist cells in the U.S., Canada and Europe will be given approval to launch attacks against civil and industrial targets in those countries.
Maximize civilian casualties with germ agents and "dirty bombs."

I guess if we are gonna go, we'd better
be ready to go All the Way.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12553823/site/newsweek/


Iran: A Rummy Guide
To borrow a phrase used for Iraq, there are 'things we now know we don't know.' NEWSWEEK sorts it out.

By Christopher Dickey and John Barry
Newsweek


May 8, 2006 issue - Back in June 2002, as the Bush administration started pushing hard for war with Iraq by focusing on fears of the unknown—terrorists and weapons of mass destruction—Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained that when it came to gathering intelligence on such threats, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Elaborating, Rumsfeld told a news conference: "There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know."

Now there's a crisis brewing with Iran. And the same basic problem applies: what is known, what is suspected, what can be only guessed or imagined? Is danger clear and present or vague and distant? Washington is abuzz now, as it was four years ago, with "sources" talking of sanctions, war, regime change. In 2002, despite a paucity of hard evidence, Iraq was made to seem an urgent threat demanding immediate action. "We don't want 'the smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud" is the memorable phrase used by the then national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Given the results of Washington's rush into the Iraqi unknown, concern is growing about U.S. policy toward Iran. Yet the Iranian case is very different—and more dangerous. The latest report from the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, released last Friday by Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, makes it clear that Tehran is defying U.N. demands that it freeze its nuclear activities. European and American diplomats are considering resolutions calling for unspecified consequences—and, according to European sources, they have contingency plans for sanctions outside the United Nations if they're blocked by Russian or Chinese vetoes. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, lest there be any doubt about his stand, said, "The Iranian nation won't give a damn about such useless resolutions."

With the confrontation raising questions about future oil supplies, and fears growing that a seemingly crazy regime may soon acquire atomic bombs, the IAEA and Western intelligence agencies are working overtime to separate fundamental facts from guesswork and propaganda.

The Known Knowns
Tehran has a full-fledged nuclear-energy program. That's a known known, and the rabble-rousing Ahmadinejad is proud of it. (Indeed, he's made it a nationalist rallying cry: "By the grace of God, today Iran is a nuclear country," he declared again last week.) The country has used high-speed centrifuges to produce low-enriched uranium suitable for power generation. That, too, is confirmed by the IAEA. But the same techniques that Iran is using, and the machinery it's assembling, can also make the highly enriched uranium at the core of atomic bombs. Once the process is mastered, the question is not whether Iran can make a weapon, but whether it wants to. And who's next? Ahmadinejad talked last week about sharing the technology with Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.

Iran insists the whole project is benign, and that it's now observing the letter of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—which enshrines its "right" to peaceful nuclear energy. But, another fact: Iran kept its enrichment activities secret from 1985 to 2003, in clear violation of the treaty's safeguard agreements. And instead of continuing a freeze on some of its activities begun in 2003, which was supposed to help restore international trust, Iranrestarted nuclear-fuel enrichment earlier this year. Such facts led the IAEA board of governors, including a reluctant Russia and China, to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for further discussion and possible action.

Yet it's also true that no solid evidence has ever been revealed linking Iran's known nuclear program to the actual development or production of nuclear weapons.


The Unknown Unknowns
At the other end of the information spectrum, on the invisible wavelength of unknown unknowns, is the hypothesis that the mullahs have an entirely secret, separate and thus-far utterly undiscovered nuclear-weapons program. Israeli officials commonly espouse this view, as do some American analysts. Former Reagan administration terrorism adviser and neoconservative scholar Michael Ledeen says he believes the Iranians already have the bomb. "Of all the hypotheses, the hypothesis that they don't is the least likely," he claims. A senior intelligence source from a country with close ties to Washington, who is not allowed to discuss intelligence matters on the record, says there's no smoking gun that points to a clandestine program. But he insists none may be needed. "What we have are a lot of dots," he says. "If you trace them and they outline an elephant, it's probably an elephant."

Israel, in range of Iranian missiles and often the victim of Iranian-backed terrorists, has every reason to be alarmed. Ahmadinejad, after all, talks about wiping Israel off the map. Yet Israeli estimates of how long it might take Iran to acquire atomic weapons—two years or less, in some cases—are often much shorter than others. "It's not the facts, it's the interpretation," says Ephraim Sneh, chairman of the Knesset's Defense Planning and Policy Subcommittee. "Maybe we define differently the definition of the 'point of no return'." Last month in Washington, top aides to U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte told reporters they believe Iran will not have a nuclear bomb until after 2010, at the earliest.

"Are there secret facilities? I don't think so," says Gary Samore, nonproliferation expert in the Clinton administration, who recently wrote a major study of Iran's WMD programs. "Look, if there were, Iran would be very foolish to provoke acrisis over its known facilities. Their best course would be to soothe everyone by allowing the IAEA to monitor those, while secretly working away in the clandestine plants." Joseph Cirincione at the Carnegie Endowment is equally skeptical. "There's not a scintilla of evidence," he says. "Is it possible? Yes. Is it possible Iran has a base on the moon? Yes."

The Known Unknowns
Between clear fact and pure speculation lies the realm of questions based on shreds of evidence that actually exist. That's where the IAEA's investigators spend most of their time, and that's where they've encountered some of their greatest frustrations. "After more than three years of Agency efforts to seek clarity about all aspects of Iran's nuclear program, the existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of concern," ElBaradei wrote with considerable understatement in last week's report.


There's still no paper trail showing the details of Iran's relationship with the clandestine nuclear network of Pakistani scientist AQ Khan. Some of the same middlemen who supplied Iran also supplied Libya, which turned over a trove of intelligence about the network to Western governments in 2003, and the Libyans got weapon designs. The Iranians said they did not, but some of the few papers they have shown the IAEA suggest weapon-related activity.

Libya also got designs and parts from AQ Khan's people for P-2 centrifuges, which are much more efficient than the P-1s Iran acknowledged first acquiring in 1987. Iran told the IAEA it got some P-2 technology in 1995, but did nothing with it until 2002. Then last month Ahmadinejad told students in the city of Khorasan that P-2s "are going through the research and testing phase." The IAEA is still waiting for Iran to explain.

As suspicious as all this sounds—and is—some evidence against Iran hasn't turned out to be as sinister as it seemed at first. The IAEA had discovered minute traces of highly enriched uranium on some Iranian equipment that seemed to indicate a clandestine program. The Iranians said they were "shocked" by the level of contamination, and that it must have been left there by someone—presumably the Pakistanis—using the centrifuges before Iran got them. Extensive tests "tend, on balance, to support Iran's statement," the IAEA concluded.

"The most important of the known unknowns is what this program is really about," says Matt Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard's Belfer Center. Is Iran determined to build a weapon, or does it merely want the option? Other analysts, including ElBaradei, have suggested its aim is to launch wide-ranging negotiations about the future of the whole region. But in the official report, there's no speculation about that. "The Agency cannot make a judgment about, or reach a conclusion on, future compliance or intentions," he said. There are just too many unknowns.

http://www.spacewar.com/2006/060430144807.gpmkiq58.html

Iranians present new nuclear reality, say observers

VIENNA, April 30 (AFP) Apr 30, 2006
The lesson to be drawn from the UN nuclear watchdog report on Iran is that Tehran feels there is a new reality freeing it to enrich uranium and defy UN inspections, analysts and diplomats told AFP.
"The Iranians are presenting the world with a new given on the ground, namely that they are enriching uranium," a diplomat close to the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Sunday.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran of "playing games" and called on Tehran to come clean and halt uranium enrichment.

Emboldened by their progression from development to actual enrichment under the eyes of IAEA inspectors, the Iranians now think they can dictate their terms on agency inspections, diplomats said in Vienna.

The Iranians have said they will allow tough IAEA inspections if UN sanctions are not levied on them but in no case will they "go back to the status-quo-ante on enrichment," said non-proliferation analyst Gary Samore, a former arms expert in both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

The United States and Europe fear that Iran is using an allegedly peaceful nuclear program to hide the development of atomic weapons and has drawn the line at the enrichment of uranium, which makes fuel for civilian nuclear reactors, but what can also be the explosive core of nuclear bombs.

Iran has defied a UN Security Council injunction to halt all enrichment activities and cooperate with IAEA inspectors trying to determine if the Iranian nuclear program is peaceful, the IAEA said Friday in a report.

US and European diplomats reacted by saying they would push to get a draft resolution before the Council for a legally binding deadline on Iran.

But China and Russia oppose such a move, as it could lead to punitive sanctions or even military action.

The IAEA report said Iran had offered a timetable for cooperation with IAEA inspectors within the next three weeks if the IAEA, rather than the Security Council, oversaw its compliance.

Diplomats described this as a veiled threat that Iran could pull out of the nuclear non-proliferation regime if its atomic ambitions are challenged.

The diplomat close to the IAEA said there were two explanations for the new Iranian pose of defiance, after Tehran had stressed cooperation in the years since the IAEA discovered in 2003 that Iran had been hiding sensitive nuclear activities for almost two decades.

One explanation "is that the Iranians were buying time so that they could enrich and since they've done that now, they can afford to be more cocky".

"The other explanation is that they have a new group in power (hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)," the diplomat said.

Other diplomats said the Iranians have clearly been racing to get enrichment working at their plant in Natanz so that all future negotiations will have to take this as a given.

Iran announced on April 11 that it had started a 164-centrifuge production line and had enriched uranium up to the level needed for nuclear fuel but not weapons.

David Albright, who runs a think-tank in Washington, said Iran was still at least three years away from making a nuclear weapon but was moving ahead.

Iran is planning to install four new 164-centrifuge cascades in Natanz by August and then move forward to building a 3,000-centrifuge model towards the end of the year, Albright said.

As to inspections, Albright said it is hard to calculate "how fast the IAEA is losing information on the Iranian program."

The IAEA has lost the ability to investigate Iran's undeclared nuclear activities as Tehran stopped applying an Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that allows this, once the Security Council on March 29 gave it 30 days to comply with its demands.

The IAEA is limited to safeguards investigations to see if declared nuclear material has been diverted for non-peaceful purposes.

The diplomat said the IAEA is likely to lose even safeguards monitoring if the Security Council imposes sanctions, and that this would be a catastrophe.

"The IAEA is like the ghostbusters in the movie of that name," the diplomat said.

When you want to verify that nuclear proliferation is not taking place, "at the end of the day, who are you going to call, the IAEA guys, no one else," the diplomat said.





All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

Turkey Refuses U.S. Request To Allow Attack On Iran From Turkish Base

By YNetNews

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Sunday that his country refused a request from the United States to attack Iran from its Air Force base in Incirlik, despite the U.S. offer of a nuclear reactor, according to a report in Al Biyan.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12887.htm

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/711267.html

Rice: U.S. may press Iran not only via UN on nuclear issue

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned on Sunday the United States might take steps outside the UN Security Council to pressure Iran to stop its nuclear program.

Rice, who appeared on several Sunday television talk shows, said Washington still had a number of diplomatic steps it could take through the UN Security Council against Iran. However, if the Council did not act quickly enough, Washington and its allies would not wait.

"I absolutely believe that we have a lot of diplomatic arrows in our quiver at the Security Council and also like-minded states that would be able and willing to look at additional measures if the Security Council does not move quickly enough," Rice said on the CBS show Face the Nation.

The United States contends that Iran is working to develop nuclear weapons, but Tehran says its program is purely to meet civil energy needs.

Despite its defiance, Rice said Iran was trying to avoid international isolation. She disputed an assessment by her predecessor as secretary of state, Colin Powell, who said in an interview in London that Iran appeared willing to accept sanctions to continue its atomic program.

"When the Iranians say things like, 'We don't care if there are sanctions,' then I ask myself, then why are they working so hard to stay out of the Security Council?" Rice said on CBS.

Rice accused Iran of "playing games" with the international community, saying Tehran had had plenty of time to comply with earlier demands to halt its program.

Rice said no one was considering oil or gas sanctions, adding that there were a other options.

She sidestepped a question on whether she agreed with Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a psychopath. But she said the Iranian president's behavior reinforced the world's concerns about his country acquiring nuclear weapons.

"I have no idea. I have never seen the man or talked to him," Rice said on CNN's Late Edition. "I just know that nobody speaks in polite company in that way and that he represents the Iranian regime very badly."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/04/30/iran.nuclear/

U.S. rejects Iran inspection offer
Wants involvement of U.N. watchdog -- not Security Council

Sunday, April 30, 2006; Posted: 2:32 a.m. EDT (06:32 GMT)


May 9 -- Foreign ministers from the Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany meet at U.N. headquarters in New York. The council will meet on Iran formally after those talks.

(CNN) -- Iran will allow snap inspections of its nuclear facilities if the U.N. Security Council does not get involved in the country's nuclear program, a senior Iranian official has said.

But Washington was quick to reject the offer.

"Today's statement does not change our position that the Iranian government must give up its nuclear ambitions, nor does it affect our decision to move forward to the United Nations Security Council," The Associated Press reported White House spokesman Blaine Rethmeier as saying.

Iran wants to deal solely with the U.N. nuclear inspection group -- the International Atomic Energy Agency --according to Muhammad Saeedi, deputy head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency.

"If the agency is again responsible for Iran's dossier and the Security Council is no longer involved, we are ready to finalize and solve the remaining issues with the agency during a three-week period," Saeedi said, referring to the IAEA.

His offer came a day after the IAEA delivered a report to the U.N. Security Council finding that Iran hasn't heeded demands to stop uranium enrichment. (Watch what the United Nations is trying to do about Iran -- 1:28)

Iran said its nuclear program is only for peaceful energy purposes. But many nations in the West, suspecting Iran wants to build nuclear weapons, want it to stop enriching uranium, a critical step toward producing electricity as well as nuclear bombs.

Earlier this year, Iran blocked snap inspections after the Security Council began taking up the matter. Scheduled inspections, however, were not stopped.

The five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China -- and Germany plan to take on the issue on May 9 at the United Nations.

On Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his Iranian counterpart that Iran must take concrete steps aimed at restoring international trust to Iran's nuclear activities, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry's Web site.

Those steps included the suspension of Iran's uranium enrichment program and full cooperation with IAEA on Iran's nuclear program, according to the Web site.

An official statement said Lavrov and Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki discussed the matter during a phone conversation initiated by Iran.

Diplomacy 'beginning'
Describing a "sense of urgency," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton said work on a draft resolution was under way to address Iran's failure to comply with a Security Council demand to halt its uranium enrichment program.

Such a measure would be adopted under U.N. Charter's Chapter 7, which would make resolutions mandatory -- as opposed to discretionary -- under international law.

U.S. President George W. Bush said Friday that diplomatic efforts are "just beginning," adding that the IAEA report that Iran is not heeding to demands to stop enrichment "should remind us all that the Iranian government's intransigence is not acceptable."

He called the report a reminder "that the world is united and concerned about their desire to have not only a nuclear weapon, but the capacity to make a nuclear weapon or the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon; all of which we're working hard to convince them not to try to achieve." (Watch Bush discuss his next step on Iran -- 3:32)

Previously, Bush had said no options were off the table, including military action.

The United States and other countries contend Iran's program is a guise to hide the country's development of nuclear weapons.

On April 11, Iran declared it had produced enriched uranium in concentrations capable of running a nuclear power plant.

Bush said Friday that he was consulting with allies. "Diplomacy is my first choice and should be the first choice of any president," he added.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said it was "very serious that the Iranian regime has failed fully to co-operate with the IAEA and the United Nations Security Council."

Before the report's release Friday, Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejad said no measures would stop Iran from continuing its nuclear program.

"Iran is a nuclear country. This slogan that nuclear energy is our inalienable right is the outcry of the people and a national demand," Ahmadinejad said during a trip to the northwestern Iranian town of Khorramdareh.

"Achieving nuclear technology is today the will of all Iranians, whether they're young, old, man, woman or child. You can hear their voice here supporting the nuclear activities of Iran. Listen!" he said, stirring a crowd of thousands.

CNN's Liz Neisloss and Elise Labott contributed to this report.

Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

MILITARY INTERVENTION AND NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION

The Bush administration's stern warnings against Iran may hasten nuclear proliferation, just as the U.S. war in Iraq may have hastened Iran's nuclear weapons aspirations, according to Ivan Eland, director of the Independent Institute's Center on Peace & Liberty. "The invasion of Iraq and subsequent U.S. military threats against Iran have actually intensified the Iranian desire to get nuclear weapons to keep the superpower out," writes Eland in his latest op-ed.

Eland takes to task both hawkish conservatives who believe U.S. military interventionism abroad is necessary to promote American security, and liberals who who support U.S. military interventions for "humanitarian" purposes. Both groups, he argues, "should realize the long-term effects of U.S. military interventions on the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world."

To dissuade Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Eland further argues, the United States should strike a deal similar to those it offered North Korea and Libya: "In exchange for ending its nuclear program, Iran would be offered a pledge of non-aggression by the United States and Israel and full economic and diplomatic integration with the world."

"The United States May Have to Live with a Nuclear Iran," by Ivan Eland (5/1/06)
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1713
SPANISH TRANSLATION:
"Los Estados Unidos pueden tener que convivir con un Irán nuclear"
http://www.elindependent.org/articulos/article.asp?id=1713

THE WAY OUT OF IRAQ: Decentralizing the Iraqi Government, by Ivan Eland
http://www.independent.org/store/policy_re...etail.asp?id=16

THE EMPIRE HAS NO CLOTHES: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, by Ivan Eland
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=54

Center on Peace & Liberty (Ivan Eland, director)
http://www.independent.org/research/copal/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20060...20513-3903r.htm

U.S., EU split on handling nuke defiance
April 30, 2006


BRUSSELS (Reuters) -- The United States and the European Union struck different notes yesterday on how to respond to Iran's nuclear defiance while insisting they were in full agreement.
Speaking at a conference, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said no one was considering military action over Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment, and Europe did not want to join a "coalition of the willing" against Iran.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, told the Brussels Forum in a speech on Friday night: "There is only one thing worse than military action, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."
He said the United States would not stand by and let Iran wipe out Israel, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinjenad had advocated.
The Islamic republic, a major oil and gas supplier, denied it intends to build a bomb and said its nuclear program is purely for civilian energy purposes. International inspectors, however, have discovered bomb-making equipment and plans following the disclosure of a covert nuclear program.
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard C. Holbrooke, a prominent Democratic foreign policy specialist, said the response to Iran's nuclear program was a defining issue for trans-Atlantic relations.
"Iran is the test case about whether we'll have effective trans-Atlantic cooperation," Mr. Holbrooke said.
The more divisions in the West and with China and Russia over Iran, the more likely that the United States would face the terrible choice painted by Mr. McCain, he said.
However, Mr. Solana, who has been involved in efforts by the EU's three main powers, Britain, France and Germany, to negotiate a solution with Tehran, said he did not think there were differences between the United States and Europe on Iran. NATO and EU foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had debated the issue at a meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, on Thursday, and "nobody at that point in time considered the possibility of a military solution in Iran."
Mr. Solana also said he did not think anyone was seeking a "coalition of the willing" to act against Iran, and no European country wanted such a coalition.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried said the next step was a strong U.N. Security Council resolution.
"I cannot predict how things will come out, but that is where we are headed, united with Europe," he told reporters.
Asked why he was unwilling to talk of military action, unlike Mr. McCain and Mr. Holbrooke, Mr. Solana said that he held political office and did not have the same freedom of speech.
The most important process was to work with Russia and China to build the broadest possible consensus on a United Nations resolution raising pressure on Tehran to comply with international demands to halt uranium enrichment.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog delivered a report on Friday saying Iran had done little or nothing to prove it was not developing nuclear arms. It had hampered checks by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and rebuffed requests to stop making nuclear fuel, said the report by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../ixnewstop.html
Strikes on Iran too risky, says US general
By Alec Russell in Washington
(Filed: 02/05/2006)



Military action against Iran would be fraught with risk and would have repercussions across the region, a leading American general conceded.

"Any action militarily is very complicated," Lt Gen Victor Renuart, the director of planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Daily Telegraph.


Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush and Condoleezza Rice in Washington yesterday
"And any action by any country will have second-order effects, and that is a strong case to continue the diplomatic process and make it work."

His comments are a rare public statement from the US military on what is the most contentious international issue of the day.

The warning was seen as recognition of the threat Teheran poses to shipping in the Gulf and also to America and its allies in Iraq in the event of an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities.

It came as US diplomats prepared for a meeting today with diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia to discuss the crisis. America wants the United Nations Security Council to step up the pressure on Iran but faces opposition from Beijing and Moscow.



While the White House insists that military action would be a last resort, hawks warn that diplomatic negotiations at the UN could be drawn out for months if not years, all the while allowing Iran to get closer to having a nuclear bomb.

John Bolton, America's hawkish ambassador to the UN, said America wanted a new resolution with Chapter Seven powers that would mandate Iran to comply with its demands to cease all enrichment activity.

"We would give them a short period to consider. Then we would consider sanctions."

Mr Bolton conceded that the Russians and Chinese were against the idea of a Chapter Seven resolution, which they fear would be a step down the road to military action. But he indicated he had not lost hope of bringing them round.

He said that while the Americans would prefer unanimity, ultimately they and their allies would push ahead in the face of Chinese and Russian abstentions.

The next step would be to pursue targeted sanctions against leadership figures and Iranian assets held abroad, possibly co-ordinated by a coalition of the willing or even the EU rather than the UN.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HE02Ak01.html
The case against sanctions on Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

As expected, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has issued a report citing Iran's non-compliance with the requests of both the IAEA's board of governors and the United Nations Security Council, and this has been widely interpreted as paving the way to UN sanctions on Iran in the near future. But has it?

Sanctions can be resorted to under Chapter VII of the UN Charter when considered by the Security Council to be absolutely necessary. To do so, the council would have to determine, under Article 39 of Chapter VII, the existence of any "threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" caused by Iran's nuclear activities.

Yet, per the admission of ElBaradei in his report, all of Iran's nuclear activities "are covered by Agency Safeguard containment and surveillance measures". This, together with the important finding that all nuclear material has been accounted for, raises a serious questions from the prism of international law: On what basis can the Security Council invoke Chapter VII against Iran?

Surely, the IAEA's complaint of Iran's non-cooperation with its requests for "confidence-building measures" that are voluntary and non-legally binding cannot possibly suffice to grant the United States' wish for invoking Chapter VII, for to do so is to substitute superpower exigencies for international law.

Put simply, there is insufficient and/or non-existing evidence, the calculated disinformation aside, to support Western allegations of an Iranian weapons build up; these allegations, initially claiming clandestine activities, have now almost entirely focused on Iran's transparent nuclear activities without, however, being able to pin-point any discernable signs of military use via those activities.

The Israelis, however, are the sole exception. They told the London Sunday Times that they had evidence of hidden Iranian centrifuge facilities working overtime to cut the timeline for nuclear bombs shorter. Such alarmist news from Israel has been heard before aplenty, and distinctly reminds one of Israel's similar gambit with regard to Iraq in 2002-2003.

Here is the nub of the IAEA/Security Council dilemma: they have both called for "re-establishing full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development". And yet, in light of the absence of any "smoking gun" lending validity to the allegations of Iran's nuclear-weapon "ambitions", as well as some 2,000 man-day inspections of civil and nuclear facilities during the past three years, the legal justification for a permanent suspension of Iran's enrichment-related activities under the terms of the non-proliferation regime is simply absent.

To insist on this demand based on hitherto unfounded fears of Iran's misuse of dual-purpose technology is to set up arbitrary red lines that would be tantamount to legal nihilism.

Ironically, ElBaradei writes that "transparency measures are not yet forthcoming", this when his own report contains Iran's April 27 letter to the IAEA pledging to set up a timetable within three weeks to resolve all outstanding questions. Either ElBaradei is interested in procuring more and more cooperation with Iran or he is not, for obvious political reasons, and if he is, then his claim that Iran's transparency measures are not forthcoming must be revised.

To open a parenthesis here, whereas ElBaradei's report confirms Iran's recent claim of having successfully enriched uranium, various Washington pundits such as Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies have dismissed Iran's claim as "vacuous political posturing". Clearly, Cordesman and other policy pundits listened to attentively by the US government and the big media need to check their sources before leveling such stupefying allegations against Iran.

The mere fact that, by ElBaradei's own admission, most of the outstanding questions, such as regarding the (foreign) sources of contamination of Iranian equipment with HEU (highly enriched uranium), have been successfully resolved in Iran's favor represents yet more cold water on the furnace of sanctions on Iran.

Indeed, the existence of small "gaps" in knowledge mentioned in ElBaradei's report hardly reinforces the momentum toward sanctions, in view of the fact that Iran is not alone and the IAEA's annual reports are filled with complaints of non-compliance by dozens of member states.

The issue is that Iran should not be subjected to punitive sanctions for exercising the same rights enjoyed by the Permanent Five members of the Security Council as well as Germany, Brazil and Japan. To do so would be to undermine the very legitimacy of the UN and its most powerful organ, which has yet to recover fully from the United States' Machiavellian manipulations with regard to Iraq three years ago.

Mindful of such a distinct possibility, Kofi Annan, the UN's secretary general, has on more than one occasion warned that the Iran crisis could be detrimental for the United Nations and that the issue should remain within the IAEA. Similarly, Russian officials have warned that the Security Council should not try to replace the IAEA.

Also, within the General Assembly, there is considerable opposition to the ill-advised recommendations for sanctions on Iran which, if implemented by the Security Council, may in effect negatively affect the UN's global image, as a surrogate of US power, and its ability to perform its functions with respect to peace and security in the Middle East and beyond.

Yet, US officials have yet to show any signs of grasping the potentially adverse consequences, for the UN as well as the future of the Middle East, if their meritless push for UN sanctions is adopted. Their current drive needs to be rethought in the light of a more sound grasp of the existing alternatives.

But assuming for a moment that the US and its European allies somehow manage to get Chapter VII invoked at the Security Council, which is bound to cause further ire in Iran and, indeed, the entire Muslim world and most if not all of the Non-Aligned Movement, then Iran's non-compliance with the initial token sanctions will put the council in serious jeopardy.

Either it will not escalate the pressure with tougher sanctions, in which case Iran's case will be yet another example of the council's impotence, or it will seek Iran's compliance by imposing more and more "smart" sanctions that will be, in effect, legally dumb and, as a result, accentuate the UN's perception as a superpower pawn. The members of the Permanent Five (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) and Germany are due to meet this week to discuss what action to take.

Iran's enrichment knowledge is a fait accompli and Iranian centrifuges are spinning irrespective of the United States' wish to "stop even one centrifuge from rotating", to echo a US official at last year's nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference in New York. Henceforth, the world should accept to live with Iran's nuclear capability and do what is necessary to make sure that Iran's pledge of non-military diversion of its peaceful program is verified through the IAEA's instruments. It is noteworthy that last spring, French President Jacques Chirac, in his meeting with Iran's chief negotiator, fleetingly consented to Iran's enrichment right, only to buckle under external pressure.

Of course, the weaknesses of the US-EU's legal hand at the Security Council is the main reason there is a growing talk of sanctions "outside the UN" by a so-called "coalition of the willing". Again, any such sanctions would be contrary to international law and, most likely, incapable of garnering Iran's forfeiture of its NPT-based right to an independent fuel cycle, only causing commercial and financial setbacks for any country lured or coerced into this coalition.

The possibility that any of Iran's neighbors, including Turkey, which has burgeoning economic relations with Iran and cooperates with it within the multilateral framework of the Economic Cooperation Organization, would join such a coalition is rather remote.

As a result, the US and its European Union allies are about to take the "unnecessary" Iran crisis to the next level, portending first and foremost a diplomatic disaster for them, and for the well-spring of international laws and regimes.

A more prudent approach would be to use persuasive diplomacy with Iran, to put Iran's security anxieties to rest and induce greater and greater nuclear transparency in an atmosphere devoid of military threats. Only then can the outside world feel reasonably secure that Iran's nuclear-weapon potential will remain latent; otherwise, if the pattern of escalating pressures continues, then the most likely scenario will be one of "self-fulfilling prophecy" wherein a potential nuclear state sets aside its own declared antipathy to nuclear weapons and embraces them under unreasonable external pressures.

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. He is also author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.

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

http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=8927

May 2, 2006
The United States May Have to Live With a Nuclear Iran

by Ivan Eland
Unbelievably, a belligerent Bush administration is trying to rattle the saber again against Iran, because of its defiance of the United Nations Security Council's resolution against Iran's nuclear program. In the long term, such blustering by a superpower is only likely to speed the efforts of Iran and other countries with nuclear aspirations to get atomic weapons.

Stopping or slowing the spread of nuclear weapons has been a primary foreign policy goal for both Republican and Democratic administrations. During the Clinton administration, for example, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright explicitly gave the policy a very high priority. U.S. policy has always focused on three tactics to stop nuclear proliferation in other countries: banning the materials and technology needed to develop nuclear weapons, punitive economic sanctions, and military action. Although banning materials can slow nuclear proliferation, economic sanctions and military action are counterproductive. A "rally around the flag" effect against these external threats usually makes getting atomic weapons popular, even if the populace is fed up with their country's regime – as in the case of theocratic Iran.

Military threats or actions can cause countries that are developing nuclear technology to accelerate their atomic program and shroud the location of the facilities to protect them from bombing. The invasion of Iraq and subsequent U.S. military threats against Iran have actually intensified the Iranian desire to get nuclear weapons to keep the superpower out. Iran has hidden and buried nuclear facilities and put them in populated areas, which would be difficult for the United States to bomb without causing an international outcry. U.S. intelligence is unlikely to know the locations of all of the Iranian nuclear facilities, and Iran may even have a separate parallel set of facilities unbeknownst to the international community.

Both liberal and conservative U.S. advocates of nonproliferation policies pay too little attention to the effect U.S. interventionist foreign policy has on the acceleration of nuclear proliferation around the world. Countries interested in developing nuclear technology saw the respect that a nuclear North Korea got from the United States as well as the absence of respect that a non-nuclear Iraq received. Many conservatives neglect this intervention-proliferation causal relationship because they believe U.S. military interventions overseas are necessary for the promotion of the national interest. On the other hand, some liberals minimize this relationship because they advocate military interventions for "humanitarian" purposes. Both camps, however, should realize the long-term effects of U.S. military interventions on the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world.

If threats are unlikely to dissuade Iran from rapidly acquiring nuclear weapons and will instead persuade it to do so, what can be done? The United States needs to propose a grand bargain with Iran – such as that offered to North Korea and accepted by Libya. In exchange for ending its nuclear program, Iran would be offered a pledge of nonaggression by the United States and Israel and full economic and diplomatic integration with the world. Although Israel considers Iran its main threat, Iran considers the Israeli nuclear arsenal of hundreds of warheads a major threat as well.

With the U.S. and Israeli threats neutralized by the nonaggression treaty, the Iranians just might feel secure enough scrap their nuclear program. But even with that offer, Iran, which lives in a dangerous neighborhood, may still elect to proceed with its quest for nuclear armaments. Nuclear powers, such as the United States and Israel, are hypocritical in denying other countries this ultimate guarantor of national security. Besides, the United States, with thousands of nuclear warheads, could easily deter an Iranian nuclear attack with only a few warheads. The United States deterred other radical rogue regimes when they obtained nuclear weapons, including the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and Maoist China in the mid-1960s.

Although the Iranians support terrorist groups, Iran has a home address that can be threatened with nuclear retaliation; the terrorists do not. More than likely, the Iranian government would be reluctant to give nuclear weapons, which are expensive to develop, to unpredictable terrorists groups that might be traced back to Iran – thus putting a bull's-eye on Iran.

Because the United States has no viable military solution against the Iranian nuclear program, it should offer Iran a grand bargain. If that fails, the United States may have to accept a nuclear Iran – an outcome far from optimal, but not catastrophic either.

A New Strategy on Iran

By Dennis Ross

The United States and Iran are playing programmed roles in a minuet on nuclear weapons. The United States pushes the U.N. Security Council to warn Iran about the consequences of going nuclear. And Iran continues its march toward development of nuclear power, even as its president declares that "we...

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

- Iran Nuclear Program Not Compatible With Our Demands Says Nuclear Club
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iran_Nucle...clear_Club.html

Paris (AFP) May 03, 2006 - All five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany agree Iran's nuclear programme "is not compatible with the demands of the international community," a French official said after envoys wrapped up a meeting in Paris.

Iran Nuclear Resolution Introduced at U.N.
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By Maggie Farley
Times Staff Writer

May 3 2006, 5:36 PM PDT

UNITED NATIONS -- Despite Russia and China's objections, the U.S., Britain and France introduced a draft Security Council resolution Wednesday that would legally compel Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment activities.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...-home-headlines